What's Goin' On?

So here we are again - back in lockdown.  This time it was made quite clear by the Welsh Government that it includes places of worship, so Mass on Friday  - a Requiem as it happened - was our last for a few weeks. Since Saturday we have been back on live-stream Masses only. 

Celebrating this morning, I felt particularly aware of the echo of my voice, amplified for the benefit of the microphones, but projected into an empty space, devoid of the people for whom it exists.  So I have to populate the space with the unseen, those who have tuned in down the phonelines and the fibre and their desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.  It's not like doing radio broadcasts where the unseen is the normal, and you're surrounded in the studio by editors, producers and Eleri Sion, the presenter on Radio Wales. Here we are in uncharted territory, as they say. 

And, while I'm about it. how weird I find celebrating Mass with a church full of masked parishioners, as we have been doing recently until Friday. We read so much into one another's faces, don't we. Just to see the eyes I find dehumanising. I've mistaken people or confused one with another more than once. 

This year has been such a strange world, with few signposts to help us navigate. I find myself asking what's going on, what's going on in the "big picture". What changes are taking place deep down in our culture, our world. Or will everything be the same when, if, it is all over? 

 I'm reminded of one of my all-time favourite albums, Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On?" It will be 50 years old next year, but I return to it every so often. For some, Marvin Gaye is most famous for the single "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", but it's really his albums, especially this one and "Let's Get It On" from the early 70's that mark him out as one of the greats. Definitely one of my desert island discs. here he is performing the first two tracks of "What's Going On" live.