Our basement room is filled with half-baked interior-redesign projects that quite never made it to the finish line. In the worship room, our new aquarium, with fishes adopted in March of last year, has spread itself out, along with used sanitization bottles of all stripes and colors cluttering every nook in the bookshelves. And our living room, after fifteen months of “remotelearning” by my three teenagers, is a complete mess. Words cannot do it justice.

As I prepare the church in anticipation of having our members join us in person once again to participate in our services, I have had to take stock of what it would be like to “return” to our normal lives once again. Although it wasn’t that long ago, I can’t quite remember what the daily routines were like. I’m sure that once I am able to shake hands with everyone and have long and enjoyable conversations and meals with friends, things will begin to settle down.

And in the meantime, I have decided that there is no need to hurry the return. Cleaning up the clutter may require some immediate attention, but there is also value in absorbing the immediate moment that we find ourselves now, at this time and place, bit by bit. We spent the last year de-sensitizing ourselves to a very strange time, just so that we can make it through. And I think that now is the moment when we need to be kind to our inner self, more so than we realize.

Rev. Tak Hayashi