THE OTHER DAY I went for a walk in the late-winter sunshine on a day mellow with melting snow and almost invisibly budding trees, in a neighborhood of old, Victorian houses beautifully and expensively maintained.

On a side street, I saw a little girl of about three years old.

She was walking with her mother and baby brother. The young mother looked me full in the face and smiled. I think she was so serene and happy to be out with her two children on a nice day that she forgot she was supposed to be worried and anxious when another person approached.

One could not help but be deeply uplifted by the sight of her.

Her baby was quiet in his carrier and her adorable daughter, with an absurd, wobbly puffball on her hat and fuzzy mittens, was still so new to walking that she was clearly proud of it. Her beaming smile and knowing side glance said, “And you thought I could only be carried!” Her little boots clomped on the sidewalk with each step.

They stopped at a child-sized basketball net in a driveway. A man of about 40 years old came out of the house to pick up the trash cans on the curb.

“Hey, Darby!” he shouted to the little girl. “How are you doing with your slam-dunks?”

The mother chatted with him for a couple of minutes and then she and Darby started to walk away.

The man said loudly and enthusiastically to little Darby, “I would help you with your baskets if it wasn’t for this COVID thing!”

He turned around and walked back into his house.

Mr. Lummox, a grown and apparently healthy man, was seemingly afraid of playing with this little girl. He saw Darby, a healthy child, as a biological weapon.

You know, it’s really none of my business.

But I don’t think Mr. Lummox was truly afraid of Darby — or afraid of coating her with noxious pathogens in his aerosol emissions.

Maybe he truly is that stupid, certainly many intelligent people have proven themselves to be that stupid, but I think it is more likely that he just can’t contain himself. He can’t hold it in. He’s overflowing.

He just loves being part of a “global pandemic.” It has given him new meaning, a new lease on life.

The religious instincts in human beings are so powerful, so irrepressible, so innate, that if they are not directed toward the truth, they will be consumed by a false religion, ignited like dry brush with a match. COVID has found millions of zealots just waiting for the right cause — a cause false enough to suit their self-love and their desire for a religion of legalistic, external practices that do not touch the inner man, the husk protecting a vast abyss.

The “pandemic” probably has had zero negative consequences for Mr. Lummox. Beyond some minor inconveniences, such as having to order delivery from Whole Foods instead of actually going there, it’s probably been non-disastrous. But it has had its positive effects. Mr. Lummox will look back on this time, if it ever ends, fondly. If he’s still alive by then, he will lose a powerful excuse to turn ordinary encounters into expressions of Puritanical piety and to convert, almost magically, the anti-social, boorish tendencies that are the inevitable result of a life of materialistic, competitive striving into virtue.

As I said, it’s really none of my business.

But I had to restrain myself from shouting, “Jerk!”

— Comments —

Janice G. writes:

Bravo. And thank you.

I am sending out your post, with credit, to those who I know will appreciate it.
As has been said: “Those who believe in nothing will fall for anything!”
The truth of that is becoming clearer daily, due to the exaggerated and non-stop concern for health that this Covid spookery has caused.

You painted an impressive case-study picture of the success the media and its “experts” (the false gods from “above”) have achieved in pronouncing the Covid narrative (“sacred scripture”); conferring the Covid rituals (masks, sanitizers, vaxx); and demanding popular consent and obedience by reward or punishment. They have obtained the veneration of the masses for their medical prophets such as Dr. Fauci, too. The people also know the teachings of the CDC (Congregation for the Doctrine of Covid), and in what places all the liturgies are held.

They Believe!  And what is amazing is that what I describe is not far from the truth. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve experienced cooled-off, if not lost friendships over it.

It is tragic that the Covid believers have little or no knowledge or understanding of the True Faith – that the Catechism wasn’t as eagerly studied and committed to mind; it looks like the Evil One found the perfect way to fill the religious vacuum in those hearts that have departed from God and focused themselves on temporal things.

Finally, I do hope little Darby in your story, and all the little Darbys in this world, will grow up strong of mind, free, able to weigh the truth of the matter and stand on its side without fear.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

Insanity always ends eventually. But in the meantime, Darby has but one life to live. … I share your hopes for her.

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