I imagine many have joined me in the past few weeks saying: "when things get back to normal." But as I reflect, I think that may be very short sighted.
First, if we are saying, "I will be happy when the Lockdown is lifted," you are consigning yourself to a miserable few weeks. Why postpone your happiness? From my experience you can never be happy tomorrow, you can only be happy right now. Why not try and wait in happiness for this to pass?
Second, I think the pandemic has given many people an opportunity and time to reflect on their lives. I can imagine many saying, as they contemplate going back to work, “I don't want to go back to that job”, or, “I don't want to go back to that way of living”.
In John's story of the resurrection, he tells Mary not to cling to him, to that old way of knowing the earthly Jesus. I think the same is true for us. We shouldn’t cling to our old ways of being and doing in the world. Don't go back to normal.
If we simply endure our forced isolation and then go back to the way things were, we will have experienced reincarnation. Contrary to trivial understandings of reincarnation, the followers of the Buddhist way see reincarnation as a curse. It is the endless cycle of perpetuating misery. The outer form may change but the inner life remains miserable.
For Christians the solution is resurrection. Resurrection requires an end to the old life, and perhaps some time in the tomb, a period of darkness, of isolation. It may also require unbinding, as in Jesus comments to Lazarus' friends that they need to unbind him.
I wonder how many will come out of the tomb of social isolation only to remain bound up in the old ways of doing things. We have much work to do if we want to be agents of transformation in our society and not agents of reincarnation and the status quo.
I wish you all a joyous fifty days of Easter, and Resurrection! Duncan