2020 will be a year that we will never forget and 2021 is starting in the same mould, although let’s pray that we remember it as the year that the pandemic is brought under control. Generally, our memories of bad things fade, seemingly because it’s the mind’s way of managing. Talk of the ‘Blitz Spirit’ seems mainly about common purpose while playing down any thoughts of the horrors of the bombing. Perhaps the rose-tinted spectacles of reminiscence will not help us with 2020 but all coins have two sides.
Even at this short distance, one huge memory for me from 2020 is that it was a year of smiles, made even more poignant given that I live alone and so had limited social contact, so each smile was more precious. There was the smile of Anna Gregorowski-Norman as I delivered spare baking for the nurses at UCLH, there were the smiles of Sally and Richard as they led Morning Prayer at the start of the first lockdown, and there was the smile of Joe Biden, who at one point was described as the man with the nicest smile in Washington.
Above all, there was the smile of the nurse on COVID triage at Bart’s as I accompanied my aunt to a radiotherapy appointment. Jean was hugely struggling to breathe and every single step was hard but she wouldn’t hear of using a wheelchair. The huge smile from that nurse could not be hidden by a mask and it said so much: No rush; we’re here for you; don’t worry.
Jesus said that the eye is the lamp of the body. (Matthew 6:22). Let’s have a year of irrepressible smiles whatever the year brings so that the love and light of Christ shine out through our eyes.
Jeff Claxton
