During last summer I got around to some of those getting ‘A Round Tuit’ jobs – that at other normal times maybe we never quite get around to – do you know what I mean? Well for me it consisted in clearing out the loft and the garage. And what a clear out it was! No wonder I hadn’t quite got around to it before. And it was then that I found Edward in an old suitcase.
I want to talk about brief encounters. Not ‘Brief Encounter’ the 1945 classic British film scripted by Noel Coward and starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. But the brief encounters we experience and that Jesus experienced in the gospels. Brief and potentially life changing.
Beyond the legend, St. George had to face a question. Was he the centre of his own universe or was their something more worth defending? A dragon that needed defeating?
In many religions there is a ‘Tree of Life’ and in the Bible this is also true. In Revelation 22:2 it says, “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” I look at this verse differently now as I think of the hidden life of trees.
Although we may be a long way from creating an adult theme park in which we might have to imagine that humanoid robots may have rights, the world of video gaming is coming ever more closer to revealing the darkest fantasies of human nature.
Social media is a mirror which reflects what we choose to treasure. Whether inward or outward looking, social media provides a statement of what we choose to value.
For all our advancements in communications technology it seems we still have a deep and sometimes dangerous fear of those different from ourselves. We can communicate in ever more instant ways and yet this freedom also provides a platform to amplify our fears and prejudices of all that is ‘other’. “Who is my neighbour?” This question was once posed to Jesus who responded with what is called the ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan’.
We cannot change the past but we can learn from it and faithfully shape the future. ‘Tomorrow’ is a precious gift that has been entrusted to us by those who gave their ‘today’.
History warns us that when we dehumanise people or treat them as subhuman for whatever reason, prejudice, or ideology, it almost inevitably leads to genocide.
