"But lay down your fears, come and join this feast"

Well, it's been a while since I've posted a Friday traditio. I wasn't sure I was going to do it today but I realized that after my flurry of posts in April I haven't posted much yet in May. Besides, I like the traditio, which is why I do it. Believe me, I don't think the world suffers at present from a lack of blog posts or podcasts. Therefore, I realize I probably do this to satisfy some weird need on my own part. You know what? That's okay.

These daze about the only posts in which I write spontaneously, "from my heart," as it were, are these Friday posts. I don't know about where you live, but here in Northern Utah we're in the process of "re-opening." Here in my county, which is just north of Salt Lake City, we never really closed. We scaled back on a lot of things. Like a lot of people, I waiver between just being nervous about lifting restrictions and being downright dubious about it. The reason for both my nervousness and my dubiousness is that there are still many unknowns concerning sars-cov-2 and the disease it causes: COVID-19. Over and above that, we still don't have a very widespread testing capability. Serum tests, which can detect antibodies, are just starting to be available. Even the ability to determine if someone has been exposed by administering a blood test, while a promising development, isn't that useful until we determine what exposure and the presence of antibodies means in terms of immunity.

In short, the lifting of restrictions is a movement into the unknown. I think anybody who pays any attention to this is aware that it was the second wave of Spanish Flu a hundred years ago that was so devastating. By pointing this out, I am not making a prediction. I just hope that as restrictions are lifted, if things start to go south, there won't be a great deal of hesitation about re-imposing them. I also hope and even pray that as we make the transition we can incorporate many of the positives that can be discerned from our collective experience over the past two months into the so=called "new normal." In other words, I hope the "new normal" is better than the old normal, to which a lot of people have no desire to return.

Yesterday, I spent the evening listening to music. It was a tonic. This morning, the song that sticks with me is Rich Mullins's "Peace (A Communion Blessing from St. Joseph's Square)." It's such a beautiful song. It's off his album A Liturgy, A Legacy, & A Ragamuffin Band, a work I cherish.