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A reflection and prayer to start the day with the Rev Lynne Gibson.

PRAYER FOR THE DAY 5TH OCTOBER 2021

Good morning
Life may indeed be ‘too short to stuff a mushroom’ as Shirley Conran once famously said. I tend to believe it’s too short to watch reality television programmes or to listen to podcasts. Yet I somehow stumbled upon not the podcast but a conversation and commentary about a podcast on the subject of ‘Pandemic Flux Syndrome’.
Perhaps you haven’t heard of ‘Pandemic Flux Syndrome’ – I certainly hadn’t. As a name, or label, for what we are living through, it made sense to me: an explanation for why we have struggled more with life in the past few months, than in the hardest of lockdowns last year.
The alternating between optimism and hope that it would all be over soon – and the realisation that we may never be ‘back to normal’. An acceptance that anxiety and uncertainty is a way of life now.
Pandemic Flux syndrome.
It seems like a reasonable attempt to define where we are.
And yet I have found myself wondering, whether it’s really necessary to give a name to the times we live in, or whether as individuals, as a society, we have an absolute need for labels. Sometimes those are labels we place on others – whoever the other might be, so that we can identify them, judge them or avoid them.
Sometimes however, the labels are for situations or conditions or where there is confusion or uncertainty, and so we look explanations as we name what is happening around us. In an unsteady, unclear world, those labels become the signposts which help us to make sense of where we are, and to navigate our way from darkness to light.
Lord you are the way, the truth and the light. Guard our steps and guide our way towards the One who is the Light. Amen