For some of us this pandemic season has shaken our casual belief in our own permanence. Over 1,440,000 deaths across the globe. Over 262,000 in the US so far this year.
We also forget at times how fragile our institutions are. We assume our American democracy is sturdy and lasting. The 2020 election was a bleak reminder: our institutions are only as strong as the virtues that hold them in place. If we lose the ability to discern truth from propaganda, if we undermine the safeguards that block absolute power, democracy falters. No nation lasts forever. No political system is immune to abuse.
Thanksgiving this year was strange and hard, even with much to be thankful for. Our family re-negotiated plans when a covid alert and new state guidelines warned against indoor gatherings. Plans changed again, day by day, almost hour by hour as we watched the weather.
We had a family Turkey Trot Thanksgiving morning, then outdoor coffee and cider doughnuts. Later that afternoon, as the weather turned warmer, my husband and I enjoyed an unexpected dinner on our daughter’s patio, with our own table facing hers, generously distanced. A Zoom gathering brought a larger group together that evening.
At the same time I was watching lawsuits here in Pennsylvania unfold. As Vice President of Government and Social Policy for the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, I’m involved in conversations about legal interventions. I also help manage social media for both the League and Fair Districts PA. And I was part of a social media monitoring team for the national Election Protection Coalition. So for weeks now I’ve been watching attempts to disrupt or dismantle the outcome of the 2020 election.
15 lawsuits in PA yielded no evidence of fraud. The last was dismissed just yesterday by a unanimous PA Supreme Court.
But repeated accusations of a rigged election stirred death threats against county commissioners, election officials, employees of firms producing voting machines. Some of our most extreme PA legislators continue to stir trouble. From what they say and do, it seems they would gladly dismantle courts, state administration and every remaining check and balance in efforts to score points with their most partisan base.
That’s my world of anxiety. For others, it’s the struggle to teach as schools move from in-person to hybrid back to virtual. Or the struggle to keep small businesses alive while firms like Amazon grab an ever larger piece of the economic pie. Or the struggle to manage staff shortages and flagging morale as the pandemic winter sets in.
We all find ourselves longing for something like normalcy.
Less conflict. Less stress.
Less negotiation over what we can and can’t do, when, with whom.
We want to hug our kids or have a peaceful meal with friends.
We want to go to church and sing.
For some of us, those longings have no name: loved ones are gone and won’t be back. Relationships are shattered and may not be repaired. The illusion that all is well is gone, maybe forever.
In The World Is Not Ours to Save, Tyler Wigg-Stevenson grieves injustice and loss of life in places like Syria and Nagasaki:
All this is permanent. It is done and cannot and will not and will never be undone. And while I am all for good politics, which is to say I am all for a good future, and so I am all for doing better by the refugees that yet live, I also refuse to let the past go as if it were merely the gravel under the sub-foundation of whatever shiny tomorrow we happen to build next.There is no politics that can redeem what time has irretrievably taken. To stand as witness to the past is to stand either in utter nihilism and despair, or in the desperate, desperate hope that in the end a Redeemer will walk upon the earth, who will bring forth those whose flesh was destroyed, to see and be loved forever by God.
That is the hope we hold tightly in Advent:
that this world, held captive to disease and anger and division and grief, will one day be set free.
That those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.
That our wailing will be turned to dancing.
That we will dwell and feast together in the house of the Lord.
On a retreat last February, I led our group in worship with the song, “We Will Feast in the House of Zion.” I explained that for me, in my own family of origin, the promise of a feast together is something to be held in hope. It will not happen in this lifetime.
Just days later our world was shaken by the pandemic. Since then this song has gathered even greater meaning.
We did not feast together this Thanksgiving. Some we love will never feast with us again on earth.
Yet the promise of Advent, of Christmas, of Christ, is that that day will come.
We will feast, and weep no more.
