Remember, this is NOT normal

I drove down Perth’s main street last Spring, soon after we all started flattening the curve. As I fumbled around for my mask I noticed a sign in front of the store that said, “Ready for the new normal.” To be clear, I was glad they were taking steps to protect their customers and I understood their desire to put shoppers at ease…but I hated that sign. I still do. I mean, let’s prepare to welcome customers during these unusual circumstances, let’s do what’s needed to survive this pandemic but let’s not call it normal. This isn’t normal, I thought to myself.

Now, more than a year on, I am shocked by how normal it feels. My six year old hardly remembers a time before COVID and introverts in my life say they’re anxious about coming out from behind their laptops and out from their homes as the vaccine rollout ramps up. Online school/church/ exercise classes/family reunions/funerals/weddings/dating/parenting have suited some of us just fine.

Look, there are many good things to carry forward from the last year, but isolation and physical distancing are not among them. So I want to affirm what I never dreamed would need affirming:

• That it is good and normal for families and friends to share a meal together, indoors.

• It is good and normal to invite two hundred people to witness our vows and celebrate the love that binds with song and dance.

• It is good and normal to congregate in sacred spaces with likeminded individuals to watch a movie, attend the theatre, visit a gallery or to worship God.

• It is good and normal for preschoolers to learn to play, fight over and share the same toys at the same time.

• It is good and normal for sixth grade band classes to blow, screech, spit and clatter a joyful and dissonant noise down the hallways of their schools.

• It is good and normal to sit shoulder to shoulder with thousands of sports fans, to belt out the national anthem and loudly cheer for your team.

• It is good and normal to high-five strangers on your way home when your team pulls out the the gold medal win in overtime.

• It is good and normal to have loved ones gather when a baby is born. To pass them from loving arms to loving arms and for elderly women to stroke their cheeks with a wistful look in their eyes.

• It is good and normal to visit our loved ones in the hospital and to pile into their rooms for their final moments.

• It is good and normal for hundreds of mourners to queue up to comfort the family of the dearly departed – with unmasked faces and undistanced embraces.

This is how it has been for millennia. And, God willing, this is how it will be again.

But to call this normal, now, is to abandon despairing folks to their hopelessness. It lessens the courage to fight by obscuring the end goal. And it ignores that these good and normal things are the necessary sacrifice required from a courageous generation to bring us back once more to all that is truly good.

But then again…maybe “Ready for this temporary state of being” just didn’t fit as nicely on their sign.

Love one another well. Stay safe. Until we meet again.