I never imagined that the fictional lives of Randall, Kate, and Kevin Pearson from This is Us would become an integral part of maintaining a sense of normalcy in my life. After weeks into a forced shelter-in-place quarantine with the unpredictability of coronavirus/COVID-19, normalcy is a precious commodity slipping from our grip daily.
You see, each week I still tune into This is Us, losing myself in the fictional lives of the Pearson family for respite from the endless terrors of the day’s headlines and death tolls. Not because their lives are perfectly scripted in a place far from reality. In fact, the show appeals to me for just how normal the narrative remains — it is a gut-wrenching, emotional rollercoaster of joy and pain. The series story arc is supported by both flashbacks and future visioning, giving us a glimpse of what the Pearson family will look like while allowing us to journey along with them in the present.
This is Us challenges us weekly to see ourselves within and question our perspectives of the characters, their stories, and actions. It forces us to grapple with the cause and effect of change in ways we are usually only afforded in the hindsight of our lives. Global, massive changes are not something unusual for me. I’m a millennial, our generational markers are all about global shifts. From the advent of the internet to terrorism to health epidemics, change is the only constant in my life.
Still, while I can tell you exactly what I was doing on September 11 when the first tower fell, the impact of coronavirus strikes a deeper fear in my heart. In a matter of days, we’ve moved from treating it as just another flu strain to mandated curfews and losing loved ones. At least with the September 11th attacks, we had a culprit. As strange as it sounds, having something to blame brings a measure of peace and a hope for justice. With coronavirus, we have nothing more than uncertainty and a climbing death toll. In all transparency, I’m both calm and filled with fear.
I suppose as a Christian, I shouldn’t be dealing in fear in the face of a global pandemic. I should warm myself by the flames of spiritual gaslighting, fueled by the fodder of biblical cliches. However, I live in the reality that my faith practice is not an exemption to the experiences of humanity. The relationship I’ve cultivated with God is strong enough to withstand my fears, questions, frustration, and anger with these seeming allowances at the hands of all that is holy and divine. My relationship to the divine is personal, but it is not selfish. I cannot be comforted by religious platitudes of “God got me” and “I’m covered by the blood of Jesus”. It’s bigger than just me and my needs. Our view must enlarge to include all of us, to include the beloved community.
Who is covering the homeless in a time where their vulnerability comes into sharpened relief? How do you shelter in place when you have no shelter in place? What God is a present help in the time of trouble for the survival sex worker, nightclub employees, and low-wage hourly earners on the front lines of shuttered retail and food service? Each day, I read a new headline about a retailer’s plans to furlough its workforce. Does the blood of Jesus reach and cover those in homes where home is not safe because of violence and abuse? What self-serving Christian soliloquies can be offered to those of us with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other mental health ailments currently being forced to quarantine alone?
We are in a time of deep communal lament that cannot be massaged by false hope. As a spiritual leader, it would be irresponsible of me to offer apocryphal, over-spiritualized analyses for how we’ve arrived at this place in time. Instead, I’d like to offer a different kind of hope for me and you as we traverse this unprecedented territory: Jesus sings the blues, too.
In this lenten season, with Easter swiftly approaching, it is apropos to draw on the words of Jesus on the cross. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In this moment, Jesus is quoting from Psalm 22:2, a psalm of lament and despair by David. It is a psalm, a song of his childhood and his community. Perhaps it is not only a lament of abandonment, but something that connected Jesus with the anguish and sorrow of His community.
Perhaps, in a time such as this, our hope is not built on a selfish, individualistic view of blood covering. Instead, we should build our hope in that we do not lament alone, that we are in community with others where our grief is neither strange nor shunned. I wonder if Jesus, in His quoting of this psalm, was somehow finding comfort in the familiarity of knowing that suffering isn’t something we do in isolation. A hope in a community that sings their despairs, but never sings alone.
I ask myself why I tune in each week to see the lives of the Pearson clan, volunteering myself for the tears, anger, frustration, and conviction of seeing my life in these characters. I realize that it is because no matter how painful their present is, our glimpses in the future of their lives always resonate with hope for a better tomorrow. I watch because it is a reminder that we have to live through pain, loss, grief, and discomfort more often than we wish. I watch because even in the midst of these heavy feelings, we uncover lessons that aid us to be and become better people.
The greatest reason I tune in, though, is because This is Us so beautifully depicts us, the beloved community. Its depictions offer a sense of normalcy for the life events we each experience. We mourn with them, we rejoice with them, and we triumph with them. Just as we find ourselves in the time of coronavirus.Like those glimpses of the future in This is Us, so too are we able to endure the challenging pain of the present for the hope of the greater tomorrow. It’s a tomorrow that only requires us to keep living through today.
I hope we are reminded in this time that Jesus sings the blues too, so we need not feel pressured to ignore our feelings for the sake of appearing faithfully devout. In these uncertain times, it is my prayer that we take comfort in knowing that through all that is both holy and divine, we can endure what today brings in anticipation of a better tomorrow.
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