Separation

separation is not a thing to be avoided and gotten rid of, it is strangely to be embraced as the thing that draws us together.

In this time of social distancing due to COVID19, it occurs to me that the Bible narrative has an awful lot of content about separation and distancing. 

In the Genesis myth – there was this lie about separation.   Adam and Eve somehow felt separated from god and felt they needed to take action to close the gap.  To “become more like god” through knowledge.  So, they did what they thought was needed to end separation which actually led them both to a more profound separation as they hid and as they covered up their vulnerability and nakedness, and as they were expelled from Eden. 

Cain was distanced from his family after he killed his brother

Noah was quarantined with his family during the flood

Abram left his country and went to a distant land.

The Israelite nation are commanded to distance themselves from other nations.  To stay separate.  They have laws and more laws about what not to touch and what to distance themselves from in order to “stay clean" (and likely in those times, before refrigeration and germ theory – alive)

Mystics and prophets distanced themselves in the desert.  

Even the crucifixion story is about distancing, “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me? “

If you are familiar with your bible stories, many more will spring to mind.

What is it about separation and distance?

My religious upbringing spun all this separation in the biblical mythology as a warning about sin and purity.  Sin will separate us from god and from each other.   Purity will keep us from separation.   The goal is to get rid of sin and thus get rid of separation. 

This interpretation is very much like the ancient Jewish notion of purity.  It is about uncleanness, contamination and contagion.   In modern times, we haven’t dealt too much with issues of global, uncontrollable contagion, until the recent COVID-19 pandemic.  Suddenly, we find ourselves thrust into a world of “Don’t touch or you’ll be infected.  Wash your hands, wear a mask.   Unclean! Unclean!”

But underneath the story that is told out of paranoia of becoming unclean, another story is being told.   A story about oneness, longing and desire. 

Separation will keep you safe from contamination, but it will also make you aware that you are not separate at all.  You are a part of a global body.  A body you need to touch, feel and interact with.  A body that, no matter how its members separate from one another, continues to infect one another; not just with COVID-19, but emotionally as well. The more we are separated from others, the more we realize our need for them and our longing to be with them.  The more we try to not be affected by it all (whether physically or emotionally), the more we are aware that we are affected.

By it all.

And in contrast, when we are in too close a proximity, we have no opportunity for desire.  When you get rid of separation, what you start longing for is separation.  During this quarantine parents and kids have just had it with the togetherness, husbands and wives are on each other’s last nerve, even cat memes have become about how they can’t wait for their owners to get out of the house. 

So, separation is not a thing to be avoided and gotten rid of, it is strangely to be embraced as the thing that draws us together.  

 It’s a push-pull.  I want you close, but not TOO close.  Like a fire that needs breathing room to roar and when smothered snuffs out.  

So, maybe rather than all the separation stories in the Bible being about impurity and punishment, maybe these stories are better read like a book about the push and pull of desire. On the one hand, it reads like a romance novel about mankind’s longing to be united with the divine, and on the other hand it is a story about how their attempt to get rid of separation resulted in even more.     

And maybe the COVID-19 story is like that too.  It is a story that is being written in history about how in our separated, xenophobic, polarized world, try as we might to get rid of this separation through political means, along came quarantine to separate us and to remind us just how much we are all one global organism that cannot be separated from itself. Along came COVID-19 to teach us that we love one another and need one another and long for connection with one another. 

Like many good love stories. 

Missing you

Maybe we are never separated from anyone or anything.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I missed my dad.  

I said yes. 

And, of course, it’s true. 

I do. 

I miss seeing him, the smell of his Old Spice, holding his hand.   I miss the sound of his voice.  There’s something about his voice….

And I don’t.  

Now before you go judging me as a totally cold-hearted bitch for that remark, read on.   (well actually if you want to judge me as a cold-hearted bitch, that’s fine, feel free)

Years ago, when my work involved traveling 3 or 4 days a week, my husband said to me, “Sometimes I feel like when you’re gone, you don’t even miss me.”

My first impulse was to dismiss what he felt with an easy answer, “of course I do!” 

But, his feelings were legitimate and deserved more than that. 

I told him that sometimes I miss people more when they are in the same room than I do when they are miles away.  When I don’t feel that I am connecting, I miss them.  No matter where they are.   So, with him, sometimes I feel close when I’m halfway across the country and sometimes I feel far away when we are in the same bed.  

I don’t miss people nearly as much for their physical presence as I do for their emotional presence.  And emotional presence is one of those things that can be with you no matter when and no matter where.  It is something that is built up over time and remains over great distances. 

So, with my dad, I feel his emotional presence.  It is with me every minute of every day.  The things he taught me, the lessons I learned from him, the ways he supported me, the mistakes he made.   His strength, his weaknesses, they are all with me all the time.  As a football coach, my dad wasn’t home much, but his presence was always large even when he was gone. After I became an adult, my parents moved around all the time but my dad’s presence was still there with me. And in some odd way he is with me now as much as he was when he was alive. 

But, after the question came up about missing him I thought about separation and how maybe it’s just a figment of my imagination.   If I can feel far away from someone who’s close and close to someone who’s far away, maybe separation isn’t a real thing, but just a story I tell myself.  

Every atom, every particle in this world is all part of one huge organism.  We might think we are separate because we have a boundary to our bodies and our mind tells us that this makes us separate, but particles from everywhere are passing through our bodies all the time.  Every second tens of thousands of neutrinos pass through our bodies.  And not to be gross, but the water you are drinking is estimated to be almost 100% Jurassic dinosaur pee. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3101363/Have-drunk-dinosaur-urine-glass-water-contains-100-Jurassic-pee-claim-scientists.html

Another estimate says we eat 10,000 hairs from the heads of strangers each year just by eating fast food, and yet another says we ingest 30,000 skin cells a day many of which belong to those we live with.   The food you eat that builds your body is simply another organism; a plant, an animal that has passed into your body to become you.   And again, not to be gross, but the soil that grows the plants that we eat or grew plants that fed the animals we eat is full of poop and dead stuff.  The more poop and dead stuff, the better things grow.  

So we are never really separate from anyone or anything – we just feel that way. 

Make no mistake, there are times when I just want to see my dad and I’m sure there will be many, many more times when the emotional presence thing just won’t be enough and I will want to hear his voice again and smell his Old Spice. Times when I will feel separate.

It’s those times when we feel separate that we do all kinds of things to feel otherwise.  We hold those we love virtually hostage sometimes to keep them close, we control and manipulate, we build shrines, we write stories, we just can’t let go.

I put up a picture of my dad at the top of my stairs after he died.  I look at it most mornings when I go into my office and say a little hello.  I have his ashes in my front room with another picture of him there.  I like to say hello to it too.  Thinking about my dad’s ashes led to a google search on what people do to the ashes of their loved ones.  People eat them, drink them, snort them, bake them into cookies, mix them in with tattoo ink.   Just to feel close and not separated.  

I was speaking with someone who read this blog post who told me this story:

She was at a close friend’s funeral and ran into his brother while smoking a cigarette behind their church. She had met him 10 years prior and didn't know him well. They laughed together at being the "bad kids" smoking behind a church.

"I snorted my brother this morning" he told her.

She said, “I died! I've never laughed so hard! I asked him why and he said "I don't know- I think he would think it's funny, you think it's funny- it's dumb- but I wanted to feel close"

He said "don't tell anyone. It's so stupid, but I think he would think it's funny and I wanted to make him laugh one more time."

We talked about that story, which I think is gorgeous in a way. She said that for her it was like some kind of perverse communion. And it was. A way to feel connected. A way to be WITH the person.

I’ll say it again.  Maybe we are never separated from anyone or anything.   And maybe we are never separate from god either – whatever your concept of god is.

Is this what is meant by eternal life? 

Who knows. 

But what I do know is that I miss my dad. 

And I don’t.