Sparrow Theology by Rev. Emily Joye

Day 1: For Parents in Pandemic Times

Read Psalm 147:13b; Matt 6:25a-26a; Romans 14:8

“Any future theology I do must put the welfare of children above the niceties of metaphysics” wrote Rev. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown who taught Theology and Ethics at The Pacific School of Religion (my alma mater). The first time I read this line as a seminary student, it stopped me in my tracks. Fifteen years later as a parent living with multiple children in a pandemic, this line about children--the way Brown put the welfare of children at center of his theology--strikes me practically instructive.

In March 2020 when the pandemic first hit our society I was pregnant with my third child. I developed two complications during my pregnancy while also working full time and home-schooling two kiddos due to school closures. We had no idea then that two years later in 2022 we’d be seeing surges in Covid cases for kiddos. We had no idea then the kinds of choices we’d be forced to make as parents, or for how long and how often we’d be forced to make them. It’s been a staggering reality.

Prolonged exposure to any traumatic scenario is torture. To have to protect children under those conditions is its own kind of hell. What theologies help us meet prolonged exposure to trauma as parents? We cannot be in denial and we cannot completely succumb to the despair of these days because the labor of parenting never stops. We need a theology that enables us to deal squarely with Covid and keep changing diapers, feeding bellies, snuggling bodies, educating minds, protecting and shaping child futures…

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