A message from the Dean - 27 March 2020
Dear Friends,
During the current Covid-19 crisis I have pledged, with my colleagues' encouragement, to try and get a message to everyone connected with the Cathedral each week. Attached to this letter are prayer and worship resources that we are all invited to sample and use.
There's a lot of strength to be had by making the daily rhythm of Morning and Evening Prayer your own. It provides a fixed point, enabling us to offer each day to God and at the end of every day to reflect on God's presence and love. It's the staple of the Cathedral's life. Even though we cannot enter the building, we can maintain its central purpose: the worship, praise and reverence of God. As God's people we're also given the responsibility of praying for the world. This could not be a more appropriate time to do that. Needs, fears and anxieties pour out of the media at present. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the statistics and the note of half-supressed panic in many expert pronouncements. All this is food for prayer: we can pray for courage and calm, patience and strength, ingenuity and resourcefulness, the curbing of selfishness and greed, for the healing of the sick, for peace for the dying and consolation for the bereaved.
At a time like this, we all know how easy it is to lose touch and become bound up in the confines of the present lockdown. It's estimated that 20% of the population are introverts who get their energy from being alone a good deal and enjoy having time and space to recharge their psychological energy without the complication and distraction of other people. For the introverts, the present might be a funny kind of blessing. However, for the remaining 80% of us, the extroverts, we get our energy from being with other people. Talking, being in company, and sharing recreation is a real vital spark in the business of being human. Extroverts are likely to find the current regime very trying. I'll be honest and say this imposed Carthusian regime is already grating. (By the way, Carthusians, as I'm sure you know, are a religious order observing strict silence, living mostly in their cells, and following an austere regime of simple food and long hours of prayer). In Belgium, however, the Carthusians make fantastic beer and wonderful cheese. Perhaps, if the lockdown persists, the Dean and Canons can turn their hands to new enterprises. In every crisis there is an opportunity!
However, to be serious, the lockdown imposes on us a new obligation to be very mindful of our dependence on God, but also how we honour God by caring for one another and being mindful of one another's needs and struggles.
We as a Cathedral staff will be doing our best to maintain worship and prayer, pastoral support and good communication. For all those of you are 'tech savvy', i.e. proficient with computers, please make sure you print and pass on information to those who haven't got the technology. As St. Paul said: "bear one another's burdens and so fulfil the call of Christ."
I will be writing again next week. With my prayers, love and blessings,
Adrian
Dean of Lichfield