Undercover agent
I WAS born in Salisbury, not far from Stonehenge. Speaking in Salisbury Cathedral recently, I was reminded of the connection I feel to this ancient English landscape with its agricultural abundance and deep roots in localised ritual practice, beliefs (orthodox and other), persistent practicality, and hybrid lineage.
That the Anglo-Saxon identity is in itself multicultural is often submerged in the fierce debates about who or what is English. Even Salisbury’s astonishing cathedral spire, celebrated as one of the glories of English gothic architecture, is rooted in French design.
Being there reminds me that I’m a Wiltshire Moonraker, descended from those 18th-century smugglers who told excise officials that their night-time activity was not (of course, Your Honour) rolling barrels of French brandy hidden below the surface of the village pond, but rather using hay rakes to gather in the reflection of the moon. With a laugh and an eye-roll at such simple country folk, the officials moved on —and the brandy was later recovered for sale.
Brave words
SMUGGLING (though, much more disastrously, of people) reminds me that many churches and communities have just marked Sanctuary Sunday, as part of Refugee Week. This year’s theme was courage: not so much eye-catching and perilous individual acts of courage, but courage as an everyday activity, for all of us. Like having a courageous conversation with someone very different from you, or organising a food event or — given World Cup fever — a game of football.
The Refugee Council’s guidance for those marking the week encouraged conversation, observing that it’s normal to have differing views on immigration, forced migration, emigration, or the expectation that a country will offer asylum. Despite this, it takes courage to state your view in a way that invites debate rather than shutting it down. And courage to check facts in case they don’t support your instinctive view or settled belief — at either end of this often fractious discussion.
Passion playing
JUNE is also the anniversary (on the 14th) of the Soviet deportation, in 1944, of Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians to Siberia. Each year, St James’s is full of the Baltic States diaspora, joined these days by representatives from the Ukrainian Embassy. This year’s preacher told the congregation that, while sin can be forgiven, it is a category mistake to think that evil can be. Evil is to be confronted, exorcised, faced down — as all totalitarian lies must be.
Strong theology for dangerous times in a Europe that forgets its past at our peril. In a speech just days after the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, it was the composer Leonard Bernstein who famously pledged: “Our sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
Running on empty
A FEW weeks ago, for reasons I’m now struggling to remember, I started running. I try to run at times when there are fewer people around, although one of our homeless guests laughed like a drain as I wobbled past him early one morning. I swore him to secrecy when I saw him later at church. “Mum’s the word,” he said conspiratorially, and now winks theatrically every time I see him.
I’ve never been a runner: normally, any sport I’ve participated in has been a game — squash, particularly — or long-distance cycling, but I’m committing to this for my health, both physical and mental. One of the features of the “Couch to 5K” app (for me, at least, the “couch” part is very accurate) is that you listen to a coach of your choice in your earphones as you’re running. My choice is the Olympian heptathlete gold medallist Dame Denise Lewis, not because I will ever have any chance of approaching her level of fitness, but because she is extremely calm, encouraging, and persistent.
I often run around St James’s Park, asking all the ducks, pelicans, geese, and squirrels why I thought this was a good idea as I make my way through the 50-minute programme. I talk to Denise, too. When she asks, “How are you feeling today?” my reply is sometimes unprintable. But I love that she answers her own questions and is relentlessly positive. “What’s the weather like?” she asks, swiftly followed by “Hopefully it’s great running weather, but if it isn’t, congratulate yourself that you’ve got out here — you’ve got this.”
Earlier this week, Dame Denise said, “Well done, you’ve completed your programme for today. Don’t forget to stretch out when you get home — and why not give yourself a treat for doing so well?” “Great,” I thought, “she’s going to suggest a croissant.” I could taste it. “I like,” she said, “to treat myself with a lovely hot shower.”
Changing futures
BUT hope springs eternal when the twenty-somethings are around. A new programme has just launched at St James’s, offering an 18-month programme for young people working in different areas of society: civil society, business, music, art and heritage, environment.
There are many leadership and changemaker curriculums out there, but this one is named after the influential abolitionist Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, who was baptised at St James’s in 1773. As the new director of the Cugoano Changemaker scheme has written, the Cugoano name is not decorative branding. It asks what it means to face injustice honestly, refuse silence, and act with responsibility in the systems we inhabit. It gives the programme a discipline: leadership is not so much about image, confidence or visibility, but care, judgement, action, and accountability.
God speed to them: we will need these leaders as soon as they can come.
Supporting casts
AND, just before the June solstice, a new five-year partnership has begun between St James’s and the choral ensemble The Sixteen. The Sixteen, and the inspiring young singers of the Genesis Sixteen, have a new London home from which to travel the world, offering excellence in music to generations who might not feel that this music can be for them. And church and choir commit themselves together to commissioning new composers to write contemporary sacred music for the singing of our faith.
In a relentlessly dispiriting news cycle, those of us involved in community-building and consecrated storytelling have a duty to grow in one another the resilience to resist the narratives that so easily take hold when we’re afraid or insecure. And, in the spirit of music-makers like Bernstein, to do this even more determinedly than before.
The Revd Lucy Winkett is Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, and Priest-in-Charge of St Pancras Church, Euston Road, in the diocese of London.