NEST. Our safe place in Lockdown.

BE still and know that I am God. Psalm 46: 10

Lockdown, 2020. 11 of us, all going through a shared experience, yet each experiencing their own within that. On any one day, some are feeling upbeat and others, struggling. We, like many, are missing our parents, our grown and flown kids and their wives, our grandchildren.

Our home is the place we are all being asked to stay, our 'safe' place, in which we process all that is happening 'out there,' as we shelter from the storm outside.

Home is where we raise our young, the place we go out from and wearily return to, our retreat, our castle, our rest. Our nest.

A bird's nest, carefully built 'out there' on a branch, or hidden away in a bush, is still subject to winds, heat, cold. Shelter may be found there, but the ones sheltering within are not impervious to the elements outside.

We are all affected. While many of us are indoors, with loved ones, or alone, others are feeling the brunt of the storm; front line, key workers. everyone is touched .

We marked the 75th anniversary of VE day recently. It was a timely reminder of the shared experience of those who pushed through a common struggle together. Those who endured the relentless bombs of the Blitz, experienced the war differently to the land girls or the evacuated children in the vales and dales, but they were on the same side, fighting different battles, in the same war. Whether it was a pilot feeling the heat of fire, or the sweating brow of the woman working in the forge, all felt the heat, the newness, the discomfort, the occasional exhileration, the general struggle and the galvanising into action.

All loved, were loved, faced the fear of losing someone they loved.

And the home, the 'nest', was central in that fight and the threat we now face.

The atmosphere of our homes, can break or make us.

While no home is impervious, (for the nest, by nature, will have the smallest gaps for the cold to reach in its icy fingers and chill to the bone), we can still generate such a warmth from our home's beating heart, as to warm us from the inside. We reject fear. We reject pessimism. We reject dark thoughts that steal our hopes for the future.

We embrace love. We embrace hope. we champion acts of kindness. We celebrate the humour in humanity. We applaud the resourcefulness of mankind, our God given ability to create.

We give thanks for the light He put within us, that illuminates the darkness and radiates warmth and cheer into the gloomy corners of our minds.

Aren't we glad, we have faced this crisis in Spring? We have nature, waving hello through our windows each morning, beckoning to step outside and breathe, while as ever, she moves forward with her plans.

For those who will admit with me that there was a time not that long ago, when we wished the world would just stop, or at least, slow down... well, now it has!

So I want this time, that seems long, but will be remembered as short, to count. Not a treading water to survive, time. Not expending all my energy to stay afloat, but to sigh, to rest, to do what our ancestors did before the whirlwind of technology freed up our time only to soak it away again. I want to just BE.

I want to make my nest, a place my family will remember as a safe place, a of laughter and feeding, of waking and sleeping, loving and feeling, sharing and helping, of peace. A nest, where we can just BE.