Around the Corner

I’m writing this on the anniversary of the beginning of the first lockdown. I’m asking myself if there is anything to say about the connection between the pandemic and the activity of writing, from a Christian point of view. And this is a challenge. I don’t think it would be helpful to talk about the effects of lockdown or of the Covid crisis on our individual, personal, writing lives, because there’s no generalization that can be made. Many people have said that they couldn’t write at all — and this has been the case both for people who have been materially affected by Covid and the response to it, and for people who have simply sat it out, thankfully without physical effects. Others, myself included, have found themselves very productive, but it would hardly be considerate to make a big issue out of this; we are just very lucky.

So what generalizations can be made? Perhaps we have to start outside the sphere of writing, at the most general level, asking ourselves what generalization applies here, and then see how it applies at the limited level of writing. I think that the least complicated idea that one can bring to the discussion is simply that things will never be the same again. Or perhaps: things should never be the same again. Probably many people are wishing to get back to normal, to life as it was before the pandemic. But if we can learn anything from this experience, and of course it’s by no means over yet, it is that we cannot expect life to be the same after a corner has been turned.

This is possibly a frightening thought for many people, and that’s why they’re clinging to the idea of getting back to everything they had before. But for us Christians, even if it can be scary at times, it’s a truth we know and are familiar with. We know that life takes irrevocable turns, but we also know that the Lord who is going with us along one stretch of the road is still there once we’ve turned the corner, and stays with us all down that stretch till the next corner. In fact the awareness of his presence may even strengthen when we’ve had to turn a particularly challenging corner. This is not always an easy lesson for us who accompany Christ, but we are trying to learn it, because we know that when we turn the last corner, we shall see our Companion as he is.

This scenario which our faith puts before us is a tremendous scenario. It’s one that we would love others to know. It has a terrific appeal. How can we introduce an unbelieving society to it? Can we find ways to encapsulate it, even incarnate it, in what we write, so that its beguiling beauty speaks to our readers from behind a veil, so to speak? That could be a challenge for 2021.