Social Distancing is Difficult

Back to our meetings in the park.

Social distancing is difficult. We may all mean to try and keep our distance but it is just not normal.
So, how can we meet and still keep our distance?

We have found that it helps to set boundaries. (Literally)

Theses boundaries could be anything.
A picnic blanket, which you stay on (a towel makes a good blanket).
Off the top of my head, a jumper, coat or even a bag placed on the ground could be used as a marker to say, you stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine.

It all sounds a bit silly but in order to keep social distancing then something is needed.
We just have this tendency to want to group together and when social distancing is required then something needs to be done.

So What do we do?

We have chosen to do the slightly crazy.

We have a white electrical cable (a thin multi core cable, cheaply bought from Wilko) which is 6 meters long. In the middle of the cable there is some black insulation tape added (in order to show the middle point).
The middle point is then used as a corner so that when the cable is laid out on the ground it forms two edges of a box.
Another cable with the same set up is then placed opposite this and then we have a cross on the floor (+).
We then have four boundary lines down for four house holds to have there own space in.

It’s easier to do this if everyone brings their own cable themselves to the park.

We have now learnt to all keep our distance from the cable.
This wasn’t always the case as we still had the tendency to want to move up to the line instead of keeping our distance from it, (I told you social distancing is difficult.) 🙂

If we were still struggling with keeping our distance from the lines then we could always have two more cables and then make a expanded cross.
What I mean is we could all have our corner to sit in with a gap between each cable that is big enough so that we do keep apart from each other.

This is not a normal thing to be doing, but it does actually work.

Whilst we were in tier 4 restrictions we met as described above.
We all kind of thought, is today the day when we are told to move on or receive that fine we really don’t want.
The COVID marshals were in the park, but we still carried on as we had been.
A marshal did walk over to see what we were doing, as we were singing and praying at the time. (The BBC web site did say that religious assemblies were allowed), so there we were having a religious assembly in the park! No problem with that…is there…???
The marshal looked at what we were doing, stayed for a few minutes and then walked off. PHEW. 🙂

At the end, as we were leaving he came back and said to us that what we were doing was good.
We took this as we are OK to carry on, whilst in tier 4.

One of the things I have heard in church is “the worlds problems are the Churches opportunities”.

I know this may sound really silly and on a very trivial level but I do think that we as a church (of people), are demonstrating to all, how anybody could meet together during this time in a socially responsible manner.

Anyone could follow the steps we are taking and meet in a socially responsible way. You still need to keep your distance when coming together and leaving, but it can be done. We try to stagger when people leave. Arriving is a bit easier as we don’t all arrive at the same time and keeping distance is easier at the start, for some reason.

When lock down came we then had to stop meeting together.
For the first one which was only about 4 weeks we broke up to smaller groups of two house holds (I think that it was mostly just two people) who met for prayer walks and fellowship instead. It was only going to be 4 weeks or there about anyway.

For the lockdown which happened in the new year and went on a wee little bit longer, well something else had to done.
If you haven’t guessed it yet, that should be the next post which should hopefully go out soon.