These last few weeks we have had to come to terms that our dreams for our wedding weekend would not come to mind. Robbie Burns springs to mind "The best laid plans of mice and me often go awry". Things do not work out the way we would like them to. We are all having to come to terms with this. As we face this ever growing nightmare that is the global pandemic, that is Corona Virus. There is nothing personal about it, it affects us all. It humbles us all. It shows just how finite we are, it grounds us in reality, it shoes how deeply everyone of us is connected and how all our lives are deeply interdependent, everything that we do and do not, every breath and interaction can lead a chain reaction that can lead to life giving love or could potentially destroy the lives of many. We are all living by chaos theory today. Every action and inaction can set off a chain of events that affects us all. Sure none of us can doubt that me. I often say that everything matters, every thought,every feeling, every word, every deed. That there is no neutrality in life. that this should teach us just how sacred all life it, how sacred and precious every thing is. That we can either bless and sanctify life through our very human being, or we can desecrate life. This could not be any clearer today. Wendell Berry comes to mind here "There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." What we do and do not do in the coming weeks will realise this.
Sue and myself accepted that had to hold a tiny private wedding in the place we had planned. With just a few people that Sue needed to stand with her, her two children Lucy and Barney and a couple of friends. I had to make the hard decision to tell my nearest and dearest that they could not be their physically. We had to play our part in this. I decided I could stand alone. I was not alone. I had the love of so many people running through my veins, bound up in my heart and soul and the love of God through which I am sustained in every breath.We were to marry in the eyes of the God of our limited understanding, but infinite experience, the law of this land and our dear precious love. We would enjoy our day of celebration when we come through all of this together. No one knows when that will be, it is important to be honest about this reality, to live in, through and by Hope but not by blind optimism.
We had also planned to lead worship together the day after our wedding. We thought it would be a lovely gift to our loved ones who would be staying over and the two communities that I lead and we are both a part of. It was "Mothering Sunday", or "Mother's Day" if you prefer. We spent many hours thinking through how we link the loving nurture of Mother and spiritual community. We wrote the service and were about to deliver that too, when we had to suspend all worship.
Once the acceptance began to set in and after shedding many tears. We began to think about what we could do. How to keep the community together, how to hold and feed one another spiritually, emotionally, and so many other ways in body, mind, spirit and soul. We could no longer physically worship together, we could not meet to share our joys and concerns, our hope and despair, to explore our lives and spiritualities, to socialise. We have spent many days thinking of ways to begin to do so. To serve our communities and the wider human community, my goodness it is so needed. What we came up for Sunday will not be sustainable, but it will work for this weekend.
Sue suggested that we should all worship together at the same time, but not physically together. To do so from our own homes. We talked about and decided that we would go and delver a copy of the full service, a tea light candle and a posy of flowers and leave them on every congregants door step. So we put to all together, followed all suggested precautions, we had hundreds of pairs of vinyl gloves, purchased for the wedding buffet. I used many pairs that day.
When we set off we had no idea what we had awaiting us, a journey of love, in love and by love. We had a lot of ground to cover, from Stoke, to Glossop and to Ainsworth near Bolton, as well as other parts of Cheshire and of course all over Trafford, taking in Altrincham and Urmston. We set off with about 80 posies,tealights and scripts, along with a love letter explaining how we be developing all kinds of ways to keep our roots, hearts,minds and souls connected in these days of physical isolation (I do not like the term social isolation because we can still be socially connected even if we are not physically together.) It was an amazing experience. We set off just before 8am and had to finally give up at just before 10pm. Not your tradition pr-marriage feast,it was though truly a Love Feast. Sue stayed with me until about 6pm but had to spend time with her children, I carried on til the end with the love of so many people bound up in my heart and good pumping the blood and air through me, inspired by love, a a journey through,by and to love. We did not get to every single one in the end, we never completed the plan, we did not achieve perfection. In the end we had to email a few of the scripts.
We did have a few interactions from a safe distance as the odd person saw me delivering. The offered their love. I have never seen more loving eyes staring back at me. Love is a deeply powerful experience. Their were many tears shared on our journey around a large part of the North West of England, on our mission of love. there was much joy and laughter, we weren't perfect as the odd negative words were shared. We live in fearful times. We received many phone calls and messages from folk. We both nearly wet ourselves as every public toilet we came across was closed, due to the virus. So I am sorry but we did have to go by the road side at near Plumbly train station. Yes we did wash our hands.
The only sad things about the day were as we drove past a couple of packed out pubs and saw folk socialising too close together. I tried not to express anger. Also the groups of young people, let out of school in the evening as I drove around Urmston and Sale. Hopefully as things settle in we will all accept to need to keep social distance, all our lives depend upon it.
A beautiful day, but one of exhaustion.
May the Love that I call good come alive and live in and through us all, may we find the courage to be and do what is required in these coming weeks. I and I know many others will do all we can to to help to hold us spiritually, others will take care of our physical needs. We need to not only survive this, but nurture our humanity. I know that we will, I live by hope. It is my north star, my guiding star. We though must bring that hope alive and inspire one another, to let that love incarnate in and through our very mortal, human, finite lives. When this is all over we will need to continue through this as we rebuild together, unity, service and love as we all recover together. We will recover from this, we will be different,things will change,but then the spiritual life has always been about transformation rather than transcendence. This always occurs in life, in the muck and love of life, in the soil, in the earth, we are human, we are born of the earth, humus. This is what it means to recognise our common humanity, to truly live in and by humility. we are not God's, we are mortal, we are finite and our lives depend on us holding ourselves in our hearts, minds, spirits and souls as we live through this.
May the love that is God live through us all.
Now I need to go get ready, as I marry my True Love today.
I will not proof read this. I cannot go through the emotion of re-reading it again,so I apologies to all the those with a better grasp of the English language than me. This is the stream of my imperfect consciousness and I believe I should let it stand as it is.
I love you all...I love the world...I love this world...
I will leave you with a favourite poem and my favourite song of all time
"I Love the World" by New Model Army
“Hope” by Vaclav Havel
Hope is a state of mind, not a state of the world
Either we have hope within us or we don’t.
Hope is not a prognostication—it’s an orientation of the spirit.
You can’t delegate that to anyone else.
Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy
when things are going well,
or the willingness to invest in enterprises
that are obviously headed for early success,
but rather an ability to work for something to succeed.
Hope is definitely NOT the same as optimism.
It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well,
but the certainty that something makes sense,
regardless of how it turns out.
It is hope, above all, that gives us strength to live
and to continually try new things,
even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing
to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily,
without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope.
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