We have been in quarantine over 40 days now. That is the same amount of time that the Essenes, in their rite of initiation, spent in the Judean desert fasting and praying (one day for each year of the Exodus) in an attempt to spiritually connect with their ancestors journeying through the desert on their way to the Promised Land. As the original Israelites ended their journey, they approached the Jordan River; so the final barrier between them and the life that God promised them was a body of water. Like bookends, the story “ends” the way it “began” – by crossing a body of water. As the story started, the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea (Sea of Reeds).[i] As they approach the Jordan River, the water is parted once again as they cross through to the other side.[ii] For both the Israelites in the Exodus epic, and the Essenes, going through the waters of the Jordan River marked the beginning of a new life – leaving their old life behind and starting again.

The journey through this quarantine seems long. It is often dry and difficult. It occurred to me, that good mythology is meant to help us navigate the terrain of life. And, the Exodus, arguably the most important epic in the history of Western Civilization, continues to be relevant today. We are Israel[iii]. We are the people wandering through the Desert of Quarantine and there is a lot of unsurety. Many have lost their jobs. Many have lost people who they love. We enter grocery stores trepidatiously, wearing face masks to help protect ourselves from the unseen plague, wandering around aisles empty of food, among other anonymous people hiding behind their masks.

Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
-TS Eliot, The Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages

A couple of days ago I wrote in a post that I am grieving the loss of a way of life, and I am. I know that life will return to some brand of “normalcy,” but I have a hard time seeing it. And then, it also occurred to me that I, like many of us, are going through the stages of grief. We have all lost something or someone. We have all been forced out into the Wilderness of Uncertainty, “between the hither and the father shore.”  Maybe we should pause to consider that we are all going through the stages of grief.[iv] No one goes through the stages in the same order, but if we recognize that we are, in fact, grieving, then we can process it.

The stage of grief that I am identifying with at the moment is anger. I have already been through depression, and if I am honest, I will be there again. (The Israelites wandered around in circles for 40 years. We are bound to revisit the same spot more than once.) But anger has such a cultural stigma of negativity attached to it, that people are often hesitant to admit anger, or feel guilt at the recognition of the emotion.
There are no “bad” emotions. A healthy anger is the great motivator. It drives us to move forward, to make change, to right wrongs, to rectify inequities, see the many places where we failed, or are lacking (as a person or as a society) and have the zealous determination to be better.
It was the anger of the prophets that exposed violations against the human family and gave solutions to heal it. Our anger can be similar. If we can take the time to pause and identify the stage of grief we are currently in, then that experience can be a powerful and meaningful one. The journey can be redemptive. And, when we finally cross over the Jordan River, we will have been baptized (literally: immersed) as we enter the new phase of our journey.

So, as we travel with the Israelites through the wilderness towards the Jordan River, TS Eliot reminds us, “the river is within us. . .”

[i] In the oldest version (J- the Yahwist, written around the 10^th century BCE) “YHWH drove back the sea with a strong east wind all night and turned the sea to dry ground.” In the newer version (P – Priestly, written around the 6^th century BCE) “And the children of Israel came through the sea on dry ground, and the water was a wall to them at their right and to their left.” (EX 14 21-22)

[ii] As an interesting aside, Joshua 4:19 we are told, “The people came up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month…” The first month in the Hebrew calendar starts on the first new moon after the vernal equinox, which for me writing this, is today (last night, actually.)

[iii] “Israel” literally means, “one who struggles with (wrestles with) God.”

[iv] The stages of grief as laid out by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler. There are five, or seven, depending on what list you look at. These seven stages include shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. Kubler-Ross added two steps as an extension of the grief cycle.