Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do everything while in quarantine.
I can’t hang out with friends, so sometimes we get together via Zoom. Any of my neighborhood friends and I go on walks, minding our distance.
I can’t go to work, so I work from home, sometimes at the kitchen table, sometimes in a chair in my bedroom, sometime from the couch. The commute is nice, but it’s distracting here.
My kids can’t go to school, so they are completing their semester at home, near that same kitchen table and couch. It’s sometimes kinda noisy.
I can’t go climbing or visit restaurants or attend our community gatherings. I miss doing things not-at-home.
But following the teachings of Jesus is supposed to be able to be done wherever we are. But so much of my living a loving, compassionate life took place “out there.”
Now, though, there’s mostly only “in here.”
So how do I do that?
In The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser, Ron talks about being the body of Christ in the world, of our literally being the physical presence of Jesus on earth. One paragraph, in particular, made me think of our current quarantine situation and my struggle to live out love when there is no “out” to live in:
God takes on flesh so that every home becomes a church, every child becomes the Christ-child, and all food and drink become a sacrament. God’s many faces are now everywhere, in flesh, tempered and turned down, so that our human eyes can see him. God, in his many-faced face, has become as accessible, and visible, as the nearest water tap. That is the why of the incarnation. (page 78)
Ron helps me see that, though I often thought of following Jesus as something done “out there” with my friends, coworkers, and strangers, seeing God and following Jesus can be done “in here” just as well, through celebrating the blessings I’ve been given, and showing compassion to my roommates, and really being present with my dog, or washing the dishes, or folding the laundry. Every moment is ripe with the blessing and presence of the one I want to follow.
May we choose to live in that presence and celebrate those blessings, every common moment.
“Christ has no body now but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ’s compassion must look out on the world.
Yours are the feet with which
He is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which
He is to bless us now.”
~ Saint Teresa of Avila
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