Finding Faith ... in a slow, autumn Sunday

In reality, there was nothing special about yesterday.

But, I have to tell you just how good a slow, autumn Sunday felt.

We slept in. Shelley relaxed in the bath and read as she often does on the weekends. I got up, and worked on some chores around the house for a couple of hours. Then I watched my beloved Minnesota Vikings get whooped by the Green Bay Packers, a perennial rite of passage if you are a Minnesota football fan.

As, I watched the end of the game, Shelley was outside finishing up some painting on the exterior of the house that we wanted to get done before winter.

After the game finished, I checked to see if I could be of any help on the painting, and being that she had it well in hand, I took the dogs for a beautiful afternoon walk. ... About 65 degrees. Bright, shining sun in the popping blue sky. Trees full of orange, yellow and red leaves, precariously hanging on before autumn winds will come along and blow them all off our trees in the coming weeks.

The day seemed as normal of a Sunday in the fall could be: Some rest. Some chores. A few boxes checked on the to-do list. A little football on the TV. Some reading. ... All so perfectly normal.

Even though none of it is normal.

I had the extra time in the morning to help knock off much of the chores needed to put our house in order for the beginning of the work/school week because I was not at church. Our church service had been recorded six days earlier on Tuesday night, the same process our church has been using since March. We do a service using Facebook Live on Tuesday evenings, and then we post the recording of that service to our church's YouTube page and schedule it to again appear on our Facebook page as a new post at our regularly scheduled church time on Sunday mornings.

If it were not for this prerecorded service, normally I would have been out the door of our house about 8ish on a Sunday morning, and I wouldn't have returned until at least 1 p.m. ... And when I do return from a Sunday at the church, the introvert in me is usually bushwacked by the emotional expenditure it takes for me to participate in worship. At that point, you aren't getting much more out of me for the day, as it takes the day for me to come down off that adrenaline boost needed to conduct worship.

And then there was the football game. ... In some ways, it was a balm in this otherwise surreal time in which we are living. Sundays and football just go together in the fall, and so I was happy to see the beginning of a new National Football League season.

But when you tuned into the Sunday morning pregame shows all across the spectrum, much of the content yesterday wasn't about "Xs and Os." It was about the league's overall response to the civic and social unrest that is gripping our nation. Let me state plainly, that I wasn't opposed to the concentration on these issues. Rather, I applauded it. ... It's just that it was just another stark sign of the strange times in which we live.

Fast forward to the football game itself, a home game between the Vikings and Packers, and U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, which is usually packed with 85,000 raucous fans ... was empty. ... Well, nearly empty. ... There were a handful of players from the Vikings' practice squad sitting in their street clothes in the stands. ... And then there were dozens of life-size cardboard photos of fans who paid to have their paper lookalikes occupy their seats while they can't.

Generally, during a Vikings broadcast, it's hard to hear the announcers because the fans are so noisy. Yesterday, instead, there was a phony, piped-in version of fan noise on the telecast. I'm still not sure if that was only for the viewing audience's benefit, or if that was fan noise that was being pumped into the stadium for the benefit of the players. ... Either way, it was distracting and didn't make the experience any more enjoyable, much like the silly laugh tracks of TV sitcoms of my childhood.

And then there was the experience of watching Shelley, sitting with our youngest daughter Siri, trying to help her finish the previous week's homework and prepare for the upcoming week of school. ... You see, our schools are operating in a hybrid format, meaning that students attend school either two or three days per week depending upon your scheduled. So, for instance, our kids fall in the "A" pod, meaning they go to school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and go online school for Thursday and Friday one week. And then they go to school Monday and Tuesday and go to online school Wednesday through Friday the following week.

All of it has left our "Littles" a tad perplexed. Our older two kids are adjust just fine, but our youngest needs more organizational help, a boost to help her keep on track and understanding the assignments. And, so as I listened to a first half in which the Packers were pummeling the Vikings, Shelley was working with Siri to finalize her school week and look toward this next week's challenges. ... Again, let me state plainly, that I am not upset with how our school district is handling the pandemic. In fact, I think they are doing the best they can in the strange situation in which they are placed. ... I'm just noting another sure sign that even though yesterday felt pretty normal, it was anything but.

Like everyone else, I find myself yearning for what seemed like simpler times. Six months into the pandemic, I too, notice my mind drifting off to a daydream of what it would be like to wake up to a normal morning in our household, be it a normal weekend day or a normal weekday.

But I know that even in this new strangeness in which we live, nothing was ever simple for us pre-pandemic either. ... I have to remind myself that our household was always pretty crazy: After all, Shelley and I both work; we have three busy teenagers; take care of two dogs, three cats and a horse; and I'm finishing my seminary degree while also guiding a church almost full-time.

And so yesterday, as I was taking our pups on their walk, a daily ritual in which I use to decompress and to think about the day, I soaked in the normalcy of it. ... I appreciated just having the time in the morning to help out around the house, completing chores that normally would fall to Shelley if I were at church. I appreciated having football again even if none of it felt like a typical pro football game. ... And I appreciated watching Shelley lovingly and patiently working with our daughter to try to help set her up for a successful week at school, even if hybrid school has caused us more work and more anxiety.

During this short meditative walk, I tried to remind myself, that not everything in this new, upside-down world is bad. ... And that not everything in our pre-pandemic world was good.

We tend to lull ourselves into our comfortable ruts, and when big things -- i.e. pandemics -- rock our foundations, we grasp at what is familiar for comfort. ... But I gotta tell ya, yesterday felt pretty darn good, all of the strangeness aside.

Here's to finding faith in a little bit of normalcy on a slow, autumn Sunday.