Wednesday 25th  March

I was chatting yesterday, on the phone, to the wonderful assistant head teacher at Thriplow School. She was saying that at the moment everything seemed so surreal. Indeed it does, there is a nightmarish quality about our lives at the moment, a feeling that it is a terrible dream and we will soon wake up.

In some ways, for me, this is made more pronounced by the wonderful spring weather we are experiencing. Our days are growing longer and the sun has streamed down daily. The birds are out and about, building nests, singing, eating my grass seed and rejoicing in the new found warmth. The spring flowers and blossom are abounding. The Muntjack Deer are laying siege to my tulip buds and Erik has woken up and begun to go about his daily business of mouse watching.

It is almost as if creation is mocking us. Humanity has got itself into a real pickle but life goes on and creation is still thriving. Yet I find the glorious weather and flowering life extremely comforting. This is a world that I believe was created by God. It was created by a powerful loving God. It was created with style and detail and beauty. Our world has seen many plagues that have, for a while, laid waste to human life. That have halted our aspirations and brought life as we know it to a halt. Yet humanity always recovers and eventually thrives.

Mankind has recovered from the bubonic plague of Mediaeval Times, from the Spanish Flue of 1918/19 and we will recover from Coronavirus in 2020. There is no doubt that life will be changed. Many people are mourning the deaths of people they loved, others are anxious about how they will survive financially, some are struggling at being isolated from people they love and left to manage for themselves.

I am so impressed by the sheer humanity, compassion and enterprising spirit I have seen in recent days. It is a joy to see our communities coming together to provide networks of support for the vulnerable people in our midst. It is heart-warming to see parents out with their children taking exercise and doing projects; to see the rainbows in the windows. It is lovely to see those confined by age setting quiz challenges for the community and offering teaching help to parents. I marvel at my elderly mother putting together a work rota to keep her house clean while her carers cannot come in and struggling to change her duvet yet setting up a long distance project for the young children next door so that they can enjoy and learn from the tadpoles in her pond.

There is no doubt that as a race human beings have an in dominatable spirit. Currently we are down, but we are not out and I believe that when this is over, as it will be we come out of it in many ways transformed and better individually and as communities. As I look at nature in all its glory today I see a powerful creator God who loves us and shares our pain who yet resources us and provides for us and gives us strength to carry on.

Every cat for themselves in challenging times. Erik laying claim to the bed!