Grace and trust: essential and always available

We may or may or may not have enough masks and ventilators; we can alway have plenty of grace and trust

I really like the Three Phases concept. You can tell it was calmly arrived at and crafted with care. It’s not heavy-handed. It offers states and counties a guideline.

It establishes quantifiable criteria for each phase. Phase One is what most locales are currently in: no more than ten people gathered in a public space, no nonessential travel, social distancing. To qualify for the two subsequent phases, a locale has to demonstrate a clear decline in new cases and deaths over a set period of time.

This is going to require testing and contact tracing at a level no one is currently doing, of course. And that is going to require patience, something that is in dwindling supply in our society at present.

But we have no choice, do we? Well, I guess we could throw everything wide open starting this afternoon, but advocates for that approach are decidedly in the minority.

So how can we muster the requisite patience to embark on the three-phase plan? By extending grace and trust.

It will require peddlers of conspiracy theories (such as that there is something nefarious about Dr. Fauci’s motives) to cease and desist. It will require legislators - particularly those at the federal level, in the matter of aid packages for businesses and individuals - to forego ideologically based add-ons to relief bills. It will require ordinary citizens engaged in the national conversation on social media and opinion sites to go a little easier on each other and not cast aspersions on others’ worth as human beings, even as they acknowledge vehement disagreement.

Trust will be earned as locales put forth honest numbers about the prevalence of the virus. If a given state, county or municipality is quantifiably not ready to graduate from one phase to the next, everyone will need to respect that and not push.

Ultimately, though, the kind of trust that will be required is a kind we’ve sorely needed for a long time anyway: the kind expressed on the coins in our pockets. We’re going to have to give God a much bigger role in this. We’re going to need trust of a degree that surmounts the cynicism born of the age-old question about why God allows misery in his universe. This might be a good time to revisit the book of Job.

Grace and trust are not material commodities. They are not goods shipped from a manufacturer to a user.

We can all start to practice them immediately, if we wish. And if your heart is too full of mistrust and ill will to practice much of it, take baby steps. Approach the task in manageable chunks. It’s like muscles responding to a training regimen.

Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see that we have any other choice. The irony is that we’re all after the same goal: a happy, prosperous, noble society. We may define those characteristics differently, but we all agree on the terminology. (Basically. There are a few misanthropes in any crowd.)

And it feels good. There’s nothing like giving one’s fellow human being the space to be who they are in a particular moment, or basking in bedrock faith that God’s plan is unfolding.

So, what do you say? Ready to give it a shot? Remember, it’s the path to where we all want to go.