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Practices of resistance: How not to respond to the lockdown

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There are a variety of ways Christians might faithfully live in this new season, and a host of ways in which individual and collective acts of goodness from beyond the church humble and educate us all. (Iryna Veklich / Getty Images)

We are in a time of resistance. The virus is at large: indiscriminate, infectious, and insatiable; and we are engaging in practices of isolation to resist its spread. We’re rationing fresh air, regulating our human interactions, and requiring confinement. We’ve let go of the familiar routines of our lives. And we don’t know how long it will be so. We’re facing new challenges, establishing new habits, and encountering new temptations. How do we sustain life in a season of involuntary isolation? So conscious of what is prohibited, how do we cultivate what is possible? How do we resist the pathologies of this new time, and live lives of resurrection? What does it look like for Christians to live faithfully in the midst of confinement?

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With almost no warning, we face an unprecedented threat. Its effects are grief and powerlessness. These effects are, in some cases, more damaging than the virus itself. They deplete and dismantle. They require more sophisticated responses than distancing or isolation. As Harvard leadership guru Ronald Heifetz points out, when all is well, you can rely on conventional structures and follow established procedures. In normal times, little thought or intentional resistance is required. But in a crisis a new pattern of resistance is required, because a crisis by definition is when the conventional habits and practices have failed.

Heifetz illustrates this by pointing to the silverback gorilla. With a silver streak of hair to mark his maturity, the elder gorilla organizes the life of his community. He governs food sources, devises plans to withstand leopards, and sorts out the hierarchy among the other gorillas. In other words, the silverback provides direction, protection and order. For generation upon generation, such organising structures have given gorilla societies stability. But suddenly and without warning the threat from the leopard is replaced by the threat from a machine gun. This is a crisis. A crisis is a time when new patterns of resistance are required. If the community is to survive, it must assess what’s essential, let go of what can be discarded, and imagine where and how to innovate. This is to engage in what Heifetz calls adaptive work.

The pandemic of 2020 is indisputably a crisis. What worked with the leopard doesn’t help with the machine gun. Everyone is in the midst of adaptive work. Now is the time to take an inventory of what’s essential, what needs to be discarded, and where and how to innovate. Inundated by guidance, predictions and experts, weighed down with grief and depleted by powerlessness, we need a rhythm and pattern of life that can sustain us through this lockdown season. It’s not just a question of resisting the virus: it’s about resisting urgent yet counterproductive voices, natural yet impoverished impulses, and plausible yet hasty reactions within and without.

There are a variety of ways Christians might faithfully live in this new season, and a host of ways in which individual and collective acts of goodness from beyond the church humble and educate us all. We want to suggest ten practices that can help us be fully alive through this time of isolation and disempowerment.

1. Resist denial: practise truthfulness.

Recognise, name and accept the disempowerment of your situation. The challenges of life have changed. We’re dealing not with a leopard, but a machine gun. Accept that many of the old habits and rhythms don’t work right now. Acknowledge the depth of grief; the extinguishing of dreams. Both avoidance and hyperactivity can be forms of denial. Ask yourself: What is the truth of my situation? What feels most confining? Where am I longing for transformation? Recall the transformations that happen in prison: Joseph is summoned to interpret Pharaoh’s dream; Paul converts his jailer; Edith Cavell witnesses to unwavering faith in the face of execution; Martin Luther King, Jr. writes to the pastors of Birmingham. From behind locked doors, truth finds a voice. In lament, say, “This is what I find most difficult: …”

2. Resist assuming control: develop patience.

Often the quest for certain outcomes and clear futures is an illusion. Remember Gethsemane: even Jesus had to come to terms with things not turning out the way he wanted. Learn to live with heightened ambiguity, suspended clarity, and delayed conclusions. Be gentle with yourself when patience is not your first, second, or even third response. Whether restlessness exhibits as anger or fretfulness, let prayer become your steadying response. Slowly, find words to intercede, “Give me grace to wait.”

3. Resist the impulse to be right: discover humility.

Even if you’re not possessed by the desire to fix all this today, you may be impelled to become an expert — to predict what will happen, which authority to trust, what the latest news reveals, which conspiracy theory to adopt. Jesus warned we would know neither the day nor the hour. Truth isn’t the same as an answer. Peace isn’t the same as certainty. Inhabit the lingering silence that follows your words. Ponder what it would be like for you to “keep awake,” not on account of an exhausting search but in a spirit of humble attention. In confession, say, perhaps out loud, “I don’t know.”

4. Resist anxiety: find courage.

Panic in the face of the unknown tempts us to hoard temporary goods or invest in what is least secure. The Letter to the Hebrews says we don’t yet see the powers that oppress us subdued, but we do see Jesus. Dwell in the present tense. Let go of the future for now. Best-laid plans are having a lean season. Courage isn’t denying danger: it’s knowing danger and finding strength and trust to keep going. Ask yourself: today, what constitutes my daily bread? What’s one simple thing I can do to make things better for myself or another? In supplication, say, “Give me the courage to pursue it.”

5. Resist fleeing from yourself: become your own friend.

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness. Be with yourself. Make acquaintance with parts you’ve neglected, avoided, forgotten, or rejected for a long time. Treat yourself as a stranger you’re intrigued to get to know. Query what you’ve always done. Accompany yourself as you discover a cultural, culinary or literary genre you’ve never tried before. Create a rhythm and routine that nourishes gladness and generosity. Get to know what makes you flourish and what gets you down. Reward yourself as you would a pet — with incentives, adventures and challenges. Practice an activity that’s always felt like home. Remember what brought you joy as a child. Allow yourself to play in ways that don’t require a specific outcome; where a thing’s worth doing for its own sake. Create space to hear and feel God’s desire to be with you. In thanksgiving, allow yourself to enjoy God enjoying you.

6. Resist the suffocation of technology: embrace joy.

Elijah experienced wind, earthquake and fire before hearing God in the still small voice. Be with creation. Limited as your freedom may be, make the most of the liberty you have. Treasure the glimpses of spring. Open a window. Put your hands in dirt and your feet on grass. Cherish such fresh air as you get to breathe. The birds and the flowers don’t know there’s a virus. Enjoy creation through them. In prayer, say, “Let my soul grow.”

7. Resist the assumption of scarcity: celebrate abundance.

After Pentecost the first disciples developed daily practices of hope and found joy in seemingly ordinary activities. They ate food with glad and generous hearts. In the midst of present difficulties, discern signs of wonder. Remember, only when 5,000 people were hungry did the crowd realise the little boy with loaves and fishes had everything they needed. Enjoy the surprising people and neglected skills that come to the fore at such a time as this. Resist dwelling on the familiar things that have stagnated, and celebrate the many good shoots that are springing up. In silence, name what day-by-day God has been adding.

8. Resist self-centredness: embody charity.

Standing at a distance, Miriam conceives a plan to care for her baby brother Moses; which in turn blesses their mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, and the Hebrew people. In the face of limitations and loneliness, resist focusing on yourself. When care cannot be experienced through physical presence, how might you place a basket on the bank of the River Nile? Who would welcome the sound of a ringing phone? Is there a message you could write that might cost you little but bring great encouragement? Is there a local business you could support? Pray for others. Turn those prayers into gestures of kindness.

9. Resist greed: realise simplicity.

Paul found that nothing could separate him from the love of God — not persecution, famine, or sword. Resist equating the loss of goods, productivity, and pay with a loss of identity, purpose or worth. Who you are is not determined by what you have. Remember your baptism. Make the sign of the cross on your forehead. You are a child of God. Welcome the gifts in you that rise to the surface and see in yourself plenty, not deficiency. Give yourself permission to let go of some things, especially if it frees you to receive what God is currently giving you. “You are enough.” In meditation, hear God speaking these words to you.

10. Resist despair: choose hope.

Jeremiah bought a field when he knew Jerusalem was about to be invaded by the Babylonians. Like the prophet, resist living as though this is the last page of the book. The present crisis is intense and agonising: but it is not the end of the story. Believe in a future that’s bigger than the past. In prayer, hear Jesus speaking the words of St. Julian’s vision: “All shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.”

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We must resist the spread of the virus by practicing physical isolation; but through these ten practices we must meanwhile resist isolating ourselves from sources of renewal. We are deprived of many familiar structures, patterns, habits, skills, resources and rhythms that organise life. But the secret of being fully alive is to learn to enjoy the things God gives us in plenty. Many of those things are just as present to us in this distressing season as they were in normal times — though discerning how best to see and receive such gifts may require new acts of resistance. But joy lies in devoting attention to such things — not in trying to make these times as normal as possible. Thus, these acts of resistance are acts of liberation; they work to free us from investing in the things that run out.

Our best response to setback, disappointment and loss is to assess which things last a limited time, and which last forever — and to transfer our energies from the former to the latter. This is the real adaptive work. What we must not do, in isolating ourselves from the virus, is isolate ourselves from the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit cannot be locked down. Through it we find springs in the desert. With it we witness epiphanies of resurrection.

Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. His most recent book is A Future That’s Bigger Than the Past: Towards the Renewal of the Church. Rev. Dr Maureen Knudsen Langdoc is University Chaplain and Associate Dean at DePauw University, Indiana.

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