How Is This One Going To Go?

Our car looks like this, but cheaper, analogue and significantly dirtier.

I figured out the news before I actually saw what it was. My phone, set on vibrate, was making a terrible racket from its holder as my family drove the hour and a bit to the city this past Monday afternoon. Our plan at first was simple. It was time for a city grocery run, and more importantly, I needed a new pair of shoes, the old ones having given away so much or their side support that it was near impossible to walk without twisting an ankle.

And so, with the wind rushing past us on the highway, “brrrzzt” the phone vibrated loudly.

If it was just that, just once, I would have thought little of it. Maybe it was just an update from messenger or another piece of junk mail. But then moments later, it came again, “brrrzzzt!” Like an angry fly right in your ear, “brrzzzt!”

I like taking Monday as my day off. Being a pastor, Sunday typically makes for a terrible choice of Sabbath. The service is in the morning, often leaving me rather drained. Not because I do not love it, but instead just because if you put a lot of work into something, it always takes a bit to recharge. Saturday also tends to make for a poor day off, as when you prep a message, there are always more things to tweak. Always a better wording, always an interesting new idea, right up until moments before the service itself. And so Monday is my day. Monday is my family’s day. Monday is our day of rest. A day to go see new things. A day to explore. A day to get new shoes so I wouldn’t risk a twisted ankle by stepping out of our home anymore.

“Brrzzt!”

Recently, there has been a rather significant downside to Mondays being my day off, though. The Province of Manitoba has decided in all its wisdom to pick it as the time to announce upcoming changes to Covid regulations and restrictions. The number of new cases has been going up over the last few weeks. More concerningly, staying up. Because of this, I was expecting some amount of change to the restrictions to come in this week. I was prepared for this eventuality and I even had a bet going with Jeff Thiessen, as to what that change would be: services down to 25 people I confidently wagered. That number would hurt, for certain, but it would be doable. Our building is well suited for social distancing, so it was possible that multiple services would be in our cards to keep things in line and safe. That was workable. Tough, but possible.

“Brrrzzt”

We were a bit past the town of Elie at this point, all of a half-hour before the city. A town whose name means “God is my Help”. And I am brave enough to admit, that whether it was the noise of the phone or the waiting for it to fire off again, my stomach had really started to churn. To clench. To hurt because of what those messages I was not getting because I was driving almost certainly had to say.

We have been through two lockdowns in our province. For the first one, cards on the table, there was a part of it that I really enjoyed. I may be wearing rose-coloured glasses, but I remember that at the beginning of it, there was a solid period of time, well over a month and possibly two, where I felt there was a genuine peace in the land. There was a solid month and possibly two, where everyone simply believed together that, “virus = bad” and “lockdown + time = no virus”. Regardless of how those equations look to us now, there was that month and possibly two, where at least in my circles, for the first time in my life everyone was on the same page. Everyone just wanted to beat this thing. Everyone thought of the people in the world around them as fellow human beings, just trying to deal as they were. To me, someone who spends a fair amount of time dealing with inter-personal conflict by nature of my profession, this month and possibly two, for this reason alone, was wonderful.

A new Samsung S7, the phone I have. Mine looks similar, but is black, and if you are not careful, the screen will cut your finger due to its cracked screen.

“Brrrzzt, Brrrzzt!” Twice in a row. A new thread of messages would cause my phone to buzz twice in a row. And if not one but two groups of people were trying to get in touch with me on my day off, any hope I was harbouring for 25 people was officially gone. All without me ever actually seeing it for myself.

If the first lockdown was a time of peace, the second was its antipodes; its opposite. For as we all know, over the spring the feeling of solidarity faded. During the summer, the old lines, the old groups, had again come out hard. And in the fall leading up to the lockdown, I witnessed some of the harshest polarization I have ever seen among fellow human beings in all my life. At first, it seemed there stopped being a middle ground entirely. Then it began to sound that lost to us was the ability to even see the humanity in those across the aisle from ourselves. This was the situation before the restrictions came in, and so when the number of cases began to rise and then stay high, the lockdown finally announced, it took all this angst, hatred, malice and lack of even the smallest desire to see other human beings as people, and it put all of it onto Facebook. All the while, the most inflammatory election and its aftermath in recent American history, combined with the commentators and sycophants that make their livelihood whipping their followings into a frothing mouthed frenzy peddled their wares on TV that suddenly hundreds of millions had all the time in the world to drown in. If a defining part of the first lockdown was that there was finally peace in the land, for the second, to my eyes at least, it would have been pure and unmitigated hatred for our fellow man; a time that will not follow any of us as our proudest of our lives.

“Brrzzt!” It had taken another thirty minutes or so before we reached the shoe store. I pulled into the parking lot and shifted into park. From its holder, I finally withdrew and then unlocked my phone. I had indeed lost my bet with Jeff, by a fair margin. Thankfully, by how he worded his terms, we have decided to call it a draw. Two losers. The third lockdown was announced. I have been in some level of discomfort ever since.

As I write this, we have officially entered into these new restrictions in the Province of Manitoba. Thankfully, this lockdown is not shaping up to be as harsh as the other two on our local businesses, many of which are in dire straights. For churches though, the regulations are such that almost all are back to online services only and for individuals and families, we are again at home alone. I have a sister who is a nurse and many friends who are as well. I at this very moment have an old friend fighting for his life in the hospital on a respirator because of the disease. Two of my inlaws have lost grandparents too soon, as well. Looking at the numbers, I understand the need for this lockdown. I don’t disagree with it. But it continues to make me hurt all the same.

We have entered into the third lockdown in our Province, and I think it fair to say that no one is happy that it happened. No one is happy that this disease is still raging a year after the fact, and that the lockdown is still the primary way it is contended with. The novelty and solidarity have long since passed, and once again we are left to our social media feeds, news and television to whittle the hours away.

How will this lockdown turn out, do you figure? Like the first or the second?

There is nothing inherently wrong with television, the news or with social media, by my reckoning. It is good to be informed of the goings-on in the world, especially just now when all that we see in a day ends up being so much smaller through little to no fault of our own. However, like many things in this life, both the news and social media can certainly become an issue if allowed to run unchecked. Never forget that the business model of both is to keep your interest, your eyes fixed on them, so they can show you more ads. One of the easiest ways to do just this is to keep you angry about what those that you see as different than yourself are up to, often with headlines so sensationalized as to fire up your gut before you even read a paragraph in. Some news sources are better at resisting this urge than others, but especially when it comes to Facebook, ask yourself which you are more likely to share. Something fair and unbiased, or something that gets your blood boiling. This question is the one ignored by everyone on the platform as they post to their heart’s content.

There is nothing inherently wrong with television, the news or with social media, by my reckoning. They are valuable tools for learning new things as well as uncovering and exposing crime and corruption. But it is exactly during times like this, times of lockdown, where the worst of these platforms has a way of getting to us, getting under our skin. Causing us to see other people as less than human. Causing us to lose hope in the world. Causing us to spend our time angry and miserable, expounding on the hurt we are already living in.

So, for this round of restrictions, I have a challenge for us all. Let’s give it a solid try to make it more like the first lockdown than the second. A time where we see other people as human beings struggling just as we are. This is a task that I suspect for many of us will be hard. But, pro-tip, when it begins to seem impossible, spend a moment thinking just how much time you have been spending with your television, the news and social media. Lately, I have taken a bit of a step back myself. Not completely, but my exposure is about halved, and the world has become a much brighter place as a result. Also, I have found myself with a lot more time for catching up on the to-do list that I had previously been unable to make a dent in, a wonderful thing for anyone trying to maintain a level of sanity.

For this round of restrictions, let’s together try to make it more like the first lockdown than the second. A time where we try to see the best in people, instead of simply assuming the worst. A big part of our faith rests on the fact that Human beings were created with worth by our loving God. How about during this round of restrictions, we work to remind ourselves of just that?