I sit in the relative quiet of what is for me a normal Saturday evening. Tomorrow morning I will get up, go to church as is my custom. When I come home, I will eat lunch with my family and then take the cross-stich I have been working on for far too long, and spend my afternoon at the coffee shop, pulling different shades of embroidery floss through a piece of aida cloth. This is also my custom.

     On Monday I will probably spend some time writing, composing, and practicing music before heading out to teach in the afternoon, Tuesday will continue that ritual and so on through the rest of the week. This is my custom and has been since before 2020, since before politics and viruses became the first things on everyone's tongue.

       Life proceeds as usual for me. I can shop at most of the same stores, attend most of the same meetings, if they still meet that is, participate in most of the same events and take a lovely cup of tea at the same coffee shop. One thing has changed, however. I find myself unable to attend the same church.

Why?

      Simply because my physiology as well as my conscience prevent me. I'm hoping the absence will be temporary. I'm praying the sabbatical will be short lived, but for now I drive thirty minutes to Cary every Sunday morning because the leaders of the church I have attended for the past eight years, and been a member of for the past four, have asked me not to attend.

      No, they didn't show up at my door with faces sterner than an undertaker's. They didn't send me a final, irrevocable personal note. They simply made a decision, and that decision gave me an ultimatum: either I attempt to comply, compromising my beliefs, and possibly my health in the process, or I refrain from attending in person.

      I chose the latter.

      Not to sound dramatic, or make my church seem harsh. The leaders only did what the vast majority of churches across America have done for the past year. They simply required that everyone cover his face with a piece of cloth to attend.  

       I do not wish to discuss the efficacy of masks here. Nor do I intend to deplore those who wear them. My purpose in writing this is neither to degrade my church or deprecate the opinions of those who think differently than I. 

        I am distressed that this is what it has come down to. 

        After all the centuries of enduring persecution, mass killings, sneaking through city streets to attend church in somebody's basement; after being the only ones out on the streets of Europe when men in black rolled through the towns on their ghastly wagons calling "Bring out your dead!" After being ostracized by family members, after being publicly humiliated and disowned, after beatings, after torture, after fiery stakes of death, and lifelong imprisonment all during which the church gathered together, prayed together, sang together, wept together, after all that, the church is barring people from attendance because of a virus with at least a 95% survival rate. 

         I am distressed that so many churches are still not meeting across the country, and the world. I am distressed because the church has given no indication of drawing a line between God's jurisdiction and that of the government when it comes to the corporate assembly. I am distressed that we find it so easy to substitute virtual attendance for physical and seem to have no problem with claiming that this is as good as meeting in person and fulfills the scriptural exhortation not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. 

         And it's not just that, it's everything that's going with it. It's the division over policies and which health professionals to believe, it's division over who's right and who's left. It's a division over everything but Christ and His word. 

         I cried over my keyboard when I received the email from my care group with the news that I couldn't attend unless I wore mask. They understood that due to lung issues this was impossible for me, and asked me to attend virtually. They were kind in the extreme, understanding as all get out, and I do not bash or belittle their right to decide things as they see fit, but I just couldn't help asking, "why does it have to be for this?"

       I've always known that I might have to suffer things because of my beliefs. I've always known that I was very different from the average American Christian in many ways. Growing up I spent more time in the church library than with the senior members of the congregation than with those my own age, but I always thought that it was okay to be different. I always thought that what bound Christians together was Christ, not their political leanings, not how much they worship or hate Mr. Trump, not what they think about the virus, not how they handle government mandates.

        I still think so, but right now it's hard to see.

        Where will it end? 

         Tonight at the dinner table, my parents brought up the church situation yet again, and one of my siblings shook his head and said something which I couldn't shake off, "So it's that easy to divide the church."

       Is it? Is it this easy? Is that all it takes? A foreign virus, a blunt, brash, billionaire businessman for a president, a few pronouncements from the CDC which have flip-flopped multiple times over the past year. Is it as easy as that to get church members isolated and alone with a pixelated screen their only access to community? 

         Is this how we want to live for the next year, the next month, the next week, the next day?

         No. I can't do it. I cannot love my neighbor by doing this. I cannot love God, His church, or His world by shutting myself up in my house and pulling up the live-stream once a week. 

I can't do it. 

         One way or another I will die someday, if the Lord tarries. It might be from a virus, a car accident, a wrong step on the hiking trail, a bad egg, a scratch from a cat, one street crossing too many, a building collapse, a stray bullet...etcetera, etcetera, etcetera! I'd rather these things find me holding the hand of a fellow human being as he slips away from illness, than sitting in my house, chatting with faces on a monitor.

          "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou[God] art with me."

           "If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Thy hand will lead me, and Thy right hand will lay hold of me."

          "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of almighty. I will say to the Lord 'my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.'"

           "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?"

For me the line is clear. I cannot stay at home or wear something which I believe is unhealthy for me and others, and follow the commands of Scripture, therefore I drive thirty minutes to a church in Cary, for now. 

        I hope that this isn't permanent. I hope that my church will not continue to bar me from its assembly. I hope that Christians across this country will join together in greater unity, not in spite of what is going on, but because of it. I hope more will come to see that there are worse things than dying from a virus. 

           I hope that more people will not die lonely and isolated in their homes, cut off from society, cut off from their churches. 

I hope that people do not destroy their lives in an effort to save them.

For now I must take up the mantra of St Benedict, Ora et Labora

Pray and work.

I must pray for those things I cannot change and work to change what I was called and uniquely gifted to change, and may God grant me the strength to persevere in both.

        Monastic life is always something I keep tucked away in my mind as my own version of a dark fantasy. Whenever I get frustrated with life, discouraged, disgruntled, or depressed, I whisper darkly, "I just want to run off and live in a cave and read books, write, and make music by myself for the rest of my life." As an introvert and a philosopher at heart this fantasy appeals to me at regular intervals, but I shall never act on it. 

        The truth is, I was not made for the disciplines of the hermitage, and neither is 99.9% of the world's population. 

         So now, as distressed as I am, I attempt to look to God, as concentration camp survivor Corrie Ten Boom advised, so that I might be at rest.

          May more Christians join me in this. Will I see a resurgence of community among the church, or was it really this easy?

          I leave you with a favorite song of mine, arranged and performed by a good friend, which seems especially pertinent right now.