A reflection on recent lifestyle changes brought on by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, and Psalm 46.
Tomorrow is the beginning of the fourth week of our new reality.
Week 4.
Speaking for myself, it sure seems longer than that. During these past three weeks we’ve been compelled to change our routines in nearly every major area of our lives: work, school, shopping, recreation, participation in worship services—the list continues to grow, with many of us still encountering more ways in which our former lifestyles have been disrupted. It’s not been easy. In such a state of disruption, it’s awfully easy to think oneself into a dither!
It’s that time of year when I’m usually starting to count down to the end of the semester. Spring Break has passed, and the end-of-semester whirlwind of concerts, exams, recitals, projects, and special occasions are beginning to loom large in my consciousness, bringing with them the anticipation and excitement (and anxiety, if I’m honest) that naturally accompany such things. Even though we are still doing many of these things, they’re occurring in a very different format, and some of them have disappeared from the calendar altogether.
It dawned on me last week that I wasn’t counting down this year. Not only that, it didn’t even feel like I was still at work. Not that it felt like I was on summer break—on the contrary, in many ways I’ve felt more overtaken with work than ever. Among the many differences that “working from home” brings with it is the absence of any kind of commute. I never realized before how much I’d come to appreciate, at a completely unconscious level, that time, alone in the car, driving back and forth, 35-40 minutes at a time, between home and Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. If anything, consciously, at least, I’ve usually felt nothing but annoyance at the trip! Now, working just a few steps from where I relax after the day’s work, I’ve discovered that I miss it.
“Going to work,” while tiring, and often irritating (can we say, “trains?”), provided a stabilizing influence to my outlook on life. Being at work—referring to its geographical location—contributed to a sense that life had meaning. Working from home is having the opposite effect, feeding an insurgent despair brought on by our new circumstances. This makes it difficult to muster the intellectual and emotional resources necessary to engaging others as teacher and supporter. I’d rather not. But then, the good ole work ethic kicks in, and reminds me that I don’t have to enjoy the work, I just have to DO the work. Thus swirls the maelstrom of thoughts, feelings, daydreams (or should it be “daymares?”), inner dialogue ramblings, etc.
I’ve always been able to compartmentalize these ruminations and “keep it together” even when feeling stressed, but this all seems so very different. Rather than the sharp, acute jab that a major personal crisis brings, this presents much like the chronic, dull ache of arthritis. Insidious, it creeps into every facet of life, fostering despair and apathy. Back to that word “ruminations.” Know where it comes from? It derives from the digestive process of ruminants: cows, for example. It’s generally well-known that cows will eat, and then, after a period of fermentation, will regurgitate the partially digested substance and chew it again (chewing the cud) to further break down the fibrous material for easier digestion. I can’t think of a more accurate metaphor to describe the internal process of thoughts and feelings that many of us experience during times of stress! We take it in, think on it, brood over it, let it “stew,” send it deep within, only to return to it time and again with a more intentional consciousness, whether we want to or not. This contributes to feeling “stressed out,” feeling defeated, feeling hopeless, or living in a miasma of despair and apathy.
Thankfully, I have medications that help me deal with the arthritis. But the discomfort arising from the rumination? The nostrum for that proves elusive. But then, one day late last week (Friday? the days themselves are running together), the following passage came to me while I was out for a walk:
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”
Psalm 46 NIV
I’m not going to tell you that re-reading this passage of scripture “made everything better.” But I can tell you that it served as a reminder that 1) human beings have coped with feelings similar to mine (and probably yours, dear reader) since the beginning of human existence, 2) people of faith will, from time to time, be called upon to exercise that faith, 3) God, the eternal one, who is Love, calls to me in the midst of my swirling emotions and thoughts to say: “Be still. Know that I am God.” And that is what I hold on to. The psalmist calls to mind natural disasters: earthquakes and sea-storms, as well as the horrors of human misery: nations and kingdoms in uproar, conflicts and wars. All to say that in the midst of these things, the Lord Almighty is with us. That the God of Jacob, which is to say, the God of our forebears, of long ages, is our fortress. And within that fortress we find “the river whose streams make glad the city of God.”
And so, as I enter this new week, I’m making a promise to myself to keep this thought: “Be still, and know that I am God.”