Quarantine and the Things That Can Be Seen in the Rain

 

I spent much of yesterday at Moorefields Eye Hospital waiting while my daughter underwent eye surgery – she’s fine, by the way. But, you know, general anaesthetic and all that. It turns out that an eye hospital is an interesting space in which to think about what it means to see.    

And then there is this mess of Covid complication. Here some of us are, in our masks, and others are locked-down in Denmark and unable to travel to this wonderful Bar Mitzvah celebration. And that makes it an interesting time to think about what we have and what we cannot have in this time of almost-time-to-emerge-but-not-yet.

And in the context of all that there is this week’s Torah reading about a strange infectious disease that contaminates and strikes in all kinds of strange ways. It’s a disease that remarkably demands quarantine.

If this strange disease is detected - וְהִסְגִּ֧יר הַכֹּהֵ֛ן אֶת־הַנֶּ֖גַע שִׁבְעַ֥ת יָמִֽים  - The priest shall quarantine the afflicted person.

And so this is what is in my mind this holy Shabbat – a series of associations about quarantine and lock-down and what it really means to see.

This word – וְהִסְגִּ֧יר - translated as quarantine in its appearance in this week’s reading, comes from the same root as the word used when God closes Noah into the ark, way back in the beginning of the book of Genesis. The animals go in two-by-two and then - וַיִּסְגֹּ֥ר יקוק בַּֽעֲדֽוֹ – God closes Noah in the ark while the destruction rages on the other side of the doors of this first Biblical account of lockdown.

There’s no mystery in understanding why and how the rainbow became such an iconic image this time last year, as the first wave of Covid locked us in. The rainbow is a sign of the end of quarantine. It’s the ultimate celebration of what it means to leave lockdown. And we are all so, so ready to be done with lockdown. So I relooked at the verse when the Bible talks about the rainbow of the end of Noah’s lockdown. Here’s the really interesting thing.

אֶת־קַשְׁתִּ֕י נָתַ֖תִּי בֶּֽעָנָ֑ן וְהָֽיְתָה֙ לְא֣וֹת בְּרִ֔ית בֵּינִ֖י וּבֵ֥ין הָאָֽרֶץ

And I have set My rainbow in the clouds, says God in the aftermath of that lockdown, and when that rainbow is seen, God continues in the next verse - וְנִרְאֲתָ֥ה הַקֶּ֖שֶׁת, I will remember My convenant.

Let me do that again – I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and when the rainbow is seen …

Here’s the thing that struck me this week.

The rainbow is referred to as set in the clouds in one verse. And it is seen in the next.

Go with me here.

The rainbow was there before it was seen. What changes is our ability to see it. Sometimes, we see things. Sometimes we don’t. Whether the thing is there or not is quite a different matter.

Of course, from the point of view of physics – that’s exactly true. A rainbow is nothing more or less than light – which is always there. It’s just that sometimes the angle of the sun refracts through the prism of a billion raindrops in such a way that there appears to be seven bands of colour in the sky. But the light is always there, whether we can see it or not. The red and orange and yellow and green and all the rest of them are always there. But we cannot see the spectacular until there is rain. It’s only in rain that we can see this ethereal beauty.

It’s only in rain that we can see ethereal beauty that is there all along.

It’s only sitting in a hospital ward waiting for your daughter to emerge from eye surgery, that you see things, looking out of the window – the way the light falls across the blinds, the way the cars in the narrow street outside perform a sort of dance as they back and forth their way along, gracefully reversing and pulling in and out and flashing their headlights to let one then the other pass. It’s only when your daughter emerges from surgery blinking and bleary that you realise how much you take this life for granted. At least that is what I found, yesterday, at the very wonderful Moorefield Eye Hospital.

There’s a particular kind of brightness in the air, as we emerge from lockdown in this country – I mean it helps that it's Spring and the blossom and the sky and all that. But also, I wonder, if we are all seeing a little more clearly now. On the back of a year of living in quarantine.

I wonder if, if we can possibly see anything other than opportunities lost, parties lost and lives lost, we might be able to see ethereal beauty more clearly as we emerge from lockdown. I wonder if we might be able to see love more clearly, the value of compassion, the fragility of our existence – these things are, of course, always there. But they are ethereal beauties, easily made invisible to our eyes when the light is bright, only becoming visible when the clouds render our lives overcast. Maybe the task of our time is to imprint these ethereal beauties on our hearts, to swear ourselves to remember even when the light gets brighter and it becomes harder to remember what is truly important and truly beautiful in our lives.

What a paradoxical life this is.

There is a gift in quarantine. There is a blessing in lockdown. There is a rainbow-coloured lining in the clouds. The greatest beauty of this extraordinary universe is there always, but the gift of our enclosure is our ability to see it. We would do well to remember that.

Shabbat Shalom