Monday 23 March
I began the week trying to get my head around the strange new world of social distancing that we’ve entered with the COVID-19 emergency and absorbing the news of the almost total lockdown which came on Monday evening. I contacted my wonderful tech savvy nephew to ask him to help me to do further work on our website and to set up online worship for the weekend. I certainly said my thank you prayers for my tech savvy nephew as I headed into a week of having to acquire tech skills that I didn’t know existed. Fast. 🙃
Tuesday 24 March
The Diocese emailed to ask me to complete a form in relation to my ministry as a training incumbent and my wider involvement in theological education and training for ministry. One of the questions asked how I understand being a training priest. There are specific tasks that a training priest has to fulfil. And those tasks form part of the doing of the role of training priest. But the role is so much more than the doing of it. It is most importantly about the being of the role which is inseparable from the being of priesthood itself. And that being is the vocation that goes to the heart of the baptism in which all members of the royal priesthood of all believers share as disciples of Jesus; the sacramental vocation to be present to each other; the vocation to love and serve each other as the Body of Christ and in the name of Christ. Could another way of expressing this vocation be ‘to love and serve as spiritual and social glue’? This vocation is particularly poignant as we have to be present to each other, and love and serve each other, in different ways as we navigate the COVID-19 emergency. I have been very moved by those who are less vulnerable offering to help those who are most vulnerable, whether by offering spiritual and pastoral support through the telephone chain and WhatsApp group or by offering practical support in getting in essential food and medicines. And I have been encouraged that our LAP partners are also keeping in touch and that together we are using that network to support the most vulnerable members of our community.
Wednesday 25 March
The glorious spring sunshine seems to jar with the lockdown and the anxiety that we are all experiencing as we settle into the strange new world of COVID-19 for however many weeks and months the emergency continues. I almost believe that nothing bad, like COVID-19, can happen while the sun shines. And the arrival of spring makes me want to get out into the countryside which of course I, we, cannot do at the present time, certainly not as I, we, would do in normal circumstances. I know that many people are making the most of the sunshine to get out into their gardens and carry out some of the spring gardening tasks. I know that our grandchildren have been getting out into their gardens to play football and escape the four walls of their homes, pressing their parents into goal between work ... I’m thankful that I am able to enjoy our garden in the sunshine. I’m also thankful that I’m able to read and keep my mind occupied while I’m ministering in new and different ways. I’m currently reading Rebecca Solnit’s book Recollections of My Non-Existence, a memoir in which she uses her experience of being female in Western culture and society to reflect on the way in which we are each formed through our interaction with the culture and society around us, whether we are aware of it or not. I’m turning over in my mind the following sentence of Solnit’s: ‘Becoming a writer formalizes the task that faces us all in making a life: to become conscious of what the overarching stories are and whether or not they serve you, and how to compose versions with room for who you are and what you value.’
Thursday 26 March
As the COVID-19 emergency tests the fabric of our local and global society, which stories are being told and which stories are not being told? Which stories serve the most vulnerable amongst us? Which stories have room for our values as Christians? Some of the stories that are being told expose huge gaps in the fabric of our society for those who are self-employed, work on zero hours contracts or in the gig economy, gaps that those who are unemployed or who are ill or disabled were all too aware of before the COVID-19 emergency began testing us. Some of the stories that are not being told concern the climate emergency and the huge gaps that it exposes in the fabric of local and global society, gaps that again those who are most vulnerable, whether in areas of Britain prone to flooding in Britain or bush fires in Australia or the burning of the Amazon in Brazil, are all too aware of. Writing in the Guardian, George Monbiot reflects on the way in which we are rightly focusing on the morbidity of COVID-19 but wrongly to the exclusion of the multiple morbidities that the planet faces which present a greater long-term threat to the survival of human beings. He concludes that ‘this coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world’. As Christians we should never forget that we belong to the natural world; a natural world which God created and saw ‘was good’ (Genesis 1:21) and over which God gave human beings ‘dominion’ (Genesis1:28), according to the first book of the Bible. There is much exegetical wrangling about how the word dominion should be interpreted, especially in the current deep geological time frame that many geologists name the Anthropocene because the very strata of the earth bear witness to the impact that human beings have had on the planet. Maybe the word dominion should be interpreted as a statement of the impact that we human beings have on the planet because of our ability to reflect and make tools, and the ecological, moral and spiritual responsibility that we bear, before God, in relation to present and future generations and to the planet because of that ability.
Friday 27 March
Thursday evening’s 8pm applause for frontline NHS staff began to bring stories of NHS staff’s self-giving to national consciousness; stories of long shifts, exhausting hours and daily risk that are being lived day in and day out by staff members across the NHS and that are particularly acute during this time of emergency. It also began to bring to national consciousness the self-giving of other key workers on whom we all depend for the safe and smooth functioning of our society, including teachers, nursery nurses, police officers, social workers, cleaners, refuse collectors, supermarket assistants, delivery drivers and many, many more. As these stories reach our consciousness, I hope that nobody will again take for granted the many, many key workers on whom we depend. A loud shout out for The Staffordshire Gin Company that has switched to production of hand sanitiser for the NHS and Newcastle Borough Council. Fridays for Future and Fridays for Key Workers. There is a connection.
Saturday 28 March
A number of years ago, an aunt to whom I was very close died shortly after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Her daughter, my cousin asked me to take her funeral, which I was privileged to do. As my cousin went through my aunt’s papers, she found that my aunt had requested two hymns for her funeral, both of which we sang as we gave thanks for her life; ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ and ‘Count your blessings’. My aunt’s choice of hymns came out of her early experience of church and chapel. My aunt became the matriarch of the family after her and her siblings’ parents died relatively young. My aunt didn’t attend church or chapel regularly in adult life. And she was not someone who spoke about her faith overtly. She was, however, someone who lived it out overtly in selfless acts of kindness and care for the people around. And in many ways, her choice of hymns for her funeral was all the more moving because it pointed to the love of God that had guided her through the joys and sorrows and losses of her adult life. The same love of God that had enabled her to love the people around her so selflessly. As we face our mortality, in ordinary circumstances and in the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 emergency, which hymns would we choose for our funerals? What do those hymns say about our faith? What do they say about the stories of our lives? What do the stories of our lives say about the love of God? Together, do they tell of the friendship of Jesus and the blessing of God’s love for us and for all people for all time?
Julia Bebbington Babb
© 2020