As we attempt to inch our way, furtively and hesitantly, into the ’new normal’, whatever that might turn out to look like, we have much to reflect on as we try and see Covid-19 in its true historical perspective.

The first global pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918-19 not to be stopped by vaccination, it has re-awoken in the minds of many truths which the comfortable materialistic scientism of the last 100 years has seduced us into ignoring: life is fragile, family matters, we need each other more than material luxuries, the incessant growth of prosperity is a pipe-dream, rather than an inevitability.

Think about your experience of lockdown, whether it was negative or positive, and I’d be prepared to bet that at least one of those thoughts was often working its way into your consciousness.

The question is, do we now go back to the old normal of ’more of the same’ or can we hope for a better future which takes to heart some of these re-discovered truths and builds on them?

The price of fuel dropped back to £1 a litre because we were staying at home – but we survived. We worked and learned from home – but survived. Aircraft were grounded – but we survived and could see the stars more clearly at night.

We started using our bicycles and local footpaths more; many of us started growing our own food and/or returning to long-abandoned DIY projects, rather than go to IKEA. And the vast majority of us discovered that we could stay in touch with family and friends by Zoom.

We probably didn’t realise it, but what we were doing was re-shaping our lives in line with a philosophy last seen on our streets in the 1980s on Christian Aid Week posters which urged us to ’live simply, that others may simply live’.

How might that principle help us create a new, healthier, more sustainable normal which might just give us a future back?

MARTIN WALKER

Rector, Wivey and the Hills Benefice