Transplanting and Sustaining: Covid-19 Special Issue

l o g o s
Yale’s Undergraduate Journal of Christian Thought
transplanting
& sustaining
Covid-19 Special Issue
Spring 2020

On the issue
Dear Reader,
Change is the only constant - is a truism. Sometimes it feels slow, then
sometimes moments come along that jolt us awake, that overturn all the
hardened soil of our lives, cemented by years of routine, and we are unable
to see life the same way. Disasters are tragedies, but they clear the way for life
to flourish. With our soil overturned, will we now flourish or grow weeds?
Our theme and our hope is that we might transplant ourselves well, and
seek to be sustained by the one who made us and loves us. We invite you to
dig your roots deeper and stretch your branches further than you have ever
done before: that through creating a space for thoughtful reflection within
these pages, you might come out strong, convicted, and full of hope. The
sun shines brightest after the darkest of nights. Lux et Veritas.
Truth in Love,
Bradley Yam
Editor-in-Chief
MUSIC & TEXT
Each author has selected a song to accompany their article! We invite you to listen to the playlist in conjuction
with reading their works. You can access the YouTube playlist here.
A NOTE ON DESIGN
The color scheme of this issue was inspired by the New York Times’s maps of the pandemic, which visualize
the severity of the outbreak in reds, oranges, and peaches. The shades of orange and red in the first half,
focused on transplanting, transition to milder yellows as the articles shift to the theme of Sustaining.
Photograph credits: Sarah Chiang (5, 6-7), Sharmaine Koh (9), Bradley Yam (10-11, 12), Bella Gamboa
(14, 16, 19, 20, 22). Front and back covers from pexels.com. Design by Bella Gamboa.
OUR MISSION
λ ο γ ο ς is Greek for “word.” The disciple John used “Logos” as an epithet for Jesus, invoking language
as an image of incarnation, the Word made flesh. In Christianity, Logos became personal. Because Christ
clothed himself in flesh, he became a life giving light to us, revealing the truth of all things. The Yale Logos
takes on this name because our Mission is also personal and incarnational. We believe that by loving Christ
and our fellow learners passionately with our whole heart, soul and minds, we align ourselves with Yale’s
pursuit of truth and light.
ONLINE
www.yalelogos.com
www.facebook.com/YaleLogos
Instagram @yalelogos
SUMBISSIONS & INQUIRIES
yale.logos@gmail.com
TRANSPLANTING
On Faith and the Coronavirus
Serena Puang
And Also With You
Jason Lee
A Prayer about Boredom
Shayley Martin
Mercy by the Sea
Sharla Moody
All We (Can) Do
Jadan Anderson
Exile: Transplanting and Sustaining
Bradley Yam
SUSTAINING
Being Home When Home Is Hard
Daniel Chabeda
I’ll Give You a Daisy a Day, Dear
Vienna Scott
More Than Just Surviving
Sharmaine Koh
Word Made Flesh
Raquel Sequiera
Roman Holiday
Sharla Moody
Contents
4
6
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
22
23
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2 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 3

On Faith and the Coronavirus
Serena Puang
You don’t need another coronavirus
article. That wasn’t true the first time
I sat down to write this. Back then, in
January, coronavirus was still a distant
phenomenon. It was something
that was happening an ocean away in
China. My dad was visiting his family
in Malaysia at the time, and when he
came back, members of our church
asked my family to quarantine themselves
in case he was exposed to something
at the airport. It felt almost crazy
at the time, but out of love, my family
complied.
As a nurse, my mom has followed
coronavirus news even before it saturated
the media. She lamented the
lack of precautions her hospital was
taking against possible infection, sifted
through fake news, and each time we
talked, provided me with snapshots of
the situation in Asia which she collected
from friends and friends of friends.
Over the last few months, I’ve watched
as those snapshots became stories in
major news outlets. Those precautions
and preventative measures that felt a
world away are now on our doorstep.
Just weeks ago, we were all on campus.
Now, we won’t be returning. This
looks different for everyone. Personally,
I’m fortunate enough to be home in
an area where there aren’t many cases.
But for so many, campus is home,
and the sudden loss of access to dining
halls and university accommodations
poses a serious hardship. I don’t claim
to know what’s best for everyone at this
time. It really depends on your personal
context, and I’ll leave dictation
of health-related best practices to the
professionals.
My church decided that we wouldn’t
meet as a congregation on Sunday and
the local state university closed today.
I wonder what faithfulness looks like
here. I think for me, this time away is
providing a rare opportunity to reassess
how I spend my time. What will
it look like to “do Yale” without being
chronically busy with extracurriculars?
What was so important anyway?
I’m sad that I probably won’t see my
Yale friends for a while, but I think this
is where God has me right now, and I
don’t want to miss the opportunity to
keep walking faithfully with Him here
because I’m pining away for what I
could have in Connecticut. As more
schools are moving online, my friends
who went out of state for college are
coming back one by one, and this is
probably the only time we’ll all be together
again. I can’t help but think that
this isn’t just a coincidence.
I spend so much time at Yale wishing
my community at home was different.
There are things I’d want to change at
church, people I wish I had gotten to
know better, and ways I wish I could
be present in my high school to advise
students, but I’m always too far away
to change anything. Now I’m right
here, and I’m praying for the next step
in faithfulness.
We don’t know how this moment will
be remembered in history. Once past,
moments like these have a tendency to
dull in significance. But I know that the
choices we make now matter.
Being at home is not like being at Yale,
but I believe we’re all called to continue
walking in faithfulness wherever
we find ourselves. Faith in the face of
coronavirus is not blindly insisting on
meeting as a church per usual and ignoring
the real dangers that this pandemic
can pose for people (though
many churches are still faithfully meeting
and taking precautions). It is not ignoring
the problem or wishing it away.
That’s not what’s modeled for us in
the Bible. Much of the prayers and
laments in the Old Testament are examples
of people coming to God with
their problems and asking how long
He’ll allow bad things to continue.
In Psalms, David asks God why He’s
abandoned him or why He feels so far
away. The inclusion of these moments
in the Bible leads me to believe that acknowledging
the problem and lamenting
over the lives that are lost is a valid
and biblical response.
But we shouldn’t stop there.
As my discipler frequently reminds
me, these examples of lament in the
Bible don’t stop at acknowledging the
problem. Ultimately, they “tell God
who God is and ask him to be that
God now”. In my experience, I’ve
come to realize that crying out to God
is an exercise in faith and hope. Faith
that God is listening and hope that He
cares enough to something about it.
Faith means turning to Jesus and resting
in the peace that God is sovereign
over all things, including pandemics.
In that sense, faith here looks the same
as it does in any situation where we
don’t understand what is going on.
We should excel at the revealed things
like loving our neighbors and caring
for strangers. For me, that might mean
doing more around the house to support
my mom as she continues to work
at the hospital. It could mean driving
my sister to school or reconnecting
with friends whom I’ve drifted away
from in college and supporting them
through their anxieties.
We should pray for wisdom to move
forward and wait on the Lord to reveal
it. And when we find ourselves in the
midst of uncertainty, we should bring
those to God too. His promises are still
true, He is still in control, and He still
cares for you.
Maybe these are our new extracurriculars.
Cast all your anxiety on him because he
cares for you. -1 Peter 5:7
Prayer in the Face of Coronavirus
Father God,
You are sovereign over all things,
all-powerful, and in control,
You are the great healer and the God
of peace,
So we ask you to heal and to give us
peace in the midst of difficult situations.
There is so much brokenness in the
world,
So much that needs to be made right,
And we thank you that one day, you
will make things right.
Please be with the families who are
grieving right now,
And with those who share in their
grief.
Please be with those who are traveling,
And give us wisdom on when to be
with people
And when to love from a distance.
Things are confusing right now,
So many things are up in the air.
Give us the strength to move forward
And protect us from our fear.
You are not the author of confusion
but of peace,
Please help us as we work out the
logistics of staying home longer than
we planned,
Staying with friends,
Or in unexpected places,
Whether at home or far from it.
Give us eyes to see what you’re calling
us to:
The people who are hurting you
want us to comfort,
The small ways we can love our
families, our neighbors, and strangers
in your name,
And the next step in faithfulness
that you’re asking us to take.
Amen.
.
4 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 5

And Also With You
Jason Lee
The time that winds up to a goodbye
takes many forms. It flows differently.
Most often for us students, it’s scrambled,
trailing zero-hour exams and occupied
by haphazard packing, meaning
each farewell has to be stolen from
an approaching horizon. Other times,
time stretches like a rubber band and
is nervously tense and a little aching
and surprisingly long, and then ends.
And still sometimes it’s lonely, smells
like antiseptic, and when we finally say
it—goodbye—the only response is an
echo.
I imagine that we’ve all lived through
farewells at one point or another,
enough times to know that the mess
of emotions that accompanies each
period of parting has weird flavors. I
am talking now less about end-of-semester
goodbyes and more about long
separations. We are sad of course. We
care for those we are leaving, are being
made to leave, or that are leaving us;
we’d rather they stay, because many
songs and poems have been shared
and the sheer potential of continued
life together, of more stories and meriendas
and listening, has a throbbing
gravity. In some contexts, anger joins
this sadness, especially if we feel we
were robbed of the relationship’s natural
duration.
I am told there is also happiness. This
has always been something of a sticking
point for me. I recognize the wisdom
in A.A. Milne’s characterization:
“How lucky am I to have something
that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
How blessed I was to have known you
well enough to miss you, to have had
the time that we did, and how grand it
is that others will now experience the
joy that is you my friend, my lover, my
brother and my sister. Or perhaps the
one that is leaving is finally returning
home, and that is a rest to be celebrated.
It is also true that there is always God
in a farewell. After all, the word “goodbye”
is just “God be with ye” subducted
together over the centuries. Alongside
a call to peace is a reminder that
it is not within our rights to truly say
“goodbye forever” because who knows
how the Lord has twisted our futures?
I am therefore a strong advocate of
stapling “see you later” to the end of
every sendoff.
Yet when it comes time for me to bid
farewell, I find myself absolutely bitten
and chewed up by fear. Ineffable
machinations of the divine aside, when
I say goodbye to someone or someplace,
I am saying goodbye, forever, to
this particular relationship in this particular
physical space at this particular
time in my life. Perhaps I will see you
later—perhaps I will visit this crooked
wood, or that silly, painted sewer
grate, or we will run into each other in
a precarious spiral stairwell again, me
ascending and you descending. But the
circumstances of our meeting will be
different. We’ll still like the same foods
and our past will anchor us in conversation
as best as it can, but life experienced
separately means that maybe
we won’t talk about the same things,
and the same sights will have different
lenses turned upon them. While old
wounds may have scarred over, new
pains that, this time, I was not there to
bear with you may have appeared, and
our minds and bodies must shift to negotiate
this new emotional geography.
Or maybe things will be just as they
were, and the diction coded by our private
history will still make sense after
all the time apart. The point is that I
do not know, and that is frightening.
When I say “I do not want to lose
you,” entwined with this terror is the
fearful and therefore selfish desire to
keep the other as I know them, to confine
them to this space where I know
how to best love them and from which
I know they can continue to love me.
And since God is love, what I am saying
is this: I am sure that God is here. I
fear He will not be where we are going.
But He will. There’s an endless wealth
of scripture and human experience
to attest to this. I want to emphasize,
however, that this should not efface or
tarp over any grief we feel when we
must say goodbye, forever, to the slice
of another’s eternity we have come to
know. Ecclesiastes 3:1-5 says this:
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under
heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck
up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to
build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time
to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain
from embracing. . .
As with any scripture, the Lord is saying
many things here. He seems to call
into question the earlier idea of a “natural
duration” to our relationships—
they will last exactly as long as they are
meant to. That opens its own winding
questions, which, for the time being,
I will answer by waving my hands
vaguely at A.A. Milne once more.
Rather, I want to point out that each
time is listed consistently, without variation,
scale, or hierarchy. Each will
come to pass, and therefore each must
be attended to with deliberate attention.
We should not deny ourselves our
frustrations, our heartbreak, our time
to weep, die, break down, and pluck
up what we thought we would have
much more time to nurture and grow.
Greet each goodbye, forever, with the
full measure of grief it merits, because
grieving too can be an expression of
our faith in the Lord. By saying goodbye,
truly and fully to what we know,
we say to Him that we trust in his plans
for welfare and not for evil, to give us
a future and a hope. In this way, when
we see each other later, we may have
our time to dance.
.
6 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 7

A Prayer About Boredom
Shayley Martin
Mercy by the Sea
Sharla Moody
Dear God,
Sometimes I wonder if you know what
it feels like to be bored. If you would
deal with it any better than we do. I
know you can take the extremes of human
experience: hunger and pain and
persecution. What I wonder about is
the monotony. I wonder if you, Lord,
would be able to deal with the routine
of over and over, same and same, again
and again. Do you know that feeling?
That desperation?
How would you make it as an old
woman, stuck inside her house for
months, unable to see her children and
grandchildren, doing the same puzzles
every day? Or as a little kid no longer
allowed to go outside and play? Stuck?
You were great as a public figure, Jesus,
reviled by some and loved by others.
But overlooked? Powerless against
some sweeping thing? Convinced that
it didn’t really matter what you did
anyway? Don’t tell me you’ve ever felt
that way.
No, of course you couldn’t have been
overlooked. How could the maker of
all things be overlooked? You have all
the power; how could you have known
what it meant to be powerless? And
you came up with everything: warthogs
and platypuses and rafflesia flowers;
how could we expect you to understand
boredom or suffocation?
it’s monotonous, at least in my memory.
It’s all rain and soup and fifty-degree
weather. And if you give something
up, you’ve got one fewer thing
even than you had for the rest of the
year. There’s nothing special, nothing
to mark the passing time.
Hold on––but Lent comes from an
episode from your life. Could it be
that Lent’s monotony is also modeled
on that episode? You spent forty days
alone and hungry in the wilderness,
in the middle of nowhere. That can’t
have been interesting. Hunger and
thirst are pure monotony applied to
the body. Looking back on those forty
fasting days of yours, they’re very
noble. But at the time, it was just an
empty stomach: the same dry mouth
no matter how you held it or what
prayers you said. And you could have
done something to make yourself powerful;
you could have made stones into
bread, but you decided not to. You decided
to be powerless before the wide
desert, as we would have been.
You are with us in the memorable
high-action moments; you care about
big decisions and high-stakes conversations.
Thank you.
You are with us in pain and sorrow
and anger, and in the times of greatest
loss. Thank you.
Thank you for that too.
You’re with us in the routine, when we
feel like worthless cogs. You’re with us
when we’re lonely. Not “with us” as in
standing nearby, peering at us, wondering
what could be going through
our minds. No. You’ve been here.
Done this. Stifling things, slowly and
consistently exhausting things, grating
things––you’ve known them all, Jesus.
They were a part of the human life
that you took on.
I know that people have been saying
this for two thousand years, but thank
you for doing that. For living a human
life, I mean. Who could have blamed
you for looking the other way and letting
us self-destruct? A human life has
pain and vulnerability and limitation
and boredom; the all-powerful God
shouldn’t have to deal with that! But
we needed you, and you loved us, and
you didn’t hesitate.
Amen.
Water left on rocks from last tide
freezes before it has the chance
to ebb or dry away, crystalized,
calcified life abandoned from the body
that birthed it.
Cast from waves, the water freezes on rocks,
restrained from polluting the ocean.
O Lord, You take away the residue
of my passions before I meet or
bid them goodbye, become
hardened artifacts of the former life
that spat them out.
Cast them into Your divine waters,
swallow the pieces whole.
But then again, how can I say there’s
something you don’t know? Something
you don’t understand? Of course you
understand.
You are also with us when we’re bored.
The first day of Lent is interesting;
that’s when some denominations get
those ash crosses on their foreheads.
And it’s interesting when it ends, at
Easter, when everybody can eat chocolate
again or what have you, when people
dress up and seem almost to glow.
When people are excited to see you.
But during those forty days between,
.
8 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 9

All We (Can) Do
Jadan Anderson
(1) A sunk cost is unrecoverable.
(2) The number one mistake in rational
decision-making is basing decisions on
what has already been lost.
The agent should move on, quickly
now. Without looking back, continue
forward. Dwelling on sunk costs
is only beneficial insofar as the agent
can reflect on that experience of loss
in order to prevent, as far as possible,
a recurrence. I was taught (and I do
agree) that this system of moving on
is efficient in a world where losses are
inevitable. In some ways, I also think
this system squares quite nicely with
the biblical motif of forsaking what
is behind and pressing on in stories
of transplantation, of conversion, of
evangelism.[1] More than avoiding
being turned into a pillar of salt, moving
on can be an act of faith.
I am not proud to admit that the news
of COVID-19 spreading did not really
occupy my thoughts until it locked my
dormitory door. Far from feeling mostly
grief or even fear at the pandemic
rapidly taking lives and life as we knew
it, I was irritated at how much of the
time I spent this academic year had
been rendered unrecoverable.
We were all in the middle of something
before lockdown effectively put a
stop to it. Before being confined to our
makeshift homes and government-issued
twelve-foot-wide bubbles of
space, we were planning concerts and
vacations and summer plans. We were
sacrificing sleep to marginally more
polished essays and extracurricular
loves. We were building relationships.
The world beyond Yale was doing
the same: planning, building, sacrificing.
And though some of these doings
have merely changed in the medium
through which they are being done,
we have all experienced sunk costs of
time, sleep, mental and emotional energy.
But, of course, that loss was a risk
inherent before the coronavirus outbreak
and will continue to be long after
humans have developed resistance
and the economy has recovered. I had
forgotten that anything and everything
anyone does can at any point become
a sunk cost. All of the choices we make
are choices under uncertainty––no
outcome is guaranteed––and the
shocks of this viral outbreak have not
really disrupted reality but rather are
forcing us to reckon with it.[2]
The illusion of certainty has emerged
as a prominent theme in all of the literature
surrounding the crisis, which
calls for a re-evaluation—or recollection—of
everything, from the vulnerability
of our impoverished, to the
weaknesses in our healthcare system,
to the consequences of our tendencies
toward discrimination.[3] It is also a
common undercurrent in the slew of
at once convicting and edifying articles
speaking directly to coronavirus
in relation to our Christianity, which
encourage us to get creative with the
ways we worship, implore us to invest
in the communities in which we find
ourselves, and remind us that lament
is holier than fear. Generally, we have
come to recognize our false sense of
permanency. Now, we feel an urgency
to count the illusion as sunk and simply
move on.
But the faithful thing to do in this time
may not be to move on to whatever
new “normal” lies ahead. Well, at least
I don’t think we should move on so
quickly. The mere fact of uncertainty
is not the lesson we are meant to learn.
The proverbs taught us that lesson a
long time ago.[4]
The real lesson through this uncertainty
is—I think—actually one about
trust, particularly where we place it.
From the beginning, the only sure thing
has been Him alone. Deuteronomy 31
reads, “Be strong and courageous. Do
not fear or be in dread... for it is the
LORD your God who goes with you.
He will not leave you or forsake you”
[5]; Isaiah 54, “For the mountains may
depart and the hills be removed, but
my steadfast love shall not depart from
you, and my covenant of peace shall
not be removed”[6]; Romans 8, “For
I am sure that neither death nor life...
nor anything else all in creation, will
be able to separate us from the love of
God.”[7]
Some of the anxiety and sense of injustice
at relocation (the latter, at least
on my part), some of the temptation
to hoard groceries and amass rolls of
toilet paper, is symptomatic of the
knowingly or unknowingly misplaced
trust in the buildings, places, routines,
living conditions, communities, and
loved ones in and alongside which
we’ve been blessed to consistently live.
This trust, this dependency, is meant
for God. If we move on too quickly,
I am afraid we will forego the mercy
(yes, mercy) we are being shown in
this time. That is, the chance to learn
and relearn how to rightly place our
sense of security in God. After all, He
is ubiquitous and unchanging in place
and time; chaotic home lives and suffocating
solitude are not excluded.
Though I’m not sure what that looks
like in our individual walks, surely remembering
and re-evaluating come
first.
And if I can offer another encompassing
idea: the other key lesson we
learn through this uncertainty is one
of value. We make choices based on
what we value, and we decide to do
what is most likely to get us what we
want or as much of what we want as
we can get. While I have realized the
extent to which I put my trust in the
permanence of life as I knew it at
Yale, I’ve also had to reckon with the
value I place, as we all do, on my output:
papers written, concerts conducted,
meetings attended, advice given,
grades achieved.[8]
Here’s the thing: it is written that when
we have given ourselves over to Him,
we become slaves to righteousness.
[9] Our new command is to do all in
love.[10] As Christians, then, in terms
of what we do, I think we should be
experiencing far fewer sunk costs. To
do something in love means that we
are no longer moving toward a value
based on output, toward whatever end
or output or destination we desire. To
do something in love means that in
the moving, in the doing, we have already
succeeded. I will remember the
costs in time, sleep, tears, energy; I’ll
also remember the basic tenet of our
faith, that in God what seems a loss is
not so. In remembering, if I find that
I have done anything in love, I cannot
in good faith count it as a sunk cost.
It is gain. He is giving us a chance
to relearn that. When this passes, we
should and will move on. I pray that
we do so wholly. But I don’t want to
move so quickly as to miss how He is
moving now.
[1] “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies
behind and straining forward to what lies
ahead, I press on toward the goal for the
prize of the upward call of God in Christ
Jesus.” - Philippians 3:13-14, ESV
[2] DeLorenzo, Dear Students: There is
No Afterwards
[3] Coronavirus & Quarantine: What Big
Questions Can We Be Asking?
[4] “Do not boast about tomorrow, for
you do not know what a day may bring.” -
Proverbs 27:1, ESV
[5] Deuteronomy 31:6
[6] Isaiah 54:10
[7] Romans 8:38-39
[8] Hopkinson, It’s Time We Talk About
Productivity
[9] “But thanks be to God, that you who
were once slaves of sin have become obedient
from the heart...and, having been set
free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
- Romans 6:17-18, ESV
[10] “Let all that you do be done in love.”
- 1 Corinthians 16:14, ESV
.
10 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 11

Exile: Transplanting and Sustaining
Bradley Yam
It wasn’t too long ago that I was walking
through cross campus with a beloved
friend on an uncharacteristically
warm February afternoon, watching
Yalies bask in the sun on the grass,
thinking to myself that I was so blessed
to be here, so blessed to be among
friends, so blessed to feel at home. Later
that afternoon, we were chatting about
Yale’s architecture, and she mentioned
she could see the seal of Connecticut
on a building from her dorm window
and its motto “Qui Transtulit Sustinet”
–– or “She/He who transplanted
sustains.” It spoke directly to my deep
fear: what would happen to this home
when I graduate? Would it all fade
away like a dream, those bright college
years? Would I be able to transplant
well? How could these good things
be sustained? Fast forward a month,
and my head of college, Prof Near, is
hosting us at a Saybrook dinner just
before Salovey announced the closure
of school. The conversation was rife
with speculation. I gazed down at the
dinner plates we ate on, the old Saybrook
plates that the dining hall had
used. I started. They bore the same
words etched indelibly in my mind’s
eye: “Qui Transtulit Sustinet.” The order
to evacuate the dorms came soon
after. What has happened since then,
you already know.
So we find ourselves prematurely uprooted,
ejected, exiled. Our reckoning
has come early, and we are unprepared.
The question in my mind
remains: what does it mean to be
transplanted? What does it mean to be
sustained?
It doesn’t seem too far a stretch to say
that we are now in a kind of state of
exile as a result of the pandemic.[1]
The question for Christians everywhere
now is how to respond to the
crisis. We may argue that Christianity
actually does best when Christians
do not flee from the crisis but dive in
headfirst to provide care to the community
(x-ref). Some have argued that
the best thing that Christians can do
right now is suspend all church services
and stop meeting together. Andy
Crouch from Praxis Journal instead insists
on the importance of meeting as
the body of Christ but with the highest
levels of hygiene and abiding by the
constraints given to us by our local
health authorities. In a time of chaos
and uprooting, it is more essential than
ever to ensure that we are transplanted
well, and that we grow roots where
we might end up: wherever that might
be. What is the right balance to strike
between listening to the math and listening
to our hearts? How do we be
the salt and light of the earth in a
time ruled by fear, anxiety, loneliness
and claustrophobia? I suggest that we
might think of answers in two ways:
transplanting and sustaining.
Transplanting and Sustaining both the
Body and the Soul
The mathematics of this global pandemic
seem elegant and undeniable.
Quoting a Georgia Tech professor, an
article in WIRED pointed out that,
given the assumption that 20,000 cases
are circulating in the US, at a dinner
party with 10 people, there is a
0.061% chance of infection, and at a
mega sporting event with over 10,000
people, there is a staggering 45%
chance of infection. We are desperately
grappling with the numbers of
infected as they exponentially outgrow
our comprehension. While we are battling
exponential forces so huge that
only logarithmic transformations can
help us understand their magnitude,
we desperately look for an inflection
point, a sign that things are slowing
down. But they only exceed our expectations.
Against this unseen foe, statistics
are our best weapon, and helpful
modelling and simulation allows us to
understand the macro-effects of our
individual decisions. These numbers
make the cancellations of plans, classes
and activities understandable, if not
more bearable. [2]
The math says that social distancing
and, if possible, total quarantine are
the optimal strategies in the game
against contagion. This will extend
the duration that the virus lives on in
our society by preserving pockets of
unblemished population that it can
creep upon, but overall it will “flatten
the curve,” i.e. reduce the load at any
given point in time for the healthcare
system so that society can continue to
cope with regular illnesses. While the
elderly and the immunocompromised
are still most at risk, new reports are
coming out to show that younger populations
are not risk-free from becoming
a burden to the healthcare system.
Social distancing seems to be the best
thing to do for our bodies.
In the age of social media, online shopping
and Zoom meetings, it may not
be obvious why we continue to meet
up at all. But thousands of college students
still travel millions of miles in total
every fall and spring to congregate
on a campus that they call home, to be
with their friends, and take classes in
the same building, even if they could
arguably have a much better time
watching recorded lectures from their
bedrooms. Now? Locked dormitories,
deserted stores, empty movie theatres
––the social distancing that the current
health system requires is perhaps
more painful than the effects of the virus
itself for young people. The empty
spaces that social distancing has created
in its wake speak to us about our
powerful need for presence. Ironically,
physical presence is fundamentally important
for the health of our soul.
The importance of presence is difficult
to explain other than with the idea
that we are beings made to exist in relationship
with other such beings.[1]
The idea that we require the presence
of others and God to fully be ourselves
is central to Christianity. In Genesis
2:18, God says that “it is not good for
man to be alone.” In the beginning
Man was with God. His ultimate fall
results in exile: the ultimate social
distancing. The present crisis and the
conditions of loneliness, isolation and
deprivation is perhaps not novel, as
much as revelatory of our fundamental
human condition: alienation. We
often risk so much, even death, just to
be with others. While we are in transition,
we must not forget that we must
care for both our body and our soul; so
intertwined are the two that the very
physical separation that helps the body
may destroy the soul. So, in order to
be transplanted and sustained well, we
must find strategies that address both
body and soul.
Transplanting Roots: Physical and
Digital
The answer from the techno-optimist
seems to come in the form of online
communities. It seems like we can convert
any of our previous activities into
an online version with a quick Zoom
invite or, in the most extreme cases,
full replicas of real-world locations on
a Minecraft server. These meetings are
a heartwarming stopgap in a time of
transition, but I am skeptical that they
will ever fully meet our need for fully
embodied presence. I am also concerned
about our temptation to default
to our online communities to maintain
a sense of normalcy and comfort that
has long since passed. Yes, we need to
Zoom into our classes, but contrary
to popular opinion, simply uploading
and replicating the University experi-
.
12 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 13

Being Home When Home Is Hard
Daniel Chabeda
ence into the digital world may not be
the call for Christians at this time. If
we simply live an online existence, we
will fail to transplant ourselves well.
We need each other, and everywhere
we go, we are called to be a neighbour
to those around us. If anything, the
current COVID-19 pandemic reminds
us about what we might be tempted
to forget: that the physical, embodied
presence of real people is important
and irreplaceable. This means that we
are not just called to be salt and light
to people in the online community, but
the people immediately around us.
That might mean being patient and
kind in a difficult family situation, or
it might be buying groceries for the
elderly in your community. As the
number of Zoom meetings proliferate
exponentially like a virus, we need to
be careful: carelessly participating in
all or even most of them may not be
wise. Instead, we need to strike a balance
between loving our online and
our physical communities well.
At the same time, even in the bible,
social distancing can have a protective
function. The covenants of Israel have
always been negotiated by distance:
in Exodus 24:1-2, God “said to Moses,
“Come up to the LORD, you and
Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy
of the elders of Israel, and you shall
worship at a distance.” The rules of
ritual purity in the priestly law were
instituted to protect humanity against
their own self-destruction, destruction
that would have occurred in the holiness
of God, conditions under which
no sin or impurity can stand.[2] This
is also a time to take stock, to get rid of
the impurities and excesses in our lives
which we might have been too caught
up in to notice before. In the oppressive
silence of quarantine is actually a
deeply necessary solitude that allows
us to examine our lives and reorient
them toward God, not simply by saying
so, but by actually removing from
our lives the things that take us away
from him. The distance that we have is
room to calibrate before returning to a
pace of life with impurities that might
be ultimately destructive for us.
Sustaining for the Long Haul
When it is time to return to the pace of
life, when classes start again, we need
a fresh and inspired way of life, one
that involves balancing real-world and
online interaction, one that insists on
presence, one that is newly calibrated
to the voice of God. In the exile of Israel
to Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah
instructs the people of God to build
houses and settle down where they are,
marrying and carrying on with life, not
business as usual, but under the new
conditions of exile. We need to find a
way of weathering through this crisis
like a long (but temporary) exile, not
simply a one-off disruption to our lives.
We must do so with hope, knowing that
God has a plan to prosper us and not
to harm us, plans to give us, and the
people around us, a hope and a future.
Any form of social distancing was only
meant to be temporary protection. We
suffer the isolation now in hopes of a
cure, or a vaccine, or herd immunity.
Whatever it is, we eagerly long to
return to each other’s presence. We
eagerly seek to return to God’s house.
In the Christian tradition, that ultimate
cure is Christ the Messiah. The
incarnation of Christ is the ultimate
response to the exile of the human
race from the presence of God. In
every Mass, every service, every Eucharist,
we celebrate and come into
his presence. It is his presence that
heals us, and his presence that restores
us, and his presence that saves us, as
described in Hosea 6:1-2. This Lent,
we may give up food or wine or even
meeting together (for the time being),
but let us not give up on presence,
whether that is with family at home,
or the limited ways in which we can
reach out to each other through calls,
letters, emails, Zoom meetings, and so
too with the body and blood of Christ.
Let us not forget about trusting and
abiding in the “Presence of God which
we are assured, will be with us always,
until the very end of the age.” [3]
[1] We exist in relationship in the sense
that we only really possess our full being––
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual––
in relationship to others. Put simply, we are
not independent creatures. We are not solitary
beings. We cannot define ourselves,
insulate ourselves, or actualize ourselves
without others.
[2] The metaphor of a “refining fire” is apt
here: the heat of a furnace selectively oxidizes
impure metals, leaving the core metal
purer but getting rid of the excess slag in
the process.
[3] Matthew 28:20
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy
and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness,
humility, meekness, and patience,
bearing with one another and, if one has a
complaint against another, forgiving each
other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you
also must forgive. And above all these put
on love, which binds everything together in
perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:12-14
The first room I notice when entering
my house is “The Pink Room,” a sunlight-filled
room with peach-colored
walls nestled off to the left of the foyer.
These peach-colored walls are loaded
with pictures of my mom, dad, and siblings.
But one family member not pictured
in any of The Pink Room’s frames
is my mentally ill grandmother. While I
was growing up, her psychosis made her
agitated and combative. She could hold
her own in an argument with the demons
inside my bedroom wall all night
long. I would plaster my ears with the
gritty songs of Metallica and attempt to
sleep. During the day, I would self-medicate
my loneliness with an acid-green
drip of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under
the Bridge.” We probably both ended
up with demons. I told my mom one
day, bitter beyond belief, that I might be
growing to hate my own grandmother. I
think she just sighed, too overwhelmed
with grief to even cry.
Across the United States, more than
60 major colleges and universities have
closed their classrooms in response to
the global COVID-19 pandemic.[1]
University administrators have told
thousands of students to return home,
creating a nationwide exodus from
college campuses and spring break
destinations to hometowns. The return
home is often joyful and long-anticipated,
a reunion of siblings, parents
and grandparents in a space that once
cradled each forming relationship.
Home is often looked forward to as the
ultimate destination of that harrowing
exodus. But home is not always the
Promised Land. Home can be a collection
of new challenges for students
to contend with: maintaining academic
motivation, adjusting to a new
work environment, and continuing
social interactions with peers to name
a few. Some challenges are even deeper––abusive
parents, psychologically
triggering scenes, loneliness––and can
turn the intended place of solace into
a land of sour milk and honey. For me,
home has been an environment of
family tension, emotional strain, and
spiritual temptation, an environment
where I was far from my family and
God. In writing this article, I assume
that many of you can relate.
Return to life at home, though deeply
gratifying in the most human sense,
can be punctuated with a sense of loss.
The familiar landscape of campus––
beeping, bustling crosswalks where no
one walks inside the lines, gothic spires
against gray skies, the viscous scent of
whatever is oozing from behind Mory’s––has
been replaced by the plain
walls and house chatter of Zoom
meetings. These are just the tangible
losses. The carefully curated schedules
of meeting with friends, prayer, homework,
and extracurricular activities
have been upended to care for family
members, work to provide financial
support, or attend to personal mental
health. This regression from autonomous
adult to household member can
be frustrating, but our experience of
destabilization from moving into an
environment that should be a blessing
is not unprecedented. For the ancient
nation of Israel, the exodus out of
Egypt brought a similar sense of destabilization.
God spoke a wonderful
promise to Israel, saying “I will deliver
you from slavery… and I will be your
God… I will bring you into the land
that I swore to Abraham.”[2] Yet after
being delivered from Egypt, the people
complained to God and grumbled at
Moses, saying “it would have been better
for us to serve the Egyptians than to
die in the wilderness,”[3] and “would
that we had died by the hand of the
Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the
meat pots and ate bread to the full.”[4]
I sympathize with them. They walked
in the desert for three days without any
water only to be led by God to a pool
of undrinkable water![5] Does this feel
familiar? Many of us might feel like Israel:
uprooted from the most familiar
environment to us and drawn into a
wilderness of bitter water, a home full
of family members with clashing personalities,
mannerisms, and ideologies.
This destabilization can make us quick
to be harsh towards our family. It may
even feel like we have been uprooted
from the only spiritually comfortable
space to us, a community that supported
our pursuit of God and righteousness.
The frustration of regression into
old sins can make us harsh towards
ourselves.
Being home can also present significant
emotional and mental challenges.
In the current global state of disease,
panic, and social distancing, being
home means being away from the people
we have come to cherish. We worry
about our friends’ safety and health all
the way across the world, yet cannot
even lay a hand on them to quell our
worry. We worry about our immunocompromised
family members, so
close to us, yet too vulnerable to touch
for fear of transmitting sickness. Even
outside the context of this pandemic,
emotional challenges present themselves.
For me, home holds memories
of a time when loneliness, arrogance,
and even hatred were all vying to be
my defining attribute of the day. I
don’t know how you have struggled,
but being home has a way of reminding
us of just how much effort it took
to get to wherever we currently are.
So how do we live well in these difficult
home environments? The answer
lies in living in faithful relationship
with Jesus. Some of you might now be
thinking, “what a disappointingly unoriginal
conclusion to what was other-
.
14 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 15

wise a fresh and engaging article!” But
even Christians can start to think that
the grinning, gap-toothed chorus of
“Jesus is the answer” from a group of
five-year-old Sunday school students
squatting on multicolored jigsaw mats
is oversimplified if not plain childish.
[6] This distrustful response towards
Jesus comes from an expectation that,
like in our human relationships, God is
holding out on us. Like we often do in
our relationship with him, we suspect
that the gracious giver of all things is
holding some true secret to Life away
from his children, close to his chest,
safe.
But God does not hold back. As Paul
writes in his letter to the church in
Ephesus, “Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places.”[7]
Jesus Christ is the absolute fulfillment
of God’s will, an everlasting source
of love, peace, patience, and kindness
in relationship. From the moment we
step into relationship with Christ, we
have the fullness of a God who holds
nothing good back from us. The same
promise God gave to the Israelites all
those years ago he gives to us today: “I
will be your God.” With this strength
and grace behind us, we act.
How do we act? If you are a Christian,
hold to the teaching of Jesus: “let your
light shine before others.”[8] Amidst
the very real tragedy and suffering of
widespread disease, you each have an
incredible opportunity to lead your
homes in becoming houses of God,
where Jesus is glorified as family members
show compassion, forgiveness,
and love to one another. So be the first
to forgive your siblings or parents when
disputes arise and the first to apologize
when you are in the wrong. “As the
Lord has forgiven you, so you must
also forgive.”[9] Be intentional about
presence! It is possible for a family to
be at home and each person to be in
their own room, on their own phone,
and in their own world. Invite your siblings,
“let’s sit at the table together as
we do our schoolwork!” Include your
parents, “can we all eat meals together?”
Let yourself laugh with gut, and
smile as you see light dawn in the wilderness.
Though our bodies might be quarantined,
let’s not quarantine our hearts
by erecting walls of distrust. View all
struggles––family tension, emotional
pain, spiritual temptation––as an
opportunity to let light shine in your
home, not as a heavy burden. How can
Jesus develop our patience if it is not
tried? And who better than our family
members?[10] Sometimes it feels like
biological families are sorted randomly,
with God paying little heed to compatibility
yet expecting lifelong bonds
of love. This is by design. Our biological
families are a preliminary picture
of the family we enter as members of
God’s family, the church. We are connected
not by individual similarity, but
shared parentage: mothers and fathers
in our biological families, our heavenly
Father in the church.
So look around at your family, see
the beautiful diversity of thought,
personality, and behavior. Honor the
Lord in that family by showing love to
each member, showing patience, forgiveness,
and humility towards them.
Schedule time to sit alongside them.
Do not let this opportunity pass with
each family member sequestered in
their own room, virtual or physical,
but be present together. Be the leader
in this. This sounds easier said than
done, but remember that Jesus is our
answer. Jesus is given to us once and
for all by his death on the cross, and
as we worship Him and pray, a still increasing
measure of grace is given to
us for help in times of need.[11] Jesus
can be trusted to provide the love, patience,
kindness, and emotional healing
that we all need to bring our homes
to the Promised Land.
All, I repeat, all bitterness towards my
grandmother has evaporated in the last
year. We now have cordial conversations.
I pray for her mental illness to be
healed. She smiles more now and can
sleep better. The craziest part is that I
didn’t scrunch up my eyes and pray real
hard and try to forgive her. Jesus just
can’t be where bitterness is. For me,
that’s miraculous. I want our picture, my
grandmother and I, on the Pink Room
walls as a memorial of God’s faithfulness.
Thank you, Father.
“In the same way, let your light shine before
others, so that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father
who is in heaven.” - Matthew 5:16
I do not assume that everyone reading
this comes from the same faith tradition,
and I can fully accept that what
I have said might seem unreasonable.
All this stuff about Jesus being given to
us, what does it mean? Allow me to tell
one more grief-stricken yet beautiful
exodus story.
In the time of the first Exodus, God
advocated for the Israelites while they
still lived in slavery. He even went so
far as to kill all the first-born children
in households unmarked by the blood
of a “pass-over” lamb. After bringing
Israel out of Egypt, he took them
through the waters of the Red Sea and
through the wilderness, guiding them
at each step. He faithfully brought
them into the Promised Land, fulfilling
his initial promise. But Christians
believe that this exodus, too, is a preliminary
picture of the salvation God
would bring to his whole earth through
Jesus, his only Son. When Jesus came
to earth, he advocated for the sick,
showing compassion by his healing.
He guided people through life’s twists
and turns, a leader in righteousness
by his teaching and a leader in love
by his weeping. Penultimately, he was
crucified on a Roman cross as the final
“pass-over” lamb, whose blood can
mark us as protected before God. But
the story does not end there. Ultimately,
Jesus rose from the dead by the powerful
Spirit of God to reign as Lord,
and all who believe in Him will one
day rise too! But until then, He continues
to guide us through the waters and
the wilderness until we can reach Him
in heaven, the Promised Land. That is
the Christian hope.
Do you feel the love of God stirring
your heart? Do you see the love of
God in Jesus’ sacrifice? If so, just proclaim
this simple prayer to God. He is
listening.
Dear God,
I see your love in the sacrificial
death of Jesus.
I believe you raised Him to new
Life as Lord.
I want to lead a new life.
I accept your gift of Salvation so I
can love you and love others.
Amen.
Have any questions? If so, email me:
daniel.chabeda@yale.edu.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/
us/coronavirus-university-college-classes/
index.html
[2] Exodus 6:6,7
[3] Exodus 14:12b
[4] Exodus 16:3
[5] Exodus 15:22-23
[6] Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive
the kingdom of God like a child shall
not enter it.” - Mark 10:15
[7] Ephesians 1:3
[8] Matthew 5:16
[9] Colossians 3:13b
[10] This may be especially hard if your
home situation remains an obstacle to
faith. I did not discuss the unique challenge
of unbelieving family members and that
some are antagonized for their belief at
home, but the advice stays the same. “Let
your light shine before others.” Also pray
a lot.
[11] Hebrews 4:16
.
16 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 17

I’ll Give You a Daisy a Day, Dear
Vienna Scott
Daisy a Day by Jed Strunk
Every year on Mother’s Day, a little
old man at my parents’ local Lutheran
Church would amble up the aisle,
to the rickety old piano, and pluck out
the country song “Daisy a Day.”
“I’ll give you a daisy a day, dear / I’ll
give you a daisy a day / I’ll love you
until the rivers run still / And the four
winds we know blow away”
While he crooned out the sweet Jud
Strunk lyrics, the ushers and the pastor
would walk up and down the aisle
and distribute a single daisy to each
mother in the congregation. For the
congregants, the folkish ditty was an
endearing commemoration of the sacred
bond between mother and child.
My mother, an elementary school music
teacher who felt vocationally called
to parenthood, braved those Sunday
services with faltering resolve as every
year the ushers passed her by. She was
infertile.
The daisy became a symbol of her
struggle. I imagine her prayers on
those torturous Sundays, like Rebekah
and Elisabeth and Hannah before her,
“O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, if you
will look upon my sorrow and answer
my prayer and give me a child; give me
a daisy…”
On April 7th, 1999, after four years
of doctors appointments and testing,
friends’ pregnancies and single stripes
on plastic sticks, crying and praying,
my twin sister and I were born. In May
of 1999, she received her first daisy.
Since then, we’ve moved five times and
attended half a dozen other churches.
But, every year on Mother’s Day my
father pulls out his wearied acoustic
guitar and strums the simple C- F- C-
F- C- D- G. While he serenades, one
by one, from youngest to oldest, each
of her nine children hands her a single,
long-stemmed, daisy. They create
a full bouquet.
In yearly celebration, the yellow and
white bud of “Mary’s rose” reminds us
of the constancy and overabundance
of God’s love. Her barrenness was
broken with twins. Doctors balked as
she proceeded to deliver three more
biological children in her state of infertility.
Through adoption, foster care,
and legal guardianship, she is now a
mother to what sometimes feels like
multitudes. The daisy is our proverbial
olive branch, a symbol of prayers fulfilled.
Its exchange has become nearly
covenantal.
While Coronavirus rages outside, we
sit quarantined, like that prophetic
family on an arc, together. Not rain,
but disease fills the outside world.
Every once in a while, I spend some
time outside, moseying around the first
budding flowers, thrusting through the
remaining fringe of snow. Amidst the
crocus buds and daffodil stems, I’m
hoping to find the first daisy of Spring.
If you, like me, are searching for
modest signs of hope in a time of a
near-biblical calamity, I commend
unto you the sweet refrains of “Daisy
a Day.” While the world seems to be
drowning, we worship a God who will
love us till the rivers run still. And the
four winds we know blow away…
He remembers the first time he met her
He remembers the first thing she said
He remembers the first time he held her
And the night that she came to his bed
He remembers her sweet way of sayin
Honey has somethin’ gone wrong
He remembers the fun and the teasin’
And the reason he wrote ‘er this song
I’ll give you a daisy a day, dear
I’ll give you a daisy a day
I’ll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away
They would walk down the street in the evenin’
And for years I would see them go by
And their love that was more than the clothes that
they wore
Could be seen in the gleam of their eyes
As a kid they would take me for candy
And I loved to go taggin’ along
We’d hold hands while we walked to the corner
And the old man would sing ‘er his song
I’ll give you a daisy a day, dear
I’ll give you a daisy a day
I’ll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away
Now he walks down the street in the evenin’
And he stops by the old candy store
And I somehow believe he’s believin’
He’s holdin’ ‘er hand like before
For he feels all her love walkin’ with him
And he smiles at the things she might say
Then the old man walks up to the hilltop
And gives her a daisy a day
.
18 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 19

More Than Just Surviving
Sharmaine Koh
By the time Spring Break came
around, the general mood that seemed
to hover oppressively over the campus
was exhaustion. We all looked forward
to the space that those two-weeks
would afford us to breathe and gather
our bearings before plunging back into
the relentless rhythm of academic life.
All around, people were telling me to
hang in there. I was telling people to
hang in there. Most times it felt like
I was getting tossed about in the sea,
and the only thing I was hanging on
to was a rotten plank. The shore was
just a hundred feet away: tantalizingly
close, frustratingly far.
These days, the global pandemic
might make our academic woes seem
laughably trivial. Many of us would
give anything to trade the fears and
stresses of disruption, infection, social
isolation, loss of support and certainty,
for the simpler pressures of academic
labour. But in our vigilant handwashing,
Zoomer-U-a-meme-ing, miserable
self-quarantining, there is that
same sense of struggle against forces
quite beyond our control. I’m still
hanging on to that rotten plank. The
waves just seem to be rougher. I focus
on just staying afloat. I know that this
is all many of my peers can focus on
doing now. Without the support structures
of campus and community, it’s a
terrifying time to be alive, and just surviving—just
getting by—is a condition
that is as inescapable as it is stifling.
These days, all we do is survive. It’s
hard enough to think about living well,
let alone thriving.
What’s the distinction? Perhaps survival
might be best understood as
continuing to exist—staying alive—in
spite of an environment of stress and
danger. It makes no inroads beyond
the bare minimum. It’s you hanging
on to a rotten plank in the middle of
a rough ocean, just afloat. Flourishing
and thriving, in contrast, points
to an “optimal range of human functioning,”
full of goodness, creativity,
growth, resilience. The sense of human
flourishing that Aristotle gestured
toward. It’s getting on that plank and
surfing, Moana-style, granted that’s a
ridiculously tall order in the face of the
most fearsome waves.
Exhaustion is symptomatic of the survivalist
condition. We are constantly
at war against conditions, whether we
choose fight or flight. In the face of
stress and danger much of what motivates
us is fear, and it is all-consuming.
Whether it is fear of failure, fear
of rejection, fear of uncertainty, fear
of loss, fear of radical loneliness, a fear
that other people in our lives might get
hurt… fear is an exhausting condition
to bear. It tires us out, eats us hollow,
and in the process leaves little room for
love. We survive, but we are in the true
sense of the word, barely alive. We
might think that our survival mindset
is temporary: we only need to ride out
the crisis. We find coping mechanisms.
We try to recover normalcy in our daily
routines. But the desperate conditions
of the coronavirus crisis, I think,
is less a rupture in our way of life and
more a revelation of a condition we’ve
long found ourselves in.
And yet can we be blamed? For many
of our brothers and sisters whose lived
realities are far from privileged, it appears
as if there is no choice between
these two states of being. Insofar as
the survivalist condition propagates
endless fear that in turn ensures an
endless state of exhaustion, flourishing
remains a pipe dream. In a world that
has fallen far from perfection, we cannot
change the conditions of stress and
danger that we are subject to. Human
suffering manifests itself on a spectrum
of problem sets to pandemics, and everything
else in between. Might it be
only human to struggle for our existence,
driven by fear of absolute and
utter annihilation by the crushing forces
that surround us on a daily basis?
But I know that I am fortunate, as are
my Christian brothers and sisters. We
can escape this languishing condition
of survival because we are able to
eradicate the forces of fear that drive
and maintain the survival instinct.
Perfect love casts out all fear. One
need only count the number of times
the Bible invokes: “Do not be afraid!”
Psalm 23:4 defeats the notion that survival
is all that is possible in the face
of utter annihilation: “Even though I
walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil, for you are
with me; your rod and your staff, they
comfort me.” What beauty lies in this
radical freedom in the face of terror!
Some say that religion is a coping
mechanism. After all, “I’m still alive
but I’m barely breathing / Just prayin’
to a God that I don’t believe in,” is a
sentiment The Script famously sang.
Maybe—maybe it’s another one of
those methods of survival, a distraction
conjured by the desperate to convince
themselves that they aren’t alone
in a world set adrift.
But if coping means only surviving,
then one need only look at the fruits
of faith to see that believing in God
enables more than just coping. In the
direst situations, allowing God into
the picture allows us to go beyond our
fears and our survival instincts. We go
beyond—we imagine not just escaping
death but triumphing over it. There is
breathing space to not just survive, but
flourish, freed from our human limitations
because we are enabled by God,
who looks upon our smallness and, out
of overflowing love, unfailingly comes
to our help. Deuteronomy 31:6 promises
that faith in God’s existence guarantees
that we never have to face the
prospect of abandonment and lonely
struggle: “for the Lord your God goes
with you; he will never leave or forsake
you.”
This same love and solidarity that
God demonstrates to his children is
what will move us from merely staying
alive to fully and richly flourishing. We
need remember that access to a state
of flourishing remains distinctly unequal
in our world today, as a result of
myriad social, political, and economic
conditions. Therein lies the impetus to
reach out to each other in love, particularly
in this time of gripping fear, and
beyond this time of Lent. Not everyone
has or wants to have a helper in
God—realities that we must respect.
Then it is all the more a Christian
duty, having been freed from fear and
conditions of mere survival by divine
love, to reach out and enable fellow human
beings, Christian or not, do more
than just survive, so that at least others
might have a helper in us. We are, after
all, his body. So in the midst of the
stormy seas, take courage in the Lord
and keep your head above water. Freed
from the oppressive fear, paddle your
way over to your neighbours. Reach
out, lash together your wooden planks.
Stronger, braver, and not alone, we’ll
all make it to shore, and do much more
than just survive.
.
20 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 21

Word Made Flesh
Raquel Sequiera
Roman Holiday
Sharla Moody
“It has something to do with incarnation…” [1]
Something to do with feeling the perfect spiral when
the ball leaves your hand, before you see its spin
against the fiery dusk;
with launching into a stride with the dregs of strength
from straining muscles;
with the shimmering sound of harmony;
with sweet gut laughter at texts from friends you hadn’t
thought to miss;
something to do with insomnia and the nights your
body goes on strike;
with yearnings only poetry can fill... nope, only deepen;
and something to do with the pain of a hug rebuffed
by a regretful elbow.
(Remember when we called them crazy—the ones
who said viruses were incarnate?)
This mortal shall put on immortality and this corruptible
incorruption,
but the mortal and corruptible come first:
A trail of blood in the Israelites’ wake, a trail of pride
in mine, and a trail of contact turned contagion,
while we wonder with each sacrifice, each quarrel,
each outbreak, if this is the day that mercy runs out.
Still, they say, in the twinkling of an eye—
like the first morning light and your bleary smile before
you bury your head in another hour of sleep;
like the thrill of a beloved voice, even in a dream;
like catching your breath at the thought of existence
and love and the word made flesh—
in a moment like that, we shall all be changed.
I thought it took three days.
[1] Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, page 66
My brother and I have a ritual: Every
night that we are home together, and
able, we watch a movie. In the span of
the past few weeks, we have watched
more films than ever before. Our list
is rather eclectic, but we watch more
good ones than bad, and we get to
maintain one of the joys of human
experience together––that is, appreciating
good art.
Recently we watched the film Roman
Holiday, a 1953 romance directed by
the always sublime William Wyler, and
starring two of the most beautiful and
talented people to ever grace the silver
screen, Gregory Peck and, in her Hollywood
debut, Audrey Hepburn. As the
title suggests, the movie is set in Rome
and follows the encounters between an
American reporter, Joe (Peck), and the
crown Princess Ann (Hepburn) of an
unnamed country who is in Rome for
diplomacy business. It is a movie about
beginnings and endings, and the brief
time between that sustains the most
powerful of emotions and tenderest
of loves, and the sense of togetherness
and apartness that define the highs and
lows, the joys and sorrows, the yearnings
and reliefs, that comprise this life.
I have been thinking about arrivals
and departures and the time spent
between more now in the past several
weeks. It has been rather hard not
to view the current events unfolding
without resentment and grief that
life has been interrupted and we are
seemingly suspended in hazy limbo,
waiting. We take snapshots of our
lives, memories that we keep in boxes
to pull out on certain occasions, and
mentally looking through this year’s
album fills me with ill-fated yearning
and anger. There’s this sense that everything
that happened this year was
a waste if it ended too soon; if the
play you were supposed to star in got
postponed, if nothing quite happened
with your campus crush, if all the cover
letters you slaved over yielded only
cancelled internships, acquaintances-turned-budding-friends
that are put
on pause until fall, then it would have
been better that these things had never
happened at all. What are these if not
reminders of things, time, people, experiences
lost?
Roman Holiday is conscious of its
timeline: the princess is only in town
for a few days, and the reporter knows
this. And yet they fall in love, dizzyingly
and recklessly fast, as they approach
the end flashing ahead in clear view. I
wonder how they felt, diving into this
new, precarious beginning and knowing
the heartache that likely waited
at the end of their ever so temporary
time together. And I wonder whether
I would have chosen not to pursue
the wonderful things that I did if I
had known how they would end and
how I would at times feel about their
endings. And, on Good Friday, we recognize
the worst ending in the history
of the cosmos: our Lord, Jesus Christ,
giving himself in complete humiliation
to be crucified for the sake of a crowd
that utterly rejects him.
And yet, every ending is also a beginning,
as unthinkable as it may be in
the first moments of experience. The
COVID-19 outbreak ushered in a new
time of isolation, of family, of anxiety,
and shifts in governance, public health,
and economics will likely be attributed
to the pandemic. Perhaps for the
last time, I am spending months with
my parents and brother, who will be
graduating from college, all under the
same roof and enjoying good art together.
Though Roman Holiday does
not show us an “after,” it is not difficult
to imagine one for Joe and Ann. And,
thankfully, Good Friday is not the ultimate
end, but simply the beginning of
a time of mourning, a time of mystery,
before the greatest, most joyous occasion
to ever occur in all the myriads
of galaxies. And so, while we wait in
this limbo with the hope of a happy
end, we celebrate Easter, the ending
of our struggle and the beginning of
our redemptions through the precious
blood of Christ. For everything there
is a season, a time to be born, a time
to die, and the briefest of moments
between. Yet even that ending is not
truly the end, for we have faith that we
will wake in a perfect beginning with
no end.
.
22 Covid-19: Spring 2020 logos . 23

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