Author: afmahlberg

Self-Care While Staying at Home

For people whose usual outlets have been suspended:

  1. Don’t just try to ride this out till things get back to normal. This approach results in simply finding ways to pass the time. This type of superficial engagement in life takes a toll on the spirit and sets us up for boredom, depression and agitation toward others. While the usual outlets that are meaningful may not be available to some of us due to the stay at home order, by simply filling time, we avoid learning what other activities and pursuits will be meaningful for us. It may be something entirely new. Allow priorities to shift. Take this as a discovery process. Be curious.
  2. Participate in the well-being of others. Many people are naturally finding ways to do this. It is inspiring. Where there are physical limitations to our ability to do so, prayerful engagement is helpful. Surprisingly, studies show that many people who do not believe in a god do engage in a prayerful equivalent. “I’ll be thinking about you.” Even if the other person doesn’t know that you are thinking about them, it is healthy engagement.
    There is also some research support to suggest that compassionate engagement with the suffering of others in our own minds and hearts helps us be less burdened. Peeking into the brain, scientists can see that the average person gets sympathetic pain or secondary trauma with awareness of the suffering of others. People trained in Loving Kindness do not. Instead, they have a compassion response. They are not taking on the suffering of others, which allows them to be aware of more suffering without getting unhealthy themselves.
    The exercise they do is to give a little silent blessing to those who are suffering. Bless you, may you have peace, may you have relief from your suffering…. Since these are Buddhists, they are not praying for a god to bless people. They are extending a blessing directly from themselves to the suffering person. I think this is helpful. If you are a person who believes in praying to God to bless someone, in addition to that, try extending blessings from yourself. While it may be uncomfortable at first, over time I think you will find it to be self-affirming along with affirming of others. We can even meaningfully extend blessing to ourselves when we notice we are distressed.
  3. Continue this list with the things that occur to you now as being helpful to your well-being under these circumstances.
    Be well.

COVID-19 Disciplines as Spiritual Practice

The COVID-19 situation calls for both active and passive roles. For most of us, our role is passive. It is important that we abstain from doing certain things, like encroaching on another’s six-foot safety zone. Even further is following stay-at-home orders. We also have had to master the discipline of control of what we touch with our hands and the practice of effective hand cleansing. This is what love of neighbor and love of self look like right now. Since these are difficult disciplines, we can be tempted to just want to get through them so our lives can return to normal. But what if we could emerge transformed instead of just returning to normal?

Approaching these practices as a moral and spiritual disciplines can help. In many spiritual practices, abstaining from one thing opens other doors. Silent retreats help us focus on the non-verbal. Custody of the eyes, also used in spiritual retreats, helps increase singular focus on what is most important. As a spiritual practice, staying in place is akin to cloistering. By putting a container around our lives, new things can grow that wouldn’t otherwise.

I have been on a couple of retreats where we had extended periods of staying in place as a solo practice. I found myself engaging more in the few things around me and experienced that the few became many. I was also better able to notice and value what was happening inside me. It is sort of like the spiritual discipline of savoring, where we slow down to explore what we eat and engage it more fully. Often my mind goes to the life that was lost on my behalf, where the food came from and the people who tended to it and made it available to me.

Whether our homes contain a little or a lot, there is rich opportunity to marvel and savor. Trees were cut down for my benefit so I could enjoy the beauty of their grain. I benefit from human curiosity, discovery and ingenuity with the amazing inventions available to me. How did someone figure that out, I wonder? What about ceramics and glass – humans finding ways to create what they saw volcanoes create. Metal working, wood working, art, music, cooking and baking, were all originally recognized as awesome, magical processes – alchemy.

If we share our space with other humans, like partners, spouses and children, that is also rich and complex. So too, with our inner lives – the deeper awareness that is more possible with the container of restricted movement.

I could go on and on about the richness that comes with staying in place and maintaining the six-foot safety zone, and so could you. May we do just that with this opportunity. It promises to increase our admiration, respect and gratitude for God, neighbor and self.

Honoring the Courageous

The COVID-19 situation has called for acts of courage on the part of many people. I say called for because people who act from courage often feel compelled by their principles to act as they do. Experts on courage say that one of the several ways to become more courageous ourselves is by learning about people who have done courageous things.

It took a whistle blower to make COVID-19 public. For informing his colleagues about the emergence of the virus, Dr Li Wenliang was detained by the Chinese police on the charge of “seriously disrupting the social order.” A week later, he exhibited symptoms and described online what was happening so other medical professionals would learn from it. He died soon after.

Medical professionals all over the world are courageously risking their lives to care for those infected. While they are doing what they were trained and committed to do, they do not have the supplies needed to follow standard safety protocols to keep themselves safe. It takes courage, not just knowledge and skill, to do what they are doing for us.

Public servants are acting courageously to make decisions that disrupt the lives of all of us, cost people their jobs and harm businesses and the economy at large. Every day, they make costly decisions with no guarantee those decisions will even be effective.

People providing essential services to us, such as food delivery, are taking considerable risk as well. We can honor them for their courage and dedication and consider how to make things better for them. A long-haul trucker was interviewed on the news recently and begged us to not hoard food, since doing so makes her life harder.

Gratitude, yes. But the point here is also to strengthen courage within ourselves to be willing to make personal sacrifices and take personal risks on behalf of others.

Confronting Recklessness

A Catholic Cardinal in Italy is encouraging people to go to mass and take communion. This, even though the virus remains out of control in his country. He asserts that the cause of COVID-19 is original sin. How will Christians around the world respond?

A US Senator puts his colleagues at risk by going to the Senate gym and lunching with other Senators while awaiting the results of COVID-19 testing. He tested positive. Will voters everywhere call him out?

People are finding that their spouses and friends are being careless and not following guidelines for hygiene and social distancing. They realize other’s behavior is putting their health at risk, so they confront them, only to learn that the other person doesn’t care and will not change. Then it is not carelessness; it is reckless defiance.

These are defining moments. Early reports suggest that differences in safety practices have resulted in an increase in the divorce rate in China. If your spouse isn’t willing to follow best practices to keep you safe, it is understandably a deal breaker. If your partner, spouse, friend, employer or religious leader puts other concerns above your physical safely, it is a defining moment, one that calls for courage and reaching out for support.

We can judge beliefs and attitudes by their fruits. The fruit that has come from the belief in original sin has been poison fruit. It is not a benign doctrine at all. The belief that one knows better than health officials and scientists causes harm. It is arrogant and reckless, like the college students who have been called out for putting partying above the safety of others.

Just as with Christians everywhere, couples in China, and Senate colleagues, when we become aware of careless beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that put people’s health at risk, they are defining moments. How shall we respond?

Invisible Accomplishments

Think of the number of people you did not transmit disease with yesterday. Good job! Since we like it so much when our efforts pay off in tangible ways, I am encouraging daily affirmation of our invisible accomplishments as we avoiding physical proximity with others. This is our main role in slowing the transmission of COVID-19. It is important to keep our morale up in this campaign. Usually we contribute by chipping in; now we contribute significantly by what we don’t do. Good job!

Reconciling with Uncertainty

The chance passing of a virus from an animal to a human has quickly brought uncertainty to humans all over the world. Many people, in our country and around the world, don’t know when they will work again. Don’t know if they can pay their rent. In the midst of this uncertainty, many are having to make decisions with huge implications for masses of people – people in government and business. Financial security has evaporated for many. Financial cushions are quickly dwindling. Front-line medical personnel face great uncertainty about their ability to have the resources to help the expected influx of patients. They don’t know if they can even keep themselves safe. Hospitals face bankruptcy. When can children return to school, pre-school, day care. Any and all of us could become infected. We don’t know how bad that would be.

The human brain has a love/hate relationship with uncertainty. It can become addicted to the uncertainty involved in gambling when there is a potential upside. But when there is no possibility of winning, there is only a downside to be faced. We hate taking losses.

The importance of reconciling with uncertainty is reflected in the fact that the Greeks and Romans gave chance the status of a god. Fortuna was her name. For people who design and administer vaccines, chance is the enemy of their efforts. Viruses are always randomly mutating, and some of those mutations will not be controlled by the vaccine. Some people in cancer treatment face the same reality of random mutation.

There is no certainty; there is only probability. While many people ignore or deny chance and randomness, it is healthier to reconcile with it as a significant way that things happen in life. The next breath is never guaranteed. There is something spiritually and morally important about living with this realization. This is how people stay sober. All we can know is now and that is challenging enough. Being reconciled with uncertainty can activate compassion toward others. We are seeing a lot of this in the news, far more than the selfishness and defiant responses. While we can’t know what tomorrow will bring, we can connect with what the needs are now.

Physical Protection/Spiritual Connection

We know that there is no such thing as spiritual isolation. Spirit is everywhere, connecting us. A breakthrough understanding for me came in the 70’s when I read about a man who had been on a life raft in the Pacific for over 30 days before being rescued. Much to the amazement of the reporters, he described how connected he felt with everything in his surroundings. “At night,” he said, “the stars were so close, it was like a blanket.”

Suddenly I realized that there is no such thing as being alone. It is an impossibility. We are always in context, no matter where we are. From then on, at times of so-called physical isolation, I came to experience that, as I put it, “every place and every time reveals an aspect of the Divine.”

Let me invite you into a little exercise. Consider the number of souls who are in the same neighborhood as you are right now. Consider all living beings in that space. Extend a blessing to them all for their well-being and the well-being of those they love. Notice how good it feels to do so. Then expand the circle farther and farther until there is no farther to go, always noticing how good it feels to be participating in the well-being of others.

May we all participate actively in the great connection that we share while we and others find physical protection from the risk that we also have in common.