Let’s give peace a cha-cha chance...
STRICTLY VICAR’S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Iremember one year passing the Nativity we had set up outside church and discovering that someone had replaced Jesus in the crib with a plastic velociraptor.
It was striking to see the Prince of Peace substituted by a violent carnivorous dinosaur but I think I can understand why.
We unite to sing about peace on earth and goodwill to all at Christmas and yet for many the world delivers neither. It must be irritating to hear those glib verses when life is hard and getting harder, as it did for many in Britain this year. And not only in Britain.
The year began with the inauguration of the unlikeliest President of the United States I can think of. That he managed to get there at all, considering the dirt that came to light between election and inauguration, surprised me not only because of what it told us about his character but also what it says about the frustration so many Americans feel with politics.
That same frustration, I’m sure, fed the vote for Brexit, which is only a little over a year away. Will it be passports at Crossmaglen? Airliners waiting for permission to take off for Leeds-Bradford? Or business as usual?
Whatever happens, the challenge is to answer frustrations by sharing more justly the prosperity that only some have enjoyed in recent years. Smooth talk about “shifting to a low-wage economy” is just another way of saying the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. You do not have to go to blighted Teesside or the valleys of South Wales to find examples of this.
The roll-out of Universal Credit has left some of the poorest of the poor penniless for six weeks or more, relying on payday loans and foodbanks to survive.
In my area – the overlooked East Midlands – social housing providers are having to plan to deal with the most vulnerable tenants getting behind with rent and risking eviction, which would turn a crisis into a catastrophe.
I think again of our Nativity and a birth in a mucky stable, and a homeless family on a hard and unfamiliar road.
I am a half-time vicar. My parish cannot afford a fulltimer, so I make the rest of my living working in the media. This year I found myself, to the bewilderment of many including me, on Strictly Come Dancing. When I told my mum, she paused then said: “Are you sure they haven’t mistaken you for someone else, darling?” I am embarrassed to admit it but I thought I might finally be revealed as a highly original dancer. I was, but not in a good way. In spite of having a fantastic time, when I watched myself on replay what came to mind was a walrus having anaphylactic shock, more like something from Blue Planet II (that overtook Strictly in the ratings), than a dance contest. I was the second person to be eliminated and was lucky to have got that far.
One of the benefits of Strictly was being invited to the Pride of Britain awards. The most surreal moment of my year happened there, while I was talking to the Paralympian Jonnie Peacock, a fellow Strictly contestant, about a dance move I had just learned.
I was twirling him to demonstrate when someone said how sorry she was I had been booted off so early. It was the Prime Minister.
Mindful that her year had not gone so well, I asked how she was doing. “Oh, OK, you know,” she said. No one would want her job, having to hold together a weak and fractious government for only as long as your party thinks it expedient; and imagine what it must be like to have the Manchester bombing, the terrorist attacks in London and the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower happen on your watch.
“How do you begin to get a grip on that?” I wondered. An answer came later, when I fell into conversation with a man sitting at the next table. He was a paramedic, one of the first on the scene at the Manchester bombing, there with colleagues to receive an award.
Also there were firefighters from Grenfell and unarmed police officers who ran towards machetewielding attackers at Borough. They seemed a little embarrassed to be given standing ovations, they were all “just doing our job”.
The world can be a menacing place and if you spend too long on social media or following the news, you might be forgiven for lapsing into despair about humanity.
But if you’re tempted to do that, pause at the Nativity scene outside a church, or at your kids’ school, or on a Christmas card, and look into the crib at the Christ Child (he’s back where he belongs in ours).
On a dark night, in an insignificant place, at a time of unrest, God came to us, not in a blaze of glory, but as a tiny baby – nothing weaker or more vulnerable – and a light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.
May that light shine in your life, as it shines in the deeds of those who respond to evil with bravery; with those who struggle to cope with the indignity of poverty; with those who endure tyrants and natural disasters and hard luck; and use their creativity, imagination and resilience to bring us all light.
The Reverend Richard Coles – Songs For Christmas, a 2-CD collection featuring personally selected music, invoking special memories and the beauty of this very special time of year, is out now from amazon.co.uk.