Covid 19 and the return to all that matters

Over the last month, all of us have seen the world change. No one is untouched. No country unharmed.
This little group of islands is taking a proper battering. As I come back to my online home, I suppose for comfort, and familiarity, our Prime Minister is in Intensive Care with the virus which is ripping apart the world.
We live in a kind of stilled, empty space, and yet time races on. We are nearly a third of the way through yet another year, the weeks pass at a terrifying rate, and yet nothing happens, to us anyway - which is really good. Because all the stuff that is happening is pretty bad.
We stand on the promises of God. Both girls work from home, Neil, with no work at all for his business, works all day on our land, and I - I go out every day and work in a care home. Thankfully not just any care home, but the light on the hill, a place hedged around with prayer, and upheld by the prayers of the righteous, which availeth much. We just go on.

Everything begins 'if we get through this...' which I believe we will, or 'when things get back to normal...', which I pray they won't.  This is an extraordinary time. A time like no other in history. A world suspended.  Let's never, never, got back to normal.

Two decades ago, we were led to come here, led to the land, led to work on it.  We're a bit off message, to tell the truth, it's all gone a bit awry.  But, per force, Neil is now working, working to put back together the resource we were blessed with, and we have time, time and more time to work out whats next.

We have an opportunity to learn to live on half what we were earning, a bright hope that we can get out of debt come what may, and that we will be in a place where we can follow that calling and just see where it leads. Too long we've waited to know where the road is going, before we set out. Now we must just, like Christian, set forth on our pilgrimage - and find out where it leads.

If we get through this (we will) and when things get back to normal (I pray they won't) the world will have changed forever. Our frugal ways and plain and simple days will be ... what? ... the new normal? An aspiration? A place of faith?

And yet, I came home here, to write that down.

Last weekend, Boo got sick. She got very very sick indeed, and it turns out, though I didn't know this until Tuesday, that she had Norovirus. She is finally on the mend, but still a very fragile, unknown little girl, who can just do a little maths, or walk down to the barn with the dog, before needing to rest.
Our family has an unhappy history of post viral disasters, so this is one little girl who will not be rushing to get back to full performance. It will take as long as it takes.
It's been a time of concern for me, because having been away on the course, it was necessary for me to hit the gardens with a very big bat indeed when I got back, and I haven't been able to. Boo was more important.
I've done some seed sowing and a little planting out, but by and large, I've just worried about it. No one has yet set foot on the field garden, and I can see yet another delay in plan A taking place.
As well, our neighbour once again complained about the cockerel, and we had a woman from the council round for over an hour (this would be the council which can't afford to mend the roads or keep the libraries open) 'discussing' the issue. It seems if matey boy wants to lie in til 10 at the weekend, then that's his right and his privilege, and the bird's volume is the only deciding factor in whether he lives or dies. Sound monitoring equipment (think: roads, libraries) is to be fitted in his house to ascertain whether Professor Bhaer is too loud, or not.

It's been interesting though, because it's forced me to look life in the face, and tell myself the truth about the situation.
We are living through a depression, I do believe it will come to that, we haven't seen the half of it yet, and if peak oil and climate change pull together to fulfill as much of Revelation as they can, we will be mired so deep for so long - should the Lord tarry - that this little spot of bother will seem nothing.
I call myself a farmer out of sheer defiance. We rent land, we grow food, we feed ourselves and sell some surplus. I can call myself nothing or I can call myself a farmer. I choose farmer. At Ragmans, I told someone - you lost your job, and now you grow food for your family, run a community farm, and a transition group - hold your head up! You're not unemployed! You're a farmer. If you can't put it on your passport, at the very least, put it on your facebook profile!

Not long ago, I was married to a shepherd, but he lost his job in the vilest of circumstances, and now he drives a taxi. Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of work, and money to pay the rent.
Life is a struggle.. It is incumbent upon me to run our little farm, feed us all on very little, make do and mend, bring up two children, whose education through our own choice is not free, and keep a brave face on it.

The goats are hopefully all bred, albeit very late in the season, so we pray for a good crop of babies, and maybe one or two sales. There are one or two green things in the garden, and we have not run out of last year's canned things, yet. There is yet some pig and some hogget in the freezer. The winter has been so cold and dry, potatoes left in the ground by mistake and discovered now, are still edible! The mint will soon be up, and tea will be free!

Counting my blessings, one by one. And tonight, I made sourdough bread with spelt flour, and I realised I will never again make bread without having Ciara and Olivia with me in spirit! I undertake to teach people this summer, and to pass on the starter - it's a precious thing to do, and I can't recommend it well enough!

My lenten reading is Scott Savage's 'A Plain Life' - re-reading after a good five years - and memorising the beatitudes with him. My bedside reading is, for the umpteenth time, 'Miss Clare Remembers' - contentment is a boiled egg for breakfast, a good cardigan well pressed, the song of a robin, and the promise of another day.

To Catch a Vision

The expression has some currency in the world of christian media, we talk about catching a vision ... but this may be stating the obvious ... you are supposed to catch a vision, like catching a butterfly, not like catching a cold.
It is easy, I have discovered to find that you have quite literally 'caught' a vision, in the contagious sense, and the downside to that, is - it ain't your vision!
My friend Cat has been talking at length about authenticity and honesty, especially when it comes to brokeness.
But what's also important is that the small treasures we hold, unbroken, remain precious and are acknowleged as our own.
I have too often been swept away in a 'vision' of homesteading and the values and virtues of 'Plain'. I have gained so much from all that, and to this day, still sneakily curl on a quiet afternoon, to read slim sections from the pages of The Plain Reader, once they have been shuffled back into place, having long since fallen out with over use.
My whole notion of church and education (home schooling) has been forged on this anvil of the Western Expansion, the cultural patchwork quilt that is Rural America.
But, I don't live there. And given that God doesn't make mistakes, nor was I intended to.
Some days I awake and realise that my own life, my very own life, which does not in any way match with the desirable vision toting big blogs of homestead land - is in fact, a perfect, perfect microcosm of quiet chapel history, the Sunday meetings, morning and evening, the English kitchen where home grown veg meet up with a local roast, and pudding comes with custard - the knitting of a cardigan, the walking of a dog, the working of a dog, a booted husband who shepherds sheep and hauls hay, and children who will be in a preciously recreated environment - a little village school with a christian curriculum.
And for generations of quietly devout and devoted, non conformist chapel women, the daily routine was much like mine - my grandmother's family was one such, though sadly I was robbed of a lot of the stories, by my staunchly Anglican mother, who wiped out as much of the chapel baggage as she ever could - but I know this to be the case, and it's a precious thing.
It's an awesome thing to realise that you already have it ... that all the precious gems of the quiet English world, beloved of many quiet generations, the girls on ponies in a milky dawn (or a drippy afternoon), the golden stubble (which once called us to gallop in an autumn frenzy for weeks, and now, blink and you miss it, they disc that stuff overnight, we had to stop to gaze on stubble today, because by the next time we will certainly drive by, next Sunday, it will certainly be gone) - and next week, even, the green tented Guide camp .... these are the testimony of quiet, christian England, these are a glimpse of a simpler time, but in this land, not far away.

Larkrise to Candleford

it's all about home, not a far off land

Little House on the Praire


it's all about truth, not dreams.
it's all about now.


"nothing is real until you do it"
Jo

Lament for Lost Innocence

Today, we went to a CofE church in our town. It was a challenging service, as there were two christenings going on, the church full of people who didn't really want to be there, and the incessant racket of discontented children, running riot all over the place.
It wasn't a good day to visit. The youth workers tried hard to talk to H, but it was more than she could take in. She ended up very tearful, with them being full on fab, groovy, you are going to love our wild and crazy kids activities, and her obviously praying for the security of her strict baptist sunday school where as wild and crazy as it gets is colouring!

Even before we went, I had a qualm about times gone by.

A few years ago, I would no more have visited the CofE church in town, than flown in the air! Scott Savage's The Plain Reader was the most thumbed book after the Bible, silence and the oil lamp reigned in our house. Heartily we homeschooled, peacefully we sought the old paths, the plain way .....

Now, I will admit, this caused us to take some dubious side routes with regard to the religion in our life, but in the calm before this morning's storm, I was suddenly reminded of moments from Savage's other book, another favourite, A Plain Life. Specifically, the moments shared with his daughter in the pre dawn barn, and the joyous garden planning of New Years Day, and I nearly wept.

These used to be my aims for my week, such precious, family close, earth scented silences, such private, prayerful, blossoming truths. This week, I will do Brownies, Guides, Pony Club, a couple of meetings, and no doubt wrangle with possibly arranging school for the children.

Where has it gone, Lord, and why? Is this sea change Of You, or am I so far from the right path, I can no longer even see it. Straight is the gate, and narrow the way. Have I fallen on the broad path?

I have a heavy heart tonight. Neil is sanguine. If we are wrong, he says, the Lord will show us. But children are such a precious duty, such a beautiful responsibility. What if I am wrong?