Independence is valuable...

Blessed John Cornelius and companions.

Saturday, 4th July, 2020

American Independence Day is going to be celebrated in a more muted form we are told. With the mixed messages of the political leaders in that country one is never quite sure of anything. A friend I have who lives in Texas tells me the whole thing is a shambles and that messages are not only mixed but shambolic and incoherent and contradictory. The Governor eases lockdown then tightens it. President Trump has been triumphalist at Mount Rushmore and doesn't even mention the virus but appeals to the 'true American' as opposed to the communists, anarchists, ignoramuses and the rest trying to suppress America's great history.

I am reading the 'Spiritual letters' of Abbot John Chapman and before bed last night I read this sentence:" My habitual feeling is that the world is so extremely odd, and everything in it so surprising. Why should there be green grass and liquid water, and why have I got hands and feet?"

How I empathise with that sentiment 'the world is so extremely odd'. Of course it is as it is and many experts will tell one why but Chapman's sentiment goes deeper: Creation is a mystery. One has to accept that one is and from that starting point work out one's modus operandi...how I will live, what I consider my purpose and all those questions as to existence, spirituality, reality and on and on.

Getting back to 'extremely odd' I find myself surprised by the behaviour of so many. I think firstly that fear is our major enemy and hard to counteract. Once fear is acknowledged and discarded as fully as possible then one faces options. Scotland is loosening more slowly than England where today has been dubbed 'super Saturday' as pubs, restaurants, hair dressers etc are opened. Caution is recommended and a respect for regulations. Yet we read of police being attacked as they disperse illegal musical raves; one hears of secret 'Covid parties' being held in supposedly closed venues; one reads of many simply flouting caution. The vast majority of people are working together to try to contain this virus's deadly progress yet others throw caution to the wind and seem hell bent on their own agenda regardless of the risk to others.

Arguments go on about the opening of schools and of local lockdowns, of safe distancing and some of those arguments are simply driven by fear but many are a serious attempt to contain economic collapse and contain the virus.

Yes, it is Independence Day in America. That celebration of Independence from Imperial Britain is richly worthy of celebration. Independence is a valued and valuable freedom, a right. But independent thought and action during a national reaction to a pandemic needs to be balanced against a general good.

Human beings' actions and reactions are extremely odd and surprising to me much of the time, and have been especially during this pandemic. Like Chapman I merely have to ask the question 'Why?'