IT WAS in the evening of 23 March 2020 that the then Prime Minister told us that we must stay at home and not go out. There followed six extraordinary weeks in which the sky was blue, the air was clear, the birds sang, and we stayed in our homes, apart from for an hour’s daily exercise. Many restrictions remained in place for months.
The Covid pandemic and the measures taken to prevent infection have left us with collective trauma, the grief of bereavement, huge debt, changed work habits, and a younger generation with crippling anxiety.
The closure of churches did not help. They were eventually permitted to use the space for foodbanks, and some even became vaccination clinics. This sent the theologically dubious message that good works were permitted, but not care of the distressed, who were denied access to places of memory and sanctuary. One of my most painful memories was watching, from my window, a deeply distressed man beating his arms on the locked door of Portsmouth Cathedral, eventually sinking to his knees and weeping. At the time, I wondered why we could not construct a simple outdoor space with a wooden cross, candles, lanterns, and safely distanced benches or chairs; but no one did.
In retrospect, it seems absurd that clergy were locked out of their churches and that the Archbishop of Canterbury conducted an Easter eucharist on television from his kitchen table rather than from the chapel in Lambeth Palace; but spiritual imagination was curtailed by the irritating little nostrum “The church is the people, not the building.”
A lot of pious people seemed to like it that way. But, I suspect, rather more felt betrayed and have not forgiven the Church for shutting them out in their hour of need. Instead, we worshipped the NHS: remember those clapping sessions on Thursday evenings? To me, it resembled the attempt to placate a pagan deity, like the cries of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. But it was, we were told, “our” NHS, and we had to save it, if there were to be any chance of its saving us.
Steps back towards normality were clumsy. Many of us cried when we were first allowed to sing hymns outside and when church doors were opened again. At one point, “choirs” returned, but only three people: not enough to provide four parts as SATB.
The trauma remains, though. I still feel mildly uncomfortable sitting next to anyone in church, and I’m reluctant to share the Peace with a handshake. The Body Keeps the Score, as Bessel van der Kolk’s book on trauma reminds us. Perhaps we could do things better another time. Five years on provides an opportunity to work out how we might keep safe without locking people out of places of memory and solace.
