Christian Mindfulness in the Time of Coronavirus

Blogging in my new apartment in Kyoto, Japan!

Who knew on Ash Wednesday that we’d be giving up this much for Lent? School, jobs, church, retirement investments, gathering with friends, touching our faces or each other or the play equipment in the park…

C.S. Lewis said it bluntly in 1939 England: “All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centered in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us know” (“Learning in War-Time”). Lewis's “now” was World War 2; ours is the Covid-19 pandemic.

All last week, my insides were in a knot. I had no appetite. I was trying to follow my own advice of praying to be resigned only to the present uncertainty rather than to all possible outcomes (as I blogged here 2 weeks ago), but my body wasn’t listening. Then Tuesday came again. Every Tuesday during Lent, the devotional book I’m using has a Psalm reading from Psalm 26 and includes the line, “I have always been mindful of your unfailing love” (NIV 26:2). That line jumps out at me for 2 reasons: (1) if I were always mindful of the Lord’s unfailing love, I don’t think my stomach would be this unsettled and (2) the popularity of that word “mindful” in education recently, especially in the context of social and emotional learning (SEL). I’ve felt a little leery of some of the practices recommended under that heading in secular settings, but I’ve also suspected that there is a strong core of Christian mindfulness we could be making more of in Christian education. I want to explore this for myself before I can think about how it might work with students.

I returned to a classic from the 1600’s, Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. While C.S. Lewis reminds me that if loss of a sense of personal control reminds me it was always an illusion anyway, that loss is a blessing, Brother Lawrence reminds me that a nervous digestion is a blessing if it leads me to repentance and Christian mindfulness of God’s unfailing love. Anxiety should not surprise me, only trigger repentance; peace of mind shouldn’t swell my head, only trigger gratitude. Worry is what I will always do apart from the power of God; peace is only the result of his presence. Brother Lawrence’s interviewer in the first part expresses it this way: “He said he carried no guilt. ‘When I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying, I am used to do so. I shall never do otherwise if I am left to myself. If I fail not, then I give God thanks acknowledging that it comes from Him.’”

In the meantime, carrying on what Brother Lawrence calls “a continual conversation with [God] with freedom and in simplicity” is the key to his Christian discipline of mindfulness. Of what does this conversation consist? Brother Lawrence describes it like this: “We need only to recognize God intimately present with us and address ourselves to Him every moment. We need to beg His assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us, offering them to Him before we do them, and giving Him thanks when we have completed them.” Sounds a lot like giving thanks in everything and praying without ceasing.

What follows is an attempt to ride my train of consciousness chugging down the track of  Brother Lawrence’s advice in 2 regular activities: exercising and showering. 

While exercising: I give thanks for the strength, health, and opportunity to exercise. For the amazing bodies God has given us, how all the systems work together. (I recently spent time with a family with a diabetic member—how much technology and effort it takes to regulate what my body does without a moment’s conscious thought or effort!) How using that body tunes and strengthens it. I pray to steward this gift well. I pray for those I know who have needs in the area of bodily strength and health, including my own. I segue into analogy: Prayer for spiritual health, strength, flexibility, and endurance for myself and all my family, dwelling on specific needs that I am aware of. I acknowledging that physical and emotional challenges are often the spiritual exercise that grows and strengthens our souls. I pray for open eyes to see that, including in this current pandemic crisis. I pray for those in fear, those suffering, those serving the sick, those making public policy decisions, and those researching treatments and vaccines. I commit myself, my community, and my world to God.

While showering: I give thanks for the pleasant physical sensations of steamy warmth, pounding water, foaming soap, getting clean. For all this available at the twist of a knob—remembering backpacking trips that helped me realize the blessing of modern conveniences by their absence. I give thanks for those trips—the beauty of the scenery, the delight of the fellowship. I pray for friends remembered from those trips and for new friendships in my new location. I pray for the preservation of creation, development of new technologies, wisdom for policy makers and individuals to care for creation. I segue into analogy: Gratitude for Jesus giving up all of his rights so he could wash sin from my conscience, swirling guilt and shame down the drain like the grime, sweat, odor, and germs from my body. I pray for open eyes to see my omissions and commissions quickly and clearly. I examine my conscience and confess what I find. I pray for wisdom and discipline to learn new habits and to grow in love for God and neighbor. I give thanks for baptism by water that typifies all this. I pray for those at whose baptisms I’ve promised support—especially my kids and grandkids. I pray for the Spirit of God to fall like water on this needy earth…at which a line of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem bobs to the surface of my mind: “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / world broods with warm breath and with ah! bright wings.” I get out of the shower and look up the rest of the poem “God’s Grandeur,” which as it turns out, is just as fitting a meditation:     

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I add a thanksgiving for the beauty and power of language and the skill of those who wield it well. I commit this world and all in it to the grace of God.

I can do the same when I’m cooking, shopping, taking out the garbage, walking down the road. It can be true for me as it was for Brother Lawrence: “He said he was more united to God in his outward employments than when he left them for devotion in retirement.”

And my appetite is returning!
Go in peace—even in the time of coronavirus—and practice the presence of God, always being mindful of his unfailing love. If I can grow in my Christian mindfulness like this, maybe, just maybe, I can figure out a way to share it with my students.

One of the sights I saw and gave thanks for walking home from the grocery store today!