Social Spacing
From a distance
we’ve been
practicing safe
space —
at least two meters
whenever possible.
No contact communication,
no contact interaction,
no facial contact
when we’re out beyond home,
for our own
health and protection,
and for everyone
else’s.
The current Covid-19
social contract.
Yet there are some
who violate that,
who don’t take it
seriously,
who believe they are
invulnerable,
not susceptible,
not contaminable.
That’s like playing
Russian roulette
with risk.
“We are in this together” means
behaving with prudence and
caution even if
we might think it
silly, or worse, a hoax.
The degree of separation
between nonchalant and
over-anxious, paranoid
is fairly wide. Most of us settle for
somewhere in between.
From a distance
people separate themselves
from others for
other unfounded, spurious
reasons.
It begins within the Ego mind –
the thought, the notion of
difference by virtue of
some false sense of
superiority.
It gets expressed in
speech, social slurs,
snubbing, shaming, stupidity, and can
so easily escalate into
objectification, hatred, violence.
All our misguided social “isms” and worse are
made manifest and ugly
and harmful and disrespectful,
and often horridly cruel
this way:
sexism, homophobia, ageism, classism,
ethnism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism,
religious persecution, and
RACISM
writ large and bold this week
in some Minneapolis street;
fueling flashcards of memory from
Ferguson, Los Angeles, Montgomery,
and countless other locales
we could name:
like Oka, Wounded Knee, Hiroshima.
The toxicity of egocentrism.
The same poison that has
polluted and ravaged nature.
This is social distancing gone
sordid, sick, and noxiously smelly.
And, if all we do is watch and
hope it might go away,
that just enables it.
And yet, in raising voice, concern,
in marching in the streets,
we risk right now our health and safety.
But fires, once ignited, aren’t always
easy to put out.
Hashtag: God help us.
From a distance?
But maybe from some deep-seated,
already implanted
core of divinity within us, here, now,
the Holy One,
the Source and Hope of all life
responds:
‘This grand process of
the evolution of
wholeness and fullness of
life for all, for all creation,
is our shared project and
mission.
We are indeed all in this
together. So,
give it up, let it go,
all that social distancing
you do, or condone by default,
that gets in the way,
obstructs, sabotages, violates, hurts,
harms, kills, and shuts down
what I made you for,
what I hoped and trusted you would eventually
become.