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.
