Pandemic fatigue

I woke to snow this morning, which reminded me of what a gift the lockdowns seemed at first to my introverted, home-loving self. It was like an extended « snow day », when everything was cancelled and no one was going anywhere, for once. I loved that about it. For the first time I could hear the birds chirping even during the daytime in our urban area, and there was hardly any traffic and no planes overhead.

I remember someone wise, about half a year into the Covid 19 pandemic, saying that we would need a « season of healing » in the wake of it all. It’s been obvious the toll it’s had on some people through their particular work or personal lives, and truly tragic things happening. But I do think that others of us, who have not faced tragedy or massive overwork directly, are also now in need of healing.

Whether it’s been through accompanying other people who have been up against it, or through living with a lot of uncertainty ourselves, and having to make multiple adaptations to how we lived, things have been anything but normal for a very long time. And in many parts of the world all of this has gone hand in hand with some pretty extreme political changes, and a rapidly growing appreciation of the very present threat of climate crisis as well.

Given the extreme suffering of many people in the pandemic and also from natural disasters around the world precipitated by climate crisis, it feels pathetic to admit that we are struggling. But it is a struggle now, I think, and most of us are tired, myself included. Bring on that season of healing, somehow, alongside the ongoing work of changing how we live and the political will to get serious about investing in renewables, removing any money from fossil fuel extraction, and also finding more creative and equitable, kind ways of sharing money and resources to enable everyone, and our planet, to thrive. 🙏💕

Moonlit revelations

Last night I went for a magical walk through a wood. It was the last full moon before Christmas. Having had a day of crisp, clear, sunny winter skies, the skies clouded over, and I feared we wouldn’t be able to see the moon at all. But actually we could see it throughout, framed beautifully by thin bare branches and a halo of soft cloud.

At one point the three of us chose a path which took us to a place we had never been to before. (Or maybe we just didn’t recognise it in the dark?) We felt like somehow we had stumbled through a portal into another wood beyond the wood. (Curiously, there was a four way signpost nearby on which most of the text appeared obliterated.) We resisted the temptation to locate ourselves with GPS, and instead relished the moment of mystery, grateful for each other’s company.

I love this quote which I saw today:

“…If a forest is a sacred grove, not timber…” May I always see forests like this. And my “brother sun, sister moon” (as St Francis is said to have put it). I believe we are all creatures of the same Creator. May I always enter the woods with awe, asking of my kin “In the name of your Creator and mine, am I welcome here?” And may I always listen keenly, without assumption, for the trees’ response.

On the pulse of the morning

« …Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning. »

from On the pulse of the morning
by Maya Angelou, 1993

Waiting

Well, so much for posting every day this month!! Scuppered when I’d barely begun. Various practicalities got in the way, as they do. Then I read something about being speechless. It was a comment about social media and a question to ask oneself; “Am I saying something because I think I have to say something or because I have something to say…?” (Paraphrasing Gideon Heugh in his little new book of advent reflections, Darkling.)

Ah. Hmmm…

Everyday hope

I have just had an idea that I might live to regret…! I will share it here as a way of encouraging myself to carry it out. Every day in advent (the season of hope and expectation leading up to Christmas), why don’t I write something here? I love writing and often find things out only by writing them. It’s my « thinking aloud ». Each day what I offer here will be hopeful, though I hope it will also be grounded firmly in reality.

At an event about sharing pandemic stories the other day, I was reminded about this video that was made in 2020. It is a bit saccharine, but it had a big impact on me at the time, and says things that I think it’s important for us not to forget:

Mirrorball 🪩

My friend Sally Livsey recently shared this picture along with a revelation that has come to her while travelling:

« I heard the long beep of a car horn and it sounded like a cello tuning up before a concert. Two different stories arise in my mind from this single experience…
Surely we can choose between stories?
Perhaps today I will go with the cello; calling out from literal experience to the silent violins of my heart.

« I need the whole orchestra, to walk into this day fully awake; before the mystery that God is infinitely in love with me. »

As soon as I read this, a song popped into my head. I have sung this song to God and heard God singing it to me as well. It’s as though we sing it to one another, over and over. There have been moments in my life where « everything has changed » in this most beautiful of ways. The ordinary is revealed in all its unspeakable miraculousness. And today was a good time for me to be reminded of the miraculous, and of Love, in the midst of difficult and intractable worries relating to what is happening in the world and to the people I love the most.

When someone beeps their horn at us, may we somehow manage to hear the cello…

Mirrorball, by elbow (Seldom Seen Kid)

Lyrics here: https://g.co/kgs/SLcnP8

Thanks, Sally.

Faith

7 years ago at this time I was reeling from the news of my cancer diagnosis. I still remember how encouraging this particular card was to me then and remains now. I am so grateful for my journey of healing, for my friends and family and for the faith that has come to me as a gift 🙏💕

Joy

How come the dying vestiges of autumn
look so much like joy?
A paean of praise
all dressed in yellow.
The forest floor littered
with a million drifting and dropped
forms of gold.
Treasure that cannot be earnt, bought, bartered or won
but comes
each year
as gift.

“Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.”

This is a line from a poem called Today, by Mary Oliver. The context is:

…I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m travelling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
Mary Oliver (Today in “A Thousand Mornings”)

Bearing it in mind has led to my beginning again to share contemplative short videos on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLGIrKgiMCpkOyOAvKB4wUg

Even the process of uploading the videos, which involves watching them again, has brought a kind of stillness, settling over me at the beginning of a new season. It seems to me that we are living in increasingly anxious times. This stillness sparkles like a jewel when you find it. I hope these little videos will help many people to find stillness. Without it, I fear we will inevitably find ourselves making decisions out of anxiety, which will rarely, if ever, be good decisions for us or for the planet in general.

I had the extraordinary experience of encountering Gaia, by Luke Jerram, hanging in mid air outside at Greenbelt Festival recently. It’s an inflated globe, with NASA images of the earth from space somehow projected on it. It glows at night. During the day, you could hear recordings of the astronauts’ astonished conversation as these images first came into view for them as you walked under the globe.

Then there were these other worldly golden beings giving everyone pause for thought about the sun, global warming, this year’s increasing droughts, wildfires and the looming reality of climate crisis. I can’t really articulate in words the effect all of this had on me. But it was something to do with awe, wonder, stillness and a commanding of my attention in a beautiful way. May this stillness lead to compassionate and creative action that will make a difference. That is my prayer, which I am seeking to live out, keeping open to possibility of how I might embody it.

A song of quiet trust

A friend shared a vision they had from God, which reminded me of this today. A lovely invitation to deep rest. I listened to the music below and reread the ancient poem below that and dwelt with that image of the weaned child. Wonderful.

This is my favourite recording of Spiegel im Spiegel (« Mirror in the Mirror ») by Arvo Pärt, performed with such brave vulnerability by Daniel Hope. Most violinists would add vibrato to make it sound professional. But he captures the simplicity and vulnerability of this music-prayer beautifully: https://youtu.be/QqmZxtrUVK8

Psalm 131

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time on and forevermore.