�鶹��

Available for over a year

I was struck this week by a newspaper account I read from a woman who feels any hope of an idyllic life in France has ended. Worried by riots in French cities and the state of the country’s schools, she’s now considering returning to Northern Ireland where she grew up or to England where she once lived. Then I met up in London with my cousin, a native Parisian. Being a typical Londoner, I frequently complain about traffic jams, cyclists on pavements, and overpriced restaurants. But my cousin, after the upheavals in Paris and fed up with Gallic bureaucracy, believes life here is wonderfully civilised, whereas I think of France as being the epitome of great food and culture. There are endless headlines written about migrants, whether official or unofficial. But if people arrive, they’ve also left somewhere else. And this country is also a place of not only comings but goings too. While 813,000 came into Britain last year, according to the Office of National Statistics 642,000 left. What makes people leave their home, then, whether here or another country? Sometimes, of course, it will be about leaving to find work. Others around the globe will be fleeing religious or political upheaval. But the writer who longed for a French paradise and my cousin who now thinks London is such a great place to live are yearning for an ideal, something more intangible. Longing for somewhere else has always been a core part of human experience. It is what the Roman poet Ovid wrote about more than 2,000 years ago in his work The Art of Love: “the harvest is always fruitful in another man’s fields”. In other words, the grass is always greener on the other side. It is expressed in Hebrew and Christian Scripture too. St Paul writes of people being strangers and exiles seeking a better, more heavenly country. Some might say that this searching is innate – that it’s shaped by an instinctive need for God. The psalms talk about thirsting for God like a deer yearning for running streams and fainting for the courts of the Lord. Yearning is one thing; discontent another, and if it goes unchecked, it can become purposeless frustration. While Scriptures are full of people on the move, there are also stories of people staying put and finding contentedness. Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce, says the prophet Jeremiah. Jesus might have told some to leave everything and follow him but there were others he urged to remain where they were to find their true role in life. Sometimes acknowledging that where someone already is, is where they should be, is the way they find peace.