When our church mailed out star words in January for Epiphany, my family received the word “friendship” in the mail. For all of us, friendships have been one of the life savers of the pandemic. My husband, Tom, meets his college friends every Thursday for “virtual happy hour” on zoom in our living room. My daughter’s friends came by our home to drop off presents on her birthday early in the pandemic, extending love and care during a lonely time. My son’s friends often met for late night group phone calls. Through texts and emails, phone calls and the occasional meet up in-person, friends provide some of the bright spots of my Covid life as well.

After a disrupted and chaotic end to the 2019/2020 school year and an online and hybrid year for 2020/2021, children and youth are headed back to school again. This year, some aspects felt refreshingly normal – Anna and I went to Fife High School in-person to pay back-to-school fees. We made the annual trip to Target to buy school supplies. We’ve shopped for a few things Jonathan will need at college and plan to move him into his dorm at the University of Washington in mid-September.

At a graduation celebration this past weekend, a woman mentioned that she had been in the mood for ice cream Saturday afternoon and headed to the Puyallup Baskin Robbins with her family. On the way, they saw the huge column of black smoke from the Puyallup cold storage fire and soon realized that the roads to Baskin Robbins were closed and the area had been evacuated. Another friend commented, “Does it feel like things are just piling on at this point?”

This week I read a blog by Amory Peck, the former lay leader for the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Methodist Church. Peck describes some of the lessons we learn from reading fiction. She says “often the author, through her characters, says just what I need to read, or gives me just the words I want to say.” I find this to be true as well, although this week, it didn’t come from a book of fiction, but rather another blog post.

Back in June, I thought Pastor Cara and I had written our last mid-week pastoral reflection. While these pastoral reflections helped us share with you throughout the long months of the pandemic, we needed to change our focus to planning in-person gatherings and a safe start to worship. We looked forward to the next stage of reopening with anticipation and some relief, feeling like we were in the final stretch of the Covid roller coaster and might even be able to get off this ride altogether!

Over the weekend, Pierce County reached the very high-risk level category which is designated by the color red on Covidactnow.org. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also has moved our county from substantial to high community transmission of the virus. We now have as many cases in Pierce County of COVID-19 as we did in November 2020. As we follow the daily number of cases that the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department reports, the trend line continues to show a rising number of cases. In following our reopening plan developed by the leadership of this congregation, we will be closing our building once again.

Throughout this pandemic, your leaders have followed the rise and fall of cases in our county and around the country. We have stayed up to date on guidance from our bishop and state and county health departments. This past week a few changes have taken place that are changing how we are moving forward.

In the beginning months of the pandemic, many of us experienced huge changes to our schedules and routines. Our regular groups and activities stopped meeting. Schools, non-essential workplaces, and church buildings closed. Many annual vacations and family gatherings were cancelled. Depending on life circumstances, some people found themselves with an overabundance of free time, while others found themselves stretched thin with new responsibilities at work and home.