As I was getting up this morning, I listened to the Radio 4 'Sunday Worship' service. Harvest Festival with several traditional hymns pruned down to a couple of verses each for timing. It's a time of year when I can sing all the hymns off by heart, four to six verses long! Not being able to sing along to the complete hymn evoked an unexpected child-like reaction, like the kid who knows the bed time story off by heart, and corrects the adult reader if they miss a few lines or improvise. Harvest Lite!
After breakfast, we watched Mother Frances celebrate the Sunday Eucharist broadcast from St John's. I wish it was possible for this to be done with a small socially distanced congregation, as the sound of just a couple of voices highlights the abnormality of what's being done. It was what we had to cope with during the severe lock-down months, but the presentation hasn't changed since, apart from shifting from being shot at the Rectory to being shot in church.
One good thing about our Parish service, is that Mother Frances sounds like she's addressing a group, although only Andrew the Camera is with her. Often officiants on Radio Four sound like they are just addressing you personally, rather than a congregation. It's a broadcasting presenter's technique which works for 'Thought for the Day' and 'All things considered' and the such like, but it's less effective in a liturgical celebration, by nature a group activity.
Talking of 'Thought for the Day', yesterday's offering from Rob Marshall was reflecting on student life, in the news because of the covid-19 campus hot-spots. He recalled how European Universities grew out of the scholarly and teaching role of monastic communities a thousand years ago. His hope was that the old monastic community virtue of people looking out for one another for the common good would come to be seen as the best resource we have in overcoming the menace of contagion.
Well and good. But Benedictine monasticism emphasised that love of learning and desire for God are inextricably linked. You can't say this holds good in modern secularised academia, where know-how and students are now commodities of industrialised learning, equipping the masses to maintain the global economy. Sure, the traditional notions of education as personal formation, and learning for its own sake still persist, but a materialistic environment has corrupted them. The element of high stakes competition, for glittering prizes dominates. It excludes or poisons the spiritual endeavour which should be at the heart of all learning.
Many students are returning to campus, disappointed and disillusioned by the poor face to face contact time they are being given, because of the pandemic. With so much being done on-line what is the point of spending so much money on a campus based education, when an Open University degree would be so much cheaper and flexible? Is the modern university value for money, if it cannot deliver a guarantee of employment afterwards? These questions were already being asked before the pandemic. They are set to become more critical as the pandemic continues.
It wasn't obviously like that when I was a student or even a student chaplain a six years later, but I've witnessed the change over my working life, and now wonder if anything can be done to save these institutions from corruption. Competition means that people can end up looking out for themselves more than others, tribally if not individually. This might well be a factor at play in the difficulties now being faced in controlling campus contagion.
There's no lack of altruism and charity in secular society, but alongside this, egotism is celebrated and greed considered good in making economic progress. The natural human selfish impulse is a huge asset to spreading covid-19. We may all pay heavily for the culture shift which has taken place in my lifetime.
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