There are story themes embedded within us at a genetic level. A very simple one: a journey into the unknown. More complex: a crisis, a period of fearful waiting, the journey out of the crisis begins … or facing chaos and working sacrificially to produce some habitable and useable order out of it. Classic story lines which can be understood as archetypes. They deeply reflect the way Homo Sapiens have experienced life for the whole of the 250,000 years have been around; and probably also for the millions of years our Hominid ancestors experienced life before that. These stories are who we are as a species.

We are currently living all three of these – and others as well. Covid-19 hits – we are knocked back and hide in our homes – we wait in fear. The waiting comes to an end – we slowly begin moving out of hiding and back into … and here is the problem: we are entering unknown territory. We face chaos out of which we need to produce order; we are on a journey into the unknown.

In conversation in May I loved an answer from a currently serving head to a retired one when asked about plans for September: “I’m still trying to sort out next week.” I am writing this article at a point where we are uncertain what the second week of term may look like. We have only a theoretical understanding of the first week because no one has ever done it like this before. There will be some frantic re-planning required in light of that first week. I am reflecting today on an email from my Head about the 4 Cathedral services for Michaelmas term. It can be summarised very simply: probably all online – check as we go week by week. At least if gives me an excuse if one of them is rather last minute. All the rapidly acquired and honed online skills from the summer term will be required for this. Thankfully the Cathedral are now very well practised at working online.

This of course is where the stories we tell, read, watch or hear differ from living through them. These stories are usually complete. When we start reading Lord of the Rings we know how it ends. Very importantly it does end – essentially it has a happy ending. In Covid-19 world we are making it up as we go along. We do not really know even what it will be like next week. We have absolutely no idea at all when ‘this’ will ‘end’ or what the ‘end’ will look like.

In the Bible we see numerous – crisis / waiting / journey out – stories. Because they are real life they don’t quite match Lord of the Rings; they do however more closely reflect what we experience. My two standard journey stories to use with the boys are Abraham at the beginning of the school year; and the Magi as we return after Christmas. However these do not really capture the journey we face this year. A much better ‘journey story’ for us is the Exile. There was no deciding to set out on that journey: the Jews had it thrust upon them very much against their wishes. In the 7th century BC the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. They destroyed the temple and everything in which the Jews had their security; and hauled them all off to be slaves in Babylon. There, in that alien land, they had to make new lives, work out how to thrive and prepare themselves – actually their descendants – for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple. Their world was turned upside down, all they had trusted in was gone, they had to rethink everything from scratch and put a new life together. That captures far better the situation in which we find ourselves. But it was during the Exile that the Jews developed an understanding of themselves and God which forged them into the people who are still with us today. It is that understanding of God developed during the Exile that has been taken on into Christianity. The Exile forced the Jews to develop their thinking in ways that delivered truths that have lasted for millenia.

Journeys into the unknown, and producing order from chaos, are very rarely safe processes. We are confronted at present with demands for schools to be safe for pupils and staff. There is however no such thing as ‘safe’; and there never has been. Schools have never been safe in an absolute sense. At age 10 my daughter managed to break her arm on the way to a flute lesson at her extremely well-run Prep School. What do we do? Ban flute lessons? Ensure all children are wearing suitable protective equipment when they leave the classroom for a music lesson? Or simply write it off to what school children tend to do.

We would all like to return to the level of ‘safe’ we had before Covid-19. That may simply be impossible; instead we would do well to adjust our understanding of safe. Safety and comfort and satisfaction with life are all relative. I was always amazed at my Grandfather’s apparent satisfaction with his lot. I considered his unmodernised 2 bed terrace in Manchester they had lived in since the 1930s to be a rather low standard of living. As I got older, I realised that a man who went to work in a mill aged about 13, was involved in the Battle of Passchendaele, brought up his two daughters during the depression, was an air raid warden during the Manchester blitz would have a radically different understanding of safe, comfort and satisfaction with life than I had.

I am guessing during the Autumn term we will be consolidating those skills developed during the summer term of putting plans together in 24 hours, implementing them, starting to tweak them to improve … and then scrapping them to put together a new set of plans in 24 hours, implement them … and repeat. This will be very difficult for the “this is the way we have always done it” cohort. To generate good quality education for the pupils we will need considerable agility and willingness to take risks .

The next few years are going to be a difficult journey as we are hauled out of our comfort and stability into the Exile of Covid-19 land. There will inevitably be casualties of varying degrees of severity during the process. But let us be reassured by the knowledge that just as the Jews were able to find God in deep and meaningful ways in that alien land of Babylon, we can be sustained by God’s presence on the difficult journey ahead and the unsettling experience of running schools in a pandemic.