On Hope: 3 – Hope and Life

In the first of these readings, I talked to you about how action brings hope, and how hope is precisely the thing we need to solve the problems of today. 

In the second, I talked to you about the ingredients of hope – how silence, vulnerability and community come together to create this ecology of hope, this web of human interconnectedness, these chains of communal, hopeful, deliberate action, that allow change to ripple outwards, to make a better world. 

This idea of hope is built upon the romantic notion that you mean something more than you suspect you do: that it is possible that your voice, out of the 7.8 billion voices clamouring on earth, can not only be clearly and distinctly heard, but also that you have something of value to say. 

In fact, you can go further: the idea of hope is more than romantic: you could say that hope is quixotic, almost entirely unrealistic, positively naive. 

But then, that’s the beauty of hope, one of its defining features: that hope is not just about the taking of action; hope is about the taking of action even though you know that your action may fail. 

The failure of our actions is not the point; the action is the point, the belief in the rightness of the action, and the belief that that rightness will prevail. 

On Hope: 2 – Hope and Vulnerability

“Hope… is not a chair, [on which you sit] and wait for things to get better. Hope is something we do. Hope is a brave choice that we make.” [1]

But if action brings about hope, and hope is what we need to solve the problems that we face, then what shall we do? 

Imagine if one of you makes that brave choice to stand up and take action – stand up… to do what? 

What can just one person do to combat climate change, to combat endemic gender inequality, to combat social intolerance? Such monumental problems can suffocate that one courageous individual. It is easy to see how one’s good intentions can be shaken, battered, and demolished before we have even taken our first step. 

I would argue that the students sitting in this room are better suited than many your age to take effective action; that you are better equipped, and that you have greater opportunity. 

On Hope: 1 – Hope and Action

Two summers ago, my family and I were due to be heading off to a little villa in Lanzarote. It had its own little pool, it was a stroll from the beach and the restaurants, the weather was hot and breezy: it was perfect. 

The night before we were due to fly, we discovered that my daughter’s passport had expired. 

We made more discoveries over the next 12 hours: that revised procedures for emergency passports were no longer in our favour; that enhanced safeguarding measures made taking children out of the country especially difficult; that my travel insurance didn’t cover idiot parents not checking their children’s passport expiry dates. 

We lost the holiday: no airplane, no villa, no little pool, no sunshine, no stroll to al fresco dining. All that money, saved and spent – all gone. 

New Zealand and Kindness: 3

Each night this week, I have been following the events in New Zealand: I have been reading the news and collecting articles; I have been saving them to my phone’s notes, ready to write them all down, to shape them into some kind of sense, so I can complete my readings for you this week.

A lot has happened.

New Zealand and Kindness: 2

Last night, once more, I sat in my kitchen and read the news. Not just one report, but dozens and dozens of articles, from various news websites, all examining the Christchurch shootings – and as I read these, I tried to make sense of what it was  that I wanted  to say.

The abiding feeling that I had as I read was a desperate, numbing paralysis. As I sat in my kitchen in Huddersfield, drinking coffee, reading the news, tapping on a keyboard, live updates were giving me more information about the shootings, and releasing more names of the dead: Naeem Rashid, aged 50, a teacher, who died in hospital having tried to tackle the gunman; Talha Rashid, aged 21, Naeem Rashid’s son, who just got a new job and was planning to get married; 30-year-old Farhaj Ahsan, an electrical engineer with a 3-year-old daughter and a six-month-old son; Hosne Ara Ahmed, aged 42, killed while searching for her wheelchair-bound husband in the Mosque; Hamza Mustafa, aged 16, who was not only the Cashmere High School classmate of the 14 year old Sayyad Milne who died on Friday (that young boy who had dreams of becoming a footballer, do you remember?) but Hamza Mustafa was also the son of Khaled Mustafa, the Syrian refugee, also killed, who I mentioned yesterday. Mucad Ibrahim, who was described as “energetic, playful and liked to smile and laugh a lot”[1]. Mucad was 3 years old.

New Zealand and Kindness: 1

At twenty to two in the afternoon on Friday, March 15^th, Brenton Tarrant parked his car on Deans Avenue, in Christchurch, New Zealand.

He walked around to his boot, picked up a semi-automatic weapon, entered the Al-Noor Mosque and began to shoot. Tarrant walked to the women’s prayer hall and shot indiscriminately at those worshipping in there; he then walked down the corridor to the men’s prayer room and continued to fire, killing as he went, shooting the wounded from close range.

Speak for Your Life

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes, the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Kweku Adoboli in a post called “Let Your Life Speak“.

Like all of us, Kweku has made a mistake. Like all of us, his mistake caused him shame and frustration and distress. Like all of us, he wants to rectify that mistake, to come out from its shadow, and to transform his mistake into something we can learn from.

Kweku’s mistake is much bigger than the mistakes we make. In 2011, Kweku took responsibility for a £1.4 billion loss on his UBS trading desk, was convicted and then imprisoned for Fraud by Abuse of Position. While the jury and the court recognised his actions were never for personal gain, Kweku still recognises that the error of judgement he made was catastrophic. He has paid the price for his mistakes.

Just as Kweku’s mistake was bigger than ours, so his attempt to put his mistake right has led him on to a far bigger journey that we go on. In the last two years, since his release, Kweku has worked tirelessly to find ways of using his mistake and his painful experience to create something beneficial and good. He has sought to consult, advise and educate as many people as he could – from policy makers to academics, from managers of industry to school and university students. He is trying to teach, to help others learn, to ensure that his mistakes are not made again. It is an incredibly difficult journey; it is also an incredibly brave one.

But, to paraphrase JB Priestley: Kweku has paid a heavy price for his mistake. And now there is a risk that he will be made to pay a heavier price still.

For four years, Kweku has been battling against the threat of deportation from Britain, his home for 25 years. The next decision from the Court of Appeal, due in early December, could result in his immediate expulsion from the UK. 

I cannot agree with this. Deporting Kweku will serve no purpose whatsoever. It is absolutely not in the public interests to deport him. Kweku has made a terrible mistake, accepted responsibility and paid his penalty, handed down from the courts, and is now trying to do good. Far from his deportation being in the public interests, it is rather in the public interests that he remain.

Here is my open letter to the Home Secretary. You can support Kweku by clicking here to sign the petition that asks the Government to stop his deportation. Please share this post.

Reflecting on Remembrance 2

“At the beginning of May, 1915, near Ypres in Flanders, a young, Canadian military doctor buried his friend, Alexis, who was killed during one of the many, hellish bombardments… The shattered remains of the young man, placed in sandbags and shaped to resemble a human body, were wrapped in an Army blanket and lowered into a grave… Afterwards, the doctor sat on the steps of an ambulance, took a pad of paper and hastily scribbled the following words:

Reflecting on Remembrance 1

This is my eighth year teaching at a Quaker School, which means I have sat through over 200 Meetings for Worship on Thursday. A Meeting for Worship is also known as a “Silent Meeting”, and the difference is in the name: rather than our usual Meetings (which are led by a member of staff delivering a talk or ministry of some kind), during Meeting for Worship, the whole school gathers together to share in ten minutes’ of silence. No one enforces the silence, or patrols it: it is a disarming and rather beautiful thing to see 300 students just being still; just thinking.

Moon Poetry

In my tenth year of teaching, I have come right round to where I began when it comes to poetry: bemusement. Not bemusement at poetry itself – though that, plenty of times – but to the bemusement of my old English teacher, Lockey. I have come round to his bewilderment as to why we – his ignorant, foolish students: you who think you know so much – why we don’t read poetry. Not because we are told to, but because we want to; because we should.