“Stuck at home”
stuck: “mired, glued, compelled, resolutely adhered, halted, saddled disagreeably”
home: “one’s place of residence, domicile, habitat”
How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity! (Psalm 133:1)
A bevy of new and resurrected words and phrases have pinned themselves to the pandemic elephant, who has been rampaging through our terminological garden the past 12 months. Here are ten of my favourites:
My first degree was in history. I was educated at the University of York in England by professors who were by and large resolutely unimpressed by notions of human progress. In one introductory lecture on the medieval period the question put before us was why Europe in 1550 was so much more fragmented, insecure, and less prosperous than it had been in 1250. And although they did not say so directly, others who were specialists in the early middle ages consistently gave the impression that England before 1066 was a much more interesting and innovative place than England after it.
Recognizing that everyone interested in pursuing theological studies is a beginner at one point, Wycliffe College faculty put together a list of rudimentary books that would be helpful for someone starting their theological studies.
The pandemic has brought forth many questions about how we conduct our lives. We have been forced to re-examine our patterns of living, attitudes, and behaviour and begun to think anew about the very nature of work and its concomitant, recreation, or leisure. We are posing fundamental questions such as: What is leisure? How do we define it? Is leisure the mere absence of work? Is it simply doing nothing and making a deliberate choice to be lazy? Is leisure meant to fulfill human needs just so that one can return to work or study refreshed?
The word lenten, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me, is older than the word Lent. In Old English lenten was in fact a noun, and it meant simply “spring.” Later it became the favored term for the forty-day period of fasting and penitence between Ash Wednesday and Easter, symbolic of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness after his baptism. Eventually the word got shortened and became Lent; and now (through one of those curious transformations that mark the history of language) the older noun has become the adjective.
My wife Annette and I own several charcoal and wash drawings by a wonderful artist, Churchill Davenport. We acquired them when we were married in the late 1980’s. Davenport was a parishioner in the Brooklyn church where I worked, and had become involved in our experiment at having daily Morning Prayer in the church sanctuary at 7:30 a.m., joining with six or seven pilgrims, as it were, in the journey of scriptural devotion. He was a young man then, and the experience had a conversionary effect on him. He not only found the faith of his childhood revivified, but his art as well.
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
What a shock, the first time someone spoke those words over me at an Ash Wednesday service. No one had ever touched my face and told me I was going to die. Something about it was clarifying, even freeing. I was cut down to size: I was just a creature, not the god I’ve sometimes wished. Still, the moment passed and I was happy to forget the dust and ashes.
I was first introduced to renowned abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and feminist biblical commentator Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) at a birthday party held in her honor at Yale Divinity School. I encountered Stanton again when my research interests turned to recovering forgotten women interpreters of the Bible. I remember how excited I was the day I found her exposition of the Ten Commandments that was buried in her 1860 political speech meant to rouse New Yorkers to act on behalf of slaves.
To say that COVID-19 has brought many unwanted challenges into our lives is a blindingly obvious statement. We are weary of the isolation and loneliness. Our worry about the future and the wellbeing of those who are most vulnerable to the virus is a relentlessly heavy burden. The losses are staggering. We struggle daily with the loss of choice about what we can do, where we can go, and who we can see in person.
Where I grew up, in southern Pennsylvania, Groundhog Day was a big thing. For weeks before February 2, the papers, the broadcasters asked: would the groundhog—who had a name, Punxatawny Phil, from Punxatawny, Penn.—see his shadow? Were we in for another six weeks of winter, or was Spring, and light and life, around the corner? (That was a question of course that only made sense in southern Pennsylvania, and in Germany whence came the settlers in the 1700s who brought Groundhog Day with them, where winter could conceivably be over by March. Not so much here in the great white north).
