BBC Radio 4 2015-11-16

Good Morning

The news this morning continues to reflect our attempts to absorb the significance of the events of Friday night in Paris. For those immediately affected, injured, bereaved and traumatized, life will never be the same again. Along with all those changing their facebook cover photos and expressing solidarity in other ways my heart goes out to the people of Paris and to other victims of terrorism this week in Lebanon and Baghdad and to all who cry out for protection and for justice.

We know that terrorism is designed not only to affect those at the epicentre but to radiate shock waves ensuring that those who last Friday night were ‘just outside, enjoying their lives and thinking about nothing,’ will in cities everywhere this Friday night be thinking about their safety. Even travelling into London yesterday I was more aware than usual of the stations I was passing through and of past horrors and of the threat of future ones.

It’s important that in the aftermath of such events governments assess risks and the protections that they can put in place for their citizens. And that it is happening. But it’s important too, in our reactions, to notice that part of what terrorists are wanting to provoke are extreme responses, dragging us into a world constructed on terms that they prefer – terms based on a spiralling fear.

Many have expressed the hope that Paris will arise defiant. Defiance, however, can take different forms. This weekend saw the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry. A night of terror designed to break the morale of the British people. A night of indiscriminate killing leaving more than 500 dead and untold destruction.

Out of the ruins of the medieval Cathedral of St Michael, and out of the ruins of what was called the ‘collective nervous breakdown’ of the people of Coventry, arose a movement committed to peace and reconciliation, committed even, as Jesus commanded, to prayer for enemies, determined to do nothing to reinforce the cycle of violence, realising as the writers of the New Testament realized that the root opposite of love is not so much hate as it is fear.

The Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig put it like this:
‘There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures,
Two frameworks, two results. Love and fear.

(A Common Prayer, Michael Leunig, 1990)

This week is recognized in the UK as interfaith week - a week when ordinary people of different religious traditions and none hold local events, patiently building the framework of a society strong enough to withstand the shockwaves of fear - helping to strengthen the frame of a tough love that maintains a courageous and defiant determination not to be sucked in.

Nothing can prevent us from feeling fear when our lives and the lives of those we love are threatened. But individually and nationally we can still choose the framework out of which we will allow ourselves to respond.