This pandemic and lockdown have been terrible, we all know that, even if we haven’t
lost anyone as a result. It’s also been a welcome step back from the usual rush of life
and that has something to teach many of us, though we may not realise it. But, if we
stand back from the human emotions for a moment, there is more to consider; what
an amazing example it is of connectedness.
For much of the time we feel so remote from other people, especially those
geographically far away. Corona time has given us a different experience. Earlier
pandemics have taken a long time to travel round the globe: back in the European
Middle Age, it took the Bubonic Plague, often called the Black Death, more than 25
years to arrive in Europe from its origins in China; the so-called ‘Spanish’ flu towards
the end of the First World War travelled much more rapidly, but the corona virus
seems to have spread around the world in a matter of weeks. How amazing it is to
think that sometime last autumn a bat in central China passed on this virus to
another animal, perhaps a pangolin and then transmission took place to its first
human victim. Since then the virus has been passed on to more than 7 million
people; a real success story for this newcomer to life on earth. How connected we all
are; how close to each other we are – person to person, we are all in the web of life.
That is not the only aspect of connectedness that the pandemic has thrown up. We
humans, in various degrees of isolation, have felt the need to reach out to each other
at a rate that is rarely seen. I’m not sure if there are any statistics on this, but I can
say in my own case, that the number of text messages, emails, phone calls, Skype
conversations has certainly at least doubled over the last three months. Quakers
among other groups have taken to cyberspace in unprecedented numbers and many
now attend Meetings for Worship on several continents on a weekly basis. Once
again, how very connected we are and largely without damage to the environment.
Travelling is not always necessary and, of course, has never been available to many
who are not able to pay the still heavy cost of frequent international travel. There are
positive outcomes for the environment as well as for our connectedness as a human
community.
So, what about our small Quaker community in Belgium and Luxembourg, whose
official title has almost as many letters as we have members? We, in Brussels, have
always regretted the sense of remoteness from the Meeting in Luxembourg and now
from the growing Meeting in Ghent – forgive the English spelling, but a Flemish
Friend recently pointed out to me that in an English text, Gent might be
misunderstood. Of course, Luxembourg and Ghent are as far from Brussels as
Brussels is from the other two cities, but capital-city dwellers are always resistant to
travel out to smaller places while regretting the fact that they do not come to ‘us’;
we’re in the Heart of Europe after all! Brussels Quakers are certainly guilty of that; I
am no exception and for this I apologise. Even further afield than the territory of our
YM, we have members and former attenders elsewhere – in York in the UK, near
Seattle in the USA to mention just two, and these can now also be familiar faces on
a weekly basis. The new connectedness is a gift to us as we can now build
community all year long, not just see each other, perhaps, once a year at the
residential Yearly Meeting and whisper to another Friend, ‘I know her face, but can
you remind me of her name?’
Phil Gaskell
9 June 2020