We start this semester with a bit of a limp.
Our exhaustion from the previous months of isolation, loss, fear, political and social discord has left many of us less than whole and a few weeks off was never going to repair us or make us as good as new. We continue in this hard time of pandemic and unrest, but now we are also back to a familiar routine of sorts. Next week we resume our studies, reconnect with our colleagues and try once more to do good work in the most unusual of ways.
And yet we have a bit of a limp and I’m looking at it differently. This limp, this understandable depletion of energy, forces us to pause and that is okay, rather than struggling or fighting it, I am letting it slow me down. I am pondering moments of clarity and connection with what really matters more carefully. I am letting this limp lead me into this new semester with a kind of renewed patience for all the imperfections of how we live now. Zoom classes, meetings with groups consisting of 25 little squares on my little screen, 1 on 1 heart to heart conversations on that same screen, imperfect in form as we all limp along and yet somehow is touching, real and slow. Although the word “zoom” infers a kind of speed, the necessity of the tool itself really has slowed us down.
Let us embrace the slowness that was initially forced upon us and is now so necessary for the good of our souls. This slow pace goes against the grain of how we normally understand ourselves at Yale, yet this slow pace can, perhaps, also save us. These next few months are going to be hard, very hard. We are not through the worst of the pandemic, our nation is fraught with wounds that need careful tending and nature itself continues to remind us of our duties.
Take this to heart…stay slow, pace yourself from the beginning, claim time for reflection, for prayer, for scripture, for poetry, for laughter, for kindness toward yourself and others, remember our limp, collectively we are still trying to heal. Last week at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman gave us a gift for the ages with her poem, The Hill We Climb. I stood on my feet as she read it, my heart full of hope, tears flowing freely and I thought of you, my beloved Yale family as she closed with these words, “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.” In all that is broken, the cracks give way to light. We may be limping, but we are still here and there is light.