By Nina Joss
March 25
To be living in a time
where emails are signed off with “stay safe & healthy,”
where the first response to “how are you?”
is: “home, safe with my family.”
Where going outside is a privilege that my lord we took for granted.
I haven’t hugged my friends in weeks.
Well I did, once, Grace, last week
and felt guilty the whole drive home.
It’s a constant distance. In the words of a dear friend—“We are not made for a virtual reality. We are made for a physical one.”
But now the majority of my day is spent looking at a screen.
But we’ve been talking. And reading. And playing music. And biking. And baking.
We are finding the joy in things we didn’t before.
We are relying on each other, morally obligated to care for the rest. Doing the most we can to save them.
Yet so far. And realizing that, more than anything, we need each other.
I went for a run yesterday, and although there was a physical avoidance between myself and the other humans I saw, I felt a spiritual connection, stronger than normal.
We waved hello. Thank you’s to a postman.
I shared the street with a teenage boy, leaving his house for a run and an old man doing aerobic exercises with his arms in the air.
And we were connected, because we are all in the same boat here.
I don’t know the waters we are passing through, but we are a team.
And so here we are, walking for the first time.