The Roiling Current

If I were to enumerate the number of mistakes I’ve made in these last few weeks, that amount would only be eclipsed by the number of new technological gymnastics I have learned, which would only be further outdone by exponentially galactic quantity of electronic windows I have entered and exited in the last three weeks. Clicking in and out of windows is driving me nuts. The blue light is messing with the synapses in my brain.

The magnetic irony here is that, like many of you, I’m teaching some pretty ancient stuff right now.  Well, maybe not “ancient,” but let’s say “old” anyway. I’m teaching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; it takes place in 44 BC and was written in 1599. So that’s pretty old. I’m sure many of you are in the same proverbial boat, teaching skills and knowledge and discoveries that have been around for bloody ages, through an insufferable blue light portal that you only signed on to, at varying degrees of willingness, a few weeks ago.

I feel like I’m clinging to the ancient stuff because all this new stuff is becoming too much. I’m holding on to what I know while uncertainty abounds. I’m reconciling the comforting and indispensable old world with this innocuous and unavoidable new one.

I’m not impotently fighting this brave new world, but I’m not enthusiastically embracing it either. I’m just acknowledging it. It’s like a confluence of rivers.

My daughter got sad this week. I told her to call her grandmother. By the end of the conversation, these two women -- these two beautiful bookends in my life -- had each other in stitches, their laughter trickled through the house like a rippling stream.

And now we alight upon that Season which represents the ultimate convergence of opposites: a reconciliation of death and life, of Judaism and Christianity, of what was ancient to what is … next, adjacent, concurrent. The roiling current.

So here is my ending prayer: This Easter, I wish you a deep dive into the rivers of your life. May all the comfy traditions and all the sparkly novelties flow together in river of agelessness. May it wash over you, your children and grandchildren, your parents and grandparents.

Blessed Easter, my friends.east

John 7:38