Each weekday, Father James Lyons (Wellington) will be helping us reflect on God’s Word while we are in lockdown. What is God saying to us as we globally unite to defeat Covid-19?
IT IS A TIME NOW…
SETTING: in your prayer space, place a photo, drawing or craft model of a boat.
Prayer for a new beginning:
God, ever faithful.
You know the aching in our hearts
as we live through this worrying time.
It’s like the stuffing has been knocked out
of the whole world.
Isolated from one another we crave for
a new day and another chance
to honour your gift of community.
In your faithfulness heal our brokenness.
Bring us back together, for we now know,
as you have always known:
It is not good that the man should be alone.
[Genesis 2:18]
In a special liturgy on Friday 27 March, from a very empty St Peter’s Square in Rome, Pope Francis spoke of the “deafening silence” and “distressing void” that had engulfed the world from the impact of Covid-19. He said we had all been caught off guard and were “fragile and disorientated”.
He was speaking out of the gospel text of Luke 8:22-25 – Jesus calms a storm – highlighting the disciples’ fear, their concern that Jesus didn’t seem to care, and, ultimately, the power of Jesus that causes both fear and amazement.
Read this passage: Luke 8:22-25. Spend 5-10 minutes in meditation. How might this passage speak to your own experience / reaction concerning the present lockdown?
Pope Francis puts the focus on “togetherness” – how the virus, in forcing us to be apart, is teaching us the indispensable need for community for a true and fully healthy life. Using the gospel image, he points out that we are all on the same boat and are called to row together, to comfort one another.
“The storm exposes us to our vulnerability and lays bare all our pre-packaged ideas.” We have allowed ourselves to be too caught up in things. Living such frenetic lives, rushing through our days, we have been “lured away by our haste.” – forgotten one another, over-emphasising independence, losing sight of our connectedness.
Our behaviour and attitude to life has also led to our neglect and abuse of the world itself – “Our gravely ailing planet.” “We carried on regardless, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick.”
Play some reflective music as you consider how Pope Francis’ words apply to you, your lifestyle, and your attitude to life, other people, the earth beneath your feet.
———————————–
LIKE A KORU
I am a listener
hearing
the split of silence
at Huka falls
I am a singer
making music
on the wind
in the tussocks
I am a woman
awaiting
the rise of yeast
and the sound of bread growing
I am a traveller
opening
like a koru
my ear
[Anne Powell]
A well known chapter in the Hebrew scriptures is ECCLESIASTES 3 – For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… Read this chapter, or listen to the song version, Turn, Turn, Turn, first written by American songwriter, Pete Seeger early 1960s. Google for Judy Collins (1966) and The Byrds (1969).
In our present situation, locked down and apart, you may like to reflect on the season upon us. Maybe a new time is calling out –
IT IS A TIME NOW –
a time to be kind
a time to care
a time for rowing together
a time to share
a time for bearing one another’s burdens
to lighten the load we place on ourselves
a time to remove impassable hurdles
a time to give to more than myself
a time to understand
what it’s like living alone
to have no one to talk with
or even to phone
IT IS A TIME NOW –
a time to be generous in thought, word and deed
a time to acknowledge there are others in need
a time to let go of our gripes and our moans
we’re in this together though for now we stay home
a time to give thanks for the love that we feel
its been there all along but now it’s so real
a time to forgive what has hurt for so long
a time to agree we all yearn to belong
there’s only one family to keep us sheltered and dry
and just one boat between us named
earth sea and sky
