‘It was like being born again,’ we heard a woman say on Radio 4. She was talking of coming out of hospital after pandemic treatment. We shall all be going through an exit procedure, maybe some time soon, as the lockdown comes to an end.
Nothing is for ever – except possibly diamonds. All good things, not to mention bad things as well, come to an end. And sometimes the end is welcome, as is the end of a school term, or a university course, or an apprenticeship. Sometimes we are actually glad to shake the dust off our feet and start something else. As T.S. Eliot put it in a characteristically gnomic passage: ‘What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.’
Doubtless few of us will lament the end of lockdown. I shall celebrate by asking Sally to make inroads on my shaggy locks. I may even enjoy a private conversation without the help of a megaphone. And I may even greet my family without the benefit of skype or a landline telephone. Truly, as Mr Eliot said, there will be a beginning to follow the end.
Indeed. Ends are inevitably followed by beginnings. The end of a marriage by the death of a partner leaves a survivor somehow making a fresh start. Things will never be the same again but in the nature of things we must get on with it and make the best of things. Canals made way for rails. The end of the steam age led not only to the pensioning off of Gresley’s A4s and Bulleid’s Merchant Navy class locomotives, magnificent creations as they were, but also to the arrival of clean, readily available electric traction. An end has its losses and heart-aches. And every end is followed by a beginning, often a time to hope and wonder.
We celebrate an end and a beginning with every breakfast (or shall we say with every break-fast) we eat. Every new day is a beginning. But to find the father and mother of new beginnings we have to turn to the New Testament. ‘For anyone united to Christ, there is a new creation: the old order has gone; a new order has already begun.’ (2 Corinthians 5.17). There’s an end and a beginning for us all, corona virus or no corona virus.
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