COVID-19 crisis puts us in ‘the place beyond words’
Where are we? What day is this? Those questions are never simple as they seem, but rarely do they defy adequate responses so thoroughly as today. Some of our calendars have us entering a “holy week” in which we remember a gruesome death, and soon after a surprise resurrection. Commemorations will look different this year, although we’ll hear plenty about terrible deaths. Celebrating new life will be the hard part. Most of us merely want someone to roll away the stone so we can escape this nightmare and have our old lives back.
That won’t happen anytime soon. We’ve just now entered the darkest, deadliest stretch of the pandemic tunnel medical experts have forecast for several weeks now. Where exactly does that leave us? Does this place have a name?
We could aptly name it a state of confusion. In a circumstance when sound, expert advice and timely decisiveness mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands, we have a cacophony of conflicting, competing voices demanding our attention and partly ordering our days. Some have credentials, some don’t, and all claim authority and expertise.
For example, the elusive, not-quitegeneral consensus on wearing masks leaves many of us befuddled. Don’t buy them. Absolutely don’t hoard them. Leave them for professionals. They can’t protect against this virus anyway. Then again, they might thwart contagion, so everyone should wear masks in public. Here’s how to make your own from a T-shirt. Some medical experts have solemnly warned us not to take ibuprofen for COVID-19 symptoms. Other authorities scoff at such alarms. What should we peons do? Flip a coin, perhaps, and give thanks no one has yet recommended leeches, bleeding, or Carter’s Little Liver Pills. And how do we think about those who defy stay-at-home orders, or consider the entire pandemic a hoax?
Doctors and nurses in Coronavirus hotspots have likened their surroundings to war zones, and indeed, video clips from New York hospitals resemble modernized MASH scenes, but without the jokes. National Guard units have constructed massive hospital units in convention centers and sports arenas. Soon, people who have spent careers attempting to save lives will be forced to decide who dies and who gets a chance to live. The whole scenario has all the marks of war, and yet, wars usually unite those who fight on the same side, and war efforts generally put everyone to work. This time, arming for battle has exacerbated our sorest divisions and put millions out of work. Like every smart virus, this enemy dupes us into becoming its allies.
My state of bewilderment suggests a place name. We have entered a wilderness, a strange, unruly place where no one expects to land and in which few have practiced survival or staying sane. Ancient literature abounds with stories of wilderness sojourns, none more instructive than the Bible’s long narrative of Israel’s journey from bondage to freedom. There, the word for wilderness means literally “the place beyond words.” It not only defies description, our old categories and ways of thinking no longer work there. So, we murmur, complain, turn on each other, sue the leaders who brought us here. Mostly, we beg to go back, but we cannot.
One by one, those folks died on the journey, but their children made it, thanks to rations along the way they dubbed “manna,” Hebrew for,
“What’s that?” The answer? Enough. Whatever else could be said about it, it provided enough patience, strength, hope, and sustenance, just barely, for one day at a time.
It’s all we have as well. But it is what it is — enough.
Frederick Niedner is a Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.