Normal Life
A few years back, my brother, my mom, and I started a bet on what would end the world first. The winner would obviously win nothing more than bragging rights, as the world would be ending, but bragging rights are a coveted prize nonetheless. It was all very tongue in cheek. Back then each option felt both equally possible and equally alien, like none of it could actually happen to us. My brother threw his lot with ecological disaster and crop failure. I, a great follower of all things political, settled on authoritarianism and nuclear war. Mom, the nurse, as it turns out, is currently the closest to winning. She guessed pandemic.
I say closest to winning, because the world hasn’t really ended. It goes on, best it can, as we all do. That said, we can’t deny the world has changed. Across the country college graduates celebrated commencement at home and over Zoom. New York City streets are quiet. Those of us who are lucky enough to still have our jobs work from home, wondering just when we’ll see our friends and colleagues again. Even going to the grocery store now feels like we’re part of the Fellowship packing up and going to Mordor. As we commiserate over these changes and this new world we live in, I’ve regularly heard the words “when we go back to normal.”
“When this is over, when things go back to normal, I can visit my grandchildren.”
“When things get back to normal we can have a big service together!”
“Once we’re back to normal life, I won’t take my social life for granted.”
“When this is over and life goes back to the way it was, I can travel overseas again.”
“Once life is normal again we’ll have to have you over for dinner!”
We all think these thoughts. They are the wild hopes that keep each of us going each day. We find comfort in the knowledge someday soon (hopefully) life will go back to normal — right? I started to think about what normal life meant, and it suddenly occurred to me that weirdly this is now my normal: wearing masks to stores, my colleagues existing in my laptop, wearing jeans instead of blazers. The idea of wearing an pencil skirt and driving to work at 7:30am or sitting down in a movie theater surround by strangers now feels bizarre. It makes me wonder what ‘normal’ even means. Before March, I would have said that normal means something is ordinary or expected or routine. Most of all, it feels safe. Today, my understanding of normal has changed entirely. To feel normal and safe, I work from home, cover my face with a mask in public, and don’t visit friends or travel.
In the middle of this new rhythm, though, I’ve found a solace. It reminds me that while ‘normal’ is unexpectedly changeable, there is are forces greater still that do not change: the presence and love of God. Every evening at 5:30pm, my family, Austin, and I all gather in our living room, turn on Facebook Live on our church’s Facebook page, and read Evening Prayer together.
Evening Prayer is one of the ancient traditions of the Church, and features some of the oldest hymns and prayers in Christian history. Each service centers around the reading of psalms, preceded and followed by various prayers and hymns. Towards the beginning of the service we sing one of these historic hymns, O Gracious Light or the Phos Hilaron, which dates back as early as the third century.
O gracious Light
Pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!
Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
And our eyes behold the vesper light,
We sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of life,
And to be glorified throughout all the worlds.
I’ve sung this hymn with my family almost every night for more than two months. In that time, it’s almost like it’s become a part of me. It isn’t like breathing, a habit that I do without thinking. Rather, it is a practice like running; it is something I do over and over again, and yet is new every time, lifegiving in its habitualness. Its words remind me that even as my understanding of what is normal changes with the world, for thousands of years, Christians have lifted their voices in worship and prayer at the setting of the sun, thanking God for the mercies of the day that is past, and looking ahead into what is to come. When I, too, pray “Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…” I know that I am praying it with all of these men and women who came before me, and all who will come after. It reminds me that while my heart breaks for the world, I am not alone. What I feel is not new to the human story. These brothers and sisters in Christ across sang these words in famine and war and pandemics, just as I do now. As I pray with them, I find enormous peace. I realize that what I am feeling is truly normal after all.
I don’t think that my life will go back to “normal,” at least not what we mean when we say normal. Even when Austin and I can go to restaurants and hug our friends again, we can never really go back to the way things were, too much has changed. I do think I’ll have a renewed appreciation for the constant nature of Evening Prayer, and what it says about the nature of God. In its routine, I found a sense of normalcy that transcends what is happening in the world around me. Rather than depend on the world to “go back to normal,” I’ll work to rely on the peace the God, which surpasses human understanding, to keep my heart and mind in the knowledge and love of God and his Son Jesus Christ.
