Love in the Time of COVID-19

With each passing hour there are more announcements of closures on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. I won’t even bother listing the latest ones here. By the time you read this, there will be many more.

Social isolation is keeping us at home as much as practically possible. We are drawing inward.

            It looks like for the next few weeks and months the patterns of our lives will be dramatically altered. There is reason for fear. Many people will die. Many more will have their family savings decimated. Businesses will be crippled. People will lose their homes. The suffering will be real, and it will be widespread.

            Differences in class pull into focus. Those of us privileged enough to be able to work from home, and who have money in the bank, will be alright. Most Americans do not. The average American cannot work from home, lives paycheck to paycheck, and has a cash reserve under $1,000. That’ll be gone in a few days. Then what?

            But this is also true: there is an opportunity in the heart of this deep and real trouble. This looming disaster is a pathway to a startling authenticity, a vibrant aliveness that our soul has been longing for. As the veneer of our oh-so-organized ordinary life is ripped away, a normally hidden depth is exposed. As they say, this shit is about to get real.

            Real is good.

            In any social upheaval the best and the worst of us is revealed. Be prepared to come face to face with who we really are.

            In a matter of days everything-all-the-time America has vanished. Wholesale disruption is the new norm. We have all become refugees in our own homes.

            Sure we haven’t seen real social breakdown yet, and we probably won’t. The water still flows from the faucets. The stores are well-stocked, despite early flourishes of panic-buying. The pharmacy is open. Basic services remain uninterrupted. But it all feels so…different.

            What’s happening is this: we are being thrust into the realization of our oneness. COVID-19 has made one thing patently clear: there is no such thing as my health. There is only our health. We do not practice social distancing or social isolation for our own wellbeing alone – unless you are over 65 and have underlying conditions, you are in relatively little danger. We practice social distancing as an act of loving-kindness for the most vulnerable among us. Our health is their health.

            There aren’t enough tests. There is no vaccine. There is no treatment. There is no cure. The only tool we have is social isolation, and all of the scientific projections indicate that if we can flatten the infection curve we will save tens of thousands of lives. Socially isolate as much as practically possible, not for yourself, but for the beautiful strangers whose lives you are saving. Again, social isolation is an act of loving-kindness.

            In the book of Genesis, when God finished making the world, he rested. Nothing in the world needed his further manipulation or interference. He stepped back and let it run according to the natural laws with which it had been imbued.

            So too now is the time for us to let the world run without our manipulation or interference. Now is the time to shelve our self-importance. Our absence from that thing we were going to do isn’t going to kill anybody. But our presence might.

            Now is the time to let the song of the universe sing itself.

            Now is the time to step off the hamster wheel and turn away from this incessant doing.

            Now is the time to feel more than to know.

            Now is the time to shift down into the center.

            Now is the time for releasing others from their obligations, and relinquishing the commands we place on ourselves.

            Now is the time for a deep and final forgiveness.

            Now is the age of love, and the epoch of mercy.

            Now is the time to know that this breath, this air, this light, this aliveness, is enough.

            As Rumi said, there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Let your kitchen counter become a holy altar. Let your bedroom become an ashram. Let your garden become a tabernacle and the canyon path a Camino de Santiago.

            When you awake at three in the morning, savor the darkness, wait, and listen. Hear the world sleeping, worrying, praying, crying, longing. Feel it all in your bursting heart. Be startled by how much you feel it, as if it were your own worrying, praying, crying, and longing.

            Know your oneness with all that is – all matter, all energy, and all consciousness.

            Know that love in the time of COVID-19 is a light in the darkness of our unknowing. Let our chaos, uncertainty, and suffering be a cleansing salve that purifies us of triviality, strips us of banality, and drives us deep into the heart of our boundless, brilliant aliveness. Let this upheaval overturn our complacency in the face of each other’s pain. Let the beauty that we are finally, finally reach the surface. Let the wonder of this being alive lift us over every obstacle.

            We are buried in fear, encased in self-obsession. Let the love that we are find its way to the surface the way a seed bursts forth from its muddy grave.

            May we be the bursting forth.

            Amen.