Born (Again) in Diaspora
By The Rev. Canon Aaron Zook, ’12
I fell asleep on Easter night feeling a sense of accomplishment. I had just successfully navigated the most bizarre week of church services I’ve ever encountered. Even having served multiple churches at one time, I have never held so many services in such a short span. This year, it wasn’t from holding services at multiple buildings but, rather, that for each service, I tripled up on everything. We provided in-home liturgies for people to hold with just their families; I celebrated the Eucharist separately with my family in the church building; and I made supplemental videos for Facebook and YouTube to fill in the gaps. Setting aside the sheer quantity of things to be done, so many of them were completely new to me and required technological experience that went far beyond my training.
It was an exhausting week, but all went well, and the liturgical aspects wrapped up at noon on Sunday with us standing in our driveway, as a large snow storm rolled in, joining in a coordinated community effort to sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” (despite the fact that we were using different and, I might add, better lyrics than anyone else in town). It was a difficult and rewarding week and when my head hit the pillow, I felt as though I had achieved something: I’d made it through a trying week and felt stronger for having done so. I looked forward to both a well-earned sleep and to the joy of waking up in Eastertide. But when I woke up, something unexpected happened.
Nothing happened.
Don’t get me wrong. I slept. And when I awoke, it was indeed Eastertide. Monday in Bright Week had arrived. (Bright Week--also called Pascha Week or Renewal Week--being the term used in the Eastern Orthodox tradition to refer to what in Western Christianity we call Easter Week, the seven days from Easter Sunday to the following Saturday.) However, whereas I expected to find the world renewed, bursting with color and potential, instead I found six inches of snow and a reminder for an upcoming Zoom Meeting. In past years, I’ve felt a release and relief as Bright Week arrived. I’ve still had many commitments, like midweek Mass, meetings, and projects, but it always felt like a corner had been turned. This year, I looked outside and saw nothing new (except for the snow) and where there should have been a corner, I saw only a long stretch of the same restrictions, the same new technology, the same isolation. It dawned on me that I was feeling the same thing I’d felt through the latter part of Lent and all of Holy Week: alone in the wilderness.
To be sure, I’m not actually alone: I have my wife and daughter, which is beyond wonderful. I “attend” numerous meetings over Zoom and other platforms which connect me to a number of people. I do the family grocery runs, so I see (from a reasonable and well-gloved distance) a lot of our community. There’s still a feeling, though, no matter how much time I spend with my family or with others via phone, video, or otherwise, that the vast majority of my time is filled with having something to say but no one available to hear it. On Monday, I awoke with a sense that felt vaguely like isolation, but was actually something else.
Diaspora.
That vague feeling of being kind of alone, of having something to say and no one to hear it, is the feeling of living in a diaspora. The concept is pretty straightforward: it refers to a group of people who are “scattered” from their communal home, striving to hold on to their own culture while also struggling to find a way and a place to fit into a new and foreign one. It may seem counter-intuitive because we’re not scattered from our homes--we’re stuck in them! But, in a way, we are scattered; we’re scattered from each other and can’t interact physically, we’re scattered from our workplaces and the daily/weekly routines they provide, and we’re scattered from our comfort zones as we struggle to find new, virtual versions of our previous lives. The functional difference between our diaspora and the Babylonian Exile is that we have all been scattered together.
Within Scripture, the Israelites experienced Diaspora, scattered in and among the Babylonians. It was up to the Jewish people to find a way to fit in as best they could. For most of them, this meant their previous culture was all but lost. Many of us are feeling like that now, as though the world we knew so recently is slipping away and will soon be out of reach. However, not all of the Israelites lost hold of their culture, or at least not in the same way. The Exile itself was the time that gave us Jeremiah, Obadiah, and Ezekiel. In the period after the Exile, we received Daniel, Zechariah, and Malachi. These individuals, and others like them, did not lose grip of the previous culture; instead, they pivoted.
For example, it was during the Babylonian Exile, the Diaspora, that the Hebrew alphabet was created. Before then, the main written language of the Israelites was something called Proto-Hebrew, a root language they shared with the Phoenicians and Canaanites. Likewise, this period experienced an increase in the number of prophets, people called to a special vocation--and a special relationship with God--who worked to correct Jewish behavior and understanding. Though there had always been individuals who were set apart for this kind of mission, the Exile created a swell that informed Jewish behavior in their new surroundings. Also during this time, without access to the Temple, the expression of their faith was forced to pivot, giving rise to the earliest forms of Rabbinic Judaism, shifting focus from ritualized sacrifice to ritualized behavior.
Don’t worry, this is not meant to be just a condensed history lesson. Well, maybe it kind of is, but not only for the sake of suggesting we take solace from the fact that others have survived this kind of displacement. Rather, it’s meant to highlight what was gained, rather than merely what was lost. In the Diaspora, the Israelites developed an alphabet more in tune to their uses and more expressive of their unique identity. They found great leaders who helped them understand who they were and grounded them in their relationship with God. They even began a shift from reliance on the centralized temple to new rituals that could be exercised throughout their daily lives.
These are the same issues we are struggling with during this bizarre period, this virtual diaspora. We struggle to connect with each other while avoiding dangerous physical proximity. We struggle to find answers about what is happening, how long this will last, and whether we’ll ever get “back to normal.” We struggle to express our faith without the spaces and liturgies that have defined the faith for so long. We need new language to express ourselves and to identify the Church’s unique culture. We need leaders who can help ground us in our relationships with God and each other. We need to develop--or rediscover--rituals that are expressed in our daily behavior.
This Eastertide has begun with many of us feeling loss and isolation . . . and a sense that this year feels “shallow” compared to what we’ve come to expect. Our world has shifted, and we’re finding ourselves in the wilderness of a new kind of diaspora, one in which our old culture and this new one both feel somehow foreign and impossible to reconcile. We are not, however, alone. We are surrounded not only by our immediate families, but also by a global sea of people in the same awkward position. In times much like these, God’s chosen people rediscovered themselves--not perfectly, but still in a manner that moved them forward.
I can’t say what will happen to us on the other side of this diaspora. What I can say is that I won’t give up hope. I believe if we find ways to come together to share our fears and our new (and old) ideas that something not just functional but, in fact, quite wonderful could grow out of all of it. The world is not likely to return to exactly what it was, yet, going forward, we can exist in new and old and imperfect and cumbersome and eloquent and compassionate ways. We are alone in the wilderness, but we needn’t be the only voice crying out.
The Rev. Canon Aaron Zook, ’12, is a proud Son of the House. He serves as the Canon to the Ordinary and as a parish priest in the Diocese of Eau Claire, and also works as a freelance Canon Lawyer. He lives in Chippewa Falls with his wonderful wife and daughter and you can find more of his work at https://www.parsonofinterest.com/