John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions were published in 1624 in London.  I’d bet most people do not know his Devotions, but they would recognize the famous phrase from them: “no man is an island.” Though these oft-quoted words have prompted hilarious cartoons, many in the New Yorker, it’s worth considering how surprisingly relevant Donne’s Devotions are at the present in the time of Coronavirus.  

Donne wrote The Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions as he battled a deadly illness, probably typhus or relapsing fever, in 1623. He came close to dying and when faced with mortality, was compelled to write from his sickbed. Donne was one of those rare people energized by conditions of extremity. Maybe he couldn’t stop his mind from thinking and just couldn’t stop writing. During the course of twenty-three days, he wrote meditations, one for each day, which tracked the course of his illness. There’s something hopeful in that number to me. Twenty-three signifies that his life (symbolized by the 24 hours in a day) was not over.  He recovered and would once again be of use in the world. Maybe not as a lyric poet writing about love and God as before, but instead fulfilling his vocation in the Church of England, where he was now the Dean of St. Paul’s. There his sermons expressed a more inclusive, charitable view of humanity and one can’t help wonder whether his confrontation with death made the difference.

Devotions has always been one of my favorite pieces, but two things in particular strike me as especially appropriate-- not just to me, but to all of us in this present moment.

First, is Donne’s keen sense of isolation, and the anxiety and fear it causes, emotions we all are struggling with now. He recognizes that solitude is the consequence of his disease (his terrible fever, weakness, dizziness as well as spots that appear on his body) and his quarantine to keep others safe is also part of his suffering. “As sicknes is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness is solitude; when the infectiousnes of the disease deterrs them who should assist, from comming; even the Phisician dares scarse come. Solitude is a torment which is not threatned in hell it selfe… A long sicknesse will weary friends at last, but a pestilentiall sicknes averts them from the beginning. God himself would admit a figure of Society…all his externall actions testifie a love of Societie, and communion.”

We love society, communion, and have been mourning its loss, even those of us who are well. I think of those who are isolated at home. Some quarantined, waiting to see if they are infected, others very sick with Coronavirus, sometimes relapsing. Donne’s words surely speak to the condition of those suffering now. In the final meditation, 23, Donne’s physicians warn him of the danger of relapsing, of the fever returning. And some now around the world are experiencing just that.

Donne also expresses my feelings, isolated in my apartment, unable to go out even for a walk, unable to have visitors, even as I’m grateful that so far I’m one of the lucky ones, that is for now, still healthy.  

The turning point in Donne’s illness, at least spiritually and emotionally --(but maybe that also triggers physical changes with the body and mind being so interconnected)-- comes when suddenly he hears the church bell toll for someone who has died. Donne has no idea who has perished—but the very anonymity of the person makes him recognize it could be anyone, it could be himself. Hearing the funeral bell leads him, that is, from his sense of terrible solitude to a perception of the connectedness of humanity, that we are not just linked by our mortality, but maybe other things as well. 

“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were. . . any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Hemingway adopted, “For whom the bell tolls,” as the title of his famous novel. But how surprised was I to hear Donne’s “no man is an island” echoed by Governor Andrew Cuomo several weeks ago as he took on President Trump’s isolationism, and the government’s policies that pit states against each other and against the government for necessary supplies and emergency funds. He criticized the competitive, market–driven structure of our society, whose inadequacy, indeed brokenness, this pandemic has exposed.

On March 29th, I had been listening to one of Governor Cuomo’s daily press updates. He was criticizing divisions between private and public hospitals, between New York City and upstate. He was creating (for the first time in at least a decade) a meeting between all the health care systems in New York, public and private hospitals, upstate and downstate. He wanted them all working together (as a large community) with the urgent sense that we are going to die and die alone if we do not work in concert. In later broadcasts, Cuomo pleaded for other states to send staff and equipment, promising that New York will also do the same. His message has always been: We need to work together.

And of course what he is talking about is the toxic culture of competition—economic policies and visions that the president and his officials (and dominant Republicans in Congress) support, but which predate Trump. Indeed they seem part of an “American spirit,” voiced now by those demonstrators who insist on being “liberated,” who wave banners, “live free or die.” They want tight national borders to keep others out, though they can’t stop the virus from entering. The culture and structure of competition and rampant individualism are at odds with a vision that we need to work as one nation and not compete. There are two different visions of America on display for the world to see.

And whose words did Cuomo turn to when he said, “No hospital is an island.” Donne’s of course. And though he may have been talking about hospitals, supplies, the availability of tests, the need to support states financially, he also meant it about all of us, about our government’s need to recognize and reform itself if America is going to survive this crisis, and any future ones. 

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are one world, all interconnected, if only by a life-threatening virus. And that there is an alternative to toxic competition and individualism, an alternative to “America” first. From coast to coast, Governors of seventeen states so far have formed regional alliances, coordinating for reopening, which includes both coasts and the Midwest.

There may be an opportunity for change, maybe even beyond our borders. Seeds for hope are apparent elsewhere. The peaks of the Himalayan mountains are visible for the first time in decades, because the sudden lockdown in India has drastically reduced pollution. We are, for good or bad, one interconnected world.

So, I ask you, has John Donne’s famous words ever been more relevant? It is time to work together and towards changing America’s culture for the better, even if we are, for now, in forced isolation while we do so.

This Passover is the strangest in my life, unsettling in so many ways.  And I’m sure it was the same for those Christians who celebrated Easter. We are all—or at least almost all of us—in “lockdown,” “shelter in place,” or PAUSE (New York’s Governor Cuomo’s term, which I like). And we have been for some time now and unsure when it will end.  We cannot celebrate in churches or synagogues, or have our traditional Seders with family and friends, all sitting at the table.  All of us are suffering from uncertainty about the future, and the fear that coronavirus will strike us or our loved ones and neighbors. Those who have already suffered losses are in mourning. But, as Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein said in the wonderful Seder he hosted on Zoom from his house in Costa Rica, we are all in mourning one way or another. We are mourning the loss of the life we had, a life that we may never entirely recover. Our world will certainly be changed by this—perhaps some of it for the better—that is if we learn we are all connected, interdependent and fix what is wrong in our society around the world.

My mourning has something added, however.  For almost four months I’ve been grieving my husband, Tony, who died December 12th. I miss him, though I’m grateful he died before Coronovirus, for both our sakes. As I sit in my apartment, self-isolated in the “high risk” group, I have entirely too much time to think.  My thoughts turn to Tony, mourning not just his death, or the empty place in my life, but also the horrible, debilitating disease he suffered for the last five years of his life. 

You don’t just mourn when a person dies. If they have gone through what is a slow process of dying, you are continually in a progressive state of grieving. And grieving begins long before the final death of the person. Yes, afterwards you are both released—but then grieving takes on other forms, metastasizes. You think back about their suffering and continue to grieve. You hope they were aware, despite your impatience or outbursts, that you really loved them. You grieve for yourself, wondering if you were everything you could have been when they most needed you. And often, you are awakened by strange, bizarre dreams, at the center of which are loss and abandonment.

When Tony died, I felt I was finally free to go back to my normal life. For years, I’d been constrained by the ever increasing duties of caretaking—doctor visits to two neurologists, an internist, a urologist, a podiatrist, a cardiologist; getting supplies and groceries, cooking all the meals—all while teaching full time, doing research, presenting and publishing papers, and so on.  It eventually became impossible for me to travel, even to see my son and his family. I pracrtically had no social life. No movies or theater. Only a rare meal with friends and eventally no time for even that. But work was good. It kept me sane, grounded. All that time, I felt bad complaining, because there was Tony, confined to our apartment, unable to enjoy the city he had loved so much.

When he died, I was released from my obligations to him. But I didn’t feel like socializing in those first heavy weeks of mourning. I was exhausted. Gradually, I thought, I’ll be up to it. I started teaching my classes at Barnard in mid-January and it felt good. I didn’t yet have energy to go out and have fun, but soon I felt it would come. But then came Coronovirus and it hit me that I was not free after all. The freedom I’d been longing for had been snatched away! I remember how Tony was confined to this apartment, how that made him so sad. “I’m a shut-in,” he’d say. And now I am too. I’m filled with anxiety (when will I be free? How many days or weeks or months of my life will I have lost?), and with a sadness that combines mourning for him, and mourning my lost life and of those close to me. I regularly cycle between fear and grief.

Mindfulness practice teaches that I must dwell in the present, not obsess about the past, a past we cannot change, or worry about the future, a future we cannot predict or control. God, they say, is in the present, so one should focus on that. Breathe. Sit quietly. Let the thoughts come through, acknowledge them and then let them go. But what if the quiet sitting is actually during a time for mourning the death of your spouse? What if you need to sit with your feelings also and they are feelings of fear and grief?

Sitting in my apartment, beautiful as it is, full of light and color, I have too much time to think about such things.

I think back to our Passover in 2019 when Tony was still alive. I hadn’t been feeling much in a festive mood—and Tony never was keen on religious ritual—but I made a minimal Seder regardless. All the essentials were on the Seder plate and I made matzo balls and chicken soup. That would be our dinner. But as we sat at our table and I was going through the Haggadah, I suddenly closed the book. “I just can’t do it. I can’t go on,” I said. “We are NOT free. We are in BONDAGE! I’m sorry. I can’t do more.” And we ate a sad meal, seasoned by my salty tears.

This year, I was sure Passover would be better and easier. I would celebrate with friends who would invite me to their family Seder. But no. We are all in isolation having to make do. I could not get horseradish or parsley. A Passover like no other, “unprecedented” as they say, and not something to celebrate for me, but simply to “observe.”  (I wonder if Christians who celebrated Easter felt more cheerful?) For thousands of years, Jews on Passover have been telling the story from Exodus of slavery and deliverance—our foundational story that celebrates freedom. If it happened once, maybe deliverance will be repeated? That is the hope.

In this Exodus narrative, hope and promise balance out misery and bondage to triumph over it. But hope is hard to come by this year, with Passover falling in the midst of a global pandemic, something we have never seen. The old Exodus narrative feels all too real, for we have an 11th plague to add to the 10 plagues visited on the Egyptians in Exodus. Ironically, we are both the “Israelites” told to stay in their homes (in lockdown) to avoid death and the Egyptians who have been experiencing the plagues. Do we hear a new message as we read this in 2020, when COVID-19 makes no distinction between us, between peoples, races, religions or nations?

My prayer (or mantra) every day as I sit in my apartment is:  May my hope be stronger than my fear. And, I would adapt the words concluding the Seder, hoping that next year will be better for us all, that we will all be closer to being “in Jerusalem,” understood spiritually (rather than literally) as the place of peace, unity and freedom.