Mid-Lent, when things are getting real. The more the
real, the more fictitious I feel. The pandemic has provided such an alternate
reality that I seem to be myself as read like a character in a book. Or perhaps
an image of myself as viewed through a home-made documentary. This isn’t the
new normal, because there’s actually no old normal. That’s a fictitious idea.
What there is, is eternal change.
It was St. Paul who identified “this mutable” which
must become “immutable” in a spiritual body. There seem to be problems with the
physical body and the problem with pandemic bodies is you’re going nowhere. Plenty
of talk, through zoom, phone and video; not so much presence. It’s not
uncomfortable: I’m a happy fictitious individual. Just strange.
Mostly we compare ourselves, in a negative sense, to
those better off, while once we compare ourselves to those more struggling we
risk self-satisfaction. There’s something to be said for the mysteriousness of
living. I’m hardly invisible: there are dispassionate eyes watching wherever we
go. Cameras, satellites, strangers in front of computers regarding everyone.
Fictitious eyes. The eye of love is close and you can see its glow. May we make
it so.
