Lenten Reflection Series – Homecoming in COVID-19

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.”