A Walker in the Suburbs

The local supermarket opens at 6 a.m. I was there by 6:30. I was not alone.

Inside, the place was bustling, with many customers wearing masks and gloves. As expected there was no soap or paper products, and the meat case was almost empty, too.

There was little to choose from in the lettuces and greens section (one of my favorites). I managed to score a small container of arugula (it lasts a while) and a small bag of mixed greens.

Moving on, I was delighted to see the dairy case fairly well stocked. I grabbed what I thought we needed but am already wishing I’d bought more.

The new shopping etiquette makes for a delicate dance these days. If you grab too much you feel greedy. If you don’t take enough you feel foolish.

I tried for the middle ground. I hope I achieved it.

Midway through the first week of strangeness with the prospect of many weeks to come, we are looking for lifelines. One is staying in touch with family — and, I’m glad to say (dinosaur that I am), more through phone calls these days than through texts.

Another are the spiritual tethers that keep us connected. My parish church was open last Sunday but will not be next, so count it among the number offering online Mass. A dear friend who lives in Paris sends me links to the resources her church is sharing, which include music, reflections on Scripture and a complete Sunday service.

I’ve also been exploring the world of online sermons, finding one of my favorites, Forrest Church, whose books I read long ago and whose homilies I’d long wanted to explore. They do not shy away from difficult topics. From a sermon titled “How to Make the Most out of Hard Times,” he reminds us that in Greek drama the crisis is not the outside event but the way we respond to it. “The moment of crisis is the moment of decision.”

These days can be seen as a prison or a prism. We are either locked in by quarantine or freed by it to see the world in a new way. As I sit here marveling at the morning light, how it spills through the shutters and lands on the bookshelves, I remember … on a typical workday I would be missing this.

Odd that less than two weeks ago I was writing about “Sweet Normalcy.” Now, each day becomes less normal than its predecessor as we hunker down with new work and home routines — and absolutely no idea how this will turn out.

The U.S. surgeon general has just said that the country is at a “critical inflection point,” a statement I learned after looking at the Washington Post online (there being no hard copy paper yet at the end of the driveway).

“Do we want to go the direction of South Korea and be really aggressive and lower our mortality rates, or do we want to go the direction of Italy?” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said.

I think there’s no question how most of us would answer this. The question is, are we willing — or do we have the capability — to be South Korea?

(Photo taken at Incheon Airport, Seoul, South Korea)