Posted by Chengde Chen
Woodcut by Hans Schäufelein, Augsburg 1513.
Christ and Mary as intercessors /
God the Father shooting plague arrows.
Besides the known causes of the Covid pandemic
I suspect that God had a few more intentions
A coincidence cannot be counted as providence
But causality deserves logical proof nevertheless
He must have wanted to help us fight climate change
Otherwise why did Covid bring a hidden green hope?
We had almost lost our confidence in reducing CO2
The pandemic dropped it decisively to an ideal level
Galileo’s telescope showed Jupiter’s satellite system
Letting people 'see' how the solar system works
Isn’t Covid like a low-carbon possibility experiment
Demonstrating the non-inevitability of global warming?
He must have wanted us to cope with the lockdown
Otherwise why did Covid arrive behind the Internet?
People of the Net can be isolated without isolation
Meeting across the Earth redefines time and space
The lights of myriad families light up screens wherever
The digitalised joys or sorrows are shared whenever
Without the personal contacts in this semi-real space
The half-dead world may have been dead completely!
He must have also wanted Covid to warn science
Otherwise why was it as massacring as bio-weapons?
If a virus can turn the world upside down like this
Won’t genetic engineering threaten our existence?
Inside those labs capable of manipulating molecules
They are full of the scientific urge to take such risks
Human self-destruction has been a matter of time
Can the Creator not worry if His work is to be wasted?
It's hard to say if these were really His thinking
But, believing or not, you'd better so assume
So as to understand the philosophy of providence –
Turning empirical logic into the rationality of faith!
(Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems, and of the novel: The Thought-read Revolution. chengde.chen@hotmail.com )
