LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 21 – Palm Sunday 5th APRIL

Where do you start with ‘irony’ in the sort of build up to Easter that we are having this virus-infected year?

     Our next door neighbours are showing their piety on Palm Sunday by defying restrictions and working flat out in constructing and installing the new kitchen in the house that is either going to be their new home or is going to fetch them a pretty penny when it is sold.  Or perhaps both.  What there isn’t, is respect for the day religiously, politically or healthily!

     The churches have been closed.  The KKK-like religious processions have been cancelled in Spain.  The pope spoke in a wet and empty St Peter’s Square.  In all the coverage of the pandemic, I have heard little from religious leaders, and little to nothing of God.  Even Trump’s fanatic fundamentalist base has not vaunted god above science.  Just as Capitalism turns to Socialism in times of crisis, for government to do what Capitalism cannot or rather, will not do, so Religion turns to Science to cure what it cannot.

     To be fair, most of mainstream religion sees no conflict between religious belief and trust in science.  Nowadays.  Those battles, since the time of Galileo, have been fought and lost; and what Churches now rely on faith rather than Insurance Policies to keep their institutions ‘safe’?

     It is, of course, easy to spin the Holy Week Story to fit the narrative of the virus; metaphor is a willing façade.  Today, in the Christian calendar is a day of triumph when Christ rode into Jerusalem in glory – though riding on an ass: tempered triumph - and that triumph soon to be translated into abject defeat which in turn transmogrifies into the ultimate triumph of the empty tomb.

     Pandemics do concentrate the mind.  A highly technological society brought low - so much for civilization and medical expertise!  All our bright and glittering technology unable to stop the virus from killing tens of thousands and infecting, god knows how many.  Our society has been literally brought to a standstill: achievement brought low, but resurrection is a vital concept and all of us sequestered in our homes and looking forward to, no, expecting a triumph of medical science to deliver the vaccine that will release us all and allow a continuation of the old way of life, our own social resurrection.

     The Holy Week story is one in which you can find triumph, deception, hypocrisy, populism, testing, faith, hope, death, defeat, disloyalty, fear, despair, community, faction, belief, confidence, loss and fulfillment – and those words only scratch at the surface of the complexity of the narrative so it is hardly surprising that it fits the present situation.

     At the end of this pandemic, will churches be filled with people giving thanks for deliverance, or shunned by people who didn’t give god a thought during the crisis?  I will wait to see.

Castelldefels has just been on the afternoon television news informing us that the Red Cross has been going to closed schools’ kitchens and ‘liberating’ the food which can be used to feed those in need rather than staying in the fridges and eventually becoming unusable.  This seems like a self-evidently good idea and I wonder in how many other places this is being put into operation.  There must also be restaurants and the like that are never going to be able to use their food supplies in time?  Something to think about, especially as governments like the one in the UK is already distributing food parcels to those who need them, surely there must be systems already in place to take advantage of any extra supplies?

Today is the start of my annual Holy Week Poem Writing Stint.  And yes, I do know that Palm Sunday is not the official start of Holy Week, but I make the rules here.

     I am well aware that this choice of poetry-writing period is an odd one for an avowed atheist to take as a key time for production, but it has become something of a tradition and I look forward to it each year – just to see what I produce!  As I have said elsewhere, "I read myself in writing"!

     I aim to get the idea for a poem each day, and then to write it up to the level of a rough draft.  Each day, until Easter Sunday, I will try and get the draft downloaded to my poetry blog at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.  I must emphasise that my ‘daily’ work will only be a draft and I reserve the right to work on the poem after Holy Week to get it to a more polished state.

     I welcome your company on this annual journey.  The best way to follow my poems is probably ‘the morning after’ when there should be something to see from the previous day!