For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins
The days dividing lover and lover
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember’d is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
This fourth verse of the chorus from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon (1865) is a favourite of mine. The words seem to have a peculiarly apt ring to them as we cope with what feels like an eternal quarantine.
We had one of the wettest winters on record and this has been followed by perhaps one of the most wonderful springs we can recall.
It is not just lovers who are separated at the moment, but anyone with a family or friends has been, of necessity, cut off from them. We are luckier than many generations, because of technology at our disposal, but even at its best and most stable there is, I think we will all agree, no substitute for the real thing.
Someone asked on Twitter what would be the first thing they would do when the lockdown was over and – apart from getting a haircut—which topped many people’s lists, meeting up with family and friends, having a hug, hit the top spot for vast numbers.
On that first Easter morning, when Mary was in the garden and realised that the person she was speaking to was Jesus, the first thing she wanted to do was to touch him – give him a hug, hold him, and never let him go.
Until we get to that marvellous physical moment with our own families and friends, we will have to be sustained with ‘time remembered’ in the hope that it eases whatever griefs we presently have to bear.
And when we reach some future post Covid-19 point, whenever that is, whatever that looks like, we might be required to ‘reset what is essential’ in our lives, as Bishop Stephen, the Bishop of Oxford, said on Easter Sunday.
And for some of us an appreciation that things which cost little or no money, things which sustain us spiritually may have greater value for us in the future, because of the experience we have all been through, in this most beautiful spring.
The Revd Judi Hattaway is the Associate Priest of St Paul’s Parish, writing on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
