Here We Go Again…
I’m tired, boss. Tired of being on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I’m tired of never having a buddy to be with, to tell me where we’s going to, coming from or why. Mostly, I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head, all the time… Can you understand? — John Coffey, The Green Mile
I’m livid. I’m ticked off. I’m tired.
You probably feel the same way. The last year and a half have been terrible.
I know there’s a lot of people out there, who are all, “Make the most of your time now. The world is changing. You can too!” There’s a lot of “motivational” speakers out there who are carpe diem-ing all over the place.
I just can’t do it.
Somehow, in the last year and a half, public health became a polarizing, politicized issue. We could go over the reasons for it, but you know.
You know all the loneliness, the stress, the anger, the hurt, the anxiety, the… whatever… You know. And yet, we’re still here.
I was in a meeting yesterday with clergy colleagues in the area. It was the local ministerial association. On the agenda for discussion was our involvement in some upcoming projects to address homelessness in our area.
Homelessness is not a major problem in our town; at least, not to the level that we see in some places. But we do have more homeless than we should in our town of 23,000 or so. However, that’s not why I’m tired. That’s not why I’m angry.
We started our discussion… in the chapel at the hospital… by talking about the “religious exemption” to mandatory COVID vaccinations for hospital employees. Four feet away from me is a pastor of a local, independent, no doubt fundamentalist, church who said that she had signed 27 such exemptions so far, and is actively discouraging people from getting the vaccine because she’s “done her research” on it. She’s also active in a group in the county that is protesting mask mandates, especially in the local schools. As a father of a 6-year old 1st grader, I was already displeased with this person before the meeting started.
The local priest said that he had signed a few for young women who recently came into his office, scared and concerned about infertility issues because of the vaccine. He signed their exemption forms. Sounds to me like those are medical concerns, not religious.
A couple others indicated that they had not yet signed any, but would at least consider it.
We have a small hospital. At the peak of the surge, there were 40 COVID patients. Right now, there are 23. Do you know how many were vaccinated? None. Do you know how many are in the hospital because of vaccine complications? Precisely, zero.
I’ve done two funerals for people who would probably be alive today if they hadn’t contracted COVID. Everybody I know that has taken the vaccine is still just fine. I’m not saying there aren’t side effects. I’m not saying that every person is perfectly fine after taking it. But when I checked a couple weeks ago, 10 times as many doses of the vaccine had been given compared to the number of people who have had COVID… with 100 times fewer deaths.
And yet… here we are… again…
The organizer of our group is the hospital chaplain, who schedules visits for people in the COVID unit; a unit that is more than halfway to where it was at the peak of the last major surge at the end of 2020. A unit that was mostly empty just 5 weeks ago. Our eyes met, and simultaneously rolled. My rage simmered. I was so angry that I nearly just got up and left the meeting.
I should have said something. I should have gone ahead and let my rage boil over into a rant against these people who are cloaking their politicized conspiracies in religious language. But that wasn’t the purpose of our discussion in that moment.
The “religious exemption” has nothing to do with how we feel personally or even the stance of our church/denomination. It simply states that we believe the individual has religious reasons for wanting the exemption. Because, apparently, that’s where we are as religious leaders. Instead of representing actual truth, we just have to say we believe somebody else believes something, and that’s good enough.
I can’t even consider signing this form and still believe that I would have any shred of integrity left.
Apparently, others have no such qualms.
We are not going to see the end of this pandemic until people start doing what is best for the entire community, and I’m so angry. But, mostly, I’m tired.
