Category: We Can’t Go Back…

We Can’t Go Back…to Pretending!
by the Ven Peter Leonard, Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight, Chair of OneBodyOneFaith and Member of General Synod

Like many others I have experienced a ‘Corona Coaster’ of emotions during lockdown. One day I’m coping and am positive and on other days it simply seems black and I just want to hide away. I’ve known for some time I would be writing this, and I have thought and prayed about it, resulting in a dozen different ideas for what it could look like and what it would try to say. It has proved to be one of the most difficult pieces to actually commit to paper and I suspect this is because I am grappling with some really unpalatable truths that perhaps I have not been completely honest about before. Has the current pandemic highlighted the deep divisions which exist within the institutional church and is it too flawed to be rescued? Has the Anglican ability to ‘fudge’ issues finally run out of credibility?

The church has also been on a corona coaster of ups and downs. I’ve seen churches work closely with local communities to support the most vulnerable through a range of practical and spiritual ways. Faith has been lived out and worship offered to God by caring for the sick, the lonely and the vulnerable.

There has also been unhealthy levels of competition and judgment between clergy and others in terms of the worship they have offered online or offline and the service they have given to their community. There have been deeply unpleasant and very public arguments on social media about whether churches should be open or not and the significance of our buildings. Even during a global pandemic, homophobia remains a given in the church and I wrote about this here. Most recently the appalling murder of George Floyd in the USA brings us face to face once again with the systemic racism which we cannot hide from in our own country and church.

So, what is it that I am suggesting we don’t go back to? I don’t want us to go back to simply putting up with these divisions and injustices. I don’t want us to go back to being dishonest about them and pretending that they aren’t there or that they aren’t massively significant, deeply damaging and part of the reason so many people do not want to engage with the church institution in its current form.

As Chair of OneBodyOneFaith I insist on positive campaigning, not simply bemoaning our lot but suggesting and living out ways for things to be better. What do I need to say to drag myself out of this ‘pit of despair’ I have landed in? The answer for me is in the story of the early followers of Jesus in Acts chapter 2. Having received the gift of the Holy Spirit we read that the followers of Jesus:

⁴²…devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. ⁴³Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. ⁴⁴All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

They were devoted to each other, a strong word which implies a deep commitment and level of relationship. These people sold their possessions to support those most in need, creating a way of living which ensured everyone had enough. What are the depths of relationships in our churches? Are we devoted to each other and what would that look like if we were?

They also devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. Learning assumes two things, that we don’t know everything and that we can be better. When a church community or leader assumes they know everything then power and people are abused. We are constantly learning including our faith and our knowledge and experience of God. We have to learn to express, to proclaim and live out our faith, the gospel, afresh in each generation. We now find within our generation we need to work out what faith means in a pandemic situation and in the aftermath of it.

This is a picture of a local community with a way of life so attractive that people were drawn to it and wanted to be part of it. And let’s be honest – who wouldn’t want to be part of it? This is a church who:
- were devoted to one another
- wanted to learn and improve
- cared for one another and ensured everyone had enough
- worshipped together, in the temple and in their own homes – every day!
- and ate together – they were generous, and they were glad
Perhaps my difficulty in writing this is acknowledging that I am part of a church institution which has too often failed to live like that.

I don’t want to go back to propping up an institution which is flawed, which too often ignores injustice and sometimes even perpetuates it. I want to go back to being a follower of the way. I want to live my life based on the life of Jesus Christ with love at the core, the very heart of everything.

Jesus said that he was the way, the truth and the life. I want to follow that way, live by that truth and receive that life.
June 5, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…to not Caring about Care

by Alison Webster, Deputy Director of Mission (Social Responsibility) in the Diocese of Oxford and author of ‘Found Out‘ and ‘You Are Mine’

I have spent a lot of time recently looking out of windows. Commuting long distances by car is no more. Attending endless meetings in small rooms with other people is no more. Work has become a matter of inhabiting an armchair at home, looking out of the window, doing mental work. And sitting at my desk looking through Microsoft windows, at a myriad of collegial faces, gathering in the unity of Zoom.

I have embraced a life of staying put. I have been forced to pause. I now see from the inside out. Am I being turned inside out?

As I look at the world outside my window, I notice things inside myself. I become acutely aware of things I have valued, often without even noticing that I valued them. I see that my life is an ableist life. It has the marks of an uncritical participation in the assumptions of mobility. It is a life where I ricochet from one fixed point in the diary to the next; careening from one damn thing to another, in a world of exteriority. looking from the inside out, I start to see things differently.

As I look at the world outside my window, I hear stories. And some shocking inequalities are brought newly into focus.

There is the story of Vivienne, a care worker who does not feel valued. Her workplace is terrifying. She works for the national living wage of £8.10 per hour, nights and weekends, then comes home to the one room she shares with her young son. The kitchen and bathroom are shared with 10 other adults and several children. There can be no ‘social distancing’ here. This is not temporary accommodation; she’s been here for three years. The rent is £600 a month, more than half of her earnings. She would welcome protective equipment, testing, recognition, decent pay, secure working conditions, and proper training and support. Her dream is for her son’s happiness.

And then there is Tabitha, also a care worker. She became ill with Covid 19 early on. She couldn’t breathe or speak. She was off sick for 28 days with symptoms, but without income. If not for the daily hot lunches brought to her by a faith group, she wonders how she would have survived. Now back at work she walks an hour each way because she can’t afford public transport.

And finally, the story of a friend of mine, a mental health care worker and a poet who, long before the current crisis, raged frequently and eloquently about ‘the neoliberal “caring” failure’. She says, ‘The failure of mental health services to adequately respond to the most broken psyches in society is a function of the lack of value placed on the complexities of humanity. The lived wisdom of authentically responding to a suffering person is not to be found in a manual, nor a diagnosis based on a medicalised reality. It is to be found in the heart. The heart of the human being doing a 13 hour shift, getting kicked, punched, spat at, and being top-down managed by folk with one eye on the profit-making balance sheet, and both feet firmly placed within the global market of the “caring” industry.’

In her brilliant book, ‘Radical Help’, Hilary Cottam says this, ‘Good care…is emotional labour: it is intensive, exhausting, sometimes lonely and boring, but always about deep human connection and relationships. Our current Welfare institutions cannot provide care. Worse, they cannot even speak a language with which we might begin to think warmly and humanly about what is needed. Caring for each other is not about efficiency or units of production. It is about human connection, our development, and at the end our comfort and dignity.’

And now we have a window. A window to achieve political change. We cannot go back to accepting the structures of an industry that monetises frailty and drives the hardest, leanest, meanest possible bargain.

As individuals and families we have taken to the streets weekly to clap our carers, whilst simultaneously tolerating a system that has put those same carers at risk of dying. And they have died. At twice the rate of the general population.

Citizens UK has launched its #LivingWage4carers campaign, centring around the shocking impact of Covid-19 on the social care sector. Together with an alliance of organisations and senior figures, Citizens is calling for a new financial settlement, raising all employees up to the real Living Wage. Let’s join in with that.

Let’s join in knowing that this is a start, but it is not enough. It is nowhere near enough.

We need an economy that reflects a different reality. One that serves not just the ableist autonomy of the few, but the vulnerability and interdependence of the many. An economy based on good love. Good love invests time. Good love connects. Good love brings us out of ourselves. Good love recognises that everyone has needs, and everyone has something precious to give. We need to move towards this economy now. Covid 19 has taught us this. It has shown us the need to de-atomise ourselves, so that all of us get to participate in the world outside our windows, even if we cannot go outside.

Music in Podcast provided by Ben Okafor (used with permission)

Photo by Amaka Okafor

June 2, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…to Social Distancing

by the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, Bishop of Gloucester

I refuse to use the term ‘social distancing’ because it expresses something which is already far too prevalent in our country and world.

In recent days as I have read social media, listened to the news, spoken with those working in the criminal justice system and those working with victims of domestic abuse, I have been reminded that all the world’s brokenness comes down to relationship. We know what it is to turn our backs and distance ourselves from neighbour, God and creation.

I have written elsewhere about the theme of ‘returning and remembering’ as we return to a different future treasuring that which we have discovered as life-giving both in the present and the past, and letting go of that which has been diminishing. A word which has been prominent in those reflections is that of solidarity.

During the Civil War in 1643 Gloucester came under siege. The city had sided with Parliament and managed to hold off the Royalist forces not least because a massive mortar broke on discharge. It is said that the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty refers to this huge gun and marks the failure of a re-membering as ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again’. The event is now commemorated each year on Gloucester Day when we glimpse something of what togetherness might look like in all our diversity. People of all ages, languages, backgrounds and political views parade through the streets of the city and it is a day of solidarity. Unique individuals with different stories and views stand shoulder to shoulder in the parade and in the crowds lining the streets. On the surface there is neither physical distancing nor social distancing.

During this time of viral pandemic we have experienced that same solidarity on Thursday evenings when people have stood outside homes in cities, towns and villages clapping and clanging as an expression of gratitude for care and dedication. Yet something even deeper has been going on – an expression of being in this together even amid the paradox of having to learn to be apart and physically distanced. The recent anger and turbulence around Dominic Cummings is rooted in a sense of this being sorely undermined. Whatever the truth of the detail, solidarity and trust has taken a huge hit.

And solidarity is not about sameness or even agreement. It is about how we live a shared commitment to particular values and beliefs. We need this in our re-membering and being put back together for the future.

Part of the mysterious truth about being a follower of Jesus Christ is that it is both intensely personal and yet also about a belonging together – members of one body. It is about a corporate commitment to justice, reconciliation and peace yet lived out amid personal story and unique experiences.

At present we do not know when we will hear once more those words spoken at the introduction to ordination services: ‘The Church is the Body of Christ, the people of God and the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit. In baptism the whole Church is summoned to witness to God’s love and to work for the coming of his kingdom’. What we do know is that they are words about the whole Church – diverse people of every age and each with a different story. They are words of solidarity in our calling and in our being.

This traumatic time of Covid-19 has brought that into sharper relief as people have reflected on what it means to be the Church. In the longing for church buildings to be open once again there has been renewed reflection on what it means to gather for worship – what is inclusive and what is exclusive. And the stories of people expressing Christ’s love and hope in many practical ways in local communities has sharpened reflection on what it means to be ‘sent out’ such that ‘we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world’. This has been particularly inspiring when it has been about a ‘doing with’ rather than a ‘doing for.’

It’s going to take hard work and intentional action to learn to live with physical distancing on streets and in classrooms; in places of work and places of leisure; and of course within our church buildings. Yet I believe that not returning to social distancing will be even harder work because it’s the work of the heart and we’ve been living social distancing and broken relationship ever since the beginning of time. Indeed it is writ large for us in the creation narratives of Genesis.

It’s going to take more than a parade on Gloucester Day or a few weeks of clapping on a Thursday night to learn what it means to live a solidarity which is life-giving. And it’s going to take hard work for us to go on discovering what it means for us to be the Body of Christ, the Church, committed to re-membering.

Repentance and forgiveness will be vital, and anger and challenge will continue to have their place alongside praise and encouragement as we strive to reveal the Kingdom of God. Yet as we ‘return and re-member’ it will be the soil of our hearts which will reveal all those things either as signs of the glorious inclusive Kingdom of God or signs of individualistic human pride and selfishness.

This Pentecost ‘come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your people and kindle in us the fire of your love.’

As we emerge into the future, physical distancing will inevitably continue to be required but let us not return to the social distancing of the past.

May 29, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…to Pre-Judging Our “Good Samaritans”

by Dr Jamie Harrison, a GP in Durham, Research Fellow in Healthcare and Religion at Durham University and the Chair of the General Synod’s House of Laity

Since lockdown, I have spent an hour or so each week on a Skype call to a colleague, a young Spanish GP based at a former ‘steel works’ town in County Durham. She is invariably cheerful and encouraging, despite it snowing in mid-May; her place of work last year was Alicante! She tells me about her complex clinical cases, and I ask about her family and friends back in Spain. We compare notes, as I trawl back over my rusty medical knowledge; she is very patient with me. We agree that medicine is difficult and full of uncertainty. I hope I do some good.

Last week another doctor, Dr Poornima Nair, became the first female GP to die of Covid-19 in the UK. She had moved from India in 1994, working first in Gynaecology and then in General Practice not far from my home. A friend of mine had been her GP Trainer and he told me how excellent she was, both as a doctor and as a person. One of her patients described her as ‘a very conversational doctor. She had a deep and loving care for human beings in general. She worked entirely for the care and welfare of people,’ as the Guardian newspaper noted. She was aged 56, and had devoted the last 26 years of her working life to the NHS. Her son Varun noted that ‘memories of her life and sacrifices will continue to inspire us.’

So I am faced with the question of how the example and sacrifice of others might change me and might change others, as we move into an uncertain future. I started with doctors, because I am one, but equally it could be nurses, care home staff, bus and taxi drivers, shop workers – the list goes on. These are folk who have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 onslaught; many have died, and too often they come from BAME communities. Others have come to be with us from countries near and far in Europe. Will we value them more, pay them better, and protect them more effectively from the next attack by this or a subsequent virus?

As Christians, we can be foolish enough to think that we have a monopoly on virtue or on service to others. Perhaps we need to learn some humility? Certainly, the bit of the global church I am in has been pretty lamentable in its willingness to see the good in others and to look beyond its own tribalism. What others can teach us about goodness, service, and selfless kindness ought to challenge our parochialism and self-satisfaction; but will it? I am conscious that the economic pressures we will face may risk further scapegoating and name-calling of those perceived as ‘different from me’. So, I need to keep asking the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ – and not just here in the UK. It seems that some questions just won’t go away: it might be someone from Spain or India; equally, it might be you.

In Jesus’s parable, his journeying Samaritan is both foreigner and benefactor. He risks the danger of the open road, with its evidence of recent violence and of an uncertain safety. Like his contemporary equivalents, he refuses to let the possible dangers override his desire to offer compassion and empathy, as well as practical action. Without the benefits of PPE, he engages with the wounded traveller, takes him to a place of safety, and offers to cover the on-going financial costs of his care. He is, indeed, a ‘Good Samaritan’. And those who hear are shocked, not because he is good, but because he is a Samaritan, a foreigner.

In what lies ahead for us during these coronavirus days, months, or years, we can either seek to develop or to regress. We have the choice of going back to tired stereotypes of ‘us and them’, or of partnering with those whose very difference inspires and creates the common good. Such differences go beyond the traditional delineations of colour, class, and creed. The so-called ‘foreigner’ in our midst is found in many guises, and not just in relation to place of birth. I suspect it is only through our own self-examination and willingness to embrace humility that we can become what it means to be ‘good’. The Samaritan of the parable does not seek the limelight or try to garner praise. He does what he does because that is he who he is. His willingness to be made vulnerable, putting himself at risk and then expressing his generosity, is characteristic of his very essence.

In recalibrating our perception of others, the examples of goodness in our midst are striking. Will we find ourselves changed by the example of the Dr Poornima Nairs or will we just turn back to our old ways? Only time will tell.

May 26, 2020
We Can’t Go Back….to Power Games & Inequality

by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham, Author, Member of General Synod and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation

In France, apparently, one of the biggest worries about lockdown was how single Parisienne women would cope: all alone in a small flat and no partner. No dates, no secret affairs, no sex. All the assumptions were that these women would go into melt down. The framework of their lives and their relationships had been undone – it would not end well.

Turns out many young single women in France have loved the shutdown. All the hectic man- (or woman-) pleasing internal drivers had been challenged. They enjoyed freedom from the pressure to have sex, they swapped sophistication for simplicity, they got in touch with how to be self contained and not dependent their partner. To everyone’s surprise it is OK – more than OK, it is very good.

It is possible that as we emerge from isolation some of this self discovery will remain and the young single French woman will have a better life.

This tale is an example of what Richard Rohr describes in The Wisdom Pattern as the process we are always experiencing in life, but which is technicolour at the moment: Order, Disorder, Reorder.

Order is the pattern we thought we knew. The familiar. Some of us loved it, some of us found it had dark and controlling elements that needed change, but it was what we knew. It was life as we had learnt to live it.

Then came the big Disorder. Present joys became past memories. Of course we fear it. Not just for the physical danger, but because it feels like anarchy. It teeters on the edge of chaos, of total melt down. We fear getting sucked into a vortex of unknowing.

Let’s be honest here; both in society and within the Church at large we were already struggling. Struggling with the age of Quantum Physics where what we thought was linear and certain was, it transpires, nothing of the sort.

Mystery, not knowing, holding multiple truths – all this was stretching our religious imagination. Around the edges interesting thinkers were rediscovering ineffable, unknowable layers of faith, whilst at the centre some pretty desperate measures were being taken to sure up the literal against the flow away from certainty .

Now of course everything is virtual. Even the bread and wine. We shouldn’t be surprised. Pentecost tells us the virtual world is vibrant and powerful. Jesus is very much with us but we can’t see or touch him.

This period of Disorder might be all sorts of things. It’s too soon to tell. What we can see is that the biggest mistake the church made in its response to Covid-19 was rooted in fear of chaos.

As a society we have a contract with one another. We elect leaders who make decisions which some like and some dislike, but mostly we obey even the rules we think are mistaken. So our Government tells us what to do, and although we are not all confident that the best decisions are being made we abide by the rules.

In the Church of England it seems our leaders thought the church worked this way too.

Mimicking the Government they issued rules and regulations, forgetting that their relationship with their flock is different. They do not rule over us, but rather are shepherds whose calling is to offer hope and inner depth and strength through our faith in God.

A bewildered nation expected words of lament, of comfort, of inspiration. Alas, although they were there, they got drowned out by the micro-management of Church buildings. We actually only needed to be told to apply the same rules as everyone else!

So it fell to the local to inhabit the Disorder and it has done so in many wonderful ways. The edges between church and community got lovely and smudgy and people lived their faith by loving and helping one another. Some may think virtual services are a bit naff and amateurish but they are rather gloriously filled with heart and courage.

Well, one day we will realise that the era of Covid-19 has passed. A Reordering has happened. Most people will want to go back to how it was before but of course that cannot be.

I can tell you how I would like the new order to look. How I would love the church to be where every human being is loved and valued equally. Where anyone who was in any way different from the majority need never fear rejection or judgement from other Christians. I would love to see the choking tendrils of power, politics, entitlement, the class system to be unwrapped from around the heart of the Church of England. Where those who had been abused received loving care and just restoration. I would love to see us less obsessed by ourselves and more obsessed by our neighbour. As you might imagine I could go on…….

What I think will happen is that we will make every good effort to carry on as before – and slowly the truth will emerge. The financial model, already strained to breaking point will prove unsustainable. Quite possibly the church in every parish model is bust. The trust of the people in a National Church, already horribly compromised by its internal moral failure to treat LGBTI+ people, women or abuse survivors honourably is gone forever and its place on the national and political stage will be seriously challenged.

There will need to be a journey, probably accelerated by this crisis, which will involve letting go of a model of the Church of England which was probably always a fantasy anyway.

I would like to think that a leaner, healthier, more equal community will emerge – a church that is much closer to the poorest, most marginalised in our society. More present in housing estates across the country and less bound up in Bishop’s palaces and London clubs.

I don’t think this is impossible, indeed God could well be in this new destination. I fear, however, that for many, it will hurt like hell to get there.

May 21, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…to Our Old Familiar Cages!

by the Revd Tim Goode, Rector of St Margaret’s, Lee, Disability Adviser to the Diocese of Southwark and Member of General Synod

‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.’ John 10.9

The theologian and author Martin Laird[1] shares a story of walking across a moor with a friend who had four dogs. As they walked, three of the dogs would run out across the moor, leaping over creeks and chasing rabbits and joyfully exploring their environment. But one of the dogs would only run in a small circle right in front of his owner. No matter how many miles they walked or how far afield the other dogs went, this dog would only run in a tight circle very close to them. Laird asked him why, and he replied:

“This dog was kept for his entire life prior to coming to me in a very small cage. His body has left the cage, but his mind still carries it with him. For him, the world outside the cage does not exist, and so no matter how big and beautiful the moor, he will never run out across it. I bring him here so he can breathe the fresh air, but he’s still running circles in his cage.”

During this season of pandemic I have found that many of my own mental cages have been well and truly rattled, and their gates have been flung open.

My parents live a considerable distance away and are both in their late 70s. I have noticed how this pandemic has drawn my attention far more keenly to their vulnerability and focused on my desire to be alongside and support them through this bewildering and unprecedented time.

Though, in our pre-pandemic age, my parents had embraced modern technology up to a point, it has taken our present lockdown for me to encourage them to embrace video formats such as FaceTime and Zoom as a means of communication. As a result it has been deeply reassuring not just to hear that they are both in good health, but to see that they are both in good health as well. These video conversations have brought us so much closer and have been as much a support to me as they have for my parents.

But why did it take a pandemic for me to respond to my rattled cage and step up and help my parents embrace video communication?

Since my ordination I have dutifully said the daily offices, with one or two members of the congregation, and I have understood that part of my priestly ministry is to say the daily offices on behalf of my parish and worshipping community as they go out to love and serve the Lord, living out their priestly ministries in the workplace, in the home or whatever context they find themselves.

But why did it take a pandemic for me to respond to my rattled cage and acknowledge that, through our online worship, many of our worshipping communities wish for a similar rhythm, a daily space and reminder to place God at the very centre of all that they do? Why had I only offered my parishioners the church building as the place for these daily services when I knew that it was not feasible or possible for so many to access the church during the week? I knew before the pandemic that the daily offices could be brought into their homes, their digital devices and to their places of work, so why did it take a pandemic for me to act?

As the Disability Advisor for the Southwark Diocese, I have the privilege of being alongside people of extraordinary faith who have all too often been denied access to their local parish worshipping communities. I have observed the existence of online church before this crisis, but I have also heard the cries of frustration of so many who, through no fault of their own, find themselves excluded from their local parish church community.

But why did it take a pandemic for me to respond to my rattled cage and seek to bring the worship of the local parish church to those who are unable to be physically present and in doing so to actively create opportunities and spaces for all to serve and to minister, regardless of age and ability?

It has become patently clear. I cannot and will not go back to how things were. These cages have been rattled and their gates have been flung open. I do not want to be like the fourth dog, I wish to run out across the moor, and be open to new horizons, new possibilities.

The Church of England is going to be a very different church when we finally all return to our church buildings. For too long we have built cages around ourselves to feel safe and secure. The pandemic has forced us to respond to Jesus’ invitation to open the gates of our cages and relate to the world as it is, rather than as we would want it to be. As Jesus says in John 10.9, ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.’

Jesus is the gate out of our many cages, out of our hardened hearts. As we finally accept this, that Jesus is the entry point into all change, depth, struggle, and love, may we as a church be empowered to step out of our cages and boldly embrace the ‘new normal’ with confidence and hope, rather than retreat back into cages of fear and cynicism.

I for one don’t want to retreat back into my own old familiar cages once this pandemic is done. And neither do I want the Church of England to do so either. As the saying goes, “God loves us exactly as we are, and God loves us far too much to leave us that way.” As we journey through this pandemic together, God is clearly revealing to us that he loves us far too much to leave us as we are.

[1] Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land. Oxford University Press 2006, page 19

May 19, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…But We Can Say Sorry

by the Revd Dr Christina Beardsley, retired healthcare Chaplain, researcher and co-author of “This is My Body” and “Transfaith”

On the 27^th March 2020 the Guardian newspaper published ‘A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future’.

It was written by the Italian novelist, Francesca Melandri.’ At that point the UK had been in lockdown a mere three days, while Italy was already three weeks into theirs.

We’d watched on our television screens shocking scenes from Italy of make-shift field-hospital wards, medical staff barely able to cope with the rising numbers of Covid-19 patients, and rows of coffins lined up in churches waiting to be buried. ‘We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time’, wrote Melandri, ‘just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us.’ Her letter warned us what to expect next as we tried to abide by the government’s warning that we should ‘stay at home.’

Amongst the experiences that she thought still awaited us, some – like not sleeping well and an unstoppable online social life – had already begun for many of us. So too, for me, had this particular one, which leapt out at me from the page of her article: ‘Old resentments and falling-outs will seem irrelevant. You will call people you had sworn never to talk to ever again, so as to ask them, “How are you doing?”’

As it happened, on the very day that we had gone into lockdown I’d emailed two friends to say how sorry I was about a recent rift over certain business protocols within the organisation to which we had all belonged, and which had led to my resignation. I wasn’t apologising for resigning, which I still consider the most prudent thing to have done in the circumstances. I was sorry though that I’d been motivated largely by fear of the possibility of personal financial liability. I’d acted responsibly but also fearfully. Yet what had seemed important then looked fairly trivial now compared to the fear of dying that many of us are feeling and I needed to say sorry. Unspoken, of course, was the thought ‘I’m telling you this in case I or you don’t survive this pandemic.’

Being in lockdown I’ve found that past and present can telescope. Maybe social media plays a part. On Facebook, old friends and colleagues mingle with your current social circle and everyone shares in the same conversation. Which is why, I suppose, my 2020 resignation began to blur a little in my mind with my exit the previous year from the Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project. I set out my reasons for that at the time in the Church Times and they haven’t changed.

I don’t regret that resignation either, but I do feel extremely sorry that it happened and the circumstances that led to it. No doubt fear played a part on that occasion too. Well, I’m sure it did.

The Church of England’s conversations, processes and guidance about sexuality and gender identity have gone on for decades. Maybe this was partly intended to induce fatigue and to numb us with boredom! Recently, though, the pace has become more frantic and debate frenzied and shrill. It all feels very fearful, with things said online that can’t be unsaid, and that people might want to say sorry for now. I hope so, as apology along with mutual recognition of the sorry state we’re in seem necessary steps towards the reconciliation we all claim to want and to live by.

It’s often said that apology by itself is not enough: that saying ‘sorry’ for the way the Church has treated LGBTI+ people in the past should lead to structural changes that will enable everyone to feel safe in our churches. This may well be true, but saying sorry, and meaning it – because you acknowledge the sorry state of things – seem essential preliminaries to organisational change.

Thethree books I’ve shared in writing over the last five years or so all demonstrate that, while some churches are brilliant at supporting trans people and their loved ones, others have failed miserably. That’s just one example. There’s so much more we all need to say sorry for – and mean it.

Melandri’s letter to the UK, written in love to prepare us for what was to come, only confirmed what many of us were already experiencing – given the scenes of suffering that we’d seen in other countries, images of people’s lives suddenly cut short. I was especially touched by her paragraph about addressing past disagreements, but by the time I read it I’d already said sorry to my friends. Remarkable that it should take a pandemic, life in the shadow of death, to make us do this kind of thing. Or perhaps not. It would be sad to lose this sense of urgency when things ‘return to normal’.

We cannot go back – to change what happened in the past – but we can say sorry for our part in creating the state we are in; and then try to do something about it.

May 12, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…to Being In Control

by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s, Member of General Synod and Vice-Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

Are you old enough to remember this?

A woman is kneeling on the kitchen floor caressing her new fan oven in her lovely large kitchen, while the birthday party behind her descends into chaos abetted by a greedy dog and a very messy set of children’s menu choices. As half the table collapses and spills the carefully prepared food onto the floor, she simply turns away from it all and sighs sweetly, ‘Don’t you just love being in control?’ while making a thumbs-up sign – and a blue flame bursts weirdly out of the top of her thumb.

The thirty-year old advert was for a well-known British gas company. The presumption behind the marketing was that we all want to be in control of our lives, and we will pay good money for it. The underlying (unintended?) message was that our ability to control life is very limited, and we’re only a short step away from the chaos around us which we prefer to pretend isn’t happening.

People with resources – and that probably includes the readers of this blog, because we have access to the internet – may know in theory that we can’t control everything, but that doesn’t stop us trying most of the time to live as though we could manage our way through life. Our phone’s map app that takes us (and hundreds of other drivers) down a quiet road to avoid a traffic hold-up; the carefully planned holiday and child care; the good insurance cover and sufficient savings, and even the spiritual assurance of eternal life, will all see us through.

Till when? Till the unprepared-for comes along, whether a coronavirus or another disease or a relationship breakdown or the loss of income or a natural disaster or terrorism or the combination of Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough speaking out about the environment – and we realise that we’re not in control in the way that we thought we were.

But not being in control is the everyday experience of nearly all of humanity, past and present. A farmer friend of mine said to me many years ago with reference to food supplies, ‘We’re only three days away from anarchy.’ Chronic insecurity has always been our human lot, and history teaches us that the pride of those in control always goes before their fall.

The United Nations estimates that 8% of the world’s population could be pushed into destitution by the end of this year, largely because of the pandemic. It’s not only because of the direct effects of the disease, which the International Rescue Committee fears could kill several million people in countries with poor health systems and large numbers of vulnerable refugees. It’s also the effect of the collapse of distribution systems and export markets. From flower growers in Ethiopia to Bangladeshi garment makers, the International Labour Organisation has warned that over 1.5 billion people are in danger of losing their livelihoods, and therefore food and security for their families. All through no fault of their own.

COVID-19 as an immediate issue is reminding our society of how vulnerable we all are: not only those who live in the UK, but all of us across the world, bound together in complete dependence on one another. This pandemic is a shared global experience which invites us all to face the unsustainability of the world’s complex systems of control, which the global warming crisis underlies; and it’s a challenge to change, to do something about it.

The key to this is relationship. From a Christian perspective, everything depends upon relationship with God, the maker and redeemer of all. The love of God seen in Jesus Christ draws us into relationship with God as our Father and Lord, and changes – or should change – our perspective, from us being in control of our own life to living for the sake of God and others.

If God has made the world and it is good, then we must care for it. Not only for its own sake, but also to enable it to sustain the lives of ourselves and every other person God has made and loves. And if God has made us, and sent Jesus to suffer and die (and so letting go of control), and Jesus has been raised not to exercise power over others but to be good news for each and all of us, then we must care for one another and not make use of or forget anyone.

The pandemic reminds us that our lives are fragile and valuable, all of them. And also that, whatever hopes we might have had for the future, and the sorrow we feel when those we love die or when facing our own death, what matters at the end isn’t being in control, but being in relationship: held in love, in life and in death.

‘Don’t you just love being in control?’

Yes, we do!

But we need the burning love of God above all, and thereby love for our neighbours as ourselves. Which means being those who live in love – and not being those who have to control our lives or the lives of others.

So let’s get over it, and get on with it!

May 8, 2020
We Can’t Go Back..in Our Quest for the “Perfect Service”
by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and lay preacher in the Diocese of Oxford

I’ve found a new way of entertaining my mother, for whom I am also her carer, during the lockdown: discovering what the various churches she has attended over the years are doing in the way of online services.

Last Sunday we visited several, finding a wide range of approaches, including:
- one priest doing the whole thing from their home, including unaccompanied singing (worked well, mainly due to the warmth of their personality which came over strongly)
- one priest doing it all from what appeared to be the church hall, kitted out with an enormous altar/table and masses of candles (useful to have the camera person doing the responses; looked ‘like church’)
- a family in their living room with children wandering around, cutting to another family home where the children sang a song accompanied by their dad on guitar (relaxed, not ‘churchy’, lots of enthusiasm).
Such variety, with everyone doing their best.

While some of us stay with our own church’s services, others are exploring their diocesan service, the weekly Church of England national service or even the Anglican communion service. Beyond services, there are also excellent contemplative online resources like Rumours of Hope; one clergyperson who used this said it was the first Easter in a while that he’d been able to keep the vigil, as he didn’t need to worry about getting up the next morning.

My church has a typical age profile for our diocese. For us, familiarity is what is needed.

Every Sunday now, there’s a short, formal Zoom communion service, led by the vicar who gives the sermon, with members of the congregation doing readings and responses, making it more of a communal effort. Last week, I was one of those members. It was a very odd experience. I’d imagined that we all did our bits and then they were woven together, but in fact we recorded the whole service, other than the hymns, from our homes. A technical problem meant we had to record the middle bit again the following evening (which meant the computer wasn’t in quite the same place, and also I’d started experimenting with my lockdown haircut, but nobody seems to have noticed!).

I find that a pre-recorded service released at a fixed time doesn’t feel like ‘church’. It confuses me; what is ‘performance’ and what is ‘really’ the service, if you’ve done it twice already and then watch it when it goes ‘live’? Maybe something genuinely live would feel better. Father Peter Anthony recently argued that no broadcast is really ‘live’ – there’s always a lag, even of a fraction of a second. Maybe, but in this context I don’t find that helps.

It makes me think of National Theatre Live, and the difference between being at the theatre, watching on the night when it is being streamed, or watching a catch-up recorded from that live version. To me, it’s the Zoom coffee-time that feels more like ‘church’, as people can see each other – the importance of the face as the self – and ask about those who aren’t present and share information on how to make scrubs for the NHS. ‘Church’ exists in the many acts of service which people – church and non-church – provide to their neighbours and communities.

My fellow Christians who watch the service on Sunday don’t seem bothered by these fine distinctions. They are simply grateful. They all thank the person who puts the service together and the assorted contributors, in a way that reminds me of the national representatives at Eurovision who start with ‘Thank you so much, host nation, for a wonderful show’. It is clearly reassuring to hear familiar voices and see familiar faces, suggesting that is part of what ‘church’ is for many people. There’s plenty of theological discussion out there about what ‘spiritual communion’ is, and on whether people should have some bread and wine with them as they watch the video, but our congregation just do what feels right to them.

There are bigger issues to online services than my personal unease.

Accessibility: they are available to a group which is both smaller and bigger than the usual congregation. Smaller, of course, because services exclude those without computer access: but bigger because those who can’t make it to church, for whatever reason, are now included.

Tone: upbeat? Reflective? Mournful? And let’s be honest here: some of us are finding this very, very difficult. I share lots of jolly COVID-19 spoof songs and enjoy free online theatre and lectures, but I also have vivid nightmares and moments of total panic. Single friends remember with longing the last time they ate with another human being for company. Those working in the caring sector, or worried about family and friends, are under great stress. Yet some services respond to lockdown with – great phrase – ‘toxic positivity’, challenging any expression of fear or loneliness with exhortations to be cheerful, to look at the beautiful spring flowers.

It just isn’t that easy for everyone.

Online church also finds it difficult to acknowledge that the economic divisions between us haven’t gone away: we’re not ‘all in this together’. While lockdown alone and lockdown with others both have their problems, lockdown in a 3-bedroom house with a garden is very different from lockdown in a bedsit. I was at a Zoom conference last week where one person was in her camper van because the house was too cramped. At least she had one. Lockdown for someone who can perform their job remotely – and this correlates with those with higher incomes – is very different from lockdown when you are unable to work. Those working normal hours, but doing so by back-to-back video conferencing, find it exhausting.

So what happens next? Having discovered the possibilities of the online world, will we change how we do ‘church’, or return to the old normal?

The thirst for real face-to-face contact, handshakes, hugs, feels very real. For many, for the ‘shielded’, that thirst won’t be quenched any time soon. Mandy Ford pointed out that the return of the activities – both social and ‘church’ – that are currently not available will mean that the pendulum may swing away from online worship and more neighbourliness, just as our currently quiet roads may become even busier than ever before as people avoid public transport and – if they have them – use their cars even more.

There are so many other important issues in our world to which this crisis draws our attention: inclusion, security, personal freedom and the role of the state. While the different ways of doing church in lockdown may reflect what we think church really is, I think we need to work harder to move beyond our internal concerns and join in the debate on the wider issues.

While escorting my mother around various churches made for an interesting morning, I don’t think any of us should be trying to move towards some image of “the perfect service”. Investing our energies in getting our online ‘product’ just right seems to me to completely miss the point that, in the words of a much-quoted article on the virus:

‘Now more than ever, we must abandon the performative and embrace the authentic.’

So how do we welcome both those who are excluded from the online world, and those who are excluded from normal church? How do we offer a place that can acknowledge both despair as well as hope, and pain as well as joy?
May 4, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…A ‘Re-Minder’ To Us All

by the Very Revd Prof Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford

On Easter Sunday, the Archbishop of Canterbury was interviewed for the BBC Andrew Marr Show. Inevitably then, as now, the pandemic dominated the discussion. I was especially taken by this comment from Archbishop Justin:

“once this epidemic is conquered we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all was normal…there needs to be a resurrection of our common life, a new normal, something that links to the old but is different and more beautiful.”

Easter is a Season that says that the world as we know it is turned upside down. Death has no more dominion. There is resurrection and new life. The Old Order has gone; behold, a New Order is born. That is what Christians first believed, and they had every reason to: they experienced the confounding of their old common life. Instead of cherishing the memory of a dead charismatic Galilean preacher and healer, they were faced with something wholly other: a resurrection commanding and creating a new social and moral order. This is Christianity: not simply a personal relationship with Jesus, but a commitment to living our communal life utterly differently from what went before.

From the beginning Christianity was a tactile – yes, even a touching – faith. This new religious movement looked after widows and orphans. It gathered to break bread. It was congregational and social. It redistributed wealth, and gave alms.

In this rather amusing depiction of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, we see the iconic rendering of John 21: 17 in Fra Angelico’s fresco adapted for the pandemic. It is ironic that “noli me tangere” has been inverted like this, because, of course, the resurrection is the fulfilment of the incarnation. In Christ, there is no longer “social distance” between us and God. God chose to dwell with us in Christ in order that we might be one with another and one with God. Coming to us as a child, and ascending as an adult, after the resurrection, the unity expressed is that our life is now bound up with God’s life.

Bringing about the Kingdom of God is therefore what Christian faith is about. It is not supposed to be the Church Preservation Society (good work though such bodies undoubtedly do for our heritage and spirituality). Christianity is a faith of touch, and of bonding. If you don’t believe me, just look at the sheer numbers of people Jesus touches in the gospels. Jesus is the body language of God. He sees the unseen; hears the unheard; speaks for the mute and marginalised; touches the untouchable. The incarnation closes the gap between humanity and divinity. In Christ, there is no more social distance between God and the world.

So, what are we learning about the way forward? I know that in these times, many of us want to do more for others – to make this pandemic more bearable, with its stark economic consequences. Few, if any, will be able to escape some impact. There are health concerns – for ourselves and those we care for and love. Jobs are at risk, as are savings and pensions. Social and physical distancing is testing.

In a few months, this pandemic has dramatically altered societies. COVID-19 has penetrated every culture, class, region and race; and regardless of religious affiliation, sexuality or gender. It has devastated social relations, dismantling ways of expressing warmth and welcome, cruelly robbing mourners of rituals of bereavement and the ability to seek comfort among friends and family – all in our efforts to stem the spread of the virus.

This unthinkable scale of loss, the dramatic measures implemented to prevent further losses, and the vacuum this has left in most of our ‘social lives’, in their broadest and most vital sense, has resulted in a collective experience of trauma and grief. There is much private suffering. There is and shall be enormous structural suffering.

In the midst of this, I expect that you, like me, will have been inspired by stories of medical and care staff bravely and selflessly protecting the public and paying with their lives. And of neighbourhood and community schemes working overtime to care for the isolated and our most vulnerable. Of charities that have stepped in to unforeseen gaps of provision and care. Those at the forefront of care and charity will continue to need our support long after the immediate repercussions of this pandemic are past.

We will need strength, courage and imagination in the days that stretch ahead. Our best resources always lie within us, and are amongst those closest to us, our communities and colleagues. We are as a nation beginning to learn valuable lessons. That the primary purpose of government and leadership is to protect lives, not the economy. Care comes before cash; lives before livelihoods. We will only get ahead of the virus if we put people first. We will have to live differently, if we are to beat the virus rather than follow in its wake.

In the meantime, we are on our own Road to Emmaus. Just as two unnamed disciples found (Luke 24: 13-35), Jesus’ resurrection re-minds us – it changes the way we think and act. As we witness him who was dead, breaking bread before us, we must look forward, not merely backwards.

Now, all over the world, we are being re-minded, and in the recovery of memory, re-membering. But this is no longer just an act of recollection. Rather, re-membering is putting things back together that should not have been taken apart; and putting things together anew – to make a better world.

So, communities have mobilised, and acted where the state cannot function well, if at all. Aid packages, food parcels, spare and vacant flats for healthcare workers are part of this. People are rediscovering service to their neighbours, communities and those who cannot care for themselves. Community drivers, babysitting networks for children of key workers, new ways of teaching, playing and relaxing are all being born. In one city, a “Mums on the Run” group now jogs to fetch medicines for those isolated at home. Without a hint of irony, they re-christened themselves as the “Drug Runners”.

We have already begun to learn some new ways of living as a result of these challenges. A truly charitable heart and a giving attitude is powerful and unstoppable, when it is wedded to serious spiritual and social intelligence. We may be socially distant from one another at the moment. But we are not apart.

Easter calls us to the core of our commitment. We are bonded together in faith, hope and love. We are bonded together to re-member this world of Christ’s, as God would piece it back together. To re-mind the world that resurrection changes our moral and social order. Knitted together in acts of charity, love, service and sacrifice, we discover touching places between our humanity and God’s divinity; between solitude and society. Standing in the midst of this is the resurrected Christ – the sign of God’s overwhelming abundant love and grace that we are bidden to accept and then offer to all. As Archbishop Justin has said:

“once this epidemic is conquered we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all was normal…there needs to be a resurrection of our common life, a new normal, something that links to the old but is different and more beautiful…”

Indeed. Christ is Risen.

May 1, 2020