A poem jumped out at me as I was
reading my latest issue of The Sun. It was titled "The Pandemic
Halo" by Jim Moore. In the poem, the narrator sees a halo around the head
of a dog, a nurse and a depressed young man. A halo is a sign of holiness, even
amidst great suffering and grief. We see it so often in paintings over the
heads of the saints and angels, over Mary and the Christ child.
In a pandemic, according to the
poem, halos become commonplace. They hover, appear and reappear, over many
lives and life forms, as the ills and tragedies of this world are made holy: as
grief is immersed in holiness and this immersion turns the darkness into light.


I'm troubled by those who refuse to
wear a mask in public, but I'm also trying to understand it. I wonder if it
isn't a way of asserting control in a situation where people don't believe they
have any. Rather than wear a mask, admitting that the pandemic is real and
death could be imminent, they control their destiny by refusing its reality, at
least for them. Often there's a naive trust in divinity to protect them, that
lies behind the rage they express to government and health authorities for
limiting their "freedom."
I've yet to actually see a pandemic
halo but I'm looking. I'm aware of auras. I've experienced auras. We all have
an energy field that surrounds us. Check it out with a friend. Simply stand
facing each other with your palms toward the other, but not touching. Wait till
you feel it. Sometimes you can even feel the pulsing and push the other back
with your aura. Some say the aura has colors. I don't know about that. But I do
know I had a massage once in India for a body in pain, where the masseuse never
touched me. He simply worked on my energy field, my aura, and told me he
manipulated my energy field back into place. It was amazing to me (miraculous
really), how good I felt afterward.

They've been here all along but I'm
only seeing our trees now that we have a pandemic. Each has character all its
own. Each has an aura. Each is making a contribution to the breeze we feel late
in the afternoon in the back yard and the song of the wind when it blows strong
through the garden.
As the pandemic days continue to
merge into each other; as Mother Earth and the Creator seem to be working at a
great cleansing; perhaps we humans will discern the writing on the wall, see
the halos and auras of the age, watch the invisible hand at work telling us to
slow down and look. Observe the holiness. Observe the humility of the saints.
Observe the Creation. Observe the pandemic halos. Try to be holy!
Carl Kline
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