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1/17 The virus loots our lives relentlessly. The excruciating flash of obituaries. The sickness, or the fear of it. The great unknowing. The pain and loss imposed on those we love.
2/17 A friend lays quarantined in a NYC hospital room, separated from his family and friends, anxious, frail. Across the Hudson River, another buried his dad this week, grieving in an empty funeral home.
3/17 A young person woke with fever at the shelter, and now sleeps in an isolation room fashioned from a classroom, separated from her roommates, talking through a mask. A young woman gave birth to her first child without family or friends in the delivery room to coach & comfort.
4/17 A young mother in Texas ran from store to store, leaving empty-handed, blinking back tears because the infant formula she immediately needs is gone.
5/17 This virus raged into our lives, armed, closing the shades, turning off the lights & pummeling us into our corners, hostages. The days offer a mixture of exhaustion, dread, uncertainty, frustration & isolation. This is not as we imagined the world in Springtime. Not at all.
6/17 We could leave it there.
And yet.
And yet.
7/17 And yet, from our corners, if we look carefully, we may see Love moving about, as freely and easily as it ever did.
8/17 Into my friend’s hospital room came a team of doctors and nurses many times a day who are tender with him. They pour their passion and purpose into saving his life.
9/17 And the director of my friend’s father’s funeral did not stay away as he may have otherwise. He joined the mourning, understanding the privilege of his proximity.
10/17 The young woman in quarantine at the shelter sipped tea with a social worker, singing together a favorite song. She sleeps tonight with a mask donated by a newly-unemployed costume seamstress who filled her time with Love’s labor.
11/17 Though feverish, the young woman sips chicken soup made from a recipe created by the chef’s late grandmother, hopping through space and time, as only Love does.
12/17 The soon-to-be-mother puffed & pushed, video-conferencing on her phone with a beloved mentor whose voice navigated & soothed. When at last she held her wiggling infant close to her exhausted heart, all 3 of them - mother, mentor & baby -wept at the joy of it all.
13/17 A box arrived on the doorstep of that TX mother, filled by a young @JVCnation volunteer, with groceries & infant formula. Despite the virus, the volunteer continued to help vulnerable families who depend on her, like countless frontline workers around the globe.
14/17 And a pair of boys at a shelter for youth facing homelessness, overhearing a conversation about the need for more masks, offered the staff $46 - all the money they had - to buy them. Staff declined that offer, and reassured the boys all will be well.
15/17 This virulent virus, a thief-in-the-night, is wreaking havoc, inflicting misery and holding us hostage. Yes. Worse agony may be ahead of us. There is no way to know for certain. But I do know this: the boundless, beautiful, bounty of Love is battle-ready.
16/17 Love is restocking grocery shelves, rushing the sick to hospitals, building ventilators, helping the ill, mourning the fallen, housing the vulnerable, singing and sewing for good, racing to find a vaccine: generously, gorgeously lifting the shades & turning on the lights.
17/17 Take heart. While the virus has us afraid and cornered, Love has something else in mind entirely, if we choose it.
