After the latest restrictions and the affect they are having on so many, here’s a lament. And yes, I’m tired, I’m a vicar in a pandemic a week before lockdown, what can I say?!
Hope, delicate and beautiful, shatters like an old glass bauble falling from the tree
and tears begin to form, their tinier, still shiny glassy baubles, teetering within me.
We’ve been here before, many moments like these, where the spirits are raised
Hope daring to peer out, until dashed once again, leaving us dazed.
‘Christmas is not cancelled’,
‘We only get to face what we can bear’
‘count your blessings’
‘Be thankful my dear’
chanting through the waves of wifi and media come these screeching platitudes
But my heart is screaming screw you, descending into the deafening darkness that is my mood.
And I’m gonna stay here a while in this cosy den made with blankets of my own pain
Held together with the threads of family dreams, stitched in heartfelt chain
This is a moment of Advent pause, waiting in lament,
a swirling mess of emotions needing time to reset.
Jumbling thoughts whirlwind through my brain, who can come, what can I do, where can I go,
restrictions are muddled, tiers confused –
my hope, delicate and beautiful, lies tattered and bruised.
Anger comes in waves, tumbling over accusations, at the leaders, the ignorers of rules, despising wisdom and instruction – you fools… so in my own frustration I stew,
Anxiety claws at the walls of my den, whispering ‘hope is long gone, so who’s the fool now?’ –
how many plans have been made, undone, remoulded, reshaped somehow?
Some start rushing for trains, clinging to the need for escape, how can I judge their choices when the fear and the pain we share,
Whilst hastily organised deliveries and meals, desperately grasp for a moment of the Christmas that had been prepared.
Tearful conversations run dimly though the wires, emotional risk assessments now part of our routine,
Longing for the ‘could have been’.
Hope, delicate and beautiful, is not departed, but for a moment in the pain needs surveying within rupture,
not placing its pieces back into a well known structure.
Residing in Advent, not yet ready even for contemplation of the joyous celebration
That will come, reminding us of a foundation of salvation,
but for now, perhaps, we wait. Together in our fragmented hope – delicate and beautiful even in pieces,
holding each other in untouching comfort, in solidarity lament releases.
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