' New Normal'

 As  lover of the amazing English language few things annoy me more than the ridiculous and unnecessary invention of new terms for things which don't require them.   Since when was ' flexology' a word??  Seriously?  😁  The amount of stupid words advertisers foist on us every week is ..... well...... grrrrrr.  As you can tell its a pet peeve of mine.

Over this past year a few annoying phrases have crept into common parlance.  ' New normal' is one of them.   I dont find it as irritating as some of the others, but its overuse can be a bit grating.  For some reason this week Ive been thinking about the phrase ' new normal' and wondering what it takes for something to shift in society such that one common experience is replaced with another.

Have you noticed that these days television advertising hardly ever features waif-like super skinny white teenage models?  Ten or twenty years ago fashion was obsessed with models being as thin as possible. Everyone knew that it wasnt healthy for the young women ( it was pretty much always women then) but the dollar spoke louder than the occasional outspoken activist.   However, over the course of years a slow drip feeding of information into the global consciousness has led to a dramatic change.  Take a careful look at the images we now see in the media advertising clothing and everything else - we see ' normal people' of average size and shape - people with curves and different body shapes and of different colours.  We even see disability projected in a really positive way.  Yes, there is still some airbrushing of celebrity photographs going on - but nobody can deny we have made huge progress in the sort of ' normal' we are portraying in advertising.   Similarly there has been a big move in kids films and toys to stop the portrayal of the hero and heroine as being chisel-jawed or waspish waisted stereotypes.   We are getting there.  But it has taken years and years to change ' normal'.  

As a child I remember seatbelts being made mandatory in all cars.  People moaned and complained that it was an infringement of their civil liberties. It took a short time for the wearing of seatbelts to become accepted and a bit longer for people to feel a bit odd if they forgot to put on their seatbelt.  The next step was for NOT wearing a seatbelt to be considered selfish and stupid and criminal.  There was a societal shift in mindset which came about due to a massive information campaign over many years by the government.   A country is a big ship to turn.  A ' new normal' doesnt come about overnight.

Yesterdays blog sparked a really interesting discussion about how we have all been feeling about church at the end of a year when our normal churchgoing behaviour has been massively interrupted.  ( Thanks to all of you who contributed to the chat - so good to get all the different perspectives and comments)  There seemed to be a consensus that we might be going through a time when God is shaking us up because He wants to do a new thing.  Lots of people have been saying that distancing and sanitising and online church is going to be our ' new normal'.   I'm not so sure.  If it takes twenty years to change imbedded attitudes about seatbelts or drink driving or fashion models I suspect it is going to take more than a nine month hiatus in our churchgoing to make a difference.   I fear that we shall all flock back into church buildings in January or whenever, pick up exactly where we left off and do nothing differently at all.   Except perhaps sit a bit further apart and pray a bit harder for those who have lost their jobs.  Once the vaccine kicks in we shall forget this year pretty quickly.   Unless....

All the big positive amazing changes that have come about in society in the past have happened because a few brave souls took a stand and refused to shut up.  They informed, they campaigned, they educated and they won converts to their cause, one by one.   Black people are still fighting for equality and they haven't got it yet.  Their fight has been going on for generations - and views have changed a LOT over the past century, but we still have so far to go.  Maybe this has been a year when God has been challenging us not to settle.  Not to go back to the way things were.  Maybe He is asking us to take more personal responsibility for our faith.  We need to be able to breathe on our own without the life support machine of church services. Our pastors and ministers cant do it all....... in fact most of them can barely do a tenth of what comes across their doors.  Its our job to be church not just to attend church. 

 In 2021 I want my ' new normal' to be Jesus.  And I suspect that might look quite a lot different from what has gone before.