Strange Peace

 It almost seems surreal,

Those days and months when the world shut down.

The last thing we did at school before sending our students home was to celebrate Pi Day.

Today is Pi Day.

Today we hold a friendly competition to see which student can memorize the most numbers of Pi.

The winner gets to pie administration in the face.

The excitement of pieing our current principal in the face was the excitement that we left school with on that Friday two years ago.

I have often wondered when that excitement will return. 

Maybe today is the day?

Maybe today is one more step toward “normal?”

Then again, what is normal anyway?

 

With as much fear as pervaded society in those early days of Covid,

There was an equal amount of strange peace.

With less human travel and gas use, the earth began to heal itself a bit,

And people’s souls began to rest.

The rest wasn’t easy for many of us because we’d forgotten how to be still,

And yet there we were, many of us,

Still:

Activities cancelled,

Games sidelined,

Family gatherings postponed,

Restaurants closed, and

Church meetings halted.

We were suddenly forced to stay home,

To make new games,

To create new ways of connecting,

To cook new meals, and

To worship with new expression.

 

Those of us in the education world scrambled to adjust—

We made the unheard-of switch to online learning—

And we were applauded as heroes as people began to realize just how difficult the education world really is.

 

There was, in so many ways, strange peace.

 

But now?

As life returns back to “normal,”

We are far from peace.

Teachers (amongst others) are doubted, scrutinized, questioned, and disrespected through conduct and lack of pay

And life has sped back up,

Expecting us to keep up while

Nursing the whiplash that we received two years ago.

 

Pi is an infinite number.

God is in infinite God.

I don’t understand either

And yet I believe in the latter as the creator of strange peace.

 

Dear God: Grant us strange peace today. Amen.