Those of you who are Radio 4 Today programme listeners will be familiar with ‘Thought for the Day’. As a result of clearer roads during the Covid pandemic I arrive at work too early now to hear it but I have always found it interesting. One of my favourites is John Bell of the Iona community . On Sunday 28th June I had the pleasure of hearing him lead the Sunday morning service on Radio 4 which made up for missed Thoughts.
He talked about what we learn from the pandemic and what we might take with us to make a better world. He said we have had a reminder to learn more about our history and endeavour not to make the same mistakes again using the slave masters of Glasgow as an example. My current book at bed time is “Gutsy Women’ co written by Chelsea and Hilary Clinton . I haven’t read far but have already encountered one young woman who escaped slavery in the US and successfully freed many other slaves starting with her family. She and others in the book strived to be educated and used their knowledge and skills to improve their environment. We have had education on a plate until the trials of the pandemic made it something to strive for. The examples of these gutsy folk challenge us to use it effectively.
We have had some very unpleasant violent events recently committed by people with serious mental health issues. John Bell reminded us that many people currently imprisoned following crimes grew up in difficult often traumatic circumstances which ultimately led to acts of crime. He suggested that if we could go back to the beginning circumstances which spawned the criminality and help at that point we would do a far better thing than waiting till crime inevitably ensues and that life seems lost maybe taking others in its wake.
He talked about the poverty we hear about -some papers report 1in4 adults will be in food poverty by the end of lockdown. The consequences will not be simple. We know there are anticipated serious mental health challenges in the wake of Covid including the bereaved, front line workers, those made unemployed, those questioning the validity of their relationships and many more.
Martin in the service on 28th June also talked about the social circumstances needing our attention and the tradition of the URC to engage with social circumstances and campaigns. He used the example of Nestle which was at one time shunned for its promotion of artificial baby milk into countries where breast milk was well known to be vital to counteract many local health issues which would not usually pertain in the Western world.
In many ways this is all rather overwhelming for a simple URC member trying their best to follow the commands of Jesus. I have read that during Covid more people have started to pray and more tune in to on line services. That must be a good start and we will just need to keep our ears open to hear what comes next… Where will we all be this time in 2021and what will be our priorities?
Meantime we need to get through the pandemic following the official advice, pray for a health solution , look after each other and be alert to tis being a learning tool.
Jill Pipe