COVID-19. The latest on our work

Following the Taoiseach’s announcement on Monday and Ireland’s move to Level 5 restrictions from Thursday, we have been busy clarifying our role and beginning again to listen to those we serve as their needs are ever changing and evolving. As a ‘drug treatment and addiction service’ we are defined as an essential service and so our staff and volunteers are working remotely and, where necessary, face-to-face to offer support, hope, comfort, resources and much more. The context of our work has been profoundly complicated by this second pandemic we now work on. One of our current mantras as a team is “Be kind, seek wisdom, stay present.” Every day we are working with individuals, families and community leaders impacted by both HIV and Covid-19. We remain grateful for all your support through this challenging time. We are currently planning for returning to our workplaces. Note that we are not returning to work, we never went away. The past 10 weeks have been among the most challenging of our 28-year history.  Rather our admin office, the homes of those we support, local parks and cafés may become places where we can encounter again those we support and serve. There will be lots to work through next week, not just the logistics of what is allowed but the reflections on what is ethical. At the heart of these discussions will be our values, particularly the mutuality of “Drinking from the Same Cup.” Please remember us as we work through how best we can support and serve the people and communities we have the privilege of walking alongside. Our Inboxes are full of the Return to Work Safely Protocol and associated instructions from funders. While our work remains remote with various supports and communications still being delivered by phone and screen we have been carefully studying the phases of reopening through to August that will inform our work practices for the coming months. The need for our work remains as acute as ever with significant mental health and anxiety challenges adding to the complexity of the supports we provide for those living with and affected by HIV. Meanwhile, communities of migrant origin are helped by the health information on COVID-19 and by the translation of that information into many languages, yet still profound cultural gaps remain in communication requiring steady presence and patience. We are also aware that the reopening will likely be far more challenging than the lockdown. In the middle of March we were ready for what the uncertain Spring would bring, our ‘tanks were full’ and we adapted well. Now exhaustion is not far away we are making sure to support one another for the cautious steps ahead. Our team, with over 100 years experience working on a pandemic, are ready for whatever the next chapter of our story will bring. Thank you to all our supporters who have been in touch to pray for us and financially give. Your donations are deeply appreciated and are helping us continue through this challenging time. If you would like to support our work please do. More details are available here. Sadly the last week has been marked by loss and no small amount of grief. The death of extended family members among those we support, including one we were very close to,  and of one faith community leader in Dublin have demonstrated how close the impact of COVID-19 is to us. Our extensive experience of mourning with those who mourn in a pandemic is real once again and it does not get any easier.

Lamenting and Hoping

“Oh! How empty the city, once teeming with people.” Lamentations 1:1 The images of deserted streets in cities across the world are among the most striking of this extraordinary time. The opening jab of Lamentations, referring of course to Jerusalem, stresses that the prophetic words are linked to a place as much as to a people. The empty Temple, walls, gates and streets evoke the weeping and remind us that we cannot divorce ourselves from the ground beneath our feet or the neighbours we share our places with. There are exactly two pandemics in the world today and ACET is working on both. Our experience is that lamenting the 35 million deaths of the AIDS pandemic, which will soon reach its 40th birthday, rapidly became a lament of the places where these lives were lived. This was the case whether that place was within a city with communities of profound socio-economic disparity lying adjacent to one another or the global inequality that is also driving COVID-19 or the way in which the lives of minority communities, particularly gay and bisexual men, were driven to the margins even within the familiar places of homes, schools and churches. COVID-19 is not a ‘great leveller’ as some speculate. It impacts people and places, both far from and near our homes in different ways. The places of note for this pandemic are our supermarkets, our hospitals, our public transport services, cramped housing conditions and the lack of green urban spaces all of which involve workers and residents in roles our society considers lesser as we elevate those with the wealth to cocoon or isolate safely.  So why lament? Lamenting draws us deep into the fault lines of injustice of which we were previously unaware. It will not leave us tolerant of the inequalities that catalyse our crises. It is an action that is both an end in itself and an opening to transformation. It puts to death the ‘wisdom of the world’ that suggests we can generate ideas and solutions to crises on our own if we are just creative and innovative enough or if we have collected enough data. Walter Brueggemann outlines the prophetic tasks of the church in such a time this as the need to “tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that practices denial, and express hope in a society that lives in despair.” I can but speculate on what specific illusions, denials, and despairs a lamentation of COVID-19 will dismantle though it is clear that, like HIV & AIDS, this pandemic is disproportionally impacting the poorest. That will become clear in time and there will be prophets who will deeply disrupt our privileges and entitlements. The only question is whether we will have ears to hear the Spirit that anoints them. What I do know is that this prophetic practice is central to the Easter story. Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday with a wondrous, packed, city celebration that is also an illusion that the Messiah would be violent, that the way of the world would be the way out of disparity. It ends with an execution and overwhelming despair. “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere” is the line from Seamus Heaney doing the rounds in Ireland at the moment as a motivation and inspiration. The suggestion is that the return to ‘normal’ life will be one big party. But Winter into Summer is not merely the linear progress of time with systemic fault lines left intact. It requires and demands death and rebirth. That dying includes the public acknowledgement of loss, of grief and of hope. Such public acknowledgement will come easier to some countries and communities than others. So what must we do now? Well of course lament, take from the richness of the scriptures, from Psalms and prophecy that point us to the heart of God. But also turn up, or at least honour those who are tasked with carrying the burden of turning up. Both of our pandemics are overwhelming. Simple acts of presence and patience can be the most profound, though now seriously limited. As we approach Easter I am struck by the women bringing spices to the tomb on the Sunday morning. Despair had not completely overwhelmed them and their tiny flicker of hope is expressed through the seemingly mundane work of physically caring for the corpse beyond the city walls. The stone is rolled away, not just to make room for Jesus’s exit (such an opening was not necessary) but to make room for the womens’ lowest of roles to be stunningly elevated, through an angelic encounter, to that of Apostles to the Apostles. Maybe the present crisis will lead us to a radical readjustment of what roles are valued in society, of where wealth is distributed and of how we care for those most vulnerable. We can only hope.

We continue to keep faith communities including churches informed on both pandemics, including with the HSE resources. Again, information itself is only a fragment of our work and tells an incomplete story. It is the richness of faith, hope and love in action in that unites us. ACET’s staff are defined as essential workers under the government’s latest guidelines so are allowed travel away from home. However we have been asked to keep any visits, even if delivering essential items, to an absolute minimum so as to follow the public health imperative of reducing the transmission of the virus. We will be using centralised resources, including our local authorities’ initiatives and HSE-funded partners, where we can. Please stand with us at this difficult time for all. Thank you for all your support.