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Squeezed between the Salvation Army Hall and the Municipal Car Park on the edge of our town is a small park. I like to walk through it on the way into town – the gardeners there are creative. About three weeks ago, I spotted a colourful pup tent in the corner of the garden, well out of the way of passers-by. The following week, two more tents were added. Curious, I posted a question on one of the town's Facebook page to ask what was going on. I discovered these were homeless people camping with easy access to the Salvation Army who run a soup kitchen. A woman posted that she knew two of the tents' inhabitants and they posed no threat. ‘Leave them be, they’re not doing anyone any harm’ was the general response. Some pointed out the need for a night shelter in our town and the existence of agencies to help. One man reminded us that Storm Ciaran was imminent – this was no time to be living in a tent. Virtually all the responses revealed compassion for the tent dwellers and an instinctive reaction against the idea of being homeless. Then Maria, a former mayor and conscientious town councillor, posted that relevant organisations have been contacted and the homeless people had left. I wondered just how many relevant organisations there would be on this occasion. During the 90s, I did public relations for several homelessness organisations, among them Emmaus UK. In those years, I learned never ever to talk about ‘the homeless’, only homeless people - because ordinary people is what they are in so many ways. I met all kinds including ex-military personnel and bank managers and natural wanderers with itchy feet. Many of them suffered with mental health problems. Many of them had suffered at the hands of bureaucrats. At times of crisis, a cold tent in a park may sometimes be preferable to navigating a tangle of impatient or patronising officialdom. I knew from experience that Councillor Maria was correct when she commented, ‘sometimes people don’t want what is offered.’ Successive governments have shown themselves unable to solve the multi-layered conundrum which homelessness presents. It can involve virtually all the ills of modern societies: sudden redundancy and subsequent debt, broken and/or abusive relationships in families, unscrupulous landlords, drug and alcohol addiction, serious illness or death of a major breadwinner. Emmaus workers used to ask prospective supporters a thought-provoking question: What would have to happen in your life for you to end up on the streets? Homelessness is not so far from most of us as we think. As I walked into town this morning, I was still wondering about the occupants of those tents. I saw that indeed the tents have disappeared and the Town Council has closed the park. On each of its three gates they’d posted a notice with a coat of arms. This closure, the notices say, is due to ‘encampment of tents’. Three! And then the final statement: ‘We apologise for the inconvenience.’ This allusion to the moving on of homeless people as an ‘inconvenience’ is wrong on all levels. It does no justice to the complex problems faced by homeless people nor to the genuine concern of at least some of the thoughtful people who pay their rates in this comparatively wealthy area. Ironically the language fails to reflect even the good work of the Council itself which, after questioning from Maria and others, has made some serious attempts to help the people in the pup tents in a stormy week. Politicians both local and natural need to think more seriously about the words they use. Maybe we could all benefit by asking ourselves some questions about how we think and speak about homeless people and many other 'inconvenient' groups.

A friend and reader of our blog wrote recently to enquire why we had not commented on the developing catastrophe in Gaza. It is a fair question. It demands some kind of response. First and foremost, we recognise that most readers will have heard, seen and read a great deal about the horrifying humanitarian disaster which is unfolding following the atrocities committed by all sides. It would be foolish for us to pretend to be able add anything significant to all that commentary. We have found these two links helpful in understanding: https://youtu.be/5Zk9r3quXfk?si=TlFufeGjvQwUhBj2 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAs5EOBUDcs Our friend’s comment did prompt us to ask ourselves why we choose the topics that we do when so many other issues demand attention? We choose one topic and automatically exclude a hundred others. Our blog seems to attract most readers when it in some way relates to ourselves and our family. That may suggest that our readers want some respite from the daily diet of alarming news and comment offered by the mainline media. It may also suggest that many readers want some fragments of insight into how life is going for us just now amid the struggles great and small. It further prompts us to ask whether we simply give readers what they want. It is easy for blogs to become comfortable echo chambers. One of our aims is certainly to encourage our small circle of readers, most of whom are known to us in some way, to spend a few minutes reflecting on issues we consider to be important to ordinary people such as ourselves. We seek to make a gentle connection between the wider context and our own often relatively comfortable domestic circumstances. I remember once relaxing in some resort in some Spanish costa and thinking airily that if I simply took to the water and kept going eastwards across the Mediterranean I would eventually arrive in a very different place. At the time my imaginary destination was the scene of some bitter fighting though not quite the all-out war we now witness. I remember on another occasion watching the police recover from that same Spanish beach the body of yet another migrant who had failed in his attempt to cross from northern Africa to the shores of Europe, hoping to find greater safety or a small taste of prosperity. In each case I made a vague connection with my own life…before I successfully put it to very back of my mind. Nowadays it is much more difficult to ignore such a disquieting prospect. The geopolitical alliances are such that our own country could very easily be drawn into conflict raging a long way away. The horrifying developments in military technology are such that nowhere is entirely free from the threat of attack. And many would agree that any early 21st century air of optimism about the future, not least the futures of our children and grandchildren, has evaporated. We both find that such a grim prospect is difficult to live with in some moments. A cloud lingers. How to react or perhaps how to cope with our instinctive reaction of horror, fear and anxiety? We have no brilliant answers. But it does seem to us that the cultivation of some inner quietness does help. We choose to seek that through a Christian understanding of life. There are other ways. One thing is sure that the more we seek a measure of quiet within the better we will be able to face the endless noise without. We owe it to ourselves to find a quiet corner of our lives in which to seek balance. Photo: Reuters

My grandmother was a great mimic. She and her children: my mother and her four sisters and two brothers were always laughing at the idiosyncrasies and funny behaviour in other people, in each other and, I think, it’s fair to say, sometimes in themselves! Growing up in the midst of that laughter is something I have always seen as a healthy legacy. Laughing privately at pompous people has sometimes stood me in good stead at times of pressure. So much of the human behaviour on what Shakespeare calls ‘this great stage of fools’, can, if looked at in a certain light, be hilarious. And many comic writers are brilliant at spotting puffed up pretension and turning it into laughter which we can all enjoy. Much of the time quite innocently. But laughter is not always entirely innocent! I discovered that recently when we were playing cards with my five-year old granddaughter. Half way through the game she began to bend the rules for her own benefit. Grandmothers, of course, are supposed to laugh indulgently at such infringements of the rules – and I did it, I thought, perfectly naturally. But Kiki didn’t like it. ‘It’s not funny, Granny,’ she said. ‘It’s only a game,’ said one of the other adults. Hmm...I thought. It is only a game and Kiki must learn to 'play' but it's not as simple as that! If you’re trying to keep your five-year old end up when you’re playing a game with several adults and you bend the rules, and one of the adults laughs at you, from your perspective, it probably isn’t very funny. And then again, if you’re the granny and it’s been a long day of keeping abreast of your smart 5-year old granddaughter, you don’t feel particularly powerful at that moment. Most of us are only conscious of power discrepancies when we’re the ones without power. When we have power, we’re always less conscious of it. So was it a misuse of my power to laugh at my granddaughter? Yep! Probably. Obviously in that situation both I and my laughter were more powerful than I realised! That’s the thing with laughter – it can be a very powerful tool and a very destructive one, often both used and abused by people who don’t recognise their own power. And if you don’t feel particularly powerful in other areas of your life, you’re even more likely to forget it. My mum and her siblings would never have thought of themselves as being powerful! They wouldn’t have thought about it at all because they belonged to a family where money was always in short supply, work not always a foregone conclusion, housing at the mercy of a powerful landlord who also may have had the ability to take away both their shelter and their work....Them powerful? That is a joke they certainly would have laughed at! For them, shared laughter was just a poor family’s entertainment! But, these days, if our ears are open, we’ve come to understand as my granddaughter reminded me, that the possession of power is always a relative matter within any community, any relationship. In my lifetime we have all been made aware of the need to wield power gently, especially when the group is diverse in age or gender or race or any of the other parts of ourselves like training, wealth, education, experience that we tend to take for granted. All of this doesn’t mean that we should stop laughing gently at the foibles and follies of our fellow human beings – most of all our own! But Kiki reminded me that maybe we all need a few more antennae to pick up humour and to ask who gets to make the jokes and who gets to laugh at whom about what!

....comes a lot of noise and nonsense – but so much more! . Our latest grandparental trip to Scotland, this time for eleven days, was requested to support our daughter-in-law . She is working full time and our son was away on a week's course. We shared where we could in all the relentless tasks of caring for small children: cooking and cleaning and washing, filling dish-washers and emptying bins! There’s meeting from the school bus and walking home, shopping, and taxiing between all the various appointments in a 5-year old’s busy life. At the end, another day 410-mile drive – this time we started in floods and rain and temperatures of 11 degrees and arrived home in sunshine and 23 degrees! After four days at home, we are beginning to feel human again! But, as parents and grandparents everywhere know, the physical exhaustion is just the price we pay for the cuddles and chats and games and giggles and all the other delights and surprises of spending time in the company of a five year old and a 19-month old. Bath time with 5-year old Kiki is often great fun. Sometimes we make up stories together peopled by the crowds of plastic characters scattered around the edge of the bath. I get into big trouble because I can never remember their names! Her regular request is, ‘Can you tell me a story of Daddy and Auntie Emma when they were little.’ One of those stories which mentioned Daddy’s grandparents led her to very serious questions about where those grandparents are now. Lots of serious and very literal 5-year old’s questions followed. Can you see after you die? Can you hear? When will I die? I don’t want to die. Her solution to the problem of her own mortality: ‘I wish I was God – then I wouldn’t have to die!’ I have no idea what she made of my answer that being God would be a bigger job than she might like to take on! Another day, she accidentally spilt her drink. She was quick to say she hadn’t meant to. ‘Don’t worry, I said automatically, ‘it’s not the end of the world!’ Serious face. ‘What would be the end of the world, Granny?’ Kiki’s curiosity is such a gift, reminding me how hard it is to say, ‘I don’t know’ and how rarely adults discuss questions to which we aren’t sure of the answers! Her 19-month old brother DJ offers me, and so many others, a different gift. Some of our readers will remember our family anxieties around DJ’s birth in March 2022. He still needs to be connected to oxygen day and night and fed through a tube into his stomach. But he hasn’t had a stay in hospital now for a year! His heart is strong and his kidneys, operated on in the first week of his life, are functioning virtually normally with no need of the feared dialysis. He is alert and responsive and laughs and plays peekaboo and jigs up and down in his baby bouncer. DJ’s gift to the world is welcome! When anyone he loves walks into the room – he looks up - smiling, clapping, arms stretched out, delight at seeing another human being written all over his face. If you pick him up, he engages fully. He puts his small hands gently on your face. He particularly likes and can now identify a nose! Driving 410 miles? Kiki’s questions and DJ’s daily welcome make it so worthwhile!

The list of untouchable men...or those who think they are - seems to go on and on...Jimmy Savile, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffery Epstein, Bill Cosby, Prince Andrew, politicians too numerous to mention. These (mostly) men have all come to believe that celebrity or wealth or power give them freedom to exploit emotionally and sexually both vulnerable women and men. Such is their popularity, such is their reputation that any abused woman or man is afraid to go public with accusations. They expect not to be believed. This week comes the latest episode in the tales of women being abused by high-profile men. Now Russell Brand, English comedian, actor and influencer has been accused in various media of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse while working at the BBC and elsewhere. He denies the allegations – and they are only allegations at this stage. Like all the rest, the truth will emerge probably slowly and painfully as investigations continue. As always in these cases, the organisations which profit from the ‘gifts and skills’ of these men stay silent until there comes a tipping point when the trickle of allegations turns into a flood and these organisations break their ties with the accused to limit the damage to their own reputations. Among them our beloved Greenbelt Festival. This week this message appeared on its website in the wake of Brand’s headline appearance at the Festival in 2019: ‘ In light of the very serious allegations against Russell Brand in Channel 4’s Dispatches and in The Times, and out of respect and concern for all those who have made allegations, we have decided to remove images, videos and audio of Russell Brand from our website.’ We have never been Brand fans. In 2019, we were elsewhere when he arrived late to speak at Greenbelt. He kept the large crowd who did gather to hear him waiting for half an hour. They were not best pleased. Opinion about his performance and the nature of his connection to Christianity was divided. He certainly never made any secret about his addictive and promiscuous lifestyle so hearing the news this week, perhaps people would be more inclined to shrug their shoulders and ask, ‘What did you expect?’ An entirely different case is that of Jean Vanier, who in 1964, founded the first of what became a global network of L’ Arche communities where people both with and without learning difficulties lived together. Vanier wrote and taught inspiringly and was much loved and respected. We have on our own shelves a couple of very good books he wrote on building community. He died in 2019. Then, earlier this year, a report was published showing that for nearly seven decades, Vanier had been systematically abusing at least 25 adult women (without disabilities) in the maintenance of what was described as a mystical-sexual sect. Sexuality and power are clearly a powerful combination. Add ‘religion’ and the toxic mix becomes more debilitating still. Toxic, hierarchy-affirming theology helps not at all. None of us is immune to involvement in this problem. Every community has its stand-out people. In the political and social world, we are all in danger when we fail to ask questions about any leading figure who glitters in their public performances. In the church, clergy and laity, both men and women collude in giving too much power and influence to hero, celebrity and priestly figures. Safeguarding procedures are ignored or waived. The celebrities whether spiritual or secular, in their turn, start to believe their own publicity. Sometimes, only too willingly, they take the power they believe has been freely offered to them. Remembering that no individual or organisation is quite what it pretends to be could help us all. What we can do personally is to try on a daily basis to ensure that the gap between the public self and the private self is not too great. Individual and group accountability is key! Photo: Reuters

How is it that law-breaking has become the province not just of criminals but of politicians, members of the government, most prominently of all, Prime Ministers and Presidents. What is going on? Can anything be done to reverse this trend? I’ve recently heard, met and read a book by one man who thinks it can. At the Greenbelt Festival last month, the founder of Good Law Project spoke about how good law can topple the powerful. Besuited, bespectacled barrister, 52 year old Jolyon (or Jo as he likes to be called) Maugham, sounds and looks, to my inexperienced eye, like a typical barrister at the top of his profession. In 2015, he received the only professional validation available to barristers as he ‘took silk’, and became a QC or Queen’s Counsel - now KC (King’s Counsellor). But as he spoke, it quickly became clear there is nothing typical about Jo Maugham. Initially he had no financial backers. In his early career as a tax barrister, his blog and his tweets about tax resulted in an invitation to work with government policy-makers. Good Law Project(GLP) has, since he founded it in in 2017, brought a series of landmark cases against an increasingly autocratic government. His Greenbelt talk listed the long list of democratic failures in the Brexit process including the election of Boris Johnson by a tiny minority of Britons, (92,000 conservative voters). What particularly brought him to pubic notice was his legal challenge to Brexit and the prorogation of parliament by Johnson in 2019. Maugham left a lucrative business as a tax barrister and led various legal campaigns. Since Covid, he has issued proceedings against the government’s misappropriation of public funds and failure to take account of conflict of interest in the allocation of contracts for PPE and other supplies to the NHS. It is a measure of my levels of cynicism about people in public life that I needed a lot of convincing to trust this man. Throughout his talk, my antennae for power hunger or fraud or celebrity ambition of some kind were on high alert! But hearing what his work has cost him in personal terms, the abuse, the lies, the vilification, the threats to his family and death threats against him personally quietened my doubts. His clear arguments, his honesty, transparency, and modesty were impressive. His obvious commitment to the cause of good law, quietened my scepticism! I did something I have only ever done once before in my life when a speaker is clearly ‘selling’ a book. I went straight out after the talk, met him and spent £22 on his signed hardback book, Bringing Down Goliath. I started to read it the same evening and finished it in short order. The story of his attempts to hold the powerful to account has the ring of truth – unvarnished facts, thoroughly footnoted - not least with media references to his own sometimes idiotic mistakes - always an endearing quality! Clearly, I am far from being the only person impressed by Maugham’s project. GLP is now the largest legal campaigning group in the country with the funding of a small political party. Its democratic funding model relies not on finances from big organisations or wealthy businessmen but tens of thousands of people, many of them giving as little as £2 a month. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me I have been naïve in trusting his account of the unjust fault lines in the British legal system. For me, one of his trustworthy attitudes is expressed in his mechanism on the last page of his book for testing our levels of personal responsibility. ‘There is always something we can do. And the safest way to know if we ... are merely keeping our consciences at bay – is to ask whether it costs.’

How many of us are following the news coming out of Ukraine with the same attention as we did at the beginning? More drones. More attacks on entirely innocent people going about their business. More ‘collateral’ damage. More body bags. A certain war-weariness sets in, and minds turn towards ways of fixing this, of getting out of this terrible stalemate. Enough is enough. There are those on the hard shoulders of both left and right, like former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who are now saying that Ukraine should accept the loss of Crimea and other occupied territory and not be admitted to international organizations like NATO. Not only is this a price worth paying to prevent further bloodshed but it will respect the historic integrity of Mother Russia and calm their fears about the threat from the West. One the other hand there are those who support Ukraine in its defence of its rich culture and modern borders. If Putin gets away with a square kilometre of Ukrainian soil, he will not be satisfied and there’s no knowing where this megalomaniac will stop. Immovable force meets unstoppable object. And the body bags will mount up. Is there another way? Earlier this week, in the first of this year’s series of Autumn Lectures at St Martin in the Fields, we heard the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, argue the case for Christians to be involved in the work of reconciliation this time in Israel-Palestine, another place of seemingly unending violence over land and culture. Post-apartheid South Africa has shown the way after a fashion. Is this just wishful thinking or clerical naivety? Has this sort of shedding of blood over disputed lands not been the human story since time immemorial? Can one reconcile without capitulating? Who will blink first? Can you play chicken when the stakes are so high? In both war zones there are claims on all sides to be standing on holy ground of some kind, ground made holy in the stories which all sides like to tell about costly sacrifices made by their bold forbears. The idea of ‘holy ground’ which has survived into our modern lexicon comes from the Old Testament story of Moses in the desert standing before the burning bush. The first thing he was told to do was to remove his protective clothing, his shoes. Only then could he feel the warmth of the burning bush ‘that was not consumed’. The message to us is clear. Only when we slowly dismantle our protective defences can we possibly enjoy the warmth of close relationship. It is not just in families and among friends that this holds true. It can be true of larger social groupings. And there are people in Gaza and Jerusalem, in Kyiv and Moscow who are trying to point a way forward towards reconciliation. They do it through their art, their music and dance, through friendships which cross divides, through simple listening to another account of things, through attention to the stories of the pain of the stranger. In doing so they sometimes take considerable risks. It is not easy to be optimistic about geopolitical stalemates. And the no-go zones in our own families can get equally ‘stuck’. Perhaps the only way forward is to follow the biblical advice that only when you remove your protective emotional clothing will you feel the warmth.

So we're back - but not really! All week our spirits have been in the Northamptonshire fields where the Greenbelt Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary last weekend. We meet a few old friends there but we know that others look at the website without drilling down further than the headline music! So why are we so enthusiastic about this space? For a few days we rub shoulders with some people who are (mostly!) very different from ourselves! Both speakers and performers are largely outside our normal frame of reference True, there is not as much racial diversity as we would like but...Many LGBTQ+ people obviously felt welcome in this place. It reminds us how often they feel unwelcome in Christian spaces. There were many people with various physical challenges somehow getting themselves around the rough terrain – an inspiration. There are young families and very senior citizens, many much older than us! Tentloads of young people in various stages of dress or undress. And then there are the questions. We’ve lived much of our lives in communities both secular and religious where, at least in public, the majority of people seem to ask fewer questions than we do! At Greenbelt, people are asking far more questions than we are. It’s a place where our assumptions are challenged, where open-minded people gather around speakers who care about all aspects of social justice*. It’s place to check whether our minds are like umbrellas, most useful when open! Greenbelt remains a broadly Christian festival, though a left-of centre one, and so there is a fair amount of faith discussion from a variety of perspectives. Two lecturers from Sarum College looked at the roots of the cost of living crisis and the benefits of sabbath keeping and jubilee as an antidote to toxic productivity. A panel on the implications of Artificial Intelligence asked the question, ‘What does it mean for faith to be human? What does it mean to have a soul?’ Lots of sessions discussing poverty as a moral issue and looking at its roots in greed – the contrast between thriving and acquiring – and always the challenge, ‘What do I need to relinquish in order for the world to prosper?’ and the vital question, ‘Who’s asking who to give up what?’ Sometimes together, sometimes in different sessions, we heard Kathryn Mannix, a palliative care doctor, with helpful words after the recent and sudden loss of our dear friend, John. We listened to members of the L’Arche communities for those with learning difficulties who described what they are learning as they recover from the shocking revelations of the sexual indiscretions of their revered founder Jean Vanier. They asked, ‘How can we make sure that the greater someone’s charisma, the more spiritual their aura, the greater the strong safeguarding accountability we provide?’ A question for many religious communities. There was Jolyon Maugham, the pioneer without a single backer and no staff who founded the Good Law Project(GLP) to challenge cases where the rich and powerful use the courts for their own ends. The GLP was instrumental in holding Boris Johnson and his cronies to account over the illegal prorogation of parliament. There was a brilliant and hilarious drama on the allocation of local government budgets, sessions on freedom of information and the collapse of some of the Covid narratives surrounding school closures and social distancing. Of course, we missed about 98% of the festival because we had chosen to be in another audience. And that included the massive Sunday morning communion attended by the majority of the 11,000 people who attended the Festival. We opted for the ‘Quiet’ communion in a different part of the site where there were only about three hundred people! But one of the delights of Greenbelt is casual conversations while waiting for speakers or in queues for food or the loo or theatre sessions – there you catch up with what people have heard elsewhere, who is worth hearing and who is not. Various fascinating chance conversations and much learning to be had there too as well as with the many activist groups eager to sign up new recruits looking to put into practice the social action they have heard about. And then, of course, there’s the bookshop.... a dangerous place - we managed only to buy one book this year! The festival lasts three days and frankly that is about as much physical, intellectual and spiritual challenge as we can manage. Since we left the closing worship event with Taize chants in a palely lit and crowded marquee, our heads are still bulging. Greenbelt fans some flames which might otherwise flicker into mere smoke.

The silly season has come early this year. The parliamentary recess doesn’t begin for another week but there are fewer political antics to cover. And sure enough, already the media are making major stories out of relatively trivial events in a desperate attempt to maintain circulation, viewers and website traffic – and of course, amass income from selling advertising space. Today things have quietened somewhat and the story has slipped down the agenda. But for several days, the media have competed to cover the story of a prominent BBC presenter accused of making payments to an underaged youth for sexually explicit images. Meanwhile, political corruption, the economic results of Brexit, a former Prime Minister’s attempts to hide the truth from a committee investigating his behaviour during the pandemic, the UK’s poor economic situation as increasing numbers of people struggle to get or keep a roof over their heads, put food on the table and keep their families together – all these stories so significant for the lives of so many people get sidelined or go uncovered. Innocents continue to suffer and die from Russian aggression in Ukraine, not to mention (and the media don’t!) other war zones where the stakes for the West are superficially lower. Elsewhere the rains never come, the crops fail and countless people lose their lives for lack of adequate nutrition and healthcare. Another species becomes extinct. This week we have been treated to a dose of national madness with allegations against the famous and hitherto widely respected BBC presenter, Huw Edwards. It will take time for the truth to surface but at present the police have confirmed that there is not a shred of evidence to support these tabloid allegations. The tabloids, of course, hope that readers will assume that ‘there is no smoke without a fire’ and will comfort themselves by declaring that publishing safeguarding matters in a national institution supported by the taxpayer are ‘in the public interest’. In the meantime they know that the character assassination of a high profile figure is always good for business, especially if it fits with their business strategies. And it's in business owners' strategies, or in the strategy of one business owner in particular, that we see the much more sinister level to this episode. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of The Sun, the newspaper which broke this story, has a long history of attacking the BBC which he wishes to replace by extending his own global media empire (think Fox News). The government and the right wing media are out to distract public attention from the failure that is thirteen years of Tory rule. So how willing are we to be distracted? – and by what? The BBC furore this week underlines how difficult it is to maintain a sense of proportion. Living in a world bewildering in its complexity, it is not surprising that many of us tend to opt for simple sensational stories. This is a battle for hearts, minds and wallets in which we are all participants.

Pearsons' Perspectives is on holiday this week checking out British history in Sussex. Very thankful for rich cultural heritage and very clear that it's impossible for any one 'tribe' credibly to claim ownership. Bodiam Castle was built in 1385 but the original settlement on the River Rother was built on a crossroads of the Roman road from Hastings to Rochester. Bodiam Castle Battle...site of the Battle of Hastings. Rye...charming and ancient Cinque Port...fortified to keep the French out!

You may recognise this fragment from what is often known as the Mariners’ Hymn, ‘Eternal Father strong to save…’hear us as we cry to the for those in peril on the sea'. You may even have sung it long ago. It contains a plea for those challenging the ocean in fragile craft. Some form of the prayer has probably been uttered many times in the past few days as the ultimately unsuccessful search for the submersible Titan continued against the clock – a search which has attracted world-wide media attention. The loss of the craft and five lives with it raises many questions - some technical, some human, some moral. Many surround the safety of the craft, and they will not be quickly resolved. Then there are questions about what makes people engage in such high-risk projects. Can we blame the men involved for their risk-taking? What of those who are left behind to mourn them? What of those who may risk their own lives in rescue attempts? What of the enormous cost of such endeavours – might that money not be better spent? Were these very wealthy men explorers or tourists? The question we want to ask is of a different order and about a different marine vessel. Just a few days before, an arguably much greater tragedy had unfolded on a different seaway when a fishing boat, the Andriana, carrying up to 750 migrants sank in the Ionian Sea off the coast of SW Greece, with great loss of life. It is one of the greatest losses of life in the Mediterranean in living memory. To be fair it does seem that the Greek authorities did attempt to provide some assistance. But in this Refugee Week, we must ask: why were such enormous resources of marine equipment and manpower invested in the search for five rich men on the submersible and so little on the 750 migrants? The details about each vessel will only emerge as investigations proceed but the question remains: why did the fate of the Titan attract so much media attention and that of the Andriana much less? Maybe the first answer is that the Titan disaster is a first of its kind. Refugee disasters have almost become commonplace. The Titan story allowed us to focus on just five persons with names and faces and stories. It is much easier to relate to these few than to the anonymous crowd aboard the Andriana. Then there is something iconic and romantic about the Titanic which the Titan was going to investigate. Any exploration of the fated ocean liner carries with it the label of ’research’. We do not know yet whether the five victims on the Titan were truly engaged in any research or was it just tourism? Was it just a special Fathers’ Day adventure for the lost father and son involved? The passengers on the Andriana, mostly men, were mainly economic migrants. But here is the most difficult question. Is there some sense in which, certainly here in the wealthy West, we believe that the lives of the passengers on the submersible were somehow more valuable than those on the clapped-out fishing boat? Do we somehow think that the crowds aboard the Andriana were somehow more expendable than those on Titan? One of those on the submarine was after all a billionaire and had led a productive life, another a skilled submariner. Tradition has it that William Whiting, a master at Winchester college, wrote the Eternal Father hymn for a pupil who was very fearful about his forthcoming voyage across the Atlantic. Whiting himself had had a brush with death at sea shortly before and was perhaps well placed to offer support. There are many unknowns in these stories which will take a long time to resolve. We can at least allow the stories to confront us with a couple of difficult questions. One is about our attitudes to strangers and outsiders en masse. The more profound may be whether we believe the prayer: ‘O hear us when we cry to Thee’ goes unanswered. Photo: NBC

I’ve always enjoyed the delights of talking to strangers! Yesterday, I had an encounter which illustrated the benefits! Most mornings I walk a couple of miles before breakfast on footpaths paths through woods and fields half a mile or so from our house. This week the rhododendrons are out by the pond, there are wild roses everywhere and buttercups and clover in the fields. In places the 21st century has left no trace in this idyllic landscape. During the pandemic, walking those paths kept me sane! The numbers of other people who regularly run there and walk their dogs suggest that many of them feel the same. But there’s a nasty threat hanging over this paradise. A bypass road is scheduled to run through these woods and fields and a new housing estate will go up. On particularly beautiful mornings people will stop to chat about the situation. The council and the local landowners who sell them the land are always ‘the bad guys’! I must admit that I have tended to stereotype the landowners as faceless money grubbing profiteers - probably among the 1 percent of the population — including aristocrats, royals and wealthy investors — whom, we are told, own about half of the land in England. Yesterday, I was walking uphill along the narrow public footpath between a field of long grass and a coppice of trees when a chocolate brown Labrador and his master came down the hill towards me. The short stocky man was breaking low hanging branches off a couple of trees making it easier for walkers to pass. ‘That’s very public spirited of you,’ I ventured. ‘When you own the land, you’ve got to look after it,’ said the man. ‘Own it, did you say? This land?’ I was all ears! ‘But hasn’t it all been bought by the council and the developers who are going to build on it?’ Piece by piece, he told me the story of his family’s ownership of the 700-acre plot on which we were standing. It had been part of a market garden when his father, who had worked for the local branch of a national bank, got a loan to buy it. His mother loved horses and his parents’ plan was to establish an equestrian centre which she would run. His dad hoped the business and its horsey by-products would make enough money to send his three children to private schools. As the children grew up, the family faced a number of challenges. The eldest son who planned to take over the business was killed in a car accident. The father died. As the mother aged, she could no longer run the equestrian centre and, of course, the possibility that the council would compulsorily purchase the land for development was a constant threat to the family’s sense of stability. Travellers took up residence in their fields, spread a great deal of litter and rubbish and could neither be reasoned with nor easily evicted. ‘Druggies’ as he called them, started to ply their trade in any empty stables and inconsiderate walkers destroyed fences and wreaked various kinds of havoc. Nowhere did an exploitative landowner feature – just an enterprising family doing their best to build a life. For me, the best part of the conversation was his parting shot, ‘Don’t worry about the by-pass,’ he said. ‘When that plan was first mooted, I was four years old and I’m 52 now! We’re still waiting!’ Joe Keohane has written a book The Power of Strangers about the benefits of talking to random people we meet. He says, ‘Talking to strangers – under the right conditions – is good for us, good for our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our nations, and our world. Talking to strangers can teach you things, deepen you, make you a better citizen, a better thinker, and a better person. It's a good way to live. But it's more than that. In a rapidly changing, infinitely complex, furiously polarised world, it's a way to survive.’ It certainly worked for me yesterday!