When I have completed my snowman and ark I shall be able to write more words like this.
“There were times” I wailed “When it was just me and the iPad in chapel”. My compatriot patiently listened. “I would set it all up, offer the eucharist to the screen, then pack it all up and go home. I do not understand what happened or indeed if anything happened. What was it all about” I griped? “I mean, what on earth was I doing?”
My friend smiled, sipped his beverage and calmly offered the reply that I needed to hear. “What you were doing was simply being faithful” Odd, I had never thought of it that way. It certainly did not feel like I was doing something that was as noble, august and important as ‘being faithful’. In fact it felt desolate and humiliating.
Frequently it takes someone outside the situation to see it as it truly is. We are so subsumed by our own ‘stuff’ that we fail to see what is truly going on and far from being a solitary figure on the screen, I was in fact worshipping with angels and archangels.
I strongly suspect that this sense of isolation and weirdness was not limited to this wonky old priest. That it might well have been identical to the experience of countless others right around this precious planet of ours.
Sometimes its just a matter of rocking up, being the person you are supposed to be and simply being faithful. That's all. There doesn’t have to be superlative and enlightened answers on our lips. It’s most likely that there will be a list of unanswerable questions instead.
I console myself with my buddies' words. “Sometimes it's just about being faithful.”