Life During Wartime

Monday was a day of great relief (well, for me), as I was released from seclusion, and of course then went back into it in the evening along with everyone else. On Sunday at 10am I prayed through the short liturgy I'd posted out to everyone on my email list, and strangely felt the prayers of the parish pressing on me. 

I knew Marion had offered the mass at the church with Rick the verger in attendance. This was what I thought might continue, but by the evening it was clear that the Diocese of London was closing churches entirely, and it was only a matter of time before everyone else followed suit, as of course it proved. I am not at all sure about the business of saying mass entirely alone: it should only be done in circumstances of absolute emergency, which I suppose these are. If, confined to the house, I try - and it seems I ought - it will be even more a sign of deprivation. What a desert Lent this is. I've found the bleak Psalms appointed for the season leaping off the page with sharp intensity: they refer to different times, places and experiences, but the same emotions. 

So many of my colleagues are live-streaming and recording masses, and even themselves saying the Office. The discombobulation of the times and the usual distraction that dogs me when saying it alone results in so many mistakes I wouldn't inflict it on anyone though perhaps it might increase my discipline. I think somehow the audio is more intimate, and stripped of so many of our usual forms of activity we strive to find new ones, I suspect.

Phoning round the congregation I discover all sorts of things. Families are ensuring that older relatives are considerably more technologically plugged-in than I tend to be! Within our acquaintance we've had three definite cases of C-19 and many suspected ones, not least my own. Tania the hairdresser told me two of her elderly lady clients have fallen out after arguing whether the current situation was worse than the War or not. 

I went out shopping yesterday and was able to get pretty much everything I wanted. Praying on Sunday morning, I realised that the constant background hum from the A3 some miles away had stopped, and going to the postbox under dead of night the silence was deep, as though this is the middle of the countryside; strangely, it even seemed to smell differently.