Sabbath Gone Viral — Green Sabbath and “Sheltering in Place”
Dear Friends,
I write to you from my apartment in New York where I am “sheltering in place.” I pray that you and your loved ones are healthy and managing to cope in this surreal reality that is our current situation.
Many of the difficult and negative aspects of coronavirus are being discussed publicly. I want to talk instead about an element of our terrible new reality (hopefully only temporary) that I believe deserves more coverage: an unexpected opportunity for self-discovery.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. Coronavirus is horrific. I sympathize with everyone coerced into isolation, especially with those who are already lonely or on the margins. I mourn for the numerous deaths. I cringe thinking about the profound economic suffering that is just now beginning. We also have, in this sci-fi existence, an opportunity that we would do well to accept. On the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), prayers beseech God to grant us forgiveness, but not by means of suffering. This always struck me as a frank and psychologically realistic prayer. We want inner growth and enlightenment, but don’t relish the pain and hardship by means of which inner growth and enlightenment often come. And yet... Can social distancing teach us to properly value one another? Can “shelter in place” remind us of how little we actually need to run after the fulfilment of illusory “needs” implanted by advertising and social pressure? Can the spread of an “unnatural” pathogen jar us to greater awareness of how unhealthy our world-systems are?
The pandemic that is currently engulfing humanity around the world has forced much of the social and economic systems of society to come to a standstill. Most of us see this as an unwanted and undesirable state of affairs, which in many respects it certainly is. Some of the consequences of this involuntary shutdown are already showing themselves to have positive silver linings, however, though many, perhaps most of these changes will not last. It might have already dawned on you that coronavirus has imposed a kind of sabbath on the world’s population. Several news stories drove home this idea to me.
The total lockdown in sections of China, which included the temporary termination of manufacturing and almost all transportation, caused air pollution to drop significantly enough that the results could be seen clearly in satellite images. CO2 emissions went down by at least 25%, NO2 decreased by between 10 and 30%, and dangerous airborne micro-particulates declined by some 40%. (Read about it here, here or here.) New York City’s carbon monoxide levels fell by around 50% last week.
In Venice, where tourism has almost entirely disappeared, the absence of the usually heavy traffic of water vessels has meant that sediment in the shallow canals is no longer being stirred up almost constantly. The return of relative stillness and clearness to the waterways has attracted birds, such as cormorants, ducks and swan, and fish, who generally avoid these frenetic locations. (Read about that here or here.)
These forms of purely unintended ecological renewal come at a devastating social cost, unfortunately, and will disappear once the economy gets going again. Yet they are not the only unintended consequences of coronavirus. The outbreak has forced an increasingly global and total coming-together of families. Restricted by governments to “shelter in place” conditions, with workplaces and schools closed, families have been required to spend much more time together. While the technologies that make internet or virtual life possible make our social distancing far more bearable, many of us also realize that the current situation confronts us with the need to -- but also an often rare opportunity to -- interact with one another in a personal, face-to-face manner, to get to know each other again. Do we still know how to play games together, to enjoy one another’s company without some transactional goal, to attend to and tend to one another’s challenges, concerns, fears and joys? At a recent press conference New York governor Andrew Cuomo beautifully described the unexpected exchanges he was having with his quarantined daughter:
To tell you the truth, I had some of the best conversations with her that I’ve ever had. We talked about things in depth that we didn’t have time to talk about in the past or we didn’t have the courage or the strength to talk about in the past — feelings I had, about mistakes I had made along the way that I wanted to express my regret and talk through with her.
Our quarantine is also forcing us to slow down, to learn how to be, not just to do. Shut off from the frenetic, near-constant on-the-go life of 24/7 American-style hyper-capitalism, we might be able to appreciate once again the slow life. Sure, we might simply have transferred instant, total connectivity to our limited at-home sphere and remain endlessly online, but the collective shutdown has postponed a great deal of work for many people. We find ourselves reading books, doing puzzles, taking quiet walks, drawing, painting or knitting. Even being bored in our current situation might not be so bad, given that we have a kind of end of the world on which to meditate. I suspect many are taking the time to daydream or brainstorm a new and better world into existence.
Hyperlocal self-organization has become a necessity. People are being forced to get to know and look after their neighbors. The mayor of Italy’s Bergamo told Der Spiegel that city employees and 500 volunteers are helping elderly residents with shopping and pharmacy visits. Each inhabitant of the city has been asked “to call elderly people and keep them company by phone.” In a 12-building public housing complex in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, each building has chosen a captain and floor leaders who “field requests and concerns from elderly or vulnerable tenants — and connect them to a flock of able-bodied volunteers who can help.” Many people have created or joined virtual, real and hybrid mutual-aid networks that operate hyperlocally.
The unexpected sabbath that coronavirus is pushing on us can be taken as a burdensome sacrifice, a kind of cruel and unusual punishment, but also as a blessing, a prompt, an opening, an invitation. Life under (self-)quarantine means we are faced with the question of who we really are, what do we really need, what are our true priorities. We are pressed to (re)discover our essence, our authentic self. Can we live without the trip to Aruba? Are we happy without the frozen yogurt place, the personal stylist, the frequent wardrobe replenishing, the next-day online deliveries? Are we sated and gratified without multiple devices and gadgets?
Some aspects of our enforced coronavirus sabbath show that if sabbath isn’t truly collective it becomes a phenomenon divided by class or race. For those newly laid off, already living paycheck to paycheck or suffering from food insecurity, the shutdown is merely another example of capricious and cruel capitalism as social Darwinism. Workers in “essential” fields are mostly minorities in the United States and not only are not benefitting from any kind of respite, they are still required to serve on the front lines, now without proper health protections.
In light of all this, I cannot refrain from raising the fact that two years ago, Pope Francis, lamenting the variety of dis-ease caused by modern existence, issued a public plea for Catholics to observe sabbath, “the way the Jews do”! A clip of this exhortation from an appearance on 60 Minutes has gone viral this past week, when it was posted again by someone from the Seventh Day Adventist Church. (The arguments between the Seventh Day Adventists and the Catholic Church are legion and in the interview the Pope mentions Saturday as the seventh day, on which the Bible asks people to rest, rather than the traditional Christian Sunday sabbath.) I wrote to His Holiness the Pope in January, telling him about the Green Sabbath Project and asking him to join the movement. I still hope that he will.
While we wait for the Pontiff’s support, we at the Green Sabbath Project would love to hear from you about your experiences in our surreal new reality. What does community look like for you under quarantine? How do you rest when working remotely from home? Have you had new thoughts about sabbath and ecology? Given the endless flow of indoor days, have you made efforts to create a sabbath day for yourself or to turn your sabbath into a truly different kind of time? We welcome you to write a blog post for us.
With best wishes for your well-being in these trying times,
Jonathan
