Too Much to Carry

It started with the toilet paper. The memes and humor about unstocked shelves and unclean rear-ends. I had a hard time getting the joke. All I could feel was the blood-coursing panic that must have been flowing through thousands of people’s veins as they grabbed the fifth 24-pack of rolls. Add to that a dose of rage at those who were stockpiling for economic gain, and the entire topic tilted me far off-center, drawing up stores of emotions I didn’t want or need.

The consequences of hoarding objects in a crisis are easily recognizable. The felt-scarcity within one person produces a tangible scarcity for another, and the feeling multiplies exponentially. Hoarding is a way of holding on. It need not be rational. It holds us tight when the rush of change is stirring down below.

Lent and Quarantine are Not the Same

When all of this took off, I was blissfully writing about how Lent reconnects us to our deeper selves, nature, and each other. When the social distancing procedures of COVID-19 kicked in, I—foolishly—thought, “Well, this is just more fuel for the soul-rest God is offering us individually and now culturally.” As a writer and a digital spiritual director of sorts, I was hopeful that the unplugging nudge of Lent was helped along by an unplugging shove of quarantine.

I was wrong.

Limiting our mobility and our social interaction is not the same as soul rest. Just like fasting from chocolate has little to do with feeding your spirit, our required breaks from the mechanical and maniacal world of American productivity is not a guaranteed onboard into God's sabbath rest.

Abstention is the beginning of healing, but it is not the end. Abstinence of any kind—sweets, screen time, social interaction, noise—can open us up to our deeper truths, but it makes no guarantees. Letting go (by choice or by force) may cause things to get worse before they get better, waking us up to the pain, the anxiety, the hidden self that led us to our favorite distractions in the first place.

We Are Holding On

With so much uncertainty and instability, we are all wrestling with our deeper dark. Our need for comfort, our vulnerability, our repressed anger and judgment at those who are different from us. Our insatiable fear and hunger for something to control. Stripped of our illusions, we are waking to the possibility that there is no "back to before." We are on our way into an undiscovered country… together.

The loudest voices among us demand an end to vulnerability. They know what to do and how to do it, and if we only did it now, then all would be well. They come in all political varieties. They also are a facade, hiding the essential truth that no one actually knows. Data from past experience gives us hints, but data is always a slave to the interpreter. Not even Dr. Fauci can save us from the unknown.

So we are holding on. More each day. Some of us are holding on to the headlines, callusing our thumbs with clicks to MSNBC and FOX News apps. Some of us are going cross-eyed scrolling through Twitter, looking for the 280 character insight that will bring meaning to an unsettling time. Some of us are building fortresses of scheduling and self-made curriculums and lock-tight plans for how to prioritize and maximize these days.

We are holding on.

Holding on to our feelings of sufficiency. Our ability to manage. Our knowledge of the most current of current events. Our awareness of the scientifically proven social distancing procedures. We know all the things. And we have all the feelings about those things.

We are holding on.

Hoarding is the word. Hoarding our rights to be strong. Our rights to be clear. Our rights to be in the right, when everything else feels wrong.

But We Don’t Have To

Beneath the plexiglass bridges we are standing upon is a rushing river. It is the confluence of the changes around us, the vulnerability to the unknown, the risks to our well-managed lives rising up. All the gentle streams of wholeness we fear are merging into a wide-banked wave of unsettling change.

I am joining in prayer with other spiritual directors and guides that we would lower ourselves down. I am reminding myself each day to let the controversy of the moment pass through my fingers, to drop down from one more ledge of certainty. While physical distancing, I am practicing social distance from:

• The latest breaking news.
• Pressures to perform, parent, “homeschool” or work in a way that proves I am “rising above” the current environment
• Expectations of feeling angry, sad, fearful, offended, shocked, or incensed at the behavior of others. (Or expectations to repress any of the above when the arise.)

I encourage you to let the river flow, and with it every emotion, every thought, every best practice, every demand for certainty. There is a million-mile difference between choosing to contain our mobility out of love for the vulnerable, and demanding social distance out of a need to be right and guarantee a result. One leads to life and the way of Jesus. The other is just one more grasp at controlling the uncontrollable.

Take Nothing for the Road

“Take nothing for the journey,” Jesus told them. “No staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no, second set of clothes.” - Luke 9:3

On this journey to an unknown future, we are all tempted to load up. Carb load. Resource load. Emotionally load. To pile on all the tools we think we need to be better suited for the vulnerability we as a society feel. The call of Jesus is so stark as to nearly strip us nude: You need nothing. No extra plan. No perfect curriculum. No official position on how to know you did your part to end the quarantine. All that is too much to carry.

Even after some practice of surrendering any grasp on the future, I still feel fear at the outset of these kinds of prayers. But we can pray them together. This is my prayer for us as we relinquish our hoarding, plant our feet, and open our eyes and hearts to the road God is opening up:

God who is our Source and our Love:

Give us the courage to relinquish the illusion of control.
Give us the humility to abandon the need to be right.
Give us the grace to welcome our fear and doubt.
Give us the patience to plant our feet firmly on the ground, living by the speed and cycles of your created world.
Give us the hope to travel forward with empty hands.
Enter us into your rest.

Amen and Let’s go.

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I write at thirtysixwords as a digital source of spiritual direction to a beloved community of readers. This is a place to recenter ourselves on ridiculous hopes, undeserved loves, and unstructured faith. You are welcome to join us.