Living in Interesting Times

‘May you live in interesting times.’

So says the well-known ‘Chinese Curse’.

In these days of ‘lockdown’ in response to the Covid-19 virus, we are indeed living in interesting times, and very much in the sense which the curse implies.

In the Rectory household, the ‘interest’ started before the major Covid-19 crisis hit.

At the beginning of February, I was due to attend the annual Priests’ and Deacons’ Pilgrimage and Retreat at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, as I have done for several years. I was looking forward to this, as it’s always an inspiring event that provides lots of opportunity for prayer and reflection. It feeds my Catholic spirituality and helps set me up for the rigours of Lent, Holy Week and Easter.

Unfortunately, a few days before the retreat, our beloved dog, Nancy became seriously ill and died on Sunday 2^nd February, The Feast of the Presentation. Fellow pet owners will understand that this amounts to a family bereavement, with all the emotions that this entails. I therefore never made it to Walsingham, so in addition to dealing with the sadness of losing Nancy, I also had to deal with missing out on the ‘spiritual top up’ that Walsingham always gives me. 

I consoled myself with the fact that at the end of April I would be attending the annual conference of ‘On Fire Mission’, which has also become a regular fixture for me. Here my Charismatic spirituality is nurtured, and I always experience a real sense of renewal that energises my ministry for the rest of the year.

Sadly, of course, this too was not to be. Like so many other events, the Conference has had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 precautions. 

Ah well, despite the lack of these two important spiritual boosts, I could at least continue to rely upon the daily round of prayer in church with my colleagues each morning and evening, and the regular celebration of Mass with our faithful congregations.  

But now, this too has gone. I must now say Morning and Evening Prayer alone in my study, and, in these extraordinary times, I celebrate Mass alone, which I have to say is a very odd experience.

All of this leaves me with a real sense of ‘running on empty’ where my spirituality is concerned.

In sharing all of this, I’m not looking for sympathy, but am rather seeking to demonstrate that like so many other people - and probably like you - I’m currently feeling rather adrift in the absence of my customary annual, weekly and  daily spiritual routines, to say nothing of all the other limitations and privations with which we must all currently live for a time. 

Part of the problem, I think, is that we often mistakenly define ourselves by what we do. This misguided notion underlies many an emotional crisis, whether it’s the ‘empty nest’ syndrome of the parents whose children have all left home or the bewilderment and disorientation of someone newly retired.  When we find ourselves in these strange, new situations, we often have to grapple with the question of who we really are. Thankfully, we usually adapt and find new routines and different ways of doing things.

The truth is that whilst our routines, and what we do might express who we are, they can never define who we are. 

For the Christian, our true identity is ‘hidden in Christ’ (cf Colossians 3:3b). We are God’s beloved Children, created in his image, and only God really sees and knows and understands who we truly are.  This is all summed up beautifully in Psalm 139:

O Lord you have searched me out and known me

you know my sitting down and my rising up

you discern my thoughts from afar…..

….for you yourself created my inmost parts

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I thank you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

marvellous are your works my soul knows well.               (Ps 139 :1, 12-13) 

Perhaps this period of lockdown is a positive opportunity to focus on being rather than doing, to slow down and to reflect on how God loves us for who we truly are rather than for what we do or don’t do. 

In addition to challenging our understanding of self and our relationship with God, these strange, surreal times also challenge us to re-think our relationship with one another.

Those who have engaged with the chilling realities of Covid-19 and are heeding the government’s directives and advice realise that this virus confronts us with the truth that we all live in relationship to one another. My health is your health and vice-versa. I believe this challenges the trend of recent years for people to become more insular and self-interested. We still see greed and selfishness, of course, in the sickening absurdity of panic-buying and the hoarding of food and toilet rolls, but in the acts of altruism of those who are generously volunteering to help the more vulnerable members of our society, in the heroism of our health and social care workers and in the willingness of most people to embrace the concept of ‘social distancing’ for the benefit of others, we see a different picture emerging.  It is a picture of true inter-relatedness and mutual concern and its name is ‘Community’.

So, perhaps this period of lockdown is a positive opportunity to change our way of relating to those around us and to become more open-hearted and generous.

Finally, here’s something I came across on Facebook the other day:

World:           There’s no way we can shut everything down in order to lower 

            emissions, slow climate change and protect the environment.

Mother nature:   Here’s a virus. Practice.

This period of lockdown is forcing us into a different way of living. With time, as with any new situation, we will adapt and we will survive. It will be nothing short of tragic if at the other end of this experience we emerge and simply pick-up where we left off and carry on exactly as before.  Hopefully, we will instead have learned something and will recognise that we can change our lifestyles to take better care of the world that God entrusted to us.

We do indeed live in interesting times; but is this really a curse or could it possibly be a blessing? If we seize the opportunity to re-appraise our relationship with self, with God, with our community and with the earth, surely it can only be the latter.