You have seen, and perhaps shared, the memes encouraging us to carpe diem, seize the day. I have shared these myself and appreciate the encouragement to grab life by the horns and seek fulfilling experiences. The question that remains is, what do we do to seize these strange days while we are in lockdown?
I have seen the memes encouraging us to use this lockdown time to throw ourselves into various activities that have slipped to the bottom of our to-do lists. I have been urged to fill my time by writing a novel, learning a new language, or organising the forgotten dark corners of my closet. Now that I have far more unplanned and unscheduled time at home than I ever imagined, how shall I spend it?
Time is a gift and one it feels we now have in greater abundance than we did previously. In my own Christian tradition, time is the first gift of God in the Creation. God first creates light and darkness, day and night, and time begins. These days of quarantine have not changed the length of days, or the number of days in a month, but our routines, our plans and our ways of marking time have been disrupted. I find myself with simultaneously both greater and fewer possibilities of how to use this gift of time.
My own instincts are to fill up this time with busyness and activities so that my quarantine life more closely resembles the normal busyness of everyday pre-lockdown life. After tiring myself out with busyness and an ambitious schedule, I awakened to the fact I need to curb this instinct. I found that, for me, the only sustainable way through this current shelter-at-home time is not hectic activity, but rest.
Luckily my religious tradition addresses this when it speaks of the gift of Sabbath. Sabbath is a gift of time where we don’t have to be productive. We can rest and travel more deeply in exploring our interior spiritual life.
This week Christians around the world are remembering the last days of Jesus’ life on Earth. Public health prevents us from gathering together for big services this year. However, we can still mark this special time by going deeper to engage with the story of Holy Week and Easter in different ways. We can pray, reflect on suffering in the world, contemplate redemption and meditate on hope.
I invite to you to consider how you spend your time these strange days. We come from a variety of religious traditions, and none, but these questions of time are common to us all. If these days provide an opportunity to not be distracted by busyness so that you might more deeply explore your spiritual life I encourage you to do so. We will need all our spiritual resources to get through this. If you would like to talk to a chaplain about the great resources of spirituality and/or faith, please send any of us an email with a phone number and we will get in touch.
I have learned that a more literal translation of carpe diem as used by Roman Poet Horace in 23 BCE would be "to pluck the day as it is ripe". With this understanding let us carpe diem and savour the flavour of the present moment. This present moment of physical isolation limits the fruits we can enjoy, but we can still feast on our own spiritual practice and savour the sweet nectar of connection.
Blessings,
Mindy
Rev. Mindy Bell - Methodist Chaplain, 6 April 2020