For the Night Owls and Quarantined

 
Our routines are disrupted, and that’s a worthy sacrifice to limit the damage of COVID-19 to our neighbors and kin.
 
We are beings that need ritual, pattern. Our bodies are made that way. For instance, I have not left my house to work in nearly a month. Yet, my body is so attuned to schedule that I still wake in the blue-gray of morning, before the rising of the sun.
 
During these weeks I’ve been staying up late, my night owl tendency unleashed, because there is no pressing urgency to rise. And so, when my body tells me it’s time to get up, I tell it to lie down a little longer. I’ve been sleeping in. For a parent of four relatively young sons (aged 4, 8, 10, 14), this pleasure seems well earned. I’ve enjoyed burying my face in my pillow for a few more lolling hours.
 
I keep waking each day, though, my body calling out for normalcy, some balancing of life. So, today I succumbed, rose and walked in the cool of the morning. (It was 41 degrees Fahrenheit, perfect for a sweatshirt and shorts!)
 
This is the Lenten season, where every day is filled with potential for repentance, and while I’m a poor ascetic, I remain grateful the Church has ordained an annual remembrance of our desperate need for salvation, and also of God’s great love and redemption.
 
It’s been a strange Lent, perhaps particularly for an Orthodox Christian, who is aided so richly by iconography and incense and light. Yet all people of faith have accoutrements of worship that we’ve been missing, and for this I am very sad. Thankfully, our priests and pastors and worship leaders have been vigilant, censing chapels, and chanting hymns and offering words and songs of encouragement. May God bless them for their faithfulness to their flock.
 
(We teachers are trying to do the same.)
 
Tears of joy and sorrow have intermingled as I’ve watched my priest and his wife and young daughter chant before God, alone. But they are not alone. Thank you.
 
I have been able to listen to my brother and his wife lead their congregation in song. Thank you.
 
I have also been able to listen to the wise words of Fr. George Eber, my parish priest from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am grateful.
 
In one of Fr. Eber’s recent morning talks, he mentioned how the birds rise before the sun to sing, announcing the arrival of the day. He said it was a reminder that the long dark of night must end, and there is joy in the morning!

​So, when the clock in my body woke me today, I consented to hurry out and listen to their song. I saw no one on my walk down to the nearby lake shore. I heard no cars, or trucks, or any human sounds. Only creaking of trees and rippling of waters; also the breeze. And, a symphony of birds! Chanting and chattering in a hundred hopeful tongues. Even the cranky honking of geese sounded lovely amid the jubilant refrain. I was reminded that all of creation worships God, even the somber stones.
 
It is spring. New Jersey is the garden state, so there is loveliness all around. At our house, I have a number of trees and bushes that are sprouting green buds of new life. There is a wondrous unfolding of pink and purple and white flowers. (Yesterday, between running routes and catching footballs from me, my 8 year old son Luke kept stopping to bring flowers to show me – oh, the pure elation of a child!)
 
We’ve been having April showers, and two days ago, nearing evening, a storm blew suddenly through, and left behind a momentary vision. Half the sky was hovering dark of passing rain cloud, the other half descending golden orange glow of sun. And arcing over the sky was an extraordinarily vivid double-rainbow. The sun was just peeking over our roof, and trunks of trees in my backyard had slipped into grey shadow, while the red and green and yellow spring buds were illuminated, producing warm colors unseen at any other moment.
 
This isolation is hard for so many, and it is much worse for the suffering sick and dying who are alone. Lord, have mercy!
 
For those who can, set your alarm for half an hour before sunrise. Drag yourself out to listen to the song of creation, praising the God of order and innovation, of steady and surreal.
 
Yesterday, on a sudden, a wind that hearkened to tornado days in Oklahoma blew through and bowed the trees and flung debris in every direction. I was on the sun porch watching my boys play in the yard. They were frightened horribly and went running in circles yelping; there was also an amazed gleam in their eye, grateful for such a marvel.