My friend Ian and I are slowly working our way through How to Inhabit Time by James KA Smith (BrazosPress, 2022). Tonight, our first catch up for several months, we got onto a chapter exploring the idea of seasons of life. One recent period that Smith mentioned as a season that many discerned together was the COVID-19 pandemic. In the UK, I think we were effectively in lockdown from 23 March 2020. My diary reminds me that I recorded the first version of morning prayer at church with a small group on Sunday 22 March and then published it that night for use from the following day. When, however, did the pandemic season end?

There are dates lockdowns ended but also when they started again. Life was quite different until quite well into 2021 although, from the perspective of late 2025, I can see why we found it hard to remember earlier experiences such as 1918 and later. There was a clear start but a much more fuzzy end.

I’m sure I wrote a short poem after a shopping trip during that yes / no period which pondered at what point I’d be going to supermarkets without wearing a mask and feeling that was normal again. I didn’t particularly mind mask wearing and I think I persisted with it longer than normal, since I was often interacting with both elderly and very young people at church. However, I can’t find a trace of that poem. Perhaps I just wrote it on my head as I headed home from the store without committing it to paper or the digital equivalent? Perhaps I ought to delve back in my memory and pin it down? For what its worth, I can’t remember when I last wore a facemask to the shops or elsewhere but I still routinely carry one in my pocket.

It turns out I did write one poem though, published here on 19 March 2020. End of Term reminds me that even the start of the period was a little fuzzier than the hard dates given above. We could anticipate the season ahead in the same way that a drop in temperature in late August or September heralds autumn’s arrival and winter’s imminence.