March to June 2020. That’s how I think of COVID in Malta and that’s what I’m still struggling to make sense of.
A tunnel we were reluctantly shoved into and from which we have now been pushed out… like a traumatic collective rebirth, that we neither remotely desired nor were prepared for…
Or maybe we were just like the reluctant prophet Jonah, swallowed whole by the “big fish”, left to contemplate our stubbornness for three long days and nights, until we were unceremoniously “vomited out” on dry land.
Is this post-COVID Malta our Nineveh?
Are we being sent to a land of debauchery that needs to be “saved”? If so, to what extent are we willing to embrace our destiny and utter words that could lead to a change of heart? Do we even want to invite others to a change of heart?
I see the aim of this new space “rethink” as an opportunity to speak to one another from the heart, about the changes that we would hope for in our lives, personal and communal, in post-COVID Malta.
We have been forced to go through months not “business-as-usual.” We have been forced to adjust to solitude, to confinement, to a new more restricted rhythm of life. Some had to suffer abuse, others hunger, many fear and anxiety. Most of us were overstressed or simply disoriented.
But the challenge of every traumatic experience is that it does not stall us, does not paralyse us, does not make us enter a rut repeating, like a broken record, the same old fears seeing no way out. We have been regurgitated out, into the real world, and now we must find the strength to rebuild it.
Finding the strength to embrace our destiny
And it starts with rebuilding one another, having the guts to expose our demons, to name our frailties, to accept our weaknesses; indeed to face and embrace the brokenness that could make us a “new whole”.
Our shattered pieces call for the opportunity to be gently sought out, to be invited to repent and heal. No matter our past sins, we are still loved enough to be sent our own Jonah who tells us that all is not lost.
But that also means that we must all swallow our pride, embrace our destiny and become a mellower Jonah for others, willing to see beauty in the most damaged of lives.
The lesson of COVID—like of any human story worth telling—is that everyone is broken, but no one can put themselves together again. We all need a “prophet” to mirror our fragile souls, to tell us where we have sinned, but to show us that nonetheless we can together start all-over again.
Rethink chose for its logo exactly such an image: a whole splintered; a sign overturned. But together they offer a new promise: (re)imagine together, warts and all… and dare believe in a new beginning
