I guess, it’s not a questio of ‘is anybody asking the question’ but of how many are asking this question?

And what is the answer?

Here I am – here we are – on the brink of another ‘wave’ of uncertainty, another roller-coaster of virus driven fear. ‘The Virus’ as it has become known, has taken on the status of some revered demi-god who must be bowed down to…a powerful entity whose rising determines our posture.

Do we bow and scrape, or do we defy? Do I run and hide, or do I rise and speak?

In some ways I think this was already known. What I mean is that it was already seen before it happened – by God – and our reactions, entirely human and normal, were known as well. The heart of God did skip a beat as He watched us reel in shock. No delight in the pain and fear it has caused us, but shocked – perhaps – as Jesus was in the Gospels – by some of our reactions.

Some of us are fleeing, some transfixed as the ground beneath our feet has split from ‘concrete’ (confidence in a world that we recognised, knew, understood and to a certain extent determined how it would be) to a looking down in uncertainty at the ‘ground’ (economic certainties for us in the rich West) which has turned to ‘water’ or liquid soil. Unpredictable, uncertain, fear-instilling, bewildering and dangerous.

We are perhaps entering a new age, or a new era where known things are mirages, mists that swirl and encircle our minds with new uncertainty. Perhaps we have to become accustomed with the need to dwell where we are – in our homes, our minds, our connections (or lack of them) and begin to walk through these new and undiscovered places.

Forced back into ‘isolation’ we are faced with ourselves in new ways. What we relied upon has been shifted and what is there? Emptiness? Fear? Eachother. Does it ‘drive us mad’ or does it drive us to seek? Does it drive us to endeavour to do things better or to seek some solution in a different way? Or does it simply make us ‘unwell’?

Am I/are we able to re-evaluate? To reflect on who we are and what our life is? Do we have more time to reflect and read and consider the big issues beyond our need to rise and feed and look after ourselves by going to work or collecting our social security payments, looking for work or whatever else it is that drives us to keep going?

Prising ourselves away from these things. Perhaps creates a margin, a space for something different?