“These are the times that try [our] souls”
– Thomas Paine
I doubt that he had envisioned COVID-19 when Thomas Payne penned these words in 1776, but as we scan our landscape with a 2020 perspective, we sense that this statement was and is quite prophetic. Our souls (along with our patience, creativity, endurance and hope!) are being tried. As a result our respective worlds have been turned upside down.
I have no great need to identify the many ways those worlds have been affected…nor do you. But to say that ours is a different world than the one given to us at the birth of the new year is an understatement! You can fill in the blanks…
Differences in Effect
I also know that there are those who are “tried” more than I. They are real. They are people of color. They are unemployed or unemployable. They are poor. They are sick, infected and yet untested. They are frail. They are the healthcare providers and first responders of every kind. They are “essential” service providers. They are teachers. They are young and dependent. They are old and equally as dependent. They are homeless, incarcerated, facing mental, emotional, spiritual and physical challenges. They are lonely. And the list goes on. You know that. So do I.
What is inconvenience to me may be life or death to another.
What may change in a week or a month or a year from now for me, may be a life sentence for another.
But even if there are others unnamed, they are not un-thought of. Our complex world has become very small… overnight! “THEY” are not the others…”THEY” are us. We do not act or even think alone, for our thoughts and actions affect those around us, be they in our own household or in countries we cannot identify or even name. We do not think or act alone, for our thoughts and actions have a direct effect on each other. It is not “Them”…it is “Us”
Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots
Payne’s opening is followed by words less familiar but certain in their beauty and truth:
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
I confess my lack of objectivity. I am, by our country’s definition, among the most vulnerable:
I am a senior…seventy two years old
I have a pre-existing health condition…heart disease
I am immuno-compromised…my system cannot fight infection as effectively as many because I take medication due to an organ transplant
Many share this kind of vulnerability. But I hope that I give voice to a larger part of our world… not just the most vulnerable.
Today, in Payne’s terms, is not the day for the “summer soldier” or the “sunshine patriot”. It is a day when we put aside partisan politics and ego. It is a day when those around us must become the recipients of our greatest concern and highest good.
Open up!
Listen up!
Care!
Be safe!
…and be well!
Thom
