Connection from Disconnection
During the pandemic, I leaned (harder than usual) into tribalism. I saw the world plainly: Winners and Losers. Right and Wrong. Black and White. Self-righteous, I “sided” with positions that felt like moral high ground. My struggle to break this habit is ongoing.
The pandemic revealed to me that my parents belonged to tribes diametrically opposed to mine. I had intense arguments with my parents over how to behave in this new world: masks, vaccines, gatherings, all of it emotionally charged with conflicting ideologies. My parents and I were locked in separate echo chambers, exiled from each other.
As a physician, I felt suited to understand the latest science and evidence concerning the pandemic. It hurt that my parents trusted the word of vitriolic influencers and propaganda over the word of their only son, who had completed 15 years of higher education that emphasized interpretation of medical literature. This all came to a head when, amid another surge, I told my parents not to visit for Christmas. My parents, clearly hurt, took it personally. In retrospect, I see the hurt we caused each other as mirror images. They sent me a series of angry text messages that left me wondering if we were headed toward estrangement. Less then a month later, my mom had died from COVID-19.
After she died, I realized that trying to win arguments had done nothing but disconnect me from my parents. Our tendency to focus on “winning” anything in this life tends to distract us from what’s most important. In today’s reading from the first letter of John, he offers another way: “Beloved: Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 Jn 5:5)
Shouldn’t belief in this Jesus naturally lead us to imitate him? What could this look like in my life? I’m learning that dualistic thinking leads to disconnection, just as it did in my relationship with my parents. Jesus wouldn’t pick sides when challenged with “this or that” questions. He spoke in parables and would often offer a third alternative: unconditional love that instead fostered connection.
Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the ultimate “connection from disconnection” story.
In this season, three years to the day after my mom was admitted to the hospital in her last days, I now find myself very much connected to her and my dad. In the wake of her death, our relationship had its own resurrection. It was enough to hold my dad and me in the same space so that, even through difficult conversations, we were able to rediscover what connected us. Posthumously, I revisited my mom’s death bed in my memories and rediscovered love in those last moments that had previously gone unnoticed. I miss my mom, but her death gave new life to my relationship with my parents. Today, I’m able to truthfully see my mom’s death as an answered prayer.
This is my “connection from disconnection” story.
What a wonderful paradox – that God can create connection from disconnection and life from death. Perhaps all of our many setbacks are invitations to “suffer through” to make fertile ground for something new.
Kevin Izquierdo