Pandemic Parables: Moving

Pandemic Parables: Moving

We are indeed on the move at the hospital in Frederick, Maryland where I’m working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August. In the middle of a pandemic a large building project is taking place in the area where the chaplains' offices are situated. 

Were situated. 

With only hours of notice our office had to be vacated. We needed to move into a temporary space, effectively a corridor surrounded by tall - but not nearly ceiling high - office dividers. 

There were ever-changing messages about this transition; what would come with us; what would be put in storage; where was our final destination; and when that would be. Many things are still uncertain. At least they are to me and my fellow chaplains. 

This past week has felt as though we are in a carnival sideshow precariously shuffling across a series of interlocking circles that are constantly shifting. All the while we are holding high trays piled with serious chaplaincy and visitation duties, like stoic religious waiters. 

Needless to say we have been doing a lot of extra praying for peace, grace, and the ability to hold it all together with equanimity. 

The other day, needing to shed stress, I couldn’t wait for my lunchtime walk around the beautiful, eerily empty grounds of Hood College, which is right behind the hospital. It was seventy five degrees, one of our first warm days. There was a tornado advisory - but that wasn’t due to start for over an hour. 

I headed out the door. 

The sky began to darken. I walked faster. The clouds became ominous. I increased my pace and my prayers. Fifteen minutes into a thirty minute walk the heavens opened and let loose a deluge that was biblical in intensity. I arrived back at the hospital front entrance dripping like a just bathed labradoodle, much to the hilarity of the security officers. 

I squished through the hallways towards our new office space to get my car keys, leaving a slug-like shiny wet trail behind me, all the while apologizing profusely to every cleaner I passed. 

I live close to the hospital. Every article I wore was soaked. There was no alternative but to change. As I drove home the skies cleared. The sun came out. Had there really been been a tremendous downpour minutes before?

There was a parcel outside my door. I buy many of my clothes second hand on eBay. A new to me maxi skirt had arrived that matched the jewelry I was already wearing. Here was my sartorial solution!  Within minutes I was dressed in fresh clothes from the skin up, had dried my hair, and was on my way back to work, hardly over my allotted lunch time. The sun was still shining and did so for the rest of the day. 

And I got several compliments on my new skirt. 

The whole incident had me thinking ahead to when the intensity of the pandemic has passed. Even beyond then, when this unsettling season has slipped into distant memory. 

Will it seem like a dream? 

As though it never really happened? 

But like me, glancing down at my new skirt and being reminded of the downpour, we will have changed. 

No one will come through this mass trauma the same. 

But I am believing that, like the parcel waiting for me outside the door containing exactly what I needed, that the Almighty will continue to provide and protect.

And because of that, although the future will look different, it will be good.