But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;
it strikes you, and you are dismayed. Job 4:5 (NIV)
There is a spiritual injury that is part of the Covid 19 pandemic. You would expect this response to the millions of lives lost, but we have seen little public acknowledgement. It is not even a political campaign issue!
A recent Washington Post article describes the continued debates related to the health responses. This is not an unknown phenomena. It was reported when healthcare workers went from “heroes” to “villains”. What is more amazing is that this “schizophrenia” has historical roots as reported in the medical history, “Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations” by Simon Schama.
What if we understood these phenomena as a kind of mourning? How would we respond to its symptoms? Like our responses to other life losses, we would grieve together. We would create a space for the grieving and we would memorialize the responses. What is amazing is that we have rarely made those collective spaces or memorials.
Thanks be to God who weeps with us,
Marvin
References
Jaffe, G; Marley P. The pandemic is over in this Michigan county. The mistrust never ended.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/22/ottawa-county-michigan-covid-mistrust/
Schama, S. (2023). Foreign Bodies. HarperCollins.
Hage, M. L. (2021). Healing Memorials.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2021/08/healing-memorials.html
Arora, S; Bhatia, S: Addressing Grief and Bereavement in Covid-19 Pandemic
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9880143/
Loftis, M Engaging Embodied Lament Following the COVID-19 Pandemic
