More playing with colour

Gratitude

Some years I have found a way to do Lent well, other years not so much.

This year, way back in the different existence we inhabited at the time, I set myself a gratitude challenge: each day I would record three things for which I was grateful: the big things or the small. I bought a notebook. I tried to slot it into a routine.

There were rules. Only three and always three: no more than that on the good days, no fewer, either on tougher days or days when I didn't feel I had enough time to think about it. And no 'buts', or 'even better ifs': I was to record only the positives, without qualifying it with the doubts or hesitations or slight negatives on the side.

And I stuck with it. We have now entered the Easter season, and in theory, therefore I should have laid that little notebook to one side. But there are still blank pages, and the need to seek out, or to remember to recognise things for which to be grateful is still here, so, for now at least I am continuing. I have found my 'gratitude diary' has become a mixture of recording my appreciation of the things I still have, and the things I've lost, but have perhaps learned to appreciate more for their absence. In the midst of uncertainty and challenge, it feels valuable to make space to remember how much I have to be grateful for.

Since the beginning of Lent, the things I have to be grateful for in my daily life have in one sense, changed quite considerably. Small things have taken on renewed significance. My days, like everyone else's, look very different.

In another sense, though, the common threads which run through this record have scarcely changed at all: finding beauty; the practicalities and privileges which facilitate my comfortable life; the importance of relationships with others. I hope that this discipline of keeping this record will help me to continue to make space to remember to be grateful for these things, whatever form and shape they take.

Zoom Squares

On Easter Sunday morning, I got up early to watch the sun rise over the city. Despite my later tiredness, I was very glad I did. Birmingham, silent beneath a colourful sky fading from darkness to light, is beautiful.

As I watched, this phrase, "The earth still turns and the sun still rises" came to me: I think I was struck by something of the things that remain certain when the whole world seems to have been turned upside down.

That, I thought, is the beginning of a poem.

It was, but by the time it came together it didn't include those words, despite my best efforts to shoehorn them back in somehow. Perhaps there's another one waiting to be written at some point. Perhaps not.

In the meantime, that became this.

(*Despite not particularly liking the sound of my own voice, I think it works better listened to than read so ...)

It is here, perhaps

In this the space

Where everything changes

That we discover

That these the cords

Which tied us down

Were

In fact

The bonds which bound us

To a reality

We at least kind of understood

The anchor

Now cut adrift 

From all we thought we knew

To be true

We don't quite know

Where we will go

But we will find

We're intertwined

With others who

Apart, together

Still turn me

Towards you

Suddenly

Almost overnight

All these the people

Who once were

Flesh and blood

With outstretched arms

And hugs

To hold us close

Became

Zoom Squares

Just

Moving pictures on a screen

And yet

Though slightly out of focus

From that we thought we knew

They smile at us

And we at them

And so

While we may freeze or falter

We realise

The connections has not

In fact

Been lost

And there is hope

Because

They still turn me

Into us.

Adjusting to a new reality

It's about a month since I last posted anything on here. As always, there are a few unfinished drafts which may or may not see the light of day at some point ... but suddenly most seem less relevant to the strange new reality in which we find ourselves. In one sense it feels like hyperbole to suggest 'everything has changed' but actually, it kind of has: and it means that I feel like to write something, it has to, at least somehow relate to this new situation. Perhaps that will change, when this becomes our mundane reality, but that's not how it feels right now. And so here I am, just one more person casting their disparate and at times dysfunctional thoughts about life in the pandemic into the ether, perhaps as nothing more than a reminder to myself, in times to come, of how it felt to be caught up in the story of this generation.

As it became increasingly obvious that, some point soon, we'd be heading to a time of increased physical distancing and lock-down, my brain was teeming with ideas of things that I would do with all the extra time I found myself with: jobs that had been hovering at the bottom of jobs lists for a very long time, creative projects, more writing: I nearly posted an apology on here for the inevitable deluge of blog posts to follow.

You'll have noticed. This has not been the case.

Time has become a strange paradox of stretching indefinitely into emptiness and flying by as quickly as ever. Whole days seem to disappear with the same struggle to fit everything I want to do in. No change there then: but it is not how I expected this time to feel.

In some ways, life looks very, very different to it did a month ago, but in other ways, not as much as I thought it might. My energies have, for the most part, been directed exactly where they always were: towards building relationships and community with those I love and care about. There's still some stuff that could be very loosely defined as teaching mixed in. The fact that the format is very different, and I, like the rest of the world, have discovered new depths of appreciation for technology, has not detracted from my first priority in my new routine and reality being sustaining human connection.

I abandoned the term social distancing almost as soon as it had become common parlance: this is not, I suggest, what any of us need right now. Physical distancing, certainly, but that is a very different thing. I know that the last thing I need right now is to feel more socially distant from my communities I would say it is part of the human condition to need social connection, perhaps even more so in times of uncertainty and crisis. We are made for togetherness. Perhaps the imposed separateness has given many of us a renewed appreciation for this need.

Despite the reality of almost no physical face-to-face contact (answering the door to the postman has become one of the highlights of my day, I kid ye not!) there have definitely been times when I have felt almost overwhelmed by the quantity of social contact. There is, perhaps a certain increased intensity inherent in continuing conversations and 'holding space' online rather than in person. Overall though, I am pleased with how my (virtual) social connectedness is shaping up.

I know myself well enough to know that a sense of purpose is deeply important to me. I know how much I would struggle to feel I wasn't able to contribute or make a difference: it was one of my biggest fears as we headed towards this strange new reality. For different people, I am sure the approach of lockdown presented very different things to stress about for different people. This was mine. When so much of my raison d'etre is focused around human encounter, what would I still have to offer from being tucked away in a corner?

I am deeply grateful that the reality has felt much more constructive than some of my concerns beforehand suggested. Much of what I am committing my time and energy to has, I hope, great value for those towards whom it is directed: but I make no illusions that this is entirely altruistic. All this reaching out in support of others is also fulfilling a deep need in me. I had twinges of guilt about that to start with as I questioned my own motivations.

This is not the first time I have wrestled with such a thing, working out how to justify whether roles which bring me great joy and fulfillment can really be called work. But I think I have made peace with it, at least for now, at least in the context. I don't think it detracts from the good I can offer others if it also gives me life: on the contrary, perhaps it is this which will make it more sustainable. Perhaps it is this which confirms it is vocation.

Now I've started writing, I have a number of other tangentially related things I think I want to say, but this post is probably already long enough, so maybe that's for another day.