81. Online and home meditation

Life generally seems to have so much meaningless clutter that there is no time for exploring its meaning. Or even beginning to think about it.

This lockdown has, in many ways, provided a very fertile environment for contemplative thought. We can’t really go anywhere and so many of the things we thought we couldn’t do without, we are now doing without. Every excuse then to turn off the TV and the phone and indulge in some meditative experiments. 

Unless you are in the blissful position of having little in the way of physical and mental distractions - no stressful journey to work, no bickering office politics, no noisy neighbours or demanding family - then you’ll be battling the problem of how to fit in any time for quiet contemplation.

You can’t go to a group session at the moment of course, however simple it would be to stick to social distancing while sitting on the floor. But there are lots of offerings online. Try googling or looking on YouTube - there’s everything from the plainly whacky to the blissfully simple and instructive. The idea of meditation has always carried different connotations for different people. Kaftans and sixties hippies, Beatle followers, weird chanting, incense sticks and so on. It’s all still there but there’s a growing layer of personal development thought and mind-management theory perfect for the self-help book generation.

Over the years I have tried a fair selection of elements of meditation. I’ve been led deep into my own breathing in a chapel in Warwick, I’ve joined proper monastery monks beneath the giant Buddha in Hong Kong, I’ve escaped the lunchtime shoppers for an hour at a Leicester centre and spent an evening for this blog wondering how long I can sit still through abject pain at a retreat near Stratford. Different levels and approaches but all with one aim in mind - to focus the thoughts by shutting out the outside world and its distractions. In the end, like everything from fitness to food, you just take the parts that work for you and stick to that. A self-help writer would turn that into a whole book on putting the ME into MEditation, but I shall resist.

For me the concept of thinking about not thinking is an early stumbling block. Many meditation session leaders have invited me to empty my mind completely. As a literal phrase it’s always struck me as daft. Daft and unachievable. What I DO need however, is to (at least temporarily) stop the galloping nonsense which seems to monopolise my thoughts every waking moment.

The thing is I am not seeking glittering truths or life-changing pathways, not even anything particularly profound. I just want a way of stepping away from the madness of everyday stress and concerns, and the chance to press reset on my equilibrium. A lot of people arrive at this through techniques associated more with mental health which have come to be grouped under the term Mindfulness. Colouring books, contemplating flowers, listening to one specific sound only - all with the aim of being in the moment, and therefore NOT embroiled in all the non-existent moments we imagine ourselves to be contending with. 

Oddly enough I find I’ve been doing this for years thanks to a calming technique I learned when transcendental meditation was the buzzword of its time. It’s easy and utterly without danger.

My tip for a meditative experiment would be to get comfy (no sitting on the floor for me!) and know you have at least fifteen minutes. Put on a quiet piece of music lasting that time so you’ll know when you’ve finished. Close your eyes and just be aware of gradually slowing your breathing down. Imagine walking on a very familiar route (I still choose the walk to school I haven’t actually trodden for over 40 years). Imagine yourself setting out on that walk with no need to hurry. Picture the route from your perspective as a walker in very small stages, pausing as you go to remind yourself of the detail around you. Turning a corner in a street might make you think what you would see on the other side of the road, a garden you always pass, a sign on the wall. It’s surprising how placing yourself somewhere begins to lead to even more detailed memories of the buildings, roads, landmarks and so on that you pass. Don’t be frightened to stop along the way and look around you. As you go you might, right in the back of your mind, become aware of how this one simple occupation has pushed the boiling mass of confusion we normally carry in our heads, right out of the way. If filling your mind with calm thoughts sends the racing nonsense out of sight for a while, then Job Done.

And that’s it really. No deep understanding of life’s meaning, no corruscating vision of the Almighty, no spiritual enlightenment. Just a few moments away from the madness. And we can all use that.

80. Stella Bailey, St Nicholas Church, Kenilworth

This week I was pleased to do two jobs at once by chatting with Rev Stella Bailey both for this blog and for the newspaper I work for.

Easter is a busy time for churches. It is, for many faiths, the most important time on the calendar.

They can expect to be filled with worshippers remembering the Crucifixion and the returning from the dead. Families meeting for Easter make it part of their tradition and even the very young can be tempted along by the prospect of the odd chocolate egg.

This year is, of course, completely different. Virus measures have left the churches - along with almost everywhere else - empty and locked.

At a time when we are repeatedly met with phrases describing our NHS workers as angels and proclaiming that they, and the people they care for, are in our thoughts and prayers, the very places where you might expect to find people voicing those prayers are closed.

There is a fairly threadbare joke about vicars only working one day of the week, and with that now taken away they should - if the joke holds true - have absolutely nothing to do at all. But that’s not the case. These unparalleled times find vicars busier than ever.

The Rev Stella Bailey, vicar at Kenilworth’s St Nicholas Church, is, like many of her calling, having to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities the current stay-at-home message presents.

For the past few weeks Stella has been live-streaming services from her home - a makeshift dining room corner embellished with a few handy artefacts brought over from the church. For this weekend’s live service there’s even a backdrop of coloured lights. Making the transition between the familiar Sunday service and the new online offering has been little short of a crash course.

"It has been about presenting people with something which is authentic to the church community while also thinking ‘how can I do it within this context?’

"We did have a bit of time to anticipate it happening before lockdown arrived. We were keeping an eye on what was happening in other countries and we were able to warn people that the only way we could continue to offer regular worship would be through Facebook.

"But I do miss the eye contact with the people I’m talking to. There’s a feeling of being disconnected. At times I’ve been on my own in the house and so services have felt very cold."

Some comfort has come through the fact that services are now being enjoyed by people from much further afield. People who have moved out of the area or those who have relatives in the parish are joining in helping to spread the connection further.

"Normally I’m trying to find ways to make the church relevant and attractive to people in their twenties. Now it’s flipped. It’s now the older people I am concerned about staying connected to. In particular those people who are in IT poverty and don’t have access to Facebook and so on."

To meet this need Stella has recently been recording spoken word versions of worship which can be delivered to those who can’t join in the church’s life online.

The response within the community to thse fighting the virus has been something which has moved the whole nation. Expressing our thanks to NHS frontline staff, people collecting our bins and delivering essential services may be something which lives on once the country emerges from this time. But the lesson we have learned is one which, in Stella’s view, must not be forgotten and must be acted upon.

"The clapping and support for those people we rely on has been welcome. But the clapping means nothing if it doesn’t lead to policy changes.

"The time to show how much these people really matter is at the ballot box."

Away from the Sunday duties, life for the parish vicar in these times has been far from easy.

Weddings have had to be called off - some within a very short time of being held. And while one of life’s big family celebrations can be rescheduled for next year, the same cannot be said of funerals. And these are weighing heavily.

Before the virus began to take its toll and the numbers of the dead start to rise in hundreds a day, St Nicholas Church could expect to find around four funerals a month in the diary. Now that figure stands at ten per week. And restrictions mean the funerals themselves are affected.

"The funerals are horrid. Most of them are directly at the graveside or the crematorium and are shortened services with only four people allowed for Warwickshire and five for Coventry. Often you can only speak to the family on the telephone.

"While you are presenting a person’s body before God, there is no opportunity to celebrate that person’s life."

Memorial services months later could become one of the legacies of this crisis and Stella hopes to allow families the chance to take another step on the grieving process.

The prospect of an end to the lockdown and the re-opening of the church doors is something treated with both joy and caution. The world into which we emerge may well be radically changed and new challenges will have to be faced. But the never-changing calendar of the church at least gives reassurance that there will another Easter.

To join Stella for her live-stream services and catch up with those you’ve missed visit stnicholaskenilworth.org.uk.

79. Notre-Dame de Paris

One of the great things about not being allowed to go anywhere is that you can go anywhere. 

There was a time when being sent to your room in solitary shame meant being cut off from the world. Now, without the prospect of another person sharing the room with me for many weeks, I’m able to travel, meet, converse and experience as I wish. If only it were real, I keep reminding myself. Because it isn’t.

Good Friday finds me taking a virtual stroll past the bookshops on the left bank, crossing the Seine and heading through the imposing doors of Notre Dame. All thanks to live-streaming of course.

It’s a year, give or take a few days, since this familiar Paris view could be seen on any TV screen around the world enveloped in the flames of the unthinkable fire that turned it from a symbol of faith and history into a blackened, smoking ruin, its spire and roof gone for ever.

It was a truly terrible time, the closest many of us will get to understanding what it was like to wake up the morning after the bombing of Coventry. History is, it would seem, not there forever.

An overwhelming tidal wave of support doused the flames somewhat and, a year on, the work is continuing - although it seems to have moved from the uplifting community stage to the bickering politician stage. Today represents a rare chance to take a look inside.

Because of the nationwide French lockdown, only seven people attended the service in person. The annual observance of Holy Week in all its pomp, a fixture on the catholic world’s calendar, is for the most part off or forced to find new arenas. 

For the short service the cathedral’s archbishop symbolically brought with him the fabulous golden crown of thorns snatched from flames. This was supposed to be a moment when the priceless relic overcame the devastation of the blaze. It may have done that, but the people chosen to transport it have yet to come through their own equally devastating challenge. Rescued and restored it currently lives elsewhere.

Planned as a veneration offering the chance to reflect on the fire, the year of restoration and the current pandemic, we also enjoyed readings from a variety of poets read by two stars of the French acting community. Music came entirely from a solo violinist, a haunting voice in the cavernous space.

It was an odd sight throughout, as many of these live streamed services seem to be. The clerical contingent of four arrived complete with hard hats - this is a construction site after all - to be met by the trio of performers clad in full anti-contamination suits and Wellington boots. Even in these other-worldly times, nobody does costumes quite like the Catholic church.

The service - fine readings and moving address testing my surprisingly still workable understanding of the french language - takes place at the foot of a giant golden cross halfway down the cathedral. Behind it scaffolding and damaged stonework extend upwards. Close-up shots of surviving windows and artefacts tail off into a dark, smoke-stained gloom you can almost smell through your computer screen. There’s still a lot to be done Mr Macron.

First the building and now the people who treasure it, everything has to prove it can endure whatever time decides will be put in its way. I’m sure we will one day see far better times for the cathedral and its worshippers but at the moment, with thousands being added to the death toll every day, it’s as great a test of faith as you can imagine.

78. St Peter’s, Draycott, Somerset

I’m not actually at St Peter’s this morning of course. If I were, I would be enjoying the fine view across the Somerset levels out to the coast at Bridgewater Bay or, by turning round, the wooded slopes of the Mendips rising like a wall at the back of the village. Coronavirus restrictions mean I’m visiting St Peter’s partly through the technology of Zoom and partly through memory.

And it’s the memory which has made this choice for me today. Thirty years ago this weekend, my dad finally succumbed to the health battles he’d long been fighting and died. He’d lived the latter part of his life just down the hill from here and had grown very proud of his Somerset base. His funeral was held at this beautiful village church and his headstone is still a place I visit every time I’m lucky enough to come down this way. 

Different people mark these anniversaries in different ways as you’d expect. Although I always circle the date in each new diary so I won’t miss it, this would have been the first time I would have set foot inside the church. I’ve been down to visit on key dates before and I usually raise a glass and spend some time in thought but we make our own traditions when no other tradition dictates and mine has never been elaborate or over-emotional. 

The news each day is filled with the latest rows over how many ventilators the  nation has managed to scrape together, the Herculean task of creating from scratch giant temporary hospitals to cope with the thousands who need help and the grimmest predictions of what kind of economic chaos will await those who survive its seemingly endless rages. And, deep down in each evening’s bulletin, the number of people who have died. Today it’s over 700. The figures are becoming almost a blur.

I have no idea how people who have suffered a bereavement in the last fortnight have coped. I hope I never find out. Funerals can go ahead but the restrictions which prevent everything from shopping to parties, football to worship apply here too. And heaven alone knows how the funeral industry is coping. At least, in my dad’s case, we were given the reassurance of a stable background against which we could grieve. 

Via the miracle of Zoom - and despite a lifetime working for BBC Radio my father would have regarded being able to see and talk to so many people in their own homes, nothing short of a miracle - I join a combined congregation upwards of 80. It is clearly an uplifting sight for regulars to see one another healthy and happy and the babble of voices - plus the contributions of at least one dog - is just as it would be were they all to gather to hand out hymn books and prepare the coffee urn.

Thanks to the welcoming generosity of the vicar of St Peter’s and his clearly resourceful IT helpers, my mug shot is top right on my screen and I’m able to wave to all and hear Rev Stuart explain why I am adding my presence today to the regular worshippers.

This Palm Sunday service is a slightly shortened communion (something we may have to live with for a few weeks yet) and carries a message of hope after suffering and comfort and thoughts to those in the community facing the anxiety of these odd and worrying times. The sense of togetherness, even across the miles and the network cables, is palpable and buoyant.

I’m invited to join the locals in a separate room for virtual coffee. Sadly the miraculous powers of Zoom fall short of giving me a voice. Somehow my microphone is switched off and no amount of clicking around on my part can rectify the problem. A pity as I would like to have spoken to those whose memories of the village might have gone far enough back into the last century. But it was not to be. In the end I scrawl ‘Thank You’ on one side of a piece of paper and ‘Goodbye’ on the other and hope that my thanks for allowing me to be there in so many people’s (very smart) front rooms, is understood. A most unconventional way to mark the turning of another year, but one I won’t forget.

77. St Nicholas, Kenilworth (Online)

I suppose comedians must be used to it in some ways. To live all your working life with a live audience which you can hear, see and - through the response of their laughter - interact with. Then suddenly, thanks to a TV chance, to find yourself on a film set with nobody to react to your lines however funny and well-timed they might be. Musicians would have it too. Sitting alone in a silent, sterile recording studio is so different from the occasionally restless but reassuringly present audience you are used to.

For vicars, this is a learning curve may will be embarking on for the first time. Preaching when there’s nobody there to preach to; looking for responses in an empty room. And, in many cases, not even being able to try to cope with these unfamiliar times on familiar territory. No church, no pulpit, no congregation.

The coronavirus crisis has worsened since last week. We are now all but confined to our homes. The wonders of IT mean many of us have the simulation of reality in our work, but step outside the door and the real world is a changed place. I combined my permitted exercise with a walk to pick up essential shopping. I passed only one person on my Saturday lunchtime walk through town. After queuing like stacked aircraft before being signalled in to the supermarket I wandered home past St Nicholas which, like everything else at the moment, is shut and locked with just a note on the door to indicate that somewhere deep down, things ARE carrying on. There was nobody around as I sat for a moment to enjoy the fabulous colours of the flowers in which the church is fringed. It’s a fine sunny day and I can’t resist a picture or two.

St Nicholas is, like many churches, offering live-streaming of some services. This morning’s communion is coming from the vicarage dining room. Thanks to a selective raid on bits and bobs from the church itself, the room has been converted into a makeshift chapel. How fortunate the archbishop last week who has such a space already available in the crypt of his palace.

It’s a one-woman-show from start to finish. It must be so odd to hear yourself recite such familiar words without any response, indeed without any real idea of who (if anyone) is listening. The absence of supporting clergy and the usual church wardens is evident in the moment when the vicar realises the altar candle has not been lit and we’re left watching an empty room while she races out to the kitchen for a box of matches. 

After that it’s a refreshingly straightforward service, shortened by necessity, but sticking to the usual format and easily followable thanks to the PDF order of service you can also download. It’s not impossible to concentrate on what’s happening, but without the physical reminder of actually being in church surrounded by others, it’s understandable that the gaze will shift at times.

I find myself distracted in particular by the tiny icon at the top of the video which shows how many people are currently watching. It starts off at about 30 and hovers around the 45 mark for most of the service. But I can’t help view it as some sort of real-time approval rating. I only hope the vicar can’t see it; the temptation to adjust the content to boost the ratings is a debate familiar to churchgoers even in non-virus times.

The prayers focus strongly, as you’d expect, those suffering and anxious at the moment and those risking so much to look after them. A few nights ago we all stood on our doorsteps and demonstrated our gratitude toward those battling on the the frontline of the virus by applauding the NHS. I feel after watching this, and pondering for a moment the commitment and determination that makes so many of us at least try to keep going, I wish there were some sort of applause button I could press. But I content myself with sending (I believe) a thumbs-up and a smiley face. 

It’s awkward and obviously lacking, through no fault of its own, in so many areas but this online response is so much more than the church could have offered even a decade ago. Without this link, and with home visits ruled out by the virus measures we must all follow, I suppose the church would simply have had to lock the doors and wait for better times. Instead it is able, like the spring flowers which defy the icy blasts the virus blows into all our lives, to keep its head above the soil, offering a promise to us all that normality will one day return.

76. The Crypt Chapel, Lambeth Palace, via Facebook

There will have been a different moment for each person when it finally struck home just how serious this crisis is. A moment when this went beyond being the threat of a virus affecting a distant community with the potential to cause inconvenience to travellers, to being something that has profoundly changed our lives at present and may well leave them looking very different in the future. 

For some it may have been the moment the first cases reached the UK or the realisation that the weekend in Rome was off. Many people I know properly sat up an took notice when football was stopped. Perhaps when the school gates were locked. And there will have been plenty of people for whom any remaining sense of distance from the problem will have been crushed by the sight of the pub door closing with no immediate  prospect of re-opening.

And for those who live lives even remotely religious, the closing of the the churches has been both a profoundly spiritual and upsettingly practical development as well as an undeniable statement of how serious a position the world now finds itself in. 

All these aspects of our different lives - football, pubs, work, shopping, schools, churches - make up the underlying fabric of what we do. They dictate the meaning and structure of out lives. Their removal, even either temporarily or in part, leaves us bereft and struggling with how to make sense of things. We also, quite naturally (and with commendable creativity) look for alternatives, ways to beat the crisis. Footballers have been challenging each other to YouTube skills contests; musicians and theatre groups have been live-streaming their efforts just to keep reaching the isolated. 

As an aside it makes me ponder what would happen in the future should some global computer virus gradually wipe out life online. Perhaps many of us would be forced to isolate ourselves in the real world in search of entertainment, companionship and fulfilment. But that’s probably one for the satirists.

You can have a faith without a church of course. History has provided us with plenty of instances when particular faiths have been driven out of any overt public presence. Many people have relied on their faith to get them through such crises. Conversely there are examples of religious communities existing without any open congregation, opting instead to mark the offices of the day with closed prayer and absolute disconnection from the world outside. But, for most, it’s the interaction of place and people which is essential and it’s this which has provided the problem and the catalyst to what the faith community has been doing in the last few days. How do we keep going when we can’t go at all?

My still lengthy list of places of worship I’d still be fascinated to visit has had to be set aside. Who knows for how long. I’ve enjoyed doing this blog but to keep things going in the way I’ve been producing it is going to need some creative thinking. 

I’m starting this period of necessary exile by tuning in on Facebook to the sight of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, conducting a morning prayer service to about three people in the crypt of Lambeth Palace Chapel. It’s a specially-recorded short service offered to the online world through the Church of England website. It’s strange to hear the familar words of the service with no response. A tough time for vicars too evidently but at least they still get the sermon. The thoughts expressed are in many ways identical to those we’ve heard from politicians and the medical community; Keep yourself safe and think of others. 

All churches have been responding using the new technologies which, one could assume, have played their part in keeping attendances falling. Online services, webcams, community forums, downloadable instructions for having your own service at home. Virtual Friday prayers. It’s all out there. 

The fact that this also happens to be Mothering Sunday is, awful as it sounds, neither here nor there. Cynics might say restrictions on what we can do have probably hit the retail and service industries far more than any other area. All those unsold chocolates, un-sent flowers, cancelled pub lunches. If you haven’t been thinking constantly of your vulnerable parents over the last few weeks, then not being allowed to deliver a card and a bunch of flowers is hardly going to make a difference.

The panel discussion on Radio Four this morning shows that the problem is similar across all faiths. And so will be the resourcefulness of the response no doubt. It may provide some more of the heartwarming community rallying we’ve been seeing.

One of the things faith - any faith - has enabled people to achieve is in providing the chance to pause, reflect and reset for the trials to come. Ironically this new life of avoiding as much actual social contact as possible gives all of us the opportunity to do just that. 

Whatever the resources, whatever the setting and whatever the faith (or complete absence of it) I hope we all manage to do that. Priorities have never been clearer.

75. All Saints, Preston Bagot

I got three texts quite close together toward the end of last week. Two were NHS reminders about my forthcoming appointment urging me not under any circumstances to forget it. The third was from the doctors’ surgery itself telling me the appointment had been cancelled so resources could be concentrated on the imminent arrival of coronavirus cases.  I also had a number of emails on the same day encouraging me not to lose sight of the need to renew a library book, telling me my home contents insurance is due and breaking the news that the football match I wasn’t going to anyway was now off.

We get our messages lots of different ways in these modern times but some things, I found myself pondering on Sunday morning, remain resolutely non-modern. It’s a grey and rainy morning a good half a mile outside the small hamlet of Preston Bagot and the bells of All Saints are being rung loud and long to advise the faithful not to lose sight of their appointment with Morning Prayer. It’s a very reassuring sound, even if I used to hate its intrusion during my younger days when Sunday mornings didn’t really start until well after lunch. I wonder if the pealing of church bells will one day be replaced by the ping of a text reminder - I certainly hope not.

Of course it’s not just a question of the medium, it’s the message too and this morning’s message is one of faith, compassion and support backed up by simple common sense. As messages go it’s no earth-mover. It’s hardly dramatic and hardly anything we couldn’t work out for ourselves. But boy do we need it. 

There are fewer than a dozen here for the early start. Brave souls the vicar calls us. She begins by telling us (with an exasperation only partly-feigned)  how, as a person past the age of 70, she’s received calls from members of her family telling her what she should do to avoid the virus. On top of this comes the advice from the government and medical communities, all routinely filtered, enhanced and just plain exaggerated by the news industry. Add to that the rumours we seem to pass from person to person with a far greater efficiency than any virulent bug, and it’s a cocktail of information and supposition guaranteed to bewilder.

Perhaps it’s the natural cynicism of the journalist in me but some of the messages which seem to sweep the nation on a daily basis seem to have a very calculating hand behind them. One well-placed salvo of social media posts results very quickly in another gap on the supermarket shelves. Toilet rolls, pasta, anything with the phrase ‘anti-bacterial’ on it - they’ve all disappeared in the last few days. It’s a pity I can’t get any success with spreading fears over the future availability of the Romany Pie CD; a few boxes of that being loaded into trolleys wouldn’t be a bad thing. 

Of course the past masters of the whole ‘terrify them into buying’ thing was always the church itself. Take a look at any history of pre-reformation catholicism and the sight of carbootfuls of Andrex pales into insignificance. In the teeth of such apocalyptic behaviour it’s a wonder the church doesn’t cash in afresh. 

Perhaps now is the time for a neo-Victorian bible-thumping campaign warning all to get in line or face the damnation of coronavirus without the Almighty’s help. But it doesn’t and the patient invocation to us to act responsibly and with others in mind is as much a measure of how the church has changed as it is an indication of what we in the pews feel we need to hear. 

But at least we’re here to hear the message. It has emerged this morning that the government is on the brink of instructing all those over 70 to stay in their homes and have no contact with the rest of the population. Without being unnecessarily rude I think that would leave this morning’s congregation at just me and the organist. He’ll be busy so it might fall to me to ring the bells.

As a footnote I stopped off at Sainsburys on my way home to buy milk and cereal. The car park was gridlocked, shoppers very stoney-faced and the shelves noticeably sparse in places. Caught up in the maelstrom of mass-hysteria all around me and being swept along by the herd, I panic bought three onions I really didn’t need. These coming weeks will provide many tough trials for all of us I expect.