Daily Connector | Embodiment | Sarah Werner
During this extended sabbatical from normal life, I’ve been finding myself thinking a lot about my body and about what it feels like to truly be embodied, a fragile being made of mud and stardust. Though no two bodies are alike, my body is not like many bodies in the way I move through the world. My body, like all bodies, is constantly changing—growing, evolving, sloughing old skin. My shins get bonier and sharper every year, while my arms have become slightly hulk-ish from pushing myself around in everyday life and wheelchair racing. I have felt pretty ambivalent about this, lamenting the things I have lost but also celebrating my strength in other ways. For the most part, I’ve just forged ahead into new activities and a different mode of being. I hadn’t until recently stopped to sit with how it feels to be in this particular body. One of
Daily Connector | A List of Things I’ve Seen During COVID-19 | Joel Call
A man who walks in circles around the block at the food pantry where I work. I see him most days. Some days I say hello. A 40% increase in the number of new families we’ve been serving at the pantry. Lots and lots of canned goods. Shelf-stable food. Laundry detergent. Personal care items. Toilet paper. Hundreds and hundreds of boxes. Hundreds and hundreds of boxes we will fill with canned goods, shelf-stable food, personal care items, and toilet paper. I walk in a circle filling these boxes wearing a mask. Most often 90 a day. Sometimes I finish walking in circles filling these boxes and walk outside and see my friend walking in circles and I say hello. A woman with five children at the pantry because she and her husband and her brother and her brother’s girlfriend, who have their own kids, are “all
Daily Connector | Kick the Can | Jim Myers
Matthew 19:14 but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” The Twilight Zone was one of my favorite TV programs in the 1960’s. Except for his ever present dangling cigarette, I continue to admire Rod Serling (1924 – 1975), the Antioch College graduate who created and directed the series and wrote many of the episodes. Perhaps my favorite episode is “Kick the Can”. In the story, one nursing home resident tries to convince his friend from the home to join him in a game of kick the can with neighborhood children. The friend is old and afraid and refuses to join. After a period of time, with the hour getting late, the fearful friend went looking for his friend, but couldn’t find him. All he could find were children playing Kick the Can. On Saturday, my
Daily Connector | Blessed | Ryan Schellenberg
My apocalypse has been strangely tranquil. At first I thought it was the calm before the storm. And maybe it will be. But for now, at least, life at our home feels like a sort of extra-long weekend, each day at least part Saturday, unhurried. Shedding the kids’ activities, our social engagements, half of Susan’s work—it’s made family life more spacious even if geographically our range has shrunk. When I look back on this month, I’ll recall family game nights, baseball with the kids in the backyard, walks around the neighborhood, teaching the kids to knead bread dough. (Don’t get the wrong idea. Life with a five- and a six-year-old involves plenty of exasperation too—but I do suspect it’s the sweet moments I’ll remember.) I don’t get as much work done from home. But I do get to look up and watch the kids on the swings or splashing in
Daily Connector | New Normal | Dan Halterman
A favorite from my list of quotes is Wordsworth’s “Tell me, what has become clear to you since we last met?” It seems so perfectly invitational and is still classy after 200 years of war, famine, disease, manipulation – the normal state of humanity. A news article from a month ago described Washington’s nervousness about the economic cost of the pandemic as Congress with abnormal civility quickly passed the $2 trillion rescue bill that acknowledges “the fragility of the systems that sustain American life” and “the complacency of a decade of … perpetually rising stock markets.” My good friend and former coworker, retired to his native Dominican Republic, describes “watching the pandemic shake our estructuras ficticias (fictitious social structures).” Combining those two messages presents to many for the first time a view of “fragility of the fictitious systems that sustain American life.” That cannot be a great comfort with first
