Exiles in our Own Home: a spirituality for self-isolation

In this unlooked-for state of self-isolation or as I prefer to call it, Lazaretto which I wrote about in my last blog, the days stretch languidly ahead. They extend beyond the forthcoming spring equinox, beyond Holy Week and Easter, beyond Pentecost, even beyond the summer solstice when the days start getting shorter again.

My diary has been emptied of all engagements. No preaching or speaking, no social events to look forward to, no volunteering in the charity bookshop, no trips to see the grandchildren, no weekends away, no shopping expeditions, no bus or train journeys, no visits to the library or cinema, restaurants, cafes and art galleries, no church services to go to. Lazaretto is a strange land to find myself in.

Who knows how long this quarantine will last?  Twelve weeks are being spoken about. But it could be twenty or more, taking us towards the threshold of autumn. How will we know when it is safe to come out again? Whose permission will we need? What will it be like to take up normal activity again, frequent crowded places, start travelling, socialising, hugging and shaking hands? What will it take to banish worry and fear?

If it were winter, we would call it hibernation. But it will be summer, so the right word for it is aestivation. And spring and summer days will always have the capacity to lift our spirits, make us glad that light and warmth have arrived. They will entice us out into the open to enjoy clean fresh air (all the fresher because of lowered emissions during the pandemic through the sharp decline in air travel that it's brought). They will invite us to find our place once again in the natural world and celebrate its loveliness. Despite what some are saying, unless we have symptoms of infection, there’s no reason not to go outside during quarantine. We should take plenty of exercise. Nature has a renewing effect on mind and body. (We simply need to stay a safe distance away from anyone we meet, but the open air does provide opportunities for social contact that would be risky indoors.)

I've been hunting for analogies to help me make a good aestivation. It would be so easy for Lazaretto to be defined by negation - here's what I won't do anymore, here's what I've had to give up, here's the heavy price I'm having to pay on this long ordeal of empty times and spaces. How might I understand it more positively, as an opportunity for good things to happen, as an enriching and rewarding adventure, as gift? In my last blog, I offered a few practical suggestions. In this and coming blogs I want to see if there are comparable experiences that could shed light on what lies ahead.

My first analogy is exile. I like that image because, like self-isolation, it is unwished for. No-one goes into exile willingly. No-one contemplates the loss of home or land or community, all that's familiar and that makes us feel safe. Exile is an experience of dislocation that is enforced, often without warning. I think all this is to some extent true of quarantine. Like the exiles of Psalm 137, we can become despondent or angry, experience severe turbulence in our emotions. 'How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?'

But exile can be a great teacher. Much of the greatest literature in the Hebrew Bible originated in the sixth century BCE when the exiles had no choice but to re-examine the foundations of their faith in an environment where the question was inevitably, what theological, spiritual sense can this catastrophe possibly make? The fruits of that deep search are found in the Torah, the classical prophets, and many of the Psalms and wisdom writings. Israel could never have expected that the destruction of the temple, the end of the monarchy, the conquest of the land and exile to a far country could possibly be gift. But so it proved.

So in the light of that observation, I am asking myself, how should I contemplate these coming weeks of exile in my own home?

I'm inspired by a passage in one of those great prophets of exile, Jeremiah. We're used to thinking of him as a man weighed down by a sense of doom. It's true that his laments are among the most passionate outbursts of anger in the scriptures as he internalises the people's experience of exile and the conclusion that God must have abandoned them. But how different is the tone of a letter he wrote to the exiles in Babylon.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29.4-7)

How to be at home in exile, how to inhabit it? - that's the challenge Jeremiah puts to the exiles. It seems extraordinary to ask of them that they should befriend this experience of disorientation. It goes against all their instincts to invest in exile in this way. Yet Jeremiah understands how adversity always invites us to renegotiate life on a new set of terms. And when we do this, undreamed of possibilities open up. No doubt he has learned this through his own experience. There is no landscape so barren that life cannot begin again - even if it takes time to glimpse the green shoots that promise springtime at the end of a long winter. 

But it's the conclusion that's so starting. Seek the welfare of the city and pray to the Lord on its behalf! You'll forgive the intruded exclamation mark, but this arresting instruction deserves it. We thought that exile meant that God had forgotten us. We thought this city was an unclean, godforsaken place. We thought that the best we could hope for was survival, not building houses, sowing harvests, bringing up families. But look! The prophet says we must say our prayers for this place. We must look for it to flourish because if it does, we shall too. Which can only mean that God is as present here in Babylon as we knew him to be back in Judah. He is not an absent deity after all. As the covenant promised he always would be, he is with us. And he will not forsake us.

As a person of faith, I want to discover how these insights speak into this twenty-first century expression of exile. Self-isolation, as I said last time, is a depressing term that seems to me to encourage all that the prophet wants to resist: self-absorption, self-concern, self-pity. Jeremiah's letter is saying: don't let exile diminish your life. Don't let it erode your capacity to reach into each new moment to uncover the possibilities latent there. Keep hope alive. Remember your community of fellow-exiles, especially people in need. Try to ask, even in times of crisis, where God might be found in what is happening to us. See if there is wisdom to be distilled in the events that happen to us, however painful or baffling or bleak. Share what you discover. Ask others what they are learning too. 

I know from my own previous experiences of exile that all this takes time. Whether it's been disappointment or failure, conflict or bereavement, it won't be hurried. It's important to acknowledge what we feel when we feel it, and to be emotionally and spiritually honest in recognising it. We mustn't rush prematurely out of Good Friday into Easter. But time will do its work. I can't predict as this exile begins what life will be like in one month's time, or two, or three. But I profoundly believe that God will be with us throughout it. Even with those for whom these coming weeks pose real threats of economic hardship, loneliness, physical and mental health or bereavement. 

Especially them, especially those who will suffer the most. It's for all of us to bring help, support and comfort to our fellow exiles wherever and however we can. And hope in dark times. This is the quarantine spirituality of Lazaretto.