Living in coronavirusworld 88: Covid 19 Update and what we do now

6/20

Notice beauty

I am part of “Covid19 Update” for medical professionals produced by the National Association for Continuing Education. The program is hosted by Dr. Neil Skolnik (https://www.pri-med.com/globals/faculty/s/skolnik-neil) and sharing with me Dr. Leana Wen. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leana_Wen)   Dr. Skolnik sets the stage by reminding us that  more than 113,000 fellow Americans have died of Covid19. More than the Korean and Vietnamese Wars combined. Twenty million jobs lost and 13% unemployment, the most since the Great Depression.  In the northeast there has been a steady decline, but 21 states are now showing rises especially in hospitalizations and ICU units.   Nevertheless the question is not whether to reopen, but how to reopen. 

In Texas, 50% of new cases are young people in their twenties. And non-white positives are six times that of whites.

Dr. Wen reports that the ideologizing of mask use is extremely dangerous. Data shows that use of masks reduce risk by 5 times. An that masks are 80% effective. The claim that the rise in new cases is due to increased testing in testing given that the real number come from hospitalizations.  The point of testing is to bring it down and combined with public health protocols and initiatives, now especially in the public transit sector does that. The principle is the Wayne Gretzky rule, focus not where the puck is but where it is going. Aymptomatic concerns are real and must continue.Of the tested, 40% have antibodies and perhaps as many as 20% if New Yorkers are antibody positive. Hydroxycloride has been tested every  conceivable way and is not only not an effective treatment but may possibly weaken resistance to infection. We need to remember that the virus does not resort our wishes. 

My presentation had to do with spiritual concerns. Here’s what I had to say:

These are difficult times. My topic is a spiritual perspective and I want to begin by talking about patients. What makes this different is that they are cut off from usual means of emotional and spiritual support….family, friends, clergy…they feel alone (New York is allowing hospital visits). You may be one of their only human contacts. Patients often want to  know why, they need a reason. She way of making sense or believing things are not out of control. In responding,  be objective…sometimes things just are. They need to know that what they feel is okay. Hard as it is, the most important thing you can do is to be present. 

Now, for you. Take care of yourself. A nurse said to me, I’m not a hero, just doing my job, but I don’t want to be a martyr. Remember the airplane oxygen warning, put your own mask on first before helping  others. You need to have someone you can  be open with. I learned from Hospice nurses the need to feel free to dislike patients. That even if someone is dying, they can still be pain in the ass.  

The most important spiritual needs are faith, hope and joy. We all have faith in something ….God, science, humanity…..some force outside of yourself. In studying depression, in the lives of  Lincoln, Styron, Mother Theresa…what’s most important is feeling you are part of something bigger than yourself. Lincoln came to live with melancholia when he moved past seeing slavery as a politics issue and came to se it as a personal calling. 

Hope is not optimism.  Things are not getting better every way every day. Hope is to have faith in spite of the evidence and having the courage to work to make the evidence change. I think of the classic statement of Dr. King: the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice

Joy has always been the most difficult for me to get hold of.  Yesterday, I walked out and one block away, there was a parade of hundreds of people with  a New Orleans style street band and banners that said not only “Black Lives Matter” but “Joy is Coming.”  Somehow,  in the midst of pandemic, of social upheaval, of anxiety, anguish and anger…JOY!!! Morningside Park was filled with picnics and barbecues. The fact is we are  always “in the midst of…,” and now more than ever.

Small things are important. Engage in  projects that have nothing to do with virus …Up until Black Lives Matter, almost every conversation I was involved or overheard had do with the virus. We need other conversations. Try to  notice small things…in my walks in the park, I have begun notice:

I.  Birds

                                II. Flowers

                                iii. Turtles

iv. An egret

v. An itinerant trombone player

             

Gratitude is the foundation of  resistance….Every night think, what happened today I can be thankful for? Awe and wonder are essential. For people of our professions, we are privileged  to be there , to be with people at the very center of life…that is something to be thank for. 

A reflection group I am part of recently reread  Camus’ The Plague. I was amazed how much it was like our present moment. I was moved by the journalist who wanted escape to be with his lover. And spent his waiting time volunteering. When his time to leave came, he chose not to go. His life and taken on new meaning. Likewise the priest moved from his pace of traditional faith to a place of more uncertainty and doubt but also meaning. I close with his words: 

“No, we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to do what good lay in our power.”

Living in coronavirusworld 17: such amazing consciousness contained in such a vulnerable vessel

4/8

Masks by Mili

We gather in our virtual booth for our Wednesday Underground meeting.  No one has watched  Tiger King yet. Here is a sampling offer collective wisdom:

 Clyde tells us that we still have over 65,000 homeless in New York City. There are over 100,000 vacant rooms. The homeless coalition is requesting 30,000 be set aside. We could lose half of our homeless people. No one will act. Even though there may be as much as $100 million available for using hotels for housing, etc. Maybe it’s fear that once  they are in, they will never leave. In the meantime, the virus spreads. 

At the shelter on Wards’ Island, there is no discernible social distancing.  There’s no soap. No sanitizers. When they do arrive, gone by midmorning. People shower in their clothes because thee is no laundry. There have been 68 deaths so far. And no testing.

On the corrections side, 280 have been released from Rikers, another 400 scheduled. But Governor Cuomo, despite his rising star, refuses to act on release from the state prison system. 

What we’re seeing is a portal into our future society. Could  it be  a door? It has taken the lid off our social cauldron. And it's more clear than ever that though we are all connected, poor people don’t count. Our friend Steve always sees the possible, the blossoming something new. Others of us are are more sanguine. As a friend once said, cup half empty or half full depends on whether you are pouring or drinking,  

It’s open ended. We could see the break up of the United States as we know it. Or the consolidation of an authoritarian autocracy. Or perhaps the birth of a real democracy. This time there are comparisons with the Hoover Presidency with it bread lines and Hoovervilles. Real resistance was rising. It took Roosevelt’s New Deal to preserve capitalism.  It was Simone Weil, critiquing revolution, who said It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the masses.

While the plague rages around us, our President uses this as an excuse to call for renewal of the war on drugs and diverts relief money to further sealing the border. 

We are stuck in the present, it is all we know. In our isolation there is profound loneliness, the absence of God. Everyone is suspicious one another. Our job is to facilitate connection. We are to claim …and hold…sacred space. And according to brother Steve, dance. 

All this conversation is related to our discussion of Albert Camus’ The Plague.  It’s shocking to  read this book from the 1940’s and see how similar our situations are…the denial, the hiding, the lying until it’s too late. People continuing to live their lives as if everything is normal until bodies start dropping around them. 

Camus (and Sartre as well) is confronting the absurd. And perhaps nothing more than the absurdity of humanity, such amazing consciousness contained in such a vulnerable vessel. 

I of course remembered this Camus quote, “Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer).”

                                                                 ****

I have given in and will wear actual masks. My friend Milica has made me two. Typically stylish. She comes down to the lobby to greet me. She says, "When I hear the cheering at seven…" and she tears up.  She’s old enough to remember the bombing of Belgrade. The hiding. 

                                                                 ****

Lines now for the drug store. 

Line for Rite Aid

                                                              ****

Thirty eight percent of Americans surveyed said they would not drink Corona Beer under any circumstances.  The Corona brewery is shutting down operations. 

A still, small voice and ...clothed and in our right mind

6/23

I hear Stephen playing the piano as I enter the sanctuary. It feels good to hear him in the semi-darkness. 

A woman from Brazil comes in looking for a service, but seeing things not quite ready to happen soon leaves. (I wish Junia were here....).

As always, it’s good to see son Dan here. His support means a lot. 

It’s a Sunday to gather in a circle of chairs. I feel what I want to say today is important and I’m anxious to get to it.

We’ve got two great passages today. ..First, Elijah and what we call the still, small voice passage.  (Still best in the King James Version..1 Kings 19: 1-4(5-7)8-15a)And the other, Jesus and the Gerasene demoniac. (Luke 8: 26-30)

First, Elijah. We’ve been following him around awhile. You may remember remember him from the throw more water on it contest with the priests of Baal.  His confrontation with Ahab the dogs will lick your blood...Now he's tired. He’s had enough. He’s ready to just lie there in state of depression, not even interested in eating.

First angels get him up again. Encourage him to eat...for the journey... so he 

Goes to wait for God. Another one of those 40 day situations. (Whenever you read that, it’s another way of saying feels like eternity..) He hides in the cleft of the rock, waiting for God to pass. 

He looks for God in all the mighty expected places....the  storm, the wind, the earthquake, the fire...but God is not in any of those. In the end it's a still, small voice---- encouraging him to get up and get going again....

We need to look, listen  for God’s presence in surprising, unexpected places. God is not always in the big and overwhelming. While we wait, we can be like Elijah. Waiting for the still, small voice...And even as we build new plans, let us not miss what God can say and do with us now,  just as we are.

Now, Jesus and the Gerasene demoniac. I just love the way that sounds. There is of course, the socio-political interpretation. The demon says its name is legion... like the Romans. Occupation,domination can make you crazy. Lose your identity.

Dostoevsky saw this story as a parable for what was happening to Russia in his day, the people plunging over the cliff like possessed swine following the rising tide of anarchic revolution. Camus in his dramatization saw it as a parable about the rising tide of nihilism.

But from a therapeutic perspective, this man was so possessed, he'd lost his own identity . My friend Nancy Lee Head of the PHEWA Presbyterian Serious Mental Illness Network..helped me to understand a lot about being bipolar...There were these moments when she would feel completely connected to all people, to everything, all creation. Felt so good she would go off her meds and then completely lose any sense of herself, lost in chaos..

Jesus drives demons into the swine, they hurtle over a cliff. And here's the best part... The next day they  find the demoniac clothed and in his right mind. And that's what scares people.

I’m reminded by what we have learned from family systems studies of the formerly incarcerated and their families. How families create a narrative with assigned roles. And changes in those roles are disrupting and painful, even if someone has regained their life. Unless a reentry process has been gone through helping the famjly to adjust, recidivism is soon to follow. 

Despite what people say, people getting healed is unsettling, disturbing and families, communities will actively or passively resist it.

What does it feel like to wake up clothed and in our right mind? If we are the person whose life has been reclaimed? The former demoniac wants to follow Jesus, but Jesus wants him to remain in his community as witness, as testimony. 

One of our former members told me that it was the custom in his tradition every Sunday for the preacher to say Thank you Jesus for waking me up clothed and in my right mind....Not a bad place to begin. 

We can help each other with that, like angels bringing food for the journey. Beginning with doxology, with thanksgiving...not a bad place to begin.....

We make our circle. Sing our amens. The Session meets briefly to reflect on the week ahead.

Later, I will notice Jane and Sanctuary NYC engrossed in deep conversation.

I will return still later trying to track down my missing cell phone. 

Only the lost boy asleep on the steps. 

Clothed and in his right mind: Dostoevsky, Camus and Teddy

7/23

RL comes by to work on his rehearsal and recording studio. Ready for his next installment of Dusty Withers. Jamie wants to make sure that he understands the uncertainties ahead so I walk down the street to his office for a conversation. Help explain the big picture. He’s been a good friend of West-Park. Need to make sure he's informed and protected.  Just to make sure everything's clear, we’ll make a memo of understanding. 

I return awhile later. After talking about everything from watering John Lennon’s pianos to how I’ve got the same eye doctor that did Lennon’s glasses  to phenomenology of friendship and the ontology of love. RL can do that. And he is a romantic at heart.

Time to run home and make the boys dinner before Bible Study. 

Tonight we explore the fifth chapter of Mark, the Gerasene demoniac, one of my favorites. The wild and strong man who lives among the tombs. As always, there’s so much here:

• John R acknowledges as to how there’s more here than  we can understand and believes in the real  possibility of demonic possession
• Luisa surprises me. She went to a conference where the speaker referenced Franz Fanon and the Wretched of the Earth (which she ultimately read in Spanish translation.) How colonial oppression can lead to serious mental illness, even self-injury.
• Someone else has a child who cuts themselves
• I remember being part of the counseling center at the University of Bridgeport. How the minorities counselor rejected the idea that our job was to help students cope. That sometimes their feelings were appropriate and the situation was crazy. Our job was to help them develop strategies of resistance and liberation, not coping. 
• Teddy explores his thought that since the madman identifies himself as legion, as in Roman legion, he may be an occupying  soldier driven mad by what he has done. Like Vietnam. Afghanistan. Iraq.  
• We compare this story to the previous exorcism  story in chapter 1 which took place in a synagogue. One in Jewish territory in the heart of establishment religion. The other  in Gentile territory under Roman military occupation. 
• Junia notes the strangeness of Jesus, a stranger as it were, engaging in this work in ethnically different territory. Like an Italian trying to organize el barrio.
• I point out that legion does refer primarily to Roman legions. That the word for herd is the same word used for a company of recruits and the word used to describe their charging  over the hill commonly used with army charges. And as they plunge into the water, everyone thinks of Pharoah’s army. 
• Unclean and all, everyone is sympathetic with the swineherd. All that lost meat. What a waste.
• That terrifying moment when the madman appears clothed and in his right mind. That’s what frightens people...the healing, not the madness. Throughout Mark, here, when Jesus stills the storm, the empty tomb...it makes people afraid....And we talk about how families have a hard time adjusting when someone returns from prison. The family narrative, structure has to be rewritten or return to prison will be imminent.  And how addiction, especially alcohol can be like possession.  I become not me. But, though I  may not be responsible, but I am accountable. 
• Teddy says that the swine rushing over the cliff made him think of lemmings and I told him that that’s what Dostoevsky thought when he wrote his play the Possessed (or the Demons, or the Devils...) describing pre-Revolutionary Russia about to go over the edge of the political cliff plunging into the abyss. And how Camus used this very passage to open his dramatization of Dostoevsky’s novel. Told Teddy he was in good company. Dostoevsky, Camus and Teddy. 
• As for why the former madman couldn’t come with Jesus on the boat, perhaps because he wasn’t ready yet to launch a multi ethnic, multicultural liberation movement. Or perhaps as Junia said, he needed propaganda. (My Latin American friends understand the need for this in way the rest of us don’t....and they’re right...) 

Philip used to tell me that in the Black church, it was common to pray to thank God for getting us up clothed and in our right minds...not a bad place to start.