25th May: 'In all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion,' Francis Bacon

This day is, coincidently, the Feast Day of the Venerable Bede. I say ‘co-incidentally’ because, yesterday, I grabbed my copy of The Life of Ceolfrith on my brief sojourn home: I had been reflecting on prayer and recalling life in 2020.

At the height of COVID I, like many other priests, had to make sense of what we “did” in a lockdown, abiding by restricted practices. For many colleagues—high on the smell of grease-paint—they became excited 'early adopters' of live-streaming. Their palpable joy at this 'new wave of the Spirit' (hummmmm?!) was reminiscent of childhood teachers who were only too willing to tell me that their job would be so much better if it "wasn't for the pupils". Churches without parishioners, et in arcadia ego (“and into heaven I go”)—although Poussin's bucolic idyll shows a flagrant disregard for social distancing! 

At that time, I live-streamed Morning and Evening Prayer, and was joined by Alexander. In the midst of fear, pain and death we observed our simple vigil. Moved by this image a friend sent me a lovely email saying how much the scene reminded him of Ceolfrith and Bede at prayer during the 7th century plague. He then forwarded me a copy of The Life of Ceolfrith which reminded me how quickly hundreds of years can collapse in a moment, as the echoes of Bede and Ceolfrith resonated with my COVID experience. Watching Ben and Alexander praying Compline a day earlier reminded me of last year, and prompted me to revisit the account.

In the account of Ceolfrith's life I remembered something about the psalms:

'Now the abbot was deeply distressed by the impact of the plague... And ordained that the order of service previously used should be abandoned and that they should sing through the whole Book of Psalms... With profuse tears and lamentations on his part, this was carried out for the space of a whole week.'

Over the past few weeks the Psalms have accompanied my tears and lamentations. Like a Greek chorus waling behind me they have voiced my longing. 

Yesterday, the psalms should have sung songs of liberation, instead they were dirges. 

Throughout my experience I have tried to, deliberately and instinctively, pay heed to C. S Lewis's words: "It's not the load that weighs you down, but how you carry it".

Yesterday tested that. I was due to be sent home, or 'released'. My parole board, aka MDT (Multi-Disciplinary Team), had met once more, and once again denied me my freedom for the third time! After negotiation I was allowed home for a "few hours", so like a Cat D prisoner I gathered my belongings in an institutional carrier bag and waited for Ben’s Uber. 

The delights of the outside world could be celebrated, 'free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I am free at last!!'. 

Having just now invoked Martin Luthur King Jnr, I am aware of how quickly one can lose perspective. Indeed, after 13 days in a windowless room, I had not realised how small my world had become. My environment—previously mere geography—was now bizarrely intimidating: hailstone is really scary, the traffic so noisy, and then there are the people. 

The people, they are so ill-disciplined—don't they know that you walk in a clockwise direction past the bin by the cupboard, touch the Welch-Allyn Obs machine, walk by the bed into the wash room, make a Fu Manchu moustache out of the emergency pull cord, and then go back to the bin?! (Exercise to be repeated during the day's episode of All Creatures Great and Small on Really TV). What you don't do is hang around like an extra from Shaun of the Dead outside Costa Coffee! 

Thus, clinging onto the passenger door handle of the car for dear life we journeyed the 7 miles home. Home was wonderful, clearly Sarah garnered the members of the vicarage (the worst and most reluctant cleaning troops - The Household Crappery) for a clean, and kind parishioners had tidied the front garden. Yet, as Bacon observed, "In all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion". Edger Allan Poe repeated the claim after him, as well, but then again he also said, "quoth the Raven", whatever that means!

My strangeness in proportion came in the form of the animals. I say animals, the cat took one look at me and said, "good you're back, feed me." The dog to my joy, responded to my return with quite disproportionate jubilation, the sort of reaction only reserved for everyone else normally. 

Buoyed by this strangeness of proportion I returned to my cell.

The fear and anxiety don't go; it's hard to forget when nurses keep asking you if your bowel has disintegrated yet? Well they say, "You must ring immediately  if you have any abdominal pain, sickness, are feverish, and so on..., have the doctors told you what could happen, remember, it's cancer". 

I do remember, it's kind of hard to forget, but sometimes I do. The disproportionate strangeness of my life sometimes highlights the beauty; the nurse complimenting me on my wife's nose(!), and a dog presenting a sodden, soiled, half-eaten tennis ball.