25.05.2022
May 2022 Letter from the Archbishop of Dublin – Thoughts at Exam Time
Dear friends
The middle of May, in so many ways, marks the best of the early summer weather. I remember watching only a week ago the leaves exploding on the trees in the park close to where I live. And it happened over the course of a few short days. It was a harvest of variegated colour and of protective shade. For me, the coming together of good weather, lots of light and long evenings heralds the onset of the examination season. It is a dread I never quite succeeded in shaking off, even though it is along time since I revised for exams or even sat exams. Clutching at concentration, every noise seemed in those days to be a distraction. My heart goes out to those who in this year 2022 will be sitting their exams in their totality in person and, in doing so, will be sitting alongside other people for the first time, whether they be near the beginning or near the end of their school careers. When you are trying to concentrate, the mannerisms of others are as irritating to you as yours are to them.
Exams are a system with its own in–built elephant traps and roadblocks for the panic stricken – there will always be a technique of timing and of presentation that takes lots of practice to master and that some of us will never master, to our satisfaction, nor can we. And there still is the dreaded announcement: You have five minutes remaining. Exams are a learned and a taught technique andthere is also a great deal of luck in it. So, all I can say to everyone in such situations is: well done andgood luck!
The rest of us need a bit of good luck too and for a variety of different reasons, even when we are not sitting exams. The last number of weeks has brought a revolutionary change to our daily lives following the sustained Covid–19 Lockdown and the progressive easing of Restrictions. The small print in the easing of Restrictions was and remains the exercize of personal responsibility. This is precisely because Covid–19 is not going away any time soon even when the daily numbers are a trickle of their former selves. If, however, we think it is now reduced to the Status Yellow Warning of the common ‘flu or cold variety, all you need to do is to talk with someone who has had it recently and has had it bad. Consistently, the word they have used with me is that they have been floored by it. Personal responsibility, however, cannot become a weapon of war. Of course, it needs to be exercized consistently and carefully and compassionately bearing in mind the needs of other people but, at the same time, those who use it for self–protection need to give some slack to those who are doing their best and within their own limitations to comply with what is not really defined. We also need to show the kindness of which Minister Simon Harris spoke so long ago in the early days of the pandemic. Kindness cuts both ways; we all need to give and to receive a slice of kindness.
As I have done before, I want to thank everyone who has made it possible for us to get to this day and to congratulate everyone in doing the utmost possible to get us here and to hold us here in safety. Staying in when others were incautiously going out may not seem like much of an achievement to any of us; but in each and every case and situation, a small step like this has made a significant contribution and difference. Stepping aside from others on the pavement is no insult to them; it is a recognition that you might be asymptomatically positive and you are being proactive in caring for them and for yourself at the same time. Civic society is built up from small and sustained gestures and actions. The broad sweep of the jigsaw is beyond all but a very few of us. I want to applaud all of those who have done these things out of the limelight, with nobody interviewing them or filming them. This work has been essential – well done and good luck!
I want also once more to thank those who allowed the tasks and the role of their daily work to expand and to embrace dangers and difficulties for which they had not knowingly signed up – but they kept going and they kept turning up. They are the long–term civic heroes and heroines of our society; and you who are sitting exams are the direct beneficiaries of their careful and painstaking hard work from the minute you ate your breakfast in the morning to the moment you hit the pillow at night. Everything that others made happen throughout the day and during the night is a living monument to the greatness of people whom we call ordinary to our peril. So again – well done and good luck!
We all now have the chance to discover what the new way of life in the post–Covid–19 times will look like. We sense that there is something new afoot even if we have not all been able to work out yet what it is. These incoming times need not be as aggressive as so many parts of life in the pre–Covid times had become. I hope that we might all do something simple: appreciate time itself. Time had become something we just too readily took for granted in a less than good way. …catch you later… had become the great greeting of non–greeting, the great throw–away comment as we brushed past others or as they brushed past us. There would always be another occasion, or perhaps you were already late for some existing occasion. But this was not always the best way to be living our lives.
The Lockdowns showed us that not only is time precious. They also showed us that you can have just too much time on your hands if you don’t work out what best to do with it. The time came when we’d have been delighted to be invited to stop and have an in–person chat all the while respecting social distancing. But mercifully these times are returning and for many have already returned.
My suggestion to all of us is that we set about making a go of it and that, in making a go of it forourselves, we make a go of it for other people at the same time. There are many things to do before holidays beckon us. We can start gently, and we can move gradually. Making a go of it, giving ourselves and others a chance : these are still a tangible expression of that kindness of which Minister Simon Harris spoke two years ago.
The summer lies ahead. Whether we need to put on anoraks and clap our hands to enjoy ourselves –let’s give it a try. Our wellbeing is very much tied up with the wellbeing of other people. We cannot have all the wellbeing for ourselves. It just doesn’t work like that. Wellbeing is for sharing and that is why we need to look out for others as well as looking out for ourselves.
Ecclesiastes is one of the most disconcerting books you will find within the covers of what now are The Christian Scriptures although its origin and its thought pattern come from the world of the Wisdom Literature in the Hebrew pattern of life. If you want a break from revision, or indeed from helping with revision, you might like to turn to the early verses of chapter three which talk about time. The chapter opens with a broad sweep: For everything its season, and for every activity underheaven its time …and goes on to outline the pendulum–swing of time in relation to twenty–eight contrasting activities. In light of the cruelty and devastation experienced by those in Ukraine, verse 8 is particularly chilling:
‘a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace’.
You might like to look at this passage. You might like to think about time as a series of options, choices and decisions to be made and go further to see if these options make sense to you or make sense of the world as you experience it. However fascinating an exploration this may be, there is no respite for those who will soon hear the words: You have five minutes remaining. From all of us to you I say: well done and good luck!
Finally let me offer a thought of my own in the spirit of Ecclesiastes:
a time to care and a time to be cared for …
+Michael