Finding Together Alone

Photo Credit Ryan Roth Klinck

By Robert Bishop

Then they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Genesis 37:25 25

Many people are thinking about community this week. How do we create and maintain it in the age of social distancing? We are collectively learning and relearning that social and physical contact matters. 

Our coping methods vary, of course. In my house, we are doing our best to follow medical advice on staying out of the public while studiously ignoring medical advice about screen time for young people. We share our lives online, perhaps even more than we were before. Instead of going to the exercise bootcamp, we do our workouts at home and post them online for our exercise buddies to see. Churches who have never posted a service online before have had to find ways to stream sermons and other activities designed to build and maintain community.

None of the above activities were available to people who lived through previous pandemics. I’m thankful for the technology that brings us together even when we are apart. The desire to connect over long distances is older than letter writing itself, and innovations from the telegraph to the telephone to the modem allow us to grow ever closer even in isolation.

And still.

Won’t it be nice when the idea of social distancing is a distant memory? When schools and workplaces and churches and third spaces are reopened and reinvigorated? This season of Lent has, at least for me, taken on the appearance of Advent in some ways. We sit in the dark, waiting for the light. 

It’s also an opportunity for us to recognize and remember the importance of community. When all of this passes, people will still be in isolation. We have now experienced first-hand, even if it’s only a taste, what it is to be distant. May our empathy and capacity to care for those who are lonely and in need of contact increase.