Earth Day 2020--Taking time out for something important

I took this morning off to travel less than a mile with my wagon and garbage bags around my neighborhood. In years past, I have always wanted to take part in the annual Earth Day cleanup of trash in parks, streambeds, and public lands. Unless April 22 fell on a weekend, it wasn't easy to take the time.  This year, with my home schedule much more under my control, I was able to spend three hours outside in a nearby park, criss-crossing a streambed in underbrush where locals go to hang out and drink. A major thoroughfare borders the woods, too, and a busy corner with a stoplight provides an opportunity for folks to throw all kinds of trash out their car and truck windows.
Litter has always distressed me. Besides despoiling the landscape (Have you seen how many shopping bags the wind deposits in trees?) the toxicity of chemicals and plastics that deteriorate and drain into the watershed makes me angry.
So today was prayer and pickup day. There is so much that needs the attention of prayer: all our front line medical workers, all those suffering near death and their families, all those essential workers and those deemed so unessential that they have been let go of their jobs. Each bottle or can or piece of trash I spotted was an occasion to pray. And I'm including prayers for all those cleaning up after someone else's thoughtlessness. There will be many of us in the coming months.

Coping With Advice Overload Now

Every hour that I've opened up my email, there are some new ideas and resources for pastors for coping with our current pandemic situation. There are those from folks wanting to sell me something--"get this online platform for doing online ministry"--and from others who seem to actually care about my situation. I am a small congregation pastor, learning a ton of new protocols and technology, but still trying to lead for the benefit of congregants, most of whom are woefully naive as to digital media and communications techniques.
Some of the advice is helpful, if a bit pedantic--"keep exercising," "keep up your at-home discipline," "eat healthy stuff." Some of it has genuinely helpful insights. Colleagues I know and trust are sending me something just about every day. I try to read at least a sampling of it every day.
But the volume is getting unmanageable. My inbox has grown from under 100 messages to over 200 an I can't seem to whittle down the messages to a manageable amount. How to turn off the fire hose of information? 
I could just unplug. I did that last week--Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
I could just wholesale delete, letting go of every message over 2 weeks old. If I haven't gotten to dealing with it by then, it's probably unimportant. The idea that I will get to all messages is impossibly naive on my part. Turn it off!
That's the only piece of advice I need to hear now. God's way of reforming us is certainly upsetting, but necessary.

Being Set Apart

Holy Week is "holy" for Christians because it is set apart. That is the literal meaning of "holy"--"set apart."  Yesterday I mused with the congregation I serve that we are all "holy" because we have all been set apart, in these days since being isolated because of Covid-19. We are set apart from each other, set apart from daily routines, set apart from the structure of time we once knew, set apart from what had considered "normal."
We are indeed set apart from some things, but are we are also set apart for something? I have seen numerous writings and essays about being set apart for this time, urging us to be aware of what we have been set apart for:

• more intense awareness of our interconnectedness
• a sabbath for renewing our relationship with God
• time to breath and pay attention to what's important in life
• time to pay attention to the needs of others
• etc.
  

This week is indeed Holy Week for Christians, and perhaps Holy Week for the whole world.
Blessings on your use of this time as Holy.

Can reading save our souls?

I have been listening and reading to the torrent of Christian writers and thinkers that are out there in this current moment of "what do we cling to now?" during this pandemic. It is a fire hose to drink from. I must admit that I'm a bit weary of the advice, even as I'm fascinated how the best and the worst instincts of Christians (as well as others) are on display. There are a few reliable sources in the Christian blogosphere (here I disclose my own proclivities):
NT Wright, Miraslav Volf, Richard Rohr at the Center for Action and Contemplation, most of the writers for Christian Century, and the community of good writers in my own Presbyterian tradition.  If I could only just read for 12 hours a day, I could work my way through the endless monotony of my own routine.
But I can't.
I'm an embodied human, not just a brain. I need sunshine and exercise and good food, and laughter and companions who can converse. I need my husband, the only other human I've been within 6 feet of in the last 3 weeks.
So going into this Holy Week, I will contemplate the holy body of Jesus, how he also needed everything any human would need. "Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us, embodied humans."