Sunday, March 29, 2020

Gimme Shelter-in-place


If ever there were a crisis I was made for, this seems like the one. Stay inside the house and avoid contact with others? I’ve been preparing for this all my life.

There are probably a lot of other introverts out there who would agree with me, although I wouldn’t expect them to flock to my side even if they were allowed to. Social distancing is built into our DNA.

I almost feel guilty when I see how hard the current situation is hitting so many people. There are a lot of folks who can’t work and don’t know when they’ll be allowed to, or even if there will be a job (or a company) waiting for them when all this is over. And I just read a statistic claiming that as many as 80% of American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck, which is surely not good news if you don’t know when the next one is arriving.

Workers who are able to do their jobs from home have been asked to do so; as a computer programmer, it’s no effort at all for me to do that. In fact, it’s not even an “adjustment” for me – I’ve been working full-time from home for 17 years now (even with 6 different actual physical homes in that time).

Side note – now that everyone is posting “tips & tricks” on how to work from home, I can testify to the truth of what seems to be everyone’s rule #1: get up, shower, and get dressed like you mean it. I never go to work in PJs or sweats or even jeans. I have found that the more informally I dress, the dumber I am, so I always face the day looking like I’m ready to “leave for work”… except my feet. I rarely wear socks and I literally have almost no use for shoes.

Because my work situation is exactly identical to what it was last month, I also don’t feel the same economic pressure that many are suffering. And as far as “staying in my home” – I would be hard-pressed to even find a way to leave the house less than I already was. If I didn’t run out of salty snacks from time to time, I’d probably never experience fresh air.

Notwithstanding all that, there is one way that our current predicament has hit me hard, maybe harder than I expected it would.

I am a preacher’s kid. The story in my house, or at least what I’ve always believed, is that I was brought to church on the way home from the hospital. From that day to this, across the months and years, through an ever-changing selection of “home" churches, the one thing I knew about my life was that my week always began with church.

Obviously there have been times when illness or travel or circumstances prevented me from attending, though if I were able to count them up I think I’d be pretty amazed by how few of those there were. I can tell you with a straight face that there has never in my life been a Sunday when I woke up and just said, “Nah, not today.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not offering this as any kind of evidence for what an awesome Christian I am. I believe that clichés and memes often hold great truth, and one of my favorites is “Sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.”

I definitely am, however, a creature of routine, and while I make every effort not to go to church solely as a matter of routine, the fact is that it’s been part of my weekly routine since before I could spell  church, or anything else.

More than that, when my wife & I moved from New York to Ohio, we had to sort of reboot our entire lives. We still “went to church”, but we weren’t really part of a church and I soon found myself becoming seriously depressed. Church is a big part of my spiritual life, but (especially as an introvert) it seems to be a significant part of my social life too, and of my overall sense of “belonging” in this world.

Fast-forward almost twenty-seven years and here I am again, essentially legally prohibited from attending church. My weeks still take the same basic shape, since I’m still working, but it’s a little like the yeast or the salt or some other pivotal ingredient is being left out of the recipe.

Easter approaches, and from this vantage point it seems all but inevitable that we will not be gathering to celebrate the Resurrection. My wife recently told my daughter that she didn’t think I’d handle that very well… and I’m afraid I won’t.

I hope that everyone who might read this is getting what they need most in a time where we all need something to make our lives feel a little less out of control.