Welcome the Virus

I had my first appointment with my spiritual director on Saturday.  It was very fruitful.  I wish I had done spiritual direction before this epidemic broke out--it would be interesting to see if spiritual direction changed at all.

We sat 6 feet apart, which was a bit further than during our getting to know you session of a month ago, but that wasn't too strange.  We began with deep breathing and checking in with our bodies.  It was both a guided meditation and a prayer.

Then we talked about where we are.  I did the bulk of the talking.  It was a bit like therapy, a bit like coaching, a bit like a coffee date with a friend.  I talked about how hard it has been for me to sleep past 2 a.m.  I talked about the few times that I'm awake after my spouse goes to bed, and I don't want to turn out the light, like a scared child.

We talked about nightlights, about God being on watch so that we don't have to be.  We talked about a breathing practice that I could try when I woke up in the middle of the night: inhale saying a word, and then exhale saying a different word.  I tried it as Saturday night moved to Sunday morning:  my exhale word was peace. I was able to soothe myself back into sleep.

We talked a lot about how much life has changed.  We talked about our churches and how we're trying to livestream both worship and other experiences.

We circled back to my experiences not being able to sleep and being on the computer much too much.  We talked about how I might both journal and pray--a swoosh of color representing one prayer, followed by a swoosh of a different color representing a different prayer.  That idea really appeals to me.

At the end of our session, our conversation took a surprising turn.  My spiritual director said, "What if we welcomed the virus?"  We sat with that idea for a bit--we were neither one of us exactly comfortable with that idea.

I hasten to add that we agreed that we weren't saying we should take precautions and use protections.  We weren't saying, "Let's welcome violent men who want to rape us--let's leave the front door open all the time."  It was more about changing our attitude, about not letting this pandemic crisis overwhelm us and change our behavior for the worse.  It was about not letting the pandemic stress us beyond our limits.

I'm still not sure we're either one of us completely on board with this idea.  Sunday morning, I sketched a bit and came up with this sketch:

I'm sure that at some point I may look back and shake my head at how naive we were.  I do think that we're both very clear on how bad this crisis could be.  I don't know that we've let ourselves think of all the implications of the awfulness to come.