Just Wear It

Just wear it.

At first, the scientists and healthcare folks were saying they didn’t know how much good it did. They suggested that it might not matter. But as more people began to study this thing, it became clear that, yes, wearing masks–while not providing absolute protection–can actually provide a medically significant barrier to the droplets which are the main point of infection. Sneezing, coughing, laughing, singing, talking, breathing–these activities spread the droplets that carry the virus. Wear a cloth mask, and you reduce the chances that you are infecting someone else. If you’re both wearing them, the chances are doubly reduced.

Health care workers have been wearing masks to work for decades. Even with asthma. Even with respiratory issues. Cloth masks don’t filter out the fresh oxygen. They don’t hold in the carbon dioxide. They’re not meant to do that. They’re meant to filter droplets. They don’t always do that in a 100% foolproof way, but they reduce the transmission of droplets. They do that enough that the country’s top medical professionals and scientists seem to agree that we should all be wearing them in public places these days.

I’m not a scientist or a healthcare professional. But I would rather listen to their wisdom on this issue than the politicos and the screamers in the agora.

Look. If you call yourself pro-life, you have to wear the mask. It’s the real choice for protecting life. If you call yourself pro-justice, you have to wear the mask. It helps to equalize our chances of survival. If you call yourself a reasonable person, just wear it. Wear it like you wear your seatbelt. Wear it like you wear your bike helmet. Wear it like you wear a jacket to protect yourself from the cold.

This isn’t a conspiracy meant to take away your freedom. It’s not an illuminati cabal meant to mark you as belonging to the beast. It’s not a liberal hoax meant to take down the president and destroy the power of white men. It’s not a fear tactic meant to take away your faith in a God who will protect you.

It’s just a piece of cloth that will help to hinder the droplets that could cause one person to infect another. It’s just basic good citizenship.

Just wear it. Please.

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Gratitude List:
1. Hummingbird is back. Yesterday she spent a long time drinking from the mini-petunias, then gazed in the window at me.
2. My bridges. My anchors-with-wings. My voices in the storm. My clear-eyed gazers. I am blessed in friends who keep me from flying off in the gales–unless flying is what is best for me, of course. Friends who remind me who I am. Friends who keep me woven within the narrative.
3. The yellow iris. I know they’re invasive and weedy. I know we have to cut them back or they’ll choke the pond. I also now that they’re beautiful and resilient. You cut one stalk, bring it inside, put it in water, and one flower blooms. That one dies and another blooms below it. Then another and another. This one is on its fifth or sixth bloom. And they’re the fiercest sort of yellow.

May we walk in Beauty!

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“In ancient Africa, in the Celtic lands, storytellers were magicians. They were initiates. They understood the underlying nature of reality, its hidden forces. The old Celtic bards could bring out welts on the body with a string of syllables. They could heal sickness with a tale. They could breathe life into a dying civilization with the magic of a story.” —Ben Okri

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“I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply inside.” —Rosa Parks

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“The historian deals with the past, but the true storyteller works with the future. You can tell the strength of an age by the imaginative truth-grasping vigour of its storytellers. Stories are matrices of thought. They are patterns formed in the mind. They weave their effect on the future. To be a storyteller is to work with, to weave with, the material of time itself.” —Ben Okri

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“Storytellers are the singing conscious of the land, the unacknowledged guides. Reclaim your power to help our age become wise again.” —Ben Okri

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“If it’s not about love, then it’s not about God.” —Rev. Michael Curry

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“I just want to celebrate you as you are, instead of waiting for you to become what the world expects you to be.” ―Rachel Macy Stafford

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“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories. . .water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” ―Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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“Do you have an unconscious belief that the forces of evil are loud, vigorous, and strong, while good is quiet, gentle, and passive? Gather evidence that contradicts this irrational prejudice.

“Are you secretly suspicious of joy because you think it’s inevitably rooted in wishful thinking and a willful ignorance about the true nature of reality? Expose these suspicions as superstitions that aren’t grounded in any objective data you can actually prove.

“Do you fear that when you’re in the presence of love and beauty you tend to become softheaded, whereas you’re likely to feel smart and powerful when you’re sneering at the ugliness around you? As an antidote, for a given amount of time, say a week or a month or a year, act as if the following hypothesis were true: that you’re more likely to grow smarter when you’re in the presence of love and beauty.” ―Rob Brezsny

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“The words you speak become the house you live in.” ―Hafiz

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Mary Oliver:
“I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.”

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“If someone asks, ‘What does perfect beauty look like?’
Show him your own face and say, like this.” —Rumi