Cri de Coeur

After conducting a funeral earlier today, I'm not as miserable as I was at the start of the day; but though I joke to colleagues about having episodes where I feel 'everything I do is pointless, I'm going into the garden to eat worms', and much as I know those feelings existed long before the Current Crisis, our conditions don't help. 

Yesterday involved too many encounters with technology. A Deanery meeting over Zoom was followed by two Microsoft Teams gatherings in the evening. I thought I left myself ample time to get into the Infants School governors' meeting, but managed to join for thirty seconds before the computer froze completely. It took more than 25 minutes to gain access again; I think it had something to do with being offered two separate methods of opening Teams and picking at first both, then the wrong one. The wrong one for the school meetings seems to be the right one for the Air Cadets. My computer is probably too elderly to cope with this as effectively as it should.

But not as elderly as ex-Lay Reader Lillian's: she still operates in Windows 8 and asking her to record a Bible reading for this week's audio service turned out more problematic than it seemed. In the end I went down the hill and handed my laptop to her through the doorway so she could record her bit and then give back to me. 

I have tried to work out how to link my phone to Facebook Live, and failed. On my own, I gave up when the Motorola website advised 'to proceed with this you must enable Feature X' and presented me with a link; clicked on, the link took me to a page which informed me 'Feature X is not available'. Dr Bones tried to help, but for whatever reason the features she can see on her phone don't appear on mine. 

Other churches stage massive Zoom services and this and that. Some of my colleagues post photos online showing how they've managed to mock up the Sacre-Coeur in their spare bedrooms and got twenty thousand hits every time they post videos of themselves saying Vespers. Fr Thesis operates a food bank from his church and has been recording Youtube assemblies for his parish school. Fr Donald at Elmham has conducted six COVID-related funerals. Alice Whalley has written in the Church Times about dealing with the flow of needy people arriving on her London vicarage doorstep 'because they didn't know where else to turn', while she hands out food, tops up phones, and re-bandages an ulcerous leg. 

In my ten years here, I have had precisely one person turn up unexpectedly on the doorstep asking for help with food. Since lockdown began, I've offered to help at the school and been told it's not necessary; have asked whether they need extra assistance at the food bank and was informed they're fine, thank you; and responded to the diocese's appeal for temporary hospital chaplains only to hear nothing back after submitting my details. I suppose I shouldn't complain - but, reprehensibly, I do!