Last night, or maybe it was this morning, I was in a foreign city, one that I've visited several times in recent weeks. A European-style metropolis, with a treasure of an old city and a large and unremarkable modern center, and lots of backpacker traffic, including me. It was Prague or maybe Guadalajara. And there I was, and I was tired of the travel and tired of the rootlessness.

I had been staying yet another night at a non-descript flophouse or youth hostel. Clean enough, but not beautiful, and lacking the comforts of home, which at this point in my travels I could barely remember. It was morning and I attempted to revive myself from this world-weariness with a cup of coffee, maybe an espresso, because this is a foreign city and therefore the coffee must be good. And just a few blocks from where I woke up, and a few terraced levels downhill was a famous coffee cavern that I'd heard about, you know, like a wine cave, but coffee. And with good geographic instincts and a guidebook I found it without difficulty, carrying my unwieldy dufflebag over my shoulder.

The owner of the coffee cave was on site. And he happened to be explaining to a young patron, not me, the methodology he uses for making this coffee. I knew he saw me, but he showed no sign of reaching an end to his discourse, still bragging about the beans and pointing to his specially patented machinery. To make use of this waiting time, I decided to pull out fresh clothes and change to start this new day and to distinguish it more clearly from the previous one.

I got down on my knees and opened the zipper of the duffle bag. The contents, now released from their confinement, began to expand. Like these mattresses you buy these days, flattened and vacuum sealed and delivered in a box, and which, upon release, begin to unfold and self-inflate, never to be compressed again. I knelt on the floor, desperately trying to re-bag my rapidly expanding possessions, including not just bedding but clothes, tools and a rubber life raft. Suddenly I realized I was already 37 minutes late for a Zoom call with my academic advisor, because I had miscalculated the time difference between this city – Rome or whatever – and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Another patron, who turned out to be someone I knew, offered to help, and she took my phone to try to connect to the call for me, but it was one of those moments when your helper doesn't know your specifics as well as you do, and so she stands there tinkering while I hop from foot to foot hoping to get my phone back. When she gave up I went outside into the bright sunshine to make my call, deciding it was worth abandoning all my personal stuff, now strewn around the coffee cave, in order to salvage this call.

But I had neglected to get an international plan on my phone. I wasn't certain it would even go through, and if it did, how big a fortune it would cost. But it didn't go through and when I looked up from my phone, I realized I had wandered into everyone’s morning commute and I didn't know anymore where I was or how to find the hostel or the coffee cave or anywhere else. I wasn’t afraid. I knew I could ask for help, I could struggle through the Spanish or Czech or German. And someone would point the way, or a way.

I knew I would be okay. I just didn't know how to break off the unending meandering that I was doing. I didn't know how to give shape to a day or a series of days. I had lost the ability to make the morning feel new, bed feel refreshing, food feel nourishing, day's end feel satisfying.

I was lost, wandering in the shapelessness of unrooted time. The shapelessness I have come to feel here, every day. Not discomfort. Not misfortune, thank God. But shapelessness. Days that are so alike. Unpunctuated by movement and direction and direct human touch. Days that have come to a halt and have lost their ability to gain any fresh momentum.

And with that thought I am no longer in that foreign city, Munich or Casablanca, but in my own home where, looking around, I find myself in a static world. Time doesn't move here anymore, but it haunts me nonetheless. I am haunted by a phantom calendar of events that didn't happen. A congregational trip to Israel that would have ended yesterday; a Ner Shalom family camping trip that would have begun today. The photographic negative of graduations and celebrations and summer breaks. And a mark on the day when this epidemic is supposed to end; a mark erased and moved, erased and moved, now hovering always some time ahead, just out of reach.

I am in fact fine holding to a commitment of immobility, of sitting still and staying home, for as long as necessary, if it allows this virus to pass over the houses and doorposts of this world as lightly as possible. I am committed to that. But I hadn't fathomed how numbing all the sameness, all the waiting, would be. It was easy and heroic to maintain this seclusion for a while, when it was new, when we were constantly problem-solving. When our confinement was itself movement into the unknown. But at this point, months into the epidemic and 59 days into shelter-in-place, I have depleted a lot of my internal resources. I am waiting for a second wind to carry me through June, July, August. And I haven't yet spotted or felt that second wind on the horizon.

So I look inward, at my internal landscape, the field of my spirit, and what I see is soil depletion. For a while things were sprouting like crazy. So many beautiful and creative responses to the moment. New offerings for the synagogue. New technologies to master. Ideas to put forth. All fertilized by love and determination and no shortage of adrenaline. But now, the plants, despite my cultivation, are looking scraggly to me. And I don't know how satisfying I will find the flavor of their fruit.

As I stand in this field, the field of my spirit, I begin hearing words. I look around me, and I don't see a person or a radio. I realize I am hearing words of Torah, this week's words in fact, because they live in this landscape of the spirit; this realm is their native habitat and words of Torah here waft in the air like jasmine without ever needing ink or parchment. The words I hear are about cyclicality, the rhythm of Creation. The words of Torah are talking about shmitah and yovel – the sabbatical year and the jubilee. They are talking about letting the field rest every seventh season. And then every seventh of those cycles, to just let go of commitments and investments. Let things roll back to their natural state. Let the soil refresh and the groundwater refill.

I can't tell you whether this Torah should apply to our actual fields and economies these days, but it certainly applies to the field of my spirit. Standing there, Torah kept speaking these words, reminding me, in this week of depletion and emotional meandering, to just let it be. Step back. Rest in the knowledge that the nutrients will return to the soil and new growth will emerge and I will be here to cultivate it when it does. And that this will all happen on its schedule and not on mine. I can let go of the actual calendar and the ghost calendar, the incessant tick-tock and counting of days. Step back and trust to the ratzo v'shov, the throbbing, whirling reality of the universe's cyclicality.

I take a deep breath. Can I do it? Can I stop tending and tinkering even for a minute? Can I let go of my need for every moment of this terrible time to be productive or meaningful or insight-giving? What will it feel like to give up not only travel and touch, but self-judgment, drivenness, and high expectations of my own leadership? What will it be like to let this time be: let it be its frustrating, tedious, anxious and sad self, without the pressure of having to be the source of global transformation or personal enlightenment?

“Let go,” Torah keeps whispering, like a warm breeze. “You hold this all so tight!”

I look at the field and let my worry give way to trust – to faith. This field doesn't really belong to me. Not deep down, not really. It will bring forth sustenance in its own time. I put down my trowel and my watering can. I watch the insects buzzing around the plants in the golden sunset. I watch the bees doing their work.

I turn away from this vision and again I am in Oslo or Barcelona or whatever it is, non-connective phone in hand, still trying to make my call. I power it down and slip it into my pocket. I retrace my steps, looking around me this time at faces and sky and architecture. I find my way back to the coffee cave, where I retrieve only the most important of my belongings, and put them in my pockets, close to my skin. I write a note and leave it on the duffle bag next to the capsized inflatable raft. “Free stuff,” it says. I turn away from caffeine's promise of a quick fix and step back out into the bright, warm morning. I find a sidewalk café and sit over a nourishing breakfast, looking out at the ocean, or the park, or whatever it is. Without hurry. I might stay all day. All week. Seven years. Or fifty. I can't speak for tomorrow. But right now, in this moment, there is nothing I need to do.

Other Reflections During the COVID-19 Pandemic:

A Theology of COVID Times

Where is God in all of this? The answer is, maybe, everywhere. And why isn’t God intervening? Of course God is intervening. In fact we are doing so every day. (May 8.) Click here.

Isolation, AIDS Flashbacks, & Divine Embrace

There are pieces of this isolation I want to remember and bring with me when we are finally able to move freely about the cabin. But I also know that this isolation, no matter how pleasant parts of it may be, is something we will all need to reckon with over time. Because there is injury in going so long not touching and not being touched! Noticing and having to ignore the skin’s desire to feel skin, our bones’ desire to be pressed in an embrace. (May 1) Click here.

Through the Lattice

The doe sauntered away, leaving me wondering how we got here. Our glorious, sorry species. How did we end up living this way? So far removed from the rest of Creation that is just outside our door? How did we end up seeing this Earth so imperfectly, as if through carnival glass? (April 24.) Click here.

You’ve Got Mail

Talmud says a dream uninterpreted is like a letter left unread. What does this if-only-it-were-a-dream time have to say to us? (April 10.) Click here.

The Mood that Came to Dinner

Anxiety has moved right into my house, camped out in my own living room! Leering at me with its purple face and lime green 1970s pants. And what do you do about an unwanted guest? (April 3.) Click here.

A Planet of Priests

Torah tells us that we are meant to be a nation of priests. It is our calling and our destiny. And now the call is even broader. Because right now we are being called to be a Planet of Priests. Each of us tending the altar of our relationships with God and Earth and each other. Offering up our guilt over the profit-driven, Earth-consuming culture we have allowed to take root. And offering up like fragrant incense our gratitude for the simple and intimate gifts of connection and food and shelter. (March 28.) Click here.

By Our Own Hands (Vayakhel in Quarantine)

Whatever is ahead, the best of it will come from the people. We, the people, whose inspired ideas and skilled fingers will concoct new ways of being together, new ways of being, period. (March 21.) Click here.

Koved – Virus and Humanity

In this moment of unfolding epidemic, I am called to honor the complexity of the Creation we live in. This Creation in which uncountable species compete for space and survival, including the tiniest ones, who can sometimes, without malice, take down the mightiest among us. (March 6.) Click here.