This morning I looked through my window, right across to Langimodierre Boulevard, Winnipeg Manitoba. On a day like today, the highway is usually very busy. But not today, today it looks sad, very few vehicles and with clouds hanging on the sky, it feel even more sadder. This is so as a result of Coronavirus, people are not traveling. It is very sad everywhere!!

At this moment during the coronavirus crisis, we are all having the painful realization of how much we miss concerts, operas, and ballet performances. They can provide us with inner immune resistance.

In times like these, we’re called, to long for hope, passion, to find home again–to relocate our hearts in suffering by finding the greater joy that comes by letting go, and the home-coming of being found again.I long for a morning that I will wake up without Coronavirus. I long for a day I will go to festivals downtown Winnipeg. 

Sehnsucht” is a popular German word (they pronounce it, zen-zookt) with no simple English translation.The dictionary will tell you that ‘sehnsucht’ is an “intense, mostly bittersweet longing for something remote or unattainable that would make life more complete”.‘Sehnsucht’ is yearning and craving, inconsolable longing, infinite dreaming, gazing at the stars. It is sensitive, creative, sad and optimistic, confusing. It is vastness and loneliness, dawn and dusk, an invitation of consolation. Inslatable.

In my words, Sehnsucht has to do with an intense desire for something beyond our human capacity to fulfill, a longing for a better day without fear of Coronavirus. It is a sense that something is missing – something that, if fulfilled, would make everything complete. 

To better understand, let’s consider some of the ways Lewis reflected on the concept.

In his “Chronicles of Narnia” series, Lewis states:

“Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning… a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and always are wishing you could get into that dream again.”

Something will always be missing for our happiness to be complete, for our life to seem full. But learning to accept such imperfection and longing is the very first and most important step in our struggle for a happy life.

To all of us, ‘sehnsucht’ conveys meaning in a way that no other thing can. In our emptiness, in our longing, and in our search for something more, God is present. Every time we find ourselves saying, “somewhere else there must be more of it,” it’s because somewhere else, there is.It is such a comforting reminder that the stars are always out there, that a new dawn is waiting. It comforts us all as we look for a day we can have our concerts, our parties, our family gatherings, our freedoms back, where Coronavirus does not hold us back from doing our daily life. It gives us hope that a vaccine for Coronavirus is on the way, we will all get better soon. These may be out of reach and at times even a little far away. But at every moment we can hold the promise of a new day, full of colour, sparkle, and depth.

But one thing is certain: once we “flatten the curve,”😂😂😂.