When my children were young, we had a strict screen time of one hour on computer and one on TV. TV time could be expanded if someone wanted to watch a pre-approved movie, which we played on a VCR. So easy to impose at the time—one TV with no cable hook-up and one computer, no cellphones. That’s what we and pediatric professionals advised at the time.

In this day, at this time, such limited screen time is laughable and even dangerous. Screens are the ways we will maintain our connections and relationships as we willingly socially distance to keep ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our healthcare workers free of COVID-19. Are screens better than in person meetings? Today, at this time, the answer is absolutely “yes.” You may not feel them to be satisfying, but the feeling we are going for in these days is something different. The feelings we are going for are “safety” and “connected” and “grateful.” In the poem below (the one that did not show up last night in the congregational letter!), our Unitarian Universalist minister the Reverend Lynn Unger urges us to think of this time as “Sabbath,” as sacred and set aside time for connecting to our deepest longings and our sense of ultimate wonder. And so I urge you, to slow down as much as you can and to foster gratitude for all the goodness and grace that continues to be possible: love, laughter, the greening Earth, people to care for and people to care.

Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Hold this Sabbath time in your hearts and minds as often as you can, as you remember, today and every day, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, and may it be so. Amen and Amen.

Blessings, Rev. Rita