Bullying - a curse beyond the playground

 Bullying is insidious. It is an attack by a thousand cuts. It belittles and undermines, it gradually wears the targeted person away until they are the shadow of who they once were.  Yet at the same time each action is seen as so small that alone they would not be considered significant. But cutting again and again causes deeper longer lasting wounds.

I cannot remember a time in school before I was singled out as someone to be teased.  There we go - words that undermine the intense power of bullying, 'just teasing', 'kids will be kids', 'it's only a joke'.

What decides who will be the focus of a bully? Someone different from the rest, someone perceived as weak, someone maybe seen as a threat that a bully wants to stop, it can be so many things. Maybe it also depends on the context of the bullying, childhood or adult, by those who should be your peers, or those with power over you.

Back to school, primary and secondary, right up to leaving the upper 6th. By then my year group bullies had either left or grown out of the worst, but younger year group lads had taken up the slack.

I wasn't beaten up, no bruises to show, and yes I am grateful for that, yet it also made it hard for me to complain or prove what was happening. It even made me feel I had no right to complain or be bothered.

Yet it is the verbal bruises that don't heal, 'no one will ever like you', 'no one will be your friend'. When you are told something day in and day out for years it gradually becomes your inner voice too. Even stones are worn away by the continual drops and flow of water.

Once a bully has the power then even things that would sound like a neutral act come with sinister messages. I clearly remember the day in my mid teens when this dawned on me. I had been encouraged to 'tell' on examples, but when a bully says hello to you in a way that is threatening, a reminder that they are there, the look in the eye etc.   But what can I report, that 'he said hello'?

And that brings us to bullying in the workplace, governments, or churches. Sometimes it is a targeted attack on individuals, sometimes it is an overall culture that is more indiscriminate in the aggression shown.

As with the Priti Patel, Home Office, case it takes great courage to speak out about bullying. You know that they will twist each individual cut, 'just banter', 'need to toughen up in this workplace', 'you are just being oversensitive' and the current fashionable one 'don't be such a snowflake'.

Yet again, as in so many contexts including too often the church, even with evidence accepted as valid no one has to take responsibility. In many organisations it is a case of no one wanting to rock the boat. In church contexts, which I see though those I know and also through union work, there is a lack of courage to challenge bullying behaviour even when it may have driven away several ministers in a row.  Or where a senior minister affects others.  Bullying can come from any side, and those targeted can be of any type.

There is malice intended in some cases, a deliberate targeting of someone or a certain group. But yes it can be unrecognised by even the bully themselves, this does not excuse behaviour and attitudes to others that consistently and significantly damages them.  If someone is left emotionally crippled and suicidal by your actions then you have responsibility for those actions, and those words.

And among the greatest lies ever taught to us as children 'sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me'. 

The truth is 'stick and stones may break my bones but names can break the soul'. 

There are many reasons I despair at our current government, but standing up for someone who has been found through independent review to have used bullying behaviours, shouting and swearing at workers in her team, is definitely one of them. But then I know all too well that we in the church structures have a plank in our own eyes too.  And that is cause to weep. 

Faith, and spiritual abuse

I am a church minister, I am part of the union for faithworkers and a rep, I have raised the issue of problems with the system to deal with discipline and complaints within the UK Methodist Church.  I have been part of a multifaith conference discussing spiritual abuse, where religious beliefs are a cover for un loving and even abusive attitudes.

Why? Because I have personal experience of bullying within my faith community, because I have known others to also suffer, because the systems to report this fall way, way too far short of facing up to those who bully in the name of faith.

I am a church minister, I have mental health struggles. I want to lobby for proper understanding of such issues. I have encountered those who gave me permission and acknowledged that mental heath wasn’t a failure. The student from another church in the circuit when I was at uni who spoke about being a Christian and depressed was the first step in that, and I cannot recall her name but spoke to me before I would ever have admitted to my own issues.

I have encountered a big barn church near here that sells a booklet written by its retired minister that says depression is self pity and that Christians should look to Jesus and reject psychology and psychiatry as of the devil (since Jung and Freud were not Christian).  Sorry but psychiatric care and medication are what enable my stability, and would they ever dare to say the same for physical conditions like cancer, even if those who discovered medications are not Christian? (And by the way psychology has developed way beyond Yung and Freudian ideas anyway).

Then I hear that decades ago, when alone in a distant place, someone close to me who was experiencing wobbles in their faith journey, and went to the person who was there to support and help was told that if don’t feel that fit the Christian mould then going to hell. Knowing that this person came home suicidal, that surviving attempts on their life they then lived decades feeling unworthy of God’s love….     All my understanding of spiritual abuse is clearly there; all the failures to understand not just mental health but the normal ebbs and flows, stresses and strains of life, all the failures I have experienced in the church, and through others’ journeys, are encapsulated in that one dismissal of a hurting person.   I wonder if that person who listened and replied in such a way went home feeling that they had testified to God’s Word and therefore had had a good day at work? Yet they left someone feeling that they could not be good enough for God and suicidal.

Matthew 18 v 6-7

⁶ “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. ⁷ Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!

 Sadly such millstone bearers are all too common in our churches and in our structures. And our structures are too scared to call people out – keeping the peace being held as more valuable than calling out injustice, bullying, causing others to stumble, and even to the point of collapse.

When we sit in our church buildings and wonder where the people are we need to ask ‘what sort of God have we revealed to them?’, ‘how have they been hurt by the church, by Christians?’ and ‘what in our life as church is strong enough for them to dare to trust us?’

I believe in God who has been part of my journey, through physical and mental health iussues. I give thanks for those who were there to say that I was not alone and without trying to fix me. I could not always sense God with me, but I was not judged in that uncertainty, others held me in their faith when I could not trust in my own faith, because I could not process my own chaos.   

Yet so many are not held as they are, but told they need to show their faith in a certain way. As with the person I referred to, this can leave wounds open for years, people spiritually abused by those that should be there to support them.  Sadly it is more common than we like to admit.  

 

What is truth?

 What is truth? So Governor Pilate asked Jesus when the crowd cried for his death with no evidence of wrongdoing.

It was also the text of my first ever sermon when I was a university student and training as a lay preacher within the UK Methodist Church. Normally you start by sharing parts of the service with your mentor but since I came to the planning meeting with 3 points I got given the sermon.

I can't recall what I had to say about it, though somewhere I may have a floppy disc with evidence.  However it is a powerful question that is very important today and in the light of the US election of Nov 2020 the issue of truth versus claims is critical.

By a coincidence of scheduling this past week as well as bringing the US election count brought the BBC programme about lies in history. How many of us 'know' that in the French Revolution Maria Antoinette said of the hungry masses 'Let them eat cake' - except apparently she didn't. And the storming of the Bastille was not a grand liberation of political prisoners but 7 random men, and that actually the revolutionaries worked with the monarchy and elites for a couple of years before killing them. 

So to the 2020 US election - despite the rampant claims of the Trump loyalists, that there has been fraud on a massive scale, no evidence has passed muster in any of their legal claims. Yet the reality seems meaningless to upto 20 % of the American population.  80% of Americans are reported to accept the result of a Biden win, which leaves 1 in 5 still in doubt despite the thousands of votes in favour in each crucial state. In past election reviews the number of votes changed/removed were in the tens or just about 100s whilst the vote in favour of Biden was in tens of thousands.  

But what is truth? Is it the people who shout the loudest? No smoke without fire and all that. If one person can cast doubt on the truth as recognised by every other channel, where is our sense of truth?  Is truth about evidence or who shouts the loudest? Is doubt overwhelming even when it is proven wrong? 

 What about those accused of wrongdoing? It is embedded in our understanding of justice that we are 'innocent until proven guilty', yet the culture of trial by social media is such that someone is guilty by any association with someone else who is vaguely linked to a crime. 

Surely truth has a value of its own - not about claims but about evidence, but then as history is written by the victors in their own image we now seem to have arrived at a point where 'current reality' is now written as 'those who shout loudest'.  Maybe it was ever so, but the wider range of the loudest voice through modern technology brings a louder voice, regardless of what is actually truth.

How did conspiracies come to claim our world?

 In a rural area of West Yorkshire, just up the road from a chaple I work with, there is graffiti on the road #QAnon.  If you have not yet come across QAnon then let me introduce you - it is a an internet group that  promotes a range of conspiracy theories, especially that Trump is the appointed one to unveil a paedophilic corruption across all other groups in politics and entertainment and finance.   They follow the revelations of Q, with no idea who Q is or whether it is even one person.

It doesn't seem that long ago that conspiracy theories were confined to the loner, the rare person disconnected from wider society, seen as weird and definitely not mainstream. Today however we find people citing conspiracy theories in every local community facebook page, denying science and seeing everything as a matter of state control.  

How did this change happen?

Lets look at history, how the status of 'those who know' was for a long time the leaders of the church (Catholic only at that time).  This was partly challenged in the reformation, but still authority was rooted in faith. Then came the scientific renaissence, this started as people of faith exploring their world, but then came into conflict with the religious ideas of the time.  

From then science began to take the voice of authority to culture, not all at once but by the 20th century science was seen as opposite to faith.  The promise of science was that knowledge will continue to grow and in time explain everything and have the answers to all the problems of life.

Late 20th century and into the 21st we have found that science has not had all the answers, and has not fixed all the problems. There has been cultural disillusion with the faith in science, and we have reached the point where that trust has crumbled to the point where science is not only not trusted as the answer but is even seen as false. 

Then every point of authority becomes something to doubt - and fake news is as valid as that with factual basis. Evidence that has witnesses backing it is dismissed as biased, and any conspiracy view is seen as worth equal exposure, or even more valid.

The irony is that science never claimed what people expected of it. As someone taking a science degree in the 1990s I can testify that scientists only saw their views as 'the best interpretation so far' where it is always open to being reviewed and even abandoning if new information emerges. 

Now we are here in 2020 - faith was dismissed a century ago, and now science has let humanity down as it has not stopped bad stuff happening. I think the rise of conspiracy theories is rooted in this loss of trust in any of the former authorities. In a pandemic where the voice of science is being heard it is immediately distrusted, not becauise of other relevant data but simply because anything said by science is assumed to be untrustworthy.

Meanwhile human nature seeks meaning, reason, some intelligence behind what happens to us. It is why people will say in the face of struggles 'everything happens for a reason'. Some take that on a faith basis - 'God has his reasons for this', for others it is the sense of the power of the universe.  The idea of randomness is too scary, and also suggests that we cannot control our situations.

So the conspiracy theories - if you cannot trust God and cannot trust science yet believe there is a reason, a mind, behind the problems in life, then who do you blame? It makes people vulnerable to groups claiming they know who is at fault, who has an agenda, who is manipulating the masses and there are plenty of those seeking to fill that vaccuum.  

Suddenly the conspiracy theorist is just down your street, claiming there is no Covid illness, that mask wearing is not care for our neighbours but a deliberate attack on rights in order to control us.

Is there corruption in power? Probably, the temption to support those like you is always there.  Are there failures in political leadership? Probably, there is no such thing as perfection.  Does this mean that there is a complex set of groups working together for a single master plan in our world? Don't think so, that would take a level of co-operation and planning that is beyond what our leaders are likely to manage. I was once told 'assume incompetence before conspiracy', and that is where I stand.

I believe in the place of science, whilst recognising its limits and constraints. I am a person of faith whilst respecting that this does not give me the authority to tell others how to live. I am frustrated by the politics of our times and the impact on those in need, but do not see any master plans at work, merely human failures, as I live with my own failures. 

Your God is too small

 

Your God is too small - Churches breaking Covid guidance

At the end of March churches closed along with almost every gathering place in the UK.  Since the summer we have begun to reopen – some churches, with careful planning, covid risk assessments and measures.   Some are not yet open, those that are open follow careful guidelines to protect us from spreading even if someone carried the virus.

In the meantime we (the church in general in its many forms) have discovered online meeting – by broadcast or interactive methods; we have supported people through phone calls and doorstep distant visiting.  We have conducted funerals, offered recorded school assemblies, delivered worship resources to those not online, supported foodbanks and much more.

The Welsh ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown includes three Sundays – just three. Yet one church at least has refused to comply and then claims persecution when neighbours reported their gathering and the police arrived to investigate.   Police who allowed them 5 min to finish their service; police who did not fine them although they had the right to.  Whilst the misnamed Christian Concern have made lockdown closures a matter for legal action, in the name of ‘church leaders’ which turn out to be a very select few.   Comments on their facebook posts give worrying insights into a paranoid faith, suggestions that zoom is not worship, that only in gathering face to face can God speak to the church.

When a few individual churches and their leaders cry persecution for being asked to close their buildings to help public safety I think they have too limited a view of their faith and of our God. When they complain that they are being prevented from worshipping they show that they do not understand that worship is not dependent on being physically in one place. Many of us have learned how real online meeting can be, more than virtual.  Would we like to be back to life BC – Before Covid – with songs of praise, hugs over coffee, face to face church? Of course we would, but that is not where we are.

We are in a place where wearing masks show care for those we may encounter; where living with restrictions is part of love for our neighbours, a willingness to walk with others.   If being treated the same as all other gathering places, as all other faiths is called persecution then what are you saying about your community?  Those who claim special rights for the churches place themselves aloof, separate, thinking they are better than the people they live among.  This is not the way of Jesus, this is not my understanding of God.    I prefer the Zoom Blessing

Your God is too small

When you say that only meeting in person is being church

        Your God is too small

When you say that you need to sing to worship

        Your God is too small

When you say you have been banned from worshipping

        Your God is too small

When you plead persecution rather than care for your flock

        Your love is too small

When you fight against public safety to score points

        Your love is too small

When you think you are above the law

        Your love is too small

God came among us as 'word made flesh'

        How vast is the love of God

Jesus sat with the marginalised, the vulnerable

        How vast is the love of God 

God's Spirit is with us in all places and times

        How vast is the love of God

Orpah, the other woman in the book of Ruth

The book of Ruth in the Bible is 4 chapters but quite a complex story, and involves various aspects of the culture of the time that may seem odd on first reading around kinsmen marrying widows etc.

It has a quote that is among the most treasured for many. When the widow Naomi decides to leave the place the family fled to in a past famine and return to her country at Bethlehem she has two widowed daughters in law who were Moabites, local women from where they had taken refuge.  She tells them to go back to their mother's homes but Ruth clings to her and says - 

'“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/ruth-naomi-and-orpah-veronica-mcdonald.html

A quote that has been used to speak of commitment, love and loyalty.  But what about her sister in law Orpah, the other woman in the story who does go back to her own family? 

The book of Ruth is the focus for 'Bible Month' 2020 and so many churches are looking at it and considering its message. As part of a day of reflection for our staff team led by Dr Rachael Starr (tutor in Biblical Studies at the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham) we were asked to imagine a letter to one of the characters in this story.  These are my thoughts addressed to Orpah - 

Orpah,

You and Ruth accepted this family of outsiders, of economic migrants, coming to your country with nothing, adding to the mouths to feed. Famine knows no boundaries, was life tough in Moab too even if better than in Judah?

But you were willing to mix with them, so much that you married one.  What did that mean for you? Was it love, surely it would not have been seen as an advantageous match for you? Or was there something that left you without options in your own people?  Or did the family take you and Ruth so that they would be more part of your community, more integrated, assimilated, accepted?

What did it mean for your identity to marry the immigrant?  Could it have been a blending of cultures? Or did you have to set your Moabite ways aside? Were you claimed by the immigrant faith, did it shape you within or just hide your own ways?

And after your widowhood, your sisterhood with Ruth, when your mother in law decided to leave your country, what then? Legally bound together, setting out on the road, then a choice.

‘Go back to your mother’s house, find a new husband, a new future there’

Was it a warning, had you considered the implication of being a Moabite in Judah, where Moab was seen as the enemy the pagan, those who tempt Godly people to wrong ways….?

Was this behind Ruth’s pledge to take on Naomi’s faith and her God – to be as little Moabite as possible, to deny her own roots in order to be more acceptable, to have a better hope in Bethlehem? 

Yet in the Bethlehem fields she was just called Moabite, foreigner, ‘not one of us’, even with her commitments she faced the prejudice. Only because she supported Naomi, working in ways the older woman’s body would not, is she praised – valued not as herself but for the sake of another who IS one of us?  Only to be protected from assault because of Naomi?

By He Qi info here https://pages.stolaf.edu/lagerqui/d-chaidez/

Did you glimpse this ahead? Did you glimpse the future of being ‘redeemed’ being married off to a relative without choice following the laws of Moses, this culture you were not born into?

You chose to turn back, to go to a place where you were not a foreigner, where people would remember you as a child, would know your kin, your place among them.  But was it that easy?

As Naomi and Ruth travelled with each other you travelled alone, as Naomi would be able to testify to Ruth’s story as a widow, you travelled alone.  Explaining your story alone.

Was there an embrace? A welcome home of the prodigal? Or were you treated as tainted by your time in the family of outsiders? 

Were you seen as a burden – married off to be someone else’s responsibility but now back looking for provision in your birth family.  Someone who would be unwanted by any other ‘decent’ husband now, a reminder to everyone of the immigrants, that they may be glad to see the back of.

Were you now neither of your people nor Naomi’s people? Caught inbetween? Whereas Ruth chose Naomi’s people, faith and future over her heritage, did you wrestle with what it means to be in the gap? Forever changed and yet all things at once – a Moabite woman; a wife of the people of Judah – did you feel the tensions in your own heart? Or did you find your voice as yourself, as an individual? 

Was that voice heard, rejected or ridiculed? Were you silenced or did you bring something new to the community of your ‘mother’s house’?

I wonder, I wonder…..

And the undertaker cried

After a funeral during Covid 19 lockdown, the local crem only allowing only 10 mourners and those to gather with distance outside the front of the crem.  The service with reduced time, happening there, and only then the deceased could be led into the crem chapel and the curtains closed.  This in an area where the dominant culture is to keep curtains open and for those leaving a funeral service to touch the coffin in a final farewell.

I had had to 'meet' with the family remotely over the phone, as had the funeral director - neither of us able to give the level of service to the family that we usually would although our best in the situation.   As the family left I commented to the funeral director how strange it was and limiting, and whilst my first lockdown funeral they had done so many, and the person who was so professional in front of the family turned to me with wet eyes.  This prompted the poem below, and whilst undertaker is now an old term, funeral director didn't have the same rhythm.

And the undertaker cried

I don't know you and I didn't know your loved one
You invite me in
Tell me their story
Entrusting me to hold that story
To hold the mirror
reflect their lives.

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

Remembering over 90 years lived
The child, the young in love,
the wonderful parent
Memories shared
only hints of the fullness of life lived

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

Emotions released
hearts aching
tears falling.
The final farewell
reduced, constrained,
in viral times.

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

I don't know you and I didn't know your loved one
You invite me in
Tell me their story
Entrusting me to hold that story.
I did what I could but wish I could give my best,
sit with you, reach out to you,
You didn't see, as you turned to go,
The tear in my eye, and
how the undertaker also cried,

I couldn't reach out a hand
You couldn't sit in the chapel
We gathered outside in these strange times
And the undertaker cried.

Easter - closed churches and open faith

Easter Day - and the churches are empty across the nation, across chunks of the world even.

Some bemoan this, that on our holy day our buildings are closed, claiming it sends out a message that our faith is irrelevant and has nothing to offer in these virus days.

I beg to differ - the church has been forced into new ways and patterns, we seem to be engaging more, with each other and with the community.

On a normal Holy Week and Easter I would be leading services hidden away in church buildings, a brief open air on Good Friday led by an ecumenical colleague, to church folk in one village and maybe 1 or 2 passers by who hurry past.

This year I have led no church services, I have sent out worship material in advance, I have invited people to place palm crosses in windows and redecorate for today - Easter Day.  This year I have posted in community facebook groups explaining that they may see some crosses amid the rainbows and why, wishing all Easter greetings.  This year I have had 58 positive responses to that post in one community alone, almost all not church attenders, and it continues with today's Easter post.

This year when we could not meet inside the church I made a point of telling the story outside the building (at church near manse).   Visible to those out on their walks, emailed to contacts across my churches, used in my community facebook posts.

This year I worried about those who didn't have internet access or resources - posting and phoning - and have challenged myself about not including those unable to attend in previous years. Just because there are more I have been stirred to act. I have worried about zoom worship and video clips because it excludes some, yet I have in the busyness of regular church services been less alert to how those not able to come any year can be a part of our worship.

This year I have thought of how the excluded can worship, for too long we have thought of those less able to get to our buildings as in need of visits, calls, but not resources to worship with us.

This year I have heard of church people choosing to engage with worship from various sources, and have spoken about how they used the reflections I circulated, I have seen their crosses in windows and front gardens when walking and photos emailed.

This year it feels that our Easter journeys have been more public, have been wider for many, and have challenged me deeply about our patterns of  inclusion.  Lessons I need to process and apply in life beyond Coronavirus.

The first Easter the followers of Jesus were scattered in different places, some - a group of women, or just Mary of Magdala depending which gospel - head for the tomb, the message is sent back to others, still more are hiding in locked rooms or heading home to Emmaus. Maybe this year we are closer to the dispersed, confused, still mourning first followers of the risen Christ.

Good Friday - rituals lost and found

It is Good Friday

A day when the churches are traditionally full of ritual - from the high churches that have stripped altar and church to a bareness to mark the solemnity of the day, to the ecumenical gatherings that walk behind a cross carried through their communities.   And in a couple of days the ritual of newly lit Easter candles, the cry 'He is risen' and response 'He is risen indeed, Allelulia'

Others follow a ritual of chocolate and the hunt for eggs, but this year we are stripped of our rituals and the hunt for eggs is mere practicality, alongside that for flour and the elusive toilet roll. 

I remember our conversations in college about the place of ritual in human life and community. In the past religions were a gathering point for community rituals. This is less the case today, certainly in the UK, although many still look to churches and faith when it comes to a funeral.  And where no religion is invoked there is still a rhythm, a ritual to our stages of life, and of death.  We are in a time where even that most precious ritual is denied people, first reduced numbers and now in many areas no gathering at all at crematoria. A scaled down farewell, with no touch to wipe away tears, no arm to support the grieving. Before that no bedside vigil at the hospital no final moments close to loved ones.

We are in a time of worldwide insecurity, and national upheaval that has changed everyone's lives, in such times our need for some roots, some shared connection is very real. Ritual offers that, and as other rituals - of faith, and beyond - are stripped away we find new ones. The Thursday clap for the NHS, or wider to all keyworkers, has within 3 weeks become one such ritual.  It holds people in a shared activity at a set time, a bonding in unity despite our separations. It offers a sense of doing something meaningful.  On facebook people celebrate where their street has performed well, or bemoan if it is too quiet, and wow betide any that question the effectiveness of the now sacred ritual. Like all rituals, we come as we are, our motives and feelings may be mixed, but the ritual stretches beyond those that take part.

On this Good Friday - I hear the echoes of crowds in Jerusalem centuries ago, The crowds cheering on the preacher on the donkey, with a wide mix of hopes of how he might change their lives; then the crowds called on to choose between the one who threatens to rebel against Rome and the one who turned over the tables and spoke of the holy temple being destroyed.

On this Good Friday - I recognise in the cross the cry of those who feel forsaken, alone, abandoned.
And I recognise the heart ache of those forced to be distant from loved ones in pain and in the shadow of death, those who yearn to offer comfort but are kept out of reach.

On this Good Friday we again stand with those who are only able to do the basics in care for their dead, and must wait before fuller farewells can be offered.

On this Good Friday we sit and wait, stripped of so much and yet called together in new ways and new rituals. A world turned upside down, and the undervalued and under paid lifted up in true recognition. I pray that the cheers of the doorsteps morph into a real change in wages and resourcing of medics, carers, cleaners  and  others who are now revealed as those we rely on.

On this Good Friday - we weep and we wait.

I am who I am

It has been a very long time since I last blogged, and we are now in the strange world of Coronavirus. I have been a minister now for over 10 years and in Jan 2020 started my sabbatical, so only returned to my role on April 1st, the day of the fools!  Yesterday I had my birthday in shutdown after a weekend getting hard copies of Easter resources to church folk not on the internet.  The calm after a flurry of activity.

I have spend most of my sabbatical in quiet and alone, so already acclimatised to how I am now living, in a way my life has not changed as much as it has for many. Unlike friends and others in the job who I meet online I am not feeling loss or angst about not leading worship week by week and especially this Holy Week into Easter.  I do not feel personal anxiety about the virus - I am physically healthy and keeping to the distance rules, although family members are more vulnerable I trust that they are also being kept as safe as is possible.  I also have insight about microbiology and biochemistry from my degree days. 

But I wonder also if the medication that supports my mental health - to balance the highs and lows of bipolar - also has a numbing factor.  I recognise the pain of others and their anxiety but it does not create the emotional link that triggers a direct reaction in me.  Does this give me resilience? Not constantly drained by the care of others. Or simply make me unemphatic?  Does this make me a more useful minister or a worse minister? Or just simply make me the person and the minister that I am?

I go with the latter, I am who I am - I am called as who I am.

Whatever you are feeling and however you are coping is a valid response, we are who we are, and there are no rules of how we should feel, even if there are sensible rules about our movements.