Vaccine Visions

By Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti

It was 5 a.m., and I had not yet slept in any meaningful way. I spent the night drifting in and out of wakefulness, my body feeling like it had lost the ability to regulate my temperature: I was simultaneously hot while also experiencing chills. I was on the edges of a migraine, the arm where I had received my second Covid vaccine was too tender to lie on, and periodically nausea washed through me. By 8 a.m. I was crying—from sleepless exhaustion, yes, but also with the deep humility of knowing with one hundred percent certainty that no matter how miserable my night had been, I was going to be okay. What I was experiencing were just the side effects of a vaccine. My access to that vaccine was a deep privilege, especially in a week in which there had been hospital fires, oxygen shortages, and thousands of deaths per day in India, the land of my ancestral heritage.

Yet, there was even more going on with me than the vaccine side effects…’more’ than I can necessarily explain. Yearning for rest, physically disoriented in a fever-chill see-saw, I found myself in a deeply liminal space. Information came to me. Guidance. Perhaps it was me, getting in touch with the best of who I am; perhaps it was my ancestors reaching out to support me and share their perspective; perhaps it was me ‘vibing’ with that cosmic Om, the universal energy of All that Is. I don’t know, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. It was wisdom to hold on to, to strive to live into.

“It all happens in the blink of an eye.”  In the cosmic scheme of things, any one human lifetime is short. We lose sight of this; I lose sight of this. My gosh, all the petty little things we get preoccupied with, and then spend our time perseverating over. The resentments, slights, opinions, and judgements that we carry with us for years and even decades. This time we have on planet Earth, embodied in this way, is so brief, whatever length of time it may ultimately wind up being. When we lose sight of the fact that our individual existences are just the blink of an eye (the cosmos’ eye), we forget to notice the beauty of butterflies. We think that our individual goals/plans are grander than the planet of which we are a part. We become arrogant. We lose humility. The finitude of our existence connects us to humility and the reality that each day of life is a gift from the universe; a chance to think, feel, practice love, and to experience the beauty that exists all around us.

“The puzzle pieces fit.”  The randomness of life confounds us all at times. Especially when we are fearful or navigating pain/loss. It can be hard—even impossible—to discern any rhyme or reason behind the events we are at times called to move through. Yet, there are also moments when we look back on our lives and are able to connect dots that previously weren’t visible to us. Those moments of “aaah, that hard/challenging thing was necessary; it helped get me (or others) here, to something new, different, or beautiful.”  The puzzle pieces fit—even when we can’t see how. Really believing that takes immense trust: in oneself, in others, in all of existence. When that trust is hard to find, we can ‘lean in’ and ‘lean on.’  Lean into the ‘thing’ knowing that there may be more there, more that may be discovered over time or with stillness. ‘Leaning on’ invites us to know that none of us is truly alone in life’s journey. The very earth beneath our feet holds us up. Our ancestors are always with us. We live on a planet filled to the brim with human beings: if the ones we are with are not worth leaning on, there is no shortage of other people we could be in relationship with.

“We are yearning for elbow room.”  We are embedded in structures of social messaging and control. Structures that allow gender-based pay inequity; racial injustice; poverty, homelessness, and starvation; media images of physical beauty that create body shame and alienate us from ourselves; unchecked greed and the hoarding of resources by the few; and on and on. We all ‘feel’ the impact of these unhealthy social realities, even as something inside us longs—so simply—to just be. ‘To be’—in the fullness and authenticity of who and what each of us genuinely is at our best: that inner ground of our higher self, the spark that connects us to the wisdom of the universe, that thing that at times gently nudges us in certain directions and/or outright bumps us up against others whenever the possibility exists of it being squelched or crushed. That part of us yearns for enough elbow room to just exist–free from the demands, conditions, and judgements that others impose on us–and one of the greatest gifts we can extend to one other is the openhearted presence (the metaphoric space) that allows that.

“We, as a species, are on a developmental curve.”  There is much that human beings have gotten wrong. Beyond the very partial list already noted, we have constructed entire ways of life (political, economic, and national security-based philosophies) that normalize selfishness, hoarding, and harm. We have essentially taken the socialized worldview of a toddler, systematized and globalized it: “I have my toys, you have your toys, and life is great so long as I have more toys and better toys than you (the Other).”  This worldview permanently pits us against one another as a species. Bridging the structural (built-in) selfishness frequently expresses itself as charity—generosity that does nothing to change the structures or patterns of behavior that normalize Othering, one-up’ing, self-centering, and greed. And, yet, we are collectively learning and growing. We are learning to look squarely at the paradigms that are harming our species, even as those paradigms continue to benefit some. The seeds of innovation and evolution, especially at the level of local communities, are increasing. Many of us are supporting one another in growing and stretching beyond where we have already been. Our species is on a developmental curve, and the arc of that curve is much larger than any one of our lifetimes.

“Dance (metaphorically, physically, whatever works) at the joy and wonder of it all.”  In the midst of the vaccine-induced fever-chills, disorientation, and exhaustion that I experienced, I also felt deeply connected to my loved ones who have predeceased me—grandparents, friends who have been siblings to me, and mentors. In that liminal space, we danced together with a joy that I cannot fully describe. I mean actually danced: in my heart, in spirit, whatever it was. It felt like the dancing and the joy were, above all else, what my loved ones wanted me to hold on to: be that joy, bring it alive, dance it into existence with others. Since it’s all the blink of an eye, anyway, why not dance a spell every now and again?  In the Hindu tradition, one metaphor of life is that of lila, or play, and across time, distance, and maybe even realities, love, joy, and the spirit of playfulness can endure.

Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti is the Senior Minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor.

Read Rev. Mishra-Marzetti’s essay on cultivating relationships in a time of division in CW Weekly #41. You can find it here.