How Long?
I am planning to trim my beard this weekend. Normally, that would not be parish-worthy news, but I share it with you for two reasons. First, a few of you have told me how much you dislike the long whiskers on my face, and I hope you will take comfort in knowing that your rector is neatening up his appearance. Second, and more significantly, I have been growing out my beard since the pandemic started, and I decided months ago that I would leave it untrimmed until we were able to come back together for worship. A few Sundays ago, we had our first outdoor worship services, and, had it not been for a coordinated staff Halloween costume, I would have trimmed it then. Even though we had to suspend our in-person gatherings again last week, I need a new way of marking the time we are away from each other.
Six months is a long time to have been kept apart, and now a new period of separation stretches out indefinitely ahead of us. This is difficult. I am wearied physically, emotionally, and spiritually by our isolation, and I know many of you are, too. As the consequences of the pandemic—anxiety, sickness, death, and grief—spread throughout our community, we need the embrace of our community more than ever, yet the act of gathering together is itself a means by which the pandemic is fueled, and so we must remain apart. For now.
Only a handful of our parishioners were able to come to in-person services during the two weeks we were able to offer them. On the way out of the green space after the services, I heard over and over expressions of gratitude and relief. “You have no idea how much this means to me,” one person said, articulating what I saw in the eyes of everyone who came and what I felt in my heart as well. Yet we all knew that so much was missing. Sitting in lawn chairs within six-foot circles and straining to hear the service over the noise of cars and trucks rumbling down Dickson Street and missing so many friends who normally worship around us, we recognized in more ways than we could count that this was not our full assembly. Though grateful for the chance to worship in person, we all still yearned for the time when everyone can come back together. And, now, a new chapter of that same waiting has begun.
Like the stages of grief, waiting has its own cycles and rhythms. At first, we are shocked by the interruption to our normal pattern, but soon that gives way to a period of adjustment. For a while, we allow ourselves to believe that this will all be over soon, but, as weeks become months, we begin to see that the end is not coming as quickly as we had hoped. Then, our hope for even a distant end gives way to a desperate sense that this might not ever be over. And, after a while longer, we forget what it means to believe and trust that things will change. But they will change. We do not know how or when, and we recognize that life will not magically go back to the way things were, but we know that someday things will get better. God is faithful. Even in the midst of unimaginable loss, the poet of Lamentations declares that God’s mercies are new every morning.
As a sign of an upcoming calamity, the prophets Amos, Micah, and Isaiah all call upon God’s people to shave their heads as a sign of mourning. Unlike some of their Semitic neighbors, the tribes of Israel normally left the corners of their beards and the hair beside their ears untrimmed as an expression of their faithfulness to God. Jeremiah even uses that image to mock those other nations, identifying them as “those with shaven temples.” But the act of shaving one’s head and beard as a sign of mourning, though shameful, carries with it an incontrovertible truth: that hair eventually grows back. Our time of mourning eventually gives way to new joy.
How will you maintain your faithfulness in this long and undetermined period of separation? How will you remind yourself that one day things will get better? Will you come by the church once a week and pray in your familiar pew? Will you watch the livestreamed service every Sunday morning and pray with us that the pandemic will end? Will you give up meat and eat only vegetables? Will you grow out your beard or shave it off completely? Will you wear a colorful and cheerful mask that brings joy even in the midst of struggle?
Even though we are apart, we are in this together, and God is with us in our waiting and in our longing. Our faith is in the one who makes all things new, whose love is never-failing, whose mercies never come to an end.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan