What will You Carry Out of Lockdown?

Lockdown has been an interesting experience. In one sense nothing much has changed for me. I work in a Care Home two days a week so I've been going to work as normal. We locked down early and, so far, we've been fortunate in not having any cases of coronavirus. Staff have undertaken to isolate themselves at home, not going out apart from when they come to work. So the 'at home' part of my life has become outwardly much more constrained. There's been plenty of opportunity for relaxation, reading, gardening, meditation, walking in the countryside around our house. I can feel the stress of many years melting away with the significant reduction in pressure to do things, meet people, respond to requests and invitations.

Something that's kept me energised and positive has been the new balance in my life. Two days of purposeful busy-ness and five of reflective spaciousness has felt good. Encounters with other people have been less frequent but deeper. Old friendships have been renewed. I've appreciated the clear challenges at work. It's been obvious what needs to be achieved quickly in response to the virus and the main frustration has been finding the necessary resources. I've been aware that for those working from home for the first time, furloughed or made redundant there may have been less of a sense of work as an 'anchor'. From colleagues in ministry in the various churches, I've picked up a degree of 'overwhelm' in terms of opportunity to prioritise and do things differently; for some this has bordered on an existential crisis. 

Finding myself in a place of heightened practical and reflective response to a crisis has been an unusual and extremely interesting experience. Over the weeks themes have emerged for me that have predominantly been around questions of justice and work. What is the true place of work in our lives and in society? The COVID-19 crisis has thrown up anomalies.

Care work is extremely poorly paid, often at or below the minimum wage. Every day an army of unseen workers cares for the very elderly, the very young and people with disabilities; this crisis has suddenly rendered them more than normally visible. Many have not been paid when they themselves have fallen ill with the virus or have had to isolate. (Care is often paid on an hourly basis with no provision for sick pay by employers.) Meanwhile other workers have been furloughed on 80% pay and have reported 'boredom' or a sense of being on an 'extended holiday.' I'm glad that people have been furloughed rather than losing their jobs and pleased that they have found refreshment amid the anxiety. But the situation has thrown into sharp relief questions about how we value work, particularly the kinds of work the we all rely on heavily to support our lives. Care is just one example. 

So how do we evaluate different kinds of work?

Skill is not perhaps the most helpful measure. It's too blunt an instrument. Justice-for-worker questions may sound more like this

• who works in ways that are essential for survival?
• who responds effectively to needs?
• who brings greater quality of life to most people?
• who has resilience and stickability?
• who enables others to contribute?

Our attitudes to work in the economies of the developed world tend to be focused on a contrasting set of questions

• who can generate market place needs?
• who is effective in suppressing economically inconvenient needs?
• who generates quality for those who can pay most?
• who demonstrates ability to move on?
• who enables me to do what I want? 

The Quaker, William Penn observed that 'true silence is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment'. It takes a well-nourished soul to meet survival needs, bringing depth and quality to all one does, turning up to do it come what may and allowing others space to do the same. A year or so after I started attending Quaker meeting one of the young Quakers asked me what had changed for me as a result of immersion in silence. I quickly thought of the intangibles - I was calmer, more focused, I'd become more attentive in listening and more measured in responding. But, as I thought about it, I was surprised to recognise more tangible changes too - I'd joined a political party, started gardening (which I used not to enjoy), taken on training as a psychotherapist. I'd not directly connected any of these tangible changes with Quaker silence but I now realised that it was the quality of the silence I was experiencing that had enabled them.

The silence and quiet of lockdown has thrown up many questions, insights, glimmers of the ways things could be different; it has pointed me toward some of the actions needed to initiate and sustain this difference. There have been shifts in perspective, shifts in the balance of my life, shifts in what I find I truly need. These, I feel, are the things to value and take forward. 

One thing I will certainly be taking forward is my work to reform our Social Care system. Those who care for our loved ones - our youngest children and our elderly parents - provide the basic 'oil in the engine' that allows society to function. This 'oil' is the ability of ordinary people to go about their business every day knowing that their family will be cared for at affordable cost by well-motivated, competent, compassionate people. Historically 'care' has been the job of the family, often the women in the family. It is no great surprise that one of our lowest paid sectors arises from a trajectory of 'women's work'. Over centuries the role of women in caring has been transferred from the clan, to the family, to the churches, to the social services and health care agencies without any rigorous evaluation of the qualities and skills involved or the intrinsic value of their worth. 

As a society we simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs about care. On the one hand it's something anyone can do - don't parents do it all the time for their children? No special training or resources necessary! On the other hand it's something about which lots of people say 'I couldn't do that for all the tea in China.' Too much patience needed, too many menial tasks involved! Put the two attitudes together and you have a profession that is not thought of as requiring much resourcing or training, where most people do not wish to think about its reality in too much detail and do not listen to the voices or wisdom of those engaged in it. So the myth that there is a plentiful supply of 'angels' who will instinctively do this sort of work, not for the pay, but simply because they love doing it is perpetuated. And 'society' feels very comfortable about that!

A friend recently said to me during a Zoom conversation, 'We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy.' What would it take to turn us into a society of communities motivated by care? We are so far from prioritising care at the moment (a symptom of this being the neglect of Care Homes' voices and needs during the pandemic) that a colossal shift of perspective is required. This will involve putting insights that come from care alongside and sometimes over and above those that come from the creation of market forces. In such a new perspective success may be seen in terms of making people feel genuinely good about themselves, appreciating what they have to offer rather than seeing only what they own and can or can't buy; not measuring them according to externally generated criteria drawn from the need always to create wealth. 
    

I've watched really experienced care workers. They attend to their clients. They read the signs and learn what makes a person feel cared for (as opposed to making assumptions about what a person needs based on their own needs.) Here's a small example: at our Care Home there's a group of staff who take infinite care to work out what a resident might like for their birthday. The genuine delight on the face of a person as they open their present or go out for their treat is testimony to the times they get it right. That same approach underlies all profound care. It is the care we experience in the heart of the Divine, to be known so well that the joy within us is liberated and flows out to others. There is no price that can be put on that kind of care. It is a quality our society badly needs and it isn't until we learn to value it that we will begin to have a just relationship with work. 

Benjamin Zephaniah - Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Thinking About George Floyd

The name George Floyd has gone down in history and will not be forgotten. I have been so appalled by his murder I have found it difficult to write anything. As a white person I am all too conscious that I should listen more than speak, but I also know that not to speak at all is to condone violence and oppression.

We are wrong, in the UK, if we allow ourselves to think that what we are seeing unfold in the United States is solely an American problem with roots in American history. We have racism built into the fabric of our society in the UK, too, albeit with some slightly different emphases. I don't have to think very hard or move from my desk or even do any research to come up with stories that show this to be true.

I've nursed alongside black nurses and heard the demeaning comments, jokes, 'compliments' ('she's very kind for one of them'). I've watched the government refuse the right to remain to black people who have served, by invitation, in industries and sectors that would not have survived without them, living their whole lives in Britain. I've read books and watched TV programmes that show the extent to which slavery of black people created the wealth on which much of the British industrial revolution was based. I've seen how people assume the black person in the group is the student (not the teacher), the offender (not the lawyer), the committee member (not the chair). I've seen a group of students demolish or ignore the contribution of the black people in the group because they don't see it as relevant to their experience. I've been laughed at by students for putting books written by black theologians on an essay booklist. I've sat tight lipped but silent when friends and family have made derogatory remarks and jokes about people of other ethnic origins. I've seen mixed race friends denied the freedom to celebrate part of their heritage, 'we think of you as white'. I've done and said things that have demeaned black people without thinking and found it difficult to listen to the rebuke; and so I ask how often have I got away without rebuke because my black friend was too gracious or too weary or too angry?

I know very little - and I want to understand more. My own ethnicity is White Welsh British. I look white but I speak a minority language and belong to a people who are regularly the butt of stereotypes and jokes. 'Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief'. The drip-drip frustration of constantly hearing your language and culture belittled damages your pride in yourself and your heritage and puts you on the back foot. Do I defend, challenge or let it go? I cannot imagine living with that 'on-the-back-foot' experience repeated over and over in almost every aspect of your life - your appearance, your access to opportunity, your freedom of movement and speech, your education, the job market, only having the 'right' to exist at the cost of other people's supposed 'right' to make you the focus of a joke or a comment. The less space you are given the more energy it takes to stand, to be, to refuse to shrink, to judge every situation with just the right balance of challenge and grace. I have had a glimpse of how exhausting that might be. And I feel a tiny glimmer of the cumulative pain.     

The events of this week in the USA are indescribably disturbing. As a white person I feel inhibited to contribute and I invite correction and comment for anything I have said that misrepresents or distorts. But I reflect maybe there are a few ways I, as a white person, can work for change. 

• Always listen to the experience of black people more than speak of my reaction.
• Be honest about my reaction to myself and, where invited, to my black friends.
• Never let a demeaning or racially offensive comment go, never join in a joke or let one pass.
• Make it a priority to learn about and from other cultural perceptions, especially those that are very unfamiliar.
• Immerse myself in black history and draw attention to black perspectives that contradict or amplify the dominant white story.  
• Explore variety in other cultures and avoid joining in anything that stereotypes a race or nationality.

In my own discipline of theology, I'm currently reading Nine African Women Theologians You Should Know About by Stephanie Lowery (with thanks to my friend Revd Ade Lawal for recommending it.) Donald Trump's actions this week have shown how Christianity can be highjacked and used in quite dreadful ways and this has been a shocking reminder of how theology has been used to oppress black people. It is ever more pressing that every theological institution takes seriously and teaches black perspectives in theology.

I'm also reading  Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga. My parents worked in Ghana and I know that I have inherited a one-sided version of the history of Britain's relationship to the many countries in which today's black British communities have roots.  I've been re-educated powerfully by Olusoga's work on the influence of slavery on Liverpool. I've been shocked to discover slavery's foundational impact on the whole British economy through the extent to which wealth was created for white people (but not black) by compensation when slaves were 'freed'. See here for Olusoga's introduction to black British history, 'the history we are not taught in schools.'

Racist behaviour does not spring only from contemporary attitudes but from deep-seated inequalities, exploitations and oppressions that are not acknowledged in popular versions of history or theology. That is as true in the UK today as it is in the USA and George Floyd's death should disturb us in Britain a very great deal.