‘It’s so good to have some normality for a while’, more than
one set of parents said to me at today’s Messy Church at Swanvale Halt. Yesterday
it was touch-and-go whether we would hold it and I didn’t decide until gone
7pm. Sandra the Messy Church leader was ambivalent; I headed up the hill to
speak to Marion the curate and couldn’t get any answer at the house despite ringing
both doorbells, and knocking. It turned out both she and her son were inside at
the time. She didn’t hear at all, while Saul apparently commented that he ‘thought
he heard someone at the door’ but in typical teenage boy fashion didn’t conclude
that he should do anything about it. Anyway, in that moment I decided Messy
Church ought to go ahead. If there are about 10,000 coronavirus cases in the
UK, the chances that any of them would be there were about 130 to 1, I
reckoned. Another week, and things would have been different. A last hurrah
before the curtain descends on relative normalcy.
Earlier in the evening I’d had to rewrite my pastoral letter
to the church on the subject after the Church of England issued new guidance.
This was to stop offering refreshments after services, to empty fonts and holy
water stoups, and to suspend taking a collection. The guidelines also mention
hanging up vestments ‘which might become contaminated’ for 48 hours after use. I
think this refers to chasubles you might inadvertently have sneezed or coughed
on, rather than any old bit of tat, otherwise it’s a bit much. All this stuff
about handling things is pretty marginal, after all: it’s the droplets of fluid
from nose and mouth which probably carry the infection, and sheer proximity of
human beings breathing in each other’s microbes is more of an issue than
handling the teacups. Whether to gather at all is the question.
Apart from Messy Church, I spent a good part of today
looking through the template ‘Continuity Plan’ the diocese has sent out, and a
version knocked up by one of our larger evangelical neighbour churches. The Plan is partly lists of names, of who is responsible for this and that aspect of
church life and who might deputise for them, but also demand that we ponder
imponderables, such as what will happen if our ‘suppliers’ are unable to meet
their obligations; well, if they are Charles Farris, we can probably manage
without the odd candle, but the services of the water company will be harder to
cope without, and it probably isn’t our place to think about.
Otherwise I make all the usual observations on the situation
that you will have heard, such as marvelling that everyone I ever hear remark
about it deprecates panic shopping, thus raising the question of who is
actually doing it; and wondering what would happen if modern Britons ever did
face an actual existential crisis, rather than this mild dose of Reality Flu.
Here Lies the Stiff Upper Lip.
However I also notice that there is among people
I know a psychological divide between catastrophism and complacency. I suppose
it shouldn’t be a surprise that the individuals who are most exercised about
this plague are also the ones who express most dismay about climate change,
while if you are sceptical about one, you tend to be about both (there is a
partial exception for the climate change campaigners who think coronavirus is
drawing attention away from the big picture). Equally, you might find the same kind of bitter pleasure in both, that apocalyptic frisson religious people know too well.
I am going to stop measuring the national
temperature, which is no more productive than constantly checking my own. There
is, sad to say, no single article online which is going to help me judge
whether the UK government is right or wrong in its approach to the crisis,
nothing to settle what I might think or feel one way or another. I can predict
the outcome no more than I can tell in advance, when I look out at the depleted
congregation tomorrow, whose funerals I will be taking by the end of the year –
assuming, low probability that it is, that it will not see my own.
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