It can’t be ‘Business as Usual’

This reflection was written on 23rd March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning to become real and present in our neighbourhood. It offers the beginning of our community story here; our response, the themes that began to arise, the challenges, the difficulties, injustices, demands and struggles alongside the opportunities and openings that would emerge when the state and the marketplace stepped back, and our neighbourhood stepped up.

Tuesday 17th March is going to live long in my memory, when the Covid-19 global pandemic suddenly felt very real. Up until that point it was a thing we were being mindful about. For example, at church we washed hands as soon as we arrived, sharing the peace didn’t include the usual hand-shake and hug but was a creative use of sign language to say ‘peace be with you’. We changed our way of doing communion (not sharing one cup!) and refreshments after the service didn’t happen. All very strange, but we still gathered and experienced community in a way familiar to us. We hung out in the same building and spoke face-to-face. It felt like an act of solidarity and creativity. ‘Self-isolating’ and ‘social distancing’ were talked about and suggestions began to emerge of how to encourage a neighbourly response, but the implications of how this would challenge the very DNA of how we act in our community, our society and our world hadn’t fully come to light yet. 

Monday evening this changed as our Prime Minister, announced that all ‘non-essential’ social gatherings should end, although it would be 5 days until he instructed pubs, restaurants, and leisure centres to close! Therefore, the decision was left with us about how to respond. The immediate practical response was, with a heavy heart, to close our community hub for social gatherings, and postpone all other organised social gatherings. We felt the call to social distancing was something to take very seriously, and we had to be an example to our neighbours that it couldn’t be ‘business as usual’. There was some fear, concern and anger at this decision; how could we step away at this moment of crisis? How can we close our doors when people will need each other more than ever before!? This was a response filled with raw emotion and very rational fears/questions. This was already a challenge to the very heart of our lives, the bonds we have built, and the ways we act in the love of our neighbour. How can we stay apart, but become closer together? How do we step back whilst also stepping up? 

Why it can’t be ‘business as usual’ 

We street connectors are community builders. We are a team of neighbours who creatively find ways to encourage social gathering, reduce social distancing, and encourage people to de-isolate into community. We would say all social gathering is ‘essential’, and the way we encourage this 99% of the time is what politicians would call ‘pressing the flesh’. Encouraging physical contact, shaking hands, hugs, knocking doors to have face-to-face conversation, hosting places of welcome, encouraging people to come out of their houses and gather socially. On Tuesday 17th March this way was having to be postponed, and we would need to work out how to ‘act’ in what felt like a new (and hopefully temporary) world. On Tuesday the usual agenda for our connectors meeting was put on hold, and we turned our attention to these questions (ones which we will be pondering for months to come): 

How does physical distancing not mean goodbye, farewell, and separation, but promote news ways of presence, closeness, lovingness, and nearness? 

How does social isolation not mean loneliness, segregation, and seclusion, but would require new ways of thinking through radical inclusion, solidarity, and mutual support? 

How does the physical act of community building still happen? What does it mean to hunt the edges, increase the circles, encourage people to ‘show up’ and nurture a ‘community life’? Especially when this feels more vital to our wellbeing than ever before. 

How do we ensure we don’t lean into a ‘needs based’ approach to an unfolding crisis and as it becomes more real? Categories of ‘vulnerable people’ are being circulated and focused upon. As people are being told they are vulnerable and at risk by the government, how are we continuing to seek what’s strong in our communities, not with what’s wrong? How do we encourage those who are crisis planning to ask the same questions, and how would collaboration make these strengths stronger still? 

What does a neighbourly response look like? How can our many gifts, skills and talents be channelled into new creative and exciting ways? How do we continue to unearth the gifts of our neighbours, and encourage new ways these can be shared with each other?