In the spring of 2020, when we were still optimistic that our concerted efforts could halt the spread of COVID, I said yes to being part of the team for a fall 2020 retreat. I have posted a lot about these retreat teams over the years. They are a ton of work, and I have grumbled about that. They have required me to do things I found difficult and scary, and I have definitely had some Thoughts about that. But these retreats are a place where the women in my parish encounter Jesus, and where we are knitted together into a community dedicated to serving him. So I keep saying yes.
I keep reminding myself that I felt a clear call to say yes in the spring of 2020. "How's this going to work in a pandemic?" I asked the director at the beginning. "Well," she said, "we're going to have to figure that out."
Last summer I was pretty emphatic about the need to reschedule, which is what wound up happening. In the spring of this year a new date was announced, along with the requirement that anyone attending would need to be vaccinated. For a little while there, it looked like maybe we could have a normal-ish retreat after all.
But now-- not so much. The retreat center is requiring masks indoors regardless of vaccination status. It's going to be weird to have small-group discussions with masked participants. It's harder to read facial cues when people are masked. It's harder to understand people wearing masks in a noisy room. We're hoping for good weather so we can take those conversations outside.
We haven't been singing at our team meetings because of COVID, which means that just today -- 4 days before the retreat -- I finally sat down and learned to play the theme song. I've had a bad attitude about the theme song. It comes from the crew at Bethel Church in Redding, California, and if it were up to me I would boycott anything from that organization until they engaged in some kind of public repentance and reparations. The overt Trump support, the insistence on indoor gatherings that pushed their county back into the most restrictive tier of mitigations, the disparaging comments from a church leader about COVID precautions -- they have a lot to answer for. It puts me in mind of Romans 2: God's name is blasphemed among the non-believers because of folks like YOU. I don't want to contribute in any way to building their audience.
Alas, I am too far down the totem pole to get a vote on the theme song for this retreat, so I am sucking it up like a meek little buttercup. (Doesn't mean I have to like it, though!) And I am reminding myself that 15 years elapsed between the composition of Amazing Grace and John Newton's apology for participation in the slave trade. Maybe that should spur me to be hopeful instead of resentful. Maybe it should.
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