Being a man of faith during COVID-19, Sunday May 2nd, 2021

It's Sunday morning, the 14th day after my second COVID shot, and I just got home from riding around Peoria, a suburb of Phoenix. I ride every morning, and it gives me some quiet time to think, and I've always especially liked Sunday mornings. And of course on Sunday mornings I think of people going to church.

Like most of the people I've ever known, I attended the church of my parents. It was a respectful thing to do, and we kids were cleaned up and sat in the congregation with everyone else. That is, after finishing Sunday School, which lasted until we were 13. At that age, I was confirmed into the Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, and after that I just recall looking forward to communion (we got to drink grape juice!) which broke up the boring monotony of hearing our minister repeat the same things that we had learned in Sunday School, often in things that were recited. I've never been much for review, and hearing the same thing over and over, every Sunday, made no sense to me. Don't kill? Don't steal? Got it!

As a nerdy kid, I remember that there were questions that I couldn't ask, like where where the dinosaurs in the Bible, or where did Cain get his wife? And as I matured, I set it all aside, and really had no further use for it. In my twenties and thirties I may have prayed to get the job, or for a particular girl to go out with me, but I wasn't really praying, and there were more jobs, and more girls. But in my forties I hit a wall, and spent time in intensive care, and a rehab hospital, and even when I got home, I was filled with the kind of despair that made me wonder how people dealt with stuff like that?

I started looking more carefully at people who leaned heavily on faith, and decided that I could combine both faith and science, things that I had always thought as mutually exclusive. I came to understand that even with the best science, and medicine, the nights can be long, and the days can be frightening. And I developed an empathy that I'd never had before, and it's helped me understand the people of faith nowadays, during COVID-19.

No, I won't thump a Bible, and I only chose Christianity because it was convenient for me, like drinking Coca-Cola. I've looked into the eyes of people who have felt the kind of despair that only the loss of a loved one can cause. And I know people who fear for their own death, and have done everything that they know how to do, including eating their veggies, and taking their prescribed meds. For them, my greatest wish is that they find faith somewhere, as long as it gives them strength when they need it. It has nothing to do with dogma, or ceremony, it's just something that the human spirit calls out for, always has, and always will.

Go in peace.

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