Remembering the pain of the Pandemic

Dear Friends,

This Sunday, March 9th, is a national Day of Reflection on which we are invited to remember and commemorate the lives of those who lost their lives since the Covid 19 pandemic began; reflect on the sacrifices made by many and the impact the pandemic has had on us all; pay tribute to the work of health and social care staff, frontline workers and researchers and appreciate those who volunteered and showed kindness during this unprecedented time. Keeping this day annually was a recommendation of the Covid Commission which was set up to find appropriate ways to mark this period of our history. The charity Marie Curie has taken a lead in marking this day as part of their wider wonderful work in supporting families through bereavement.

Each of us will have our own memories of the acute weeks and months

of the pandemic; each of us will have been touched in some way by the

challenges and trauma of those years; so March 9th is perhaps, first, a

day to be gentle with ourselves as we allow some of those memories to

surface. Probably together we hold a mixture of memories both painful

and appreciative. They were months of everything being intensified – the shock, fear and grief alongside the generous reaching out, the caring and the shared community spirit. Holding a mixture of feelings is very human, but not something easy to express.

In the Christian and Jewish traditions we have a treasure called the book of Psalms, in which ancient communities gave voice to the mixture of feelings they had as they lived through times of tragedy and times of triumph and everything in between. Many of these psalms are songs of lament: crying out to God in anger, in sorrow, in isolation and often discovering through that honest expression a sense of being held through it all and carried towards healing and renewal. They often include expression of what causes pain, a request to God for help, and a tentative voicing of trust and hope in God’s presence in things to come. Writing our own psalms, from our own feelings might be a simple, but good way, to mark March 9th this year.

God bless,

Samantha