I have friends from across the political spectrum, so during these Covid-19 Days, I see some of them who are shaking their fists at the governor and saying they are ready to take their chances with the virus ("Give me convenience or give me death!"), some who are adhering to the restrictions but bitching and moaning their way through every day, some who don't really seem upset about the deal, and some (I shit thee not) who are praying to the Virus, thanking it for the lessons it has taught us.
Yep.
In fact, I have a microcosm of allathat on the home front, as my youngest son wakes up every morning and begins to complain, and asks me when things will be open again at least one hundred times (literally...and I mean that literally) during the course of the day...while my daughter happily listens to Monteverdi in her room, walks the neighborhood with me, reads, and talks to her friends--a group which includes St. Lucy, Christine from Phantom of the Opera, Cosette from Les Miserables, and so forth.
And me? Well, I'm a little bit country and I'm a little bit rock 'n' roll. More country though.
But it seems kind of whiny to me to get really upset about the whole lockdown thing. As I told one of my bitching and moaning friends, "You know, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in a prison cell, and he didn't even have Netflix or grubHub." She was not impressed with this, by the way, but we are still friends.
Kinda sorta.
ANYway...my Crazy Ladies group (actually an Edgar Cayce group I stumbled into (full story available upon request), but I am usually the only male present and though the ladies are very kind, sweet, and etc., they are also without a doubt batshit crazy) has been meeting via Zoom since the Clampdown. At these meetings we do a little meet and greet, a little meditation, a little prayer, and then spend the majority of the time reading from A Search For God...which is basically a book of spiritual reflections based on Cayce's experiences and writings. That's the part that I enjoy the most. (I'm not much of a meditator, and I like to keep my prayers to myself. I do like the chit chat, though.) Put me in a group that wants to read and talk about what they've read, and I'm happy. I don't care what book it is, really.
At our last meeting, one of the participants suggested that we should say a prayer THANKing the Coronavirus for the lessons it has taught us. (As referenced above.) And at the top of this meeting, she read a prayer of that ilk which she had composed.
On the one hand, I marveled at her optimism. On the other hand, I was appalled [(With emphasis.) AP-PALLED.] at the idea of the thing. I mean...to me that's on a level with praying to a concentration camp and thanking it for the lessons IT taught. (Obviously not in degree of extremity, but in terms of how inappropriate such a thing would be.) But I have to admit that her prayer did have some sense to it...though I can't remember the specifics...and of course there is something to be said for attempting to find a lesson even in a horrible, negative experience. Just ask Viktor Frankl.
Anyway...we then proceeded to read from a chapter entitled "The Cross and the Crown"...specifically in the sub-section "Why Must I, as a Soul in a Material Plane, Bear a Cross?" And there's a lot about how you carry The Cross until you overcome it, and then you wear The Crown. And when my turn came to read, I have to admit that I stopped in my tracks after I read this line:
"Shall we evade the cross that is ours to bear, especially at this time when humanity is entering the greatest test period in the history of the world?"
I mean...yowza.
And then I heard a bell ringing in the back of my mind...but I couldn't quite catch the tune. Until this morning, when it hit me:
I'm not saying that this means anything...because I don't think it does. But it is pretty fuckin' weird, isn't it?
The kingdom is ransacked
The jewels all taken back
And the chopper descends
They're hidden in the back
With a message written on a half-baked potato
The spool goes 'round
Sayin' I'm back here in this place
And I could cry....
Joe Strummer and Mick Jones
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