Calculating Your Risk Budget

If you’re like me, you’re feeling exhausted by the constant risk calculation and decision-making surrounding COVID.

What should you do for Thanksgiving? Should you RSVP “yes” to that wedding this spring? Is it safe to fly? Do you really need a booster yet? Is it safe to take off your mask when you get to the office? Can you go back to commuting on the train instead of driving

It’s hard to know how to make these decisions.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Enter: the risk budget.

A risk budget says we should imagine that each of us has a certain amount of risk we’re willing to take on. Each activity “spends” a little bit of that risk. If you use up enough of your risk budget within a certain time period, then you stop doing anything until your budget gets refilled.

How much can you “spend?”

The total risk you’re willing to “spend” comes from a few factors.

• Do you live alone? With several people? With how many people does your collective household spend time indoors and unmasked?

• What is your risk of a bad outcome from COVID-19? What about that risk for everyone in your household and pod? Do you regularly come into contact with any vulnerable people?

• How much risk are you willing to take on?

Where will you “spend” it?

The way you choose to spend your risk will depend on how risky each of your required and desired activities are.

• How much of your risk gets spent at work and/or school?

• How much is left for leisure, self-care, and other activities?

• Can you mitigate the risk of any of your activities with a better mask, distancing, open windows, going outside, or limiting your time around others?

• If you choose to do a particularly risky activity, what other activities will you forego so you don’t exceed your budget?

A Calculator

The above are just guidelines, but if you want some actual numbers and calculations, the folks at The microCOVID Project have your back. You can use their online risk calculator to estimate the COVID risk of your activities and compare it with your risk budget.

For example: attending worship at St. Paul’s for one hour on Sunday mornings, unvaccinated but wearing a KN95 mask, currently adds up to around 94 microCOVIDs. (This is also based on the overall risk in Hartford County right now.) If you’re using their Standard Caution Budget, that makes it a Moderate Risk activity.

But! If you’re double vaccinated with Pfizer in the above scenario, it brings your microCOVIDs for this activity down to 16, which is Low Risk for their standard budget.

The Best Part

This is the best part. These calculations remove the moralizing around our decisions.

If you choose not to get vaccinated (or your body can’t produce immunity from the vaccination), this calculator doesn’t yell at you. It just tells you that your risk for worshiping at St. Paul’s is nearly 6 times higher than it would be with a vaccination. Maybe, if you don’t leave your house except to grocery shop, that’s a risk you’re willing to take.

Each decision we make affects our options and one another. It’s our responsibility to continue to be diligent—exhausted by this as we may be—and keep everyone in our community safe, healthy, and whole.

Welcoming the Children

How appropriate that we're starting up our children's formation again (in a modified format), and this Sunday's gospel reading is from Mark 9.

In this story, Jesus is sitting with his twelve disciples.

Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Children in the ancient world were particularly vulnerable. Some scholars think that only about 50% of children in ancient Rome lived to see the age of 10.

So, when Jesus places this child at the center of their circle, he is highlighting for them one of the most defenseless people in their society. And he's identifying himself with that same vulnerable person!

"Jesus welcomes the children" from the Jesus Mafa project

It made me think of this painting from the Jesus Mafa project. In the 1970s, Mafa Christians in Cameroon did dramatic recreations of scenes from the New Testament. They sought to envision the most important scenes from Jesus' life in their own cultural context. Photos were taken, and French artists transcribed the photos into paintings.

In this painting, we see Jesus, wrapped in a red robe, surrounded by children. He has several in his lap, and others are gathered around smiling. Clearly he has a magnet-like effect on the children of this village. And they have his undivided attention.

The gospels record Jesus prioritizing children several times in his public ministry. I wonder what he means when he talks about welcoming a child in his name? He seems to have a soft spot for them, in the same way he has special love for sick people, tax collectors, and scorned women.

If welcoming children is equivalent to welcoming Jesus, then our supporting our children's formation program is crucial work. We're still looking for teachers for 2021-2022, and we'll be doing fundraising activities throughout the year that will need your support, as well. I invite you to discern how the Holy Spirit might be nudging you to take action to welcome children in Jesus' name.

For more Jesus Mafa artwork, see the collection online at Vanderbilt University's Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries. And let me know which ones are your favorites!

Praying with Our Bodies

Sometimes, we can get trapped into thinking that something is only “prayer” if we’re talking to God. Maybe it’s during a church service, at home with our Bibles, or even on a walk, but we still assume that prayer requires words.

But our embodiedness is one of many ways we are connected to God, and God has declared it good (see Genesis 1). This means that using our bodies to pray is every bit as valid as reciting words. In this post, I will share a “body prayer” adapted from a few different prayers I’ve learned over the years.

This prayer flows through a cycle of postures, and it can be done sitting or standing. I like to link each posture to an intention, so that when I’m embodying that posture, I’m also embodying that intention, even without words.

Here are the postures with their corresponding intentions:

1. Hands folded in prayer over your chest. Find your inner quiet.

2. Arms outstretched over your head, head tilted up. Praise and thank God.

3. Hands gently placed over your heart. Recognize your body as part of the body of Christ.

4. Arms opened outward in front of you. Offer your gifts to the world.

5. Hands gently placed over your heart. Draw the love of God into your heart.

6. Arms down at your side, palms open forward. Open yourself to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

7. Hands folded in prayer over your chest. Return to inner quiet.

You’ll notice that postures 1 and 7 are the same as one another, as are postures 3 and 5. If you do them all in a row, you end up where you started!

To pray this prayer, stay with each position for a breath or two, allowing yourself to feel the intention but not necessarily saying the words. Then move to the next one for a breath or two. I like to cycle through the whole thing at least three times. If you don’t “know” what you’re supposed to be praying in each moment, that’s okay. The idea is to be present with your body, and to invite God to be present with you.