Tuesday 17 March

 Day 2 and we are getting into some sort of rhythm, helped in large part by the fact that Manu continues to follow the school timetable (albeit dressed in her pyjamas). So at 9am we gather at the kitchen bench for breakfast (I am already so grateful for the couple of hours before that when the house is quiet and I can read, journal and workout in peace!). Then we share one of the beautiful liturgies from the book Every Moment Holy. This morning, hilariously and yet appropriately for four people stuck indoors together, I read the one 'for experiencing road rage.'

If my heart were more content in you, O Lord,
I would be less inclined to rage at others.
Let me gauge by the knot in my gut,
the poverty of my own understanding
of the grace I have received
from a God who, loving me,
chose rather to receive wounds
than to give them.
Take from me my self-righteousness,
and my ego-driven demands for respect.
Overthrow the tyranny of my anger, O Lord,
and in its place establish a better vision
of your throne, your kingdom, and your peace.

We are also reading through the psalms and today we pray for three people we know who are sick with Covid-19. At 9:30, Manu gets started with online school and Tim drives to the store to get groceries for a couple who are unwell and not able to leave the house. At their suggestion, he left the things inside their front gate without seeing them, which feels harsh but necessary.

Meanwhile, I get on with writing a piece for YWAM that was discussed at an online meeting of the communication team last night. While the writing goes quickly, it's hard to find the right tone for a time like this. I send it to my team-mates for their comments and, after a quick Zoom call, join the family for lunch. Even though we have absolutely everything we need right now, I find myself far more conscious than usual of how much food we are using, wondering how significant rationing of essentials might become. It's hard to convey this to the kids without freaking them out and, in any case, it would be a tad premature. Maybe I've read too many novels.

In the afternoon, Tim works on building a gate from some pallet wood he had in the shed. The dogs had got into the veggie and herb garden he and Keziah planted last week, digging up a row of chives. He creates a clever little gate to that part of the garden and I find it prettier and less annoying than I thought I would, and can imagine at some point adding a little arch for growing a vine or jasmine.

I don't normally relish walking the dogs in the rain, but today it feels good to get out of the house. I make sure I take my ID with me, as we've read that we shouldn't risk getting stopped without it. I exchange audio messages with my sister as I walk; she's in the UK and restrictions associated with the pandemic are beginning to affect her work.

After Manu finishes her school work, we connect with some friends to celebrate St Patrick's Day together. 

I had challenged the kids to dress in green and one of the boys had really gone to town - not only is he head-to-toe in green, but his face is green too!

It's sweet to catch up and exchange news of how we are all coping with being shut in at home, especially since one friend is home alone. I am not sure, right now, whether to see that as fabulous or terrifying.

After the call, the girls retreat to Keziah's room to watch something together while Tim and I set up a HIIT circuit in the den. It doesn't take long but it's a great way to energise at the end of the day. We had been training for a half marathon together, which was due to take place on 19 April and, inevitably, has been cancelled. We'd been hopeful that even during the lockdown we would be able to head onto the hillside behind our house to run trails but that is clearly not going to be possible. So instead we run up and down the stairs in between squats and push ups. It's not much but it might just save our sanity!

Manu is grumpy and rude before supper and my heart sinks at what it might mean to stay home together for weeks. Then we feed her, and she is her usual chatty and bouncy self ... may all our mood swings be as simple to deal with as that one!

Monday 16 March

Monday 16 March (4:30am)

Scrolling through Facebook and the flood of Corona-related posts, I read one that made me particularly sad. Someone, somewhere in the world of ‘Christian missionaries,’ was wondering out loud how best to respond to having to stay at home, to avoiding others for the sake of slowing the contagion. So far, so normal. The sad part, the part that revealed a breathtakingly disintegrated view of the world, was the part that bemoaned the way that ‘the Devil would be winning’ so long as we can’t get out there and share the Gospel with people for a few weeks.

Please just give me a moment while I hold my head in my hands and rock gently with my eyes closed.

I won’t even bother to get into the obvious, that we are not engaged in a battle where ‘the Devil wins’ if, at times, we are compelled to live into the reality of our faith without simultaneously delivering a four-point message of salvation. We might want to remember that we do, in fact, know who’s won this cosmic and unevenly weighted tug-of-war between good and evil. And while we’re at it, we could take a moment to reflect on the rather exquisite fact that, while we all grumble about being confined to our homes, and face some very real fears about the shaking of the world as we know it, the people of God are marking the season of Lent. We are rehearsing the story of Jesus reconciling both us and all creation to his Father (and ours). This year, as every year, we are intended to get in touch with our need for salvation. Do you feel it?

Anyhow, all this came back to me at 2 o’clock in the morning and got me thinking about being Christian at a time like this, of all the invitations that will come to us in these days. It reminded me of something Zadie Smith wrote, describing the time she visited Tintern Abbey in Wales, that beautiful wreck of a place of worship originally built in the 1100s.

We parked, I opened a car door on to the vast silence of a valley. I may not have had ears but I had eyes. I wandered inside, which is outside, which is inside. I stood at the east window, feet on the green grass, eyes to the green hills, not contained by a non-building that has lost all its carved defences. Reduced to a Gothic skeleton, the abbey is penetrated by beauty from above and below, open to precisely those elements it had once hoped to frame for pious young men, as an object for their patient contemplation. It was already an ancient memory two hundred years ago, when Wordsworth came by. Thistles sprout between the stones. The rain comes in. Roofless, floorless, glassless, ‘green to the very door’ - now Tintern is forced to accept that holiness is everywhere in everything.

I wonder at this opening out of religious defences, this emptying from the containment of our small ways of thinking and speaking, so that everything is a lived experience of the life of God. Are we willing for our lives to be greened from the outside in? For the terrible beauty of this hauntingly messy world to be owned as part of who we are - it is, whether we see it or not. Could it be that something of who we are, these living epistles, will be more effectively incorporated into the world that surrounds us when our windows fall out and our doors fall off?

Zadie Smith turns our attention to Wordsworth, who wrote of his sensation on visiting Tintern: ‘That in this moment there is life and food/ For future years.’ Could it be that in our confinement during these days, in our inability to be anything but identified with our neighbours as we queue for food staples, or wait outside the pharmacy, there is something happening that can nourish both us and them? Are we willing to become broken bread, in our prayers, in our identification, in our inarticulate groaning for the redemption of all things?

I was listening recently to the wonderful podcast of Ruth Haley Barton. In her latest episode she had a conversation with Father Ronald Rolheiser, who spoke of the struggle to give away our moments of dying. That is, not only our physical deaths which can become sacred gifts to those we love, but also those moments of dying to our own ability to drive and control our lives.

Could it be that when we are least able to be our usual, action-oriented selves, we are able to be a gift in ways that we are not during those periods that seem to be the most productive? And could it be that we make room for a profound work of God when we enter into the surrender of letting go, relinquishing our usual efforts to ‘make something happen?’

In these uncommon days when we are more aware than usual of being limited, while also being so very connected with those around us, sharing this experience of disequilibrium, may we know the life of God’s Spirit at work in and through us like never before. Perhaps he will work to bring quiet confidence to our waiting, perhaps to help us enter into the groaning of creation, perhaps through acts of selfless kindness that surpass our own fears.

Yes, we need the merciful salvation of God. And no, it does not depend on us.

Sunday 15 March

We thought today was the final day before travel restrictions came into force (as it turns out, we heard someone jogging through Alhaurín got stopped by the police and fined). Anyway, based on that, Tim and I decide to continue as planned with our run training and drive out to the other side of Alhaurín el Grande to run a 14km trail. It was blissful, honestly, to run with the dogs along the hillside contour and to think more about whether I was rolling through my foot, springing with my achilles, and firing my glutes than about hand-washing, food rationing, and spotting viral symptoms.

We return home and, apart from the relative lack of movement on the roads (not completely different to a usual Sunday morning), everything seems pretty normal. Our elderly neighbour is standing in the street under a red umbrella, talking to another neighbour through her gate. Those two watch out for one another, and we have let them know that we can buy groceries for them if they prefer not to go to the store. One of them is a widow in her mid-eighties, so there’s good reason for her to stay home. She just returned to Spain after visiting family in South Africa and I’m wondering if she wishes she’d stayed there.

We have brunch with the girls and talk about loading the online platform for Manu’s schooling, so that she’s ready for tomorrow. We light the fire and enjoy the cosy feel of the house, aware that by this time next week we might be feeling differently about staying home with books and mugs of tea. The cooler weather seems like a mercy; it’s easier to want to stay home when the weather is cool and damp. We hear the kids next door as they play, but otherwise the street is quiet and none of the cars parked curb side have moved in the last couple of days.

Things get busier when friends turn up for a ‘final visit.’ Their eldest daughter needs to borrow paint for a school art project she’ll be working on from home. They also grab an arm-load of books to read aloud together with their four kids in the coming days. After staying for a cup of tea and a chat, they head out in search of a park, hoping that they won’t find it closed just yet. The kids need to burn off some steam and today may be the last chance to do that all together.

Our parents call us, first mine and then Tim’s. My parents are conscious that Manu has been concerned about them and their relative vulnerability to the Corona virus, so they chat with her and try to commiserate with the State of Alert in Spain (the UK seems to be about a week or so behind contagion levels here). Tim’s parents already sent her an audio message and, in a curiously timed administrative moment, they discussed with Tim the details of their Will.

In the evening, Tim gets Manu’s online school platform working and I talk to her about the family schedule. Initially, she doesn’t respond well to the idea that she can’t just roll out of bed at 9:30 in time for class at 9:40 (still in her pyjamas, of course). Thankfully, she rallies relatively quickly to learning that showering,family devotions, and breakfast will still be necessary fixtures of her morning. I can see that it will be helpful to have a family schedule, with shared expectations of mealtimes, quiet times, chores and (please God) time to work.

All this is casting a very different light on Tim’s intentions to release his local leadership responsibilities in order to reflect on what ministry will look like in the next season. Indeed, the training and ministry centre will be closed, as will the local outreach centre. Two staff families and two or three single staff call the former their home, but apart from them there will be no one gathering at the usual meeting or training times. One couple and a young single woman travelled into Morocco a week ago and may opt to stay there rather than try to return to Spain. Most people are confused and unsure what is okay and what is not and, while we continue to support them relationally, it’s odd for Tim not to be making decisions at a time like this.

I think back just a few days. Tim had returned from a 5-day debrief in France, where he had had time to process some of the events of the last 6 years, including the losses involved in a demanding season of leadership. He wanted to also identify the gifts of this season, and we had sat at the local golf course for a couple of hours with that in mind. Over coffee, I had asked him questions and helped him to draw out those things for which he is grateful. We talked of adventures in different nations, and the way our house has enabled us to host people, and shared family experiences. It seems so timely now, to head into these weeks of restriction with gratitude on our minds.

The house is growing quiet. It’s time for Manu to go to bed and for the dogs to go out to their kennel. Tomorrow brings with it a new reality: Manu schooling from home, which she always said she would never do, and all of us confined to barracks. For now everyone is at peace, and I am grateful.

Saturday 14 March

I wake up determined to safeguard a little bit of morning space without checking email or online news. This margin helps keep me grounded at the best of times, let alone when the energy in so many interactions is panicked. It doesn’t last long: I have a message from a friend and team member who is stuck in Morocco. That is, she could have raced for the border at Ceuta to attempt to get back into Spain within a small window of time; equally she could have tried to get a flight from Morocco to the United States, where she has citizenship. But instead, she decided to ride out the lock-down in Morocco, staying with good friends there and using the time to practice her Dirija.

Tim decides to draw a bit of cash. It’s not that much - we’re aware that if everyone empties their accounts the banks are fried - but we don’t usually keep any cash to hand and it seems sensible to have some. I go in the opposite direction, heading to the supermarket and kind of dreading the mayhem that seems likely. A week or so ago we bought some extra ‘long life’ groceries, like rice and beans, just to increase the amount of time we can get by without shopping. We need dog food and it would be great to have a few extra staples.

I hate grocery shopping at the best of times, and this is far from the best of times. I park a block away from the store because there are cars everywhere, even though I am arriving in the first 5 minutes of the store being open. I think to myself how smart I was to wear my running shoes, and feel as though I am part of one of those ‘supermarket dash’ events. This makes me smile, and I decide to continue smiling at people - everyone is pretty freaked out and me smiling at them can’t make it any worse. In fact, I end up having more friendly supportive chitchat with these Spanish neighbours than I’ve had in a long time, and that has to be a good thing.

There’s been a fresh delivery of toilet rolls and I put some in my trolley. I feel like a stereotype as I do so, and add some bottles of wine to make myself feel more normal. I am conscious of resisting the tide of panic that has people cramming their trolleys with enough meat to fill a freezer, along with multi-packs of coke. I’ll stick to my rice and beans approach, I think (apart from the fact that it would be weird for a vegetarian to suddenly start buying meat, rice and beans are also easier to store and pack more nutritional punch). By the time I make it to the check out, I’ve been standing in line for a while, every so often exchanging texts with Tim who lets me know he has bought eggs and chocolate elsewhere. His idea of essentials, I guess.

The girls are just getting out of bed when Tim and I return home, converging from our different outings. We eat breakfast and fill the girls in on latest developments, paying attention to the way Manu responds since she has been unsettled by all the Corona-talk at school. She was especially concerned for her grandparents back in England, afraid that their advanced age would consign them to Covid-19 fatality. I had both grandmothers send her messages assuring her of their robust state of health, and that seemed to soothe her fears for now.

Instead of the numbers of predicted fatalities, we talk about what schooling from home will be like. Manu explains to us the online platform they’ll be using, and that they will follow the regular timetable. This seems a bit of shame to me, since she will complete the work much faster on her own than in the classroom. But I am sure it has something to do with maintaining a state of normality for the kids, and keeping them busy while their parents work. I make a mental note to check her timetable and add in our own family rhythms as well as music practices and some physical activities. Manu will miss playing football with her friends and, not for the first time, I am grateful for the outdoor space we have at home for her to kick a ball and run around.

Our Sabbath meal friends message us saying they want to take advantage of being able to drive out to walking trails. Did we want to go with them? Tim and I had just walked the dogs around our usual 30 minute loop, but it’s a no-brainer. We tell the girls to get ready and within 10 minutes are heading out the door again. It’s funny how grateful we are to be able to drive wherever we want, when faced with restrictions that come into play soon.

We all meet at the fuel station 5 minutes from our house. One family fills their tank, while the others wait. Payment is through the out-of-hours bank teller-style window, since the shop is locked. And when Tim buys a sack of firewood, he has to wait while someone comes out - unlocking and then re-locking the entrance - to give him access to the woodstore, now also locked.

Eventually we get underway, driving just a short distance to an off-road trail. We pass a woman who always has her roadside fruit and veggie stand set up at a particular location, and I wonder what it will mean for her livelihood if she is not allowed to sell there.

The walk is great, the kids and dogs lively and wonderfully distracting from our somber mood. They discuss ways around the restrictions on movement, agreeing to text one another to shop for essentials at the same store at the same time, so they can meet up. Hey, whatever gets the teenagers doing errands sounds good to me. We take a few photos, we talk about sharing Sabbath meals via Skype, we don’t hug. It feels weird.

Dropping the kids at home, Tim and I head out to look at a leather armchair I saw on Facebook Marketplace. It feels kind of illicit, although it is still perfectly legal to be driving around at this point. Tim has wanted a leather armchair for his birthday, which is coming up on 28 March. It’s a milestone - his 50th - and by this point I am aware that the guys’ weekend I had planned, with his brothers and some mates flying in from England, will have to be cancelled. I’m hoping the chair is a winner and that at least he will be able to have the gift he hoped for. Whether it is or not, he won’t forget this year’s birthday in a hurry.

We check out the chair while subtly keeping our distance from the Scottish guy who’s selling it. He’s a chatterbox and doesn’t seem to notice or, if he does, is suitably agreeable to our sensible precautions. The chair is great and we get it into the back of the vehicle. The prospect of the 50th birthday being a total anti-climax is averted and I find myself relieved and happy at Tim’s old-age armchair excitement. As we drive home, I wonder when we’ll next drive this road and watch in puzzlement to see that the cable car from Benalmadena up to the birds of prey tourist attraction on the top of the hill is still running. These days seem full of contradictions.

Friday 13 March

It’s Friday. Over the past few days we’ve been wondering what steps the Spanish government will take to respond to the rapid spread of the Corona Virus. We’ve been receiving daily emails from Manu’s school this week, assuring the parents that they are working with the kids to control the spread of germs through hand-washing and the use of anti-bacterial gel. They - and we - have been waiting for the government’s decision on school closures, which has seemed inevitable.

We’re surprised, frankly, that the school has stayed open as long as it has and even considered keeping Manu home despite the lack of official decision. Then last night we had heard that all schools will be closed from Monday. Manu headed in this morning to collect her books and learn how the online platform will work, through which the kids will continue classes.

While Manu was at school, I met with Debbie about the training in spiritual direction we had planned to host. We took the difficult and yet only viable decision to postpone the program. It will mean a lot of people having to cancel flights and risk losing money and it feels disappointing and sad; we’ve been working towards this for months. The only thing to do is choose to trust in the only One who is not surprised by this pandemic, and the only One who can ultimately work goodness out of the chaos. As John Lennon said, if it’s not okay then it’s not the end.

Later in the afternoon, I have an online call with someone in Serbia whom I see monthly for spiritual direction. We talk a bit about the virus, but it’s certainly not the main topic of our conversation. I think to myself how fortunate I am that, if push comes to shove, much of my work can take place online. Who knows, maybe even more people will appreciate someone to chat through how they are feeling in the face of these unusual days.

When Manu gets home from school, we prepare for our usual Sabbath meal with friends, aware that it might be the last one in a while. We don’t hug as we usually do, but still set the table together, stand at the grill, check phones periodically and after the meal sit around the fire pit, talking about people we’re responsible for who are stranded in different nations, trying to get back to Spain or to their passport country. We talk about the closure of our local outreach centre, and how the food bank will manage to support the immigrant families who depend on this help to feed their families. I find myself super-conscious of every sniff and sneeze, suddenly we are more aware of our desire to protect one another.

That night we hear that from 8am on Monday, the Spanish government is implementing a State of Alert. We’ve been watching the news from Italy and this move is not unexpected. Nobody is completely sure of what it will mean, but it looks like rationing of essentials is likely, as well as restrictions on moving around. All this is mulling around in my mind as I go to sleep.

Negative Space

Dear friends of South Africa

Eight years after leaving your shores, I wonder if I owe you an apology. I’m not sure I ever thanked you enough for the way you welcomed us into your space, for the way you made room for us. The thing is, I knew enough to recognise the sweetness of great friendships, the affirmation of open invitations into people’s hearts and homes, but at that point in my life I didn’t realise how rare are those gifts.

I do remember riding my moped over Boyes Drive one bright morning, looking out onto the seascape to my right and, just as aware of the fynbos covered hillside to my left, telling myself to savour this moment. Deep inside I knew that this wonderful synergy of knowing and being known, of beauty and grit, of colour and contrasts, wouldn’t last forever. And it didn’t - it was ours for a few short years, a gift that I couldn’t completely fantom until it came to an end.

So, thank you for sharing your friendship so easily. Thanks for being inclusive, for always being willing to add another steak to the braai, to pour another glass of wine, to pull up another chair to the table. I’m grateful that even when we were the ‘extras’ we were made to feel like we belonged. I have particular memories in my mind, of standing around the fire with people we’d just met, or being invited to share a neighbour’s pool, or weekend home. This generosity of spirit is rare and beautiful, and it changed us.

It changed our expectations and, right now, I’m not sure if that was a good thing. But I’m holding onto the hope that it will be good, some time soon.

Thank you that you never allowed our foreignness to be a reason to exclude us. You never asked us how long we were staying, in order to gauge whether it was worth your while to seek our friendship. You willingly translated for us the subtle complexities of life in your brave and beautiful nation - as far you understood them yourselves - and never made us feel disqualified from participating in the unspoken rules of engagement.

And thank you for reciprocating the friendship we sought to offer you. I realise now that this is the secret ingredient of all successful relationships, that both parties must share a desire to engage and be willing to put effort into the connection. Thank you for the text messages on weekend mornings, letting us know in a low-key way that if we wanted to join you for a hike, or a picnic, or a coffee, then we could. Thanks for the amazing camping trips, and the evening visits to theatre or music events. Thanks for making us feel that you wanted to be with us; that’s pretty damned precious. 

Your friendship was a great affirmation of who we were, made us feel that we were more than we were, somehow. We spent a decade with you and now, incredibly, it is almost a decade later. I can honestly say that, elsewhere, we have yet to find anything like the generous, spacious gifts of connection you so willingly shared. Do I feel diminished? Yes. Does the echo of your faith in me still sound in my soul? For sure. 

If the past eight years feel like a liminal space to me, then it is a transition to something deeper, and if not more full then certainly more filled with longing. Thank you for being part of the formation of desire in me - desire for connection, for soul hospitality, for belonging. If, for a time, I have inhabited the negative space spoken of in art and photography - the empty space surrounding an object - then it has worked to bring into sharper focus the gifts of friendship, to define the place of community in our lives, and to mark out the true value of connection.

It’s true that you cause me to know what I miss. You also cause me to know what I want. And for this, I thank you.