It is too soon to know what will emerge from this emergency, but not too soon to start looking for chances to help decide it.

The sadness in the depths and the fury that burns above are not incompatible with hope, because we are complex creatures, because hope is not optimism that everything will be fine regardless.

If you are sad and frightened, it is a sign that you care, that you are connected in spirit.

It’s a conflict, one that takes place while things that were frozen, solid and locked up have become open and fluid – full of both the best and worst possibilities. We are both becalmed and in a state of profound change.

We are only in the early stages of this disaster, and we are also in a strange stillness.

Changes in the public sphere originate within the individual, but also, changes in the world at large affect our sense of self, our priorities and our sense of the possible.

Some workers have gained new rights and raises, including almost half a million Kroger grocery store workers, while 15 state attorneys-general told Amazon to expand its paid sick leave. These specifics make clear how possible it is to change the financial arrangements of all our societies.

Lots of things we were assured were impossible – housing the homeless, for example – have come to pass in some places.

I have found over and over that the proximity of death in shared calamity makes many people more urgently alive, less attached to the small things in life and more committed to the big ones, often including civil society or the common good.

‘So what? I want to live a good life and I want to risk my life, because I can also lose my life in one night.’ You realise that life has to be lived well or is not worth living. It’s a very profound transformation that takes place during catastrophes.”

Perhaps this will be the moment that we recognise that there is enough food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education for all – and that access to these things should not depend on what job you do and whether you earn enough money.

A new awareness of how each of us belongs to the whole and depends on it may strengthen the case for meaningful climate action, as we learn that sudden and profound change is possible after all.

Perhaps we will find a new respect for the workers who produce our food and those who bring it to our tables.

We are witness today to daily displays of love that remind us of the many reasons why humans have survived this long. We encounter epic acts of courage and citizenship each day in our neighbourhoods and in other cities and countries, instances that whisper to us that the depredations of a few will eventually be overcome by legions of stubborn people who refuse the counsel of despair, violence, indifference and arrogance that so-called leaders appear so eager nowadays to trigger.”

“Let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.”

When this storm clears, we may, as do people who have survived a serious illness or accident, see where we were and where we should go in a new light.

Our rulers showed little willingness to recognise the ominous possibilities of the pandemic in the US, the UK, Brazil and many other countries.

If everything is connected, then the consequences of every choice and act and word have to be examined, which we see as love in action and they see as impingement upon absolute freedom, freedom being another word for absolutely no limits on the pursuit of self-interest.

please do NOT tell your peers about the symptoms & your assumptions. By doing so, you are causing unnecessary panic in the office.”

The stock of mass-manufactured goods in large corporate chain stores seemed to matter more than people needing food and clean water, or grandmothers left clinging to roofs.

Such elites often prioritise profit and property over human life and community.

When elites describe “panic” and “looting” in the streets, these are usually misnomers for ordinary people doing what they need to do to survive or care for others.

In a crisis, the powerful often try to seize more power – as they have in this round, with the Trump Department of Justice looking at suspending constitutional rights – and the rich seek more riches: two Republican senators are under fire for allegedly using inside information about the coming pandemic to make a profit in the stock market (although both have denied wrongdoing).

it seems to be stable, and those who benefit from it often insist that it’s unchangeable. Then it changes fast and dramatically, and that can be exhilarating, terrifying, or both.

At moments of immense change, we see with new clarity the systems – political, economic, social, ecological – in which we are immersed as they change around us. We see what’s strong, what’s weak, what’s corrupt, what matters and what doesn’t.

We were adjusting to the profound social and economic changes, studying the lessons disasters teach, equipping ourselves for an unanticipated world.

We ourselves change as our priorities shift, as intensified awareness of mortality makes us wake up to our own lives and the preciousness of life.

One of our main tasks now – especially those of us who are not sick, are not frontline workers, and are not dealing with other economic or housing difficulties – is to understand this moment, what it might require of us, and what it might make possible.

The word “crisis” means, in medical terms, the crossroads a patient reaches, the point at which she will either take the road to recovery or to death. The word “emergency” comes from “emergence” or “emerge”, as if you were ejected from the familiar and urgently need to reorient. The word “catastrophe” comes from a root meaning a sudden overturning.

The future will not, in crucial ways, be anything like the past, even the very recent past of a month or two ago.