Theological Journal - More COVID-19 Musings

Again I interrupt my series on Joy for some further thoughts on dealing with the confinement most of us are and will likely for some time be dealing with. Here I offer ten things each of us can do doing this time. They all begin with “s.” I’m a preacher, so sue me!

Slow Down (Sabbath from Speed)
Three-miles-an-hour is the speed at which humans normally walk. It is the “human” speed. But, as Brooks, a character in The Shawshank Redemption said upon release from prison after fifty years, “The world’s gone and gotten itself in a big damn hurry.” By becoming human, Jesus brought “God” to us at a “speed” we could understand and relate to. COVID-19 is forcing us to “slow down.” Perhaps instead of restlessness, anger, boredom, fretting, and anger we could begin to settle into a new speed of life and acclimate 0urselves to it and focus on getting to God at the speed he has chosen to reveal himself to us. If we could do that we might have in place our own “temple in time” (what Heschel called the Sabbath) to protect us falling back into the insane franticality of our pre-COVID-19 lives.

Sign Out (Sabbath from Cyber-Space)
While cyber-space will be an increasingly important way for many of us to connect during our time of social distancing, the challenge for us remains the same: not to allow social media to become our primary connection to life, our surrogate reality. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its gifts, we need regular breaks from cyber-space, periods when we sign out in order to reach out and lay hold of the life-in-relationships that truly sustain us.

Stay Put (Sabbath from Mobility)
The need to stay put and to lay aside the ability to get up and go whenever and wherever it pleases us may turn out to yield rich and important fruit for us. The real estate mantra “location, location, location” may turn out to be a profound spiritual reality too. Forced to “bloom where we are planted” for a season may yield some life-style changes that will hold us in good stead for the long haul.

Shut Up (Sabbath from Words)
Just listen! To God, to your life, the family and others you can connect with during this time. Those who live by their words may die by them. But those who learn to listen will unearth hidden treasure.

Stoop Down (Sabbath from Controlling)
Humility, the grace to confess that we are but creatures (who are not in control) and not God (who is) – a lesson all too real during a pandemic, is best made palpable by re-connecting with the humus, the dirt from which God made us. I daily eat a “sacramental” pinch of dirt to help this grace hit home for me. We are a part of God’s creation, and by grace his partner in reclaiming and restoring it. We best play our role by remembering who we are and the grace by which we live.

Stare (Sabbath from Distraction)
Distraction and diversion are in my experience the heart of the enemy’s strategy to disable our living humanly. They will become even more potent in a time of enforced sabbath from many of their sources. They short circuit our capacity to be present to our lives and those who remain within our sphere of connection. We suffer from “Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder” already. It will get worse for a while with privation and can derail any gains we might make in growing with God during this time. Wholeness in living comes for me when I rediscover the truth Kierkegaard captures in the title of his book Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. Use this time to (re)discover what truly has your heart and wrestle with it.

Sing (Sabbath from Memos)
Discursive, linear, pragmatic thought rules us most of the time. I heard Walter Brueggemann name this  kind of thought “memos.” And he said that memos will kill us. But poetry (he was talking about the Psalms) gives life. I encounter poetry mostly in song. So I need to sing (even though I can’t carry a tune) or at listen to the poetry of music regularly . I think it was Augustine who said that the one who sings, prays twice.

Share (Sabbath from Me)

Life is our relationships, and relationships mean sharing. We must learn to share the necessities of life (food, communitas, faith) and joys and burdens with others while receiving their gifts and sharing their burdens as well in whatever ways we can during this season. Artificial constricting our circle of physical contacts need not lessen the reality of those we cannot physically connect with. We will just need to work at it harder than we usually do. 

Simplify (Sabbath from Clutter)
We need to pursue the path of downward nobility rather than upward mobility and this period may be a time for us to realize how little all we have truly adds to our lives. We don’t have to go Marie Kondo-obsessive about it but divesting and de-cluttering our lives of unnecessary stuff may prove quite liberating for us in any number of ways. We want what we have and know and do to serve life rather than us serving them. To know the difference between want and need is a great gift. 

Sleep (Sabbath from Self)
Sleep, enough sleep is a basic form of selflessness and trust. To give ourselves unreservedly to God in the needs of our creatureliness is to affirm our Creator’s wisdom and the goodness of what he has made, even in a time like this. Sufficient rest is a primal act of faith and powerful witness in beleaguered, fatigued, workaholic world. And now we are afforded a bit of time to rest and learn these gifts of God’s wisdom and goodness.