Day two - Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Last February, I saw “Upstart Crow” in the Gielgud Theatre, London. Today I had to be content to re-watch its 2020 Christmas special, sub-titled “Lockdown Christmas 1603”. Shakespeare entered his London lodgings wearing a “plaguey beak” and he bemoans with his landlady’s daughter those who do not wear such masks, or wear them inappropriately. Ben Elton’s writing uses these two characters to show that neither pandemics nor people’s reactions to them are new. During the programme, Kate subtly feeds Will the words to one of Shakespeare’s finest soliloquys: “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. This speech summarises the futility of the human condition – much like Psalm 103:15: “As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field”.

Perhaps it’s because both Shakespeare and the Bible can speak so readily to our human condition that they are given to the castaways on Desert Island Discs. (The Bible can be substituted by another “appropriate religious or philosophical work”.) There have been moves over the years to abandon giving the Bible yet, in a survey conducted for the Church and Media Network in 2016, one third of all adults wanted to take the Bible with them.

Because I studied Shakespeare many moons ago, I checked online for the location of Macbeth’s soliloquy – Act 5, scene 5. I found a website called “No Sweat Shakespeare” – where a modern-day translation of the speech includes the phrases: “How the days stretched out – each one the same as the one before” … “every day we have lived has been the last day of some other fool’s life”. These words sum up many people’s thoughts today. This current lockdown seems to be causing more depression than the others, possibly because we now don’t see the vaccine as the cure-all that was promised.

What sets Christianity apart from other religions is that it is NOT a religion, but a relationship with a living God. Studying the Bible, worshipping with others and enjoying the fellow¬ship of a church can all aid that relationship but, brought down to basics, sometimes it does seem to be just me and God against the world. But at least I’ve got God. My faith in God is a gift from God: “… Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit … to one is given the utterance of wisdom… to another FAITH by the same Spirit … who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses”. (1 Corinthians 12: 3-11, with bits taken out!)

Read purely as literature, I don’t think the Bible offers more to our struggles than Shakespeare, so we need to pray for those who have no faith.

Prayer: Jesus our Saviour, you proclaimed to your first disciples that you are the Way, the Truth and the Life and that you came to bring life in all its fullness. Use us to bring more people to see these truths, so that no-one needs find life futile, whether in lockdown or not. Amen

Elaine Kinchin