The Prophet Canoniah.

Steps walked: 8256.

Furthest point travelled: 1 mile. Chapel at the North Middlesex Hospital.

Face to face non-household interactions: 3.

Track of the day: ‘Melancholy Hill’ - Gorrilaz.

            Today would have been day two of my pilgrimage, taking me twenty-something miles from Fenwick to Town Yetholm, and indeed from England to Scotland. I keep wondering what the weather’s like, the views I might have enjoyed; at various moments during the day I’ve paused and wondered, “Where would I have got to by now? How would I see?”

            So praise God for the Prophet Canoniah.

Last year I really began to get into photography. It is changing me. It is changing how I look at the world around me.

It can be all too easy to see the ugliness in life. The litter and the fly-tipping; the people pushing their way past (admittedly, not so much pushing going on at the moment) or shouting at each other in the street; smashed windows and graffiti-ed shop shutters; careless wealth and helpless poverty. It’s all there, it’s all out there; and in a big city like London, it can occasionally feel overwhelming.

Just having a camera with me, changes how I see my environment. Now I’m looking at the colours, contrasts, patterns and textures of my context. Even the broken glass and graffiti can sometimes take on forms of beauty.

In January a second wave of grief at Mum’s death hit me. We’d all been focussed on ‘getting through’ Christmas and New Year and making sure the boys had a good time. And we did get through it, and she hadn’t been there, and those thoughts brought a new sadness. I wasn’t thinking things through in that way, but I suspect that something like that was going on in my heart.

The canary in the mine that made me sit up and pay attention to myself, was the realisation that I’d stopped taking pictures; or rather, I’d stopped seeing anything I wanted to photograph, stopped seeing the colours, contrasts, patterns and textures of life, that make up its beauty.

And photography is about light. Photography is a lot about light – where it comes from, how it falls, the colour it takes, the shadows it leaves, the reflections it causes. When I have my camera with me, I think about light a lot. I look for the light and pay attention to it; I think about the difference it makes and where best to put myself in relation to the light.

Hence, my lowly Canon camera is elevated to the status of Prophet – the Prophet Canon-iah.

For the role of the prophet is to help God’s people see the world anew. The prophet points to the wonder of being a part of a Creation, and the wounds that are caused when we forget or deny that truth. The prophet has a keen sense of the presence of light, and strives to point us to the places where the light may be found.

The Wind in James' Face.

Steps walked: 8439.

Furthest point travelled: 1.5 miles. Family cycle to Firs Farm Wetlands.

Face to face non-household interactions: 3.

Track of the day: ‘Born to be Wild’ - Steppenwolf.

            Some Saturday afternoons we like to cycle over to the Firs Farm Wetlands. It’s a pleasant jaunt, not too far for little legs (and no Susie, I’m not referring to myself here!), and the Wetlands are usually a bit quieter than our nearest park. These short trips usually follow a fairly familiar pattern. We cycle over, and then as soon as we reach the ponds and wide field at the far end of the park, the boys want to stop and runaround-playcricket-climbtrees-catchingpractice-explore-runningraces-repeat.

            This Saturday afternoon we cycled over to those wetlands. However, this trip didn’t follow the fairly familiar pattern. We reached the runaround-playcricket-climbtrees-catchingpractice-explore-runningraces-repeat spot, but instead of stopping, the boys announced that they wanted to keep on cycling. We completed a circuit and returned to the runar… you know the rest; anyway we reached the spot, and again they insisted that they wanted to cycle another lap. Again around we went, and over again.

I was enjoying the ride, I was very much enjoying the ride, but a bit of me was also trying to figure out what was going on with the boys, and why they were uncharacteristically indifferent to stopping and playing.

            It was on maybe the fourth circuit that a penny dropped. Suddenly there were no other cyclists, joggers, dog-walkers or families ahead of us, and at once James accelerated away down that stretched empty path, with wide green on either side. He pedalled faster and faster, and even as I cycled behind him, not able to see his face, I could feel joy like a wave crashing out of him.

            When we were able to talk I asked him what he was enjoying so much about cycling today. ‘The wind in my face’, he answered.

         I think of long walks with my Mum, whose ashes I should have taken home to Scotland this week. I think of her mother, my Gran, who used to love to go to the coast and looking out to sea with the wind in her face, would sigh, ‘It fair blows the cobwebs away.’

            We’re so lucky as a family, the boys are so lucky. We have so much space, we have a garden. But today I saw that even young children realise that space is not freedom, and even at so young an age, the desire for real freedom pulls hard on their hearts.

            In the story of Pentecost, God’s Spirit is experienced as a rushing wind.

            What is it about wind on our face that breathes into our hearts freedom and life?

A moment to be held.

Steps walked: 15061.

Furthest point travelled: 1 mile. North Middlesex Hospital Chapel to support the Chaplaincy Team.

Face to face non-household interactions*: 18.

Track of the day: ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’, Bruce Springsteen.

*On reflection, it was a bit misleading when I was describing the things I was counting as ‘conversations’. It rather risked giving the impression that I wasn’t taking social distancing all that seriously. In fact, what I’m counting, includes talking to the cashier at the supermarket checkout, thanking a delivery driver, saying “Hello” to the staff in my local park. I’m counting them all, because right now it very much feels as if they all count.

            I’d been invited to go and pray with members of one of the teams at the North Middlesex Hospital this morning, as they prepared to start their shift. They’re working at the sharp end, and the sharp end of anything can be painful. I felt quite inadequate to be there with them, almost like an imposter.

            How would I begin to speak? How would I move from their daily briefing, into a space of prayerful silence and benediction, before they then went out to the ward and the realities of their days?

            I went to bed with something of a ‘script’ in my mind, but it had changed by the time I woke up. What follows is what I would have said if I was a more eloquent speaker. What I did say was a kind of ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’ version of the words below – still largely recognisable, but not precisely the same:

            I have two children, they’re aged six and eight. They’re dealing with this changed world remarkably well in this strange time. But my eldest, James, he runs deep, and although he’s fine during the day, it’s almost a nightly occurrence now that around three or four in the morning he’ll wake up, become restless, and then come into bed to sleep next to me. He stays restless, until I hold on to him; when I hold on to him the restlessness ends instantly and he falls deeply to sleep.

            We all need to be held sometimes, and that can be a difficult thing to think about in this time of physical distancing and separation.

            For people of faith, there is that deep sense that we are all held; by God, or the Creator, the Great Power, whatever name we use: love, love is as good a name as any for what holds us, and which never lets us go, no matter what we go through.

            We’re also called to hold on to one another. Holding on to people in your thoughts, your prayers, in your practical actions of healing and care. I’d imagine that’s something you’re very good at.

            And we also need to let ourselves be held sometimes; to be held by others, to allow them to look after us. People whose work is caring for others, aren’t always quite as good as that. You are our NHS heroes; on Thursday nights at eight I ring the church bell vigorously, my boys stand on the doorstep cheering and clapping. But sometimes when we’re heroes, it’s quite difficult to be human too, and to face the frailties of our humanity, the parts which can get tired, which can be vulnerable, afraid sometimes.

            And so I hope that his moment of silence that we’ll share now, will be a moment when we can be human, when we can hold on to one another in prayer, and when we can be held, a moment when we can allow ourselves to be held.