麻豆社

Good morning. Human beings are good in a crisis. Most of us, most of the time, when something dreadful happens, respond instinctively and naturally with both practical support and deep compassion. I saw that very much last year, in the aftermath of the terror attack in central Manchester that claimed 22 innocent lives. Huge levels of energy and commitment, from all across the community, went into the twin tasks of supporting the victims and holding the people of the city together.

We鈥檙e good in a crisis, but often nothing like as good in how we react to more regular but less cataclysmic events. As a young priest, preparing couples for marriage, I would warn them that their love was more likely to be ground down by the steady pressure of not having enough money, or by disagreements over apparently minor matters, than to be destroyed by a single, massive blow. Their best defence would lie not in the occasional grand gesture but in the small but regular expression of love and care. It鈥檚 noticeable that many of the people Jesus heals in the gospel stories are suffering from non-life threatening but gruelling long term conditions.

Yesterday鈥檚 incident in Westminster may represent an emerging pattern, where the weaponising of common elements of our life, such as motor vehicles, allows more frequent attacks to be planned and executed, albeit each individual occurrence does not wreak havoc on the Manchester scale. In the face of such pressure, I need to do something tangible, but not overwhelming, to express, and so underpin, my determination not to let the terrorists dictate who I trust and how I act.

Last year, I spoke to the people of Manchester and beyond about the place of defiance in my faith tradition. At its simplest it鈥檚 about not responding as our attackers would wish. We may not need, and probably don鈥檛 have the stamina for, the huge outpouring of love of last year. Yet we need to do something. Otherwise the constant news stories of incidents like yesterday鈥檚 will grind us down to the point when the terrorists have achieved by repetition what they failed to gain by fewer but much larger scale atrocities.

As with my wedding couples of yester year, more frequent but smaller scale acts of kindness and togetherness may be the better way. Little things that create harmony and cohesion, but can be done on a steady and committed basis, could make a real impact in our towns and cities, workplaces and schools. They can be done alone, or with families and friends. Small acts of goodness mount up, until they wear down the will of our aggressors.

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