Thought for the Day

Good morning,
If you’re feeling in need of a little nostalgia for the 1980s, then the film, Wham! 10 Days in China that opened in cinemas this week might be just the thing. It’s a documentary about the 10 day tour of China that Wham!, featuring George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, made in 1985. They were the first pop act to visit the Communist country and it was devised by their manager as a way of garnering publicity for Wham!. In that it was ultimately successful. But as the documentary shows, there were other more profound consequences too from this encounter between cultures.
In an interview this week Andrew Ridgeley talked about a behind-the-scenes clash between band members about China. He recalled that backing singer, Shirlie Kemp, was unhappy. At the time she told the music press that the tour was unfair to the Chinese because it threw a spotlight on freedoms they didn’t have. But for Ridgeley, it showed the Chinese that Western values were about freedom and a chance to fulfil dreams and aspirations.
The Chinese agreed to let Wham! Into the country as evidence that it was opening up but the concerts were tightly policed. They have taken a similar approach to Christianity, creating an official Protestant and an official Catholic church, both regulated by the Government. Even then they view Christianity with great suspicion. When I visited official churches a few years ago, for example, my group was followed by government officials everywhere. Other Christian churches do exist, though they operate underground. And like those who follow other religions in China, their members face abuse and constant harassment.
Part of the tension over Christianity is that even though there is evidence that Christianity first arrived in China around 625 in the Christian era, and today there are at least 44 million Christians, probably more, Chinese officials see Christianity as Western and alien to their culture.
But Christianity does not belong to one nation or one continent; God does not have a passport identifying his nationality. It is as much for the Chinese as it is for anyone else. It offers dreams and aspirations, as Andrew Ridgeley said of music. But it needs a place to start.
Four years after the Wham! tour, one of those who attended a show at the Beijing Workers’ Gymnasium, Cui Juan wrote a song Nothing To My Name, that became an anthem for student protesters at Tiananmen Square.
What begins as a small lifting of the curtain to another world, can be a route to calling for far greater change. It may well cause some initial frustration, as Shirlie from Wham! feared, but it can lead to seeking something, whether music or faith that offers meaning, sometimes triggering a desire for liberty. It’s a chink of light in the darkness.

30 JULY 26

Good Morning,
‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people:’ these beautiful words from Isaiah open the Seven Weeks of Consolation which begin now, and lead up to the Jewish New Year.
Yet only days ago was the bleakest date in the Jewish calendar, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, marking the destruction of Jerusalem.
The embers of the fires that devoured God’s temple were still red hot in memory; the surrounding hills, once forested, were devastated. Yet the rabbis insisted on proclaiming Isaiah’s words of comfort. How dared they? How could they be so brazen!
Would we say, “Take comfort!” while the flames near Madrid and Bordeaux are burning, bringing horror to the people, fire-fighters, animals?
But the prophetic message was not: ‘Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay.’
Rather, it is ‘We must look on disaster, then take hope, not by turning away, but by living differently. ‘Prepare a highway for God,’ Isaiah continues: ‘Make the world better,’ he demands.
I thought of his words as I cut turfs to help Tracy and Roger Mclachlan rewild their 91 acres at Bac Dhub in the Highlands. We were building leaky dams to raise the water level of a stream so that it would rewet and restore the peatland. In short, we were doing what beavers do naturally. ‘The peat will regrow one millimetre per year,’ Tracy explained. ‘But it’ll absorb more carbon than trees.’ It’s her pledge to the future.
I compare that one millimetre per year to the forest fires raging forward and shudder. Where’s your comfort, Isaiah?
But I know that countless local groups worldwide are saying: ‘This is our place, our park, trees, birds. We’re determined to do everything we can for our world, our children, our future.’
I speak to Simon Oldridge, Co-founder of the National Emergency Briefing UK, in which the country’s leading experts on security, health, food and weather tell the climate crisis as it is. The film of the briefing has already been screened to over 2,000 groups.
‘People feel better when they’ve seen it,’ Simon explains. They say, ‘The issues aren’t being boxed away. There are things we can do. People feel motivated.’
Action from the bottom up is great, Simon acknowledges. ‘But we need urgent, galvanising leadership from top down,’ because this is about everything: energy, agriculture, how we eat, travel, insulate homes.
That’s Isaiah’s message. ‘Look up and see!’ he insists. This is God’s world. Take comfort, not by turning away, but by treating creation with the love, justice and respect it demands.

28 JULY 26

27 JULY 26