Throwing snowballs... and that virus thing
I was sweating while simultaneously freezing. It was the darkest of dark, and I could not see a thing. My monkey mind was running laps at an olympic pace. How long can I hold out here? If this guy catches me, I assume he will either pummel me or hand me over to the cops. Well, that’s the rationing of my 12 year old mind. A few of my friends and I had been throwing snowballs at cars driving by, but then this car came to a screeching halt. The guy that jumped out was looking and sounding as if the only viable penance for hitting his car, would be blood. The adrenaline that shot through me seemed to have transformed me into Usain Bolt. I’m tempted to think I ran so fast that I simply glided on top of the snow, not one step puncturing the ice crusted snow. The combination of sweat and ice allowed me to slip under the neighbors deck and burrow in the very back, tucked up against the concrete foundation of the house.
After what seemed like an hour, my mind began ping-ponging back and forth from the angry stranger popping my head off, to wondering if I had crawled into a den of raccoons plotting to scratch my eyes out. This makeshift bunker has me both safe… and trapped. I can’t see anything, and I am starting to turn into a human popsicle!
This bunker no longer feels as if it is keeping me safe, rather it feels like it is suffocating me. This thought catapults me into the present… and this whole virus pandemic.
A bunker is dark, dry, barricaded and fortified. The purpose of a bunker is two-fold, to keep a person completely tucked away and protected, and to keep everything and everyone else out. You cannot see in, and at most, there is merely an eye slit in which to see out.
A bunker is for hiding and hoarding.
Contrast that with a greenhouse. A greenhouse is fresh, arid, and you can both see in and see out! It is transparent. The sun can cascade its brilliant rays in, and that which is living inside can gaze out.
A greenhouse is for clustering and care.
Friends, in the midst of this pandemic, we are to be a Greenhouse! Get out that environment friendly glass cleaner, and wash those windows. Tilt yourself toward the stunning sunshine, and lookout so as to see your neighbors. Cheer them on, open a window and yell out to them, “We are in this together!”
Keeping a distance does not mean we have to decay. This is but a season of learning new ways to be human. We are getting a crash course on new ways to offer infectious love, without infecting one another with a deadly virus. We have been quarantined into learn more fully about that which matters most. I am not at all of the mindset that the Divine has caused this, but I most certainly believe the Divine is offering us a soul education in the midst of it.
We are not hiding, we are hoping. We are learning that relationship and connection anchor our mind and sustain our soul. Being a greenhouse allows us to be nourished, connected, and still be life-giving to others.
Oh, the snowball incident? I was caught, along with one of my friends… who peed his pants… literally. I laughed at him, then I cried when my step dad was brought into the situation.
