Author Archives: PearlS

I’ve had my head in the cartoons for awhile now and I’m not sure I can switch lanes easily. It has come to head, the seriousness of the matter of having lots of physical energy (not mine) in the house most of the day. I have one kid who is impossibly busy throughout the day; six years old, decides on a whim to make lemonade or kill ants with all the remaining soap in my bathroom. The others are only slightly less occupied. The part of my brain that is supposed to light up when you are doing nothing hasn’t flickered much, so it is easier to jot down funny kid quips and sketch out silly pictures in five minute bits while I sit on the patio and watch kids fly down the road on scooters.

This is the reality, I told a friend on the phone–different people deal oddly under certain circumstances. I’m writing silly stuff and brainstorming how to make elbows bend on paper because there isn’t time to really be my thinker self, and I refuse to make lists, arrange the file cabinet, sort through winter clothes. I, being introverted and disorganized by nature, have an incredibly difficult time wrapping my mind around what the next several months offers. I’d rather not wonder long-term, because I’m of the opinion nothing good comes from fear-based propaganda. Face masks while I’m out jogging, minding my own business, breathing in and exhaling fresh air? It doesn’t strike me as sensical. I could be one of the many in a hospital bed being denied a ventilator (this week is supposed to be just terrible, they say)–or I just as soon (maybe sooner?) might die in a car accident. It isn’t up to me, and I know it. I’m ready to go.  I live moment to moment, low-maintenance, creeping about like a mouse, looking for random crumbs to eat in our refrigerator, scolding children to not climb the cabinets. It doesn’t do a lick of good for me to make plans on how we are going to address this crisis of staying at home. I’m already a stay-at-homer.
Finding quiet–that’s my inner crisis.

When I can, I take walks with the dog. Or do yard work. It’s just mental space I’m craving. I never walk fast enough for the dog, but as I try to keep the leash at a slack, I pass homes and wonder about the stories inside them. Why are there two newspapers on the sidewalk? Two black cats stare at me from a stump; a faded VFW banner is tacked over the door. What are those folks eating, if they can’t even bother to pick up yesterday’s newspaper? What will I make for supper tonight? Something to share with the neighbors–maybe potato soup. Why is it my mother always sliced the potatoes so thin in her soup? Maybe it was simply because it cooked faster than if she had diced them up. Or maybe it was quicker because she could hold a potato in one hand and a knife in the other. She never did use a cutting board for anything, just sliced things straight into the pot or skillet. Efficient–that’s my mom. The apple fell far from that tree…and rolled off a cliff.
It’s comforting to think simple, interrupted thoughts and not feel ruffled by sloppy lemonade makers that sit on the counter, their dirty socks inches from knocking over the too-full pitcher.

Today we walked–the whole family–through the park to a different walking route, hoping we might catch some neighbors out and about and wave to them from afar. In the middle of the park open space, we saw bees buzzing around the lower branches of a pine tree.
“Look, guys, it’s a swarm,” Joe said, pointing. “There must be a queen bee inside of the mess of them. They won’t sting because they’re on a mission, looking for another place to build a hive. It happens when there are more than one female bee and so they fight and one leaves. Stay back,” he warned the boys. “They won’t sting you, but just watch. You may never see another one of these in your lifetime.”

Thousands of bees clung to and covered the branch. It was alive and bouncing. Every bee was sold on his purpose, not distracted by our excitement at noticing them. We crept closer and marveled–creation doing exactly what the Creator created them to do.

Earlier in the week, I made a Costco trip (side note: I feel like Trader Joe’s who hides the moose in their stores…if a kid spots it, they get a prize. From now on, I’ll try and drop Costco into every blog post for fun. Ha). I was excited to leave my house, the recently shattered light fixture (a yo-yo was the culprit, therefore I was not as mad as if it had been a ball-in-the-house sort of rule breaker), sticky table and splattered floors could wait. My zeal for shopping was quickly spoiled by the sight of the poor cart-retrievers with hazmat-esque suits and Ghostbuster backpacks, spraying down the line of buggies.

I retrieved my own sanitized cart and pushed it to the entrance, nodding at the card-checker. I walked each and every aisle, frequently bumping into a pesky kid and his daddy. The child dallied behind his father, kicking at the backs of his shoes and boredly slapping every box and can within reach. I saw masks and gloves. I saw fear on people’s faces. I could count the steps between me and other customers. Six. I hurried up and bought my milk, bread, and eggs.

At home, I told my family about the irony of it all.
“I was glad to be out and about,” I said, “until I saw how terrified everyone looked.”

“What do you mean?” one of the boys asked.

“Well,” I said, thinking slowly, “no one seemed to think they might die until just lately.”

It bothered me. I wonder if, when God pops your bubble, you begin to understand your handy Costco card plays actually very little in the way of offensive strategy. When one is confronted with the real need to protect and guard what is precious, it feels scary and insurmountable. All the toilet paper and paper towels in the world might extend my time here; but surely I’m risking my neck to touch the filthy, germ-ridden carts to tote them to the car. Life, till now, has never offered so many apprehensions.
What exactly does this say about us? When you realize your responsibilities, erased of the superfluous and exciting– when it boils down to working, feeding, cleaning, parenting, teaching, bill paying–are all there is? When no one cares about your hair and nails and body and diet except for you and your self-control to manage it? When you cannot avoid the spouse and their irritating habits or the child with their thousand needs. When you realize charisma doesn’t travel far without an audience, nobody else’s sun ever rose or set because of you. Your online persona has never represented you well. It is textureless, flat, out of sight, out of mind. When it is you, alone, and you find you are actually terribly impatient and unkind at your very core.
Your “screentime is up from last week”–how often do you need to dash away for a “bathroom break” and take a long drag on your cellphone–the healther, more qualified cousin of smoking a cig outside…It’s all very telling.

This experiment of social distancing is proving to us how socially distant we’ve been for a very long time. What length we go to avoid pain, hurt, and interacting with real, live people, and even God himself. We’ve never wanted to enter hurt before, poverty, helplessness–as if it were a disease (“Why do you eat with sinners?” Jesus was asked by the ultra-religious)–one that catches, one that can be held off with an invisible face mask. And now we are alone, it’s become obvious who we are and who we’ve been catering to all along–people just like us. Ourselves, the self-justified. Pharisees who have their junk together and tassles (HOA fees and pretty pictures) to prove it. We actually can take care of our kids and job and life when push comes to shove. Stress doesn’t break us, even if it might drive us to more wine and more TV. Our facade is laid bare because now it’s been made obvious–the people we care about can take care of themselves. They’ve got their own Costco cards and bank account. They have their own entertainment systems, favorite podcasts and celebrities.
The people who can’t take care–well, they’re on their own, just as before. We don’t know them, but hopefully they’re staying home and not spreading their germs. Let’s hope for their sake they can get a job in a couple of months. And as for God, well, we can ignore Him like we always have. There are enough shiny things to keep our mind off the inevitable, death, and otherwise–how much do we really need Him?

When an invisible virus reveals our human nature, why don’t we draw the similarities between our physical and spiritual destitution? Spiritually, many of us have been wearing masks our whole lives, terrified of germs. Or we have flat out ignored we were the sick ones to begin with, in dire need of a ventilator, intubation by the Holy Spirit.

Friends, obviously I am no different. I busy myself with silly little antics, hoping this whole thing will blow over without damaging me or my family too much. I hope my dear, elderly neighbors up and down my street are no worse for the wear in two months. The heaviness I feel for my fellow school moms and dads and teachers is weighty, but I’ll confess–I’m not sure what I can do for them, because we are now distant.
Keeping busy with small, insignificant activities distracts me from the monumental realization that this is our signal to scrape out the infection. I want to hope for the best because I want to finish on top, but we ought to be on our knees, broken by our arrogance, our insistence on doing things our way, all of the time.

Moses repeatedly spoke of a covenant between a loving God and the people of Israel, and didn’t mince words on the application bit:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home (I’m doing that right now) and when you walk along the road (I’m doing this every day to burn their energy), and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads (not unlike a homemade, cloth face mask). Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (another great stay at home activity).
When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you–a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide (toilet paper, fresh fruit, take-out food), wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant–then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord…
Fear the Lord your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the people around you (TikTok, Instagram, Jimmy Fallon–am I being irreverent?); for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God…

Deuteronomy 6:4-15 (emphasis and parentheticals mine)

God made it pretty simple, pretty lovely. Love Him, talk about Him, enjoy your families, mind your own business, stay humble, don’t forget it came from him. Y’all, we are the same as the Israelites. This is what He asks of us even now, to pour our energy into loving Him will our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Fast forward a few generations, and the people had forgotten. Prophets were raising red flag warnings to His people who had given themselves over to every indulgence, every little whim and fancy. Idols filled their homes, prostitution and murder were their offerings to beloved man-made gods. The land that flowed with milk and honey began to dry up. Those chosen people were jetting to Costco, masks strapped to their faces, completely oblivious that their own sin was creating sickness and separation from the God who loved them.

Hyperbole and metaphor weren’t born from the mind of a witty writer. God himself uses it to grab the attention of his people–even professed Christians!–who are clueless pretenders, overly confident in their humanism:

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samarica, you women who oppress the poor and needy (sit on your couches and do nothing) and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!” (guilty as charged!)

The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness:
“The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fish hooks. You will each go straight out through breaches in the wall, and you will be cast out toward Harmon,” declares the Lord.
“Go to Bethel and sin; Go to Gilgal and sin yet more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years. (Play church, be a responsible Christian! Don’t pass up the offering plate!)
Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings–boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do,” declares the Sovereign Lord. (Let everyone know how generous you are, make sure to tag your Facebook photos at the food bank, create sharp logos for your church’s new outreach program!)
“I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord. 

“I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain; another had none and dried up. People staggered from town to town for water, but did not get enough to drink, yet you have not returned to me,” declareds the Lord.
“Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, destroying them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord.
“I sent plagues among you as I did to Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord.

“I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the fire, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord.

“Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God.”

He who forms the mountains,
Who creates the wind,
And who reveals his thoughts to mankind,
Who turns dawn to darkness,
And treads on the heights of the earth–
The Lord God Almighty is his name.
(Amos 4, emphasis and parentheticals mine)

Friends, let this be the way God gets our attention, not the way we die in our ignorance, masks pressed to our faces.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

Psalm 51:16-17

It is the bees that bring me back–their laser focus on the queen, their adherence to the job. Their buzzing around, clinging to a branch at the park, unbothered by our gawking family. They have a job to do. Their loyalty is one rooted in instinct; their tiny bee mind knows nothing more than its singular, repetitive duty. It is submitted to its Creator.
I wonder if I might be satisfied with my own responsibility to such a degree as the bee. Lord, remove the masks from our faces; open our eyes to what is true and what is temporary. Lord, restore us to life.

 

The Englishness of English is audible only to those who know some other language as well. In the same way and for the same reason, only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see… this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas; this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you have ever thought this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt. Meet her and know her. If we are immortal, and if she is doomed (as the scientists tell us) to run down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this hoyden, this incorrigible fairy, this dumb witch. But the theologians tell us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The “vanity” to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cured, but cured in character: not tamed (Heaven forbid) nor sterilised. We shall still be able to recognise our old enemy, friend, play-fellow and foster-mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting.

C.S. Lewis, Miracles, 1947