Month: April 2020

A nice morning for going out on a short people-avoiding walk around the block.

Just been looking at the BBC website, and stuff about the virus Reproduction Rate. Apparently, R is about 3 with no restrictions, and 0.7 with lockdown. So, if we’re still in the exponential phase (which we will be until there’s a vaccine, or most people get it), then at a rough calculation(*) you need 3 days of lockdown for every day of freedom, in order to maintain parity – and obviously you would want to maintain parity at much much lower levels than the current horrifying total.

It’s not as simple as that of course. The good news is that when numbers are lower, you can make an attempt at contact tracing and perhaps get a clean sweep in some areas. Things are patchy, too. The spread of the virus in different populations is different. Once it gets in a care home, it’s very difficult to get it out again. Protective measures can be applied in a way that responds to conditions.

But all in all, it’s a horrible time, and decisions are hard.

* 0.7^3 * 3 = 1.029 (i.e. near enough 1)

God of love,
we pray for the people of this nation
and all nations.
Bring healing for the sick,
comfort those who grieve.
Give wisdom and strength
to people with hard decisions to make.
Help us all to deal with what we face now.
May all people who suffer
know the companionship of Christ.

Strange but wonderful yesterday to see our government marking International Workers’ Memorial Day.

At the same time the grim reality comes home to thousands of families.

God protect your children
in our coming out and our going in,
in sickness and in health,
in conviviality and in isolation.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Just a reminder that today is Workers’ Memorial Day. Today there is to be a one minute silence at 11am, to remember workers who have died because of their work, particularly, in this virus outbreak, the bus drivers, care workers, workers in the NHS and GIG, and other key workers who have lost their lives because of the virus.

The clouds have changed, but it’s not raining here. Judging by the fire crews congregating at the Bottoms environmental centre, the fire on the moors is still going on its fifth day.

I’m just starting to read a book about neurotheology. I’ve always wondered does religion trump science or does science trump religion? I reckon it must be both. For a person of faith like me, the study of nature is part of wanting to get to know what the Creator is like. Also there is the ethical question – so how do we decide what to do with our knowledge? Plus there are also ethical questions about the getting of knowledge itself. But OTOH, faith is also a phenomenon within nature, and a legitimate object of study … just don’t be like those patronising so-and-sos who don’t want to deal with the content of faith.

As for the Lectionary, Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep…” I don’t know how well that metaphor stands the test of time. I think I know what that is like, but I have a picture in my head of a bloke standing between two hurdles with a stick in his hand to make himself look bigger, derived from distant memories of ‘one man and his dog’. And I’m not sure that picture really applies to first century Palestine. And what will a twenty-third century shepherd be like? The question then must’ve been something like, “who is the true shepherd?”, “who is the real prophet?” – and that question hasn’t gone away. Whom do we trust with our lives? Is the real Jesus to be found in churches? Do we hear the real voice of Jesus in the pronouncements of church, and are its leaders to be trusted as ‘shepherds’? Speaking as a someone who’s just retired from being a minister – i.e. a leader in the church, I think these are real questions.
Also from Acts 2:44f… “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” This doesn’t seem to have been adopted as a model by the majority of churchgoers (including me); so the right wing can sleep easy in their beds. This seditious literature is not going to be a danger to twenty first century capitalism. But deep inside somewhere, I wish it could be.

On my morning ‘exercise’-walk I passed our local industrial estate and saw a plate on the wall that said ‘BAY 24’. It was actually reversed, what they call ‘horizontal flip’ in image processing software. I guess that was so a lorry driver could see it correctly in a door mirror. The firm had taken care to make sure the driver saw the ‘correct’ image – though in order to do so, it had to turn things round. The other day I saw a TV show about the Hubble space telescope, and the trouble people went to to make sure it gave a correct and clear image. I wear glasses for long distance, because my eyes don’t give a clear image. Even what we see ‘directly’, though, is a nerve signal from an upside-down image on our retinas which has gone through a load of processes before we know what it means. I don’t think there is anything we can know directly. It’s all just a welter of different signals that (usually) we manage to fit into a world-model. Sometimes our processing goes awry: when I am very tired, I imagine I can discern voices in the sound of the sea or the wind for instance.

Why do I mention this? Perception is a slippery thing – I don’t think there’s any such thing as direct knowing – it’s all indirect, and mediated through a load of pathways outside and inside the body. Last Sunday’s reading, about Thomas recognising the risen Jesus after being invited to touch him, seems so real, it hits me with a kind of sledgehammer force (although I should point out the story doesn’t mention whether Thomas actually touched Jesus). But perception is a slippery thing. So I believe even this seemingly straightforward story is infused with mystery…. as, more obviously, is today’s reading, about the road to Emmaus.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” – though intravenous bleach probably isn’t one of them.

Also on the image front, our house nearly got into a picture on the BBC Derbyshire website, a long shot of the smoke from the moorland fire I mentioned a couple of days ago: modest excitement there, I think. BTW, whoever started the fire, what were they doing up there? Maybe it’s a selective lockdown.

I still don’t really know where I belong. My bus pass says Derbyshire, my council tax bill says High Peak (Derbyshire), the police are Derbyshire – but the trains all go to Manchester – that’s our TTWA (not that we work now). One consequence of the lockdown is that the pendulum swings towards the local, which is Derbyshire. Obviously I know I live in Derbyshire, but I’m not sure if the whole of my life belongs here.

God of love,
help us care for this earth,
this peat, this planet.
Help us care for one another,
taking care for each other’s lives.

Another sparkling day out there.

In the Psalm for Sunday the writer thanks God because of God’s kindness to him (probably ‘him’). And lots of people can indeed count their blessings. My love for God and probably yours is like the Psalmist’s, because it also seems conditional much of the time. Can we still love God when times are hard? That takes a certain kind of heroism. But I seem to remember that we’re taught the importance of unconditional love in human relating.

Loving God is not just about being thankful. It’s also about doing right, which is kindness and fairness for other people too (says he from his armchair).

Not expecting to see many people, I went barefaced this morning. It was a beautiful morning and I think I heard my first curlew of the year. I saw what might have been a hare, and later, down by Valehouse Dam, what might have been two sandpipers. Judging by the two helicopters carrying big orange globes, yesterday’s moorland fire is not completely out yet.

Odd thing to think about: I wonder what the Emmaus story might have been like under distancing rules. The earnest debate on the road, anticipation of a shared meal, etc. – is it possible to have a kind of intimacy in this mysterious encounter without proximity?

Creator God,
we pray for people in these days
who cannot enjoy the created world,
because they are too ill,
or confined in cities,
or overwhelmed by anxiety or grief,
or exhausted by their demanding jobs:
God bring them to the point
when they can love to live again.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

Thank you very much to Janet, who with a piece of cotton fabric and a J-cloth, made a face mask for me that worked – a great improvement on tied up teatowels and scarves – and no worries about slippage.

I went on a longer walk which ended up as 1 1/4 hours, and saw a small number of people when I was nearly back home, but they were easy to avoid. I walked where I haven’t walked for a year or more, a little way along the top of Rhodeswood Dam. The work there is finished now. The water was quite rough in the wind.

On the way back, I could hear the wind making the electricity grid wires rumble. I’ve tweaked this recording a bit, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to hear what my ears heard…

Spirit of God,
holy roaring gale,
energise our lives,
even as they are limited, constrained.
Help us to see beyond the present,
beyond our own needs
and embrace the world
in the love of Jesus Christ.

Another tea cloth, tied differently, this time for a trip to the village Tesco. But still it kept wanting to move out of position. I went without glasses to make it simpler. Crossing roads was tricky, because I had to move my whole body to look round, so as not to disturb the delicate positioning of the tea towel. I believe there are websites that may help me.

The generous sun is flooding through the window here. I wouldn’t fancy being confined indoors in a place where you never see the sun, especially not where it’s a long and peopled journey to the ground. I suspect that this pandemic, like everything else, is disproportionately bad for people in poverty.

God give help, we pray,
to everyone who is feeling the strain
of long spells indoors,
especially those a long way from
hills, or rivers, or anything green,
children getting increasingly bored
and those who care for them,
people feeling rising frustration in their lives,
people living in fear of domestic violence.
God, we pray for an end to the pain.

We pray for those who have no indoors,
no home but the streets,
living in discomfort, danger and fear.
Take away the fear, we pray,
and the causes of fear.

Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

No, not what you were thinking. This Sunday coming is the nearest to Workers’ Memorial Day on the 28th April.

God of love,
we remember today all those who have died
in accidents at work,
or because of diseases contracted at work.
We remember particularly
those who have died with COVID-19,
medical workers, carers, bus drivers,
shop workers and many many others;
each one a son or daughter,
husband or wife, father or mother,
grandparent.

In the silence, we remember them…
…with thankful and grieving hearts,
we remember them.

We pray about the future,
and ask that everyone who sets off for work
may come home again safe and healthy.
Strengthen those who seek to make the work place a safe place.
Give wisdom and a care for human life to all.

And in these days where it’s hard to know what to do for the best,
and safety equipment is hard to come by,
then God strengthen us all,
and heal the rifts in our relating
which are exposed in times of difficulty.

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.