23rd April - Day 40 - Changing the landscape

I know - another deer picture - but I couldn’t resist getting off the bike last night when a large number of them were stood quite close to the road. I promise no puns this time!

There are far more deer around this year which I understand is about a reduction in culling due to restrictions last year. It is also due to the fact that they can jump over a wall 10 foot high and escape from Chatsworth to surrounding land.

The sight of the deer made me question how many other aspects of the world will also look, feel or become different as a result of the year we have lived. There are many landscapes it seems, real and metaphorical, that have been changed by restrictions or the pandemic itself. The world may look a very different place - the St Wilfrid’s Centre certainly is - but it also makes us question whether we need to try to change some of our own landscapes.

Martin Luther King said, ‘Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”

Facing change is always difficult but as we plan for reopening more of the Centre to more clients later in the year, this seems the ideal opportunity to explore what we might do differently, what we can learn from the lessons of lockdown and the sense of resilience. Of course we understand why there are the protectors of status quo. The values and principles of the last 30 years need to remain but in the same way that we are trying to stay awake to new ideas, perhaps we should all use this opportunity to remain vigilant to possibilities and challenges.

Talking of Challenges, I have now completed 8 of the 30 weeks and will have cycled 1200 miles by the end of today. So - when I say to everyone - try not to sleep through important moments in time - I quite like the thought of doing just that this weekend - and being indifferent seems quite attractive. Anyone who knows me though will immediately be saying that I would find both of those things impossible. So - as the writer and philosopher Alan Watts wrote, ‘“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” - it better be a weekend of plunging in and dancing instead!