Reader Writes - June 2020

Before the lurking and unseen peril of Covid-19 holed our vessel causing the world to list and have a reluctant think, only 20% of air travel was said to be for business; the rest of it was recreational, tourism and ‘love miles’ connecting our globally scattered families. Environmentalists have been arguing for years that most of this carbon binging on air travel could be substituted with virtual travel and conferencing. Nearly all of us gasp with wonder and delight over wildlife and travel documentaries; film makers and their commentators take us into astonishing places and give us privileged encounters that would rarely if ever come our way, even if we spent a fortune reaching some wild and remote destination. Thanks to lockdown we are now doing it and learning to Skype and Zoom into our families’ homes and gardens for some quality catch-up.

One church service on a Sunday is normal and enough, but now we can manage even 4 short and stimulating services by lunchtime. Last Sunday I enjoyed Morning Worship on Radio 4 over breakfast, a Hereford Diocese service on YouTube, our own live-stream from St Mary’s, leaving time for a big city church over a cup of tea. But are these effective substitutes? I heard a doctor encouraging us to take sufficient vitamin C. OK, sure. But he was a psychologist, and his vitamin C stood for Community.

We are built for community; we have evolved as tribal and family groups using language, teamwork, empathy and all our senses to protect, hunt, gather, survive, breed and raise young. It is easy to see that virtual relationships lack the intimacy of physical presence. The virtual world is a vital resource to be developed and used both for creativity and for cutting carbon, but it remains “two dimensional”. Philip Pullman’s angels envied humans’ physicality in His Dark Materials. In this time of severe restrictions we suffer what a friend calls an ‘exile from our true nature’. But what is the spiritual angle to this?

We could consider biblical bookends for the question. After Adam and Eve had let God down by eating the forbidden fruit, they hid in their nakedness from God who was “walking in the garden”; God called out “Where are you?” The Creator could have seen Adam, but he chose to make himself physically present allowing his special creatures to try hiding. For our other bookend, consider Jesus. He physically touched the sick, the unloved, the dispossessed; and when he appeared to his disbelieving disciples after the resurrection he said “Touch me and see!” Jesus, in both life on earth and in resurrection, was physically present and will come again physically.

This all needs thought; ideas please! Returning from Ireland a couple of years ago, we stopped at Ffald y Brenin, which is a special place of blessing and prayer; Celtic Christians would have called it a ‘thin place’ where God made himself particularly present and accessible. When we can open our church doors again, let’s celebrate spiritual place once more as well as the presence of each other. The swifts, those marvellous galleons of the summer skies, are breeding in our eaves; here’s another example of a God-given physical presence. Our Creator gifted us with the delight to see and touch, to wonder and care for, his world.  

Robert MacCurrach