I remember a children’s poem about a little boy “sick-abed” playing with his toys over the covers in his room. I am not going to quote the poem, except to tell the reader that the name is “The Land of Counterpane,” and it is by Robert Louis Stevenson. I am fully recovered or will be tomorrow, but last week I had to go to the hospital to confirm that I had COVID-19. They told me that if I went out up past 5 days after Friday to wear a mask, but I preferred to stay indoors. For sometime it was like having a very bad cold, but I was lucky in that it was no worse than that. I certainly wasn’t dying.
I told my friends I was sick–largely through email and facebook.com–but mainly I had an excuse to frolic in the lazies… I did write Blogs and Entries, but I read less than 100 pages of The Saga of the People of Eyri; portions of a book called Great Cats; and part of the first pamphlet of Great Epics of India: Puranas. I usually read more intensely, but I forgot The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History till next week… All of this sounds like more than it is… and I watched a massive amount of TV… for some reason I couldn’t read much of the Bible–something I like to do when ill–but I did read part of Psalms…
I cooked largely TV dinners, but last night I was well enough to fry latkes. Eating latkes will constitute the only way in which I keep Chanukkah this year… I am sorry I missed watching Zelensky’s heroic speech last night.. yet I had to fix supper… So I watched clips afterwards. Because Ukraine is struggling for it’s freedom, Zelensky understands what is best about America: he understands our desire for freedom and our belief in God. I believe he even knows that there is no contradiction between the two. As de Tocqueville said–despite usually disliking the United States–in a democracy religion is unlikely to die out because it is best loved in the hearts of the “common man.”
When Trump disappears from our politics, people will find a newer, better way to worship God… not that a person cannot be Catholic or Methodist or Presbyterian or Jew, but that they will understand in the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind, they can share this land with Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists without any threat of what they love dying out. And hopefully those who find themselves losing faith because of current politics will find it again…
I don’t want to believe that the younger generation will fail either American traditions or lose faith in God. And to see a model of both patriotism and faith, all they need is to look at Ukraine. In Ukraine people are dying for their country in the way Americans did in the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II–and beyond.
And I have thought about all of this–because I have been too sick to work–all of last week and this week.