Exile: Transplanting and Sustaining
March 22, 2020 | By Bradley Yam, SY ‘21. Bradley is majoring in Ethics, Politics & Economics and Computer Science.
We need to find a way of weathering through this crisis like a long (but temporary) exile, not simply a one-off disruption to our lives. We must do so with hope, knowing that God has a plan to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us, and the people around us, a hope and a future.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was walking through cross campus with a beloved friend on an uncharacteristically warm February afternoon, watching Yalies bask in the sun on the grass, thinking to myself that I was so blessed to be here, so blessed to be among friends, so blessed to feel at home. Later that afternoon, we were chatting about Yale’s architecture, and she mentioned she could see the seal of Connecticut on a building from her dorm window, and its motto “Qui Transtulit Sustinet” - or “She/He who transplanted sustains”. It spoke directly to my deep fear: what would happen to this home when I graduate, would it all fade away like a dream, those bright college years, would I be able to transplant well, would these good things be sustained? Fast forward a month, and my head of college Prof Near is hosting us at a Saybrook dinner just before Salovey announced the closure of school. The conversation was rife with speculation. The dinner plates we ate on, the old Saybrook plates that the dining hall had used, bore the same motto: “Qui Transtulit Sustinet”. The order to evacuate the dorms came soon after. We find ourselves prematurely uprooted, ejected, exiled. The question now is: what does it mean to be transplanted and sustained?
It doesn’t seem too far a stretch to say that we, as the body of Christ at Yale, are now in a kind [1] of state of exile as a result of the pandemic. The question for Christians everywhere now is how to respond to the crisis. One article argues that Christianity actually does best when Christians do not flee from the crisis but dive in head-first to provide care to the community. Others say that the best thing that Christians can do right now is suspend all church services and stop meeting together. Yet others insist on meeting as the body of Christ but with the highest levels of hygiene and within the constraints given to us by our local health authorities. In a time of chaos and uprooting, it is more essential than ever to ensure that we are transplanted well, and that we grow roots where we might end up: wherever that might be. What is the right balance to strike between listening to the math and listening to our hearts? How do we be the salt and light of the earth in a time ruled by fear, anxiety, loneliness and claustrophobia? I suggest that we might think of answers in two ways: transplanting and sustaining.
Transplanting and Sustaining both the Body and the Soul
The mathematics of this global pandemic seem elegant and undeniable. As an article in WIRED pointed out quoting a Georgia Tech Professor, given the assumption that 20,000 cases are circulating in the US, then at a dinner party with 10 people, there is a 0.061% chance of infection, and at a mega sporting event with over 10,000 people, there is a staggering 45% chance of infection. We are desperately grappling with the numbers of infected as they exponentially outgrow our comprehension. While we are battling exponential forces so huge that only logarithmic transformations can help us understand their magnitude, we desperately look for an inflection point, a sign that things are slowing down. But they only exceed our expectations. Against this unseen foe, statistics are our best weapon, and helpful modelling and simulation allows us to understand the macro-effects of our individual decisions. These numbers make the cancellations of plans, classes and activities understandable, if not more bearable. [2]
The math says that social distancing and if possible total quarantine are the optimal strategies in the game of non-contagion. This will extend the duration that the virus lives on in our society by preserving pockets of unblemished population that it can creep upon, but overall it will “flatten the curve”, i.e. reduce the load at any given point in time for the healthcare system so that society continues to cope with regular illnesses. While the elderly and the immunocompromised are still most at risk, new reports are coming out to show that younger populations are not risk-free from becoming a burden to the healthcare system. This seems to be the best thing to do for our bodies.
In the age of social media, online shopping and Zoom meetings it might not be obvious why we continue to meet up at all. But thousands of college students still travel millions of miles in total every fall and spring to congregate on a campus that they call home to be with their friends and take classes in the same building, even if they could arguably have a much better time watching recorded lectures from their bedrooms. Now? Locked dormitories, deserted stores, empty movie theatres--the social distancing that the current health system requires is perhaps more painful than the effects of the virus itself for young people. The empty spaces that social distancing has created in its wake speak to us about our powerful need for presence. Ironically, physical presence is fundamentally important for the health of our soul.
The importance of presence is difficult to explain other than with the idea that we are beings made to exist in relationship with other such beings[1]. The idea that we require the presence of others and God to fully be ourselves is central to Christianity. In Genesis 2:18, God says that “it is not good for man to be alone”. In the beginning Man was with God, and his ultimate fall results in exile: the ultimate social distancing. The present crisis and the conditions of loneliness, isolation and deprivation is perhaps not so novel as much as revelatory of our fundamental human condition: alienation. We often risk so much, even death, just to be with others. While we are in transition, we must not forget that we must care for both our body and our soul, and so intertwined are the two that the very physical separation that helps the body may destroy the soul. In order to be transplanted and sustained well, we must find strategies that address both body and soul.
Transplanting Roots: Physical and Digital
The answer from the techno-optimist seems to come in the form of online communities. It seems like we can convert any of our previous activities into a reduced, online version with a quick Zoom invite or in the most extreme cases, full replicas of real-world locations on a Minecraft server. These meetings are a heart-warming stopgap in a time of transition, but I am skeptical that they will ever fully meet our need for fully embodied presence, and concerned about our temptation to default to our online communities to maintain a sense of normalcy and comfort that has long since passed. Yes, we need to Zoom into our classes, but contrary to popular opinion, simply uploading and replicating the University experience into the digital world may not be the call for Christians at this time. If we simply live an online existence, we will fail to transplant ourselves well.
We need each other, and everywhere we go, we are called to be a neighbour to those around us. If anything, the current COVID-19 pandemic reminds us about what we might be tempted to forget: that the physical, embodied presence of real people is important and irreplaceable. This means that we are not just called to be salt and light to people in the online community, but the people immediately around us. That might mean being patient and kind in a difficult family situation, or it might be buying groceries for the elderly in your community. As the number of Zoom meetings proliferate exponentially like a virus, we need to be careful that carelessly participating in all or even most of them may not be wise. Instead, we need to strike a balance between loving our online and our physical communities well.
At the same time, even in the bible, social distancing can have a protective function. The covenants of Israel have always been negotiated by distance: Exodus 24:1-2 “Then He said to Moses, "Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship at a distance.” The rules of ritual purity in the priestly law were instituted to protect humanity against their own self-destruction, destruction that would have occurred in the holiness of God, conditions under which no sin or impurity can stand[2]. This is also a time to take stock, to get rid of the impurities and excesses in our lives which we might have been too caught up in to notice before. In the oppressive silence of quarantine is actually a deeply necessary solitude that allows us to examine our lives and reorient them toward God, not simply by saying so, but by actually removing from our lives the things that take us away from him. The distance that we have is room to calibrate before returning to a pace of life with impurities that might be ultimately destructive for us.
Sustaining for the Long Haul
When it is time to return to the pace of life, when classes start again, we need a fresh and inspired way of life, one that involves balancing real-world and online interaction, one that insists on presence, one is newly calibrated to the voice of God in this time. In the exile of Israel to Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah instructs the people of God to build houses and settle down where they are, marrying and carrying on with life, not business as usual, but under the new conditions of exile (Jeremiah 29). We need to find a way of weathering through this crisis like a long (but temporary) exile, not simply a one-off disruption to our lives. We must do so with hope, knowing that God has a plan to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us, and the people around us, a hope and a future.
Any form of social distancing was only meant to be temporary protection. We suffer the isolation now in hopes of a cure, or a vaccine, or herd immunity. Whatever it is, we eagerly long to return to each other’s presence. We eagerly seek to return to God’s house. In the Christian tradition, that ultimate cure is Christ the Messiah. The incarnation of Christ is the ultimate response to the exile of the human race from the presence of God: and in every Mass, every service, every Eucharist, we celebrate and come into his presence. It is his presence that heals us, and his presence that restores us, and his presence that saves us (Hosea 6:1-2). This Lent, we may give up food, or wine, or even meeting together (for the time being). But let us not give up on presence, whether that is with family at home, or the limited ways in which we can reach out to each other through calls, letters, emails, Zoom meetings, and so too with the body and blood of Christ. And let us not forget about trusting and abiding in the Presence of God which we are assured, will be with us always, until the very end of the age.
[1] We exist in relationship in the sense that we only really possess our full being, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, in relationship to others. Put simply, we are not independent creatures. We are not solitary beings. We cannot define ourselves, insulate ourselves, or actualize ourselves without others.
[2] The metaphor of a “refining fire” is apt here: the heat of a furnace selectively oxidizes impure metals, leaving the core metal purer but getting rid of the excess slag in the process.