SOUL SURMISE

WERE THESE MY BEST DAYS (CORONAVIRUS TIMES)

I see a heron in the river

Without suspicion, oh so calm

Curiously watching me on the bank

Wondering what in nature I am

The wild is vibrant from this breather

Retreat to resurface our brutal tracks

Will we carry lessons into the opening

Or lose that hope in a hard fast reflex

 

The streets are getting busy 

I am looking both ways again

Yet the road that we are walking down

Has bend after sharp blind bend

Sometimes it’s not a map we need

But the right vehicle for the journey

So I’ll travel in patience and discipline

And pray the speed doesn’t over turn me.

 

Were these my very best days

Far from the joyless urgent howl

Taking refuge in the lockdown relief

From expectation’s constant scowl.

WHAT YOU WANT MOST AFTER LOCKDOWN IS WHERE YOUR HEART IS?

As the nation comes out of lockdown, after 3 months when our freedoms and desires have been greatly curtailed, I have been wondering if this brand new experience of opening up after such personal limitations is a spiritual thermometer.

I have been thinking about opening up while turning over in my mind, heart and soul that verse in Matthew 6 where Jesus says “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.

It is during Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount and he is in a little section about treasures in general. 

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…”

He finishes the section by talking specifically about money:

“You cannot serve both God and money.”

This verse about where your treasure is is right bang in the middle.

I have been surmising whether I could paraphrase Jesus’ line to “what you want most after lockdown is where your heart is.”

The nation has been chomping at the bit for weeks. People have been deprived of many things and it is fascinating to see where the rush back to everything is concentrated.

The seeming desperation to shop. Writer Mike Starkey once wrote a book called Born To Shop that took Descartes’ understanding of being human “I think therefore I am” and changed it to “I shop therefore I am”. Are the queues after lockdown confirming Starkey’s fears?

Or a meal at a restaurant or a manicure or haircut or sun holiday or or a night at the pub? Maybe I should be thrilled with the pressure on churches to reopen as a sign of spiritual fervour.

It is only me surmising but it might be a helpful thermometer to ask what we missed most? What we are eager to return to in “normal” life. Is that a gauge as to where our heart is?

As I critique my own soul, I fear that for me it is the opposite of the yearning for what I want as lockdown opens up. I don’t want it to open up. As an introvert I am loving the time to myself and family. 

The thermometer of my hesitancy is telling me that I need to begin to be less selfish with my time and be ready to give my time for other people. Following Jesus is all about giving up self for others. 

As a natural introvert whose energy is quickly used up in social situations I have had three great months. Lockdown relief I hear it called. My yearnings and desires were not curtailed but indulged. The government were kind enough to ground my 22 and 19 year old daughters to the house. The government kindly gave me a near sabbatical where I could read and write and listen and prepare. All my time was for me. 

I am now wrestling with God as I deal with my treasure being self absorption and how I can shift that to a selfless giving to neighbour and church community. The thermometer of “what you want most after lockdown is where your heart is” is challenging me greatly!

JANICE AND MY WEEKLY BENEDICTION

This morning's sermon in Fitzroy (watch it HERE) was from Lectionary readings in Matthew 11 and I looked at we need rest and wisdom in these Coronavirus days. This was my benediction. Janice and I send it out as a blessing for the week ahead.

 

Whether in Arua City or wherever in the world to here in Fitzroy

May God the Father fill us with his wisdom

May Jesus lead us in his unforced rhythms of grace

And may the Holy Spirit work both wisdom and rest into our lives 

In practical ways that bless those around us.

Amen

WHAT LESSONS CAN CHURCHES LEARN FROM OUR CORONAVIRUS EXPERIENCE

Below is my Coronavirus Column in the Belfast Telegraph on Saturday July 4th 2020.

Let me preface that article with some up to date Stockman Surmising.

I have been very hard ball these past few weeks about why churches should not be not opening. That posture comes from my fear that there would be pressure on colleagues to open churches as soon as it became possible. As my article states I do not think that there is any need to rush back into church buildings if church as it should be could not happen in the building. 

However, I am aware that not all churches are not like Fitzroy. They don't all have a production team to create on-line services, or the number of gifted musicians to lead worship from their smart phones or even the resources for the congregation to watch on-line. In such situations it might well be the best thing for that congregation to begin to gather sooner rather than later. 

I am aware that some smaller Presbyterian congregations are meeting on July 5th, some allowing those with no access to internet to watch in the building, some are experimenting with the idea, some working on two sites. I am praying that such services go well. This article is a reasoned argument for those of us who feel that not only do we not need to gather yet but that we are better in the short term not to gather.

 

Last Monday churches were given the green light to reopen. Should we rush right back or leave it until more of us are allowed in the building? Will getting back to the building be a spiritually tonic or might we lose some of the lessons learned in these strange days? There is a lot of debate and discussion among church leaders. 

The truth is that churches reopening is easier rhetoric than reality. 

There are many health and safety issues, from physical distancing to ways in and out of buildings to the human resources and financial cost of the meticulous cleaning that will be necessary to allow us to attend week after week. 

Then there is the service itself. We will have to curtail fellowship. There will be no communal singing. Apparently the preacher can’t even raise his or her voice. With Celtic evangelicals like me that is a big ask!

The limited numbers will mean either booking your seat or rotating your congregation by groups. In Fitzroy more people would be excluded from a service than would be allowed in. What would we do with visitors who turn up not knowing the booking system?

It all leads me to ask what Church actually is? I fear that we might have people gathering in a church building but that the gathering might not be anything like what church is supposed to be. Fellowship without tea and coffee? Worship without singing? The body with members barred? 

Into that discussion it might be helpful to ask what we have learned about Church in lockdown. We discovered that the church buildings might be closed but churches were very much open. We learned that the church was not about bricks but about people. We learned that we could pastor one another from the kitchen table with phone calls, that we could gather for prayer and committee meetings as well as continuing youth and children’s work, and even Baby and Toddler groups, by Zoom and that we could all feel very much part of a worship service by being creative on Youtube.

In Fitzroy we found that we have never had such a handle on our pastoral needs. We found more at the Zoom prayer meeting than we we met in church. We were astounded that our on-line services reached maybe five times what we might have had on Sundays before lockdown and that now we have weekly members from British Columbia to Ohio to Greece to Bangladesh to Australia.

As we ponder when to return I am not prioritising so much the urgency of people in a building so much as what is best for the spiritual formation, pastoral care and missional reach of our ministry. Even when we get back to physically gathering we would be wrong to leave behind the benefits we have found in the virtual possibilities of these months.

Finally, as we try to avoid just a quick reflex back to how it was I hope that the our returning to the buildings doesn’t make us spiritually complacent. It is sometimes too easy to think that going to church on a Sunday morning is enough. In lockdown many of us having been praying more, reading the Bible more and pondering spiritual things more. Please God that continues.  

Do not get me wrong. I cannot wait to see Fitzroy filled once more. I love the live connection of preaching and prayer and the deep fellowship in our Welcome Area afterwards. However, the same Fitzroy Sunday that we last enjoyed in March is still a long way off. We need to think of the right time to start returning and when we do, it needs to be spiritually even more enriching than it was.

IT'S JUNE 29! CHURCHES CAN OPEN. WHY FITZROY WON'T BE OPENING YET!

Today, June 29th, is the day that we have been told that we can consider re-opening churches again. I read one local newspaper that seemed to be claiming themselves the heroic instigators of such a decision. The argument was that if off-licenses were opened then it would be "an appalling contradiction" in a country with such deeply held religious convictions to have churches remain closed.

It is a bizarre argument. It is quite a stretch to compare off-licences with churches. In the former you walk in and purchase a few cans or bottles and leave. The latter is built on fellowship and a community listening to God's word and communal singing in worship. Off-licences can be opened quickly, they can be restricted to numbers easily. Contact between people will be minimal.

Sunday services in churches is a whole different matter. If we need to have numbers limited so that some are left out of fellowship and worship. If we cannot actually have fellowship because the after service coffee is not allowed. If we cannot actually sing as that seems to be scientifically a dangerous activity that might spread the virus. If all of this is the case, then we are not opening on anywhere like the same level as an off-licence. It would be good to ask if this is church at all and not just a few people meeting, very spread out in a church building.

Now I understand that buildings are important in some denominations and that I am speaking from a Reformed Presbyterian position where the building has no special or sacred importance. Yet, whatever our spiritual practice the June 29th date has thrown many church leaders into a quandary as to what to do and put them under pressure to simply return to how it was in early March. That can be done in an off-licence but certainly not in a Sunday morning worship service. I have spent a lot of time debating, discussing and wrestling with other clergy as to what we might do after we reached today's date!

Fitzroy's Session has decided that we will not be opening through July and August. We will continue to do Church on-line. We will relook at the possibilities of some kind of re-opening in the early autumn depending on what the Covid 19 status is in Belfast as we come out of the summer months.

Returning to gathering for worship is fraught with difficulties. The Presbyterian Church has sent all churches a very helpful document that includes a lengthy check list of the vast array of things that need done before we could meet the health and safety criteria. We will start working through that dossier very soon and use the summer to get ourselves in a place where those stipulations are met. 

By the end of August we may find ourselves in a healthier situation. Taking two months to see how the coming out of lockdown works out will be helpful. Of course it could go the other way and we might be back with more restrictions. These are the uncertainties we are living with. The reopening of pubs and restaurants, a main gathering place for people will be a test as to whether we can contain this virus. These will be hotspots for the possible spread. Churches might be too. Even more reason, in a love your neighbour way, to not be putting our members and the wider public at such risk.

The wonderful thing is that we have found Church in lockdown. We have somehow discovered a way to be Fitzroy, feeling very much together, even though we have been isolating on our own. Our on-line services have kept us all in touch. Indeed they have done so much more than that and we have now a virtual congregation that stretches from British Columbia and Alberta to Ohio through the British Isles and across to Greece, down to Bangladesh and over to Australia.

Our Children’s and Youth ministry has been doing an incredible imaginative job, not just surviving but thriving. Pastorally through telephones and even letters we have all looked out for each other and made sure that lockdown has not meant lonely or isolated.

In an email this weekend I thanked everyone in Fitzroy for their contributions in a plethora of ways throughout lockdown. I also asked that as a congregation we would be patient as we moved forward and worked our way through the challenges in our way so that we can gather together again.

At our last church gathering in March I spoke about the need for grace and imagination as we started the journey into lockdown. I thank God that he has given us that grace and imagination in abundance. I pray that God will continue to give us that grace and imagination as we traverse these difficult days out of lock down towards opening again as church in the early autumn. (If you wish to hear my sermon on that yesterday then you can watch it here on FITZROY TV)

There have been many lessons learned in these past few strange months. Lessons for individuals and hopefully society but also for churches. We have learned that church is not about buildings but about people. We have learned new ways to reach out missionally and how to do pastoral care more intentionally. We have lived in the revolution, not just sentimental cliche, of love your neighbour.

As I have blogged before the rhetoric to open churches on June 29th is much easier than the reality. The business community and particularly the hospitality community have been putting much pressure on government about opening and the physical distancing restrictions. The results of that for our nations health will be seen in the weeks ahead.

As for churches. We have no need to put on any pressure. Church is alive and well, maybe much more open for business in these days when the buildings are closed. I am looking forward so much to being back in a Fitzroy filled to capacity some day soon. BUT there is time and the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Let us take our opening up decisions in the light of that!

 

 

 

WHAT HAS TONY MACAULEY BEEN DOING DURING LOCKDOWN?

Tony Macauley has become a pillar of the Northern Irish writers community with memoirs, novels, musicals and potential movies. I also love how he has this passion for reconciliation and justice and that that weaves its way into his writing. I asked him about these last three months in lockdown. It seems that though his introverted writers personality has been enjoying time in his Portweatert home that he has been all over the world in his creativity.

What were you working on before the lock down?

 

For the past year I’ve been working on a novel set in Rwanda in 2004. It’s a collaboration with a young Rwandan screen writer called Juvens Nsabimana, who I met in Kigali in 2017. Over the past few years I have been visiting Rwanda as part of the steering group with a vision for a new reconciliation centre (UPRC: The Ubwongo Peace & Reconciliation Center https://www.uprc-rwanda.org/ ) to share the remarkable stories of forgiveness and reconciliation from post genocide Rwanda with the rest of the world.

 

When I met Juvens we discussed ideas for collaboration. We agreed to co-create a story on the theme of reconciliation. Juvens would write the screenplay and I would write the novel. It’s been a remarkable experience to try to co-write a book via email and WhatsApp and it became more challenging when Juvens was subjected to serious homophobic threats in his country and had to flee to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya and is now seeking re-settlement as an LGBT refugee. His blog is here https://storiesfromrefugeecamp.wordpress.com/ I sometimes think the story of how we are writing this book is just as interested as the story in the novel!

 

How did lockdown impact your work?

 

I had been very slow in writing this book because I had been travelling so much. I was barely writing one chapter per month. However, lockdown has meant no travel and therefore more time to work on the book. It’s been an unexpected writing retreat at home and I’m enjoying it. In the past two weeks I’ve written around five chapters and I now hope to have the first draft completed by the end of July.

 

How did you deal with life in general?

 

I’m quite an introverted person so staying at home in Portstewart with a daily walk on the beach has been good for me. For years I’ve thought my ideal life would be spending more time at home writing. Isn’t it interesting that it took a global pandemic to get me off the hamster wheel of busyness to spend most of my time doing what makes my heart sing. 

 

I believe that a crisis is a time when people show us who they really are. For the past few years I’ve been coaching a brilliant young entrepreneur in Uganda called Trinity Heavens. When lockdown was enforced in the slums of Uganda, people began to run out of food very quickly, so Trinity organised his team to serve the urgent needs of the community. So far they have provided over 150,000 meals! As part of my partnership with Trinity, last year his company era92.com produced and recorded the audiobook of Little House on the Peace Line. When I saw what Trinity was doing I was inspired to release the audiobook free on my Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOTgykaGmjvSH6kPHIw-JVEKGI2lJsGyi and I asked people to donate to this work https://92hands.org/covid19 if they enjoyed the audiobook.

 

How did you stay in touch with the public?

 

At the beginning of lockdown, when all my public book readings were cancelled I decided to do book readings on Facebook Live every weekday evening. 12 weeks later I had read 58 chapters, starting with Paperboy, then Breadboy and finally All Growed Up. I was surprised and delighted at the number of people from different parts of the world who watched and it became a little community that I will always remember as my experience of lockdown.

 

Though we are coming out of it, it will take time to get back to normal. Are there ways we can help you and other artists?

 

One of the big disappointments for me was the cancellation of the Breadboy musical at the Lyric Theatre in August. It’s now been re-rescheduled for next summer, but this is a good example of how badly hit theatres have been by the lockdown. While many other places are re-opening and trying to get back to normal, theatres remain closed and many theatres are now at risk of never re-opening as a result of the huge and unexpected financial losses they have incurred. This collapse of the theatre industry will have a big an impact on many artists such as writers, actors, directors, musicians, sound, lighting and stage technicians. I think anyone who can offer creative ways of helping theatre to survive would be greatly appreciated.

 

What plans have you as the world opens up more and more?

 

I hope the novel will be published in 2021. The film version of Paperboy has been delayed by a few months but the last I heard they are still planning to begin shooting the movie in Belfast in October. That will be very exciting! I’ve also had some interest in television versions of Little House on the Peace Line and my latest book, Belfast Gate. I’ve also been working on an idea for a musical set in the slums of Uganda which would be an exciting international collaboration, if we can make it happen.

 

Are there lessons you have learned in lockdown that you would like to take into the new normal?

 

In a time of crisis people show us who they really are. Don’t be too busy to get round to doing what makes your heart sing.

 

Any books you’ve read, films you’ve watched or music you discovered that you would recommend to us?

 

During lockdown the Island Arts Centre in Lisburn asked me to host a Virtual Book Club on Zoom. I loved it! We read Birds Without Wings by Louis De Berniere and The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, but my favourite was ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ by Delia Owen.

 

On television I finally got to watch Stranger Things, which is right up my street! I’ve just started Series 2.

 

In terms of new music, my favourite song released during lockdown was Sometimes by Belfast singer, Scott Mac https://open.spotify.com/album/6Z8kN4XJFmhFNdXl9qpyWn?highlight=spotify:track:6f1aWMIXsuzMhvuy62d0vZ although I’m biased because he is my nephew, Scott Macaulay!

CAN WE LEAVE "JOYLESS URGENCY" BEHIND

(this was my Belfast Telegraph column on June 20th, 2020)

The world is opening up. We are starting to peer out from lock down. It has been great to hang out with a few friends around a fire in the back garden, to visit family or take that trip to the beach.

Football is back, though without crowds the atmosphere is a little lacking. I feel for Liverpool fans who have waited thirty years to win the Premiership and will not be in the Kop to celebrate. 

We are shopping again. It is no longer just essentials we can queue up to buy anything. We might get a meal in a restaurant soon. There is even talk about haircuts!

As, this all happens, I fear for myself, and for our society too, that we will just reboot and go back to how it was back in March. It would be tragic, would it not, if we didn’t learn from these strange days that we have been, and are still going, through. 

I do not believe that these long Coronavirus weeks have been a God given sabbatical but I do believe that they have been a sabbatical of sorts. I know some of us have been under work pressure, worried about losing our jobs, feeling isolated or anxious and fearful. Yes a pandemic hit planet earth and shook us to the core but it also allowed us to stop the world as we knew it. We stepped off for a period.

What did we learn? What can we avoid in the new normal that can turn around what was preventing our human flourishing in the old normal? 

There has been a phrase running around my soul for most of the lockdown. It is one of a plethora of quotable phrases from Marilynne Robinson, the Purlitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote Gilead. She describes our modern times as a “joyless urgency”. 

Joyless urgency. I remember that. The crammed diaries. The demands on my time. The hurrying between meetings. The driving from here to there and this to that. Keeping up with everyone else. Not missing out. Squeezing in family dinner. Burning candles at both ends.

Could the new normal turn that around. I honestly believe that is what Jesus was on about what he invited to us to seek the Kingdom of God. It was a new world where priorities would be joyful, where we wouldn’t get distracted by the chaff of empty materialist stuff. As he said we cannot add to our height or life by all the worry.

There is that scene in the life of Jesus where he is in the house of two sisters - Mary and Martha. Martha is running around the house planning and preparing and putting everything in order. Mary is just sitting listening to Jesus. Martha rebukes Mary for not helping her but Jesus commends Mary. Martha it seems was full of joyless urgency, even in trying to serve Jesus. Jesus was happier with relationship. He wanted to simply be with us.

My Youth Director at Fitzroy, Paul Bowman preached on Mary and Martha recently in Fitzroy and challenged us to be Marys in in a Martha world. I love that phrase too. It seems to be an antidote to Marilynne Robinson’s “joyless urgency”.

We are peering out at the possibility of a whole new world. We were forced by what was bad to break with the Martha world. Maybe that bad could turn to good if we create a Mary influenced new normal.

ONE DAY THERE WILL BE SUCH A GATHERING - BUT NOT YET!

DOUG GAY'S Missing  -  Video by PETER GREER

Recently, we played this Doug Gay song during our Fitzroy Sunday On-Line Service. Doug, a theologian, author and songwriter, wrote it in lockdown. It is a beautiful juxtaposition of lament and hope. Psalm-like. The verses have us lamenting the pain of separation in lockdown. It is cathartic.

Then the chorus breaks in with this joyous hope. Peter Greer put a Fitzroy-centric video to the song and when Doug hit that line, "One day there will be such a gathering.." and a photo of a very full Fitzroy came up on the screen I freely admit that I spontaneously burst into tears. 

It surprised me. I have been one of those who have been experiencing what has become known as "lockdown relief", the breather that us introverts have enjoyed. yet, seeing my Fitzroy community... their faces... in that familiar space. I didn't realised how much I missed it.

A lot of my imagining as a pastor these days is about that gathering. How long will it be? How can we make it happen? What will the stepping stones be like in between now and that full church experience?

The government has said that churches can meet again on June 29th. That is easy rhetoric. I found it humorous and a little sad that I had to find the news under a headline that stated that hairdressers were being allowed to reopen. That is the place that churches have in the world of 2020! 

The reality though is much more complicated than the rhetoric. As I have blogged before the very clear restrictions of Stay At Home was much easier to live out than the Be Alert of reopening. 

When we say churches can reopen Fitzroy has to consider all that needs to take place to make sure the building is safe from spreading Coronavirus. There are practical steps to work through. Then we have to ask how we can safely work through social distancing. Can we use every other pew. We have the architects drawings out. If we do that then do we need two services... or three? Will we have to turn visitors away if there are no pews available? When will the science of this pandemic tell us we can sing again? If we can't sing then what will a service look like? It is likely that for a time the Welcome Area will remain either closed or unable to fit the numbers who will want to restore fellowship. 

What is certain is that that emotional moment in Doug's song is still a long way off. We continue to need patience. In the meantime we will be living in the blend and blur of the virtual and real. The pastoral and indeed missional work of the church goes on and perhaps that is the over riding factor in how we move in short careful steps from the lament of Doug's verses to the celebratory joy of us all back together again.

Grace and imagination will be needed, as always.

RUSHING OUT OF LOCKDOWN - NOT COOL... NOT BIG... NOT CLEVER!

When my children were small I remember watching a TV documentary. A teacher gave a child five sweets and told them that they were now leaving the room for fifteen minutes. If the sweets were still there when the teacher returned the children were promised more sweets.

Then, most entertainingly, we were treated to watching the decisions and actions of the children when they were alone in the room. Of course most took the sweets in front of them. 

It was a version of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and the research showed that those who waited ended up with better health, higher exam results and more positive in various other outcomes.

I have thought a lot about that wee experiment as the weeks of lockdown have lengthened. 

I have heard so many suggest that they cannot wait any longer to get out from under these draconian laws. It’s a free country and we shouldn’t be asked to live like this. Sadly, some were politicians!

We need shops and we need them now. We need to get to a beach and we need to go now.It would be nice to eat out at Holohans. A few days in a hotel would be lovely.

BUT… this is much more serious than sweets. As a society we have gone through the challenge of a generation but can I suggest that the next few months might be an even bigger challenge. If we can hold back our temptation to have a little now, we can have more people alive and a more healthy environment to come back out into later down the line. Eating my sweets NOW would be murderously stupid!

Stay Home might not have been easy for many but at least we knew what was what. The shops were closed. The parks too. The police were stopping you driving too far. 

It was hard but it was easy. It is not going to be so easy when we start opening up. Then we will not be living by law but by mature decision making.

Stay Alert is a trickier deal. It needs the maturity and intelligence of a child who can refrain from a few sweets to get a load more. Staying alert means that even when things open up we need to be about the longer game. What we do in these months coming out of lockdown will effect the results in the future, maybe even if we… or our neighbours… live or die.

Why am I concerned as my life and my loved ones lives might well come down to the intelligence, maturity and selfless discipline of our nation! A shiver runs through me just typing that! Can you see what Stay At Home, plain and simple, still seems a good idea to me!!

The spiritual life is in play here too. The apostle Paul spoke about how the law was a pedagogue (teacher) saving us from our immature selves until Christ came to redeem us and then by the indwelling Holy Spirit brought about our maturity. “Strict laws are for children and freedom is only a good thing in the hands of the mature,” is a very loose paraphrase of Paul in Galatians 3;23-25.

Now don’t get me wrong. There are those who claim to be followers of Jesus and immaturely stlll worship at its altar and try to burden us all with their childishness. There are those with no interest in Jesus who act more maturely. That is how the world is.

However, what I am taking 600 words in this blog to say is that we need a maturity that perhaps we have never been tested for before. We need a social intelligence that is always looking AHEAD rather than at the NOW. We need a discipline that will re-programme every social interaction. We need a Love Your Neighbour that sacrifices every impatience to get what we want in order to stay alive and keep others alive too. 

Rushing out of lock down is not COOL… it’s not BIG… and it’s not CLEVER!

WHY JANICE AND I FEAR COMING OUT OF LOCK DOWN

the photo is the two of us modelling Norn Iron Tees and Tote Bags... put a laugh on your shirt here https://nornirontees.com

 

I was on the phone with a friend recently who said that he and his wife were feeling guilty for actually enjoying lock down. I understood the sentiment. 

Janice and I are both only children and so are very used to our own company. We have our daughters locked down with us. This is almost perfect for us.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. A friend lost a friend to Covid 19 this past week. We are aware of the grief. We have members of Fitzroy on the NHS front line. We are anxious. My father has dementia and is in a Residential Home. We are frightened. 

Yet, in the every day lock down we are more than surviving. We are thriving. Fitzroy’s nerve centre has moved to our kitchen table. Janice is phoning around the congregation, doing Rhyme Time with the toddlers on Zoom as well as the Woman’s Group. I conjure Sunday morning’s service, lead the Zoom Prayer meeting and keep a handle on pastoral care, neighbourhood outreach and other projects.

Life is full if not as mad crazy busy as the “normal” life we used to live. It has been time consuming learning all kinds of new technical operations but for us there have been lots of advantages.  

I have been on a journey, understanding something about myself, for a couple of years. Writer Donald Miller put out a piece on the hard work that the introvert has to do in company. It struck a chord. It was like he was describing me.

Yet, me an introvert? Who would think? My office is a lecturn in front of a full Church. I have led communion to 20,000 people. I have made crowded rooms across the world laugh out loud as well as hopefully communicate something of God’s grace and imagination.  

This is true. Give me a crowd, the bigger the better. Push me out before it and something deep within me decides to go for broke. If they are going to laugh at me, I might as well ham it up. Maybe I can grab their attention. I believe that without doubt that it is what I was born for.

However, send me into a room with no introduction or reason to be there and I am the last person who will walk across and introduce myself. I am, below the hoopla, very shy. I become that only child who didn’t learn interaction with brothers and sister. I sat in my music room and played The Beatles. On my own.

So reading Donald Miller was a relief. He explained my struggle. He understood. The extrovert refreshes in socialising. The extrovert refuels in crowds. The introvert is working his or her socks off in any group dynamic. Even though I am looking confident and extrovert on the surface, my inner core is running like a marathon runner to keep up. It is exhausting.

So, during this lock down, Janice and I have rested from that hard work that we believed we are called to. We really have had sabbatical. We understand the struggles our friends are having being cut off from social groups. We understand but we are not struggling. 

In fact we are beginning to struggle as we start to imagine the coming out of lock down. We are aware that this idyllic cocoon we are in is soon to be over. We are bracing ourselves. We know that it will mean party time, a celebratory overload of the social gatherings that tire us out. We will want to be there but we are readying ourselves for the hard work.

I suppose that I am writing this to say that for the vast majority this lock down has been a mental stretching. Mental health has been rightfully high on the agenda of those of us who pastor and care. As lock down lifts us introverts are simply asking that our mental struggles would be equally considered. 

Indeed this respite has been unprecedented (how many times have I heard that word!) for us shy folk. The norm stretches our mental resources all of the time. As introverts have been gentle with extroverts during lock down, please be sympathetic to us as it lifts!