Companionship Anniversary
Good morning,
Exactly two years ago, on 15 March 2020, I sent the first Companionship email. This was to offer support and encouragement as our lives became more isolated as pandemic restrictions increased almost daily. The emails, written by other members of the Chaplaincy team and guests as well as me, went out every day for three months or so, and every so often since. They are also put on the Chaplaincy webpages as blogposts found here: https://chaplaincycompanionship.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/category/companionship-blog/
Of course more has happened in two years than the progress of the coronavirus – the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, wars in Ethiopia, Nagorno Karabagh and elsewhere, Cop 26 and increasing deadly evidence of climate change, and of course the invasion of Ukraine. But for many in our community, Covid has been the overwhelming frame for our experience since March 2020. I hope both that existing constraints in Scotland will be eased next week, and that the worst of the illness worldwide has passed.
This semester I am taking an online evening class at Glasgow University on Creative Writing as Spiritual Practice. Last week we were asked to write a psalm of thanksgiving on any subject. As the second anniversary of the first lockdown approached, this is what I wrote:
Psalm of Thanksgiving
O God,
whose world is criss-crossed every year
by swallows, terns and whales,
by sleek dreamliners and heavy-laden ships,
we call to mind this recent two-three years
when our fellow-creature Covid
commanded wind and wave,
creeping into every cranny of our planet,
following plagues and flus with deadly skilled recurrence.
The list of what not to thank you for seems long,
and other psalms lament much loss and grief,
the pain of isolation,
unvisited death-beds,
cramped, disfigured rites.
And yet throughout this earthly pilgrimage
from Wuhan to where we are,
there were and are side-trips, new discoveries, corners turned and resting places
surely from your hand…
Those early days, walking the Lade Braes
by cherry blossom massing against skies miraculously blue despite the news,
hearing birdsong without the drone of vans and cars on City Road, Hepburn Gardens and Abbey Street,
discovering paths that God’s work hadn’t allowed the time to take;
or encountering a friend and pausing a Donald apart
(for I’m two metres tall give or take an inch)
and having time to pass more than the time of day,
to learn what isolation meant for his life,
to hear how lockdown was with her soul;
or offering day-long laps to Tobit, Hephzibah and Poppy;
or the unencumbered joy of not going out and having to be nice for Jesus’ sake;
or laughter at the things we thought essential: cannellini beans, tins of chopped tomatoes, broccoli;
or Compline zoomed with a dozen candles lighting my laptop screen.
And all the while others gave their lives in service to our species,
intubating, catheterizing, turning, washing, holding,
laying out;
and discovering within molecular profusion
new saints canonised with marvellous speed:
the blessed Astra Zeneca, Moderna and St Pfizer.
O God,
we know bubonic plague and Spanish flu
still travel here and there,
and this coronavirus is not done yet,
but we give thanks for your companionship throughout it all,
creatively consoling and cajoling,
by the Spirit of your Son
who criss-crossed all our planet faces
and lives to fly another and another day.
Yours,
Donald.