Trio Watson
“COVID has thrown us into a liminal space,” I read in a music review, “and that is why I have called my new album ‘Liminality’.” I was fascinated to read this, because although I didn’t know what the word ‘liminal’ meant, somehow this cri de coeur spoke to me. I googled it.
For me it is certainly true that with regard to my Quaker practice I am in a liminal space: the known quantity has gone, really, and now here is a new silent space with COVID in it. Feeling my way into it, trying to discern, or recognise, or invent distinct shapes in this cloudy interim environment … is very weird. I wondered if I’d somehow lost God. My faith had gone into a rather threadbare patch where secular ideas, or ideas from other practices, become more inspiring than the old ones. I decided it was normal for a faith journey.
I found reassurance in the silver necklace that I’d bought as a ‘capture’ of the time I first became a member of the Society of Friends. Comfort also came in the form of vegan ice cream, and the reassurance of friends (big and small F) whose practices didn’t seem to have got lost in the same way. COVID has presented a challenge to the status quo, to be sure. Some say this is how God works, it might even be Him at His best. I started a spiritual journal.
If I seem to write a lot about trips to the pub, I’d like to qualify such trips by saying they are rather unusual for me. If I’m not visiting a church, holy outreach is often helped by the ministrations of a publican and a packet of salted nuts. Our intimate conversation is protected by chatter and clatter and a recording by Dua Lipa. We stop the daily flow to make space for a different experience, for each other. I’m happy to pray to a God who makes this stuff possible. (Coffee is also good.)
Stopping, for the sake of an important spiritual conversation, is obviously something that Quakers are good at. I enjoy the tiddlyfaff of my working day at the shop, and chats with customers who are Christmas shopping and are thinking aloud on consumer ethics, gifting, and love. Sometimes, just as I am replacing the label roll on our purple pricing gun, someone will start an observation of family life, traditions, foibles and all. To encourage it, I put down the gun. Similarly, one day when we had closed up but still had other admin and things to do on the premises, my colleague and I made tea, and she gave me a healing for my sore shoulder. Praying aloud, and laying on hands, is not a Quaker tradition, but we have space for it in our credo as an appreciation of the ‘diverse liveries’ of practice. My shoulder is still sore, but she’s feeling much better! And we managed to improve the protective cardboard casing around the shop Wi-Fi. And in that making of space, we confirmed the value of our inadequate experience, the reality of frailty, and the strength of our gentleness. Working days since have been very smooth, even in the busiest times.
I miss the people and places at 43 St Giles. It seems that this hiatus in my Quaker practice is the right thing to be doing, and the life of the Meeting still informs my days. I will be back at some point! Meantime I send lots of love xx Trio
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 512 • December 2021
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW