Vol. 1 6 // No. 1 Spring 2020
This publication is published by New York University students and NYU is not responsible for its contents.
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Spring 2020 is a season unlike any other. At the penning of this letter, NYU, along with learning institutions across the country, lie empty. Restaurants and bars, normally bustling with patrons, are silent. Even Broadway has gone dark. Apparently, the show must not always go on. Meanwhile, hospitals in every borough are filling up to capacity. Venues across the city are being converted into makeshift clinics. Refrigerator trucks now serve as overflow morgues, making room for those soon to follow. This isn’t the introduction to a dystopian novel. This is our new reality, compliments of a disease whose name has joined our global vocabulary, COVID-19. There are other words, too: panic buying, social distancing, and flattening the curve. We have become unwillingly literate in pandemic language. This crisis hits us during Lent, a time when believers all over the world celebrate Jesus who cured a far more sinister, far more deadly virus: sin. Easter brings hope of a new life that endures to eternity, immune to all afflictions physical, mental, and spiritual. As we pray for a cure for the coronavirus, I hope we can also share a cure that was provided two millennia ago when Jesus rose from the dead. This issue of Seed is our attempt to do just that. As always, our goal is to make you think, make you wonder, and make you laugh. So, please, wash your hands, social distance, and pray for Jehovah Rapha, the Lord Who Heals, to work among us now. God bless! 3
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This is Hard Katrina Dubee
I’m struggling. This pandemic has thrown everything I had planned into the garbage. I have gone from trying to find a job to trying to plan for tomorrow. I still have classes to attend, papers to write, and a thesis to finish in less than a month. But I can’t seem to make my brain go. This is one of the hardest times I have ever been through. But it is also one of the most illuminating. I have learned about myself, my family, my friends, and my country—about how we’re all coping, differently, but as best as we can. One of the most interesting things I’ve experienced is watching my mom, a priest, try to figure out new ways to worship and stay in touch with her congregation and with God. She has turned church into something different, something that everyone must take an active role in all week, not just on Sunday. She regularly sends out discussion questions, requests written pieces for an online newsletter, and hosts “Stump the Rector” Zoom calls with the church youth group. Watching her congregation (made up of mostly elderly people) take to everything with vigor and excitement has given me a different perspective on everything that’s happening. Yes, it’s a difficult time. Yes, everyone is struggling. But if we stand together in God—distantly, of course—we can come out the other end stronger.
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Silence in Suffering Joseph Shin I recently watched the film The Seventh Seal by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Released in 1957, the movie is one of the pioneers of the so-called arthouse film, in which a knight and Death (personified as a pale man in a black robe) play an ongoing game of chess. The film takes place during medieval times, after the ruinous Crusades and at the onset of the Black Plague, which remains the most catastrophic pandemic in recorded history. As the knight and his squire travel through various small towns, they encounter several characters who are terrified of the plague and who view the current decimation of humanity as a possible punishment from God. This medieval interpretation of near global annihilation leads these same
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characters to chastise themselves and to punish certain individuals by death, as they believe God was doing to them. The knight undergoes a severe crisis of faith, as he, often hunched over in deep thought, struggles to make sense of a world filled with suffering and the silence of God. The film is a thoughtful meditation on how we as individuals confront suffering. Do we yell out seething questions to the sky? Or do we rationalize suffering and embrace the inevitable misery of the human condition? The film doesn’t offer answers (always a hallmark of quality filmmaking), but it does offer truth in its allegory. Death is as tangible as a chess opponent, and God’s silence, in whatever way you wish to interpret it, is something that every human—including the wholly divine and wholly human Jesus—must confront.
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A World Changed Alyson Ferro
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In what world does a healthy, 59-year-old man suddenly die alone? In what world do doctors have to choose who gets to live? In what world do our brown and black neighbors die at an unfairly high rate? I ask these questions as I hear the statistics and stories of COVID-19. But in my search for an answer, I realize that a world in which this can happen is the very world we have collectively created and individually perpetuated. This is a world in which freedom of assembly trumps public safety, in which those with resources trump those without. This is a world in which self-satisfaction reigns. This is a world of globalization, of polluting our atmosphere so much that it takes a pandemic to reveal blue skies amidst a factory skyline. This is a world in which we grow immune to racism while taking our privilege for granted. In this corrupt world of our making, we adjust to our less-thanideal “new normal,� and we wait, eager to return to life as we once knew it. But in doing so, we should not diminish the positive ways in which this new normal has changed us.
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It has reintroduced us to dolphins swimming the waters of Italian canals after years of hiatus. It has reduced our carbon footprint. It has reminded us to spend more time with our loved ones, with the lingering thought that maybe our days on Earth aren’t limitless. And it has reminded us that as big as we may be, we are neither all-controlling nor immune to life’s hardships. It is in these times that we turn to God for comfort. Eventually, we will celebrate the death of COVID-19 and greatly mourn what we have lost in its wake. But though we move on, we must not forget. COVID-19 has taught us crucial lessons about our lifestyles, governments, and society that we cannot ignore for risk of making the same mistakes again. The world will change for the better if we change for the better. As stewards of creation, this is our God-given mandate.
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Risen Anonymous
A city slumbers. Eerie silence echoes through the streets. The air is thick with fear and disease. Some have even fallen asleep. A nation rests. A body is buried hastily before the Sabbath. Disciples cower behind locked doors. The tomb is sealed. A city stirs. People rise up to serve those in crisis, With hope that not only will they survive, They will overcome. A nation trembles. The ground shakes. The veil is torn. Christ descends to the dead, And death is overthrown. He is risen And in Him our hope rests. Indeed, He is risen. And we, too, will rise.
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Coping with COVID NYU alumna and practicing counselor, Chrissie Chua, provides five helpful tips to deal with the coronavirus blues.
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1 Limit social media use and time spent watching the news. Don’t feed into the thoughts of worry that you’ll miss the latest news—if it’s important, you will find out sooner or later. Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5–6 NIV
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2 Re-establish control over areas of your life during this quarantine. Organize your closet, catch up on bills, or clean out your fridge. This can help you cope with the loss of control you may feel over COVID-19. With areas that are out of your control, trust in God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Psalm 62:8 ESV
3 Learn a new skill and/or improve on a skill that God has gifted you. Try out a new recipe. Run an extra mile. Use this time to refine your God-given skills and develop more selfconfidence and sense of self. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 1 Peter 4:10 NIV
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4 Read scriptures daily and find support in God. Find a devotional that provides you with comfort. The YouVersion Bible App has devotionals that help with anxiety, crisis, and finding hope during dark times. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 ESV
5 Express gratitude to God by identifying positives in your life. Expressing gratitude not only helps you battle negative thoughts and emotions, it also allows you to praise God. Positive thinking is not avoiding a negative situation but approaching it with faith and hope in God. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13 ESV
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A Revolutionary Thought Liz Page
One night, I had a dream that I started a revolution. By accident. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe the right time, and everything in society shifted from this one moment. Families were torn apart, lives lost, truth revealed, all because of this one moment. Even in this dream, I could feel the pain of loss and inequality, but I could also feel that I had no business being a leader of anything. I had no idea what I was doing. I was just some kid that got thrown into the fire, my whole world turned upside down. And today's world, five months after this dream, doesn’t feel all that different. There are families torn apart by loss, truths revealed about governments and humanity, reality shifting and creating a new path for us all, because of a singular moment in time. The only difference is that it’s you who has the chance to start a revolution. Maybe it’s an act of outward kindness, maybe it’s a decision to revolutionize your way of thinking. We could have been born at any other time, in any other place, but we’re here during this moment in history. What will be your revolution? 19
Pointing the Finger Temistocles Molinar, Jr.
For me, the COVID-19 pandemic brings back memories of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak in 2002. I remember seeing images in the news of people walking around wearing masks to protect themselves from the strange new disease. While SARS never gained a foothold on American soil, its novelty and unusually high mortality rate drew so much international attention that its impact on me remains. I never imagined that eighteen years later, the world would face another SARS-like disease: COVID-19. The viruses that cause both SARS and COVID-19 are closely related: they are believed to have originated from bats in China, they belong to the same class of viruses called coronaviruses, and they are at least 80% identical genetically. As the severity of the pandemic heightened and the world began shutting down, I could feel nothing but anger and frustration over how dire the situation had become. Most of all, I resented the fact that I had to close my lab, halt my experiments, and stop my work indefinitely. In my frustration, I harbored enmity for entities that I felt were responsible. I blamed the Chinese government for failing to prevent a second and far worse outbreak of a SARS coronavirus. I blamed the U.S. government for failing to respond quickly and appropriately to the COVID-19 threat. Assigning blame made me feel better; pointing the finger eased my helplessness.
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Ironically, writing this article has been cathartic. Putting my thoughts down on paper has forced me to reevaluate my opinions, some unfair or possibly even irrational. It is true that successfully preventing the next outbreak requires a criticism of the public and private institutions that currently exist. However, my hope is that this criticism takes place through reasoned, thoughtful, and respectful discussion without giving way to anger and frustration.
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Things I Learned from Social Distancing Yvette Shin On March 22, in a drastic effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, New York state banned all non-essential gatherings and mandated that 100% of non-essential workers stay at home. Besides realizing that I am the epitome of “non-essential,” here are ten things I learned during social distancing.
1 An ample supply of toilet paper is vital to my mental health. 2 People have no idea how far away six feet is. 3 I had been washing my hands for 1/10 the recommended time. 4 Being close to my refrigerator 24/7 is awesome/dangerous. 5 YouTube on autoplay leads to strange, dark places on the Web. 6 Not wearing a bra for days is completely life changing. 7 Nothing—not even a pandemic—can force me to cook. 8 Something called Zoom? 9 Healthcare workers are real life superheroes. 10 God is good. All the time. 23
Contributors Chrissie Chua Katrina Dubee Alyson Ferro Temistocles Molinar, Jr. Liz Page Joseph Shin Yvette Shin Editing and Layout Alyson Ferro Rebekah Shin Yvette Shin
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV