Endurance in Love. Many of our virtues are being tested right now as we experience living in a time of plague. And Netzach, which includes in its constellation of meanings Endurance, is one that we all must call on. Because this plague and our response to it won’t be a sprint—it’s a marathon, an endurance test.

It may be the fourth day of the Omer, but it is also the 36th day since I have been staying home to help flatten the COVID-19 curve. Enduring the isolation and the loneliness, the ache to feel the touch of another is something that is not going to change for the foreseeable future.

Netzach also includes Fortitude within its group of meanings. And this is another quality that we must call on to get through this difficult time.

Usually when I count the Omer, the fourth day is when I begin to be resentful of the practice. So that this combination of Netzach in Chesed is a good reminder from the universe that my endurance is in the service of love. When I’ve concentrated on the inner dynamics of this work, I’ve had to call on my Fortitude, because something always comes up that I’d rather not look at.

This year, simply by staying home to flatten the curve, long before this, the fourth day, I started to feel resentment—rage in fact—at the sick joke of our national leadership that did nothing to protect us from this plague. But right now this anger is a deflection. Because I’ve been home alone, as if I were on a spiritual retreat, my demons have begun to show themselves. And it’s easier to give in to anger and rage than to feel the grief and sadness for all the loss.

Self-righteous rage is a very satisfying feeling—it’s addictive in fact. And like a substance addiction, it distracts me from things I don’t want to feel or see. My powerlessness. My fear of getting sick. My grief over the people I know who have died. My fear for friends who are working on the front lines in New York’s hospitals.

So I have to call on my Fortitude, my inner strength and courage to face these feelings.

This is one of the things I think about when I look at the Seven of Wands—the man who is defending himself against the 6 staves that are at the bottom of the image. What do you think is outside the frame of the image? There could be six people ready to attack him. Or these other staves could just as easily be sticking up out of the ground, with no one else there, so that the man is projecting his fears onto these other staves.

When it comes to relationship this combination of cards leads me to inquire into the ways opening to love activates my defensiveness. Today, I have to consider that my anger as a deflection from feelings of greater vulnerability can poison my expression of love for myself (by taking actions that would imperil my health) or my love for others (how my prickliness and short temper can wound others who I’m reaching out to for support on Zoom calls and on the phone).

That’s what’s going on for me today and leading me to the questions above. What’s going on for you and what questions arise in your practice?