Sunday, April 24, 2022
After Easter
Lent and Advent are such distinctive parts of the liturgical year. Often I have reveled in the depth of meaning that comes with those rhythms.
But... COVID seems to have thrown everything off, including that. I wouldn't say that my faith is diminished in any way, but it's undeniable that my attachment to some of the things that have been a part of my faith seem faded. Easter didn't seem to inspire emotion in me the way that it usually does.
Recently, I had a bad bout of COVID myself-- even after three shots and mostly being careful. But it got me anyways, and when it did, it got me good.
Some people describe a loss of taste and smell when they got COVID, but that wasn't exactly what I experienced. Instead, it just seemed like things tasted different (once I got back to eating after a few days of abstaining). I would look down at my bowl of Grape-Nuts, this breakfast I have eaten since I was a kid, and in just tasted.... strange. The milk wasn't sour. I don't think it is possible for Grape-Nuts to get stale (they kind of start out that way). And yet, they tasted like something completely unfamiliar. Not bad, necessarily, but it was unsettling, like finding out that your car had changed color on its own somehow.
The pandemic seems to have done something like that with these markers of my faith.
How does one recover from that?
