Facts not fear. Clean hands. Open hearts.—An Epicurean/Lucretian meditation on how to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic

Lucretius contemplating how nature works Introductory meditation (excluding the Lord’s Prayer) adapted from ‘An Epicurean Gathering’ arranged by me, Lewis Connolly (until recently the minister of the Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House) and Dean Reynolds: The Roman poet Lucretius wrote:  In the murk of our darkness, you, Epicurus, raised your blazing lantern to show us the […]

Learning from Lucretius in the shadow of coronavirus

READING: Lines 78-58 from Book VI of the De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) by Lucretius trans. by David R. Slavitt (University of California Press, 2008, pp. 253-254) . . . But people / tend to revert under stress to their earlier superstitions and imagine cruel taskmasters, omnipotent beings we wretches / ought to fear and appease, […]