Reader Writes - July 2020

Dafydd ap Dafydd drew his scythe in long strokes through the churchyard grass; in the heat and silence there was little other sound than the whisper of steel to earth as a crop of wild flowers of all hues lay in sweet smelling rows on the ground. He liked this job, and he was even paid for it. In the rhythm of labour as he worked his way up towards the church door he reflected on a favourite verse from the 24th psalm. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it; the world and all people who live in it.” He’d heard that this verse stood over the entrance to the World Bank, an institution that still existed. How wise but how consistently disregarded. If only, he thought.

Eventually on that bright summer day he heard the town clock strike thirteen; finishing his row he laid the scythe down and walked to the church door to find his bread and cheese. He let himself into the cool of the interior, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. A barn owl flew down the nave and disappeared through a hole somewhere; pigeons cooed soothingly on a ledge. Since the economic upheavals of the twenties and the storms of the thirties it had been hard to keep the church bird-proof, let alone totally weather-proof. And to think that it was now 30 years since the great pandemic started in 2020 when he was only a student; and with it came the great collapse when the world of before was swept away, hastened by the reality of climate breakdown.

Of course it wasn’t long in those days before people started talking in hushed tones about God’s judgement on the world. His parents had been pretty angry about this, and all the more so since tragedy had hit their family too. But there was a strong common theme shared with the environmentalism of the day; we had disregarded our planet and allowed ourselves to believe the lie that the earth belonged to us (and the mighty corporations who owned us) and not to God.

But Dafydd knew that the Greek word translated judgement was krisis, a much more nuanced word that suggested verdict or decision. So the pandemic and the great collapse presented opportunity to turn back, to rethink, to recalibrate economic and community life. In his lifetime he had actually seen the active tension between human longing and free market dogma shift towards people and care for our earth. Much had been lost but so much had also been recovered; the town was surrounded by allotments, farms were diverse and smaller, the digital revolution had exploded allowing many more families to work and thrive locally.

And what of the Church? With owls enjoying the gloom of medieval buildings, and with churchyards rank with wild flowers, it wouldn’t look encouraging to our predecessors. But not a bit of it; the Church was very much alive and growing and integrated into its community. Dafydd ran a market garden and employed a number of refugees; his son was a solar energy technician, and if plans went well they would soon upgrade the panels on the church roof and use the additional income to persuade owls and doves to move house (but not bats and swifts). Indeed, he muttered to himself, happily, “The earth is the Lord’s and all people, and creatures, therein”.

Robert MacCurrach