The Bishop of Chichester asks who’s on your Thursday evening clapping list?

Of course we clap for the NHS, for its work in combating the Coronavirus, also for responding to A&E emergencies, and to patients, young and old, with every other kind of medical need.
Chichester CathedralChichester Cathedral
Chichester Cathedral

A good thing to emerge from our response to this pandemic is to be much more aware of what the NHS does for us all the time.

But I think teachers in schools are amazing and we should clap for them. I know of some school staff who have volunteered to provide out of term-time schooling for the children of key workers.

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This kind of volunteering, which is meeting the needs of vulnerable children by supporting both them and their family, is selfless and amazing.

Another group I want to add to my Thursday evening applause list is those who steadfastly continue with the work they did previously.

Among them are people who run trains and drive buses, continuing to provide an invaluable service for an easily forgotten sector of the population that doesn’t own a car. And let’s add the delivery people who also support isolated and potentially lonely people

And let’s also give some special applause to shop workers.

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Shopping for food and essentials is now a different experience. Having to queue can teach us the art of patience and of making conversation with other people.

Second, we are also learning to make provisions last and to avoid waste. That’s a good thing in itself. It can also remind us that some people’s jobs have just disappeared (in tourism and catering, for example), so feeding yourself and a family can begin to be unaffordable.

Third, empty spaces on the supermarket shelves should remind us that the global food supply chain is expensive, damaging to the environment and increasingly precarious.

I still enjoy shopping and am delighted when something that’s been unavailable, like vegetable oil, turns up again. And I really want to applaud the endlessly patient and cheerful shop staff.

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Most of all, I hope that we learn to return home from shopping with a huge sense of gratitude.

The origin of the word “gratitude” is grace. The Christian tradition of saying grace, “thank you” to God, for food on the table, for those who have grown, harvested, supplied and prepared it, is a different, simple kind of applause that can help us to find pleasure in daily life.

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