AN ALTERCATION

There were five minutes to go before today's worship set in the garden.

"Hello," I said, as a man approached me. I'd never seen him before, but there he was, looking strangely in my direction.

"Are we allowed to praise and worship this week?" he asked, raising a grey eyebrow.

"Well we're not supposed to sing together," I replied, still seated at the piano. Indeed, the government regulations are still that groups of people shouldn't do any communal singing at the moment, as it increases the risk of transmission. I have no doubt that the longer that situation goes on, the more frustrated people will get, despite our best efforts to help our church step into a different way of carrying our hearts. But I understand: it isn't easy to undo hundreds of years of cultural understanding about what 'a time of worship' is.

"It's all nonsense, isn't it?" he said. He was poised to continue. "I went into hospital last month with pneumonia, pneumonia! I'm in my 70s and I shouldn't be here, by the government's advice, but I recovered just fine, and you know what, I didn't see a single case of this coronavirus the whole time. It's all a hoax you know, just a big government hoax. The devil's put a muzzle on us being able to worship for all these months, and for what? Absolutely nothing, that's what! And that Gates, he's gonna make an absolute packet isn't he? He's definitely top of the new world order. Ridiculous."

God bless that man. I basically told him that all we could do today was what was asked of us, and that we were going to honour it, whether he was correct or not. It most definitely wasn't the time (five minutes to go) nor the place (an actual church service) to have any kind of discussion about the politics, the theology, the global economics or the personal paranoia that seems to drive individuals towards conspiracy theories. I tried my best to smile, and said:

"Did you recover well? From the pneumonia, I mean?"

He told me he had, and that, I hoped, was that. He drifted away to his camping chair. Chris, poised with djembe, looked at me, beaming and just said, "Don't let it get to you, mate."

Great advice.

I did think twice about writing about this. I think it's justified though. As peculiar an interaction as it was, I think that the fact that he accosted me when he did means he forfeits his right to anonymity. I also think he's free to his opinion - just as I'm free to hold mine this way. What he did was quite rude and subversive. I was politely having none of it.

I also think it highlights quite a dangerous place we've got to in our society. We no longer have completely trusted sources of information. Into the void, rushing though the social media channels like tides of sewage and joy, come all the titillating theories about why everything's really so awful. Why the government is lying to you. Why the powers that be don't want you to know what strings they're pulling and why you should be afraid. And a lot of people, perhaps this man included, just don't know what to believe any more.

In CS Lewis's The Last Battle, there's one sad moment where a group of dwarves are no longer able to believe in the real Aslan, even though he's standing right in front of them. They'd been duped by a donkey in a lion costume and a smooth-talking ape, and now refused to believe that they were face-to-face with the Real Thing. That feels very much like a danger for so many of us. Please don't let me be a dwarf.

Another troubling possibility of course, is that (at least partially) he might be right - we really have been silenced in our praise and worship: how we've seen it so far. But I don't believe it's a difficulty we'll fail to overcome. Singing is not everything; it really isn't, and I do believe there's an opportunity for us to find a deeper kind of intimacy. We simply don't need words printed on a screen for us any more - we don't need the boxes we built for ourselves: there's a new way open, and that at least, is quite exciting.

There was no time to say all of that of course. I just beamed back at my friend Chris, closed my eyes for a little focus, and gave it a tiny powerful prayer - the kind that's long fuelled me in those moments of attack. I won't be disrupted so easily. There's too much at stake.