"The Long Experience of Love": Meditations on Breath and Beauty amidst a Pandemic

Abstract

In extreme cases, of course, the loss can amount to nothing less than the gift of life itself, as measured by the rhythm of our breathing, since in its most virulent forms this disease attacks the respiratory system to the point that it can still the lungs altogether [ ]order, the other whom we might encounter—whether neighbor or friend, stranger or family member—has become a potential threat to our own wellbeing A rising fear of social contact, because of the contagion they or we ourselves might carry;the closing of small businesses and larger enterprises whose livelihood depends on the flow of commerce;a rising tide of joblessness;a mandated interruption of public gatherings, from neighborhood cafes to public cultural, sporting events, and, of course, worship services: all these have been among the losses we have had to face, with a dismal downward trend in the economic measurements of our public life The anomie all this can lead to, in the worst of cases, finds expression in T S Eliot's description in Burnt Norton: Here is a place of disaffection Time before and time after In a dim light: neither daylight Investing form with lucid stillness Turning shadow into transient beauty With slow rotation suggesting permanence Nor darkness to purify the soul Emptying the sensual with deprivation Cleansing affection from the temporal