Day 17: We still okay.
Hi, and welcome to Day 17. How do things look out your window today? Hit reply or email me at hi@lauraolin.com.
Marguerite S. wrote in about how her family’s Slack channel is helping them all through this time:
We've had a family slack as our family chat for a few months now: this includes not only my husband and out siblings, but parents and aunts and uncles on both sides. We have channels for videogames, family trips, discussions of the Kingkiller Chronicles, and pictures of food (#monches). My grandma is on it too, and checks it sometimes on her iPad (I get very excited when she posts, which is rare, and so, gold). Since Covid-19 hit, posting frequency on the #famchat has increased dramatically. What I want to share is that today my father in law learned how to create his first slack channel. Here it is:
Matt P. related a part of his religious practice he’s been thinking about lately:
"... the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns."There is a Christian worship service called Tenebrae, celebrated once a year on the Wednesday before Easter. It's one of my favorite parts of the church calendar. It includes a variety of psalms, spoken or sung, and readings that emphasize sorrow, loss, destruction, and death. The Lamentations of Jeremiah are here. The Song of Hezekiah, too: "In the noontime of my life I must depart; my unspent years are summoned to the portals of death." (Isaiah 38:10)
At the start of the service, a series of candles are lit at the front of the church. As it continues, one at a time they are extinguished, until only one is left.
It is hidden. There is a great noise (our priest shakes a metal sheet, a horrible flexing and rending sound.) Then the candle is returned to the altar and the people leave in silence.
And Elley shared a Mary Oliver poem that happens to be one of my favorites. (My partner and I had a friend read it at our wedding.)
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
“There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.”
The world has always been ending. What will you do—to borrow another Mary Oliver line—with your one wild and precious life before it does?
Send ideas, stories, and observations to hi@lauraolin.com.
See you on Friday, otherwise known as Day 15. 🌸