Building on work done through the DFID IMPACT Programme, my colleague Tom Adlam and I had a piece published today in Impact Alpha: “Maintaining momentum for the SDGs in the face of COVID”.
Click here to read it (you can sign up for free to access 5 articles a month).
My year started with a book that came to me with providential timing.
Last year was a tough year. Really tough. I ended it thoroughly depleted; staggering into the Christmas break emotionally, spiritually and physically wrung out. More than ever, I needed a rest… a sabbath, if you will.
Enter: Sabbath, by Nicola Slee. Slee’s thoughtful and vulnerable book is based on a poem by Wendell Berry, which begins describing his journey into sabbath rest:
I go among trees and sit still.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
Real rest requires an element of intentionality – a deliberate pause in order to find the stillness. As my exhausted brain worked through the mess of the year, it began to quiet as I allowed it to process, rejuvenate, recharge.
Reflecting on the book, and on my own relationship with rest, it occurred to me that sabbath actually has an element of work; it involves the work of resting.
To rest actively requires us to consider what has made us tired, and to sort through the chaff in our minds.
But fortunately, this quiet work of the sabbath comes with a reward.
After days of labor,
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
Doing the hard work of rest is valuable. It is also, at times, painful. As I took stock and reflected, I could see truths and realities in a way that I could not in the noise and busy-ness of life.
As I approached the end of my break, I wrote in my journal:
This year – more than ever – I have limped over the finish line, frailer and sicker than I have ever been.
Slee says that this is normal – sometimes to enter sabbath is to have it all crash down on you as your body catches up. But this year has been particularly torrid and I think this has had an effect. The last few days have been tough. I begin work again tomorrow and my body knows it. I don’t want to do it.
I need more time.
Even just little more time.
Leaving sabbath is difficult, and not just because we connect with ourselves and with God in it.
Leaving sabbath is hard because we return to a world we do not control, and which has marched on in our absence. Even if I was in control of my world (which I am not), returning is hard as it has grown out of my control in my absence.
While I have been in sabbath, I have been discovering (or rather remembering) some of my passions that bring me joy.
And that, I suppose, is good. Anxiety may be the price of leaving my sabbath woods, but a renewed sense of self and (hopefully) better tools to find rest again are what I take from it.
There are certain parallels between leaving sabbath and leaving the strangeness of this season, whenever that may be.
2020 has forced many of us into a form of sabbath; a mandatory degree of rest and reflection that we have not had before. In many senses, the year has been traumatic… But it has also been an opportunity to reset and renew our inner worlds.
Leaving this form of sabbath will come with its own challenges.
Leaving any sabbath is hard. But eventually the sabbath must end.
The key is to take its lessons and its energies to meet the new day.
I don’t want to pontificate about the short- and long-term effects of the last few months, but I have been reflecting a little lately on two things in particular: certainty and familiarity.
The strangeness of this year has upended a number of things that we thought were certain – supermarket stock, health systems in the global north, the ubiquity of air travel and mobility, not to mention (controversially) the need for a physical office.
At the same time, the last few months has also left man of us with a deep sense of defamiliarisation. Not only are the ‘certainty’ building blocks changing, but the things that make life familiar also seem to be changing.
Our rituals – handshakes, physical meetings, crammed bars – are no longer possible.
Our spaces – offices, trains, planes – are altered. Some of these may change forever.
But as much as the unfamiliarity and the uncertainty affects our lives, there are some things that remain certain or familiar, and that I am grateful for.
Some of these are certain ‘certains’ that I had never really thought about before.
Our carers are a consistent and welcome form of certainty – often overlooked and underappreciated.
I’m grateful for the certainty of my faith community, even if its online mode of expression is deeply unfamiliar!
I have found comfort in the familiarity of baking bread. Finding flour was a bit touch-and-go there for a while(!), but the rhythm of bread-making has been a deeply familiar part of my life for a few years now.
The internet – gosh. Without the certainty of the internet, it is hard to know what we would have done. Never thought I would thank BT.
And then there are our relationships; (hopefully) a source of both familiarity and certainty in times of need.
So, in the unfamiliar and the uncertain – we can always find what is truly familiar, and hopefully some things that are certain.
The internet is veritably heaving with articles about how to be productive at home. I’ve read a few. They’re fine, if a little facile.
For me, what is more important is keeping a sense of life progressing forward during this weird time.
I thought I’d share a little about what I’m doing around the house to: a) keep moving forward, b) enjoy the quiet time without pressure to be social, c) getting distance from my work when the house has become my workplace, and d) do more ‘quirky experiments’ (see my post from May).
1. Bread
In fairness, this is not really new for me; I’ve been baking bread for some time.
Sourdough seems to be the bread du jour, with many millennials growing their first sourdough starter. Really, though, you can bake immensely satisfying and tasty bread with ordinary baker’s yeast. I’ve done both. Anything with a longer proofing time (e.g. overnight) will taste leagues ahead of store-bought bread, and the process is really rewarding. Admittedly, it’s not for the patient – but there is a definitely joy in the wait and the reward.
A good start is the Overnight White from Flour Water Salt Yeast by Forkish (fantastic author name for a food book).
2. Growing – and growing to eat
We don’t have a large garden, and it’s largely paved, meaning most of our growing happens in pots and a couple of elevated beds. I’m really enjoying pottering about each day. Some of our plants have been with us for years, and we’ve now got carrots, mangetout, strawberries, peas, celery, lettuce, spring onion, tomatoes, potatoes and herbs (including bay tree, parsley, mint and others). Some of these have been re-grown straight from kitchen scraps that would have otherwise gone in the bin.
It has been particularly fun to see some of the plants I’ve grown from seeds thrive – special shout out to my peas, madly climbing our homemade tepee trellis.
I’ve also started a worm compost with an Urbalive unit, reducing our food waste.
3. Fermenting
Most people – including myself, until recently – associated ferments with deeply unpleasant, stinky, odours. I’ve learned that a lot of what we eat is actually fermented – from naturally leavened bread, to wine, beer and sauerkraut. I’ve tried my hand at a few now, including carrots sticks with cardamom, kimchi and sauerkraut. Some have failed – the sauerkraut was particularly over-ripe, but some have been great!
My favourite by far has been tepache, a Mexican pineapple. See recipe here, and the It’s Alive video version here (with the inimitable wourder-drinker, Brad).
For bonus quirk – I’m trying to make the top of the pineapple shoot out new roots so I can grow a new plant).
4. Gaming
Again, not a new one – but I’m really enjoying Red Dead Redemption 2 😉
5. Reading
Again, the two people who regularly read my blog will know that reading is not really a new habit for me. However, I started the year with a resolution to be more intentional about the types of books I read – to ensure I was being strategic. Lockdown, for me, has been tricky with reading. I am often tired at the end of each day, as the work and general stress of the situation has got to me. When I have enough energy, though, reading has been a constant source of joy. I am currently enjoying Montefiore’s biography of Jerusalem, and Wilcock’s analysis of Revelation (only coincidentally on the topic of apocalypse!). See my reading post from March showing some things I’m working through or have just finished.
Stay safe.
Each year I am struck by what a sense of isolation and helplessness the disciples must have felt on the first Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
All they had known for years came crashing down around them. Their messiah and deliverer died an ignominious death on a Roman cross.
The disciples had in their hearts a vision of political revolution; the establishment of an earthly kingdom. But what they had before their eyes was a crucified leader.
It is easy for us now, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, to know that we are about to celebrate the resurrection. We know that we can celebrate His death on Friday because his resurrection on Sunday is on the way.
But in that moment, the disciples knew nothing of what was to come.
They hadn’t read to the end of the book – of the victory to come. And even if they had, it was a different victory than the one they had anticipated, and they could not have comprehended, with their religious-political mindset.
But Jesus did know the end of the story. He knew of the victory to come. He knew Sunday was on the way.
Despite our strange isolation this year, we cannot really fully understand what the disciplines went through on that first Easter. But we can empathise with the isolation and a sense of helplessness.
More importantly – we can remind ourselves that Jesus knows the end of the story. Isolation is not the end. Victory – in some form or another – is on the way.
Sunday is on the way.
James Hills Writes 