“To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen

End Slavery: +814292.09

The Good Place is a television series that revolves around the concept of the afterlife. According to the show, humans are sent to either the Good Place or the Bad Place after they die. During their lifetime, every human is assigned a numerical score that is based on their actions. Only those with the highest scores are deemed worthy of entering the Good Place, where they are rewarded with eternal happiness.

“The Good Place” is not your run-of-the-mill comedy show. It delves into impressive philosophical themes and offers a unique perspective on judgment. The show explores the concept of retributive justice, which suggests that the destiny of all rational beings is determined by their good and bad deeds.

Judgment

noun

1. the ability to make considered decisions or come to a conclusion.
2. A misfortune or calamity. Viewed as punishment.

During a conversation with Ken, a few weeks ago, he shared an interesting perspective. He explained that “as Christians, we commonly assume that judgment only comes at the end. We believe that we receive grace first and are then judged at the end”. However, Ken emphasized that this is not the case. “In reality, judgment comes first, and then we are always being judged; that is how we are able to receive grace.” That is, grace is always “despite” and not “because of” our human condition (Karl Barth).

The parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates the dynamics of judgment, grace, and human relationships. While it is often portrayed as a story about God’s love, its central theme revolves around our interactions with each other.

Perspective Taking: The Prodigal Son

What I’m about to say is subjective and my own opinion, but I think we often live and judge ourselves, others, and events either in the past, present, or future in our headspace as rational creatures.

1. Past – guilt, shame, regret, dwelling on what happened, replaying events or conversations, over analyzing.
2. Present – clarity, acceptance, joy of being, understanding, inner peace, gratitude.
3. Future – fear of the unknown, worrying about what could happen, feeling anxious for what is to come, ‘what if’ scenarios.

I am not saying that being in any particular headspace is either good or bad, but I believe that the following list is useful in understanding what shapes and evaluates our lives in the world today. For instance, if we view the narrative of the Prodigal Son through the lens of past, present, and future, we can gain deeper insight into the characters and their motivations within the story.

We see that the younger son is experiencing something close to depression and anxiety when he reunites with his father. Believing and acknowledging the judgment he placed on himself and believing in the possibility of his father’s wrath was justified. However, the father is a glimpse of a character who is mindful of the deep hurt, damaged trust, and wound that his son did to him, but he also sees someone taking ownership, and anything but forgiveness doesn’t make sense.

To emphasize the humanity of the Prodigal Son parable, we can turn to the season 1 finale of Ted Lasso to observe Rebecca and Ted in action.

‘You…What? Why?’

At the beginning of season 1, Rebecca hires Ted Lasso to coach the Richmond team, intending to take them down to get back at her ex-husband for hurting her. As the audience, we walk with Rebecca as she begins to sabotage Ted at every possibility and as her humanity begins to come out.

Ted, also going through a divorce, can understand and share Rebecca’s pain and forgive her. Despite the damage caused by the hurt and loss of trust, he recognizes that she is taking responsibility for her actions. This empathy is the outcome that we observe.

“The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Concerning J.R.R. Tolkien

If you were to open The Lord of the Rings and step into Middle-earth, you would be transported to a realm beyond your wildest imagination. Although beautiful and fantastical, the characters and themes in the text are distinctly human.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works have profoundly impacted the fantasy genre as we know it today. His story spans over a thousand pages and is widely considered one of the greatest of our time. Critics and readers alike have pointed out the numerous Christian allegories embedded in his work. He once wrote to the English Roman Catholic theologian, Father Robert Murray, calling The Lord of the Rings “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” However, Tolkien himself disliked the idea of allegory. He believed his work’s applicability to readers was more important than any intended allegory. He understood that the meaning and interpretation of his work were ultimately up to the reader.

In Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” he explores his views on the role of imagination and deep consideration for escapism in fictional stories. He argues that “escapism” is healthy and necessary as long as readers are not abandoning their responsibilities. In other words, the type often misunderstood as the only type of escapism is when the reader uses the story to ignore his duties in life and disappear into a fantasy world. However, for Tolkien, well-written fantasy and escapism literature can only enhance the readers’ view of their everyday world. Stories are meant to immerse us in a reality that points to an ultimate truth. Walter Wangerin Jr. once wrote, “To comprehend the experience one is living in, he must, by imagination and intellect, be lifted out of it.”

A Good Catastrophe

On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people and tens of thousands more later due to radiation exposure.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, leaving its capital Port-au-Prince devastated. About 220,000 people were reportedly killed.

On December 26, 2004, a 9.1-9.3 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, ruptured, and approximately 230,000 people died in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Catastrophe comes from the Greek word “overturn” or “any sudden disaster.” It names a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter destruction. It is a circumstance that disrupts our lives—an interruption to human life’s existing activity and progress.

Tolkien believed that an event that is a catastrophe can be a surprise and fortune-reversing but with a happy ending. To describe this, he used the Greek word eu-the Greek prefix simply meaning good. Thus, Tolkien coined a word that would help describe and explain the understanding and power of stories derived from the real world – eucatastrophe. Eucatastrophe describes the fortunate turn of events—an unexpected and sudden good during dire situations.

The showdown in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope is an excellent example of eucatastrophe. The Rebel Alliance faces destruction as the Galactic Empire has found its military operations on the moon base of Yavin 4. The Death Star’s superlaser can destroy a planet, and the Rebel Alliance has only one chance to stop it. They send their fighter pilots to shoot proton torpedoes into the Death Star’s reactor core, causing a chain reaction that can destroy the giant battle station. Darth Vader and a couple of tie fighters are shooting down the Rebel Alliance’s pilots, and Luke has a one-in-a-million shot. The unexpected destruction of the Death Star through Luke’s shot is a moment of eucatastrophe that saves the Rebel Alliance from destruction and brings hope to the galaxy.

However, Tolkien believed that eucatastrophe could only be brought about through grace, not heroic efforts or human achievements. ***SPOILER ALERT***. A great example is the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Burdened by the ring and carrying it from the Shire to Mordor, Frodo has finally succumbed to the ring’s will at the heart of Mt. Doom. Unable to resist, he tries to take the ring for himself. 

Frodo was on the brink of destroying the ring, but its accidental destruction during his fight with Gollum granted an unexpected grace.

Eucatastrophe does not deny the existence of sorrow, wrath, fear, greed, oppression, failure, or death; instead, it offers a glimpse of hope and joy through grace, denying universal final defeat through unexpected means. 

The Incarnation was a momentous event, even though it was prophesied in the Old Testament. It was a sudden and unexpected event that changed the very nature of reality and our understanding of human history. The Incarnation was the first significant change in reality since the world’s creation. It brought together God and creation, marking the beginning of the redemption and reconciliation of the earth to God through Jesus.

While Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a fantastic work of fiction, it can sometimes be challenging to relate to the story’s fantastical elements – we’re not wizards, Balrogs, or Hobbits. This is where shows like Ted Lasso come in. Ted Lasso is a show that understands human relationships and how they can bring about unexpected moments of grace, hope, and joy. 

Richmond Till We Die

Let’s address the larger-than-life elephant in the room – yes, I am a huge fan of Ted Lasso. I have rewatched the show countless times and listened to numerous podcasts where people analyze and discuss each episode. I even have Ted Lasso stickers on my belongings and a Coach Beard costume that I will probably wear every Halloween, and I bought Fifa 23 so that I could play as Ted Lasso and the entire AFC Richmond team.

Ted Lasso is a show about an American football coach hired to coach a struggling English soccer team. Despite the cultural differences and initial hatred towards him, Ted Lasso’s kindness, empathy, and belief in others transformed the team, leading to unexpected growth and success. The show is a testament to the power of human connections and the way they can bring about moments of joy and hope in the face of adversity. Moreover, it shows that eucatastrophe is not just limited to the world of fantasy or the Bible but can also be found in our everyday lives through our relationships with others.

During the Advent season, we’ll reflect on the themes of grace, hope, and joy and how they can reveal themselves unexpectedly in our relationships. Perhaps our friend Ted can offer some valuable insights. 

Before I get into the post, I want to address some critical points in which understanding this post will make sense. 1) These are my thoughts, observations, and reflections on things I have seen throughout the pandemic and in Christ Kaleidoscope. In other words, I am not complaining, nor is this an evaluation of people. It may be uncomfortable to read this post, but this is not coming from a place of condescension or anger, but from a place of discipline in acknowledging my own vulnerability. 2) This particular post requires much more than what I originally anticipated. Originally, I wanted to give a brief overview of my experience of the pandemic and connect it to American society and pop culture. I mean, I can still do that! However, I know myself too well to be satisfied with that plan. Meaning, this post would require some theology. 3) The theological literature on “place” and/or “displacement” is not a discipline that I am too familiar with and not as easily accessible to the general public. Therefore, it requires me to look into more academic and “heady” literature. I confess that I don’t think I fully understand the theology of “place”, but I will try to distill some of the more digestible thoughts. Was this an excuse for me to read academic and theologically heavy works? You tell me. 4) This is not a post on how the pandemic affected my mental health, but it will shed some light on my mental state throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are curious how I am doing now, I am doing great and I am grateful that is the case!

J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord of the Rings

 As a World War I veteran who notably fought in the bloody Battle of Somme and lived through the most destructive war in our history (World War II), J.R.R. Tolkien and his experience with both world wars reflected deeply in his work. Tolkien hated allegories and never meant for anything from Middle Earth to directly represent something in our world. However, his ideas, thoughts, and understanding of war and the human condition clearly leaked into his written work. As a result, in regards to a soldier’s homecoming, he knew and understood the experience that soldiers would feel after being confronted by the fears and sadness of war – a sense of displacement.

LOTR The Return of the King – Homeward Bound

The moment we find our four hobbits back in the Shire and in the pub is a poignant one. The director, Peter Jackson, beautifully captures the feeling of displacement for our heroes. Not because the other hobbits are completely oblivious or don’t care, but because the Shire hobbits lived experiences no longer match with Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin anymore. Therefore, the feeling of “not fitting in” and isolation creeps up on them. They look at each other and think “what do we do now? After all we’ve seen, after all we’ve experienced, how do we go back to our normal lives?” However, all is not lost for our four heroes and we see that they begin to joyfully acclimate back into their old lives (more or less), but somehow we still see Frodo feeling off. The clip ends right before we get to hear Frodo’s monologue:

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.”

This movie quote is quite dramatic (I mean it is a movie); however, Frodo’s speech gets to the heart of what Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were feeling at the pub the night they came back home. 

I have watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy over the years and I understood, intellectually, what was going on during the pub scene. However, after living through COVID-19 for two years now, I can say with absolute certainty, I truly understand what Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were feeling in that moment of silence surrounded by joyful drinking and laughter. 

Two Realities During COVID-19

On September 20 of 2021, The Atlantic published a story, Another Truth About Remote Work, that clarified Americans’ misconceptions about the prevalence of working from home. The Atlantic commissioned a poll from a Canadian-owned market research and analytics company called Leger. The poll asked Americans to estimate how many people had worked from home during the pandemic. The results were not entirely surprising: those working remotely tended to overestimate how many people were doing the same.

“Seventy-three percent of survey respondents who had teleworked because of the pandemic guessed that at least half of American employees had done the same. But the actual number of people who worked remotely because of COVID-19 was, at its highest point, roughly 35 percent, way back in May 2020. Let’s skip ahead to last month: About 90 percent of surveyed respondents who worked from home in August because of the pandemic guessed that at least 40 percent of American workers did too. In reality, only 13.4 percent worked from home in the final month of summer.

Part of the reason for the discrepancy comes down to basic psychology. Human beings tend to believe that other people are like us, that our thoughts and opinions are more common than they actually are, the sociologists I interviewed for this story told me. But when I answered that question so wrongly back in March, I felt a pang of embarrassment; I was out of touch. “People don’t have a great sense anymore of what the lives of others across the economic divide look like,” Jonathan J. B. Mijs, a sociology professor at Boston University, told me.”

The media coverage, in regards to working from home during the early parts of the pandemic, talked about Zoom fatigue, how to be more productive at home, and the 11 most comfortable pants to wear when working from home. Christ Kaleidoscope is hardly the exact picture of what all Americans were doing and dealing with throughout the pandemic – majority of people in the community were working from home and staying put. Understandably, it was tough for all of us to stay away from family and loved ones during a global pandemic. While I am glad I heard stories of people playing video games together, getting into a sourdough bread-making phase, staying in shape, or starting new hobbies, I could not help but recognize that I was living a different kind of reality than 98% of the people in CK.

During the winter surge of late 2020 and early 2021, every day I counted how many sirens I would hear from outside as a sort of game to myself. I eventually stopped counting after a while, but I think on average I was hearing a total of 20 sirens going off a day. I would come out day in and day out seeing multiple fire trucks and ambulances parked outside the Emergency Room with lines of patients on gurneys (attached to oxygen) waiting to be admitted into an already full-packed department. Like an In-N-Out employee, when the drive-thru line gets too long and busy, someone would always come out to begin admitting each patient and do a complete medical workup. 

This is one of the stories I usually tell people whenever they ask me about what it was like during the first surge of COVID-19. This is one of the milder stories I tell. However, I found myself not telling many stories about what I saw throughout the pandemic. Not because I didn’t have any stories to tell or I was too sad about what was happening, but because there was a sinking feeling in my gut that told me that no one really wanted to hear them. Moreover, I felt that no one could really understand or relate with me unless they were in healthcare themselves. I wasn’t the only one who had this thought. This language of us vs. them, healthcare vs. non-healthcare, or frontline workers vs. people working from home was ubiquitous on the healthcare threads of Reddit. Doctors, nurses, and emergency service workers complained how family, friends, and the public didn’t really fully understand what was going on. Not just what the pandemic has done to our healthcare system, but also how dangerous COVID-19 truly is. “They don’t see what we’ve been seeing! They don’t understand!” they would exclaim.

Living through COVID-19 and coming back into a community like Christ Kaleidoscope has been a jarring experience for two reasons. 1) People seem to easily get back into the rhythm of talking as if no time has passed for them. It was obviously easier for people who worked from home to relate to one another. In contrast, from the perspective of someone living in what seems to be a liminal space, it was-and still is-hard to be present. It was easier for me to relate with my coworkers and other healthcare workers. 2) Risk factors are understandably, but frustratingly different. Although I hold a pretty safe and conservative view towards COVID-19 safety, it is tough to hold strong safety views in a community full of non-healthcare workers. 

This has led to many thoughts and feelings of displacement for me in Christ Kaleidoscope. If I am to be completely honest, that sense of displacement when I am with people hasn’t fully gone away for me. Yes, I have since worked through it, but it will always linger in the back of my mind. As a result, this caused a sense of loss in my identity and belonging in a church community. In other words, I gave up on my identity as a member of a church community that was taken from me by COVID-19 and quarantine because, throughout this entire pandemic, I was always reminded that I had been living a very different life than most people in CK.  

Theology of Place and Displacement

We live in an era of displacement. Our country has undocumented people who are deported, sent back to a “home country” that many do not consider home. Others live in fear of deportation, trapped in the precarious space of the in-between. We can also use the Russia-Ukraine war as a prime example of displacement found in our world. Displacement raises existential questions (human personhood, meaning, suffering, and belonging) to which the church is called to think theologically and respond to displacement.

The concept of “place” invokes the language of “making room” or “making space”. Within the Christian context, “place” is often defined as socio-spatial communities of creaturely life and is a means of grace by which God reveals himself to us.

What we find in the Christian tradition is a great deal of understanding of “place”. That is, the Christian faith answers the question of how Christianity can be good news in a world of displacement and loss of “place”. Theologically, we answer this question by saying the means of inhabiting creation is God in Christ investing himself in creation and reveals God as thoroughly committed to its good, to make it a place again for the fullness of creaturely life in God’s presence. In other words, the incarnation, death, and resurrection are God’s acts of self-revelation and are demonstrating God’s devotion to be fully present by inhabiting a place of creation. As a result, the risen Christ makes the church his body and calls it to inhabit creation as himself: a bodily manifestation (or eikon) that makes space in creation for creaturely life to flourish.

There And Back Again?

I don’t know if there’s an answer to how we can reconcile the two realities. I think in giving a suggestion or an answer, it would come off as dismissive to how someone might think and feel. I have learned that I’m not a fan of receiving unsolicited advice, so I’m going to avoid giving one out. For that reason, I’m gonna end this post with a Lord of the Rings quote. I think this quote is the necessary language of encouragement and gentle wisdom for people who feel displaced and for people who can make space for others should hear:

Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.“

Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Loss vs Sacrifice

Video games, at their best, are artistically and narratively compelling blockbusters. Often allowing players to be transported into new kinds of realities, perspectives, and mythos that can speak to our human condition. Not many video games masterfully do this well, but there are gems and dialogues that can capture someone’s attention and imagination.

In the last decade or so, YouTube started seeing an increase of videos where people would upload all a video game’s cutscenes and a few gameplays to seamlessly create a movie-like experience. This is great for people like me who want to experience a compelling story without actually playing the game (and at 2 times the speed at that!).

Tomb Raider’s 2013 reboot of a young Lara Croft was one of those games for me. The story begins with Lara, our protagonist, going through an emotional growth arc throughout the game, beginning with a scared young woman washed ashore on a dangerous jungle island to a kick-ass heroine who is prepared to do what is necessary to survive at the end of the story. It is in this kind of media-the circumstance that the protagonist finds herself plays a big role too-that we sometimes get some food for thought on the human condition during an exchange of two characters:

“Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you.”

America and COVID-19

On March 1, 2022, during his State of the Union, President Biden announced the good news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new masking guideline for all Americans- most Americans are now free to not wear masks. He then goes on in his speech to acknowledge what COVID-19 is and has done and what he hopes the future of America would look like.

“We have lost so much to COVID-19. Time with one another. And worst of all, so much loss of life. Let’s use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: A God-awful disease. Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies, and start seeing each other for who we really are: Fellow Americans. We can’t change how divided we’ve been. But we can change how we move forward—on COVID-19 and other issues we must face together. ”

Like Biden, many politicians in the past couple of months have spoken to this idea of moving past COVID-19 and looking forward to the future where we recognize COVID-19 as an “endemic”.

Lent

Lent is a forty-day season of reflection and preparation for the death of Jesus. It is a time of repentance and meditation, of considering Christ’s suffering and rethinking how we are called to take up our own crosses. Some of us give up things like chocolate or television during this season as a sort of fasting. As a result, we are left to rethink how we live and how we want to live. However, Lent is not necessarily a New Year’s resolution for Christians. Yes, we sacrifice and give up certain pleasures and bad habits, not because of self-improvement or righteous piety, but to reorient our lives towards the cross.

Additionally, Lent is not simply about mirroring Jesus’ fasting in the desert for forty-days and the temptations he had by Satan. Lent is a season where we hear, respond, and arrange our lives to Jesus’ call and the cross. It is a season of giving over our lives to Christ in union with his pending death. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best, “when Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die”.

Loss, Sacrifice, COVID-19, and Lent

Dr. Ajita Robinson, a licensed clinical counselor with expertise in grief and trauma defines loss as two categories: “physical loss” and “symbolic loss”. “Physical loss” are things that can be easily named that involve something tangible or something that can be seen. A physical loss can be a death of a loved one or a house due to fire or eviction. “Symbolic loss” on the other hand are things that we can’t see or are intrinsically intangible. A symbolic loss can be losing a sense of control or identity. However, Dr. Robinson states, “we don’t even see them as losses”. She further explains that “the challenging part of the symbolic loss is that we don’t have rituals or built-in support systems for them. So oftentimes they can accumulate when we don’t have the language to name them. This accumulation can trigger the same grief response as a physical loss”.

What does, loss, sacrifice, COVID-19, and Lent have to do with one another? True, the sacrifices that we do as Lenten practices aren’t the same as the kind of physical loss found through the pandemic. However, what this reflection series is getting at (and what I’m hoping that I’m correctly arguing for) is that we gave up on the symbolic losses that were dealt to us by the pandemic.

Whether it was for the sake of politics, mental well-being, technology, routine, etc., like a poker player, we made a calculated choice to sacrifice certain card(s) that the dealer handed to us.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers, nor do I know what we can do from here. It’s simply my reflections and my experience in looking at the past two years. However, maybe looking at COVID-19 as a Lenten experience can allow us to find the necessary language needed during this Lenten season and to live in this new “post-COVID” world.