The dietary preferences of centipedes.

Steps walked: 8,774.

Furthest point travelled to: 3.2 miles – Enfield Crematorium.

Face to face non-household interactions: 6.

Track of the day: ‘To Cut a Long Story Short’ – Spandau Ballet.

              “What do centipedes eat?”, asked Barnaby. As is the case with most of his questions, Daddy has no idea.

              I often carry a little digital recording device with me. I bought it ten years ago for my pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne. The recorder would sit in my jacket pocket, and whenever I had some great moment of spiritual illumination I’d whip the recorder out and preserve the moment: in the evening, over a pint or two, the recorded thoughtlets would get pulled together into some sort of coherent whole and posted on this blog.

              After the pilgrimage the recorder was left neglected and unloved, but thanks to my boys it has had something of a revival. A point was reached, when I realised that every journey to school featured at least one or two questions which left me absolutely stumped. The digital recorder returned to my jacket pocket, so that those vexatious enquiries could be preserved, and when the children came home in the evening Wikipedia would be consulted.

              The Bible is often thought of as a place to find answers, but it also features lots of very good questions. I like that about the Bible.

              The people who have been my best mentors and guides over the years, have been people who have known how to ask good questions, tough questions sometimes.

              We are in a season of doubt and questioning. How do we stop the spread of the coronavirus? When will there be a vaccine? How will contact tracing work and how effective can it be? Should we wear face masks in public? What businesses and public venues can be re-opened safely? What will the long-term economic impact of all this be? When it finally arrives, what will the ‘new normal’ really be like?

              Like just about everyone else in the country, we have our smaller domestic questions too, which are trivial by comparison but which look quite large when you’re living close up to them. When might we move parish? Will we be able to say goodbye to friends in the ways we’d like to? What is going to happen about the boys’ schooling?

              Just as we have questions about this pandemic, so the pandemic is asking questions of us. What do we most value in life, what are we most missing? What are we learning about ourselves and about our community? What strengths are we discovering we have, and what vulnerabilities?

              Sometimes true faith is about asking our hard questions, and sometimes it’s about facing the hard questions that life asks of us.

          Centipedes, at least the ones we’re likely to find in our garden, largely eat earthworms.