I’m acutely aware that this first Sunday when we are not able to come together to worship, because of the social distancing that is required by the COVID-19 emergency, is Mothering Sunday. Many families are not able to come together as planned on this Mothering Sunday either and this is particularly poignant and painful for all of us. Mothers are worried about their own mothers and fathers and their children. Children are worried about mothers and fathers and older relatives who are especially vulnerable to this new virus about which we still know relatively little – although international scientists are working around the clock to understand it and develop treatments and a vaccine within as tight a timeframe as possible and are sharing vital new information each day.
The situation is unprecedented and uncertain for all of us. We do not know at this point how long we will be required to observe social distancing, nor do we know just how fatal the spread of this virus will be. We do know that it is important that we work together for the good of everyone. Social distancing is part of us working together for the good of everyone. And it requires all of us to observe it in order for it to be properly effective and enable us to protect the most vulnerable amongst us. Each of us and each of our families is affected in different ways. Social distancing has reminded me at least that so much of the fabric and functioning of our society depends on trust; on us being able to trust each other to do the right thing for the good of everyone, including social distancing and refraining from panic buying.
These last few days have felt surreal to me as advice from Public Health England, Government and Church of England has been updated daily and life has begun to change rapidly as the scale of the emergency has become clearer. Part of me has felt as though we have gone into free fall and are bracing ourselves for the impact of the peak of the epidemic. Part of me has felt that the decisions that we are all making at the moment, as individuals and at every level of our society, are decisions whose full impact and implications we cannot know as we make them in the middle of an unprecedented emergency situation. This again reminds me how much we depend on being able to trust each other in the sense of making decisions in good faith, based on the best knowledge available and for the good of all of us and especially the most vulnerable.
I have had to talk to families about funerals, weddings and baptisms that we are planning. The pastoral implications of being able to have only immediate family members present at a funeral service, and not being able to sing hymns, during the emergency are heart-breaking as families are not able to say goodbye to their loved ones in the way that they had hoped. The pastoral implications of being able to have only five people present at a wedding service – bride and groom, two witnesses and officiating minister – are also heart-breaking as couples have to celebrate their big day in a very different way or else are no longer able to celebrate their big day on the day that they had been preparing to celebrate it on. The pastoral implications of families and friends not being able to come together in a large group to celebrate the life of a new child amongst them is also heart-breaking for new parents.
As I’ve telephoned around church members to explain the situation and set up a telephone chain and a WhatsApp group, I’ve been struck by the anxiety that we are all feeling for ourselves and our families and each other because of the danger that the virus presents to the most vulnerable amongst us. I’ve also been struck by the effects of social isolation as we are all missing the contact that we usually have with members of our families and with each other. I know that many of us are climbing the walls of our homes and wondering how we will manage the next weeks or months without the contact that we usually have. My husband and our two eleven months old kittens have started to watch concerts that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra have put on their website for people to view without charge to keep themselves entertained! The orchestra has made available dramatized recordings of St Matthew’s Passion and St John’s Passion which are particularly apt as we approach Holy Week and Good Friday – and Easter Day beyond.
Through the telephone chain and WhatsApp group we can keep in contact with each other and support each other through the effects of social isolation. We can continue to chat and share prayer requests and offer as much practical help as possible to those who are most vulnerable. Through the telephone chain and WhatsApp group we can continue to let each other know that we are thinking of each other and praying for each other; that knowledge can be for each of us a source of spiritual support and encouragement.
The children and young people who make up our Messy Church, Jimmy’s Ark, are completing blessing boxes as we journey through Lent. Each day, as far as possible, they are writing down, or asking mum and dad to write down for them, people and experiences for which they want to thank God; people and experiences through which we know God’s well-words, God’s loving presence and care in our lives. We were planning to bring our blessing boxes to the Good Friday workshop that we were going to be holding, but no longer can hold. We were planning to share some of those blessing are we gathered to thank God for God’s self-giving love in Jesus. Maybe, as we journey through these days of Lent, we can all create blessing boxes and share some of those blessings with each other as we support and encourage each other through the telephone chain and WhatsApp group.
I am thankful for the technology that makes it possible for me to remain in contact with my parents via Facetime; technology that allows us to see each other and to see that we each look well when we are not seeing each other physically and spending time with each other physically as we do normally, in order to minimize the chances of us transmitting the virus to each other. I am thankful for a wonderful new phrase that I learned through a Facebook Messenger conversation. That phrase is busy brain. It helps me to articulate how my brain has felt some nights recently and it helps me to know that I am not the only person who experiences it. And I am thankful for the wonderful person who taught me the phrase!
I am thankful for Spring springing, as my husband puts it. The weeping willow that I see from my study window is green and sticky with buds and tender new leaves beginning to burst open. As I write the sky is pale blue with some cotton wool clouds scurrying between the swaying branches of the willow. The gift and grace, the beauty and fragility, of life are all around us on this finite planet. Perhaps this time while daily life is suspended in many respects and changed in other respects can become a time when we draw closer to God as we attend to the natural world around us and attend to each other in different ways; nurturing to our deepest spiritual need to be connected to God and to each other albeit in different ways during the COVID-19 emergency. As the psalmist writes in Psalm 139, ‘If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, your right hand hold me fast’ so ‘I thank you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are your works, my soul knows well’.
© Julia Bebbington Babb 2020