My friend sent an email yesterday saying she’d received coronavirus updates from her church, Bachman’s, Panera, Baker’s Square, Macy’s, Chase Bank, the City of Blaine, and Body Sense Yoga. I have to add Sony, Caribou, and The Board of Pensions. Somehow we are all united in this. Yet, most of the solutions involve this new thing called “social distancing.”
The HOH Session met on March 14 to decide our way forward for now. We have suspended in-person worship and programming at the church until the end of March. We are answering the call from the Minnesota Health Department to cancel gatherings in the hope of slowing the spread of the virus. We will evaluate actions for the next phase toward the end of this month. After the meeting, four of us started talking. And we found it hard to stop, that is, we found it hard to go our separate ways. It is more natural and intuitive to stay together as we face this unknown illness. So we have activated this blog to nurture togetherness, share needs, perhaps assuage fears, and to practice compassion. Hope is in our name and, in this and any other hardship, we have hope.
—Rev. Julia A. Carlson
