Grimometers

One of the silver linings of the pandemic: my college roommates and I have been talking via Zoom every weekend. We have an ongoing text chat, and we get together in various combinations as often as we can manage it, but it's rare for all of us to see each other's faces this regularly.

Today we were talking about the perils of sifting through the news, and I think part of the problem is that we're all having some trouble calibrating our grimometers. How bad is this? We have no frame of reference; we have no crystal ball. We can all agree, I expect, that it is exhausting and inappropriate to keep our collective grimometer needles in the red zone. This is not a Station Eleven situation; there will be a lot of pieces to pick up afterward, but the large majority of us will be here to help with the reassembly. We can all agree, I expect, about the delusions or mendacity of those who are arguing to keep the needle in the the green zone. The people who are still saying it's all been overhyped are not reading this blog. But I am doing a daily seesaw from yellow to orange and back again. "Remdesivir!" chirps my inner optimist, nudging the needle downward. "Dialysis overload and NYC healthcare provider infection rates and reagent shortages!" groans the pessimist in me, and that needle sproings right up again.

But I believe in a God who is present when we suffer, and so I keep reminding myself that I need to think hopefully and give generously even as I act cautiously. That this bizarre blur of blank days is temporary. 

Grimness sells, I think, and so the clickbait headlines abound. I have seen some hand-wringing stories about the long-term impact of school closures on kids' math skills, but the reality is that kids are generally wired for learning things, math included. I am finding that I need to turn the page instead of reading the very grimmest stories about the economy. My worry cannot add a hair to my head or a dollar to my IRA, but it surely can change the flavor of a glorious spring day. This is me reminding myself that allowing the grimometer needle to slide toward the red zone is not just a bad idea in an abstract sense; it is actively damaging to the climate of my home.

Green-zone grimometer needles are also actively damaging; I remain troubled by the politically motivated bright-siding that seems to be multiplying like malevolent mushrooms as the lockdowns lengthen. I read a profoundly disturbing blog post written by a man who identifies as staunchly pro-life, in which he devoted hundreds of words to arguing that we don't need to get too exercised about all these nursing home deaths because people in nursing homes are mostly there to die. I was contracted to a bunch of different nursing homes in the early years of my career, and part of my job now is preparing students who will work in long-term care themselves. I have been thinking all weekend about the climate of a good long-term care facility: the protective affection that the staff shows the residents, their attempts to compensate for the confusion and other indignities that old age heaps on the people they are committed to caring for.

I am trying to imagine 70 deaths inside a month in one facility. It's apocalyptic. It's unimaginable.

To anyone who might say "Where is your Jesus in this mess?" I would say he is right there with those nursing home residents. The ones who cannot understand why they cannot breathe and why they are in the hospital and why they are all alone -- he is holding them close. He is right there with their relatives as they grieve and worry. He is right there with the women who are wondering how they can possibly continue a pregnancy right now, right there with the single mom who is wondering how she will arrange care for her preschooler if her cough lands her in the hospital. And even though my own personal worries are much less pressing (it's pretty meta to be worrying about whether you're worrying the right amount), he is with me too.

In today's gospel Jesus invites Thomas to feel his wounds, a story that always reminds me of a line in Crown Him With Many Crowns: his wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified. The grimometer challenge isn't just a COVID thing: we will always need to strike a balance between minimizing temporal suffering (especially others' temporal suffering) and getting stuck on temporal suffering, failing to see the big picture. I hope for a day when that line will echo for us, too: our wounds, yet visible above, forever sanctified.