OVER THE PAST few years, especially during our nation’s way too longstanding run of “Lockdown” and its simultaneous spin-offs “Cooking in the Time of COVID”, “Monetizing Your Hobbies”, and “Stuck Online”, being comfortable with media and platforms for the decrepit/aged/me — like Facebook and Twitter, but not Instagram (I can hear the cries already, “Ok, Boomer.” Guilty and proud of my fuddy-duddyness, so there!) — has actually been a comfort for me.
In the age of COVID, being an introvert was a passport to happiness, let me tell you. And no, I do not want you to tell about how I’m not really an introvert. Believe me, I’m noisy but I run away and hide sometimes. Once, I spent an entire summer or two in the suburbs of Chicago reading Gothic novels and lady’s romances downstairs in a basement while hiding from my bored brother who saw me more as entertainment rather than as a sibling. It was somewhat musty in my parents’ basement, but it sure was peaceful.
Then and now, I learned all about yeast and sourdough, and twice realized that while keeping a nice fresh sourdough starter was, as many sourdough enthusiasts have noted in their picture book blogs, a life long commitment, not a date. They seem proud of their ongoing affair with fungus. I, on the other hand, forgot to feed my starter for a month because I could not eat even one more waffle, not ONE, and it took three cleanings of the container to get that certain pencillin sidenote out of my poor Rubbermaid pitcher.
Side note to food writers: Always include a link to the darn recipe right after your byline. Otherwise it can only be reached after scrolling through 17 huge pics. Please. Your dear readers are busy. I just want to know how to make homemade yoghurt. Also, while you have time on your hands, find out how to reduce the file size and resolution of your images, so my hubby doesn’t need to cry out from downstairs, “Honey, the internet’s down again,” because I am waiting for pics to load… line… by… line … by line. I mean, we have cable, ok? But don’t push me!
Oh, I’m sorry, I digress. My apologies.
Actually, I take that back. I don’t apologize.
And I do digress, because digression is both an effect of our current plague, but also a survival mechanism.
On the one hand, as many folks have noted, it’s just really hard to focus on things these days, to keep that intellectual sharp-focus thing working.
I literally had to get a side job to get out of the house, just to get moving. That’s why I was sleeping until one or two in the afternoon, until hunger forced me to change my plans to lie around forever, or at least supper.
And I note that as I listen to other folks — something I am really good at — I use a lot of energy just to keep track of the narrative, partially because, like so many of us now, I feel a bit of lack of focus but also because, apparently so do folks around me.
We’re always asking each other for clarification: “Wait. Are you talking about Joe? Or Jane? And was this the spring trip or the winter trip?”
I don’t know that God always wants us rational.
Aristotle defined humanity as “the animal that thinks,” but God made us in their image.
In her “The Mind of the Maker,” Dorothy Sayer argued that the idea of being created in God’s image was that God creates, just like we do — novels we read, paintings with oil, acrylic and watercolor on paper, canvas and glass; plays with actors and audiences.
True. We do that. But we also digress. We don’t stay in focus.
After all these years, and the possibility of another season of “The COVID Show” upon us, maybe we don’t have to sell our crafts — but just plain be, letting our minds roam a bit.
To stay focused takes energy, and that has its place in religious life. But maybe the kind of conversation where you just roam all over the decades, digressing right and left and here and there, maybe that has its place, too.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. The Rev. Dr. Keith Dorwick is a Deacon at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Port Angeles/St. Swithin’s Episcopal Church, Forks.
