It is Holy Saturday and things are sliding into the new order. Going out to check the mail or take out the trash is a joyful experience, BECAUSE YOU GET TO GO OUT! I will check the mail after I write this, and that will be the high point of my day.
It seems the virus has been rising in Ecuador and it has turned into a literal hell. There are bodies in the streets and the morgues are full. No one can get buried. As Dr. Rieux said in "The Plague", people will fight to the death to not have their loved ones thrown to the sea, as was the case in plagues of Greece. In Ecuador, families are putting the bodies of their dead in their cars and dressing them up as passengers just to get them out of town to bury them. Vultures swarm above to feed on the bodies left in the street. They have run out of wooden coffins and are making cardboard ones. The place smells of death and the infection is only going to get worse.
The more this spreads, the more every single problem of wealth will be shown within the starkest relief of the random equal justice of a virus. The world, so keen to have itself redefined in every way by science and capitalism over the past few hundred years, is now going to be taken to its knees over the course of the next year or two. Science cannot give the immediate cure and seemingly divine salvation that people always thought it could. People are dying from this thing for reasons no one can figure out. The economies of the world are going to have to figure out exactly what to do next as the labor force is going to be slow in coming back and bills will not be paid. There is always the possibility of hype-rinflation and all the turmoil when it comes to visit. We shall see. All we can do is wait.
The service tonight is the highest holy point in the Catholic Church calendar. It has been my favorite service to go to for many years, even though in the past several, I have not been able to go. But that is the way in this New World Disorder.
The Mass tonight, when done almost anywhere, lasts easily over an hour and a half. Most times I ahve been to the Cathedral near here, it was around two hours.The whole service is based on a huge incline of emotion, lighting, and sound. It starts off slow, in the almost dark and then, when the second part kicks in a bit later, the lights go on and the organ and choirs just go bonkers for the Gloria. It is impressive. There is also a huge solemness to the first part that focusses on death and the afterlife.
I remember years ago and being in the pew alone at the cathedral near where I went to high school. One of my former teachers, Brother Robert Ziobro, was doing one of the many readings. That threw me off guard as it was an unexpected visit from my past and it was enough to make me begin to cry. It was mostly for the people I knew that had died the previous years, not to mention a good amount of self pity thrown into the equation. But I was able to hold off until his voice threw me off balance enough to cause the damn to break.
I will watch the Service in a little bit via livestream. It will only be a shallow echo of what I remember feeling and experiencing. The death of my friend a little over a month ago seems like a bad dream that happened decades ago. I hope I get moved a bit by simply watching it. I really do.
So, being here in this quiet house and only able to leave to check the mail does not sound too bad, to only live within the echoes of being within a sacred ritual, to long for the most simple of outside human interaction. This is the other side of the progress everyone has made, the back-slap echo of all the progress that generations thought had no dark side. To be sure, myself and others have reaped the benefits. But now, were are all entwined in the inevitable sorrow.
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