Notes for the Week Fourth Sunday of Easter May 3 2020

Dear friends,
If you think physical distancing is something new, think again. Apparently, the birds figured this out long ago and continue to incorporate the tenets of physical distancing to this day. As a practice, physical distancing has some major advantages. For instance, it can give one time to think before speaking. One can observe another from a polite distance, thereby preventing an off-the-cuff remark one might regret. At least, you can figure out how to say what you really wanted to say before actually saying it, instead of blurting out something you really didn’t mean, only to craft a perfect response later, when you are alone in your room, or on the bus, or in your car, turning on your heel to walk hurriedly away from a particularly tense encounter. A little physical distancing might have really helped in that kind of situation. I have noticed great flustering and fluttering of wings when two or more birds try to land on the same perch at the same time, and how much smoother things go when they simply spread out, leaving each other in peace.

Another advantage of physical distancing is that it allows one two share friendship from afar without feeling guilty about not sharing another hour with someone you see every day. One does not have to always have to sit shoulder to shoulder in order to maintain friendship. I have friends with whom I am in touch every few weeks or even months. We always thoroughly enjoy our catching up and our conversations are never boring. Of course, we would speak more often if there were a crisis at hand, like illness or some other reason for having to be in touch more often, or by necessity needing to lessen the physical distance between us.

Yet a third reason for embracing physical distancing has to do with one’s personal space. I don’t recall Jesus ever have a problem with physical distancing and he always went to the side of his friends when they were in trouble, although, even at that, he didn’t always hurry. Even though Jesus often found himself in a the midst of large gatherings, he rather liked to go off by himself, whenever he could find a way to distance himself. It didn’t mean Jesus didn’t love his friends, it just meant that it was fine to indulge in a little personal space in order to gather one’s thoughts and to pray, after constantly maneuvering through and around lots of people.

Not that physical distancing was a new phenomenon even in Jesus’ time. Just look at the Book of Leviticus (13:46): “And the leper in whom the plague is….he shall dwell alone….” In other words, if you have the plague, isolate yourself. Emperor Justinian had a plague named after him called the Plague of Justinian (!) The emperor enforced a quarantine on the Byzantine Empire, but his impulses, although timely, were less than effective creatively. Dumping sick people and bodies into the sea, just didn’t work out well for him in his efforts to stem the spread of the plague, especially when he blamed everyone and his brother for the plague itself. Thankfully, the World Health Organization must have taken good note of that fiasco.

In fact, the World Health Organization has suggested that during our effort to overcome the current plague, we use the term physical distance, rather than social distance, and for that we can be thankful, too. We may be physically distant, but we are not socially distant. Our pprayer and study together is something else we have inherited from thousands of years ago. 
The reason is pretty simple. Take groups of people, no matter the sizes of the groups, who call themselves Christians and they will not only find a way to pray and worship God together with all their hearts, souls and minds, they will also find a way to help their neighbors as themselves.

Thank you, God, for showing us ways to be thankful. And thank you for gifting some of your people, who may worship you in many different ways, or not at all, with brains that can figure out how we can be and see each other, no matter where we are in the world, so that, while we may be physically distant, socially, we are closer than we have ever been before.

We journey together,
Mother Esme+

For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection,
and mutual affection with love. (2 Peter 1:5-7)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++