Life in the Time of COVID-19/ Part 3
By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor —
I think all of us will remember Easter 2020. Families could not gather, church services had to be watched online, parks were closed, and news reports were mostly grim, endlessly talking about the novel coronavirus that was threatening the health of Americans and people around the globe.
Like so many others, our family resorted to video-conferencing to see each other and exchange greetings on Easter morning. There was laughter, yes, and some show-and-tell, but how long can you stay on WhatsApp? Twenty minutes later, the video togetherness was over and, for the rest of the day, the house seemed unseasonably quiet. There was no point in dyeing eggs and hiding them around the yard with no kids to search for them.
But what I missed most is a tradition that I grew up with: egg cracking. I believe that all Orthodox Christians have it though am not certain about that. But it sure is fun. Here’s how it works: Once everyone is seated around the dining table, every person selects a decorated egg from a basket of eggs nestled in green crepe paper grass. The goal is to pick a strong egg, one that will be able to stand up to attacks from the other eggs. Then the cracking begins. Two people start the game, one by holding an egg protectively in her hand while the other hits from above with his egg. They first go tip-to-tip, and then bottom-to-bottom. The winning egg is the one that doesn’t break.
The game can take some time depending on the number of people involved. By the time everyone has had a chance to “attack” and be “attacked,” most eggs will be cracked on both ends but usually there’s indeed one that survives the cracking game intact. The person who chose that hardy egg wins bragging rights and everyone has a good time. In our family, we save and keep the winning egg. What happens to it over time is another Easter story that dates back to who knows what century, but we will leave that part for another occasion.
Well, Easter, such as it was, is behind us. There’s no winning egg at our house, yet we hope, like everyone else, that the time of renewal, which Easter symbolizes, is just ahead of us, maybe as close as mid-May. No one really knows for sure.
To soothe anxiety or just detach from COVID-19 reality, we may want to turn to music and I would like to tell you about some wonderful music composed exactly for that purpose – soothing, beautiful and calming music.
Several years ago, outstanding San Antonio musicians, Joel Dilley and Bett Butler, who happen to be husband and wife, created a video for the YouTube channel named “Meditation For Dealing with Difficult People” (https://youtu.be/tgfxL-8RXDO) which many people found useful, said Buttler. So, they wanted to do more to help people in any kind of distress and reached out to therapist Louise Locker to help them “follow best practices.” Out of that collaboration a new project was born, the Zen Life Hacks Channel, also on YouTube, which launched with “Meditation in the Wake of Disaster” inspired by the devastation and despair following Hurricane Harvey (https://youtu.be/mmNm2Kii6mg). The channel now features guided meditations with therapeutic suggestions, layered over nerve-soothing music.
Dilley and Butler also have another You Tube channel, The Mandala Meditation Channel, that also features soulful music combined with art, poetry or imagery, “little breathers for the brain” as Butler put it. (https://www.youtube.com/Mandala Meditation/). All are freely accessible.
Jasmina
Humor is the Best Medicine
Remote Learning: “I can finally shut off my teacher just by clicking my remote.”(From vicevi-dana.com)
In the classroom: “Which month has 28 days?” asked the teacher. Johnny raised his hand. “All of them, Teacher! Some have even more.”(From vicevi-dana.com)
Little known fact: The dinosaurs had just bought a lot of shares in Amazon before the meteor hit. (From vulture.com)