Great Minds by Hilary Brand

 

It's a funny sort of Lent this year. No course to attend. No challenge to give up luxuries, no fundraising for greater causes. In truth, for me this has much to do with just having moved house and not yet being involved in a new local church. But of course there are other bigger factors at work. I haven't given up chocolates or wine, but have sometimes had to forgo eggs and brown bread. The process of making new friends in a new area has been put on hold. My plans are stymied.

A friend sent me a poem that had been circulated to her (one of several I've received – it seems the threat of COVID-19 may stimulate the urge to write in verse). With credit to the author, Katie Smith, about whom I know nothing, here is a part of it:

... Suddenly all the plans I had made were gone.
The calendar stood bare,
Like a winter tree.
The people I loved – isolated.
The routine I knew – decimated.
The pattern of my life – changed, almost unrecognisable.
‘I know the plans I have for you’ says the Lord. But I want my plans.
I want what I thought I would have,
The meetings, the people and the places ...

I know exactly how she feels.

The last Lent course I wrote, The Mystery of Everything is focussed around the life of Stephen Hawking. This, as we all know, is the story of a life in which all plans seemed swept away by disease. And yet, as we also know, despite that most drastic shut-down of the human frame, a mind developed that roamed the heavens and delved into some of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time.

Back in 1665 another university scholar must have thought his career was over. He had just obtained a not particularly distinguished BA when Cambridge University was closed down due to the Great Plague. Isaac Newton 'self-isolated' as had been advised, retiring to his family home in Lincolnshire. And there, in that frustrating, seemingly-useless time, he sat in the sunshine and pondered, going on to use prisms to demonstrate that within the white light he was seeing were contained all the colours of the rainbow. He sat in the orchard and pondered an apple falling from a tree, and we all know what he deduced from that. It turned out to be not wasted time but the most productive time of his life.

Look back a little further in history and we find another scholar laid low and isolated by an epidemic. John Donne was nearly killed by what he called the 'spotted feaver' (most likely typhoid) , but during his recovery he penned a series of meditations on sickness and suffering, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, later encapsulated in perhaps the greatest poem ever on isolationism. I've found myself thinking of it in recent days and its message for these strange times, so here it is:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Familiar words suddenly seen in a new light in a whole new situation – where isolation is itself a mark of being a responsible part of the whole. Where even an island cannot be entire of itself, where despite Brexit being swept from the headlines, we are still well aware that we are part of Europe, and indeed of a whole damaged planet demanding our co-operation too. And, of course, where we cannot help being reminded of the tolling bell of our own mortality.

I wonder how many more examples might be found of creativity in times of epidemic and isolation. Casting my mind even further back, I realise that it was killer plagues in Egypt in that sent a rag-tag community of slaves into the isolation of the Sinai desert – and look what resulted from that!

So I guess we should not be too quick to consider this wasted time. God may well have some plans for it, that we haven't quite grasped yet. It could even be the most precious and productive time of our lives!

           

~

Each day, we will post a short article by one of Darton, Longman and Todd’s amazing authors, offering a personal reflection on our current situation in life. Sometimes this will be written with reference to one of their books, and sometimes about how they are living in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus and our current world situation. We hope it will give you a taste of the depth and diversity of DLT’s list – books for heart, mind and soul that aim to meet the needs and interests of all.

Today’s post is by Hilary Brand, author of a number of our most popular Lent courses, including The Mystery of Everything. You can buy a copy of the book here.