living into a lent we cannot yet comprehend...

Today looks and feels like Lent to me. It is gray, damp and almost cold - not frigid or oppressive - just confused. Or maybe emotionally and metiorologically complex - like it could all slip through a variety of changes at a moment's notice. Given the absurdity of the current regime's lies and disinformation about the cornonavirus, our stunning inability to prepare for the harsh realities yet to come from this pandemic, and the cognitive chaos coursing through our communities: the current calm before the storm feels like we're floating through a play by Samuel Beckett. Not fully engaged as actors as of yet, just periodically startled into consciousness before slipping back into the dull haze of anxiety. 

Watching the Trumpster last night on TV - all bloated, orange and reeking of insincerity - took me back to the industrial/goth/fantasy aesthetic of the Tim Burton "Batman" or "Edward Scissorhands" movies. There was something simultaneously unnerving but engaging about those films. Burton knew how to fuse exaggeration with subtlety, adding the grotesque to the mysterious, and mixing it up with comic relief and the songs of Prince. I kept waiting for the President to jump up and start to dance. Or blurt out: "Tell me something, my friends, ever dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight?"

As a rule, I am not one for ridicule: it cheapens political discourse and changes nothing. But the macabre ignorance of this President is staggering. So much so that only the theater of the absurd makes sense. You see, the Trumpster is a master at manipulating our darkest fears. He is brilliant at reducing complexities to dangerously simple black and white skirmishes that work to his political advantage. Now, however, his pathological inability to grasp the big picture - or the long term consequences of his fear mongering - has put the whole nation at risk. News reports note that even as he was speaking last night economic indicators began to tank as investors feared the worst is still to come. There is no confidence in this leader. There is no trust that he can manage this crisis. And no sign that there are any adults in the room among his advisers. Thank God Dr. Anthony Fauci has broken through the regieme's muzzle and shared some facts about how we might contain the disease despite the government's incompetence. (For more clarity  https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487230-fauci-it-is-a-failing-that-people-cant-easily-get-tested-for-coronavirus-in?jwsource=cl)

Slowly, and haphazardly, I am praying my way through Pádraig Ó Tuama's prayer book for Lent. Today the prayer goes like this:

"For truly I tel you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ willl by no means lose their reward." Mark 9: 41

Jesus our rewarding friend,
You knew need.
You knew thirst and hunger.
And so do we.
We praise and honor
the surprising providers
of comfort and care.
We praise and honor them.
May their work increase.
We praise and honor them
because without them
we thirst.
Amen.

There are so many good people in our government who have been thwarted, silenced and inhibited from being the incarnational friends of Jesus. They ache to bring us water. And comfort. And testing for the coronavirus. And cannot. So we move along in the gray fear while Jesus walks closer and closer to the Cross, living into a Lent we cannot yet comprehend.