In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
― Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

As most of us face additional weeks of quarantine, we may feel as though we do, indeed, understand our fellows of the cell. Celled in, sheltered-in-place, cloistered–call it whatever you wish. In the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi, walked the roads of Italy and joyously proclaimed that [the] whole world is our cloister! Today, the world’s cloister is more of a collective reclusiveness and remoteness.

To cloister means to seclude or shut up in or as if in a convent or monastery. In the photo above, the 11th century Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Greece, one of 24 Meteora monasteries, is a stunning example of a cloister. In Greek, meteora means suspended in the air. This type of suspension–above the earth, cut off from others–is precisely what many of us think of when we consider cloistering. We think of a dramatic retreat from normalcy, a sparsely furnished windowless cell and endless hours of solitude. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity looks like just the place for this kind of retreat. And as remote as it is, it may not seem all that different than the homes we now find ourselves sheltered in.

In his book, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Henri Nouwen writes:

We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we really are thinking of, however, is a time and place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever it may be. For us, solitude means privacy . . . We also think of solitude as a staion where we can recharge our batteries, or as the corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are oiled, our muscles messaged, and our courage restored by fitting slogans. In short, we think of solitude as a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life.

As Nouwen suggests, I suspect that many of us regarded our first days of quarantine as welcome–even necessary–recharging. To be cloistered in our homes meant privacy and valued time for ourselves. I remember the first weeks of a summer job I held in college. I cleaned rooms in a small motel and, in the beginning, revelled in the time I had alone in each room. A bottle of Lime Away in hand, I scrubbed and thought, scoured and dreamed. I recall thinking, they’re actually paying me for this? A few weeks into the job, however, I began to dread being alone with my thoughts, for they had run amuk into darker, scarier places, and I couldn’t rein them in. They charged into what ifs that often left me standing on a precipice looking into the worst of my fears. I began to hate being cloistered in those rooms. With each bath tub I scrubbed, I felt as though I was scrubbing away layers of myself, leaving little of worth behind.

Nouwen writes about his own struggles with what he calls transforming solitude, the solitude of the saints. He explains how this type of solitude requires getting rid of scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract me–naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken–nothing. He goes on to explain that it is this nothingness that is so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. Ah yes, I have known–and continue to know–this nothingness.

Our current cloistering doesn’t prohibit us from talking or video-chatting with friends and family, from listening to music, watching television, reading books, and doing whatever we like to do in our homes. Nor does it relieve many from attending meetings (thanks to Zoom). Still, we’re not used to living exclusively at home. And in spite of technology and other means of distraction, we may find ourselves staring into the nothingness that arrives when all else fails to engage us.

Indian writer Amit Kalantri writes that [s]ocial distancing is an opportunity to check if you can tolerate your own company. There are certainly days–like those in my motel-cleaning summer–when I genuinely can’t tolerate my own company. I’d prefer others’ company. I’d prefer to listen to thoughts that are not my own, to immerse myself in the blessed presence of anyone else but me. And yet, I understand that the true nature and value of cloistering is not found in distraction but in contemplation.

In his book, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton writes:

In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.

We’re not monks, and we certainly haven’t abandoned the world. Still, we have an unprecedented opportunity to listen more intently to those deepest and most neglected voices. That is, we have this time to temporarily abandon the busy, noisy lives we’ve led. We have this time to probe the inner depths of all our lives could–and should–be.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read some amusing posts and seen some funny memes about everyday sweatpants vs. good sweatpants. Today, dressing up might certainly mean breaking out the good sweatpants or leggings. In The Cloister Walk, author Kathleen Norris writes about her time in a monastery:

I could suddenly grasp that not ever having to think about what to wear was freedom, that a drastic stripping down to essentials in one’s dress might also be a drastic enrichment of one’s ability to focus on more important things.

I think Norris is right: when we strip down to essentials in what we wear, we may also be more likely to strip down to essentials in what truly matters–and what does not. For the foreseeable future, we will be fellows of the cell. As we move about our cells with the glorious freedom that only elastic waistbands can afford, may we cloister well.