In Other Words: Quarantine or Sanctuary

   

            “Sanctuary” is the word I prefer to “quarantine” for this time of COVID-19 social distancing.  “Quarantine” implies a person or animal is tainted and outcast. Another word for it, “Lockdown,” is most often applied to prisoners isolated in their cells, typically after an escape attempt, or other disturbance. To call this staying home a lockdown makes me a prisoner deprived of my freedom and rights. “Sheltering in place” was a term first coined during the Cold War, applied to bunkers and school basements in case of an explosion of an atom bomb.  Arguable, COVID-19 is a global attack.  If I call sequestering “sheltering in place,” I lose that sense of protection and care that home means, for many have had to hunker down in foreign lands and roadside motels to shelter in place.  So, unless I have succumbed to the virus, to call it “quarantine” makes me feel sullied, resentful, angry.  If I call it “lockdown,” I am a prisoner deprived of my freedom—and I want to rebel. What I call staying at home determines my experience, so I most often call it “sanctuary”—protection, refuge, retreat, safety—something chosen instead of imposed; an assertion of strength instead of vulnerability.

            Sanctuary means permission to retreat from the careering and careening that is contemporary life.  It is a refuge from the storms of days that start with stressing about clothing, driving, stalled trains, delayed flights. Just as if I were on a retreat, I can relax vigilance about how I look and seem to others.  I can focus on what I love about my work.  I can be grateful that I have virtual tools to do it.

A sanctuary is the innermost sanctum of a church.  Although I do not claim membership in any religious tradition, home is where I can feel what I’m feeling, reflect on what matters to me, visit life’s larger questions—breathe.  A sanctuary is where I would pray for peace and the end of the war.

Sanctuary is also a word often applied to natural reserves—for the protection of animals and birds, especially those that have been injured.  It is a place where endangered flora and fauna might find resurgence.  There are parts of me that I have lost—talents, feelings, relationships, energy, joys.  This sanctuary provides me the space and the time to rediscover and reclaim them.

There is a storm going on in our world, the virus is a constant and there are armies of truthers out there spreading the disease.  They are calling protective measures “quarantines,” “lockdowns,” “infringement of freedom.”  To deny and defy directives is, bizarre as it may seem, their misguided way to protect what’s sacred to them—as it is to me—the pursuit of happiness, freedom to realize myself, to live.  The cog they are missing is that someone else is in charge of that.  I’m not embracing sanctuary only to be a good citizen, I’m embracing it as a privilege and gift.   

            But what I most prefer to call this time of self-protection and regrouping is “Coming Home” and all that implies—comfort, ease, casual tees, safety.

            What do you call it?