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shelves challenge our faith in our fellow humans.
Early in March, our church abandoned the hand-
shake during the passing of peace at Sunday wor-
ship. Some opted for elbow bumps, but I liked plac-
ing my hand over my heart and making eye contact,
maybe leaning in a little. A moot point now, as our
church, like so many other houses of worship, has
suspended all gatherings. This is meant to keep us
safe, of course. The mischief in me would like to dis-
cuss what it says about our faith in God, and in one
another, to believe we’re better off apart. But then
I think about how I always tell my husband, “Don’t
die stupid,” after I find out he was talking on his cell
phone while crossing a busy street. There’s only so
much we can ask of God.
As always in this country, some are suffering
more than others. The elderly and the sick are par-
ticularly vulnerable to COVID-19, but so are those
who were at an economic and social disadvantage
before this crisis started. When we pull out of our
community, we don’t have to drive even a half milein any direction to see the continued blight of urban neighborhoods that
never recovered from the soaring rate of foreclosures in 2007. Every part
of life is harsher when you live in poverty, including the judgment of those
who see you as an embarrassing footnote in the fabled tale of downtown
development and renewal.
Racial and economic inequality, voter suppression and foreign interfer-
ence with our elections—it was all so overwhelming before the threat of
this virus became all-consuming. The racial tensions we were hoping to ad-
dress in our community are magnified tenfold by a President who daily in-
sists on giving COVID-19 a racist name, which I wish my colleagues would
stop repeating because it is potentially endangering the lives of Asian
Americans. Trump has repeatedly made clear that he doesn’t care.In our neIghborhood, though, something is happening. We have
shifted the topic but not the intention. Neighbors are checking in with
one another more than we used to. We’re sharing more phone numbers
and coordinating tag-team trips to the grocery and pharmacy. Far more
of us, it seems, are taking walks throughout the day. We are yearning for
the connection, even if six feet away.
One neighbor, recently widowed, is circulating flyers offering to run
errands and asking for donations for a nearby neighborhood in need. Her
list included diapers and feminine- hygiene products, and so I’ve just
walked around the house gathering up the supplies we keep here for the
daughters in our family, and our youngest grandchildren. They won’t be
visiting soon, their parents insist, because they want to protect us. All
those years of promising my children they would never have to worry
about strong, mighty me, and here we are.
It is my habit to turn to poetry in times of stress. Today I picked up my
copy of Mark Nepo’s Surviving Has Made Me Crazy. His poem “In the Other
Kind of Time” reminds me of what our community, what every commu-
nity, should be trying to do in this moment, in this time.Come with me out of the cold
where we can put down the
notions we’ve been carrying
like torn flags into battleWe can throw them to the earth
or place them in the earth, and ask,
why these patterns in the first place?
If you want, we can repair them, if
they still seem true. Or we can
sing as they burn.This is our truth: we’ve always needed one another. This is our bigger
truth: we’re starting to act like it.
That conversation about race in our community would be put on hold
only with our consent, and it appears we’ve collectively made a decision:
permission denied. We are setting fire to that reckless disregard for our
potential.
The porches and front stoops are living up to their promise. We wave
hello and talk across our tiny yards. The questions rise like songs: “How
are you holding up?” “What do you need?” “How can I help?” The chorus
is always the same: I see you.Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, is the author of the upcoming
novel The Daughters of ErietownUWR.Schultz.indd 59 3/24/20 10:37 PM