My spiritual director asked me how I have been experiencing the Covid-19 social isolation of the last four weeks. (She asked this by video conference of course.) I told her I had stoped writing. She mis-heard me and exclaimed, “Oh what good news!”
I told her I was listening. I was watching and observing. I told her I was waiting with my face turned toward the windows of my apartment. I said I had nothing to say yet. She nodded her head.
It isn’t that I have not been busy. Paying attention requires, well, attention. Paying attention means observing, noting what is different and what is the same. Paying attention means not taking anything for granted including the pigeon couple that lives in the shared yard behind our house. Sometimes the fly up to the roof that extends over our back windows and sometimes they perch on the balcony railing that juts out a scarce half foot from the corder of the neighboring building. Recently, one of them slammed into our window and fell back. He quickly flew back up to the roof peak of the house on the left and his companion landed next to him. She stayed close while he paused to do whatever it is that pigeons do when they have received a shock. I think they have a nest or will have a nest nearby. I’m really not read up on the family lives of pigeons but I watch this pair. And I watch how they watch for the raven that also claims this space. I think he likes eggs for breakfast.
I pay attention to the people I walk past on the street. Parents taking their children out for walks, the great child energy burn off. The elderly making their treks to the store for supplies and to brush up against other human beings. Each step outside their door could lead to the encounter with a virus that would then kill them. But staying inside, alone could also bring death as well. So we walk toward each other and then I step out of the way to let them pass at a safe distance, or at six feet. What is the safe distance, really? Today, two women smiled at me and said, “Danke,” for my space making. This is not a cheap and easy Danke culture. I just smile and reply, “Kein problem” while they clear the cross-transit zone. I can wait. We all have time now.
I pay attention to how quiet my city has become. Fewer cars day or night and the neighborhood becomes a s quiet as a forest. I notice how silently the sky now spans the earth and how few jet trails appear overhead.
I notice where the stores no longer stock the yeast on the shelves. I notice the yeasty condition of my own sourdough starter now colonized with wild European yeast. I notice the occasional pulses of Italian pasta but the reassuringly steady presence of flour.
This is my spiritual practice this month. Some in the Ignatian spirituality tradition call it “taking a long, loving look at the real.” I don’t know about loving but I’m trying to be kind I’m trying to ask what is good here, what isn’t good here? I’m always asking, “Where is God here?”
In Celtic spiritual traditions, observing and claiming thresholds are an important and helpful way to see where we are in relation to each other, this world, and God. Transitions are something of a sacred space to be transversed, a movement from one state to another. It is said that the Irish St. Brigid was born when her mother was crossing the threshold into the dairy which seems like both a startling quick labor and a rather uncomfortable landing for the child but the story is interested in the crossing not the physicality.
Speaking of thresholds, how have our front doors changed in a time of “safe” and “unsafe” space? Here, we should wear a mask and there we can walk inhibited in breath. Here we keep our distance and there we can embrace our loved ones. Here we keep our hands away from our face and there washing our hands is the first thing we do after crossing through the entryway. We mark our transitions with soap and face masks.
I watch and wonder, where is God in this?
I try to pray still, but not always with words. I stand out on my porch at sunrise and sunset with my eyes open. I give God and the shared back yard my attention, looking for the signs of change and the signs of steady presence. I let my eyes rest on what I see, I try to notice anything that God is calling my attention toward.
In the yard I can see that the two centuries old chestnut trees that pre-date all the housing around them have leafed out, again. These trees are old. If they had memory they would tell us about all the crops grown on the farmland now supporting pre and post war apartment houses. Once, a few years ago, one of the trees supported a true crow’s nest. I watched it bounce in a fierce windstorm and knew why the highest point on a ship carried that name.
I also pray with words sometimes. Sometimes at night, when I’m going to bed and my fears are settling in alongside me, trying to get under the blanket with me. I pray a caim prayer, an encircling prayer that asks for the protection of the Trinity in front of me, behind me, and along side me. For the protection of my home and my family and my friends. My fears seem to take comfort in this prayer, they are like little children really. Small bundles of anxiousness that settle down and snuggle up quietly once I’ve prayed them and myself to rest.
I have no wisdom to write to you nor to my Spiritual Advisor, no stunning insights to share. Don’t worry, there is a million other spiritual blogs and books and Bibles already full of wisdom that might catch your heart and give comfort to your fear. I’m sorry, I worry that I am letting you down but I don’t know how to be wise like that right now.
I’m still just watching.
There are very small little birds with dabs of yellow toward the end of their little bellies darting about the yard this last day or so. I think they are just passing through. I’ve seen them before.
Isn’t it incredible that we can just shut down an entire world for a month? That somehow we made and accepted that choice? That now I walk for my lunch, sold to me out a window where once tables were laid for long meals? Who knew we could do that? Ground all the planes? Close all the offices? What was so important that this could happen?
And now that it is happening, what do we see?
Where is God in this?
Still here, I think.
Still with us, and that is all the wisdom I have right now.
Later on, I’ll tell you if I see anything. Tell me please, what are you seeing?