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Posts Tagged ‘lockdown’

An Old Hat Life

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 2 March, 2021| 5 Comments »

It’s been a struggle to write this blog, this Lent, this #lentowrimo. Last Lent the pandemic had only just started, lockdown was looming, and then began. There were things to speculate about – what was going to happen, how the world was going to cope. There were new things to negotiate – social distancing, online church, finding a source of flour, developing a sourdough starter, advanced baking, homeschool protocols.

This Lent, it’s all old and wearying. We’ve had more than enough of homeschool. We’re fed up of not hugging people. I’ve not made sourdough for months, despite having enormous bags of flour stashed away. It’s been winter for months and months, and I still have toothache.

I had things to talk about last year. But I’m struggling this time around. Life is mostly all old hat.

An Old Hat (Photo by Yulia Rozanova on Pexels.com)

The more interesting things I’m doing are non-bloggable, as often seems to happen in life. I don’t write about everything, you’ll be shocked and amazed to hear (not). One of the dangers of our online lives is the way we curate them. We only tell part of the story – to protect ourselves or to shield others, to present ourselves as we want to be seen. But as we’ve lived so much more of our lives online of late, I’ve seen more of that part telling going on. I’ve done it myself. I’m more than the sum of my blogging and my Twitter feed. I am truthful online. But I don’t tell everyone everything. It’s only a glimpse of Vicarage life. So there are other stories here, but I’m sorry to say that they are staying here.

So tonight’s post is just me saying nothing much, because there’s nothing much that I can say from my small quiet life online and in the Vicarage. Thank you for listening in to me saying almost nothing though. Maybe I’ll find something a bit new hat tomorrow.

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Complexity and Information

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 22 February, 2021| 3 Comments »

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is complexity. The complexity of our society and economy has been made clear as the government has made decisions during the pandemic which have had unforeseen consequences. They’ve not had enough information about every single person and their situation as they’ve tried to make provision for people in lockdown. So there have been changed plans and new initiatives as things have become clearer. The individual histories and situations of each person in a nation is almost impossible to imagine and to grasp. A very interesting thread on Twitter from Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, outlined how pandemic policies backed up by databases – information – have been far more successful than those without.

Life is complicated! (Pexels.com)

I’m not in government (thankfully!) but I am involved with some other complex and difficult situations. And I can see that decisions, or pronouncements about decisions, are often made without enough information, and certainly without all the information. It’s a blessing of aging, of experiencing difficulties and struggles as well as joy, that you gain a much bigger grasp of complexity. That you learn to see the politics, the relationships and the history behind things. I find that I often feel overwhelmed as I get a glimpse of complexity, especially where there are decisions to be made.

But that has also given me a bigger vision of the greatness of the LORD, who sees everything from the beginning to the end, who has all the information, in all its complexity. He is never overwhelmed, he grasps all the politics, the relationships and the history. Praise God for his understanding of all that he has made.

The Lord looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.

Psalm 33:13-15

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Blanket Zooming

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , on 16 February, 2021| 3 Comments »

Like many others, I’m spending a fair amount of time on Zoom this year. This afternoon was an encouraging couple of hours in a meeting, but I find it much harder to concentrate in Zoom meetings than in flesh and blood ones. So to keep myself from major distraction I have a new blanket project. The kit was a gift from our friend Dreamer and has been very useful for meetings over this latest lockdown.

How do you concentrate on Zoom?

Such great Spring colours

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Strange Days, Strange Place

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , on 8 April, 2020| 2 Comments »

I’ve seen a few people online commenting that this strange season is subjecting us all to culture shock. So much has changed for everyone – we are all living very different lives to what has been normal for us. Things are so changed for us all. And it reminded me of a post I wrote about moving here to the parish – and some things the Vicar and I learnt when we moved to Kuala Lumpur many years ago.

twintowers

The culture shock I’ve experienced before – moving to different countries and to different cities – has taken much longer to kick in. But I think that being in the same place and yet nothing being the same has compressed the experience. A couple of weeks into lockdown and it no longer feels like a slightly odd holiday. The boys are now fed up of not going to school. And the steep tech learning curve is exhausting, and trying to find new ways of connecting with people isn’t a fun alternative any more, but frustrating and awkward.

So, as in my original reflection on culture shock, I’m reminded that this world is not my home; here I’m a ‘foreigner and exile’ (1 Peter 2:11). Suffering culture shock should make me look to my heavenly home, and focus on the place I really belong. This week we remember those days when the Lord Jesus gave himself for us. He gave up his true home to tread the path to the cross – and on to glory. And so I can stumble along in this strange new world, remembering that whether things are strange or even just ‘normal’ I’m here in exile. My home is now with Christ, because of the cross and the glory he won there for his people.

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Holy Week, Hobbling Along

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 7 April, 2020| 2 Comments »

I didn’t manage to finish a blog last night – the first #lentowrimo post I’ve missed. My brain just wasn’t functioning – the third week of lockdown has felt exhausting and overwhelming. We were meant to be on holiday this week – at Word Alive with thousands of other believers. But here we are, still in the Vicarage and not in glamorous Prestatyn, hearing helpful Bible talks and meeting up with dear friends.

We’re here serving the parish online and over the phone, helping at the foodbank and wrangling Zoom with people who struggle with technology. We’re here following the way of Christ. We’re here, looking to our Lord, who trod the way of the cross, exhausted and overwhelmed. So this Holy Week, I’m hobbling along, aware of my fragility, like the daisies which have bloomed in the Secret Field this week. But the blessing of Holy Week is that it goes through the cross to the resurrection. The perishable becomes imperishable. The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of the Lord endures forever.

[Text on yellow disc over picture of white/yellow daisies on green grass] For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures for ever.’

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Numbering

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 1 April, 2020| 1 Comment »

Today we went back down to the Secret Field with the boys and the Vicarage Hound, the tennis ball and the floppy frisbee ring. And I vowed to be a little less languid today, so I walked around the field in a rather more energetic fashion than I did yesterday.

Yesterday when we returned I checked out the pedometer app on my phone. And from a frankly embarrassing daily average, I had raised my game significantly by taking just a couple of laps. So today I increased my field laps and upped my step count. A better number. And now, of course, I will have to do another extra lap on tomorrow’s Secret Field trip so I can count more. Who knows how many daily steps I’ll be doing be doing by the end of the lockdown? I’m not sure I’ll match Martin Lewis, but perhaps I’ll get a taste for increasing pedometer scores.

There are so many numbers about at the moment – graphs and totals are filling my timelines, some people are counting days since the lockdown and calculating days to go until some sort of loosening of restrictions. Numbering something else feels like a good distraction: 4426 yesterday, 5062 today.

Right numbering is always important, but perhaps even more so in this season. I’m praying that I’ll learn how to number my strange days right and gain a heart of wisdom.

[Text over photo of cut tree trunk] So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

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Exercised

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 31 March, 2020| Leave a Comment »

The boys have been somewhat resistant to exercise that isn’t the gym, taekwando, bouldering or school sports. But today we insisted they venture outside with us and the Vicarage Hound. They emerged, blinking, into the afternoon and we all went down to the secret field, hidden just at the top of the park, near to the gate where we come in. In deference to the Engineer’s desire to not actually really walk anywhere we took a tennis ball and the favourite floppy ring frisbee and installed ourselves in the field.

The Vicarage Hound is very keen on the frisbee, which he can catch in the air, and loves to shake vigorously to ensure its complete surrender. The Vicar and the boys threw the frisbee around and the Vicarage Hound ran between them, at full racing tilt, occasionally successfully grasping the prey and then looping around the field to remind us all that he is by far and away the fastest runner in the family.

I am a little embarrassed to report that I, meanwhile, walked gently round the outside of the field, looking at Spring flowers and tree buds. Although I was taking my exercise more gently, I did have to bellow instructions when the Vicarage Hound took an impressive tumble on an unsuccessful mission to take the frisbee in the air. In his usual fashion when sustaining a minor injury, he held his paw up and whimpered pathetically. No amount of patting on the back was enough to comfort him. The boys had not realised that a sore foot requires attention. You have to look at it properly like a medic called out to a footballer clutching a hamstring. Then you have to stroke the afflicted leg tenderly before the hound will even attempt putting it back on the ground. This is then followed by a limping walk for ten paces or so until, to everyone’s relief, normal service is resumed.

After all the dashing about, and the pseudo injury, the Vicarage Hound took a well earned rest on the grass whilst the rest of us continued with our vigorous and not so vigorous exercise. He has barely moved all evening, and the boys have been much jollier, so I think we were successful in our government mandated exercise: happy teens and dog make for a far better lockdown.

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Wrangling with Week Two

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , on 30 March, 2020| 1 Comment »

Into the second week of lockdown and, in common with the rest of the country I’m sure, things are somewhat unravelling here in the Vicarage.

The Engineer has had to deal with double woes today, not even including having to do homeschool. Since there are no leaving things on the bus woes at the moment, we have had to find them somewhere else. And so it proved. Last night he’d left his headphones on his computer screen and caught his feet in the wire, pulling the screen over onto its face. When he came down this morning he found that the screen was completely borked. There’s a new one on its way, but until then there will be some less pleasing gaming, which is important when you’re 15.

After recovering from that shock, he took solace in playing the piano, only to find that the D and E flat keys above middle C were sticking together. I’ll not tell you how the Vicar dealt with the sticking keys, in case you know anything about pianos ought to be mended, but now the D doesn’t play at all but at least it doesn’t play the wrong note. We can live with that until the piano tuner is allowed out again.

Anyway, after that start, I asked the Vicarage Hound what he thought about it all. And he gave a very considered opinion. Since I last blogged WordPress has disabled videos, so I’m afraid you’ll have to click through, but I think what he has to say is worth hearing.

Blond lurcher looking thoughtful

The Vicarage Hound being thoughtful

 

 

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Homeschool, Homegroup and Home Hair

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 24 March, 2020| Leave a Comment »

We’re settling into a new normal here in the Vicarage, as I expect many of you are. And in the second day of homeschool a certain amount of disillusionment has set in. Turns out that learning Tudor church history from a textbook is not that easy. But then we discovered that if you read it to yourself out loud and record it, you can actually concentrate on Henry VIII’s vacillations about communion without being distracted by squirrels.

The day finished with our small group meeting over Zoom. Although a couple of members couldn’t join us – it’s going to take a while to get everyone up to speed with the technology. But we also had the blessing of a group member who can’t usually attend because he lives too far away. I think that many churches will be doing many things – including groups – differently when this is all over.

What I won’t be doing differently in the future is my hair. I like my haircut. But for now it is certainly going to be different. I called my hairdresser to make an appointment a couple of weeks ago because it was getting a bit long, but she was off with a bad back. So I was wondering what to do about my fringe and had been thinking about finding someone else to do it. And now I can’t do anything! Except ask the Vicar or one of the boys to cut it *nervous face*. I have thick hair in a shortish bob and a heavy fringe so when it grows I start to resemble Hamish the Highland Cow, a firm favourite with our kids when they were young. I don’t keep toffees in there though. Yet.

Hamish

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Locking Down, Lamenting in Hope

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 23 March, 2020| 1 Comment »

So when I restarted this blog back on 26th February, just 26 days ago, no-one would have imagined that by time Lent was hardly half done we’d all be locked down, that church would be shut, that weddings and baptisms would be forbidden, that the Vicar would be recording Bible reflections and Morning Prayer to YouTube and Facebook and that all our meetings would be happening on an app I had barely heard of until a few months ago.

And I also didn’t realise that my reflections on coping with a messy head would actually become tips for coping with the weirdness of a global pandemic. I had a messy head about other life things, but now Covid19 has come along to mess with all our heads. So much is not normal. So much is strange. The boys are home schooling. The Queen is sat in her student flat with the campus almost empty. Our days are revolving around video uploads and contacting parishioners online and over the phone.

The Vicar’s reflection tonight was about lament, and there is so much to lament at the moment: the removal of the normal, the deaths that have come and will come, the battles faced by medical staff, the struggles of businesses, the increase in domestic violence, the anxiety and the disruption. And we are lamenting and will continue to do so as this virus causes pain and trouble.

And yet we are people of hope here in the Vicarage and in this parish. God’s people under siege in Jerusalem so many years ago could say that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. And we can say it too. We are waiting here too. Waiting quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

[Text in green circle over photo of hawthorn blossom] The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord..

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