Ever had that feeling, ‘enough is enough, already?’ I did, the other day.

The day started off badly with a sour stomach, but not from something I ate. It was from something I read.

Armed right-wing militia groups were reported patrolling the streets of a small Idaho town to rout “outside protesters” rumored to come there. They were not an authorized militia. They weren’t poor and scraping by; the hardware they carried cost a fortune. A photograph showed armed white men, angry and looking predatory, carrying automatic weapons prepared to do vigilante justice. This was an exercise in intimidation and another glorification of force as the means of conflict resolution and domination. The vast majority of African-Americans, citizens who had been legitimate victims of real injustice, did not bring assault rifles to protests when making their case. In a country that has it all, blacks have little and were asking for their fair share.

The scene in Idaho discouraged me, my body felt heavy, my spirit ached. Witnessing force is oppressive. I react viscerally when I see it; I feel as though I’m being suffocated. It’s a terrible feeling.

I opted to get out and take a walk. It helps soothe me. Walking doesn’t necessarily lift all the depression or mitigate the sorrow. Taking in the outdoors can repair my stressed internal connectors that keep me linked to what’s good. I walk, take a deep breath and rekindle hope. When I feel especially helpless to change anything, I look for a sign, anything to reassure me that in this troubled world, the power of goodness survives.

My driveway is thick with trees on both sides. Many are conifers. Their needles, high in the upper branches of the tree, catch the early morning light and shimmer. No matter what time of day, tree trunks are always softly illuminated by the light descending from the treetops.

One tree seemed mammoth as I walked by it; so large, at first I couldn’t believe it. I returned later to measure it. The trunk was 78 inches around. The tree conveyed solidity, grounding, serenity; roots fixed deep in the earth as if feeding from a source as timeless as creation. I liked feeling that there was something eternal, a place where I might feel grounded and be serene, like the still point of a spinning world. Being among these trees momentarily comforted me. They witnessed to the beauty of constancy and the reassurance of quiet strength, what is durable and substantial about life.

Staying rooted and grounded is challenging these days. Hatred and brutal displays of force, in one form or another, continually attempt to uproot us.

My bad day began being exposed to brute force and intimidation. Force seems everywhere, glorified by weapons. Force, however, is different from power: power inspires and creates possibilities; force overwhelms and dominates.

America was founded by visionaries. The fledgling nation couldn’t mobilize much force, but marshalled a remarkable capacity to empower people by its vision of government. Empowerment was America’s strength which, I believe, is why the present strategy to make America great again is a bad idea. The ‘greatness’ being pitched is banal; it’s all about acquiring, and nothing about inspiring. The scheme is predicated on equipping America to dominate the world economically and militarily. It has nothing to do with practicing the values its founders held.

Human history is filled with myths. Many myths include trees. Myths are timeless and speak to the way things never were, but always are. The Garden of Eden is a familiar one. It enjoys a certain status in pop culture since the image of Adam and Eve, au natural, evokes erotic fantasies. Strictly speaking, I suppose, the story is about carnal appetites, but not sexual ones. It’s a story about a couple who have it all and want more.

Genesis describes Eden as lush and verdant with “trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.” Abundant wildlife, natural resources galore, and fresh water from the streams. In one river “there is gold . . . aromatic resin and onyx are also there.” The climate is temperate. This is a piece of real estate to die for. It has it all.

When Adam and Eve take up residence there, we now have a couple who has it all. One tree is off limits. No sooner does the couple see its fruit, they simply must have it. Even when they have it all, they want more.

America is wealthy. It’s powerful and rich in natural resources. In principle, it has a uniquely inspired democracy. Notwithstanding its unresolved problems it’s not unreasonable to say, most Americans have it all.

Sadly, Americans elected a leader who has it all . . . well, maybe not all, but as much as he can possibly get. His vision of America is a gated community. The power of America is not its values but its walls and the force to secure them. He wants it all and doesn’t want to share our bounty with others.

Adam and Eve didn’t tend and care for the garden as they were first instructed. Instead they indulged those insatiable appetites, the same kind with which today’s consumerist culture plays us. The indulgence cost the first couple what they had.

We have enough. Developing ways to tend and wisely use what we already have is our challenge. The truly powerful use force judiciously. They know when enough is enough. It’s all about having a well-grounded sense of “enoughness.”

There’s power inherent in a single tree. There’s power, too, in a single life.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I think of these times as living in the dark. I’m waiting for the light to return but when it does, uncertain as to just what I’ll see.

The thought of what this new light will reveal may have been prompted by a recent visit to my eye doctor. My left eye was driving me crazy; scratchy and irritated all the time. Three rogue hairs had grown under my eye lid. The doctor plucked out all three …by the roots. My eyelid was pulled back with each extraction, then released, popping back to my eye, like paddleball.

Some years ago, I had cataracts removed from both eyes. It was life changing, the way I’ve heard people talk about being born-again or seeing the light. Indeed, the scales fell from my eyes and the maddening haze plaguing my vision dissipated like sun evaporates morning mist. Vibrant colors returned, enriching my world. Visual acuity was razor-sharp. I now drive at night without terrifying my wife.

Gordon “Mouse” Cleaver flew for the RAF in the Battle of Britain. In August 1940 his plane was hit, shattering the canopy leaving acrylic shards lodged in his eyes. His right eye, too damaged, lost its sight. His left eye was treated by Dr. Harold Ridley. Ridley discovered that Cleaver’s eyes had never rejected the plastic splints. His eyes incorporated them. Ridley conceived of how plastic implants might serve to replace an eye’s compromised lenses. Modern cataract surgery began with his discovery. I am one among thousands to benefit from his pioneer work. Speaking of being blind: at that time, the medical community dismissed Ridley’s theory. Whatever we’re first inclined to reject as foreign or even dangerous, when viewed in a different light, actually clarifies and broadens our vision.

Seeing, however, involves more than just light. The famous Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges was blind, but claimed he could still see light. He couldn’t make anything out of it. In order to see objects, perceiving them depends on both light and shadow to define them. It’s similar to the way we have of seeing others or seeing ourselves. To assume that we are either all one or the other is itself a form of blindness and does not accurately depict who we truly are.

In Annie Dillard’s memorable essay called “Seeing,” she reflects on the phenomenon of sight, including the complex journey the sightless travel when transitioning to sight. Modern ocular surgery has restored the blessings of sight to those once consigned to blindness. However, not all who can, necessarily go “gently into that good light.” Describing an instance of a girl, blind since birth, whose sight had been successfully restored, Dillard writes: “…she is never happier or more at ease, than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness.” Her long habit of blindness indisposed her to seeing, an apparently not uncommon reaction of those whose surgeries have been successful. It’s no easy thing leaving a familiar world and going into one where all the rules are different.

The challenge for the person who transitions from blindness to sight is having no concept of space, form, distance, and size. These phenomena are meaningless to the sightless. “For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning.” I understand this. Beginning as a septuagenarian and finally abandoning the effort as an octogenarian, I tried learning French and Spanish. The strange words evoked odd sensations, but I could not seem to catch on to their meaning, to feel familiar with them. After a while I simply closed my eyes to the whole thing and took refuge in what I knew best, English.

What was it like for Adam when he named the animals? The myth suggests that Adam had first dibs on assigning their names and so did not attribute to what he saw more than met his eye. He made no judgements. Pure impression unencumbered by meaning, so to speak. A skunk was just a skunk.

I often think how suffocating and limiting words can become when we associate them with particulars. Black, brown and red are simply colors, manifestations of energy vibrations. We attribute colors to certain peoples. We all know where that goes. When it does, it invariably winds up becoming much more than just delineating a color. With words, we assign meanings to colors that don’t properly belong to them. We skew perception and create alternative facts which become, in the last analysis, fake ones.

I noted with interest that it’s common for those transitioning from blindness to sight, how colors are significant in the experience, just colors, not colors as defining any natural objects. Again, there’s a purity in what they first see because a color or shadow ‘just is,’ and it’s not associated with or serving to define something else. One of the experiences the sightless who newly gain their sight share with small children, is seeing something for the very first time. For children, unfortunately, this is a small window. Experience soon jades this experience. The first time is often the last time we will see things as they are, innocently.

The Huichi Indians of Mexico created what they called “Ojo de Dios, or” God’s eyes. These sacramental objects were presented to small children as gifts. The eye represented the sun and stood for the power of seeing and understanding the things we cannot normally see. Children see things adults can’t.

Light was the first order of creation. Light has a way of being everywhere, so pervasive that, if there’s none around, there are creatures that make their own. Some, those creepy looking, gelatinous bodies of the lightless deep, generate their own light. They shine it to foil predators, lure prey or get mates. They swim in the light that they have, while multitasking.

The great saints of history have been described as those through whom light shines. Like Mother Theresa or Gandhi; they don’t dazzle us with glitz and glitter, but glow softly, just enough to show us the way when it’s dark. They are always a sight for sore eyes.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I once had a dog named Spunky. I enjoyed taking her for walks. There’d be days in the house when she’d pace, indicating her wish to be outside. It was always best to honor her inclination. Once outside, I’d take her off the leash and she’d tear away, bounding this way and that for the sheer joy of it. Other times when I’d take her out, no sooner did I let her loose, Spunky would just sit. She’d do nothing while raising her nose to the sky, sniffing the air, as though engaged in some mystical transcendental exercise only dogs comprehend.

One of the pleasures of writing the personal essay such as I enjoy writing is turning my mind loose. I like to let it rip, freeing it to go wherever it will. There are days of late, however, that when I turn it loose, it goes nowhere. My mind just sits there, lodged in the skull where it’s supposed to be, but without entertaining a single intelligible thought for which it was designed. So, it as has been for me these last weeks: I have not been able to muster concrete thoughts or even feel the energy necessary to chase down the kinds of impressions that might be worth writing about. I’m in a funk.

A few weeks ago, Mother’s Day, I was determined to write, to get on with it. Why Mother’s Day I’m not sure. Possibly it was because the day evoked recollections of my mother’s impatience with me when she’d see me sitting around dawdling when I was supposed to be doing something. I didn’t feel the kind of urgency I’d have when having an inspired idea. It was more an unidentified push to get something down on paper, as if during this hiatus, I had to justify my existence by producing an essay.

I took out my pad and my pen, (I still write first drafts with a fountain pen, then transcribe the material onto my computer) sat myself down, tried to release my mind to go wherever it wished. It didn’t go anywhere. Like Spunky, it just sat there. This was not writers block. This was different. I can only assume that the peculiar pall the coronavirus and political turmoil, has cast over our world is getting to me.

This shouldn’t be, really. I am fortunate right now. During the pandemic, I have had no immediate safety concerns for myself or for loved ones. At the moment, all are safe. I am appropriately healthy and can walk a good two miles (now without dog) with little discomfort. I have enough to eat and a functional TV with cable –– in short, the basic staples required to live the American way of life. Still, whatever it is that’s going on, it’s making me edgy. I feel disoriented.

Grief expert, David Kessler writes: “By now we have all lost something. For some it is a loved one, a friend or a job. For many others, it is our plans; weddings and graduations canceled, retirement postponed, the first hugs to a new grandchild pushed into the future. Above all we have lost our sense of certainty…in our safety and our future, in our ability to make plans and control our lives. We may not realize it, but we are grieving.”

Kessler’s observation feels right to me. I’m grieving losses.

Recently our granddaughter formally graduated from Tampa University. Neither she nor any of the family attended a real graduation ceremony. The University held a virtual ceremony while we watched it a half a country away. No one really participated in the graduation in person.

Our first great grandchild was born recently in Baltimore. We received a flood of digital images of her as well as of the happy parents. Even the grandparents who also live in Baltimore were cautious and thought they might have to wait briefly before they went to hold the baby. The hands-on experiences of real life transitions have become, dreamlike, ephemeral and unreal.

The birth of the child is epic in any family life. Reports of the marvel in holding the baby for the first time are legendary. The pandemic has set new terms for this moment and denied us real time to participate in one of life’s most consequential rites of passage. The snapshots of our daily lives are assuming the character of reality shows, robbing us of an experience in reality by melting it down into digital images.

Our grandson is a graduate of Peabody Institute in Baltimore. His fiancé is also a graduate. Both are intimately woven into the fabric of the classical music community. They asked me to perform their marriage in the library of the Peabody Institute. I have never seen it, but I’m told it’s a magnificent space, more like a cathedral than a library. I was thrilled to be asked. Because of their musical connections the event would have been filled with grand music performed by skilled artists. Because of the pandemic the event now has an uncertain future.

I have read, too, how those who have lost loved ones to the coronavirus will not be able to see them even long enough to say final goodbyes. The fears of infections prohibit contact. Their grief will not have the closure that funerals provide. And funerals, like weddings, graduations and births gain significance as communal events. They celebrate life and confirm our common humanity.

When the pandemic is over, will it really be over? Will our world look like the one we left?

It was 1950 and on the day the Korean war broke out. I had been hospitalized with a hernia. Today this surgery is an in and out procedure, but then it was a week in the hospital in another week confined at home. I remember feeling cut off during the convalescence.

I was confident that after my convalescence ended, I’d return to my world, the same one I left before the hospitalization. The thought energized me and I eagerly anticipated getting out to be with friends. It’s different now. I have no idea today how my world will be when the pandemic is finally under control. In the 50’s, my social landscape remained the same and stable during my ‘lockdown.’ Now my social landscape is being torn this way and that by disease and political turmoil. It’s unsettling not knowing just what I’ll be returning to. I suspect next to the prospect of being exposed to, or infected with the coronavirus, the profound uncertainty about the future is the piece of today’s experience that’s the most unnerving.

We grieve a lost past while facing an uncertain future.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

At the time, I was living in Manhattan. I rode the subway from 79th St. downtown. I had to transfer at Penn Station. When I arrived, I got off to transfer to the downtown local. My train was just across the platform. I walked over, boarded it and sat down. From the window, I could see the train I’d just left. Neither train was moving. My car doors soon closed. Looking out, I saw the windows of the train on the opposite platform. They seemed to be slowly gliding ahead. I feIt as though I was going backwards, in the wrong direction, back uptown. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I felt the train surge slightly. My body pulled to the right. We’d begun moving ahead. The other train had in fact moved ahead a minute or so before mine did, creating an illusion that I was going backwards. In fact, I had been standing still. It just didn’t seem that way.

Are we ever really standing still?

I know occasions when I think I’m getting ahead, and I may be going backwards. Then, when I think I’m going backwards I discover I’m actually pulling ahead. And, there are times when I feel I am only standing still, but I’m moving. I can’t always be sure whether I’m coming or going.

We are itinerant creatures, always on the go. We live in a universe constantly in motion. Planet earth is slipping effortlessly through space. She does a 583,000,000-mile orbit around the sun as I sit here writing this piece. Even when I’m sound asleep I’m doing 66,000 mph and at the end of any day I’ve clocked 1584,000 miles. Twenty-four seven, I’m being taken for the ride of my life and I haven’t a clue. So are we all.

If you sail, you know all about moving ahead, but edging backwards. Tacking against strong winds and contrary currents will do it every time. Tack as I might, I’ll wind up just about where I started, often behind. I know I have to give it up. Reluctantly, I scrap my planned destination. I head for the nearest port that the wind can take me. In trying to get ahead, I’ve stood still or gone backwards.

My wife and I had left early one morning on our way sailing north on the Chesapeake from Fairlee Creek. We were hoping to make the Bohemia River by mid-afternoon. I’d heard the river was a gorgeous. I was eager to see it. A strong northerly wind arose about five miles south of the Sassafras River. I tacked back and forth with fierce determination, but made little if any progress north. We fell back. It was clear that we’d never make the Bohemia.

Disappointed we headed for the Sassafras and found a cove. I’d never been in it before. I believe it was Turner Creek. It was then late in the day. We were exhausted. The entrance was unnervingly shallow. We bumped and scraped our way in. The narrow entrance quickly opened up revealing a spectacular panorama of farm land, an old house and a barn in the distance. It was the perfect portrait of refuge and solitude. The creek was protected from wind such that even though it blew a gale on the Bay, the creek remained as still as a millpond. We spent a lovely and serene night. We had been pushing ahead that day, but wound up getting behind. The day was far more satisfying for having gone backwards than if we had gone ahead the whole way.

People say that they’ve worked hard all their lives to get ahead. Even though they’ve succeeded, they’ll tell you they’ve wondered if they were ahead at all. As the shadows of life lengthened, questions often haunted many of us. Did we love well? Were we too busy getting ahead that we fell behind in the quest for what really counts?

Most of us would say that standing still is tedious. Being stalled is boring, irritating. We get restless. Far more invigorating to be on the move, going somewhere, doing something. Only idiots just stand there and do nothing.

I’ve read recently in books, op-eds and seen on TV clips stories about people who had learned the art of just being there. Doing nothing is, well, doing nothing, but not really. It’s the most skillful way of being with others in times of crisis. With our aging population, with our neighbors, being there, not in order to do something or fix anything, but just being there makes all the difference. If you can’t be there in person, try zooming instead. Zooming, unfortunately, takes a little doing.

The coronavirus highlights what feeling stalled is about. The pandemic has imposed limits; we cannot go back to how things were – there’s no turning back –– nor do we know just how things will look as we move ahead. Are we moving ahead at all? Now that we can’t physically be with others the feeling that we’re only standing still is exacerbated all the more.

“The present,” writer Phillip Lopate once wrote, “is not always an unwelcome guest, so long as it doesn’t stay too long,”

I suspect many feel as I do; this present is staying far too long. Truth be told, the present may seem stationary, but it’s actually on the move, speeding ahead. Where it’s going is the big concern. Covid-19 is upending our world. We may think we’re stalled, but our train’s left the station and it’s barreling ahead with dizzying speed. We are being taken to an unknown destination. We’re on the ride of our lives.

As I am writing this, I’d swear I’m sedentary, but in fact I’m traveling at 66,000 mph while on a 583,000,000-mile orbit around the sun.

For the life of me, it doesn’t seem that way.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

There was a crisis at my house the other day. A bird was trapped in the chimney.

It’s one thing when birds fall down a brick chimney. Typically, the damper is closed so you never know he’s there until the poor thing languishes and dies. Only when you open the flu to make a fire will you ever know the bird had been there. This is always sad.

This time our situation was different. We could hear the bird two rooms away. It scraped and flapped, pecked and clawed, making a terrible ruckus so that there was no question as to his presence. Every movement the bird made, however small it was, reverberated up and down the stove pipe as if he were trapped in a drum.

His presence troubled me. I couldn’t help feeling for the bird in his dilemma. I felt so helpless. I didn’t know what I could do about it.

It’s a terrible thought; a bird, a creature, epitomizing the very heart of freedom itself, ‘the wings of the morning,’ had become trapped in a sooty stovepipe like a child who had wandered and fallen down a well. The stove pipe was long; it went from the woodstove straight up, a full 25 feet, through the roof and beyond. I could think of no way of accessing him. A damper was fixed to the lower part of the pipe and even to open it would offer little or no space for escape. Then, at the top there was a cap on it to keep the rain out. Between the cap and the pipe, a small space opened which was where the bird must have entered.

The problem. The bird was lodged somewhere between the woodstove itself and the top of the stovepipe.  Even if we were to remove the cap at the top, there was nothing I could imagine would be long enough for me to get hold of the bird. Even if there were, I’d surely break a wing or otherwise injure the bird. And then I did not know how to disassemble the pipe. What to do?

We called an exterminator. Some offer pest control as well as annihilation. This business claimed they could get all kinds of critters out of your house. It was a Saturday, but the exterminator arrived in an hour. He could do nothing; the same problem –– no tool long enough to get at the bird. He recommended we contact a chimney sweep. Of course! Who is better qualified, and more versed in all that transpires within chimneys, but a chimney sweep? We called one. He told me he was sure he could help us. He quoted a fee and we said we’d do it. He could be there in a few hours.

In the meantime, the bird grew more active. Listening to his attempts to liberate himself was painful. It was unnerving to hear him flapping and clawing pathetically, knowing his attempts to gain freedom were in vain. It tied my stomach in knots.

Finally, the chimney sweep arrived –– actually, two of them. Why two? Did they then anticipate a hawk, I wondered? The one got to the business at hand while the other chatted amiably. “Might be a squirrel or maybe a raccoon.”  He said this with a twinkle in his eye is if he was pulling my leg. I wasn’t sure. He told me some tales of birds they had extricated that turned around only to come back down the same chimney the very next day. “Some birds are dumb, really dumb,” he observed, shaking his head. He added, “Got an Osprey out of a chimney, once. He was fixin’ to nest on top.”

I grew worried that they’d find some predatory bird or animal.

The assistant then went and opened up the woodstove to gain access to the pipe. He shone a light up the pipe and with a mirror quickly determined that it was a bird. In a few minutes, he had the bird in his hand. It was a lovely bluebird. The bluebird fluttered, flapped and chirped furiously–in protest or relief I could not tell. It was a little like seeing a baby being held shortly after its struggle to be born. You can never tell whether the infant is glad to be out of there or protesting all the discomforts and indignities he’d been put through in order to get out. 

The man then went out onto the porch, and raising his hand in the air, released the bird. It shot up into the sky and flew to the top of the willow oak. For all concerned it was a happy issue out of that affliction. We had indeed found, if not the bluebird of happiness, at least the bluebird of relief.

People worldwide find themselves trapped in terrible circumstances all the time. I feel so helpless when I learn about them. Even in small ways there is nothing as satisfying as knowing when a life is in jeopardy, I can do something tangible to turn things around. Now, strictly speaking, I didn’t rescue the bluebird, the chimney sweep did. Still, just knowing I helped make it happen, pleased me.

A bird in hand can make your day.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I don’t like brussel sprouts.

My mother was of the old school. When I fought eating the Brussel Sprouts she put on my plate, she’d say: “Just think of all the starving people in China.” I’d eat the brussel sprouts resentfully, not because I had any idea that eating them would serve the needs of a starving population, but because my mother wouldn’t let me leave the table until I did.

That must have been seventy odd years ago. To this day, whenever I see brussel sprouts I have vague thoughts of China, but don’t like brussel sprouts any better. There has to be another way (other than through shame and intimidation) to help us obey our better angels, serve the less fortunate and still enjoy nutritious food or for that matter, the other blessings we already have.

It’s easy to feel down when we’re sick, especially today when half the world is sick or in imminent danger of becoming so. There’s an old wives’ tale about how to cheer up someone who’s down either for illness or any adverse circumstances. Invite the stricken person to consider all the people they know who are in worse shape than they are. Then they are sure to feel better. When I first heard this I felt righteously indignant and considered it rubbish; am I to feel better only if I can think of others who are more miserable? And then, too, what if, after identifying others who are suffering, I discover I’m worse off than they are. The last state of my soul will be worse than the first. No, there has to be a better way of managing misfortunes, mine or those of others. Just thinking, ‘Wow, I’m glad I’m not that bad off,” is not a good way to go.

On TV recently, I watched Governor Cuomo speaking to the needs of New York and how the city was being ravaged by the coronavirus. His statement touched something in me. I was born in New York and lived for a time in Manhattan: I have fond memories of my years there.

Cuomo went on to say how New York City became the vibrant city it is because of its vast array of people. Today, some eight and a half million live there. The numbers and the variety of the population brought the creativity and imagination that has characterized its history. In a cruel irony, the same asset that has made the city so vibrant is now devastating it: the presence of the corona virus in such a population density has turned the source of its vitality into a scourge. As Cuomo explained this in more detail, I had a feeling I didn’t like. My reaction was not one of compassion for their suffering, but personal relief. I compared my situation here on the Eastern Shore to theirs in New York. Isn’t the population comparatively sparse here which will mitigate some of my exposure to danger, more than the residents of big cities like New York will have? While the thought offered me momentary relief, I knew it was a thinly veiled variation of what I’d thought was so contemptible in others: finding in the suffering of others a way to make me feel better. My relief was short-lived as I met my own self-centered impulse head on. I felt like a deer in the headlights.

I know that being self-centered is part of being human; it comes with the package. We see it quickly in others, although rarely in ourselves. It’s as epidemic here in the U.S. as the COVID-19 is, and it’s having a corrosive effect on American morale. The me-first milieu that seems to pervade doesn’t make for a congenial community

I’ve decided to deal with the potentially corrosive effects of my self-centeredness in the ways we deal with COVID-19; first take a thorough inventory of our own spiritual “vital signs” to determine the state of our own soul, and next, to use Mr. Rogers iconic phrase, “look for the helpers,” that is, notice the ways in which the selfless people among us look out for others.

Checking regularly on the level of my self- awareness helps immensely. A self-inventory can help me clean out the ego litter, like going through a closet that’s long been untended, accumulating all kinds of junk we’d forgotten was there. As with closets and psychic spaces, a lot of what we’ve accumulated there we really don’t need, anyway.

After tidying up my psychic closet I look around to find for those looking out for others. Looking for helpers like that can be heartening and inspiring. It’s encouraging being able look up to public servants again and feel ennobled, like our health care workers.

We don’t normally think of them unless we need them. At this time, they have emerged from relative obscurity to heroic status. These are the other-directed few doing so much for so many. And, front-line causalities are taking a toll on them.

What does any of this have to do with Brussel Sprouts? I recall one incident years ago.

My daughter offered to cook dinner for me. She knew nothing about my unhappy history with brussel sprouts and as dinner came, I saw to my dismay, three brussel sprouts sitting a half an inch away from the salmon. My self-centered instinct came over me and was compelling: tell her to lose the brussel sprouts and ask if she’d make something else. Scrambling for time to decide just what to do with my egoistical impulse, I inquired, “Oh, you like brussel sprouts?” Not only did she like them, they were her favorite. I struggled for a minute and then said, “I’d like to try them.”

When I feel a compelling instinct driven only by my own selfish impulse, and I can recognize it for what it is, I try to catch in the bud and decide deliberately just how I want to handle it. In this case, my better angels told me to just eat it.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

The Christian liturgical calendar identifies today as The 1st Sunday after Easter

Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, was the first time in my life I have not attended or officiated at an Easter service. I felt an emptiness, appropriate perhaps to the prevailing symbol for Easter Sunday ––the empty tomb –– which is about people entering an empty space where a loved one had once been. This Easter, access to religious services were being streamed online. Typically, services showed one or two clergy officiating along with a couple of soloists providing music. Most churches and other houses of worship throughout the country, once packed, remained empty.

The Eucharist celebrated at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. was simple and dignified; conducted in Spanish and English, a testimony to inclusivity in our postmodern world. The music was provided by an organist, two soloists and trumpeter. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church delivered the sermon. His sermon was engaging, I thought; he introduced it by saying: “It doesn’t look like Easter; it doesn’t smell like Easter; it doesn’t feel like Easter, but it’s Easter anyway.”

He caught my attention. It didn’t feel like Easter to me either, but of course it was.

For me, Easter has always been a festive, colorful, day that appealed to all my senses, from the resounding tones of an organ, to the warm spring sunlight. We sang familiar hymns and listened to the anthems that the choir had prepared. There was the sight of the priest proceeding to the altar, cloaked in celebratory vestments like the cope, a kind of brocaded cape; he looked regal, like a medieval king. Silver communion vessels glittered on the altar in the early sunlight; people dressed in their Sunday best. There was the firm feel of the hardwood as I gripped the pew in front of me while I knelt or rose. The piquant smell of incense rolled over the altar like mist and the heavy-sweet smell of lilies filled the church. A subtle, but pervasive scent of women, was always present. Even taste played a role: as a boy, I couldn’t believe communion wine tasted like Christ’s blood, or any blood for that matter. When I had bloody noses, the blood always tasted like iron when I licked it from my upper lip.

For me, a melancholy note wove its way throughout my experience of Easter. I felt the note rising and falling in me, appearing and disappearing the way fugues wend their way through musical compositions. The smell of the lilies evoked melancholy. I can recall a boy how their scent filled the funeral homes when I attended the services for my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, and later my mother. The lilies smelled sweet, but almost suffocating, as if the smells of Easter services and gatherings at funeral homes kindled two powerful emotions in me – representative of the two great challenges in the human drama: loss and hope. Their confluence left me longing. I was never sure for just what, but the longing had something to do with death and the hope of the resurrection. I feel the longing to this day.

I often think of the religion of my boyhood and how I understand it now. For many people of my generation, their early religious experience had been negative. The weight of moralism and judgment burdened them. Leaving church behind was a relief. In conversations over the years with some of those people, there was indeed relief but also a residual longing for something inspiring, for what is good and pure, what I would call holy. My experience was positive.

Through the awe and the mystery that the several rites and rituals aroused in me, I was left with a sense of divine presence, an idea of the holy, but the holy as a visceral impression on the heart, not doctrinal or dogmatic formulations. I felt as though just around the corner, behind that cloud, around this oak, in a tulip, in those waves breaking on the shore and somewhere deep inside me, even in the dark, something wondrous lived. I could not apprehend it directly. I would try so hard to lay a firm hold on it, but as I did, it was like trying to catch a pantry moth on the wing; just as I’d swing and think, “I’ve got ‘em,” he’s darted away and gone from sight.

I understand better now how a pious practice of boyhood reflected how I thought about God. I believe I liked him. I say “him” not to limit God, but only from habits from the past.

There had been a succession of family deaths during my childhood, seven to be exact. These were grandparents, great aunts and uncles, all well up in years. I don’t recall feeling grief as I know it now, but a kind of emptiness, a vacancy of an inner space where someone once lived. Then I developed a prayer practice at bedtime. I’d kneel by my bed and pray for my relatives. It occurred to me only recently that my supplications were not guided by fear or obligation, but a quiet conviction of divine kindness. I mean by that, how my prayers were not offered to redeem souls from any kind of perdition; I was just reminding God to look after my kin (those were my actual words, “Look after Aunt Daisy.”) I assumed God was caring for them anyway, but I was just checking in, a gentle reminder, not that I really thought God would forget. I remember the innocent trust fondly.

The Bishop was right. Last Sunday didn’t look like Easter, smell like Easter or feel like it, either; but it was Easter anyway. The virtual simulations on TV were sufficient to begin me walking again down the corridors of memory. I was able to relive once more all the Easters, now as alive in me as they had always been so many years ago. I suppose I’d call such recollections a resurrection of sorts.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, so the old saying goes. These days the devil is a hot commodity and he’s really smoking because a lot of us, except health care workers, first responders and other essential employees are, mostly idle.

Kenko, a 13th century, Japanese Buddhist monk and writer, thought a lot about idleness. I suspect he had time on his hands, being a monk and all, so much so that he wrote a series of reflections he called “Essays in Idleness.” Idleness when translated from the Japanese is rendered, “having nothing better to do.”

Two hundred and seventy years later, we’re also “having nothing better to do” than riding out the pandemic as best we can.

Kenko describes many of my recent days when he writes, “What a strange demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this inkstone (like my pen and pad or computer) with nothing better to do, jotting down at random what nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.”  That says it for me. For these days, no matter what I happen to be about, it’s safe to say I have “nothing better to do.”

My first nonsensical thought today is seeing myself for first time in my life wearing surgical gloves to go to the supermarket and shop. Of course, it is prudent, but I felt extremely self-conscious, like a rooster with socks on, or how people might think I was kinky. Except when selecting merchandise, I kept my hands close at my sides to reduce their visibility. My wife and I went early, at seven, as the market accommodated seniors at that time. I qualify as a senior; actually, I’m overqualified.

In front of the supermarket I saw that a washing stand had been installed. If idleness is the devil’s workshop, cleanliness is next to godliness. The store was ok that I was idle, but not that I might be dirty.

The store was adequately stocked for our needs. While we normally shop more casually, selecting things at random, depending on how we felt at the moment, today was different. Our behavior was definitely overdetermined. We knew exactly what we wanted; it was all written down –– we each had a list and we knew just where to go to get things. This reduced our shopping time exponentially. It’s well known that efficiency is increased by being purposeful and we were in and out of the market in no time. I had mixed feelings about it though.These days, just getting out of the house and going somewhere is a big deal, even exciting, and it lifts my spirits. Still the swift in and out did not lend to the normal social interactions that are part of shopping in a small town.

I also saw no one I knew. It may have been that it was so early, but not seeing familiar faces was disappointing. It reminded me that idle hands are also lonely ones. When we got to the checkout counter I saw they’d installed a clear plastic window between the cashier and the customer, the kind you might see in a bank. If any thought of social distancing had escaped my mind the window served as a reminder. Happily, it was easy to talk to the cashier by putting my head slightly to one side giving a measure of humanity to the most perfunctory part of the shopping experience. We knew the cashier from previous trips and talked with her some. She said that there were a lot of people talking about the virus, and some saying how the government had planted it. Some offered that it was the Chinese. I asked why they thought this. She was not sure. She thought this talk was kind of nutty and we chatted for a minute about conspiracy theories. Talbot County residents can get suspicious of things they’re unsure about.

Driving back home the roads were lightly traveled, mostly trucks as I could see. I assumed they were tradesmen who were still being called on to practice their craft, an encouraging thought.

Driving past the recycle station I noticed how the bins fairly bulged with recyclables, not the sight I’d typically see on a Thursday. What to make of it, I thought? 

A friend takes our garbage to the dump weekly. He told me that, at the dump the other day, cars and trucks were backed up to the road, something he’d never seen before. We concluded that the “nothing better to do” folks decided to clean their houses, big time. What with churches being closed but dumps open, taking out the junk has begun to eclipse, “bringing in the sheaves.”

My wife, Jo, is more scrupulous about household matters than I am. She had designed hygienic practices when bringing groceries in the house and getting them put away. She instituted a system by which we disinfected packages, washed veggies and then placed the cloth shopping bags outside for a few days to ensure nature would disinfect them. I worked closely with her except for onions. I was willing to wash most veggies, but I drew the line at onions. I don’t know why, but I can’t imagine God made onions to be washed, since he already knew people were going to peel them, anyway. Still, I pray that no COVID-19 virus finds onions a hospitable landing site.

When I find that I’m living in reduced circumstances and I must revisit how I do things, little things assume a whole new character; in fact, it feels sometimes as if I’m doing for the first time, what I’ve done forever.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I practice social distancing. I thought it would be easy. It’s not.

Being introverted –– by which I mean that engaging with lots of people drains my energy –– one would think I’d welcome any limits imposed that would spare me extended social engagements. I found I am not easy with social distancing. It unnerved me at first. I wondered why.

It’s not that I have no fear of the virus. I do. The virus is scary. I understand the wisdom in being prudent and observing the precautions, including social distancing.

No, this reaction of mine to staying home is something else, unrelated to my essential survival instincts. I’ve noticed that as soon as something which I’d normally welcome and happily indulge places limits on me, it loses some of its magic. In other words, now that I have all the free time that I might ever have wished for, I have this urge to get busy using it up by going out to shop, see a movie, to eat and otherwise mix it up with people. It’s perverse: I wish for what I don’t have and don’t for what I have. I believe that I suffer from severe case of what I have diagnosed as Americhosis ––an American male’s atavistic impulse to resist doing anything that someone else has told him to do.

Do you suppose what I am experiencing is similar to what Adam and Eve felt when they first lived in the garden? Except for the one constraint imposed upon them –– not to eat the fruit from a particular tree –– they were free to do whatever they wished. They had a blank check, a surfeit of pajama days, sans pajamas. And sure enough, with all the freedom afforded them, the forbidden fruit seemed the more attractive. What they had, although plenty, was not enough.

One change in our lifestyles imposed by the pandemic is the request by officials to stay home. As if to sweeten the pot, in some instances, there are promises of financial compensation. Under normal circumstances most people would welcome such a break. Admittedly, the shadow of the coronavirus that hangs over us is disturbing, but for an undetermined period we have free time unencumbered by obligations to do anything or go anywhere, like the snow days we had as kids.

Who among us doesn’t recall waking up as a child to learn that school had been cancelled? Snow days were common during my childhood. When one occurred, I’d feel jubilant; I had an entire day and perhaps a few more in which I had nothing to do except what I wanted. Providence had no greater gift to offer kids than school cancellations. Whenever school announced one, I felt as though I’d been delivered.

With snow days, there were no restrictions. A snow day was a freebee with no strings attached.

I’m not so sure adults feel the same about free time being imposed on them, especially American men who have a reputation for being workaholics.

Mary Catherine Bateson, in her classic book, Composing a Life, treats the matter of how men and women tend to use their “leisure” –– the time they spend outside of their responsibilities. In my day, a woman’s role in domestic life was far more eclectic than men’s were at work. The task of caring for children, managing the household, dealing with kids’ crises, large and small repairs around the house, left her little if any free time. She yearned for it. She’d typically take hold of free time and luxuriate in it, filling her days with imaginative projects she’d put on hold for the duration of the marriage. Husbands, who functioned primarily as breadwinners, performed their work typically outside the home and for the most part their tasks were defined by much tighter parameters than were women’s. When men retired, Bateson observes, they were more inclined to feel lost and restless, as if something had been taken from them –– not sure exactly what to do –– very different from women who found retirement, liberating, a gift.

When circumstances remove us from the tasks and social networks that have traditionally defined our lives, we are left alone with ourselves. While the freedom implied in this seems attractive at first, the experience of it can be unnerving. Who am I, if I am not busy ‘doing’ something?

When I first retired, I felt this discomfort. I had all the time in the world to do as I wished. As a therapist, my professional day had been defined by hourly appointments. At retirement, I wasn’t sure how to reorient myself around my experience of time. How do I reconstruct a life? I felt unsettled for several months.

Like all crises can, whether social or medical –– in this case both –– they shake loose unaddressed spiritual matters. They surface deficits in the health of our souls.

Any crisis that forces us to be alone with ourselves for any length of time unpacks many unsettling issues. In the mid 17th century Blaise Pascal, a renowned religious philosopher and mathematician, made this prescient statement: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Social distancing may create opportunities, but the kind that, at first, are not welcomed.

I’d offer this thought for our troubling times: that the health of our souls requires us to manage ourselves flexibly in two ways. That we remain meaningfully connected with others while deliberately taking quiet time to be alone with our deepest thoughts, listening to what they tell us. The social distancing now being asked of us can provide the time and space we need for reflection and, the availability of an iPhone, the means of remaining connected.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.