I am winding down here in my little corner of North Encanto. Taking out trash, watering and feeding Tikka (she likes to nosh at night), laying out clothes for Monday that few will see, since I am one of a skeleton crew in my office. Remembering I have to take my own lunch since our cafeteria is closed, not to spare the workers, nothing like that. But because there are too few workers to make staying open profitable.

Profitable.

I am thinking thoughts in this North Encanto night. Thoughts that might disturb some of you, but that, perhaps perversely, instead leaves me with a sense of calm.

I have those dreaded ‘underlying conditions’ everyone talks about. What no one talks about is stress; how stress leaves one vulnerable; makes for weakened immune systems. I have talked about toxic stress from a racial lens, but here I am talking about something else–the collective stress all of us are living through right now. Anxiety about using the pen to sign our credit card slip; about germs on the gas pump; about accepting change from the cashier. Stress about who I might encounter in the elevators tomorrow. Stress about not if I am vulnerable, but am I, unknowingly, a threat to others?

I am pretty sure, given that I spent part of fall and almost all of winter fighting off a virus of my own, that left me weakened and at times fighting for air, and that left my sick and vacation time depleted, that if Coronavirus manages to get me, that I will fall hard. I only recently got better, to be faced with this.

I am sort of leaning into this. Leaning into the fact that I may get very sick, and thinking how I can live and serve despite that. I am fortunate that I have a platform that allows me to write; all I need is the ability to sit up, and working fingers.

But I may not be able to. So I will have to find other ways to stand in the gap. Meditation; prayer can be done even when rendered silent. Staying as grounded as I can. And yes, if I do succumb, to do so with the same grace and graciousness and honor as I have exhorted others to do.

Make no mistake, I know my odds of contracting the virus are low. I know that if I do get it, odds are I will recover, even if it again takes months. But the odds are not zero, and I think it is profitable, my kind of profitable, to consider and practice the woman I want to be in this current crisis.

I don’t want to go in tomorrow. It is so safe here in my living room. But off I will go, and will love my fellow colleagues also being semi-sacrificed as well as I can from the obligatory six foot distance. I will love them, and pray for them, and ply my spreadsheets. I will acknowledge worst case, even as I practice being the best person I can be. I will pray for the people with power in my and other workplaces, that their collective discernment will pull through, either because or in spite of them.

I will serve. And I may pay a real price. But that is what walking means, yes?

All of us, keep walking. Our hearts can cleave, even from six feet away.