Friday 3rd November 2006
Why are we so scared? Why am I so prejudiced? What is it about our world that prompts such fear?
I'm in a long bank queue. Behind me is a woman speaking Nigerian patois on her mobile. In front of me, a Cantonese man is getting confused about how to pay cheques in, and further down the line three Muslim women, are in deep conversation, each wearing the veil or hijab. I am scared. Society is changing so quickly and these people seem so different to me, how can I relate to so many different cultures; understand so many unfamiliar belief systems? And how many of these people would want to relate to me?
And yet I don't call myself prejudiced. I am scared of the unknown, the unfamiliar, 'the other'. I am not the only one. Fast forward to the single mother from Barton in Oxford whose garden was trashed by a gang who then threatened to bite her if she didn't go inside her house. She was beside herself with fear as expressed in the Oxford Mail. 'I was petrified and I called the police twice. They said they would send someone round, but no police officer came round to my house'.
Our lives and our worlds change so fast, it is hard to believe we matter to our employers, our neighbours, who may not speak our language, and even our families. How do you and I KNOW we matter to God? Hasn't the divine got got too much to do already?
Yet that is what God promises and there are glimpses of those promises come to life if we choose to look.
Shoppers have inundated their 'favourite' store with furious calls after discovering that a learning disabled man was sacked for eating six grapes dropped in the bottom of a shopping trolley. The Reading Evening Post gives details of the campaign which resulted in a petition with a hundred signatures presented to the shop, in an attempt to save the man's job. We do not yet know the outcome. But we now know that human beings are capable of compassion for society's most vulnerable. Christ had the same attitude.
Perhaps there is an antidote to my modern anxiety? And perhaps it begins with asking for that divine strength to let go of all that worry, next time I am in a long and multi-coloured, multi cultural bank queue.
Clare Catford presents BBC Radio Berkshire’s Sunday morning programme on 104.1, 104.4, 95.4 and 94.6FM