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Back to Work

Just when we have this whole Zoom thing figured out and our home office is neat and clean, it’s time to return to the office.

At least for me. Maureen’s never left her office.

How, I keep asking, with so many things cancelled, can I still be so busy? I am caught between being so grateful that we both have jobs and the strong desire to blow it all off and go for a walk in the middle of the day.

The office will reopen officially in a few weeks and the working from home will slowly subside. I will have to move the papers and files and books from the attic office and dump them back on my “real” desk.

I will take a look at the folders and papers around the office and wonder to myself, “If I haven’t touched them in 15 months, can I just throw them out?”

I will see colleagues I haven’t seen in ages, which is mostly good.

I will take a break from my weekly filming of Mass and return with the family to attend on a regular basis.

Most of all, I will have to find pants that fit.

You see, one thing we all figured out working from home is that you can wear the same sweatpants for a week and just change the top – or not – while you are Zooming across the hemisphere. There are clothes in my closet I have not worn in more than a year, even if I have been going in to the office, on average, once a week.

I have seriously considered wearing a uniform like that rich kid from the Facebook or the guy from Apple, but my ego won’t let me wear the same things over and over. To be fair, I am not sure that’s what they do exactly, but you get the point.

The children are mostly back in school (one in quarantine because a classmate’s parents let their kid go to a party) – and just as they will be released for the summer, I will head back to work.

It will be a nice change of pace, but I know that it will not be the same when I cannot turn off the camera, go grab a snack, and wear clothes that don’t match.

Have a good week – at home, at work – or wherever you are.

 

 

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The Longest Lent

It seems this Lent has lasted longer than most. It seems it might last longer. With the world around us shut down for another month or more, how can we celebrate Easter alone? How can we celebrate the washing of the feet, the veneration of the cross, the Easter fire, when the lights in our churches are turned off and the doors are locked?

Well, we could go back to the beginning.

We could remember that 2,000+ years ago there were no churches like there are today. There was no schedule, there were no livestreams, there were not daily phone calls and meetings reminding us of the distance between us.

There was only fear. Not of a virus, but of persecution for those who had followed the Lord.

And yet they gathered as families and cared for one another.They gathered as small communities and fed one another.

They washed each other’s feet by caring for widows and orphans.

They venerated the cross by remembering the sacrifice they had witnessed – even from afar.

They remembered their experience of the person of Jesus Christ and loved one another as a response.

Yes, Lent will seem long this year. Hope will seem distant. Light will seem weeks away.

But perhaps that is the gift of this pandemic: time to stay close with those who love us most, quarantined with those who love us no matter what. It offers us time to be still – as if we were in the dessert.

We must remember our experience of Jesus and his challenge to us to love one another, forgive one another, serve one another.

It started with an experience of Jesus.

That encounter led to discipleship.

May this experience – this desert experience – do the same.