Early last summer, my husband and I found ourselves in a season of health-related hardship. What we thought was the return of a known illness turned out to be much worse––something much harder to contend with, and something that had already caused a host of related problems we knew nothing about. Each week of the summer brought a fleet of more-painful challenges, and as the start of the new semester approached, we found ourselves scrambling to deal with difficulties we had just learned to name. . . .

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A few weeks ago, a friend clarified for me the difference between isolation and solitude. “Isolation is forced on us from outside,” she said. “Solitude is chosen.” I’ve been reflecting on her insight during this time of social distancing. Retired in the Boston area, she lives in a seniors’ home where all residents are now strictly confined to their apartments. They are to stay out of the hallways. Meals are delivered to their doors to be eaten in their separate rooms. But my friend is making her forced isolation into a chosen solitude to think, read, reflect, watch, listen, feel, pray, and be alone with God. Also, she is actively reaching out to fellow residents by phone and internet. She embraces the solitude as a “communal solitude” and is trying “to learn how it is that we may contribute to the communal solitude.” Solitude is something I may intentionally prize; communal solitude we may prize together.

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There are Holy Spirit whispers I’ve heard in the past few weeks, holed up like many of my colleagues at a makeshift dining room table workstation. The work continues and the days gallop by for those of us fortunate enough to remain working, but for some of us they feature a little more margin. What is being asked of those of us who have been given this extra margin?

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This is a nerve-racking time. As a pastor I spent hours and hours the week of March 8 making plans for a safe worship service. But by the end of the day that Sunday, March 15, all that labor was obsolete. I spent the following week getting up to speed on live streaming and pulling off our first ever digital worship service for our folks at home. Throughout this time, I had to make countless decisions, big and small. It left me exhausted. . . .

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I sometimes feel guilty these days about my teaching at Washington University, Zoomed once a week for the rest of this tattered spring semester, because I am having my students read and discuss formal, abstract, scholarly theology. The course is called “Christian Theology and Politics in the Modern West,” and it deals quite a bit more with the theology than the politics. What in the world am I having my students do, reading the likes of Kathryn Tanner, the Yale theologian who painstakingly draws out a theory of human nature and its political implications from the technicalities of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity? In times like this, I think, they ought to be reading material that immediately connects to contemporary issues . . . .

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The day I learned things would change forever, I was looking at the cover of USA Today. Center page, it told about the death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, who had been killed with nine others in a horrific helicopter accident with nine others. That was the big story. But to the side of that article, still on the front page, was a heading saying that the rush was on to develop a vaccine for coronavirus. . . .

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Years ago, my grandfather's house got burglarized. Twice. Both burglaries occurred on Sunday morning. Sunday morning seems like an odd time to burglarize a house. That is unless your victim is a pastor. Everyone in the neighborhood knew my grandfather was a pastor, so everyone knew where my grandfather would be on Sunday morning. He’d be at church. That’s what pastors do. They go to church. Every Sunday. In fact, that’s what Christians around the world do. We all go to church every week. It’s our main event. So what happens to the Church when we can no longer do what defines us? What happens to our enterprise when we can no longer experience our main event? 

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Although the calendar says that we are coming to the end of the season of Lent today, I am coming to believe that it is helpful for us to approach the time of this pandemic as a long Lent. Lent is a season each year when Christian churches focus again on the story of Jesus’ suffering for our sake. And it is also a season to consider again Jesus’ call to take up our own cross and follow him by his grace on a path of suffering as we serve the mission of God’s kingdom. . . .

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At the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” – which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

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On Maundy Thursday in my church, we gather each year in the basement, as though huddled in refuge from a storm. Tables sit in a semi-circle, linked in a line, and we share a meal to begin the night. After supper, lights are dimmed and candles lit. We begin reading scripture, passing the story down, and one-by-one we extinguish the flames. We sing, and we wash each other’s feet. And when the service is nearly ended, we celebrate communion: the Last Supper. Then in silence, we file out into the night. . . .

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As a person with chronic health problems, I have been training for this season my entire adult life. Being stuck at home is a normal, though unwelcome, activity. Feeling isolated from my church community is run of the mill. Been there, done that, and, based on the prevalence of articles about isolation and loneliness, you would think I would be doing it again. But, in many ways, I feel less isolated than in those previous seasons of my life. . . .

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Throughout the Old Testament, the theme of “when we go back” saturates the text. When we return to the land, when we have power, when our routines and traditions return. Except for the Book of Esther. Here is a story of God’s people in exile – stuck in a place they don’t want to be, living with people they don’t want to live with (I think we can all relate to that feeling). They have been stripped of everything that defines them—no temple, no traditions, no power. . . .

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Today marks the opening of Holy Week. A triumphal entry yesterday on Palm Sunday culminates, only days later, with Jesus crying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Monday begins a pilgrimage that ends at the cross. And those who journeyed with Jesus in his day had no idea that a light might still yet come. They had witnessed only an ending—a life snuffed out. It would have been reasonable, in their case, to despair. . . .

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These days, we all find ourselves marking—and missing—dates that held significance for us: vacations canceled, family reunions delayed (my parents canceled a 50th anniversary celebration), Easter worship reimagined. Today, Friday, April 3, marks a significant date for The Carver Project: we had long ago scheduled our signature public event, The Carver Conversation for tonight. . . .

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Two weeks ago, many of us at Washington University in St. Louis received the news that our spring semester had been canceled. At first, I found it very difficult to acknowledge the implications. What does it mean to shut down a campus? As a second-semester senior, I simply felt a sweeping numbness and shock. Everything I had been preparing for over the last three and a half years suddenly ceased to exist. . . .

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The spread of Covid-19 has caused us to group people by levels of risk, and I find myself, unfortunately, both in and surrounded by the most dangerous category. At 75 years old, I am high risk. My wife is even higher risk, with a history of heart disease and high blood pressure. Our sixteen-year-old grandson, diagnosed with leukemia in January, is undergoing chemotherapy, leaving him at high risk too. Our daughter and son-in-law, who are frontline primary care pediatricians in Boston hospitals, are also at high risk. Every day I am hit hard with the reality of our vulnerability. . . .

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In a short two-week period, our understanding of corporate gatherings has drastically changed! Group gatherings in university classrooms, offices, coffee shops, restaurants, concert halls, and churches have been replaced by Zoom and Skype meetings, online lectures, online church services, and even online dance parties. But balancing this necessary social distancing with our need for in-person human interaction is not an easy task. . . .

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In these days of home quarantine, a friend of mine posts a scavenger hunt on social media each morning. It is a simple list of ordinary wonders in our neighborhood. As families file out for a morning walk, we search for a daffodil, a fire hydrant, a bicycle, a purple hyacinth, a bridge, a school, a bug. In Chicago, I have heard, neighbors who hardly know one another now band together to hide items in their windows. Children scamper down the sidewalks and across the empty streets in search of ordinary, everyday objects. . . .

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When the first announcement went out, I looked at my husband and asked, “What in the world are we going to do for eight weeks?” I find myself, once again, in an unfamiliar place. I am not in control, and I don’t know what to expect. . . .

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It has barely been two weeks since my world, like yours, began to slowly contract. Now, we are all homebound, for better or worse, perhaps for months. Isolated in our houses, we are all doing our part, (rightly so!) to prevent a growing viral outbreak from becoming a rampant contagion. Let me be clear, this is not just the logical choice, it is the only choice for those who profess a “love for our neighbor.” The sacrifice asked of us, isolation, is quite small for such an outsized effect on the greater good. Still, in recent days, I've noticed a subtle but crooked change in my behavior. . . .

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