God Calling…?

4 min readSep 3, 2021

Still hoping for a return to “normal”? Maybe we never were…

“God Calling” (Words and music by Joseph Lee Hooker, ©Copyright 2010 JL Hooker)

If we’ve heard it once over the course of the pandemic and its subsequent aftershocks, we’ve heard it 1000 times. So many people continue crying, stomping their feet and demanding a “return to normal,” which all too often is followed by something that feels a lot further away from what we are trying to “get back” to.

Enter: Blissful Acceptance. Can we all just please try to look at things a little differently?

If “abnormal” is eating at home more, hooking up less (or at least more carefully), contemplating the meaning of life, and recognizing the value of friends, time and health, then maybe recent crises have allowed us to embark upon a great pace to a real “normal” that far too many of us had long abandoned.

If “abnormal” means recognizing the value and sacrifice of our healthcare workers, our scientists, our leaders, our teachers, our kids and our parents, then maybe we should be eager about a future full of the kind of compassion that the human heart needs to survive. Maybe that is a far better version of “normal”!

If “abnormal” means wasting less toilet paper, conserving more gas, protecting the earth, reusing a baggie, working occasionally from home, or starting a garden — ostensibly for our own survival but really, affecting the entire globe in the process — then maybe our ears should be perking up and our hearts clamoring, “Out with the old, in with the new!”

Maybe something is whispering some sort of secret that recent generations haven’t had the time, inclination, or desire to listen to. Maybe our universe is groaning and wailing, and somehow intentionally shifted what we perceive as tragedy to its own advantage. After all, survival happens on various levels — cellular to cosmic — and most of us know when a shift is required.

So let’s flip the script on “normal” and look at this with minds renewed…

What if “normal” means slowing down our pace of living, looking our neighbor in the eye and even more, actually listening to their heart or a silly, everyday story?

What if “normal” is expecting less from our kids at school and ourselves at home, living in the now and breathing through pain as a fundamental bridge to a better tomorrow?

What if maybe, just maybe, we should be running from what we feel an indescribable restlessness to get back to…?

What if we are actually on the road to “free at last, free at last,” the ultimate Prayer of Renewal prayed by Martin Luther King…?

Maybe after you’ve gone to bed earlier tonight and woken up later tomorrow for work, made your own organic coffee along with some eggs and toast instead of a quick fast-food stop costing you twice as much time and money — maybe you can start to rethink this whole “return to normal” thing, and realize what you want is actually more within your grasp than it ever was.

Maybe, just maybe, we are on target to a kind of joy and peace we’ve never known. Maybe we should stop all the foot stomping on behalf of a return back to the actor formerly known as “Normal”… because he wasn’t “the One” but frankly, he sucked.

Should your new mantra be, “Thank God Almighty, free at last”…?

And maybe, alongside that… is God calling…?