Darkness fell hours ago.
The kids are in bed, tired from a day of playing in the fresh-fallen snow.
They should have been in school, but the school, like most everything, was shuttered. You reflect on the irony of how the “education” they’re supposed to be getting is being replaced by the raw, real-life education that has been foisted upon them by the situation.
The situation.
A few neighbourhood children had joined them in the snow. In the back of your mind, all day, was the constant worry that the police would come with fines, but to hell with fines, you nervously tried to convince yourself. It’s the last thing they have. Let them play. Their laughter and red cheeks could almost make you forget about “the situation”.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
You’re startled out of your half-slumber. Fear grips you for a moment. It’s 10 o’clock! Who could be pounding on your door? Your mind races, then focuses: it’s the police. Of course it is. You run upstairs to the bedrooms.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! OPEN UP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!
The kids are crying, and you try to reassure them that everything is okay. Your phone rings. It’s your pastor. Shit. The guy who caused all this, you think to yourself. You hesitate to pick up the phone.
A lot of churches have been forced underground. Friends just this week told you about the many churches meeting in remote rural barns, pulling in with their lights off under cover of darkness, early on Sundays, and parking behind the barn. Why the hell couldn’t your pastor do the same thing. Why do we have to be the ones to openly defy the state – who, after a year of ever-increasing restrictions, have committed the “crime” of opening the church doors. A flood of confusion. All between rings. You pick up.
John. It’s me.
Yeah – they’re at my door. They’re pounding, yelling. The kids are terrified.
I know. They’re going around right now, doing the same thing to all of us. Same with the church in the city, I hear.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! OPEN UP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!
John, you don’t have to answer the door if you don’t want to.
I’m not. It’s … look, pastor: couldn’t we do like Jim’s church, and meet secretly. I mean, Lord knows that’s how the church has met through tyranny since the first Easter. It’s how they still meet in communist regimes around the world. You’re the one who often told us about the underground church.
Sure. I get it. But look, John – are we really ready to concede that we’re at that point in Canada? It may get to that. They may bolt the doors shut. We’ll find a barn. We’ll meet at 6 AM. We’ll meet in small groups in people’s homes, whatever. No problem. But shouldn’t we, who FOR FREEDOM HAVE BEEN PURCHASED, return to chains? You can’t separate freedom in Christ from ANY OTHER freedom, John. You know that. Freedom is one ball of wax, indivisible. You either fight for it all, or you fight for none of it, and you’re a slave – spiritually and in every other dimension.
Yeah. Can you imagine that this is where we are – my door sounding like it’s going to be broken down, and a few short months ago they told us that it’s just about a mask. Did even THEY think it would come to this? I really wonder. I just told the kids today that evil always advances proportionately to how tired the resistance becomes. I think they’ve left now. Oh no – MOM! Do you think they’ll go to her house? She was there on Sunday. I gotta go, pastor.
Mom remembers how the doors were kicked in. She doesn’t need this at her age.
Mom!
John. I’m scared. The police were here.
I know. They just left here too. Are you okay?
It’s like my nightmares are turning real. I was okay with dealing with just the nightmares, which never seem to go away for more than a few weeks. But now it’s real, John. It’s real. They were here. They were screaming and banging on my door and even on the windows, John. Why at this time of the night, John? God knows I expected we wouldn’t get some punishment for going to church, but this? Like when I was a little girl?
I see from the window that they’re in an unmarked car, mom. Good Lord. Real brave, those, …I’d better not say it. Coming under the cover of darkness, pounding on your door, and in a civilian car so that the community won’t know what they’re doing.
Is it too much to call them the new Gestapo, John?
I don’t know, mom. So far we’re not being put on the trains to the camps. But it sure seems to rhyme with your stories. I’m sure they’ve left fines in our mailboxes. Don’t pay it, mom.
I won’t! If I can go to church, I can go to court.
We’ll probably have to pay some day, but for now, if the laws of this land still mean anything, we’ll get our chance to stand before a judge and make him tell us to our faces that the constitution means nothing, and that this nightmare is normal in a free country, and that we have to pay. We’ll worry about it then, mom. Try to get some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.
Update Dec 30, 2020:
All we’ve done since then is watch more and more people’s lines being crossed as the narrative around $&:)!-19 continues to collapse.
I witnessed the line being crossed with a close friend today.
She left the former Soviet Union many years ago, seeking a better life in Canada.
Throughout the last months, we’ve had many conversations about the approved narrative, and she has insisted that those in charge mean well and are genuinely trying to protect the public.
We had many gentle and genuine conversations, and while she saw many inconsistencies before today, she continued to try to justify her position, but it became more difficult for her to do so each time we spoke about it.
I knew her line was being approached.
Today, after hearing just another instance of the reprehensible actions of Doug Ford and his finance minister, her line was finally crossed.
She lamented with great sadness that those “in charge” firstly obviously don’t themselves believe for one moment what they fear-monger to the peasants, and secondly that they thumb their noses at their constituents in ways no better than the corrupt regime she thought she had left behind.
If you still continue to believe that we have a vyrus-pandemikk, rather than a globalist geopolitical class-pandemikk, please seek help.
I’m not being facetious: there is therapy and good help out there for your condition.
Find a therapist who has dealt with trauma, abuse at the hands of authority figures, and PTSD-related cognitive dissonance. If possible, someone with experience in Stockholm Syndrome and similar psychological conditions.
You don’t have to live this way.
