My heart is heavy tonight.
I am mourning a couple of people who have recently passed away due to COVID complications. One was vaccinated and the other not. One was immunocompromised and the other not. One was a senior and the other much younger.
It’s really important for me to honor their memory, not by blaming them for poor choices, but to learn from their experiences. Eighteen months into this global pandemic, we are all tired of hearing about vaccines and masks (myself included.)
But we cannot let our guard down, not for a moment. I can recall this week how many times I forgot to sanitize my hands after touching door handles or pressing the button at the crosswalk. It is exhausting to remember every little detail. And it is uncomfortable to wear a mask for several hours a day as I did at my last job and will again when I start my new job. But if wearing a mask is the difference between saving a life or not, there is no question that I will do it.
All of this brings to mind the trend that I observe in people who choose to not wear a mask, even when the sign on the store front window kindly asks them to do so. People don’t like to be told what to do. That statement bears repeating in a slightly different way:
No one likes to be told what to do.
When we hear a word like “mandate” or “commandment,” many of us will balk at the idea of following someone else’s directive, even if it is coming from a health specialist. Somehow it feels like our freedom to choose is being challenged. Seth Gillihan, a clinical psychologist, puts it this way: “When we don’t know where it ends, we worry that our liberties will be taken away.”
We certainly don’t know where, or when, or even how this pandemic will end. Because of that uncertainty and the rise of cases and deaths due to the Delta variant, we need to revisit the idea of mandates.
By definition a mandate is “an official order to do something.” The federal government has jurisdiction over its workers, but beyond that, states operate within their own jurisdictions. As we have seen, each state’s governor has their own ideas of how to handle the COVID crisis. Within the states, there are smaller entities like school districts and private businesses who have their own ideas about mask wearing.
The school district I will be working for has a mask mandate in place, but as the principal of my school explained, it cannot be enforced because our governor doesn’t support it. When given the choice between wearing a mask or not, most kids would probably choose not to. Fortunately, my elementary school has about a 90–95% rate of mask wearing.
At church, members would respond to the word “commandment” which is defined as “a divine rule.” There hasn’t been a commandment issued at my church or any other that I have heard of. Instead, my church’s leaders have used the term “urge” when encouraging us to get vaccinated and wear masks. A wise friend noted that this preserves our agency (freedom to choose.)
But it has been frustrating to observe so much inconsistency of mask wearing in my congregation, even after our church president, a retired medical doctor and renowned heart surgeon, has asked us to do so. As the above video shows (in a musical genius sort of way,) it is not asking too much to wear a “tiny, flipping mask.”
And so I return to those who have lost the COVID battle. My prayers and virtual hugs go out to their families. I hope that it won’t take a death or serious hospitalization to make us realize that vaccinations and masks do make a difference. I dream of the day when this crisis will be over and we will hug and shake hands freely, when divisions will soften and we will be more unified as a country.
