In recent weeks, this poem (the first of an enthusiastic spate when I discovered roundels) has felt personally apt in new, weird ways.
Of all the people I know, I guess I’ve been one of the least hit by lockdown. Largely because of massive privilege. But also because I have been keeping life simple for some years now. My mental health has long needed careful managing. Or, at least, it feels like it needs careful managing still – who knows by this point? I’m generally too scared to test it.
And some days I am amazed and grateful for my capacity to cycle through a routine regardless of how I’m feeling. I’m grateful for all that I’ve learned and achieved by making study a part of that routine. I’m grateful for the habits of prayer and intercession that have grown my faith and heart for reconciled wholeness (even if the status of my outer-life relationship with the rest of humankind remains “it’s complicated”).
And other days it disturbs me. And/or it infuriates the people around me. I know my life is ‘small’ and I struggle to even just picture it bigger; I take action to lock down the boundaries and reinforce the framework and I sort of know I’m losing more than I am keeping but, conveniently, I haven’t scheduled time in my routine to have that conversation with myself, so I just keep on keeping on.
So lockdown itself is not far from business as usual, for me. I have never needed ‘help’ social distancing and, after some initial adjustments, I find myself in a day-to-day that is more optimised and undisrupted than ever. Instead, it’s the prospect of ‘easing’ that fills me with dread – and not just because I do not trust or agree with the government’s agenda (although there is also very much that, and I’m angry and sad for those many who will be hit way harder by it). I’m not looking forward to re-relaxing my routine; to facing possibilities and making judgements that I’ve been glad to put on hold; to dealing with other people’s expectations and frustrations again, and feeling the frustrations of not being understood.
Where am I going with this? I don’t know, maybe it’s just a plea for understanding. I suspect I’m not the only one who needs it. People who are less practiced at managing their mental health might be in new territory. People who are only too well practiced might be at or beyond the limit of their resources. And all of us are in this thing in some way, which is to say we all have our own (widely varying) stuff to contend with, and less capacity than usual, perhaps, for looking beyond that stuff to the needs of others. There’s a risk that it isolates us further, causing us to withdraw and/or to find ourselves neglected. We need each other (I say that as someone with a strong preference for self-sufficiency), but we need to go easy on each other. Nobody has it all fully together, nobody is capable of not letting down even those they most love – the best among us are still finite. Even Jesus, while on earth, could only be in one place at a time.
Funnily, I’d already been thinking about this poem when I got to the part of my morning where I read some Bible – and found myself in Lamentations 3. Lamentations is a near-unbroken torrent of acute communal grief in the face of overwhelming suffering (the context being the 6th century BCE destruction of Jerusalem). But pretty much smack bang in the middle comes this striking burst of hope:
And it brought back to me the healthy foundations of my life of habit, the bit worth constantly reclaiming from the problematic aspects. Take the next thing as it comes, as best you can – receiving mercy, trying to show it. This is not ‘advice’; it’s not a ‘strategy’ that ‘works’; it’s just my story, or the part of it I find myself in need of hearing as I face the mostly out-of-my-control unknowns that we will all face (differently, together) in the weeks and months ahead.
[1] Tom Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, SPCK, 2011.
[Thumbnail image cc. by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.]
DIURNAL ROUND
Another day, another shock alarm;
Another bracing of the body to obey,
And of the face, to face with surface calm
Another day.
Abolish every thought that goes astray,
Deny yourself the luxury of qualm,
Just exercise, and eat, and work, and pray.
You have a system, and it’s like a charm.
And if you’re losing out to keep it, that’s OK;
The time for all those other things will come
Another day.
Carolyn Whitnall, 2018.
Of all the people I know, I guess I’ve been one of the least hit by lockdown. Largely because of massive privilege. But also because I have been keeping life simple for some years now. My mental health has long needed careful managing. Or, at least, it feels like it needs careful managing still – who knows by this point? I’m generally too scared to test it.
And some days I am amazed and grateful for my capacity to cycle through a routine regardless of how I’m feeling. I’m grateful for all that I’ve learned and achieved by making study a part of that routine. I’m grateful for the habits of prayer and intercession that have grown my faith and heart for reconciled wholeness (even if the status of my outer-life relationship with the rest of humankind remains “it’s complicated”).
And other days it disturbs me. And/or it infuriates the people around me. I know my life is ‘small’ and I struggle to even just picture it bigger; I take action to lock down the boundaries and reinforce the framework and I sort of know I’m losing more than I am keeping but, conveniently, I haven’t scheduled time in my routine to have that conversation with myself, so I just keep on keeping on.
So lockdown itself is not far from business as usual, for me. I have never needed ‘help’ social distancing and, after some initial adjustments, I find myself in a day-to-day that is more optimised and undisrupted than ever. Instead, it’s the prospect of ‘easing’ that fills me with dread – and not just because I do not trust or agree with the government’s agenda (although there is also very much that, and I’m angry and sad for those many who will be hit way harder by it). I’m not looking forward to re-relaxing my routine; to facing possibilities and making judgements that I’ve been glad to put on hold; to dealing with other people’s expectations and frustrations again, and feeling the frustrations of not being understood.
Where am I going with this? I don’t know, maybe it’s just a plea for understanding. I suspect I’m not the only one who needs it. People who are less practiced at managing their mental health might be in new territory. People who are only too well practiced might be at or beyond the limit of their resources. And all of us are in this thing in some way, which is to say we all have our own (widely varying) stuff to contend with, and less capacity than usual, perhaps, for looking beyond that stuff to the needs of others. There’s a risk that it isolates us further, causing us to withdraw and/or to find ourselves neglected. We need each other (I say that as someone with a strong preference for self-sufficiency), but we need to go easy on each other. Nobody has it all fully together, nobody is capable of not letting down even those they most love – the best among us are still finite. Even Jesus, while on earth, could only be in one place at a time.
Funnily, I’d already been thinking about this poem when I got to the part of my morning where I read some Bible – and found myself in Lamentations 3. Lamentations is a near-unbroken torrent of acute communal grief in the face of overwhelming suffering (the context being the 6th century BCE destruction of Jerusalem). But pretty much smack bang in the middle comes this striking burst of hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,And then my New Testament reading happened to be in James 4 (“...Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes...”, v14) with notes from Tom Wright: “Learn to take each day as a gift from God, and to do such planning as is necessary in the light of that.” [1]
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)
And it brought back to me the healthy foundations of my life of habit, the bit worth constantly reclaiming from the problematic aspects. Take the next thing as it comes, as best you can – receiving mercy, trying to show it. This is not ‘advice’; it’s not a ‘strategy’ that ‘works’; it’s just my story, or the part of it I find myself in need of hearing as I face the mostly out-of-my-control unknowns that we will all face (differently, together) in the weeks and months ahead.
[1] Tom Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, SPCK, 2011.
[Thumbnail image cc. by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.]
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