In New York, I was so busy all the time. I was busy with school or with work, with meetings and lunch chats and trying to find my way in a city much bigger than myself. At a certain point, the two hours of church became too much to fit into my schedule, especially factoring in the thirty-minute walk to and from my apartment. What started as a week or two off, blaming my absence on the start of a new year and the increased workload I had taken on, turned into a month and then two. I still saw my friends weekly, all of whom understood that I was just too overworked to think about adding another thing to my plate. We’d all make dinners on Sunday nights. They would tell me about their weeks and I would always ask them about their walks to church.
To get to church from my apartment, you have to walk through a park. It’s old stone stairs and overgrown foliage give it a gothic feel, but I always appreciated the tulips that bloom along the edges in the springtime. There’s a little pond and people will jog or push a stroller around it. The walk to church every Sunday was a part of my routine I sometimes complained about, especially in the rain or snow, but it was a part I looked forward to.
Nowadays, I am back home, in Los Angeles and a pandemic has forced me indoors, for the indeterminate future. I am still taking classes, and working remotely, but it seems that the world took time to slow down, generously granting itself time. I am less preoccupied with getting tasks done or checking things off a to-do list. My perspective has shifted. I realize how trivial, how unimportant my routine had become.
Tuning into the zoom sessions of church each Sunday has provided me with a little something like comfort. I like to sit in my backyard and feel the sunrise over my skin while I listen to my Bishop speak. There’s comfort in both his cadence and the way that the fresh air feels in my lungs when I inhale long and deep. Watching a church meeting from thousands of miles away, I miss the time that ritual consumed.
Comfort in Lack of Control
I am never too busy to notice the flowers that weren’t there last week, or the way the green hills on the horizon turn yellow at sunset.
Successfully slowing down, even as the world feels like it is crashing all around me, reminds me of the way that the hills here always get greener, each spring, after the little bits of rain from the winter. In Los Angeles, fire season often seemingly destroys whole ecosystems, and the places you have come to love are at risk every autumn. But this year, after an especially devastating fire season, one that came close enough to cause my family to evacuate, there was an even more unusual rainy reason.
I find it almost funny, how the walks to and from church were the things I did not leave time for. Now, my daily walks are the only times when I can get out of my head. I am never too busy to notice the flowers that weren’t there last week, or the way the green hills on the horizon turn yellow at sunset.
Two weeks into our shelter-in-place order, my grandfather had a stroke. He is 84, and an especially high-risk case if he should catch coronavirus, considering his history of cancer, diabetes, and respiratory issues. My grandfather had a stroke and was suddenly shuttled away to a hospital where I could not see him, a hospital where I could not even get out of my car and enter the building.
That morning, I paced around the house. It was an exceptionally warm day and I stood in the backyard on the concrete and watched the plants and insects move. I needed control. I needed to do something. There was nothing I could do. I did the only thing that I could think to do. I texted a friend to ask about the feasibility of priesthood blessings done via the internet, or on behalf of someone else. The answer, as I suspected, was no. So I stood there, feeling the sun radiate down on my skin, and quietly felt my heart sing Nearer My God to Thee and longing for protection. If only I could simply feel a blessing, know that something was there looking out for me. I wanted comfort.
I let myself stand, barefoot, on the rocks in my backyard and I felt the way they pressed into the soles of my feet and I prayed. I didn’t make any promises with God because I knew I couldn’t keep them. I just thought about the way that distance and absence and the lack of control made me feel so scared. I thought about how my reaction to space, to my surroundings and my circumstances, was to seek comfort, protection, in something I had no way of knowing was even there.
Three days later, my grandfather was home and speaking and walking normally. I’ve started to say a small prayer each day, even if that prayer is an acknowledgment, a surrender, to circumstance.
