The Church Lab is blessed with a creative community. We invited our members to contribute poems, photos, videos, and prose to a gallery to be shared with you. Please enjoy these reflections offered as inspiration or solace during this period.
Dialoguer Shelley shares this video and its accompanying sound of her backyard in Georgia.
Dialogue member Rev. Shannon Shannon-Wildt wrote this passage as part of a sermon just as the scope of the pandemic was becoming clear.
We all know that this is a scary and unprecedented time. So many of us are struggling with not being with our loved ones and even with not being with strangers. Loneliness is prevalent. Fear can feel overwhelming. I mean even going to the grocery store is a challenge! We are being asked to stay away from the very thing we most need--community. We are staying away in order to keep our community safe, which brings some solace, but not enough. The loneliness we feel, the fear we feel, the anxiety we feel are all valid and real, and we absolutely are allowed to feel them. Isolation can be overwhelming for some and even dangerous for others who experience mental illness. We must allow the feelings to be present, and to give ourselves space to experience them. But we also can find hope and peace in knowing that Jesus stays with us too. That just as Jesus’ death was not permanent, this too shall pass. Even though we are isolated, we are creatively finding new and exciting ways to stay connected. Recently I have heard of people tailgating outside others’ homes to see each other from a distance. I’ve heard of people dropping off baked goods for a loved ones’ birthday. I’ve heard of online yoga and meditation and support groups and even scavenger hunts. As much as this is a devastating time, we can also be so grateful we have high-speed internet and cell phones to remain connected. We are in unprecedented times, with so much unknown, but Jesus and the disciples were in unprecedented times too after his death and resurrection. No one knew what the future would hold; no one knew how long Jesus would remain with them; no one knew of the impact that one man would make on the entire world--changing it completely. The other day I was listening to a webinar and the speaker said something along the lines of, “Yes we are in unprecedented times, and we don’t know what the future will bring; but really if you think about it, we never know what the future will bring.” We never know what the future will bring. But the one thing we do know it’ll bring is community. And as we stay inside, as we stay in isolation, we are able to stay connected--to each other and to Jesus.
Melissa shared this image of her family’s new vegetable garden, which is just sprouting! She is a member of TCL’s Board of Directors.
Pam, TCL’s pastoral assistant wrote this piece just before shelter-in-place, when the possibility of travel was still an option.
“We got in the car and Seph put on music. It was dark out. Nine or so. In that moment I just wanted to drive. To keep driving into the dark. To drive away.”
Matthew: “What music?”
“I think rap. Driving beat? almost yelling at you?”
“If you drive away, where do you go?”
“New Orleans. Or Mississippi. Someplace that feels different.”
“Go to New Orleans. Imagine and walk there. Where are you there? A restaurant? A cemetery? A bar?”
A club. A club with live music. It’s filled with people. We’re sitting at a table. We just ate. We are surrounded by real. The leather the wood the people the alcohol. The music.
Right outside, the river. The churning the driving being that is the Mississippi. You can’t miss it. In the Quarter it’s right there. There’s only a levee separating it from you. When you’re in the Quarter, you feel it. You can’t forget. It’s just right there.
A liminal place. There are so few to begin with. So rare. Even more so an entire city. A thin place. Holding both the sacred and the profane. The deeply sacred and the deeply profane. Holding life and holding death. Death in life and life in death.
Holding the broken, especially since the flood, and being the heart of New Orleans. The whole the core the center that is New Orleans and can’t be touched no matter what. What draws you near and swallows you and makes you never forget about New Orleans.
In my chest under my sternum, the churn of dark. Its companion, the bright center of my being. Not two sides of one coin, rather each contained in the other. The broken contained in the ever-generating whole. Broken open. No one is remade entirely anew. Jesus himself, rising with marks. The Incarnation. My own self.
……
Seph: “It was rap.”