Leon Bibel's slightly surreal 1938 serigraph "Brooklyn Bridge" greeted us this morning in the Metropolitan Museum's engagement calendar of New York in art. Weirdly appropriate for a day when things got really twisted out of their familiar shapes. (But our clear blue sky was cloudless!) The day began at the Church of the Holy Apostles - I was upstairs for choir practice as chairs in the church were set some distance apart. As it was, not many folks came, older parishioners largely staying home. The Rector, aware that this would be the last service here until Easter at the earliest, gave a moving, thoughtful sermon. Things are changing around us and will likely never go back to the way they were before, she said. The Church will have to reimagine what it is to
be Church in difficult times - but the Church has been doing that since the first centuries of its history.
"Social distancing" will be an enormous sacrifice, she said, but where there is sacrifice there is love, and where Love is, God is. We felt the difficulty already at the exchange of peace, elbow bumping and sending "namaste" bows across the room, and even more talking to friends after the service, a meter or more from each other. It's caring distance, loving distance, what Rebecca Solnit calls being "separated by love," but painful sacrifice too. It will be harder still with our
beloved space shuttered. (The Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, too, is suspending most operations, will be offering bag lunches from a tent outside.)
The next stop in what has become our Sunday routine was Variety Coffee. Nearly empty when we arrived, it filled up a little while we sat, but by the end of the day the news was out that it, together with all the city's bars, restaurants and cafes, will have to close indefinitely. Weeks, possibly months without these spaces and their nourishment! The transition to online interaction we've been planning for college classes now faces us in the rest of our lives - but how can you replace the animal warmth of a bustling coffee shop, or a worship community in prayer or song? Love will win, but separation by love will hurt so.
Leon Bibel's slightly surreal 1938 serigraph "Brooklyn Bridge" greeted us this morning in the Metropolitan Museum's engagement calendar of New York in art. Weirdly appropriate for a day when things got really twisted out of their familiar shapes. (But our clear blue sky was cloudless!) The day began at the Church of the Holy Apostles - I was upstairs for choir practice as chairs in the church were set some distance apart. As it was, not many folks came, older parishioners largely staying home. The Rector, aware that this would be the last service here until Easter at the earliest, gave a moving, thoughtful sermon. Things are changing around us and will likely never go back to the way they were before, she said. The Church will have to reimagine what it is to be Church in difficult times - but the Church has been doing that since the first centuries of its history.
