Dear Friends,
Today I did something I had not done for a very long time. I enjoyed a cup of coffee sat down inside a coffee shop. I took no chances. I tucked myself away in a corner and kept my head buried in a book, making sure that no one came within 5 metres, leave alone two. It was a strange experience. One sensed that the other people there were as ‘nervous’ as I was. Slightly hesitant, not quite sure how to relax. And so maybe ‘enjoy’ isn’t the right word to use to describe it. The coffee was nice though! But of course, if you live in and around Hampstead Garden Suburb, and you have time on a Saturday morning you don’t have to visit the local coffee shop, you can call in at the Church’s very own ‘West End’ Café. This is one of the ways in which we are seeking to reach out, to reconnect with our local community. And it has been very encouraging to welcome ‘old faces’ and ‘new faces’ during these past few weeks. Hopefully this initiative will grow, and develop into something which is vital to the work and witness of the church during the coming months…As we emerge from ‘lockdown’, all of us, in a variety of different ways will find ourselves having to reconnect with wider society; being presented with opportunities to go to places, to do things, to visit people. For many of us, this is what we have been waiting for during the whole of this time. We are excited at the prospect of being able to do, once again, what until now we have been prevented from doing for so long. For some it will be a bittersweet experience. Relatives and friends who they were not able to visit during lockdown are no longer there. Businesses closed, workplaces shut, jobs gone. Pupils and students denied the educational opportunities that so many of us were able to take for granted. It is all to easy to concentrate on the negative aspects of having been ‘locked down’ for so long. Whether we like it or not, we cannot turn back the clock, have our time over, rewrite history. While we do well to pause to reflect on what might have been, if only, nevertheless we have to move on and embrace the future as it presents itself. Not that everything to do with Covid-19 is behind us. The virus is nowhere near ready to be consigned to history and everything we say or do regarding what will happen next has to caveated accordingly. It is too easy to be overly cavalier concerning our approach to our new found freedoms, such as they are. I am as impatient as anyone in my desire to just, ‘get on with it’ and I am grateful for those who rein me in when I am at my most extravagant…Maybe it isn’t about ‘reconnecting’ at all. Maybe it is about making new connections, or maybe connecting up in a different way. If it hadn’t been for the ‘lockdown’ forced on us as a church by the pandemic, would we have ever thought of opening the ‘West End Café?’ Probably not. Yet in so doing we find ourselves exploring a whole new mission field. No Cappuccinos, no Lattes, no Mochas, just good old instant coffee, made in a mug. It’s not the end product so much as the good time that goes with it. In the brave new world into which we are all emerging, that might just be a useful way of appreciating our own life, the lives of others, a new way of living. So, wake up on Saturday, and smell the coffee…