Lax in the Time of Coronavirus

As I often do when I’m not sure how to think about something, I’ve been musing on how Lax might have responded to all that is happening in our country and our world right now. Self-quarantine wouldn’t have bothered him much. He tended to self-quarantine most of the time anyway. And he was used to staying in touch with friends only by mail or phone or, later in his life, email. Even when he went out, he tended to keep what we now call “social distance.” And the possibility of dying because he was older wouldn’t have caused him worry.

What I think he would have been doing is spending more time in contemplation. Not trying to figure out what a spreading pandemic meant but simply holding himself in the moment, waiting on God, resting in the reality of being alive. He would have prayed for his friends and for peace in this time as in all times. And he would have written—poems, of course, but also letters to the people on the long list of correspondents he kept–assuring them he was okay, asking if they were, making a joke and encouraging them.

Most of us live such busy lives, it can be difficult at first to slow down in the way this virus is making us slow down. But once we do, we start to see what Lax saw before he left the United States to live by himself on a Greek island: Much of what busies our lives is a chasing after things—a doing—that keeps us from simply being.

In a long meditation I quote on page 207 of my book, Pure Act, Lax wrote this:

“Deprived of being we have recourse to having, which is indispensable for us, and good, as long as we know how to use it largely and simply for our real needs. But there is a danger: having, in giving us many things (burdening us) weighing us down, gives us the disastrous illusion of making up for our deficiency of being, and we are always tempted to look for a (consistency) in it, to attach ourselves to it as to a security, and to accumulate more and more…instead of turning ourselves, as empty as possible, toward the Source of being who alone is capable of satisfying our thirst and giving us happiness joy blessedness.”

With our world shut down, now is a good time to think about our real needs, the illusions we live by, where our security lies, and what we are really thirsting for.

Yesterday afternoon, when my wife and I walked around the lake near our Seattle home, there were more people out than usual on a cold day. After the walk, my wife asked: “Did you notice that we didn’t hear the snippets of complaining we usually hear when we walk the lake?” I hadn’t noticed that, but I had noticed that the people we passed seemed lighter in spirit–less burdened than usual–despite the uncertainty the virus has brought. Freed of their usual busyness, they were able to slow down. Able to let go.

Slowing down. Letting go. Being. And loving. These are the things Lax would focus on right now, I’m sure. These are the things that will get us through this.

(This meditation originally appeared in The Robert Lax Newsletter–March 2020. If you would like to receive the newsletter, go to this site’s main page and look for the sign-up box on the left-hand side.)