“We are members of one body, not only when we choose to be, but in our whole existence” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Welcome to Level three Central Vineyard! Where the flat-whites flow, and our bubbles remain unbroken. We have actually had an addition to our flat bubble, Karen. She arrived three weeks ago and each day her bitter demeanour takes up more and more space. Yes I am talking about my sourdough starter, and yes I have possibly lost my mind.
We are in a time of letting the land lie fallow. I heard this phrase last year and it settled on me that you cannot plow, sow, grow constantly - the land needs to rest. To take a Sabbath. On Day One (a decade ago in lockdown years), I had a call with a colleague who was feeling the productivity pressure - she wanted to make something, build something, make sure people knew she was doing something. And in a slight deviation from my conflict-averse manner, challenged her, what would it look like if you… didn’t? In other words, who were you, before you were told to be something different? I personally have a love-hate relationship with the enneagram, but I believe it serves a purpose here. It’s strengths/weaknesses modality proposes that in stress we move to another ‘number’s’ temperament. For instance, a typically people-pleasing Two will go to an Eight (the Challenger) in stress; controlling the situation and trying to manage the outcome. But in health, they go to their Four (the Individualist); seeing beauty in things and creating for creations sake. This is (supposedly) where a Two originally began. A curious, artistic child, who somewhere learnt along the way that they were affirmed more when they cared for others than when they created for themselves, so they adjusted accordingly.
Which takes me to bread-making. I have joined the masses in the routine feeding of a sourdough starter. Asking my flatmate questions about how Karen is growing, or when Katherine was fed is what I imagine it is like to have a silent, hungry child. And as we know by the empty supermarket shelves, I am not alone in this new hobby/borderline obsession. And while I could reference some bootleg psychology as to why our monkey brains are craving carbohydrates, or draw strong parallels between the fermentation process and the importance of slowing down, I think what I am most taken by is my strong impulse to do something tactile. Famously not one for anything requiring much kinetic effort, in this time I have found myself wanting to knead dough, tread pavement (slowly), brush colour onto paper. I want to be reminded that I am real, that my movements and actions have consequences. There is a strange dissonance between this feeling of floating through a period of time I have no authority to define, whilst simultaneously and definitively carving out a space for myself that is wholly mine. I have less control than before, but I have never felt so grounded. I feel more ‘me’ than I ever have, yet I have been ripped up from the ground I know and plopped into unknown territory.
When Level Four was announced, it felt like a direct attack on my personhood. Almost comically those around me checked in - I received more than one message asking how I was doing “because we know this is really hard for you”. Before this I had built a sense of self upon being spread across as many places as physically possible. And so following my known script I initially packed my days with ‘check-in’ calls, only to find those on the other end equally exhausted. But now, five weeks in, my self professed off-the-scale extrovert self has been pleasantly surprised to find that the space between myself and the people I truly love is revered. Our love is strengthened by something greater. I carry them with me, in the quiet, in the rahui. It is as Henri Nouwen says; “from now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us is holy ground”.
We will always be part of the body we have been adopted into, for “we are members of one body, not only when we choose to be, but in our whole existence”. And with this solid grounding, this space of belonging, comes the freedom to imagine a new way of living. Who are we then, when the old script no longer applies? With no expectation to be anywhere, with the knowledge my friendships endure irrespective of physical space, with the desire to be tactile and create. In this time and space, I find myself dizzingly happy with plunger coffee in the morning and the comfort of routine. I feel satisfied by doing little more than making one pot of soup. I haven’t experienced the anxiety that previously would set in after one afternoon of sitting still. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is the end-game. Whilst I have enjoyed building a cosy little life, I believe we are called to love, to go outwards, to be much, much more. But enjoying - dare I say delighting - in stillness is a facet of myself, I didn’t know existed. It counters all the narratives that came before it, and begs me to ask new questions about what kind of life I would like to paint next. Who was I, before I was asked to be something else? Who am I when I meet with God in my home, as I am? What else may I be surprised by, that lies dormant in my personhood? I’m not encouraging you to delve into narcissistic navel-gazing but for those of us privileged with the time for self-reflection, we have been handed an opportunity to engage with our childlike self. To give airtime to dreams and ways of living we buried long ago.
I am discovering new holy ground. We started a Sunday small group right before lockdown, and have continued to meet weekly to share our heartaches and insights together. We are physically apart, yet nobody is piece by piecemeal. Instead we strengthen each other - the space between us truly revered by a greater love. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer refers to Christian community as a body where “one who returns to the fellowship after fighting the battle of the day brings with him the blessing of his aloneness, but he himself receives anew the blessing of the fellowship”. We are apart, physically, but we continue to participate in the greater organism that is the Church, bringing with us the blessing of our aloneness and receiving the strengthening that comes from fellowship, the joy of communion together. In this unfamiliar space, with no pre-existing script, we are experiencing a new way of living. And we can choose to cling to the old way of doing things, or risk it all and forge an unfamiliar way forward. This is the invitation before us, and in accepting it we follow in the footsteps of those who came before. This is church.
Written by Laura Taylor. Photography by Katie Patterson.