We should not try to return to normal from the coronavirus

I usually greet the first weeks after Easter Day with a mixture of relief and joy.

Lent is heavy, and the mood intensifies in Holy Week. But by the time we celebrate the resurrection, those days are behind us, spring settles in, we anticipate graduations and weddings. Among liturgical faith traditions, the season of Easter continues with a brighter, optimistic tone.

Only this year, it hasn’t. Our parish’s Easter service, even via Facebook, was thoughtful and inspiring. I have never needed church more. In the days after, however, the suffering has continued, overwhelming and unprecedented.

To paraphrase the Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, this has not been a sweet sugarcoated Easter.

Many people have offered the good that can come from this pandemic-fueled reordering. Families drawn closer, friendships rediscovered, promises never again to take for granted what’s important.

But we must also be mindful and attentive to all those for whom this is devastating. Lives have been and will continue to be lost. People have been plunged into desperate circumstances from which they may not recover. Grief will forever mark memories of this time for them.

We must acknowledge that it is a point of privilege for those of us who will look back at this as an extended but manageable inconvenience. The skill set gained by others is surviving through despair.

The lack of tests for coronavirus means we may never accurately know how many people were sickened or died from it. Those numbers won’t include deaths not caused by COVID-19 but that were hastened by limited or delayed medical treatment.

We know that marginalized communities, again, have suffered disproportionately, whether by race or economic status, location or access to health care.

We know that farmworkers have seen their health put at-risk even amid efforts to reduce their pay.

We know that many families with children in the home have been put in untenable positions.

We know that service sector workers who have long begged for a living wage have risked their lives to make sure we have food on the table.

We know that more than 26 million of our siblings are out of work and that small businesses are teetering.

Even such grim circumstances do not justify a precipitous “reopening” of society. The lack of preparation and expertise that landed us here should not be exacerbated by a lack of preparation and expertise going forward.

We need to strengthen new, short-term assistance to those who are suffering. In the longer term, current circumstances reinforce the necessity to restructure economic and policy priorities that leave people engaging in the gruesome calculus of lives versus money. The commodification of some for the benefit of others has been used to justify all manner of atrocities. The results of undergirding a nation with systems of oppression are unavoidably on display.

Our rector preached a powerful Easter homily about why we should not return to normal after this precisely because that normal was a struggle for so many.

Resuming life in any sort of unchanged, untouched, unscathed sense represents a failure to recognize the underlying injustices that have left too many vulnerable. This time cries out for a new and better normal and not just for those of us for whom new and better is the norm.

Aleta Payne is a contributing columnist for the Editorial Board who writes about the intersection of faith, justice, and equity. She lives in Cary and can be reached at aletajpayne@gmail.com.