Tag: prayer

After The Virus

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We have been in ‘lockdown’ for so long now that I’ve forgotten what a normal day was. We do get out; we walk in the park or around a block or two if it’s very windy. Our days have taken on a new shape. We celebrate our mass via the computer. It’s a bit like having a house mass with no other people there. Even our walks outside are different. The roads are quieter and the air seems cleaner. There is nothing much we can do out there so there is really no pressure. Life has become quieter.

This is not ideal. We miss our grandchildren; video calls are good but not quite the same thing.  My wife has joined Gareth’s online choir and they practice every weeknight at five thirty. We are continuing with the Holy Father’s rosary for the Corona Virus victims and workers. Our life has a new tempo.

Increasingly we are questioning why our ‘normal life’ was the way it had become. Why was there so much pressure to get to places and get things done? So many people are working from home now, using laptops and having meetings on Zoom. They are even making television programmes with the participants working from home. When people start questioning why we do things the way we do it can lead to big changes. Are we about to change how we live?

This virus had forced us to question what is really important. Is it more important to save lives or to save the economy? Perhaps the two are not unrelated. If people cannot go to buy clothes, go to the pub or go on holiday then businesses will suffer and jobs will be lost. Unemployment will cost lives. If people are forced to work in unsafe conditions some will die. If we kill off the workforce the economy will suffer.

It seems to me it’s all a question of values. Are the people here to serve the economy or is the economy about serving the people? I take the stance that people are important and the economy is important where it serves the interests of the people. Why do I say that? It is simply because God created people. We are here because it is God’s will.

I have no idea when this emergency will be over. I don’t know how many lives will be lost. I do think that when it is over we need to bring about change. Every Thursday evening we have been coming out to demonstrate our appreciation for the workers in the NHS and emergency services who have risked their lives for us. We have been forced to think again about who is important in our society. We have come to realise that those people we depend upon have been undervalued and their service has gone largely unappreciated.

I believe that we need to rebuild our society as one which is based on Christian values. We need to recognise that people are the priority. The economy, the laws and our institutions are there to serve the people. We can no longer decide on the value of a person on the basis of how much money they have or the level of their earnings or the property they own. As Christians we believe that God values every person equally as He created all of them and gave His Son to die for them, rich or poor, the good and, significantly, the bad.

So, how do we go about this revolution, for a revolution it is? We need to look to Jesus and how He began his work. We remember that Jesus began his work at a wedding and he started reluctantly. He thought He wasn’t quite ready but His mother had other ideas. At that wedding in Cana Jesus gave us three hints about starting out. He recognised that someone was in difficulty and decided to help. That’s a good place to start. How many people have been recognising their neighbour’s difficulties in this lockdown and set out to help? So we have made a start already. It might not seem like a major issue to start on but then Jesus’ first miracle was just about a shortage of wine.

That’s the second hint. We don’t start changing the world by tackling the big issues first. We deal with the practical things. We deal with the problems that are easiest to solve. How difficult can it be to make sure everyone gets enough to live on? Even before the lockdown the big shops were in trouble. People didn’t have enough money to buy all the things they were selling. Shop windows were soon displaying notices of 20% OFF, then 50% OFF. This kept the businesses going. Now if people had a little more money and prices didn’t go too high things might just work better.

The third hint was that Jesus can take a seemingly insoluble problem and do something remarkable. It’s clear that when we work with Jesus great things can happen. This implies that we should not expect to know all the answers ourselves. It is easy to let our own ideas lead us off in the wrong direction. We need to be able to follow God’s will rather than our own. By giving prayer its proper place in our lives we should be able to keep closer to God’s will.

Jesus told us that the most important commandment was to love God and to love our neighbour. If we follow that guide closely then whatever society we build should remain close to God’s ideals. By looking after the interests of others we can only succeed in building a fair society. We have seen that acquiring lots of money does not protect us from disease. It cannot save us from the virus but the unselfish help from our doctors and underpaid nurses can bring us safely out of it.

With the help of God and the love our neighbour we should be able to create a world worth living in.

Communications Problems

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This article was published in the Scottish Catholic Observer on Friday 13th March 2020

I was just thinking about the demise of the postcard. Nobody takes the time to send them anymore. Why bother choosing, writing and posting something that might arrive two weeks after you get home when you can send an instant photo on Twitter or WhatsApp or some such. Communications have changed dramatically in my lifetime. The world I was born into seems like an alien planet to millennials.

The wireless (nobody called it the radio then) was the centrepiece of the living room. Television was a rumour that sprung into life with the Coronation in 1953. The telephone lived in a red painted greenhouse at the corner or in the homes of people with money. You had to lift the phone and listen for the operator who would connect you with the number you required.

I had uncles and aunts in California and I remember my Dad being sent for when Uncle Benny had booked a call from America at eight that night. Yes, you had to book time on the transatlantic cable in those days. The whole family gathered at Uncle Joe’s house; he had a telephone. All the brothers and sisters got a few seconds to exchange greetings. It wasn’t what they said; it was just great to hear their brother’s voice.

The big changes began with Telstar, the first communications satellite that carried TV pictures and ‘phone calls. Other satellites followed and communications exploded. I can dial a call to any place under the sun, even though the dial left the ‘phone years ago. I have a ‘phone in my pocket that lets me call any place from almost any other place. The ‘phone can also send pictures and video of what I’m up to as well as browsing the internet.

It was as a man from this interconnected world that I met a very different kind of man. I was in India, in Tamil Nadu at the bottom of that subcontinent. I was on a mission visit with my boss Fr. Pat and we were staying at a school, or rather a campus of schools that served the poor of the region. I was greeted by an old man (well he looked very old but probably was younger than me) dressed in a simple loincloth.

In the caste system, which was then illegal, the lowest caste was only allowed this garment so that people would recognise that they were untouchable. This man greeted me by putting his hands together with splayed fingers and bowed. I responded with a bow of the head and a smile. I asked Fr. Pat what this greeting was about. His answer was that the man was paying homage to the deity within me.

Here was I, a man of sophisticated communications systems, who might greet you with “Hello” or maybe just “Hi” being greeted by a very simple man who alludes to the essential truth of my being, that I am the creation of a God who resides with me. Who is the simple man now? That meeting forced me to think about the nature of my communications. I could send a picture of myself in India to friends in Scotland but how did I communicate with the Holy Spirit who is never very far from me? Perhaps it is the nature of the communication that stops me.

A trivial comment and a picture are easy to send. They do not require much thought. The result might be a smile or a smart reply. Communicating with God is a different business altogether. The trivia does not go very far with a person who knows you better than you know yourself. And yet the very fact that God knows you so well should make communication much easier.  Listening to God makes more sense than taking advice from anyone else. In the silence that quiet voice can be heard but silence is something I avoid.

When I’m alone in the house I play music or switch on the television or radio, anything to fill the place with noise and block out the silence. I’m not listening to the music, not watching the television programmes; I’m not even interested in what they are about. The other day I found that my set top box had recorded a whole series of programmes I’ve never seen. It had noted that this programme was frequently on my TV. It had no way of knowing that I wasn’t watching.

Why do I use all this trivia to stop me communicating with God? Am I aware I’m doing it? Am I afraid to reveal who I am to God? If that’s the case then I’m even more stupid than I had suspected. God knows everything about me. That’s why listening to God would be more valuable than listening to anyone else. I’m not claiming to hear voices in my head, that’s never a good sign. God’s communication is more subtle than that. You don’t get a vision appearing on your wall but you might find a solution to something that has bothered you. You might have a good idea about helping someone or have a sudden urge to speak to someone. God doesn’t make demands but helps us to see things we had never thought of before. He lets us thing it’s our idea.

We are into Lent now and the big question is ‘What will I do for Lent?’. Will I give up chocolate? Will I put more money in the Saint Vincent de Paul box? I decided to get to daily mass more often, get closer to God. Now that I’ve been thinking about the distractions in my life perhaps I should aim for more silence. Perhaps I need to make more space for God to speak to me and that can only happen in silence.

I’m going to try to limit how much time I spend online; using social media, browsing the internet for the latest scandal about Donald Trump. I’ll shut down my computer when I finish working on it and leave that gap in my day, a gap that the silence can fill. What about my ‘phone? Can I trust myself to leave it in my pocket when I go for a coffee or sit on the train? The temptation is always there to click on the ‘phone and see what’s causing all the excitement on Twitter. I’m not too happy about switching off my ‘phone; I could miss that important message from Parkhead telling me to bring my boots, they are a man short. Maybe that would be my biggest sacrifice for Lent, switching off the ‘phone. I wonder?

Whatever you decide to do this Lent, don’t give up. Even if you have a bar of chocolate now and again you can still keep trying. No matter what you do try a bit of silence now and again. You don’t have to do the full silent retreat, just a few minutes here and there when you switch off, like the ‘phone.