In the last few weeks I have been enjoying Richard Rohr’s blog. (https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#inbox/FMfcgxwHNVzNbBGVLVJHfcWLHQFzrCQf) Rohr is a Catholic monk who has authored several books and is nearly as well known in secular circles as in the religious world. In one of his blogs this week he includes the following quotes from environmentalist and author Bill McKibben to support his discussion regarding “restraint” as a spiritual practice. McKibben writes:
“The most curious of all…lives are the human ones, because we can destroy, but also because we can decide not to destroy. The turtle does what she does, and magnificently. She can’t not do it, though, any more than the beaver can decide to take a break from building dams or the bee from making honey. But if the bird’s special gift is flight, ours is the possibility of restraint. We’re the only creature who can decide not to do something we’re capable of doing. That’s our superpower, even if we exercise it too rarely.”
The lock down period of the last two months has been an exercise of our “superpower,” restraint. There are many things we normally do in our day to day lives that we have chosen not to do, and in many cases were not permitted to do. We sacrificed some of our liberty, our coming and going in the world, to stay put, to stand still, to sit and wait. We limited our movements and our social activity, even with our families; some were quarantined for weeks within the same house. Mothers and fathers separated themselves from their children and from each other. Adult children were and still are separated from aged parents in convalescent care. Many worked from home or alone in empty offices. The well were restrained from the bedsides of the ill, even the dying.
In exercising our restraint many of us have made some observations. In the NT clergy meeting this week with Bishop Audrey I tried to describe the vacuum I had been experiencing in my own life as the last few weeks have dragged on; the nearly indescribable interior hole that no amount of activity could fill; the constant feeling that something was missing - like you feel when you head to the grocery store and realize you’ve forgotten your list. Audrey remarked that not only could she relate but she was hearing a similar description by clergy all over the diocese. Bishop Jose’s (Diocese of Western NC) Youtube parody (https://www.diocesewnc.org/post/quarantine-with-bishop-jos%C3%A9-episode-1) of his quarantine experience, though humorous, points to this; to the void that can’t be filled, even with the pictures of the people you normally work with on the back of their chairs as you alone conduct a meeting as Bishop Jose attempted to do. During the book study group meeting on Wednesday night Nancy Dart shared this poem she had found on the Sage-ing website (https://www.sage-ing.org/covid19-resources/). For me it puts words, at least in part, to what I stammered to describe to my colleagues and to what Bishop Jose and every other humorous Coronavirus Youtube parody attempts to portray on a deeper level.
The following poem was written by Sarah Bourns:
We’ve All Been Exposed
We’ve all been exposed.
Not necessarily to the virus
(maybe…who even knows).
We’ve all been exposed BY the virus.
Corona is exposing us.
Exposing our weak sides.
Exposing our dark sides.
Exposing what normally lays far beneath the surface of our souls,
hidden by the invisible masks we wear.
Now exposed by the paper masks we can’t hide far enough behind.
Corona is exposing our addiction to comfort.
Our obsession with control.
Our compulsion to hoard.
Our protection of self.
Corona is peeling back our layers.
Tearing down our walls.
Revealing our illusions.
Leveling our best-laid plans.
Corona is exposing the gods we worship:
Our health, Our hurry
Our sense of security
Our favorite lies, Our secret lusts
Our misplaced trust.
Corona is calling everything into question:
What is the church without a building?
What is my worth without an income?
How do we plan without certainty?
How do we love despite risk?
Corona is exposing me.
My mindless numbing
My endless scrolling
My careless words
My fragile nerves.
We’ve all been exposed.
Our junk laid bare.
Our fears made known.
The band-aid torn.
The masquerade done.
So what now? What’s left?
Clean hands, Clear eyes
Tender hearts.
What Corona reveals, God can heal.
I know several people whose lives have not been really affected by the two month shut-down. They worked throughout in jobs that were not anymore stressful then before the pandemic and life was pretty much as it had been, except for their longer hair. I’m glad for them. But I’m also sorry for them in a way. And here’s why: In Chinese medicine everything has equal but opposite sides - left and right, top and bottom, front and back. So while the front of the virus is everything you are hearing on the news and the difficulty and inconvenience of exercising of our “superpower” of restraint, then the back side is all the learnings from having experienced it; the gifts of restraint, the gifts of discomfort, fear, anxiety, and from loss. A friend of mine refers to the virus as a teacher. That names the true nature of the back side. To know that everything that happens to us in this life has a front side and an opposite back side is a spiritual teaching. What has been the front side, the challenging side, of Covid19 for you, just you… not the country, not the economy, not your neighbor… but for you? And what is the back side of the virus - what is this teacher revealing to you about you?
Sarah Bourn’s poem includes both the front and back sides. She ends it with, What Corona reveals, God can heal…., leaving us to focus on the back side. Is there anything that the restraint of the last two months has made visible? Is there anything that needs to be healed? Do you have a desire to grow beyond where you are? Do you want to see the world through the eyes of God; the eyes that see the perfection and balance in all things? Do you want to live out of the fullest and highest expression of yourself and not the same old patterns that run your life? Then pray for these things. There is a time for restraint and this is not it. This is the time for letting the unwanted revealed parts of us fall away and shift into the highest and best parts of ourselves. We have been given a small window of opportunity for spiritual growth and this unlikely teacher, Covid19, is showing us the way.
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