There’s a chapter in the Book of Ecclesiastes which is often read at funerals and the committal of ashes, and which begins: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”
Now, I would suggest, Great Britain should be focused on a time to heal, after last week’s referendum which brought a mixture of excitement, dismay, recriminations, anger and, for some, jubilation.
The day of the result I was walking through our local park in Kent – a solid Brexit area – when I stopped to talk to a neighbour. “Look,” she said, “the main thing now is that we must all pull together – however we voted.”
That, I thought, was just about right and altogether in a Christian spirit too.
And there’s something else we must do: because some immigrants now feel vulnerable and sensitive about their position, we must make a special effort to show any migrants that they are part of the community, that they are welcome and appreciated and that they should never, ever be subjected to hostility or verbal abuse. Indeed, anyone expressing such abuse should be charged with “hate crime”.
At the same time, the Church authorities who, for the most part urged Catholics to vote remain, should bear in mind that those who voted leave were more often poorer people. The map of England and Wales showed a swathe of communities who felt they had been left behind by the metropolitan elite who themselves were often thriving as lawyers, marketing experts, media consultants and the like, while fishermen, steelworkers and those who once manufactured British goods had lost so much ground.
The hierarchy might bear in mind that Brexit was in great part the voice of the poor. And the Christian churches should never be distanced from the poor.
What we can and should do is to concentrate on my neighbour’s advice: “pull together”. That truly is for the common good.
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Each time I heard reports – which have been continuous and obsessive – of how “the markets” would (and did) react to the Brexit outcome, the responsive phrase that came to my mind was “casino capitalism”.
What are these “markets”? Would it be too uncharitable to describe them as a bunch of globalised spivs gambling with all of our futures, and our family’s futures, by clicking buttons? Maybe so.
Perhaps there are many good individuals working in the various money markets around the world who conscientiously do their best, though that’s not the message you would get from movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short or George Clooney’s Money Monster. According to such depictions, these are more akin to the money-changers in the temple to whom Jesus gave such short shrift.
Indeed, I’m beginning to wonder if the Rev Giles Fraser wasn’t right to exit from St Paul’s Cathedral and join the anti-capitalist Occupy protesters camped outside.
I suppose markets are inevitable, but the worship of them shouldn’t be compulsory.
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However turbulent our times, they are nothing like the anguish experienced 100 years ago this week – at the terrible Battle of the Somme, begun on July 1, 1916, with nearly 60,000 British (and Irish) casualties in the first morning. I visited the beautiful, now so peaceful, Somme area of France in June, and to be there was a moving and rewarding experience.
I stayed at the historic old town of Péronne, with its wonderful Historial Museum, and just a short distance away from Thiepval, where a new museum has just opened as an extension to the visitors’ centre there. There is a special Chapel to the Missing dedicated to those soldiers whose names are listed on the Thiepval Monument.
I hope to go back, carrying Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Somme, the most definitive and experienced guidebook on this tumultuous terrain, where the poppies still blow in the wind. So many evocative places to visit in the area: St Quentin, La Boisselle, Ginchy, Guillemont, Albert, Bray-sur-Somme, passing those military cemeteries honouring soldiers “known unto God”.
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