Diary of a COVID-19 hermit #2
Blog by Claire Henderson Davis, MitE Chaplain
I imagine that as part of finding our way through this time of confinement, many of us are taking comfort in TV programmes and films of one kind or another. For me it’s Spooks. The entire 10 series is up on BBC iPlayer and I have been steadily working my way through them.
This drama about MI5 in which, time and again, the security services avert widespread disaster on British soil, seems particularly apt in the present circumstances. Whether or not it is even remotely realistic, it functions as a way of containing anxiety at this moment of national crisis, offering a picture of competent professionals working behind the scenes to protect us. They are not afraid to make difficult decisions in order to save the many, but they never lose sight of the greater good. If they do, they are found out and dealt with. It is a reassuring picture, an assurance that all will be well.
Over Easter, I watched a very different kind of programme, The Great Mountain Sheep Gather. This is a slow, meditative documentary tracing the journey of a hill farmer in the Lake District as he gathers his sheep and leads them down from the hills for shearing. His farm has been in the family for more than a hundred years, and he is now teaching his sixteen-year-old daughter the skills of a shepherdess. He laments the wider loss of these skills and with them, of a tradition going back centuries.
These two programmes together express something of my present life as a Covid-19 Hermit. On the one hand, I have a need to feel safe in these strange and uncertain times, to feel that the people in power have my best interests at heart, and are working to protect me. This sense of safety opens up a different, more contemplative kind of space in which I am able to slow down and notice what previously might have passed me by.
I have started listening to the birds as I go out on my daily walk. I’ve never paid much attention to birds before, but now they are captivating me. With the help of the RSPB website, I am beginning to be able to distinguish their songs.
This is a time of tragedy as tens of thousands of people fall ill and lose their lives. It is also a time of grace, interrupting our habitual patterns and inviting us to notice what we have been missing and taking for granted.