Rhythms for Life

For many students and staff this year has brought grief, exhaustion, mental and physical ill-health: strains of many kinds. Those caring for others, or working in medicine, research, or charities, have faced acute needs. All of us have had searching times of alienation from things we counted on for our flourishing. There has also been the small matter of studying for a degree on a screen, away from the human community which Magdalene insists is the best environment for an enquiring life of the mind.

All this means that we have missed the rites of passage that help us understand ourselves. These are not only milestones for our memories, they are way-markers for our sense of who we are becoming. So, I take my hat off to everyone who cares for our students but also to our students themselves. Because, despite everything, they have found ways to keep communal spirit alive by marking time.

Sometimes that has been simply marking the beginning of each new week (on a Thursday of course). We’ve also had the MCR’s virtual charity marathon and the 1988 Club’s Cook Along for International Women’s Day; Week 5 packs of sweets; book groups and campaigns; and the famous fortnightly quizzes, with photos of Magdalene’s brightest in their babygros. Something of the rhythm of Term has been maintained by the flair and grit of our students.

I have found that pastoral care has so often turned on this hunger for rhythm too. Walking the riverbank or chatting online, we have reflected on helpful patterns for life and made time to mark the moments that have mattered and the ones we have missed.

So although graphs of infection and vaccination became our collective story this year, marking time in Magdalene has reminded us that there are other tales to tell and other rhythms to keep. For Chapel, this means maintaining a centuries-long pattern of music and prayer. Strikingly, this has been especially important this year to people of all faiths and none. We have gathered for worship and community online, in Hall, in Cripps Auditorium and choral services in ‘exile’ in the gloriously generous acoustic of St Giles’s Church. Best of all, we have met outside: I treasure the Easter Day services in the Fellows’ Garden, where the birds joined in as the sun rose, and swans flew low over the river. At Christmas, we had our own little midwinter spring of hope when at Midnight Mass we sang O Come all ye faithful in First Court.

In the centre of all this, the physical space of Chapel has remained a lodging for those who could enter its patient atmosphere, entering its 55th decade this year. Why not make your own virtual moment there by catching up with services from Chapel online? Within the shapeless stretches of loss and limbo, the regular rhythms have helped us to keep time with a different story and a larger hope. However unclear the way ahead, it is possible to walk in step with the sort of life that sustains hope, love, even joy.

GARDE TA FOY!

By Reverend Sarh Atkins, College Chaplain
This article was first published in Magdalene Matters Spring/Summer 2021 Issue 51.