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While On Pause...

Craig Case

The world has hit the pause button. Our "stay home" isolation has brought a jarring stop to our assumed routines. Like a surprise guest, it has come in. We can watch the clock until it leaves or welcome it. I choose the latter. I hope you will to.

It's quiet here. I now realize what my springer spaniel experiences each day. And much to my amazement, it's wonderful. So wonderful. But maybe yours is not so quiet as you're now surrounded by little ones. Little ones who seem to suck the oxygen out of you. Yet in the midst of this, you notice there are distinct moments where the quiet of life grabs you.

Absent are days, and often weeks, of exhausting meetings and urgent to-do's. Surely there's work to be done, but it's different. Much different. The pace has slowed like the grating halt of earth's rotation.

I feel like I've jumped into a DeLorean, pressed the gas pedal to 88, and landed in the early 1900's where one's daily focus was on the essential needs - not the wants. It seems like this pandemic has refined our lives to what really matters, the essence of living and how we ought to live.

I watched a video from a drone the other day which zoomed across the serene, cloudless, blue skies revealing the empty parks, vacant malls, and deserted downtown. Yet as I walked around my neighborhood, I observed droves of people - alone or with others - biking and walking and talking. I even noticed several smiles.

In my five decades of existence, I've never seen this. You haven't too. Is this the new way of life in the 21st century?

I overheard someone at the grocery store who spoke of her physical distancing (I think the term "social" distancing is a misnomer) from me and others and spoke through her secure facial mask to her daughter, also with a mask evidently homemade from a spectacular lavender cloth, "Don't worry honey, this is the new normal".

I don't think it is. Maybe for the short-term.

This temporary time-out, the "new normal", affords us opportunities herewith that have been obviously ignored or discarded. Like walks. Long walks.

I recall the Wisconsin of my youth. It was as if Eden existed just beyond our front porch. Acres upon acres of woods and fields. It was an adventure just waiting for me, I just had to walk to find it. I spent immeasurable hours in search of it afoot - and much of the time, I found it.

Yet the adventure was not where I ended up but what I experienced along the way. Like being alone.

Being alone with my thoughts was invaluable. Maybe I won't be the star football player as my brother. That's alright. What if I don't gain the attention of others like my best buddy, Joe. That's OK. Perhaps my folks won't acquire all of the stuff that family has - we were just happy to have new clothes for school in the fall - that's fine.

And being alone with my memories was life-giving. Like St. John who wrote that if he logged every detail of the life of our Lord there would not be enough books in the world to contain them, and if I tried to describe all of the memories that floated through my mind as I traveled the many fields and streams on our farm, there would not be enough paper to contain them. There was one memory that mind would inevitably go back to, a memory that came to me on a walk yesterday - summer mornings with my many cousins at my grandparents' house in south Minneapolis. The aroma of Grandpa Case's pancakes wafting from the small kitchen and penetrating our morning sleep; springing us up from our cramped sleeping area in the living room. Although that room possessed the only air conditioning in the house, we quickly abandoned it for breakfast. Grandpa's breakfast. And I haven't tasted better pancakes since.

So take this time, this moment of life to see, grab onto, and experience the beautiful elements of life that have far too long eluded us because of our busyness or lack of attention. You never know - you may never have this chance again. Welcome the quiet where you can find it and soak in the minutes and hours with your kids, your spouse - or just yourself.

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