Greetings in the Name of the Lord, 

We continue our lenten journey of exploring what we lost during the pandemic. My hope is that we are not only naming what we lost with some specificity, but also allowing ourselves to mourn and lament what was lost.  This week's theme (which we will engage during worship as well) hits me pretty close to home because I lost my Grandmother during COVID and although we held a small funeral for her, we never got around to full the celebration of life we intended. As a pastor, I have also noticed that memorial services and funerals have changed since the pandemic, and I am not sure all the changes help us with the full process of mourning.

So this week we lament the lost rituals that we are still finding ways to bring back into our lives. The graduations, the weddings, the retirements, the baby showers, the funerals, all the rites of transition that either never happened, or were stunted or forgotten about or lost in the shuffle. My older son started kindergarten during the pandemic, and his "first day of school" picture is in the playroom that I converted to classroom space   Even more than just the rites themselves, there was a loss of touch and presence with these, we were not able to truly be there for one another, I know I was only able to say good bye to my own grandmother through a zoom call, and my Mom (a nurse) was the only one from the family who was able to get to sit with her at the end.

We also lost our communal voice, I remember singing was considered too risky for a while, and our choirs were silences, as were many music venues and places where conversations could just flow and flow.   Not to mention losing the very ritual of Church as community and gathering place. We were forced to watch our services instead of truly participating in them, they were fragmented, and sometimes even felt distorted.  For my part, I lost the ability to know how folks were reacting when I preached, or being able to shake hands after worship, or share a cup of coffee over a post worship conversation.

Like I said last week, if these reflections hit you hard, call a loved one or a trusted friend and talk about this with them. One of the themes of the pandemic was that everyone lost something, and a whole lot of us lost at least one loved one.  We went through those years without being able to really mark what mattered in our lives, and many of those opportunities are now lost for good.

As we lament these, and name these, it helps us move towards rebuilding these rituals, remembering why they matter, and centering them in our lives again.  In the effort to try and move on from the pandemic, many of us may not have realized how deep some of these scars may run, but by naming them and talking about them, and sharing those feelings with deeply trusted friends, we all grow a little bit, and get that much closer to the restoration and healing so many of us long for.  

In Peace

Mike