We have now completed the equivalent of one full Ebola incubation . . . (21 days of health used to be pretty good news), with no clear end in sight because no one really knows the SARS-CoV-2 trajectory. A 21 day slow-down, per Uganda and every public health expert one can listen to, has slowed the inexorable march of infection. Not before a global 1.6 million infected and 100,000 dead, though.
Day 22 finds us beginning the next three weeks of constriction, of waiting, of uncertainty, on Holy Saturday.
Two thousand years later, we sort of get the story. Looking back to yesterday's grief: the injustice and the pain and the darkened ending of a life, a hundred thousand times over, the replaying of the terror, the feel of the limpness of that body being carried away. And zero grasp of what tomorrow will bring. It is Saturday, and we don't yet know if it's an Easter Saturday, the eve of resurrection, or just another long day post-loss and pre-glory. We're caught in the midst of living the best we can with no idea of just which story line, the blue or the orange or one not imagined, we are on. Choices feel limited, and there is the numbing distraction of just how much energy it takes to do little more than be alive in 2020. Friday is behind us, we hope, so we should be productive. But on Saturday that feels impossible.
And it is not just our Saturday, it is a global Saturday, where our small losses seem unimportant and hardly noticeable in the context of New York City, of Lombardy, of Wuhan. It is a Saturday where we wake up and think, well, we could have died Friday with Jesus, but we're still here when others are not. What now? We thought we were on the cusp of greatness, talking about left and right hand seating and thrones. Now our horizon has narrowed down to the aggressively needy beggars or the hot stretch of tarmac from home to a pile of tomatoes or basin of milk, our interactions have resolved themselves into minutes of 2x2 cm squares on a phone screen, our work has a feel of inevitability, more of the same malnutrition and pus and fever. Contraction, the stone of the grave or the belly of the whale, seems to be the Saturday reality. No escape from the moment that is in itself, if we could see it, our escape.
How do we live in the reality of Saturday? The Saturday that has no certain 24-hour limit, that could be weeks, months, longer?
Preparing our spices, I suppose. The next necessary thing based on our Friday reality. That means we start with our daily routine. Psalms, every morning, preferably two. Coffee. Patterns where we can make them. Air. Work that depends on hope to have meaning, like planting seeds or feeding babies, work that projects forward, and especially work that is making meaning of the losses, like the preparation of those preserving fragrances to honour the dead. Art in general, and specifically Saturday art, that tells the story in the midpoint and doesn't insist on the conclusion. Dirty hands. Quiet. Space. Food. Lament. Pondering. Listening. Waiting.
Because Saturday is a day without answers, a day in-between, a day to let our narratives begin to shift. It wasn't supposed to be this way. We weren't supposed to be stuck here. To be separated. To be jobless. To be preparing burial spices instead of coronation clothes. We thought we were riding the wave and now it is breaking over us instead. We thought we were God's favourites and that meant things going our way, but now it looks like God's chosen loves still suffer, still lose control, and that God suffers right there with them, and the happy endings take way longer than we expected.
The orange line is our flattened curve, bought at the cost of much hardship, but as our president keeps reminding us, this is not about convenience it is about the lives of Ugandans.
These maps of global flight patterns might explain our relative slowness to the COVID curve, even more than our strict social limitation measures. Turns out that China, Italy, and New York get a lot of movement. Africa, not so much.
Two thousand years later, we sort of get the story. Looking back to yesterday's grief: the injustice and the pain and the darkened ending of a life, a hundred thousand times over, the replaying of the terror, the feel of the limpness of that body being carried away. And zero grasp of what tomorrow will bring. It is Saturday, and we don't yet know if it's an Easter Saturday, the eve of resurrection, or just another long day post-loss and pre-glory. We're caught in the midst of living the best we can with no idea of just which story line, the blue or the orange or one not imagined, we are on. Choices feel limited, and there is the numbing distraction of just how much energy it takes to do little more than be alive in 2020. Friday is behind us, we hope, so we should be productive. But on Saturday that feels impossible.
And it is not just our Saturday, it is a global Saturday, where our small losses seem unimportant and hardly noticeable in the context of New York City, of Lombardy, of Wuhan. It is a Saturday where we wake up and think, well, we could have died Friday with Jesus, but we're still here when others are not. What now? We thought we were on the cusp of greatness, talking about left and right hand seating and thrones. Now our horizon has narrowed down to the aggressively needy beggars or the hot stretch of tarmac from home to a pile of tomatoes or basin of milk, our interactions have resolved themselves into minutes of 2x2 cm squares on a phone screen, our work has a feel of inevitability, more of the same malnutrition and pus and fever. Contraction, the stone of the grave or the belly of the whale, seems to be the Saturday reality. No escape from the moment that is in itself, if we could see it, our escape.
How do we live in the reality of Saturday? The Saturday that has no certain 24-hour limit, that could be weeks, months, longer?
Preparing our spices, I suppose. The next necessary thing based on our Friday reality. That means we start with our daily routine. Psalms, every morning, preferably two. Coffee. Patterns where we can make them. Air. Work that depends on hope to have meaning, like planting seeds or feeding babies, work that projects forward, and especially work that is making meaning of the losses, like the preparation of those preserving fragrances to honour the dead. Art in general, and specifically Saturday art, that tells the story in the midpoint and doesn't insist on the conclusion. Dirty hands. Quiet. Space. Food. Lament. Pondering. Listening. Waiting.
Because Saturday is a day without answers, a day in-between, a day to let our narratives begin to shift. It wasn't supposed to be this way. We weren't supposed to be stuck here. To be separated. To be jobless. To be preparing burial spices instead of coronation clothes. We thought we were riding the wave and now it is breaking over us instead. We thought we were God's favourites and that meant things going our way, but now it looks like God's chosen loves still suffer, still lose control, and that God suffers right there with them, and the happy endings take way longer than we expected.
Saturday road, in spite of constraints, people are out to buy and sell
Work goes on, slowly by slowly, a new boys' latrine at CSB, thanks to our friends who donated for infrastructure
Thankfully Ike likes to ride this old mission motorcycle and can ferry mail and a few groceries for team
Normally this space would be packed with dozens of boda taxis waiting for passengers. No longer legal.
We made the unleavened bread for our team on Thursday, even though we all ate the meal in our own homes post-curfew.
We did NOT get a lamb slaughtered here, but this butcher has bone-splitting panga moves.
Passover for three: Scott, me, and Elijah (he didn't show, again)
A 2020 twist, instead of foot-washing we passed the alcohol hand santiser
The screen shows a few of the about 25 families that shared the Messianic Passover Seder meal together via Zoom. Jason B dubbed it a Zeder.
If you could expand this photo you would see a family in our Area (the Robbins) celebrating passover with us by Zoom, Scott and I are on their screen.
Quiet road in front of the mission, only bodas with cargo, and people on foot.
Quiet school, waiting on this indefinite Saturday.
Sometimes a moment to bring meaning into the long days of uncertainty, like leading the kids through the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.
Spice prep work: walking, dirt roads, gathering food, Saturday.
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