This from an article by David Grossman in today's "Haaretz" newspsper. 24 March 2020. He is reflecting on some of the ways in which we might be changed by this defining moment in the history of humanity, and his thoughts include the following:
"There will also be those whose political outlooks will suddenly look mistaken to them, being based exclusively on fears or on values that disintegrated in the course of the plague. Perhaps some will suddenly cast doubt on the reasons that have made their nation fight its enemy for generations and believe that war is a divine edict. Perhaps going through such a difficult human experience will induce people to detest nationalistic views, for example, and reject attitudes that promote separation and xenophobia and self-containment. Possibly there will also be some who will for the first time wonder, for example, why Israelis and Palestinians continue to do battle against each other, afflicting their lives for more than a hundred years with a war that could have been resolved long ago."
Every cloud they say, has its silver lining. Like Grossman I cherish hopes that there will be radical reassessments in favour of what is just, wise, good. Grossman ends his article on an ambivalent note - he wonders also if any radical effects might only be temporary, and in the end, we will all go back to business as usual once the threat has subsided.
The threat will only subside of course if we have an exit strategy that is as sensibly paced and uniformly heeded as the strict instructions we Brits heard on the news yesterday will no doubt be. (I know that there will be debate about how sensible this country's pacing has been, so please put the phrase "sensibly paced" above in quotation marks if you like. I'm not really interested (in this post at any rate) about debating that.) There is another factor too that will inform our behaviour and interactions in the future, and that is whether or not an effective vaccine against the virus will be found. A continuous threat in the absence of a vaccine will result in a very different world from the one we know now, and a threat rebutted by a vaccine might well return us to "business as usual" in the long run.
One of the things the pandemic has made us do as church and community where I live, and no doubt in most parts of the world, is to get us to use our technology to work collaberatively and imaginatively, and to reach out to one another to check and reassure. (Sure, there have been other not so welcome effects too, like the panicked stripping of consumables from the supermarket shelves.)
So we are dealing with the situation as best and sometimes as worst as we can. I believe that if those of us whose instincts and whose comittments are orientated towards the good of all and not merely ourselves hold to our vision, keep our hope for a positive endgame alive, and engage responsibly with the advice or instructions we have been given, the good will win out. There will be tragic losses to come, of that I have also no doubt, and if these losses do not teach us, do not inspire us to higher better things, then we will have dismissed the losses with crocodile tears, we will not have honoured their lives, their suffering and their dying. My prayer is, "Let it all have been for something worthwhile. Help us forge from this crisis something truly better. Give us the determination to make it so."
"There will also be those whose political outlooks will suddenly look mistaken to them, being based exclusively on fears or on values that disintegrated in the course of the plague. Perhaps some will suddenly cast doubt on the reasons that have made their nation fight its enemy for generations and believe that war is a divine edict. Perhaps going through such a difficult human experience will induce people to detest nationalistic views, for example, and reject attitudes that promote separation and xenophobia and self-containment. Possibly there will also be some who will for the first time wonder, for example, why Israelis and Palestinians continue to do battle against each other, afflicting their lives for more than a hundred years with a war that could have been resolved long ago."
Every cloud they say, has its silver lining. Like Grossman I cherish hopes that there will be radical reassessments in favour of what is just, wise, good. Grossman ends his article on an ambivalent note - he wonders also if any radical effects might only be temporary, and in the end, we will all go back to business as usual once the threat has subsided.
The threat will only subside of course if we have an exit strategy that is as sensibly paced and uniformly heeded as the strict instructions we Brits heard on the news yesterday will no doubt be. (I know that there will be debate about how sensible this country's pacing has been, so please put the phrase "sensibly paced" above in quotation marks if you like. I'm not really interested (in this post at any rate) about debating that.) There is another factor too that will inform our behaviour and interactions in the future, and that is whether or not an effective vaccine against the virus will be found. A continuous threat in the absence of a vaccine will result in a very different world from the one we know now, and a threat rebutted by a vaccine might well return us to "business as usual" in the long run.
One of the things the pandemic has made us do as church and community where I live, and no doubt in most parts of the world, is to get us to use our technology to work collaberatively and imaginatively, and to reach out to one another to check and reassure. (Sure, there have been other not so welcome effects too, like the panicked stripping of consumables from the supermarket shelves.)
So we are dealing with the situation as best and sometimes as worst as we can. I believe that if those of us whose instincts and whose comittments are orientated towards the good of all and not merely ourselves hold to our vision, keep our hope for a positive endgame alive, and engage responsibly with the advice or instructions we have been given, the good will win out. There will be tragic losses to come, of that I have also no doubt, and if these losses do not teach us, do not inspire us to higher better things, then we will have dismissed the losses with crocodile tears, we will not have honoured their lives, their suffering and their dying. My prayer is, "Let it all have been for something worthwhile. Help us forge from this crisis something truly better. Give us the determination to make it so."
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