This article was originally published on May 16th, 2020.

As we make our way through this challenging time, I have a sense we are all focussing on change and what the future holds. Because our current situation is unprecedented in modern times, it gives rise to doubt in many forms. I certainly experienced doubts about my own responses. Encouraged by one of Fr. Simon’s recent homilies, I turned over my doubts to the Lord. In Him, all things are possible. I love the idea of making a dead end into a doorway. Instead of thinking about what can’t be, I began considering what can be.

Fr. Alex further encouraged my responseto this pandemic. He suggested that “a defective perspective needs a perspective corrective.” Maintaining a pre-COVID-19 perspective was obviously defective. I needed to find a new vantage point to see and adjust to current circumstances. He caused me to consider that despair and hope are two sides of the same coin. How am I looking at things? Is the glass half full or half empty? How would it all look if I were 100 metres in the air? I’m staying on the hope side of the coin.

Here are some correctives that occurred to me. Sadly, isolation can separate me from people I like to hang out with. On the other hand, isolation also separates me from the busyness of the daily grind, the self- perpetuating routine. Isolation can look like the deprivation of my ‘normal’ stuff. Or, it can look like a respite, some time off from being caught up in the swirl.

Quiet, even silence, can seem like someone has turned off my entertainment and my flow of information. Or it can look like an opportunity to go deeper within myself, to not rely on being stimulated by media, but to be focused on what lies deep within me.

The constant updating of new cases of COVID-19 and further deaths caused me to think about mortality: my life and the lives of my loved ones. This life is finite. I began to ask, “Am I using mine in the best way possible? With no waste?” Reflecting can reveal both how I may be stuck and how I might grow.

Quite often over these past several weeks I have heard people say, “When things get back to normal.” I have thought about it too, but recently I think more about what the ‘new normal’ might look like. How will our world be different? We have been forced to pause and think about just about everything, so I think we will see greater intentionality in the future. There will be a lot less life lived on autopilot.

I have also heard people say that “God has our attention, and He is inviting us to consider new directions, and to make some course corrections.” I agree, and have a sense we will respond in some amazing ways.

Anxiety elicits a variety of responses in me. Over these past weeks, my initial anxiety has gradually become an anxious anticipation of how our world might change for the better. The care and compassion I have witnessed daily gives me hope that the way we see each other will make kindness the new normal. I’m hopeful that our virtual hugs will eventually become real hugs and the beatitudes Jesus taught us will become our new way we live.