Neil Oliver: Our strength is being together

Sep 20, 2021 by

from TCW:

People are talking to me about the months ahead and the winter to come. Many fear a winter of discontent.

They dread the dark and what the dark might hold. The troubles of recent weeks have been hard enough, they say, while the sun has shone and it has been easy to be outside.

How will it be when the days are short and the nights are long? I say the autumn and the winter ahead will be what we choose to make them. It will be a test of who we are as people.

I say that in the most important ways, the winter should be the making of us. We are divided now. It is no longer just about physical divisions. Opinions have hardened to the extent that we cannot talk to each other.

These divisions run through families, between friends and neighbours. Such are the differences of opinion it has become easier to avoid people altogether. I say this has been no accident. Our leaders have done their utmost to drive wedges between us.

Apart from a few weeks at the beginning of it all, I say keeping us apart had nothing to do with health and everything to do with keeping us demoralised, fearful and helpless. When pressed they will say it was for our own good. I say it was a bad thing to do, that has had only bad results. I don’t believe the pubs and restaurants and the rest of the places folk meet to talk were ever a threat to health.

People who come together, might stay together. A stick on its own is easily broken, but a bundle of sticks is unbreakable. When we are physically together we communicate in ways that are impossible through a computer screen. We were stopped from gathering and so the glue holding communities together has flaked away.

Too many have been made strangers to each other, even enemies. Our leaders and their advisers are, I say, devoid of empathy – that ability to feel what others feel. Either that or they do not care what hurt they have caused, which is even worse. It’s time for faith leaders – more of them, at least, to speak up for the lonely and excluded.

Places of worship have a sacred obligation to open their arms. What is a church without a congregation after all – just an empty building. I say it is up to us now to come together – in every way we can – and remind ourselves and each other that there is no need to feel powerless, helpless. Each of us must find at least one other of like mind.

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