"Ask not for whom the bell tolls," wrote a fellow believer in a time of plague. Of course, in parts of what he would have called Christendom, there are no bells - with no services to mark and congregations forbidden from attending, Western Christianity's capital lies silent, deserted. Lent is already a spartan season, as altars go unadorned and clerics depart without music at the end of services. Coronavirus has simply imposed these austere observations universally.
Indeed, even our secular places of worship are empty, with the possibility that annual championships will not be completed this year. While a pall is cast over performances, sports, and arts, panic ensues at our markets, physical and digital. Rumour has it a skid of papier de la derriere sold out at our local warehouse retailer in less than two minutes.
This author will resist the temptation to either divinate or prophesy - adding to the fear by blaming our enemies or God's wrath is scientifically and spiritually unjustified. There is a place for philosophizing and terse empiricism however, starting with the observation that we need to be aware of how quickly things can spread in an age where people can jet set around the globe in a few short hours. Like all other plagues, we are living through the byproduct of global travel.
It should also be noted that vicious hoarding has been matched by virtuous selflessness in some quarters - people have bought up things with the specific hope of giving something to everyone. Others are offering to make trips for the homebound and elderly to gather supplies on their behalf, keeping their risk of infection to a minimum. Some are even crafting anti-bacterial gel at home, placing it in gathering or worship spaces while these are still allowed to operate.
Our Lord advocates visiting the sick, and having survived H1N1 (swine flu) in 2009, I can assure you we the quarantined need to be visited. Of course, with all our modern methods of communication, visiting need not bear the risk of infection - I encourage you to use whatever device or app you find most convenient to interrupt the monotony of anyone you know to be self-quarantined, especially those facing severe symptoms that are causing them to despair.
Whatever philosophising there is to offer has already much been discussed. It turns out that with nothing on the devil's tabernacle as Mother Theresa called it, we are reinvesting in our familial relationships - perhaps even creating more family members, as has occurred in every other disaster. Distraction has been a topic of every publication for decades - perhaps we can use this time to refocus. Tempus fugit, memento mori, and all the other old adages resound.
There is also the spirit of human resilience that is on full display in the most affected parts of the world. Aside from material needs, people are rediscovering our pre-mass media existence, the culture of their ancestors. Folk songs and obscure instruments are being brought out of attics in our heads and houses. Stories are being told that were nearly forgotten, and new ones being written in light of the world at a standstill. Clearly, our creativity knows no bounds.
I promised not to prophesy, so instead I will pray that this lesson sticks with us who are more inundated with distantly generated stimuli than any people in history. I mean no disrespect - my own faith has also ceased to gather and broadcast at its epicenter in this crisis. But we are more than the sum of our parts, our inputs, our chats around the recently removed water cooler about things that we all witnessed but did not participate in. Meaningful living starts at home.
As the dean at St. Paul's told us, "no man is an island entire of itself" - let us stand in solidarity with the afflicted while acting out our rote drill - ablutions and oblations, inside and out.
