I’m continuing my COVID supplement to The Book of Waking Up. If you’d like to support this project, signup for my Substack. (And follow the tags below to read the full series.)

2. The Responses to the New Demon

In the earliest hours of the New Demon’s dawn, the people gathered around office coffee machines, stopped in stocked toilet-paper aisles, and yammered around lunch tables. We became prognosticators and predictors, pandemic forecasters. We created narratives, and those narratives were much in line with the narratives of human history.

Camp 1: “The New Demon? It’ll be no worse than the flu,” some said, sneering like pharaohs on the eve of the Black Angel’s visit.

Camp 2: “This is the pandemic to end all pandemics, a global extinction potential,” some said, crying like the people of Noah’s day when the rain fell.

Camp 3: “It will pass in a week or two, and we’ll all wash our hands of it,” some said, shrugging their shoulders like Pilate.

Camp 4: “Pay attention because the days are dark and who knows what tomorrow will bring,” some said, embracing the mystery of a new wakeup call.

There were other camps, I’m sure, including camps of Mardi Gras bead hunters and Spring Break partiers who’d never let a pandemic get in the way of their good time. These, I will not place in a camp. They are sleep talkers at best. We’d be best to walk away from their words.

3. Exorcising the New Demon

Days into America’s outbreak, the news from Italy came like a torrent. Each day was the same: an onslaught of new cases; overrun hospitals; doctors choosing who should live and who should die. We watched as the Italian measures to flatten the curve resulted in a complete lockdown. Streets were populated only by pigeons. St. Peter’s Square was a monument to human imagination, less the humans needed to adore that monument. Still, medical professionals were unsure whether Italian efforts would work. The Italian reality as an omen of our own future, and We the People entered the age of social distancing.

4. All Fun and Games

We hoped isolation might exorcise the evil, so we shuttered the bars, the restaurants, the coffee shops. We shuttered the churches, too, called off the people’s participation in the sacraments. The dead buried themselves. The young held private weddings. The middle-aged became distance-learning teacher’s aids overnight. Most became well-acquainted with house arrest. And for a week, perhaps, it wasn’t so bad.

At least, so the COVID memes would make you think.

At least, so the virtual happy hours would make you think.

At least, so the Instagram Live rave would make you think.

Was it a display of American grit? Yes, and truth be told, we needed the distraction and the connection. Truth be told, these gritty attempts at coming together were not bad in and of themselves. But when the fog of that first week cleared, something like a communal hangover set in, at least for some. How do I know? I took the calls.

To Be Continued…

Join me tomorrow (and for the foreseeable future) as I continue my Pandemic Supplement to The Book of Waking Up. And if you haven’t grabbed a copy of The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life, grab a copy. And yes, Amazon has slowed down book shipments, so considering purchasing it from Bookish, Fort Smith or grabbing a digital copy for Kindle or Nook.