We tend to think of the planet as a patchwork of nations and continents, but it is really a single tapestry in which everything and everyone is intertwined. The COVID-19 pandemic is tragic evidence of that, but the new coronavirus only illuminates a lesson taught to us already.

At a time when mother nature has “sent us to our rooms” (as one viral post put it), the digital world has opened its arms wide to embrace us. It is a reality that I have been reflecting on during this pandemic.

In Alberta, the province where I live, those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic are workers in meat processing plants.

While in a bulk food store recently, complying with social distancing rules, I was led around by an employee whose job was to scoop out items I wanted and bag them.

On the doorstep of what would become the COVID-19 crisis of spring 2020, a wise woman I encountered called me out on the distinction between hope and expectation.

Space is not a word I associated with love for most of my life. I grew up longing for the freedom of stretching further away from the intimacy of my family and small Saskatchewan town. I sat in the farmhouse window sill in my bedroom, staring up at the expansive, prairie sky of stars, full of wonder at all the space in the universe for all of us.

Domestic church

I believe the present focus on streaming Masses is the wrong way to go.

Medical experts worldwide are racing to create a COVID-19 vaccine. Of course, these efforts should be encouraged and well funded because normal life won’t return until an effective vaccine is developed and distributed around the world.

There is not a lot to commend living in a quarantined world.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t write a COVID-19 column.