Eschaton and testing for Covid-19

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Elea Lee

About a month ago I spent a day dragging my family through a crash course in coronavirus. It was appalling.

The range of symptoms is highly variable.
Carriers can be asymptomatic.
With over 200 mutating strains, the range of severity in this disease can be highly variable.
A person can be exposed to the mild strains, and still get hit by a secondary, more severe infection.

We put too much emphasis on testing. Testing would be great only if there were limitless tests and the tests were far more reliable than they are. If that were the case then we should all follow a protocol of weekly prophylactic testing.

Not feasible right now.

A few years ago my family started to play a modified version of a very complicated fictional tennis game from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. His version was very apocalyptic (fitting); ours was as well but with a fraction of the complexity.

In our version two teams of as many people as you have (evenly divided, of course) face each other on either side of the net. We divided as many balls as we could muster and started hitting them across the net relentlessly. The opposing team did the same. At a predetermined point (like music chairs), we would pause the game. The team with fewer balls on their side won that round and then we would continue.

Great cardio workout. Quickly exhausting.

That is coronavirus. We will all face an onslaught of a relentlessly moving, mutating virus which can spread quickly, if not effortlessly, through contact and fomite transmission.

Eschaton is a fun game.

This is not. But if I know one thing about how to “win” at eschaton, it is organize your team and don’t stop lobbing the balls back across the net.

We don’t play eschaton right now. Our tennis court is closed. That is a good thing. The best way to “win” at this is to assume we are all spreaders and keep us all

Six feet apart.

Pray. Pray because our lives depend on it. Imagine what a simple game of eschaton would look like if

God were clearly on

The winning side.

Matthew 17:20-21 KJV

[20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

Always true

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Elea Lee

Only one of them, the beloved, would be clueless and self-absorbed, inclined to foibles and easily distracted

A regular

Flibbertigibbet!

But the Other One—

He would always be true.

Coronavirus

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Elea Lee

All over the world

Right now

People just like

You and me

Have begun to

Live in fear

Of our own

Invisible, creeping

Spinning, spiny, tiny, inevitable invisible crowns

Empty shelves

Where once cellophaned signifiers of

All that can be wiped away–

Canned food, pasta, string cheese, milk

Fomite transmission

You and me

Gone

Don’t worry, Darling

He took all our thorny little crowns

Smoothed each out

Like a girl braiding her sister’s hair

Singing some sort of song about

A proper crown for the One True King

Come to save us all.

When mountains crumble

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Elea Lee

Think about it.

Your darkest night

Your loneliest moment

The here-and-there times when it is either your own

Life or the life of the beloved

Taken from you

Faith I get

Love anchors

But it is my squint-into-the-sun-reticence about hope

Which drives me to speak

Of mountains.

Today darling the mountains

Are all shaped like crowns

Crowns of thorns or flowers,

The braided laurels of an imperial victory

He said, it is finished beneath these crumbling mountains

And I will wait, sometimes in tears

To see them all

Thrown into the sea.

The Feast of Thorns

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Elea Lee

Long before our terrible story your birthday was already

the feast of Servites pruning winter roses. I cling to that now, all the other days this day could be:

Obstinate mountains lumber into obeisant seas

Lame men whole, blind men see

Dead men rise and shake off their shroudy bindings

impossible things all around ya

If only you will

See

The Invisible World

Posted on February 14, 2020 by Elea Lee

Not often enough

Do I think about the light I cannot see

The whole beings made of it who

Could be standing right beside me

defined by light not visible to me

Or smell, or touch or sound or taste

All senses which could be

Stronger somehow–

A male polar bear can smell a mate from 100 hundred miles away

Sharks can smell single droplets of

Blood in the water miles away

What portion of my human brain is cordoned off for

My sense of Love? How far, how long, how wide a net

Will you cast for me?

The Real Quiet Place

Posted on January 20, 2020 by Elea Lee

In the stories of Jesus’ public ministry there are accounts of people who have been healed of skin diseases which would have set them apart from their communities due to infection prevention measures codified by the Mosaic law.

In some of these stories, Jesus heals them and gives them permission to not tell people they were ever infected with these diseases.

I think this injunction was made (at least in part) to allow them to have a new life, unencumbered by prejudice.

When my family moved to a new place a few years after we found out that our adopted son had sexually assaulted some of our children, I realized that this was our chance to “start anew.”

We had pushed for legal consequences for Charles. We had a good counselor in the aftermath. We moved to protect the children. We were open with everyone in our previous community.

But we chose to continue

To tell our story.

The result has been fascinating and lonely.

There is a lot of prejudice about victims of sexual abuse and their families, maybe especially in churches.

We could be contagious?

Maybe

Or maybe it is our openness that scares them.

Either way, we call it “the island.” We live on an island

An island made of truth and pain and loneliness

With a single, unwavering resident

The one who heals us.

The one who knows this quiet place.

The one who tells us the truth will set us free.

My family is healthy, happy, and stable because we have never tried to hide

The story of our grief

But it can be quiet

On the island.

Super Powers

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Elea Lee

The argument was about space-time manipulation. Wouldn’t he be able to fix them immediately? Couldn’t he move things instantly, not just travel between times? I like to think of you, in the room with the baby girl, talking in words only children can understand

About how lonely and strange the world might be

Without a best friend/just/like/you

The Shining Path Ascent

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Elea Lee

Have there ever been friars here? Or caballos en el potrero, chico? I don’t know, I am afraid of this cathedral mountain, stone sacristy and holy of holies, a Wonder Wall above the pools, a picnic area where

Light would dwell

Among us

Who can dig and scrape and cajole this stone, this path? Light the wave, the pulse, the metaphor, the insistent presence, and somewhere, somehow we use it to call out to each other these great distances between

With news I do not want to substantiate

We will all break like waves

into light

You believe?

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Elea Lee

I ask the children who would win

In a foot race

Einstein or Newton?

S. says the wearing of wigs would matter

And I picture Newton trotting gamely behind

Losing precious seconds

As he tries to keep the wig on.

Gravity is something you might believe in

Or streams of consciousness

But not Jesus, my subjective friend

Whose fury you have misjudged

Like the smallest of figures in the distance

Moving inexorably toward you

Fire in his eyes

–Revelation 19

Carrying Light

Words for light

Tag Archives: Jesus