Good Friday in a Sad Time

I've been thinking about how it's a season without festivals. Religious festivals remain on the calendar but we strain to make them festive. Arts festivals are canceled outright. Conferences and symposia are not always festive, but some can take on the air of celebration---but not this year.

I'm writing on Good Friday. It's nearly impossible to feel it. There is already so much grief and fear, reliving the Passion of Christ seems redundant at best or sadness porn at worst. Golgotha seems too far away or else too near and might even be seen as a mockery of what we're experiencing. We know what happens on the first day of the week, a recovery that we Christians hope for but know won't come so soon.

Some politicians, like my senior senator, want to emphasize the numbers of recovery, the percentage who do not die, which is a nice attempt at keeping positive. He's not exactly wrong, this virus isn't a death sentence, but for those who die, being in that minority isn't much of a comfort. But politicians don't often seem to be in the business of comfort these days.

Last weekend, I walked to the neighborhood CVS. On the way, I saw a woman looking up and down the street then looking at her phone. She saw me coming and stepped off the sidewalk to let me pass and I smiled and nodded as I made an arc around her. I few steps past her, I saw a car in a driveway with a woman waving from it. I looked back to the woman I'd passed and we immediately switched roles. I stepped off the sidewalk and she made an arc around me. I followed several steps behind until she stopped and talked/yelled to the car. "Let me go get my mask and gloves and I'll be right back!" The other woman said/yelled, "Okay, I'll be right here!" I decided to cross the street there (no traffic at that moment). Uber or Lyft, I decided was the story. I pondered my lack of mask or gloves.

At the CVS, I gathered up a few things and went to the cash register. The cashier was a friendly guy, jovial even. He made small talk easily, and even when chatting about the pandemic, it sounded like casual small talk. He ended each transaction, including mine, with "Stay sane and safe."

Mask and gloves. Sane and safe. It was the last day I left my apartment without a mask, makeshift as it is. I don't have any gloves, though. Those are harder to do makeshift. I need to make a run tomorrow, maybe I'll look for something then.

I feel ridiculous in my mask. Or absurdly dangerous. I look like a bandit from the old west. They say I'm protecting others, more than I'm protecting myself. Fair enough. How would one know if one is asymptomatic or not? I don't have symptoms, but it seems "asymptomatic" only really fits if you should have symptoms.

I end up playing word games. Is it surreal or absurd? Either/or/both/neither.

Jesus was crucified "today." Out of the hundreds (thousands?) of people crucified by the Romans, The overwhelming majority stayed dead (so far). By my conservative estimate (I could find little data on numbers crucified, though one site says "thousands upon thousands," seems like internet hyperbole), somewhere between .1 to .02 percent of people crucified by the Romans resurrected.

Other causes of death have an even lower percentage.

The odds, it seems, are against us. But what is hope without impossible odds?

So far, my association with confirmed cases of covid-19 is no closer than 2 degrees of separation. That's confirmed cases. There is also the supposed case that is recovered, but never got bad enough to warrant testing--that one would be one degree. What are the odds that I'll get through this (first wave) without a confirmed case of someone I know personally? They have a 90-something percent chance of survival. If 100 people I know become confirmed cases, how will the 2, 3, 4 (depending on the news story) get chosen for not surviving? The odd thing about odds is that for or against you, if you die, you die. That the odds were for you doesn't really help at that point.

These are odd Good Friday thoughts. I'm sure there's no inspiration or edification in them. There was a time that I spend hours in a church on Friday afternoon. I wish I could have done that today.

I live in hope to be able to do it another year. I live in hope that there will be festivals again.