麻豆社

Good morning.

This week, British photographer and film director Steve McQueen has unveiled a massive art project in the Tate Britain gallery and on billboards across London. The project is titled Year 3, and it comprises photos of more than 76,000 children from London鈥檚 primary schools. They鈥檙e standard school pictures 鈥� teachers sitting among rows of pupils. It鈥檚 the content rather than the style which celebrates the diversity of children from all kinds of backgrounds. McQueen says his intention is to encourage children鈥檚 creativity by engaging them with art.

For me, the images are a reminder of why I love living in this cosmopolitan city. Like so many in our modern world, I鈥檓 a nomad of the post-imperial diaspora 鈥� one of millions who don鈥檛 really know what it means to speak of a country as home. I was born in Zambia 鈥� then Northern Rhodesia 鈥� to Scottish parents. I was brought up to see myself as Scottish but I鈥檝e never lived in Scotland, yet I鈥檓 not African either. I married an Englishman and we eventually settled in Bristol with our children.

Bristol is also a vibrant multicultural city, but it was when I moved to London for work that I discovered for the first time a real sense of belonging. When I asked myself why, I decided it鈥檚 because, more than anywhere else I鈥檝e ever lived, this is a city that belongs to everybody and nobody. I feel at home in this vast metropolis with its swirling human diversity.

Teaching theology and religious studies in a London university is part of that experience. A typical class includes students from many religious and cultural backgrounds. Studying texts can never be a substitute for the knowledge that comes from such encounters, when as a lecturer I鈥檓 learning as much from my students as they are learning from me.

We have in recent years become a culture that seems increasingly isolationist and hostile to those we perceive as 鈥渙ther鈥�, defined over and against some imagined 鈥渘orm鈥� of what it means to be British. That鈥檚 why I love those Year 3 photographs. From my own Christian perspective I find myself thinking of a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins鈥� poem, As Kingfishers Catch Fire: 鈥淐hrist plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men鈥檚 faces.鈥� I see the meaning of that when I look at those school children鈥檚 faces.

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