Not even five weeks ago, back when none of us thought we’d be giving up going to work or church or the gym for Lent, I was thinking about the fast described in Isaiah 58, and how this season was a call to action.

In the meantime, so many of our regular ways of serving have gone on hiatus. We’re cut off from the people we care for and our own daily needs are shifting, well, daily. Rather than developing deeper, sustainable rhythms of drawing out our souls on behalf of others, we’ve found ourselves in crisis mode.

How then, shall we serve? How do we redeem the time? How do we satisfy the afflicted souls and our own (Isaiah 58:10-11)?

Obviously, we need to be open to new and creative ways of doing so. As we seek entertainment and solace, we’re recognizing a collective need and appreciation for poetry and stories, art and music. So let’s recognize the creation thereof as a form of simultaneous service and soul-care.

For your sake poets sequester themselves,
gather images to churn the mind,
journey forth, ripening with metaphor,
and all their lives they are so alone…
And painters paint their pictures only
that the world, so transient as you made it,
can be given back to you,
to last forever.

All becomes eternal. See: In the Mona Lisa
some woman has long since ripened like wine,
and the enduring feminine is held there
through all the ages.

Those who create are like you.
They long for the eternal.
They say, Stone, be forever!
And that means: be yours.

…

Awakening desire, they make a place
where pain can enter;
that’s how growing happens.
They bring suffering along with their laughter,
and longings that had slept and now awaken
to weep in a stranger’s arms….

— Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Philosopher and Poet by Giorgio de Chirico

Personally, I find it more daunting than to motivating to hear how Shakespeare wrote King Lear while quarantined. It’s about as helpful as comparing your ministry to Jesus’ at age 33. For every one of us with extra time on our hands, there must be a dozen feeling more burdened and busy. My mental space for creative work has telescoped in on itself, rather than expanded. But. I do find that making creative time enhances my mental space — if I’m realistic about where I’m at and let myself be in it for the process more than the product. Don’t expect to produce your best work right now, but let yourself be play at being an artist. Set aside a time to sequester yourself like a poet instead of just staying home.

Make it a small regular gesture, or make it unsustainably all-consuming for a day, but find a way to assert your humanity in an environment that’s conditioning us to think of ourselves and others as medical statistics or economic units.

Sketch that view out your window and exchange it with a friend. Chronicle your thoughts in a lasting way, or in such a way that you can walk away from them for a while. Sing while cooking for one again or the twenty-first meal this week. Curate a playlist. Create something the best you can and then release it. Even if it’s only sufficient to charm or cheer yourself and your mother for a quarter of an hour or a dozen strangers for a minute or six of your most like-minded friends for five minutes, that’s half an hour of charm or cheer that would not have otherwise existed, and the making itself will help your cooped-up soul stretch.