When will this be over?

Already we’ve come to the end of March and there’s no end in sight. Easter services have already been canceled. Here at Boundless Way Zen Temple, we’re in the third week of suspending all in-person gatherings. Originally we thought two weeks of physical distancing would probably be sufficient. Now it’s uncertain whether two months will be long enough.

Welcome to the new normal. Wash your hands. Stay six feet away from others when you go out. Be careful. This is no vacation, but an endurance contest. How long can we survive, isolated in these small houses and apartments?

And the mind, seemingly on its own, runs on ahead – wondering about the future. What will things be like when this is over? Will my work still be working? What about my carefully crafted financial plans? Will I ever be able to go out to eat again? How long will this take? Will my parents be safe? How will I manage?

Even as I write these questions, I feel my heart beating slightly faster and a my stomach turns uneasily with the subtle sensations of fear.

Gregory Bateson, the great anthropologist, thinker, and occasional Zen student once said: “The mind creates the world then says ‘I didn’t do it’” We our lives within the many worlds of our creation. This creative participation is mostly hidden from our awareness. But just in reading the words above, as the mind shifts its attention and we can see how this operates. Though the world has not essentially changed in the last five minutes, my experience of the world changes radically. Worlds of ease. Worlds of fear.

What are the resources and the skills we have to manage in this new normal where danger is real in some new way? Where we can no longer pretend that life will obligingly go on according to our predictive illusions?

‘Even though I walk through the valley and the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ The words of the 23^rd Psalm come to me—arising from some forgotten corner of my mind. I am surprised how comforting they are to me. Is it remembering that human beings have always faced danger and fear? Is it the courageous recognition of this land of the ‘shadow of death’ and the assertion of not being overcome with fear?

What is it that we might touch, that we might remember that will sustain us even as we walk though the valley of these days? Time to unearth and turn toward something more trustworthy than our own competence and cleverness.