This feature is coordinated by The Post-Standard/Syracuse.com and InterFaith Works of CNY. Follow this theme and author posted Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.
What will we take into the “new normal” that makes life more whole and holy? New hobbies and activities? Zoom with our families? Commitment to address racial, economic, and social disparities? An untitled poem by Kitty O’Meara, sometimes called the poet laureate of the pandemic, went viral.
And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.
The Rev. Richard K. Klafehn, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, serves as interim rector at Christ Episcopal Church in Manlius.