Jesus said to his disciples, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in them, will bear much fruit.”
Bearing fruit is a metaphor indicative of health; physical, psychological, spiritual. Producing sickness is indicative of the exact opposite. A terrible sickness, abnormal in that it is a pandemic, has plagued the world for over a year. People whose immune systems are less healthy than normal have had their health most adversely affected by Covid-19. Relevant factors are congenital such as lung problems and heart conditions and pre-existing such as COPD and hypertension. But also relevant to a healthy immune system are personal and social factors such as childhood adversity and chronic stress spawned from confined living space, diets lacking fresh vegetables, environments lacking clean water, neighborhoods lacking medical facilities, regions lacking gainful work. These factors are not normal and yet are normal in the U.S. Thus, not only is it now normal for a virus to cause people to be sick across the U.S. culture, but it has long been normal for the U.S. culture itself to cause people to be sick. A sick U.S. culture judges the coronavirus a hoax because it judges each of the aforementioned factors as a hoax – psychological rather than physical, and personal rather than social. However, there is a natural interrelationship between psychological suffering / trauma and physical illness, and personal and social maladies. But U.S. culture habitually assigns blame to the people it makes sick: they don’t eat right or don’t exercise or have a weak character. U.S. culture hinders consideration of it being a sick and thus causing sick people. The sickness of the U.S. culture was recently admitted to by the former president’s Covid response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx. After making cuts to Affordable Care, disbanding the Covid response team, impeding PPE, lying, censoring medical data, and using race and politics maliciously, Birx confessed, “100,000 deaths came from that original surge. All of the rest of them (300,000)… could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.” In truth, so much sickness could be mitigated or decreased substantially. For example, when U.S. capitalists convene in Congress to maintain an unlivable wage, corporate Ag, and deregulation they are not healing the sickness of poverty, toxic food, pollution, guns. They are being the withered vine and dying branches of which Jesus speaks that perpetually cause the sickness and death. So too when world capitalists convene in Davos, as they did recently, to implement “The Great Reset,” they too are the great sickness causing great sickness. It is not a conspiracy theory to identify the U.S.’ for-plunder disease system as sick (whether of not Elon Musk wants to inject us with a microchip). The capitalists admit they convene to “determine the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons.” Capitalist masters, however well-intentioned, have been determining all that for centuries, and sickness is the resulting norm; personal and social.
Creating a ‘new normal’ with healthy vines and healthy branches bearing fruit means knowing our personal health and immune system is in relationship with our social health and immune system. We live in communion. We are an interrelated whole. We can create whole environments of health for our ‘new normal.’ Proposals include environments based on the meaningfulness of humanity and the use of technology – not the other way around; a respectful rather than capitalist interaction between wild-life and human habitats; the universal right to healthy resources – air, soil, water, and emergency services; the universal right to health care; the inclusion of mental health in provisions for social health: the inclusion of persons disabled, older, and/or vulnerable in social health designs; activist health care professionals; health curriculum in schools; rural towns and city neighborhoods having medical clinics, community centers, and family areas; civic planning for exercise, bicycles, play, and Farmers Markets space. Our social for-health immune system can be paid for by defunding capitalism’s sick for-plunder everything system.
Prayer: Spirit of healing, you are our vine
Question: How am I helping to create a socially healthy immune system?
May 2, 2021 Gospel John 15:1-8 Fifth Sunday of Easter