My seminary graduation has been on my calendar for at least a year and a half; I’m the kind of person who plans his calendar too far in advance. Having helped pull off graduation services for the past two years, I’ve had plenty of fantasies about what it would be like when it was my turn. As it turned out, the last six weeks of my time in seminary were a pale imitation of what they should have been. Graduation day was spent on a screen. 

Every life has its “Where were you when you heard?” moments, those altogether rare occasions when we find we can neatly separate our lives into “before” and “after.” The slow-moving beast of a pandemic would seem not to lend itself to such distinctions, but I think many of us can point to the moment when the reality of the coronavirus came home to roost. For me, it was the first Saturday of spring break, as I worked on an assignment that was already late at a desk under a wide, bright window. I opened an email that informed me that the university administration had decided to close campus and move classes online for the rest of the term. I admit that up to this point I had been preoccupied with life as I knew it. I was still counting on coming back from break to begin the final push toward graduation and the work of the long goodbyes that came with it. While I had heard that other universities were closing in denser locales far away, I had assumed that the virus wouldn’t reach us in any meaningful way in rural Tennessee. Maybe some sort of concessions to public health would be made, but it would be moderate and time-limited, surely. I hadn’t considered the outright cancellation of the end of my senior year and all the rites of passage we had been working toward. I finished my paper and proceeded to sink into a deep depression that lasted weeks.

Truth be told, moving to online instruction was fine. Since high school I’ve been someone who can be described as Extremely Online. Attending lectures on Zoom wasn’t ideal, but it was tolerable since it was only for a few weeks. What really destroyed me was the realization that I had lost the communal life that was one of the reasons I had chosen this particular seminary in the first place. When talking with prospective students, I always emphasize that 100-odd people doing life together in the woods of southeastern Tennessee means those people become your lifeline. Over the first couple of weeks many of my classmates who had other homes to return to and suddenly found themselves with no compelling reason to live on campus quietly came back, packed up their things, and left, unable to properly say goodbye. As the following weeks unfolded I would slowly realize all the things I had done for the last time without knowing it: singing the table blessing at community lunch, chanting the Daily Office with my classmates, gathering in each other’s homes to unwind after a long week. I thought I had more time for “thank you” and “I’m sorry” and “I love you” and “see you later.”

It was the second week of a spring break that seemed determined to go on forever when I got word of a group of first-year students who had been gathering on Zoom for Morning and Evening Prayer. I joined a couple of times that week and something that felt like hope began to stir under the rubble of the way things used to be. Christ met me in familiar faces saying familiar words that sounded better when someone was saying them back to me.  Although I knew that things weren’t right, for the first time it felt like they were maybe going to be okay. On Palm Sunday I brought myself—barely—to “go” to church for the first time since we began self-isolating. I was laying in bed, deciding whether I felt like getting up and telling myself I would watch a service later after I had pulled myself together, though I knew that was a lie. As I scrolled through Facebook, the livestream from the parish that sponsored me for ordination appeared on my screen as they sang the opening words of the palm liturgy—I don’t know about you, but sometimes the Spirit’s movement in my life is not subtle. With the opening peal of the organ my spirit lunged forward to grasp at something that finally felt fully familiar. As the feed played in the background, I got up, made my coffee, and let myself go to church on the couch. Later I would recognize it as the inimitable and ever-needed grace of not having to try so hard. Of course we ought to be intentional about preparation for worship, but that morning the best gift I was capable of offering God looked more like desire than action, and God loved it. For all my time spent in church, I still have a hard time remembering that God loves me just the way I am, even when that means I’m under the covers in my pajamas in a bad mood. That morning doing my honest-to-goodness best to listen through the din of my grief for some bit of good news looked like tuning out of the interminable Passion Gospel long enough to get a refill. And God showed up.

As the fog began to lift (metaphorically and literally), I slowly reoriented my life and noticed that those things that had been important and life-giving under the old order still held true, and I suddenly had the opportunity to spend my days and weeks in ways that made sense for my well-being. Meeting with others to pray on Zoom and Facebook Live was important, but I also found myself going to stand in the back of the huge stone chapel at the heart of campus to sing on behalf of those hundreds that should have been singing in that space for Holy Week or graduation. Suddenly old friends I had fallen out of touch with were just as close at hand as anyone else. I’ve attended my share of Zoom birthdays, weddings, and happy hours. My oft-stated desire to spend more time on the miles and miles of trails outside my front door is finally coming true, and I’ve surprised myself with what appears to be a fledgling interest in birding. A potted hydrangea appeared on my front step on my birthday; his name is Louis, and I’m doing my very best not to kill him (so far so good). And like the rest of the internet, I’ve gotten really into trying new recipes and baking bread. 

This season has been as reorienting as it has been disorienting. I’ve had the chance to see what’s really important about my own well-being and what has been at the heart of this season of formation for ordained ministry in a place I have come to love so deeply. Last week I gathered with some of my classmates on Zoom to watch a video prepared by the university to mark the end of our time here. One of our professors offered words that echoed what she said in our first class held over Zoom several weeks ago: “None of us could have guessed you were being prepared for ministry under such difficult conditions. But God knew, and you are prepared.” What sounded like an empty platitude in late March has borne out to be true. This time of social distancing has forced some things to fall away and others to rise to the surface, offering an unexpected lens on just what has been going on for the past three years. With or without my fantasies about the end of senior year, I’ve found that I still have everything I need for what lies ahead. 

As my classmates and I learned how to be the same community we always had been in new and inconvenient ways, it turns out I did have time for “thank you” and “I’m sorry” and “I love you” and “see you later.” They didn’t unfold in the ways I had imagined, but we made down payments on the hugs and laughter and tears we’ll gift each other when we do finally share space again. Like so much else about the last several weeks: they weren’t what we wanted them to be, but God’s persistent, irresistible grace has been and will continue to be made known to us all the same.