Has the desert of quarantine already taught us all it can?
Those of us privileged enough to stay at home have to go back to work eventually. Will we go back to our former distraction?
In March, the desert sands blew up to our doorsteps.
“We are all monks now,” a friend texted me shortly after the quarantine began. But we didn’t become Benedictines so much as desert hermits. And our primary spiritual practice became the simplest and most difficult of all: stay.
“Stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything,” goes the most famous saying of desert spirituality. And many of us have done just that, insofar as we could. Previously purchased concert tickets sat unused in a drawer, and instead we watched our favorite musicians perform on Facebook. We joined Sunday morning worship on our phones. We attended staff meetings in our pajamas, seated at the kitchen table. Yes, we took walks, but we walked alone, endeavoring not to break quarantine, even outside. We stayed as much as possible in the hermitages of our homes.
