The sandwich you will NEVER eat.

Steps walked: 8457.

Furthest point travelled to: 1 mile – North Mid Chapel.

Face to face non-household interactions: 1.

Track of the day: Can’t think of anything tonight.

            This probably belongs with my recent reflections on uselessness, but… yesterday I was looking forward to a tuna-mayo sandwich for lunch. Tuna tin opened and the brine draining away, I discovered to my horror that our fridge was entirely mayonnaise free. What I did spot, however, was a jar of pesto. It’s difficult to unpack my full chain of thought, so let's just jump to the conclusion – I’ve discovered that there’s a reason why you’ve never seen a tuna-pesto sandwich on the menu at your local café.

            …and if you can think of a ‘Thought for the Day’-esque conclusion to my tuna turmoil, then please do post it in the comments. I’m off to give the church bell a good old eight-o-clock-on-a-Thursday-night-thank-you-NHS-ring, and then a beer.

Missing Biscuits.

Steps walked: 9860.

Furthest point travelled to: 0.75 miles – jog in the park.

Face to face non-household interactions: 3.

Track of the day: ‘These Boot Are Made For Walking’ – Nancy Sinatra.

            If I’ve already said this, forgive the repetition, but my two boys are Amazing. Four times a week they’re filling in for an entire congregation, and their grumbles are few and far between. They have become so familiar with the liturgy now, that they can offer their responses without even lifting their heads up from whatever book they’re absorbed in. I hope this isn’t going to put them off worship for life!

            After celebrating the Eucharist together today one of them (and this is probably a time for some anonymity – protective shielding if you like) said: ‘Daddy, I really miss church. At first I just missed the biscuits, but now I really miss the people too.’

            (Look, just hang on to the fact that he misses you, and don’t be dwelling on the implication that you’re second in his affections to ginger nuts.)

            In spite of all the humour of what he said, honestly, you needed to be there: his tone of voice and his downcast expression made it sorrowfully clear to me that what he was saying was really heartfelt. The church feels big and empty, and we’re missing each other.

            Assuming that you are in fact missing ‘going to church’, what is it that you’re missing? And more broadly, what are you missing in life right now?

            I’m missing so many things about our church life together, but the thing I’m probably feeling the absence of most, is the shape that Sunday gives to the whole of my week. Mondays and Tuesdays invariably involve responding to pastoral needs and practical problems that have come to light on a Sunday morning. Parts of my every Thursday and Friday are about making sure that everything is ready for Sunday’s celebration. In terms of where my time goes week by week, Sunday morning and the preparations for it are just one small part of the whole; but that one small part is like the centre of gravity which gives the rest of the week its shape.

            More broadly the thing I’m missing is a sense of freedom. I can’t tell you how many times a week I want to go for a walk, just for the sake of it. Three times a week I go for a jog, I take the boys cycling twice a week, helping out at the North Mid gets me out regularly – I know I’m very fortunate. However, this desire to go out for a walk around the block is such a novel and powerful feeling that I realise that it’s not really about the walk at all, it’s about the sense of liberty. Because I can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, I just want to open the front door and meander, with no particular place to go.

            What are you most missing?

I think we might all find some value in making a note for ourselves of the things we’re missing during this lockdown; it seems to me that one of the gifts of this time of crisis, is that it’s shining a clear, true light on the things we most value. My worry is, that as and when some normality returns, we’ll all too soon forget what we’ve learned and find ourselves swept up all over again by things that really don’t matter so much.

            A friend of mine is learning that there’s more to Sunday morning than biscuits.

            What are we learning?

            What will we remember?

Useless.

Steps walked: 1633.

Furthest point travelled: Front door to get the post.

Face to face non-household interactions: 0.

Track of the day: ‘Wrecking Ball’ – Bruce Springsteen.

            Useless.

            The first person I heard use the word in this new covid-world was a hospital worker. It was four or five weeks ago, and they were frustrated at and exhausted by the scale of the suffering they were seeing around them on every shift. The frequency with which the coronavirus was defeating their immense efforts to bring healing, led them to say to me, ‘Sometimes I just feel useless.’

            Now it feels like a word that I’m hearing almost daily. Friends say it, colleagues say it, I’ve experienced  it, the times when we just feel useless.

            It’s probably worth acknowledging that there’s some honesty in feeling useless at times, because at times that’s exactly what we are. For me, that sense of uselessness is most keenly felt when responding to bereavements just now. So many of the things that are central to my ‘normal’ response to bereaved parishioners are no longer possible; no visits, no arm around the shoulder, handshake or hug, no opportunity to offer a service in their church. I find myself trying to offer solace down a phoneline, and then standing in front of a handful of mourners all sitting in numb isolation, and the two metres between them is a gulf.

            I take a strange kind of hope in the uselessness of so much that I do.

            The pilgrimage I’m supposed to be making right now from Lindisfarne to Iona; what would the use of that have been? It would have been good for my physical fitness (and good for Scotland’s hospitality sector), but what is the use of visiting sacred places per se? Why be in Lindisfarne rather than Lewisham? What’s the use?

One of ‘The Rules’ (https://pilgrimscairn.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-rules.html) I’m trying to follow involves stopping to pray at fixed points throughout the day, but where is the actual ‘use’ of that at a time like this?

            My faith is, that some of these seemingly useless activities are amongst the most important things I can do with my time. There is a deep human need to have and to honour sacred places; places whose stories and whose soil give us fertile ground in which to root and interpret the stories of our own lives; so wishing no disrespect to Lewisham, it can’t quite be for me what Lindisfarne is.

The discipline of stopping to pray, and making that place of stillness and smallness part of the rhythm of the day, helps us to recognise that giving value to our ‘being’ helps us most fully to achieve the things that we’re supposed to be ‘doing’… and also helps us to find the grace to know that we can’t do everything, and that’s okay.

            To be made ‘useless’ from time to time can help to remind us that we are loved and valued not because of what we can do, but simply because there is a God Who loves us anyway. Rooted in that love we can survey the chaos again, and see with fresher eyes the use that we can be.