Sustainable; Notes on Our Weird Ecumenical Life

Lots of ladies I know like to choose a word for each new year that they are going to focus on. It’s a fine idea, but one I’ve never resonated with. As a teacher, that’s probably because my new year doesn’t really start each January, it starts in August. 

 

If I were going to choose a word for this next school year, it would probably be sustainable. I can’t do what I did this last year during pandemic teaching and my Master’s degree again. I can’t live at that rate. My health has taken what I worry will be a permanent toll. I’ve had no time to pay attention to my heart or soul, which are in shambles.

 

This is no way to live. 

 

But there are ways that I was living unsustainably pre-pandemic. Like trying to go to two churches and meaningfully participate in both. My husband is Presbyterian and I am Orthodox Christian. We decided we would both go together to both churches. This idea only works because we were fairly confident we would have no children; and we didn’t.

 

 

Right before the shutdown in March 2020, Jim and I had hatched the plan of attending St. G for the Lenten Presanctified Liturgy, and Eastminster on Sundays. That way, we were able to be with all our loved ones each week for a period of time. But then, the shutdown. 

 

Since my vaccine, I am experiencing again how hard it is to keep up with both. 

 

I’ve learned that going to two churches is like having two sides of the family. I love them both. I need them both. I find God in both, and my heart/soul/mind/life seems to require the ministrations of both. (Not everyone is such a wretch that they need two churches constantly speaking into their lives; but I am.)

 

Like two sides of the family, both churches cycle through taking up more time than the other. Orthodox Holy Week. Keeping up with all the (completely) Protestant family’s holidays: Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, family visits in town…. That stretch of time gets busy on the Protestant side. 

 

And even though we don’t have children together, we do have children whose church attendance depends wholly on when/where we go to church. They don’t go to church independently. This feature is complicated even further by Jim’s hospital work schedule which means that he isn’t at church at all one or two Sundays per month. And those are times that I can go to my church. But if I do, there’s an eighteen year old that just stays home. With him under our roof, we are still responsible for his soul a bit, yes? 

 

In the meantime, I have godsons and goddaughters I don’t see enough.

 

This Twister game of liturgical logistics is eased by attendance at Wednesday night classes at my church. We have been able to join a delightful small group at Jim’s church. These times outside of Sunday morning help us stay connected. 

 

And I just don’t know. 

 

The school life sustainability is eventually just going to look like my setting a boundary, putting my laptop away, and refusing to let work be 85% of my life. I can find habits that will make me more efficient in the classroom; they will assist this. But eventually it will be a matter of establishing healthy boundaries and simply walking away from the continual press of all the things. 

 

Church is harder. 

 

And I just don’t know. 

 

Since this ecumenical life is like participating in family, I don’t think there’s a way to streamline it into “sustainability.” It has to be lived organically, with the needs of all thrown into the pot and honored. And nurtured. But addressing those needs will cycle, like needs in a family do. 

 

Entering back into my post-vaccine life, I need to just enter into that organic flow again. 

 

And to all my friends at both churches: I love you guys. I need you guys. I miss you guys. 

 

Heaven for me will be when we’re all in Eternity with Him; finally in one church. 

 

 

 

The Daily Blue

The Daily Blue:

So, this year I had some quirky kids. I always do, but some of them were downright mysterious quirk. For example, I had one student who, every day (every DAY!) had part of a blue crayon that would be sitting unobtrusively behind or beside his desk.

It was always just PART of a crayon, usually a small part. It was unfailingly blue, no other color. It could either be swathed in its paper cocoon, or not. Most days, I asked him to throw it away, which means that somehow he threw away much more than a whole blue crayon. MUCH more, over the course of the year. I've never understood it.

Some days, I WOULDN'T ask him to throw it away out of mere respect for the blue crayon. Its blueness. Its tenacity.

This group of kids and their quirk were in some ways harder to say goodbye to than most.

Much of that is because the kids themselves weren't altogether sold on the idea of summer, not completely happy about it. And why should they be? We haven't had a school break without major existential angst since December 2019.

One student (who I honestly didn't think liked me all that much; I'm an acquired taste) said to me, "...but what I am I gonna do WITHOUT you?"

So, since school's been out and my encounters with the crayon Daily Blue, I've been working to shake my own teacher blues. I've already seen plenty of social media pics of kids on vacation; pools, meals out, general hijinks. But I sincerely hope these kids get better than what they've had. I hope this summer is a truly good and carefree school break for them.

My quirk kids deserve better than blue.

The Ghost of Covid Past

In the region where I live, not enough people are vaccine-ing up. 

 

Because I am vaccinated, I have effectively ended Covid-19 inside my own body. In my body, that threat is past and I am free. Not so for my community. Not so for my elementary school job. 

 

It’s the next to last day of school. All I can see is Covid variants on the horizon; ones that we’ll have to make a new vaccine for. Which means we’ll have to wait for it to be produced.

 

Again. 

 

We’ll have to teach both remotely and in person at the same time again, because people will have to quarantine again. We’ll have completely Remote Learning again. 

 

We will have to teach without small groups again, or limit the exposure time severely. We will not be able to do cooperative learning again. Kids stuck in desks for hours. AGAIN. (For non-teachers, these are the WORST of the in-school Covid precautions. Covid precautions fly in the face of good educational practice.)

 

I was always someone who took my medicine. A year ago today, I would have never dreamed that there would be people who would not take their medicine. A year ago today, I had hope. 

 

I was in deep grief. I worried, mostly for my students and their families. But I had hope.

 

I am losing hope; I have lost hope. 

 

I can’t do this school year on repeat, ad infinitum, forever. 

 

I hear people talk about “living in fear” of Covid. That’s not me. My husband has been working at our local hospital for 20+ years. Day in and day out, he’s lived with droplet precautions. He knows exactly what they mean and don’t mean. He’s very comfortable with them. 

 

We have not lived in fear of Covid. We have lived in reality of Covid. 

 

We ate out indoors together. We traveled. We masked. We stayed in a very small bubble. We worked to serve our students and our patients, to stay healthy for them. And we did. We know how to live with this. 

 

But I can’t do this school year again. 

 

If a vaccine resistant variant arises (and in my region the way things are going, it will), we will have to wait for a second vaccine and then just pray that people decide to take their medicine the second time, because they didn’t take it now.

 

This is a worldwide pandemic, and many countries still don’t have the vaccine. How arrogant are we that we have it, and can’t be bothered? 

 

I can’t do this school year again and again. This cannot be my new career normal. 

 

I will have to find another career. 

 

And then what will I do?

 

I am literally made for teaching, I have teachers generations deep on both sides of my family. I don’t want to do anything else… What’s a more valuable, more interesting, and more fun way to get to spend my days on this earth than teaching kids how to read? There isn’t one! I have the best job there is! 

 

This time, I worked to not get sick. I did this so that I would not have to quarantine. I did it to protect the health of my students and their families. I did it to protect their family incomes. It was easy. The skills that it takes to not get Covid are the same skills that it takes to be celibate, and I was a virgin till the day I got married at 41 years old. 

 

I worked to protect my students’ families. It was easy. 

 

But I can’t do this year on repeat. 

 

Who do you think will babysit your children when all the teachers have left the building because you would not get vaccinated? How will YOU go to work? 

 

So, when the vaccine-resistant variants come, I can try a new tack. 

 

I can go out and lick all the doorknobs. I can get as sick as I can as fast as I can. I will pray that I just go ahead and die instead of having long Covid or the other debilitating, chronic effects that people are having post-Covid. 

 

And then I’ll come back and haunt the nincompoops that didn’t vaccine up this first go-around. 

 

I cannot do this school year again. 

 

I have lost hope. 

How to be Wrong

The people who chose not to mask and not to get vaccinated were wrong.

They were wrong; they made my teaching job and my sweet husband's hospital job so much harder for so much longer than they had to be.

They were wrong; they insisted on their personal rights and forgot about the second most important commandment: To love your neighbors as yourself.

They will continue to be wrong; as of now, the current vaccine provides immunity against the current variants. But they will become the Petri dishes for future variants that the current vaccine will not be able to provide immunity for.

There's lots of reasons they chose what they did. And they were wrong.

There are some of us who tried our best to take all people into consideration. We masked. We vaxxed up when it was our turn. We did these things out of consideration and compassion for others.

Now, the opportunity for us all to be unmasked has come. Some, because they never did and never will. The rest, because we followed science and the best intents of our respective religions: Compassion. Care for others. Emptying oneself of rights for the benefit of all, as Christ did.

If science can move us to be cautious, following that same science can move us to freedom.

So it will be hard to tell. Hard to tell anymore who was right and who was wrong.

The question is: Will it matter?

I know some who will want to hold on to the wrongness of others. It does point to a troubling lack of shared values in a group that used to be in step with each other.

But in holding on to the wrongness of others, will I damage my own soul?

If I have conducted myself in a way that I can both look in the mirror as well as face my God without regret, should the actions or values of any others matter?

If I hold on to anything about anyone else's choices, I will become at least AS wrong, if not more wrong than the original set of wrongness.

It is still a time to walk with caution of soul and compassion toward others.

Won't it always be that time?

Lord, have mercy on us all.