How Long, O Lord?

It’s at times like this that the Psalms come into their own.

The thing about reading the Psalms every day, regardless of how we are feeling, is that the poets provide people with a vocabulary for the spectrum of human experience. From exuberant joy to the depths of despair, there is something for everyone.

One of the repeated laments that finds its voice in a coronavirus world is that unanswered question: “How long, O Lord, how long?” When will the pain end? When will the exile from familiar ‘home’ expire so we can return to ‘normal’? It is a simple human articulation of frustration.

So, we find ourselves now not knowing when the lockdown will be relaxed or end. In the UK we are now in week four or five and there seems to be no imminent end in sight. And therein lies a problem. If we knew when the rules might be relaxed, or when increased association might be encouraged, we could measure out the days and weeks. If I knew that I would have to live for ten weeks in lockdown, I could then shape the weeks and days in order to do certain things and mete out the space. As people keep saying, this is a marathon, not a sprint. But, as one of my colleagues observed, a marathon has a known end and the runner can train for each stage of the race. So, we might actually be having to run a series of mini-sprints just now.

What can we do about this, then? And which wells can we drink from as we seek to navigate these strange times?

Well, the biblical story begins with the bringing of order out of chaos. That’s what the creation narratives in Genesis are about. And, although human beings seem to have a propensity for reversing this (bringing chaos out of order), there is something in us that needs to shape, to order, to form.

But, we can only do this effectively if we also have a sense of perspective – one that does not arise within us naturally, but can be learned by looking and listening and studying. One of the key themes in the Hebrew scriptures is that of time. The Israelites spend over four centuries in Egypt before being liberated in the exodus. They spend forty years in the desert going round in circles before they can enter the land of promise. Exiled in the eighth century BC (and again in the sixth), several generations or more find themselves in unwelcome territory and hoping for a swift return home. And so the story goes on.

The question it raises is how we should live in ‘exile’ when we have no idea how long the exile will last? How were the Israelites to live meaningfully – and order their common life – when they had no idea for how long this exile might last?

The trick remains the same for us as it did for the exiles three thousand years ago: shape now in the light of the past and with a vision for the future. The prophet Jeremiah put it simply: “Seek the welfare of the city.” In other words, attend to what you can shape – now – and what is in your control. You can’t kill the virus or make the political decisions, but, you can shape your own life in small bits and in ways that do not militate against the common good.

So, for now, this suggests that even if I can’t speed up the process of lockdown, I can break down the uncertainty into smaller timeframes (mini-sprints). I can take the week ahead and decide what I want to have done by the end of it. I then break down each day of the week and create a routine that pencils in the things I have decided to do. I can then measure backwards after a week and see what shape I gave to the empty time.

This might sound like a luxury for those with the space or freedom to do it. Living in a large house with a garden is very different from living in a block of flats with loads of children or a difficult or violent partner. But, by creating some shape to ‘short time’, we take some control over what seems “without form and void”. And this is better for our mental health.

This shaping of now derives wisdom from the past and aims to fit us (by the reforming of our vision of who we are and what matters) for an uncertain future. We might not be able to control the future, but we can shape ourselves to cope better with whatever comes our way.

(I realize this is all obvious, but it shouldn’t do any harm to set it out again.)