Today has been a busy day of writing to and for other people.
Several emails to people facing surgery, having had difficult news, struggling with loneliness, anxious for family or friends. The usual pastoral response would involve presence, visiting, conversation, prayer. Some of that can be written, but much of what we convey in pastoral care is embodied and the body has its own language. Whatever benefits can be found in online encounters, they cannot substitute for the touch of hand on hand, the smile of understanding, the awareness of a physical presence that says we are not on our own.
A pastoral letter to our church community. No, not the "As I sit in my study watching the daffodils wafting lazily in the gentle breeze" kind of letter, the literary and spiritual equivalent of artificially sweetened dream topping. Rather. Reflection on how we practise hospitality in a time of social distancing, isolation and lock down; find ways of being there for, if you cannot be there with. Then some thoughts on prayer as what the church does alongside everything else. Prayer, not as add on, but as essential source of energy, imagination and compassion. Prayer is not only what the church does; it demonstrates what the church is, – a priestly community open to the world, open to God, and facilitating the connectedness between the grace of heaven and the need of earth.
Then producing a week's Thought for the Day, seven verses from the Bible, each with no more than 70 words of comment, but earthed in the reality of our life together as a community of faith and belonging. Something to think about, words to guide and encourage, a catalyst to change the way the day looks.
Then the phone calls. To people self-isolating and feeling the long loneliness of another 3 weeks looming, and beyond that. To someone heading for surgery soon and anxious about going anywhere near a hospital just now. To couples where one is shielding the other, and so far it's all going fine and food, medicine and exercise are all working out. From someone checking up on us and taking time to listen as well as speak. From my oldest friend, out for his exercise walk and decided he needed to find out how we are doing, and our promise that as soon as this is over we meet half way between here and Glasgow and have a bacon roll and coffee.
Aye, that kind of day. A privilege kind of day. One of those days when you give what you can and trust it's enough. A bit like the boy with his loaves and fish; the results are the same whatever we put into the Master's hands.
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