Pick your favorite joy!

 

Several readers have asked why I appear to have ignored the worldwide pandemic in these blog postings. How do I view the predicament?

I have referred these friends to a recent piece by New York Times opinion columnist Gail Collins whose answer to a similar question was succinctly wrapped in her title: “Pick Your Favorite Anxiety.”

  Her response reminded me of the story about a teacher who held a large sheet of white paper with a black spot on it in front of a class and asked them what they saw. Without exception, the students said, “A black spot.” They took little note of the large sheet of white paper.

      Aren’t most of us like that? We tend to focus on the spots (the anxieties), often missing the bigger picture. Bible history records this tendency and tells of the efforts of inspired teachers and prophets who helped shake human thinking free from self-imposed limitations and find a deeper view of situations.

In my efforts to view the pandemic with greater depth and breadth, I have leaned toward a title such as “Pick Your Favorite Joy,” with an emphasis on the patience and concentration shown in the 1970s by tennis grand slammer Chrissie Evert.

Sports columnist Sally Jenkins recently reminded her readers that at the height of Chrissie’s career, there was never an erratic moment. Never a rash shot. Never an uncontrolled blast—nor a self-pitying bleat of wounded ego. She was always ready to wait to play a winning shot.

  Jenkins recommended that we confront the covidvirus with similar consistency, and with plenty of “inner Evert,” especially when our daily lives are so challenged by unforced errors, recklessness, botched charts, and chaotically bad decisions.

  We could learn a lot about mastery from Chrissie, even though to play the way she once did requires not just patience but persistent schooling.

  “Life is stopped,” Chrissie said in a chat with Jenkins. “It’s a time to think about the things we’ve been avoiding. … We should be getting more clarity.  People have a lot of time to think and reevaluate priorities.”

  High on the list I would put activity with a spiritual impetus. 

The Christian Science Monitor noted that in March the number of Google searches with words such as “prayer” and “God” skyrocketed in 75 countries, confirming people’s need of the deepest comfort.

  The newspaper pointed out that although individual problems may differ in type and scope, the universal truths found through prayer can provide peace and calm to all. Those truths are eternal and accessible.

  And I would endorse them with a swish of my own spiritual racket—because I’m grateful to have proved them in my own life.

  So, this is where I would begin any blog posting in these testing times, striving to establish a patient, prayer-based awareness of the oneness of all of us with God.

  As the Apostle Paul put it: Neither “death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:38, 39).

  Those long-established words of wisdom eloquently and convincingly confirm our true nature as radiant, healthy, individual expressions of Divine goodness, with an ever-deepening concern for the world, and an ever-expanding love for neighbors near and far.

  Most importantly, as I suggested in my choice of title, we’ll exult in the freedom to pick—and share—our favorite joy!