Notes from self-isolation

As a long term sufferer from asthma, and more recently diagnosed with COPD and bronchiectasis I am now in the “vulnerable at risk” category and am therefore self-isolating. I am the husband of someone who had a heart attack some years ago, and also a father and grandfather and eldest son of a 90 year old mother. I have been an ordained parish priest for over 40 years. In all those ways my self-definition has been that of someone who goes out and looks after others; so it’s strange now to be defined as someone who is potentially on the receiving end of care. I am chaplain to Witney hospital and I love that work; I can determine when I visit and when I leave and am in control of the process. Now I am subject, as we all are, to something I can’t control; I am experiencing something of the vulnerability of the patients I visit in hospital, and perhaps to rediscover my true identity as a child of God, beneath all those other roles (son, husband, father, grandfather, priest) that I have acquired. I know that God won’t protect me from the virus – It’s our responsibility to make sure we take such measures as we can to ensure we stay healthy, and as a medical household (Keri, my wife, is a medical doctor and we have a daughter at medical school) we have been taking precautionary measures very seriously for some weeks. But I also believe that God will sustain us through this crisis, and that there are signs of hope and new life around us each day if we have the eyes and time to see them. Today is the Feast of the Annunciation when we celebrate that Mary had a heart that was open to the message of the angel, and to respond. And it’s my job to do the same. I hope to be able to share some of the ways in which God is sustaining me and giving me hope in succeeding days in this blog. But now as I look up from the computer screen I notice the yellow Brimstone butterflies enjoying the sunshine and calling me out to do the same.