2 Timothy 1:6-7 (HCSB)

Therefore, I remind you to keep ablaze the gift of God that is in you (Timothy) through the laying on of my (Rabbi Shaul) hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.

2 Timothy 1:6-7 (CJB)

For this reason, I am reminding you to fan the flame of God’s gift, which you received through s’mikhah from me. For God gave us a Spirit who produces not timidity, but power, love, and self-discipline.

I’ve been hearing this verse floating around a bit lately in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, as this is certainly one of the highest anxiety times that my particular society has experienced in my lifetime.

First, the fear. This virus is very, very scary. We don’t have a vaccine, cure, or even fully effective treatment. In just a few months it’s causing more economic upheaval than most of us could have imagined, to the extent that people even who aren’t particularly worried about the virus are worried about its cascading effects. I’ve gone through moments of deep anxiety about both things. The deaths and suffering happening from this are appalling. And the cascade (I think of Ganymede in the sci-fi series “The Expanse,” for my fellow nerds) is also horrifying to consider. We all rely on so many delicately interconnected and potentially vulnerable services, from moment to moment, without really noticing it.

So on the face of things (“in the flesh,” in the Bible-shorthand that I’m accustomed to), we have plenty reason to be scared. But I believe Paul is saying here that my 3am freak outs are not a great destination for my journey at the moment. Don’t get me wrong: The freak-outs are a valid and necessary part of my grieving process for my old life, for all of our old lives. In fact, as I’ve thought about the stages of grief – without me doing any, you know, actual diligent research or anything – I now believe that Anxiety can be a stark and important expression of the Bargaining phase. And from Denial to Acceptance and everywhere in between, I believe all of us are in some phase of mourning for the way life used to be.

But the products of the Holy Spirit working in my life should be Power, Love, and Sound Judgment/Self-discipline (the last Greek word in the trio is “sophronismos”). If those are not the things that are coming out of me, then I need to check myself and go back to my Lord for a Holy Spirit refresh.

[My husband is making pizza sauce and my four-year-old just tried raw onion for the first time. My husband: “Did you like that?” 4yo: “Yeah!” Half a second later, 4yo: “Ueeaeagghhgh!” Another half second later 4yo runs up to me while I’m writing so that he can breathe in my face. Tears fill my eyes. Now his big brothers are doing the same. Why did I decide to start blogging again when my kids’ school and public life is all suspended?]

So I want to talk about Power, Love, and Sophronismos one by one.

Power

Here’s the Strong’s definition of the Greek word “dunames” that Rabbi Shaul used:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G1411&t=KJV

Each of us has things we can do. In a time of crisis like this, or even if it’s not a full-blown crisis yet, we can do things to help. If you’re not scared yourself, look around you at the people who are scared. What can you do for them? What is in your power?

Are you in a position to set up your employees to work from home? Or to pay them when they can’t come in because their kids are home from school? Are you in a position to notice and thank people who don’t normally get thanked – grocery store clerks, garbage collectors, mail persons, delivery drivers, warehouse workers? Many of these are putting themselves at risk or working in very high-stress situations with low pay. Are you able to donate a little bit of money to a food bank where kids who rely on free food at school aren’t able to get it now? Regardless of our concern about the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to use whatever power we’ve been given, right now.

And if you don’t know your power, check in on it with prayer. If you’re not sure of your gifts, try something, and see what sticks. Maybe you have a superpower to comfort people, or a superpower to get people to sit up and take notice. Both are needed. Maybe you have a superpower of intercession, O my sibling in the Lord, how we need it!

This is not a time to sit and dream about what we will do someday once we figure how to use our gifts to our best ability. I’ve done that quite a bit. You should take a look inside my head, there are some beautiful spaces for beautiful dreams built out in there. Part of why I’m writing this is because I’m trying something, to see what sticks.

And remember, this isn’t something you have to make happen. All you have to do is be willing to plug one end of yourself into the Holy Spirit and the other end into the world, and the Holy Spirit will provide the Power.

Love

Of course, God is love, and anything from the Holy Spirit will be rooted and grounded in love. Holy Power is the energy, or ability, for Love to take action. Holy Sophronismos is how Love examines the world and judges what is Righteous and Just to do (Micah 6:8). I can’t really touch the tip of the iceberg of Love in a blog post.

But I can point out one specific action that is quite counterintuitive in our culture. And that’s when we Love one another by staying the heck away from each other.

I’ve been reading a lot online about slowing the spread of this virus. It spreads exponentially, so that one person infects more than one, who in turn infect more than one each, etc. The number of people typically infected by each first person is called the “R nought” or “R zero” of the disease. So if this number is greater than one, any initial infection of a very small number of people will spread to others slowly at first, but then pick up speed as multiple people infect multiple people and so on. Here’s the Wikipedia page on R nought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

This COVID-19 has an R nought of 2 to 3+, whereas the normal seasonal flu is about 1.3. Each person who gets infected is likely to infect two to three people, who in turn infect two to three, etc. And the tree branches out and out and so on. So we saw very few infections in the USA at first, but our curve is starting to look awfully sharp. And experts estimate that, without drastic shutdowns, the number of documented infections will double every six days. That means we go from the current 3,155 today (3/15) to something like 20,000 by the end of the month. In about two weeks.

The total hospital bed capacity in our country is estimated at just under a million. Unless the doubling-every-six-days thing is stopped very, very soon, we’ll hit that in early May. And a lot of people are already in those beds, and the doctors and nurses and other workers in the healthcare field are already working very hard, and for long hours, before this thing hits them. So long before we get anywhere near a million cases in the USA the healthcare system will be overwhelmed, healthcare workers will be getting infected themselves and/or be completely exhausted, and people require treatment for anything else will also get inadequate care.

Oh, and people carry the virus around for a couple of days or even up to two weeks before they start showing symptoms. So I could be infected right now and not know it. I could feel completely fine and decide to have a couple of my closest friends and their kids over to my house. Their kids play with other kids. And behold, a hideous branching tree of dozens of lives.

So, what is the loving thing to do here?

This is a devastating short video of a newspaper from northern Italy. The obit section in early February vs. the section a few days ago.

https://twitter.com/davcarretta/status/1238791068071661568

This is sobering. This requires some major sophronismos.

Sophronismos.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G4995&t=KJV

This translates to “self control, soundness of mind, and moderation.” Some might say that “moderation” means “not too much” or “don’t be extreme,” but of course in certain situations the loving thing to do is to be extreme. Dying on an execution stake is extreme. Laying down our lives for others is extreme. Rabbi Shaul told the Philippians that their moderation should be seen by all, and the Greek for “moderation” there means appropriate, fair, equitable, even gentle. We are supposed to use our sound minds and our self control to know what is appropriate and suitable in a given situation, and to behave accordingly.

So, what is appropriate?

Right now, we probably have many infected people in our country who don’t know they’re infected. We also have had a challenge rolling out testing to everyone who may have been exposed. So in these initial weeks, while the virus could be incubating without people showing symptoms, it’s critical for each of us to limit our exposure to others as much as possible. I’m sure not all reading this are big fans of the Washington Post, but the simulations in this article are based on math and expert input, and the graphics are very helpful:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

The summary is this: If we don’t isolate from one another somewhat, our healthcare system will be overwhelmed. More people will get sick, will suffer, will die. If three out of four of us can cut off most of our contact with others during these crucial few weeks, while the first wave starts to recover and more infected people are noticeably symptomatic, and then as a society we reassess, we will fare better. If seven out of eight of us practice social distancing as best we can, and listen to the experts for guidance and when it’s safe to have more contact with people, our whole system stands a much better chance. Less death, less suffering, less societal upheaval and instability.

A little inconvenience now to save a whole lot of suffering for a whole lot of people.

So my take on a loving, powerful, sound-minded action in this situation is: Be one of the seven.

I would love to come back to this in two weeks and say, wow, that was too extreme. What I really don’t want? To look back and say, “Wow, I could have done more to protect my community and stayed home. I could even have posted that annoyingly preachy blog post I drafted on the 15^th.”

Now, our family is self-isolating, and we will reassess in two weeks. As far is it’s under our control, we won’t go within six feet of anyone else, or share an indoor space with anyone. We have a small financial cushion and my husband’s clients have been understanding, and we recognize our privilege there. Since we are people who can stay home without contributing to a collapse of society, we are going to be five among our seven. Can you be another one?

I edit myself a lot. So I wind up editing for ages, in my head or on the screen, and never posting anything, as evidenced below. If you are reading this, know that I am now going to be posting with very light editing. You’ve been warned.

These are not my final answers.

I’m not crazy. I cloth diaper with twins. I’m a member of the Main Line Mothers of Multiples club and know of at least one member who cloth diapered her triplets.

Cloth diapering has seen some major innovations in the last decades and even the last few years. Safety pins, rubber shorts, most leaks, and even folding… all that can be left in the past.

When it comes to multiples, doing laundry every other day for two babies is not much harder than doing the same for one. And the cost of disposable diapers and wipes for multiple butts, through potty training, is some serious, serious cash.

My cost analysis for twins was something like $5500 over three years to go disposable, or less than $2000-2500 with cloth. Remember, in addition to diapers there’s also the cost of wipes, pail bags, diaper cream, and so on. We did choose to cut ourselves a little slack and go disposable for the first couple of months, when we could go through 20 dipes per day. But because we got a good deal on our cloth dipes, I still expect to clock in under that $2500 figure. That includes everything on the list below, as well as detergent/water/energy costs, over more than three years.

And figuring out your own best cloth diapering practices is a truly satisfying hack. So, however many bottoms you may have to diaper, give it serious consideration before just defaulting to disposables.

There are plenty of pages out there on the topic, but here’s a summary of what I’ve come up with. This post covers the nursery side of things. The laundry room side of the process is a whole other bullet list, and I’ll save that for another day.

–        Diapers I got: Kawaii. www.theluvyourbaby.com. I got 48 of the colored one size dipes. They have a huge sale twice a year and we got our dipes at the sale price. I wound up spending under $300 for 48 dipes, which is an absurdly low price for diapering two kids from 2 months old through potty training. I did have to spend another $100 or so to hack a solution to the occasional soak-through problem I had with their microfiber inners though…

–        My solution was Bamboo and Hemp fleece, which I cut into strips and just fold and insert. These materials are much more absorbent and breathable than microfleece. You can buy pre-made bamboo and hemp inners, but it’s much cheaper to buy the fabric and cut it up. I cut one long 6’ strip, fold it to the length I need, and insert into the liner. No hemming or stitching, they are inners so I don’t care how they look, just care that they are comfy and absorbent.

• Caveat on the bamboo: I prefer the bamboo, but with the bamboo fleece to which I linked, you have to make sure to cut so that the different-textured edging along one edge of the fabric is parallel to your strips. If you don’t, you will get curling on the edges of all your strips, which will decrease coverage in the dipe. Of course, I learned this the hard way.

–        Cloth wipes, I got Osocosy and Bumkins, which are almost exactly the same. Cloth wipes are better for butts than disposable ones, and of course fit in with the environmental and financial stewardship of cloth diapering. Plus, throwing wipes into one receptacle and dipes into another is just annoying.

–        Wipes dispenser. This Oxo one serves us well, it’s sturdy, pops open easily, and cloth wipes are easy to get out of it, one at a time, with one hand.

–        Extra virgin coconut oil. Serves as diaper cream, not that use it much for this; cloth dipes and wipes cut down diaper rash, and the wipe solution below has coconut oil in it which keeps their tender skin feeling nice. Coconut oil is also helpful for cradle cap, works as nipple cream, and supposedly boosts lactation when ingested, along with 101 or so other uses.

–        Homemade wipes solution. There is a huge list of recipes on Eco Crazy Mom; I just use 4 parts water to 1 part coconut oil to ½ part Dr. Bronner’s baby soap.

–        My wipe method: Fold the wipe down from the top and up from the bottom, so edges meet in the middle. Stack in the dispenser while applying wipe solution to your preferred dampness.

–        We do not use a wipe warmer. For the first few weeks, our kids screamed as soon as their diapers came off, so a toasty wipe wouldn’t have made much difference. Once they got used to it, they absolutely love changing time, so the temperature of the wipe still matters not. Wipe warmers are good bacteria breeders and I don’t need to clean things any more often than I already do!

–        Speaking of cleaning, I spray poopy dipes with BacOut before I throw them in the pail.

–        Tall kitchen trash cans with foot pedals are good diaper pails for cloth diapering. We chose this Simplehuman one because it’s nice and sturdy and has a lid lock for once the boys get a bit older. We use Kanga pail liners.

It’s a lot. Everyone has to hack their own favorite process, but I think my process works pretty well. And yes, there’s a lot of startup cost, but in the end we still come out way, way ahead of disposables.