This moment
feels perilous because it is. We feel helpless to control events, and moreover
we are told to remain alone. Our only power lies in staying physically distant
from each other, hoping isolation protects us. But are we really alone? And are
we really so isolated?
The Spanish flu hit the year
my father was born, and he has been gone nearly 8 years. In our lifetime we’ve
never seen anything like this moment in its global scale, sudden spread, and long
duration.
Most of us now are sheltering
in place. When the orders went out to self-quarantine, I was surprised by the irony.
“Quarantine” comes from “quarantino,” the 14th century Venetian policy of
banning ships from landing at port for 40 days (“quaranta giorni” in Italian)
during the Black Plague. The number 40 may not have been arbitrary, but was probably
based on the 40 days Jesus fasted in the desert—and the 40 days of Lent. The irony:
we are now under quarantine during Lent 2020, so most of its ceremonies—including
the Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil, and Easter Sunday services—have
been cancelled.
Traditionally, many Christians
have practiced “giving something up” for Lent. But this year we have no choice,
as the First Baptist Church’s sign tells us:
When Pope Francis preached to
an eerily empty Saint Peter’s Square last week, he first described our situation
in terms of spiritual distress:
For weeks now it has been evening. Thick darkness has
gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our
lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that
stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice in people’s
gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost.
And then he also named the
spiritual challenge that accompanies a crisis like this:
We are on the same boat, all of us fragile and
disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row
together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of
us.
Francis is right. Now, as my
own self-quarantine has taken hold and focused my thinking, I've realized that many moments in my own past echo the present crisis ——
and those echoes seem to all teach the same lesson: whenever a crisis triggers
physical isolation, it challenges our commitment to human solidarity more than
ever.
None of those past moments were
as grave or massive as this one—but they all posed a similar challenge: We must
all row together.
When I was born, in December 1948, my mother left the hospital knowing she could not
take me home. My older sisters had contracted scarlet fever, and the family
home was quarantined — — the front of the house even bore a poster warning
people to stay away.
So instead my mother and I spent the next few weeks
staying with my mother's best high school friend, who just happened to be my
father's only sister. My father could visit, then return to my sisters. I'm
sure my mother and my sisters still suffered terribly being isolated from each
other.
And I’m sure this upset the usual happiness of having a new baby. But
the support from my wider family—my aunt, uncle, and cousins--meant that we all
got through that crisis.
In May 1955 the surgery to remove my tonsils was cancelled for fear of the Polio epidemic that was spreading among children even in hospitals, and especially during the warmer months. My tonsils never came out. That summer, the same fear of Polio infection kept many children, including my sisters, from seeing the Red Sox at Fenway park. It fell to parents to guard their kids against dangerous settings, which often meant keeping them at home.
One dark afternoon in November 1965, walking home from school,
I saw all the street lights and house lights suddenly go off. Reaching home, I
could see the power was out everywhere. But what did “everywhere” mean? We had
no other means of communication at home, so we had no clue what was happening until
a neighbor visited with a transistor radio, informing us that the entire eastern
seaboard was blacked out, with no word on when power might return.
 |
| 1965: Manhattan in Blackout |
In Boston
itself, elevators in the new Prudential Tower (The tallest building in the
world outside Manhattan at that time) stopped between floors, trapping dozens
of passengers in the dark with no exit and no way of knowing what had gone
wrong. After the crisis, stories told of many “foxhole friendships” created
over the next 24 hours.
In March 1969 I Visited the Ann Franke house in Amsterdam during my
Paris school break. I was shocked by how confined this small attic apartment felt,
and the painted-over windows, concealing the life within, made the sense of
isolation total. This was like the family’s prison, I thought. But then I
spotted a small hole scratched in the paint of the window through which I could
spy the back garden. My first thought: “At least this gave some contact with
the outside world.” Then a second thought: “But that outside world was also a
prison, just bigger.” Ann, of course, did not survive, but her diary did, and
her father did, and even she gained two years of life in hiding--all due to the
courageous willingness of another family to hide and feed them. Here again,
solidarity supported those facing danger.
Boston’s “Blizzard of ‘78” was a perfect storm combining the greatest 24-hour
snowfall in our history with hurricane force winds and astronomical high tides.
It inundated and paralyzed an entire snowbound region for weeks. 
Public transit shut down except for subway tunnels. No one could get to work, schools,
family, friend, or stores except on foot. This lockdown lasted two weeks, so neighbors
banded together to share food, run errands, and organize cookouts in the snow. No
internet relieved our isolation, although phones worked. For two weeks the
entire population sacrificed mobility and comfort so emergency workers could rescue
people from flooded homes and snowbound cars. Eventually the roads were
cleared, and life return to normal amid gratitude for the common effort we all
made faced with nature’s overwhelming power.
On September 11, 2001, my wife and daughter were both working in
downtown Boston when the news broke that two airplanes from Boston had crashed
into New York’s World Trade Center. Amid general fear of the unknown, and with an
FBI anti-bomb truck raiding a hotel in Copley Square, they agreed not to risk
riding Boston's transit system and returned home on foot, five miles through
the anxious city streets. Since more than 400 Bostonians were killed in those
planes, area communities and churches joined with New Yorkers to mourn the
victims and support one another. One of my client parishes lost one parishioner
in each plane—thus that community faced two funerals and two families to support.
In April 19, 2013, following the Boston Marathon bombing, Governor Deval
Patrick requested all citizens to “shelter in place,” making Boston a ghost
town overnight, so that the escaping terrorists could not hide among the
general populace.
 |
| April 19, 2013: "Shelter in Place" |
The manhunt succeeded less than 24 hours later, and people
began to emerge from their homes. The solidarity of an entire region acquired the
label “Boston Strong.”
Over the years, public
officials have also advised at-risk individuals to stay home during hurricanes,
blizzards, and heat waves -- and urged family friends and neighbors to check on
their welfare. In all such cases, people survived because isolation and solidarity
became partners.
Of course, the current crisis is bigger than any of those, so the
solidarity we need is greater than ever before.
Now we are seeing such
solidarity everywhere. Businesses offer delivery, museums and activities offer
online exhibitions and concerts, neighbors talk at a distance and offer help, friends
and family share face time on the internet, people make donations to hospitals,
shuttered workplaces, and institutions that are fighting the crisis.
We also see solidarity’s absence:
people crowding beaches, hoarding essential goods, price gouging, demanding rents.
As the crisis grows, so does the urgent need for solidarity: social distancing
isn't tolerable without spiritual unity. As Francis said, we are all in the
same boat.
Put another way: When power
endangers us, we need to mobilize wisdom. One thing we know: this virus has become
global, so the wisdom must be global too.
There will of course be life
after isolation — — but what lessons will we take? Will we live better prepared
for the next time? Will we reopen our borders to trade and movement? Will we withdraw into enclaves and shut others out?
Next: A Timely Vision for Matching Power with Wisdom
© Bernard
F. Swain PhD 2020
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