What if we thought of the pandemic as a sacred time?

As we enter the third week of California's "Safer at Home" policy, we are hunkered down in our cozy little Craftsman home and enjoying our garden and pets, including our 15-year miracle chicken named Checkers, who continues to lay egg despite her longevity. She wakes us every morning with her cockledoodoing, as if to say: What a joy it is to be alive!

When we venture out for walks, we can't help noticing that the skies are bluer, the air cleaner, and the streets quieter. I am reminded of my childhood in Princeton, NJ, when Sundays were actually a "day of rest." Businesses closed down, people went to church in the morning and spent their afternoon and evenings with family. This was a a true sabbath time.

This "never on Sunday" approach to what Quakers call First Day changed when a shopping center opened up in Princeton and stores began doing business on Sundays. Sunday became just another work day for many, and even for those who had a day off, it was often spent shopping rather than relaxing at home.

I realize that the sabbath time that we are experiencing now is not the same as what I experienced as a child. This time of required rest is tinged with anxiety about how to pay rent, how to take care of family members, and how to deal with what may come next. Many low-income workers in grocery stores and warehouses are working seven days a week in unsafe conditions. Others are working at home uncertain how long their jobs will last. Everyone is feeling a little cabin feverish and anxious about the future.

There is the ominous feeling that this is the "quiet before the storm." We realize that in the next few weeks, we could see a catastrophic rise in deaths here in our city and throughout the country. How will we respond? Will we panic like the people in the movie "Contagion" and start looting stores? Or will we come together and witness to our higher values?

So far, my neighborhood has responded with kindness. We've received flowers and other

gifts from our neighbors, including much coveted toilet paper. When we walk around and talk to our neighbors, they are friendly. We have much to be grateful for.

While sheltering in place is the best way to respond to this crisis at this time, we will probably need to stay home much longer than we would like. Perhaps even months. We need to develop strategies to cope with this crisis at the emotional as well as practical level. 

One of the strategies to cope with this crisis is to see it as an opportunity for spiritual growth. Not in the sense of an arduous spiritual discipline, like fasting. But to see this period as a true Sabbath in the Jewish sense--a sacred time when we cease from work and worry and enjoy the blessing of being alive. 

This poem captures beautifully how we can experience this pandemic in a truly novel way:

Pandemic

What if you thought of it

as the Jews consider the Sabbath

the most sacred of times?

Cease from travel.

Cease from buying and selling.

Give up, just for now,

on trying to make the world

different than it is.

Sing. Pray. Touch only those

to whom you commit your life.

Center down.

And when your body has become still,

reach out with your heart.

Know that we are connected

in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.

(You could hardly deny it now.)

Know that our lives

are in one another’s hands.

(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.

Reach out your heart.

Reach out your words.

Reach out all the tendrils

of compassion that move, invisibly,

where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--

for better or for worse,

in sickness and in health,

so long as we all shall live.

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20