As I start writing this o the East Coast, NYC in under something of a lockdown. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut are still SORTA open for business, but the traffic on Rt 1 at midday is like a 12 inch snow fall in January....with no snow on the ground in sight or memory.
There is talk on social media of sleeping in, like every single day is now the weekend, This makes sense, as churches in the area have closed due to the fear of communal inflection. The alternate, and way more popular religion, sports, has also closed shop. I remember hearing an announcer say that Bull Riding was still going on. Okay. Fine. I once has a long chat with a bull rider waiting for a plane in Texas. Lovely young fellow. Totally respect his chosen profession. However, from my place on the east coast of America, no one, and I mean NO ONE, has ever spoken about watching bull riding here.
With God and sports both being on vacation, we have been left adrift to wonder the fate of the actual moment. Those of us who pray can still incantate hope of a better future as we have no idea what will happen next. To those who had a more immediate answer to future hopes in sports, well,.... I got nothing.
In the book "The Plague" by Albert Camus, the soccer stadiums of Oran were turned into quarantine stations. Camus had a deep love for soccer, which he played almost professionally before being taken out of the game due to his lung issues. For him to talk about a soccer stadium as a place for people in quarantine from the Black Plague would be like me taking about a music school used as a MASH Hospital. The emotions run rough and ragged for him when it comes to soccer.
In the book, Camus has a character by the name of "Fr. Paneloux" be a voice of religion in the plague ridden town. On the whole, the Jesuit priest joins the volunteers and helps with the plague, knowing full well what is at risk. In fact, he is first introduced helping out the first character in the book with the plague, M. Michel, the concierge of the building where Dr. Rieux lives. Paneloux, for the most part, thinks of the plague in theological terms of punishment by God as shown by his first sermon at a catholic Mass for men at the beginning of the outbreak. But it is watching a boy die of plague with most of main characters alongside him, that he has a change of heart and has to deal with the unexplainable suffering and death of an innocent child. After that, Paneloux, joins the volunteers to help with the plague, his conversion making him take action.
I am going to guess that I am like most people in that I have never seen what this virus does face to face. The numbers that are screamed from the news are just numbers...
...and rarely do abstract numbers cause a conversion.
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