Aware

This is me the day I was given my little face shield thing to wear at school a year ago in August. It’s quite the contraption, y’all. My voice booms in my ears when I wear it . . . light reflects on it at certain angles, making it difficult to read through occasionally . . . I was constantly afraid I was going to sneeze in the stupid thing . . . but it is certainly easier to teach in than a mask. By the end of the year, it was second nature to me. I forgot I was even wearing it sometimes (thus, again, the constant fear of sneezing in it).

Nevertheless, on the last day of school, I was tempted to ceremoniously chuck the thing in the dumpster in my joy at the school year being over. We’re all getting vaccinated! Numbers are declining! Back to normal school in the fall! Woo hoo!

And then here we are.

I was masked up again in church last Sunday and annoyed at how little air support I could get to sing. At the play I attended that afternoon, the audience was asked to wear masks (my girls and I were among the small handful who complied). By the end of the long production, my ears were so stinkin’ sore from those straps. A pain in the butt, they are.

A few days ago, I finished reading an interesting book about the Holy Spirit: The Go-Between God. It describes one of the primary roles of the Spirit as giving us an intense awareness of some “other” or some greater “whole” which needs our attention in that moment. So, I’m becoming much more conscious of the Spirit doing that in my life lately. And there are many things that he’s given me an “intense awareness” of this past week.

For one, the connective chain between us all. I’m vaccinated. I’m not worried about getting sick – the chances of it being serious if I do are low. (Honestly, I’m more likely to kill myself in car wreck jamming to my music while I drive.) But we've learned now that I can apparently still be a link in the chain passing the cooties around the community and be completely unaware of it. It is not ridiculous to think that there might be someone in an ICU ward right now who is at the tail end of a virus trail that I was a part of while I casually picked up my frozen jalapeno poppers at HEB in my vaccinated ease.

The argument was made to me (from an unvaccinated friend, interestingly enough) that those who are sick and dying from the Delta variant right now are those who knew the risks and chose not to get vaccinated. It’s their own fault. Well, yes. But there are children in the hospital right now who didn’t make that choice. There are immunocompromised people in the hospital who didn’t make that choice. There are those with non-covid illnesses who might not get the care they need in these once-again-overflowing hospitals -- they didn't make that choice. There are health care workers killing themselves mentally, emotionally, and physically with the overtime work this new surge requires – they didn’t make that choice. I am suddenly intensely aware of all of them.

Teacher workdays started at my school last week; I became aware that I have some work colleagues who are not vaccinated, some who are taking care of at-risk family members, and some who are immunocompromised themselves.

School starts next week, and there are, of course, scads of students at my school who couldn't get that shot if they wanted it.

I read a New York Times article yesterday morning about the current surge in Texas, where we are free to walk about the state unmasked and unvaccinated. Hospitals are setting up overflow tents again. Daily cases have doubled in the last two weeks. At the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, two teenagers died last week and children as young as six months and two months are on respirators – all covid cases. 

Y’all. There is a desperate mother of a newborn staring at a machine keeping her baby alive because somebody (maybe her, maybe me) was sick of wearing masks. I’m undone.

The Spirit is making me uncomfortably and intensely aware . . . of the Other around me but also of my own self-absorption. Annoyed that I can’t get the breath support to sing as loud as I want at church. Irritated at my sore ears after a two-hour play. Grumbling about the glare on my face shield while I teach. Annoyed . . . irritated . . . grumbling . . . and there are babies on ventilators – in hospitals that are almost at capacity again. In my own city.

Mercy on me, Jesus.

So, I’m wearing the damn mask, people, until the Spirit tells me otherwise. Not because I’m choosing to live in fear. Because I’m trying so hard to live in love.