This morning as we prepared for our daily prayer, talking about the previous evening and the day ahead, my husband mentioned that yesterday he had seen a political programme that he knows I don't rate highly. A guest on it had been a politician I neither trust nor like, but whom he respects and esteems.
This makes me happy.
If he and I espoused identical political views and listened only to the same people, I think we would be at risk of consolidating an ever narrower outlook. Our understanding would be coloured by a shared bias, and we would lurch further and further away from reality.
While he was watching his political programme, I was considering listening to a podcast from a YouTuber I like very much, that he does not follow. In the end I didn't because I saw that in this particular podcast she was urging us to find our soul tribe. That's not what I want to do.
I have begun to think that soul tribes — ideological clans — are something of a problem in the modern world. The whole phraseology around "identifying as" is indicative of separation.
In recent days there's been a tremendous to-do about the Green Party's ill-advised vote to dub Zionism as a form of racism. Do we need this to add to the suspicions and separations and antagonisms we already have? Absolutely not.
Humanity faces the steep challenges of climate change. I do not share the perspective that it is greatly affected by human activity; the planet's climate has always changed, and will continue to do so regardless. At present it's heating up, and I doubt there's anything we can do about that. But — if we work together — there are many simple measures to help us adapt to the changes. There is wonderful knowledge and practice about permaculture and mob-grazing, water capture and re-wilding, that can protect us against desertification and extend our possibilities for feeding ourselves and protecting our fragile and vulnerable physical bodies against heat. What won't help us is fighting for control over resources, threatening one another, and dropping bombs on what isn't already polluted and ruined. If we really had the intelligence of which we so proudly boast, we'd co-operate, we'd treat one another with respect, we'd take responsibility, we'd accept and learn from one another.
It must break the heart of God that religious factions are among the worst soul tribes for cruelty and violence.
I know of nowhere but my own life, my own heart, to make a beginning with this. The two books I wrote this last year (St Luke's Little Summer and The Light of One Lamp) were to address our responsibilities in these matters. There is a sense in which we all share the same world, but at the same time we can each be said to create our own individual world. St Luke's Little Summer is about taking responsibility to create and establish and heal one's own world. As it has been said: "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me".
The Light of One Lamp is about constructive ways forward when cohesion breaks down, when people who once saw eye to eye find themselves in dissension. How to stop this hardening into separation and dislike, how to stop it spreading into factions and division?
There is one world which is our home, and one creation which is our soul tribe — wider than humanity; the trees and plants and water and animals are also on our side. And there is no power but that of God.
Our task is to use our minds constructively to figure out pathways of healing and peace. Our days are for wonder and service of the living God. We are here for friendship, and creativity and joy. We are here to be kind to one another. Possibly also for the opportunity to have tried cake.
