Covid Chronicles, part 3: Temper tantrums, Puccini, and dating apps.

Since there is just SO MUCH TIME for reflection, here’s a list of things I’ve learned about myself during this Covid season, in no particular order:

When God tells me to do something (like go live in Lebanon), I’m in it until I hear otherwise. Come rain or shine, garbage crisis or financial crisis, I’m in it. But this does not mean that I won’t have moments in which I just wanna get the hell out. Don’t you worry; I’m not leaving (and I couldn’t since the airport is still closed, ha!). Just know that I will throw a temper tantrum periodically because I need to be difficult.

To temper the tantrums a bit, I decided to download a bunch of operas and listen to a different one each evening. I’m not a sophisticated theater goer and I’ve only been to see like three operas in my life, but coming from the family I come from, I felt I should put more of an effort in. Sooo… Still not a connoisseur, but I think I like Puccini’s melancholy the best. Verdi and Bizet aren’t bad. Mozart is too sanguine. Definitely don’t like Wagner. Too angsty. 

Speaking of angst, dating apps. OH. MY. WORD. Until now I refused to engage because they made me nervous and I still cling to the illusion that I possess sufficient people skills and geographic mobility to meet someone in person. But because mobility is limited and people skills are superfluous for the foreseeable future, I decided to give it a shot. For kicks. So I downloaded three apps that had been recommended to me and I set up my profile and started surfing. But it’s a complete and utter gimmick. They tell you you’ve received 30 messages but you can’t read them unless you either get two friends to sign up or you pay the whatever dollars per month for a subscription. Also, they don’t bother to ask any insightful, character-based questions, just conversation-starter type stuff. So basically, I’m dealing with a lazy algorithm. And the most exasperating thing of all: they limit you to your geographical area. First of all, my geographical area is exactly why I felt the need to enlist the help of dating apps. Secondly, my location registers like this: 

Welcome to Beirut urban planning. I feel like this is a metaphor for my love life.

Anyway, the point is: I don’t want to meet guys in Beirut. I want to meet guys in Europe. Because just like every other single, young-ish person living in Lebanon right now, I’m hoping to (eventually) leave and go somewhere else, like BACK TO EUROPE. Duh. Creators of dating apps should make allowances for the geographically restless. And maybe also read up on some geopolitics. One of the apps so generously gave me the option of widening my search to a radius of 400 km, which for me just means Syria and Israel. Syria is out for obvious reasons, and even though I found the Israeli guys to be the most handsome and intriguing, Lebanon’s secret service would track me down and kick me out of the country for liaising with the enemy. So that’s unhelpful. 

Fed up, I deleted all three apps after 48 hours. Then I tried registering on two other UK-based sites but couldn’t get past the very first step because they wouldn’t accept my email address (I suspect they can tell by my IP address that I’m in Lebanon). RUDE. 

Screw dating apps. They make me angry. 

On a more positive, but still depressing note, I’m not too good at keeping things alive. Empirical proof is found in the fact that I’ve managed to nearly kill both of my aloe plants, and even my spider plant looks like it’s longing for heaven. These are supposedly resilient types of flora (I mean my word, aloes are built to thrive in the desert), yet under my apparently not so maternal mothering, they’ve decided to give up on life. I’m tempted to do the same. But because I refuse to accept that I have the touch of death, I bought a new aloe plant, a rose bush, two cacti, and a bonsai tree and spent my Sunday gardening. (Just to be safe though, I made sure the plants were cheap enough that I can afford to have them die on me, should they wish to.) 

Covid Chronicles, part 2: All things new

Last week was Holy Week, and if there’s any week that a Christian is supposed to have ‘the feels’, it’s this week. But I had none of the feels. I tried listening to podcast sermons, tried praying contemplatively (as seems to be the trend now), tried feeling broken about the state of my soul and the world. But nothing. I just felt pretentious.   

So finally on Good Friday I watched The Passion of the Christ. I don’t think I’d watched it since college, but I figured if anything was going to get me into the right headspace for Easter, this would. Thankfully, I wept through most of it (my heart still beats!), but the moment that broke me most was when Jesus is carrying his cross to Golgotha and he stumbles. His mother runs to him, compelled by maternal instinct, and he turns to her and says, “Behold, I make all things new.” 

The thing about me is that I tend to have delayed emotional reactions to tragedy. For the duration of whatever is currently tragic, I feel emotionally detached from what’s happening and cerebral about what needs to be done. Feelings of grief or loss come later. Sometimes much later, sometimes never. And what the world is experiencing right now is tragic. Not only because of the high number of deaths that many countries are experiencing, but also because of the enormous number of people who are losing their sources of income, who are being forced to shelter-in-place in toxic and abusive home environments; it’s tragic because of the sharp uptick in usage that I imagine porn sights are experiencing, and the relational fallout from that breaks my heart.

I suppose it didn’t help that I spent the past two weeks listening to three different podcast series hosted by investigative journalists who followed and/or broke the stories on Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby. How so much evil and depravity can exist in a single person is devastating to me. The earth is groaning, and not just from pollution. 

I desperately needed to hear Jesus say, “Behold, I make all things new.” 

This Covid19 season feels to me like a forced sabbath, like a forceful hit on the "pause" button. Humanity is exhausted, the earth is exhausted, the humanitarian community is exhausted, capitalism and globalization are exhausted. But no one was actually going to do anything to stop the reckless speed we’re moving at. Not really. I’ve never been a faithful observer of Lent (I tried to engage this year and failed miserably), but I can’t help thinking that Covid19 was interestingly timed with this Lenten season of collectively waiting for Jesus to make all things new by triumphing over darkness. I can’t help hoping that there’s something deeper at work here. 

It’s easy to see God making things new in the fact that families who have been too busy with work and school and hobbies to spend proper time together are now getting nothing but time together. It’s easy to see God making things new for a planet that has been ravaged by our lack of mindful stewardship. Now city birds are chirping, the skies are clear and creation is breathing a collective sigh of relief. It’s easy to believe that God is making things new within the systems of finance and commerce that have for too long been the driver of gross exploitation and inequitable practices. I sincerely hope the disruption results in our thinking differently about material wants and needs. 

That said, I’m having a harder time seeing how God is making things new in the lives of the countless people all over the world who are losing their sources of income, the millions of informally employed people who have no safety net to fall back on when their governments revoke their ability to make a living. It’s hard to see God making things new for those people who live with abusive partners or parents and who now have little recourse for escape. 

In just the last five to ten years, the lid has been ripped off for many of the powerful men who sexually preyed on women with impunity, and for many religious figures who have been caught out in the same sin. But for every instance in which a sexual predator is held to account, just as many cases are covered up. How and when is God going to make that new? 

To be clear, I don’t ask that question out of doubt, but out of impatience. I struggle with the fact that God is so patient with us. The longer He is patient, the more evil we commit and the more people fall through the cracks. It does not make natural sense to me. So I’m challenged by 2 Peter 3:9 where Peter says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness [that’s me!]. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” It makes me think of Habakkuk’s heated discussion with God in which God responds, “The revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay.” (2:3)

God does not tarry. He has promised to make all things new. But this doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll make all tangible situations new right now. His work is more often than not conducted in the realm of the unseen and eternal. In the movie, Jesus says “I make all things new” when he’s walking towards his crucifixion, but in Scripture he says it at the end of the story, in Revelation 21:5. 

We haven’t yet reached the end of the story. 

Until we do, my hope is in this promise found in Zephaniah 3:

At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you; I will rescue the lame and gather those who have been scattered. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they were put to shame. At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.

The Covid Chronicles - Part 1

Wow guys. This will be an era for the history books, huh! 

I’m sitting in my living room. It’s Day 10 of Lebanese lockdown. Every day there’s news of another nation following suit. I’m working from home while blowing through my classical music album collection, drinking copious amounts of tea, reading reading reading, assembling a 1,000 piece puzzle, and generally just puttering around my apartment. 

But wait…isn’t that basically what I do most days? Being an introvert who lives alone, I practice self-isolation pretty regularly. Imagine my surprise to learn that this lifestyle is actually called 'self-quarantine'. Huh…

In addition to working from home and trying not to bake too much (since no one is around to eat the results except me), I’m trying to not let my mind descend into total Netflix lethargy. It’s hard though. I appreciate solitude, but two weeks of it is a bit much to be honest. I’m starting to get a little nutty.

Thankfully, I have a bird story to tell y’all. 

Because people are mostly staying put, the air quality in Beirut has been amazing. I spend a lot of time on my balcony just looking out over the blue Mediterranean and thinking gosh, the coronavirus may be decimating our economy, but it’s sure doing wonders for the environment. Anyway, because of all of this clean air, a relatively unusual phenomenon has surfaced in the form of birds hanging outside my terrace door. Yesterday morning, two of them were fluttering around, pecking at the window, and pooping all over my outdoor chairs (the audacity!). Every time I approached they’d fly away, only to return a few minutes later. Annoying, but whatever. The earth is happy. 

This morning, I woke up to a strange noise. I went into the guest bedroom (where my terrace door is) only to discover that one of yesterday’s birds had flown in through the crack and was flapping around in disoriented fashion. I’m a city girl, right, so I don’t always know what to do when undomesticated animals find their way into my house. I slid the door all the way open, thinking the bird would find its way out. But for some reason, this bird - who had found it fully doable to fly through the barely-big-enough crack between the sliding door and the wall - could not for the life of it find its way out through the now wide open doorway. Instead it flew into my bedroom where I rushed to open the balcony door, hoping it would find its way out there. But no, it smashed into the wall just above the door, then into my mirror on the opposite wall, then Ianded in the corner and stayed there for a bit. 

I approached very slowly and tried to pick it up (let’s face it, I’m just as scared of the bird as the bird is of me), but I didn’t get a good enough grip before the bird freaked out and flapped around some more, this time knocking itself out by rushing headlong into the mirror again. It landed on my dresser, breathing heavily and twitching a bit, its neck at a peculiar angle. So I picked it up and placed it outside on the terrace, hoping it wouldn’t die on me but also lacking the necessary bird resuscitation skills to prevent said death. (I’ll spare you the video version that shows it twitching as some of you are sensitive people and might experience trauma.) 

I returned to my bed, trying not to get neurotic about this bird possibly dying on my terrace. I peeked in on it a couple of times. At one point it had ended up on its back several inches away from where I’d placed it. Still breathing heavily. Still twitching. 

And I’m thinking to myself, Dear God, I really can’t handle a bird death right now. Too many emotions for the current situation. 

A couple of hours later I checked up on it again, and this time the bird was looking decidedly more put together, even though it was still on its back. I got closer, thinking I could try to turn it over so it would at least be on its feet. But before I could reach down, it miraculously flipped over and flew promptly away. 

So that’s that. The bird is alive, I’m alive; we're on our backs, we're breathing heavily, some of us are twitching. But we’re all going to survive this Covid-19 madness. Hang in there. 

Airplane confessions

I’ve lived in Lebanon for two and a half years and I love it. I really do. But I confess: I tend to have ungenerous thoughts toward Lebanese people when I’m with a large number of them on airplanes. 

It starts in the gate area. A certain slice of the Lebanese demographic have around 2.5 kids who are usually pacified by iPads while their botoxed mothers take selfies. For the other Lebanese demographic, the more the merrier, and at least four of their 7+ children are crying hysterically. Maybe because they wish they had iPads (in those moments, I certainly wish they did). 

When it’s time to board, I will be shamelessly cut in line. Generally, it’s the men who are guilty of this - maybe I look blonde and dumb - but the audacity! Next time, I’m going to shame them into orderly conduct by making a show of letting them go ahead of me. More than anything, the shame tactic generates results in this country. (Well, shame and bribes.) 

Always without fail, once we’re on the plane and busy finding our seats, a verbal spat will break out among passengers who didn’t look carefully at their boarding passes and mistook their seat numbers. Or they’ll try to rearrange the seating assignments so that their party of 12 can sit together. It takes two or three crew members to calm everyone down. 

During takeoff, the grandma next to me crosses herself, praying to Saint Charbel to postpone her meeting with God. Then she’ll turn to me and ask me the usual placement questions: 1) where are you from, 2) are you married, 3) why aren’t you married, 4) do you have a boyfriend, 5) why don’t you have a boyfriend. Then she’ll look at me, half perplexed, half pitying, and say, don’t worry, I’ll find you a good Lebanese boy to marry. I roll my eyes. 

Once we’re in the air and the food is being served, they’ll ask for things that aren’t on offer. Like anything other than what’s in the food cart. It takes forever for the frazzled attendant to get to me, and I’ll smile at him or her sympathetically and just ask for water, their relief palpable. 

Upon landing and taxiing, at least 15 people will get out of their seats and start rummaging in the overhead compartments, ignoring the cabin crew who are exasperatedly trying to get them to take a seat…since the plane is still moving. And inevitably, at least one bag will fall out of the compartment onto some unsuspecting person’s head. Probably mine (it’s happened more than once). 

But once we’re at the gate and we’re waiting for them to let us off, everyone will be laughing and talking to each other, exchanging well wishes on their return to the homeland. The atmosphere is warm and exuberant. And I’ll heave an internal sigh and tell myself to get over it. For as long as I live here, these are my people. And as exasperating as they can be on an airplane, they’re still completely lovable on the ground… Most of the time.  ; )