We will keep the lamp burning

DEAR EDITOR:

To be awake before everything else is a quiet pleasure. For weeks now, I have woken up several hours before dawn, my internal alarm going off, and I sit outside in the dark silence. It’s when I can hear myself best and reason things out most clearly. The air is cool and fresh, and it seems like oxygen is more breathable in this very early part of the day.

There is anticipation about what today will bring. More bad news, more death, more testing positive, more loss-numbers and numbers and numbers going up and up and up and then up some more, leaving us feeling numb and hopeless. Yes all those things will come today.

But there are good things begging to be acknowledged over the deafening state of affairs. There is a hopeful voice to be heard, about an eternal certainty, over these most uncertain times. It is OUR voice.

Neighbors looking after their neighbors, strangers lending out dwindling resources, heroes willing to lay down their lives in caring for someone else’s.

It’s in the video chats of distant friends, the phone calls of moms and dads and grandparents, the checking in on each other. It’s in the brilliance of ingenuity, all these inventive new ways that we choose to create and reach one another with our gifts and talents.

The human spirit begs to be a comfort, ever standing firm against adversity. There will always be the bad news, and we must, individually, grapple with that, process and grieve the present and oncoming change ... but there will also always be US working together to preserve one another- and WE are the oil that will keep the lamp burning in the midnight hour.

Stay safe, use wisdom, and let’s continue to commit each day to flattening the curve.

Olivia Gunn

Rome