Blogging for the World

This is a great piece from the Church Times Archive by Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham (his blog can be read here and you can follow him on Twitter here...)

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Mrs Partington lived at Sid­mouth on the seafront. The Revd Sydney Smith records her gallantry with a mop and pail during the great storm of 1813: “The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.”

Confronted by a new wave of communications technologies, some Christians will reach for the mop and pail. Others will just keep calm and carry on. A few will go sailing, seeing the Atlantic as the way to a new world.

New media are the greatest quan­tum leap in communications since the invention of printing. Networked computers are now connecting and reconnecting people all over the world in radical new ways.

This is visibly changing the course of history. Time magazine’s most in­fluential person of 2011 is Wael Ghonim, the 30-year-old Google ex­ecutive who, over a few weeks, mobilised 12 million people to topple the Mubarak régime. He used Face­book, which, if it were a nation, would be the third largest in the world.

The world of social media is large and complex, but three kinds of site are driving the revolution.

Social-network websites such as Facebook connect people, enabling them to share information and stories. MySpace enables people without special technical knowledge to pub­lish personal websites.

Resource-sharing sites such as YouTube publish videos produced anywhere from Hollywood studios to people’s phones; while Flickr and Picasa specialise in still images.

Blogs are websites for personal stories, writing, and comment. The world has roughly 6500 daily news­papers and 200,000 periodicals; 129 million book titles have ever been pub­lished. There are about 156 million active blogs in the world. A really successful religious paper­back might just achieve sales of 20,000 copies. My blog, over three-and-a-half years, has received more than half a million hits.

Twitter is a “micro-blog” — a site for comments and links from other media in a tiny format of up to 140 characters, called Tweets. It pub­lishes instant news, images, and thoughts. Some six-and-a-half million people followed the royal wedding on Twitter.

Social-media sites are en­gaging unprecedented numbers of people, but what is really revolutionary about them, along with the way they all interconnect, is that they give anyone who is con­nected an equal op­portunity to par­ticipate.

The editor of the Manchester Guardian C. P. Scott wrote in 1921: “a newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly.” In the days of hot metal, you could say anything freely as long as you happened to own a press. Now anyone who is networked can publish anything from home.

The mushrooms are no longer in the dark, and they can talk back, with radical results. The key to using these media is to interact personally and to engage others in conversations, not to shout at them. New media are in­herently anti-hierarchical — some bishops may not take kindly to a world where nobody cares who any of them are, in which they are only as good as their last job.

Christians are the Body of Christ, the Word made flesh. The Lord com­missioned them to be good news. This involves communicating in any way we can. Churches with printing presses led the last revolution; so what are we going to do about this one? We could always do nothing, or perhaps sit it out on our spotty behinds, sullen and cautious, with occasional bouts of whining and nostalgia.

There are indeed dangers lurking out on the ocean. It contains so much information that getting what you need can be like trying to drink under a shower. Privacy is being re­defined in terms that we don’t yet under­stand with confidence. Instant com­munication can stoke up fire­storms of bad behaviour.

The fastest-growing take-up of Face­book has been among people over 55, mainly to get back in touch with former associates.

Every community needs a camp­fire around which it can gather to share stories, build relationships, and make decisions. There is an emer-ging trend among US voluntary as­socia­tions, including churches, to do their internal communications, in­cluding contact with the house­bound, through Facebook.

Twitter, meanwhile, is a good way to collect news, as well as snippets of personal expression, as all the world’s media outlets now use it as their primary broadcast medium for hot information.

Does triviality matter? Frankly, most human conversations are less weighty than the Gettysburg address. Quirky observations and chit-chat are the staple diet of all social gather­ings, including Twitter and Face­book.

If you have more heavyweight observations to offer or stories to tell, start a blog. Almost all serious leaders in politics and commerce, along with a few of the clergy, are using blogs to communicate and develop vision, comment, and ideas.

In Social Media, authenticity is gold dust. Many people expected the internet to be dominated by anonym-ous or pseudonymous bigots, but in general this has not happened, and Facebook goes to great lengths to pre­vent this on its site.

The key to social media is to be yourself. Christians who believe in the Word made flesh should have faith to engage, as themselves, freely with others. There are one or two con­texts, such as confession, which call for anonymity, but, in principle, people who refuse to take personal responsibility for their words almost always detract from their authen­ticity.

Any revolution contains many reasons to be anxious, but I feel optimistic about Christians’ using social media. We have a gospel to proclaim. If it is true, it should be able to stand up for itself in the open market. The New Testament con­tains good examples of Paul and others preaching in the streets, with­out the privilege of controlling the scene, and achieving great things.

Christians have much to say using social media because churches con­tain many ordinary people with en­gaging stories to tell. Now they have the means to do so personally and conveniently. The more they get out there and speak freely, the richer a view of Christianity the world will get, to replace the two-dimensional retro soap that Fleet Street makes of Church.

The earliest Christianity flou­rished on the open streets of a pluralistic world. The ocean is wide. The possibility of getting lost or drowned is always there, but this is a time for courage and im­a-gination, not mop and pail.

Thomas - the greatest apostle of them all

Victor Meldrew’s cry of “I don’t belieeeve it!” from the hugely popular tv series “One Foot in the Grave” struck a reassuring chord with many in this country, characturing perfectly the now infamous British reserve!  People who loved the series found an ally in him, through his frustration with the modern world, it’s technology, and with life especially in retirement.  His catch-phrase would most often get an airing when he was forced to face the things he disliked, distrusted, and doubted.  It didn’t matter whether that was people or things that make the contemporary world much more immediate, perhaps even things that you and I take so much for granted, like the telephone.  His quiet frustrations turn so quickly to ‘I don’t belieeeve it!’ exposing what he really felt.

It’s true though.  W e don’t like to show others that we cannot cope with life.  So often the life we show the outside world day to day with our work colleges, family and friends, is often one of calm in controlness.  But from time to time we can have our feathers ruffled by the simplest things like a conversation with a friend, an article in the newspaper, or the video not working, and it’s then that we show that underneath we maybe struggling to make sense of our world with it’s changing patterns of family life, society, values, politics and dare I say faith.

Belief and uncertainty or doubt are the yin-yang, the polar opposites, of all of our lives at one point or another. Many who are desperate to believe to share religious faith, wrestle with doubt, question reality, and yet can’t bring themselves to put to one side something so dearly cherished. Many cannot live with faith and yet cannot live without it.

But is doubt a bad thing?  Personally, I see doubt as not only healthy but essential to the Christian life. If more religious people doubted, perhaps the world would be a slightly saner place?

Even as I speak there is news of yet another Iraqi suicide bomber blowing himself up along with any fellow Iraqi or Coalition forces unfortunate enough to be within striking distance. I wonder how many suicide bombers would blow themselves up if they doubted the promises of a martyr’s paradise?

The opposite of doubt is certainty, and yet there can be no room for it in any religion. Give a man or woman certainty and there can be no room for faith, for faith is hope in what is not seen. We can live faith for it is open, endless and eternal. Does not ‘hope spring eternal’? Give certainty and we risk sowing the seeds of arrogance, bigotry, and fundamentalism.

Those with faith, I believe stand much more chance of living in harmony because they recognise within others a seeking after truth and a quest for answers to those illusive eternal questions; the truly faithful recognise that faith is but a tradition to build on and live by.

This Sunday's Gospel reading mentions Thomas - one of Jesus’ 12 disciples - encounter with the Risen Christ.  Imagine the scene, he, like the other disciples, was suddenly thrown into fear and confusion after the man he knew to be God’s son and capable of the most amazing miracles who was set to re-establish Israel both politically and spiritually on the world stage - driving out the Roman occupiers of the land and restoring the eternal presence of God with His people - this man had been captured, arrested, and condemned to death on the cross.  His mission, his vision all had gone wrong.  The day after these terrible events, other disciples of Jesus come excitedly shouting about having seen him alive.  For Thomas, all talk of Jesus his leader, Master, saviour and friend, rising from the dead was just cheap talk, a slap in the face, bittersweet words of comfort in the face of shocking grief.  Could you blame him for doubting?  I certainly can’t.

Thomas is also known as the greatest disciple.  He later meets with the risen Jesus himself, seeing the scarred body with his own eyes and touching it with his own hands.  There is no question, this is Jesus.  Thomas who has withheld himself utterly from the hope Jesus offers, imprisoned by doubt, gives himself utterly, and finds himself freed and he utters the profoundest statement of faith - my Lord and my God, as in the risen Jesus Thomas recognised both.  Thomas finds faith, through belief transformed by doubt.

There are many today who stand at the threshold of faith and say with Victor Meldrew and St. Thomas - I don’t believe it; who ask the profoundest questions; is it all true?  Can we believe it?  The Risen Jesus does not ask any of us to believe in him.  If we begin to explore the depths of the Christian faith we are not suddenly asked to sign on the dotted line in blood assenting to believing everything about the faith - we are not asked by Jesus to verify or falsify what the Bible says as FACT.  Neither though can we simply place what the Christian holds dear into the same category as belief in Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, beautiful stories that enrich but do not change our lives.  Jesus says to us as he said to Thomas and those first disciples ‘Come follow me!’ and that means you if you have lots of faith or little; with questions answered and thousands not.  Faith is not about certainty or lack of doubt, but it is about hope and the future.  Hope is what Thomas saw in the Risen Jesus - my Lord and my God - and it is what he offers us when we come to him in honest doubt today.  So what about the Christian faith, can any of what we claim be true - I don’t believe it, but I have faith that it is.

Doubt/Faith

Here's a Wordle of this Sunday's Gospel reading from John 20:19-31...

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.'

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

A six-year-old girl writes a letter to God. And the Archbishop of Canterbury answers

This is lifted directly from Damien Thompson's religion blog in the Telegraph blog and I had to share it because it moved me to tears...

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There’s a charming article in today’s Times by Alex Renton, a non-believer who sends his six-year-old daughter Lulu to a Scottish church primary school. Her teachers asked her to write the following letter: “To God, How did you get invented?” The Rentons were taken aback: “We had no idea that a state primary affiliated with a church would do quite so much God,” says her father. He could have told Lulu that, in his opinion, there was no God; or he could have pretended that he was a believer. He chose to do neither, instead emailing her letter to the Scottish Episcopal Church (no reply), the Presbyterians (ditto) and the Scottish Catholics (a nice but theologically complex answer). For good measure, he also sent it to “the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace” – and this was the response:

Dear Lulu,
Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It’s a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –

‘Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected.

Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – specially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I’m really like.

But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!’
And then he’d send you lots of love and sign off.

I know he doesn’t usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf. Lors of love from me too.
+Archbishop Rowan

I think this letter reveals a lot about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sort of theology – more, indeed, than many of his lectures or agonised Synod addresses. I’d be interested to know whether readers of this blog think he did a good job of answering Lulu’s question.

But what the letter also tells us is that the Archbishop took the trouble to write a really thoughtful message – unmistakably his work and not that of a secretary – to a little girl. “Well done, Rowan!” was the reaction of Alex Renton’s mother, and I agree.

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Well done Rowan indeed! This letter reveals the profoundest of theologies expressed in the simplest of terms. It is written from the heart and from a father whose son will continue to ask the same profound questions that we all do from time to time...

God Grant Justice...

I have been gripped by a story of humanity, faith, perseverence, and hope this week. I am of course referring to the rescue effort to free the 33 miners from underground in the San Jose copper mine in Chile.

What was it about this story that so captivated the us? Was it tenacity? Was it human perseverance? Was it engineering skill? Was it the miners’ faith and trust in God? For me, in all honesty, it was all of those and more. It seemed so unlikely that those miners were alive at all. It seemed unlikely that those miners would ever resurface. It seemed unlikely that the miners would be together emotionally in any way and yet, against all odds, their story - a rescue into the pitch black underworld snatching back the stranded one by one, has gripped us all. The rescue moved me because it is a story of the triumph of good over evil, of hope over despair, of life over death.

The other story that has moved me this week is the counterpoint to that of the Chillean miners. This week the inquest opened into the deaths of 52 people when bombs ripped through tube trains and a bus in three locations on 7th July 2005. Seeking justice for the dead and injured, the coroner’s court has heard harrowing evidence about the extent and arbitrary nature of the attacks, but also stories of incredible courage as civilians and members of the emergency services ignored warnings about returning to the bomb blasted scenes to search out the injured and the dying. As the carnage of those attacks is turned over one shard of metal at a time, we notice again and again the hand of human compassion reaching out to embrace, to hold, to heal and console.

This morning’s Gospel reading sounds like it is straightforwardly a parable about prayer. The Gospel writer Luke even tells us so - Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart, and yet as we take a closer look there is more to this story than first meets the eye.

The judge in the story, then as now, has extraordinary power. He is the last port of call to administer justice according to the laws of God. The judge in the story exercises not the law of God, but is a law unto himself as he is not willing to hear the widow’s case.

The widow, throughout the pages of scripture, is a vulnerable victim - she could not inherit her late husband’s estate. Widows were dependent on the generosity and support of others. All the widow wanted was justice, but the judge flouted the judicial protocol of the day by refusing to even hear her. Eventually he relents though because she is so persistent. The judge does the right thing for the wrong reason. Jesus’ story says that if the unjust can be persuaded to act justly, the point surely is that those who pray to a just and loving God should never give up calling for justice in their cause, because the one who is righteous, namely God, can be trusted.

God is the protector of those like the widow and the judge of those who persecute them. As I read and reread the passage three words stood out - God grant justice. Yet waiting for God to grant justice can so often be the hardest part.

To experience the justice of God, we must place ourselves within the will, within the life and in the presence of God. The widow receives justice from the judge because she makes it her business to be in the judge’s face. She is constantly in his presence. Similarly to receive the justice of God, we must be open to the presence of God. There is an inextricable connection Jesus seems to be saying between persistent prayer and the justice of God.

God is like the judge in the parable, in that his justice is unexpected and surprising. God’s justice stands contrary to what we expect, desire or deserve. God is a god who not only forgives a murderer like Moses who killed an Egyptian guard or Paul who persecuted and murdered early followers of Jesus, but uses them to reveal something of His loving purposes to the world. The rescue of the Chillean miners touched me so much because this daring mission brought these men back to the surface alive. In turn it reminded me of the God of justice who engineers a gripping rescue through Christ’s life, death and resurrection, into the pitch black underworld of our lives, snatching us, the stranded, back one by one, back into the presence of His Father whether we feel we deserve to be there or not. God doesn’t write us off as a mission not worth executing, but but instead He goes the extra mile to search us out and bring us back to himself in love.

So often our lives can be torn apart like a bomb blast. Our hearts warped and twisted - whether of our own doing or through the actions of others - and the God of Justice gently and slowly helps us sort through those experiences, offering us the nail-pierced hand of perfect compassion - reaching out to embrace, to hold, to heal and console. To plead our cause in prayer to this God is to not find us ignored by Him. Waiting for that justice to come is painful, but God assures us, it will come.

Three words stand out from the Gospel - God grant justice. To know God’s justice is to know God. His justice is not a piece of clothing that He puts on and takes off like his favourite jumper. It is who He is. But to know God, we must know His Son Jesus Christ; not know of Him, not know about Him in an intellectual way; but to know Him as the one who asks us to follow Him and to discover more about His God and Father through what we see and experience as much as through what He says about Him. All too often though I hear - I believe in God, but He hasn’t answered my prayer. But what were you praying? Are you prepared to get in His face with your request day and night? And who is this God you believe in? I believe in the law of gravity but it will not save my immortal soul and does not love me into new and eternal life.

Friends it is not possible to call ourselves Christians and not in some way be following Jesus. For we are not Christian if we are not in some way going deeper into the life of faith - discovering more about God through what we see, experience and discover with others, as much as through what Jesus teaches in the scriptures.

Friends, if this morning you long for a faith that is more than an intellectual exercise or assent; if you long to discover more about a God who longs to help make sense of the broken fragments of your life and transform for good; if in your deepest being you long to be taken from the darkness into the light and love of His presence then let me assure you that you are placing yourself within the will, within the life and in the presence of the God of justice. If this is you this morning and you want to know this more for yourself then pray with me these words:

Holy God, faithful and unchanging: enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth, and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love, that we may truly worship you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God,now and for ever. Amen.

What makes us rich?

This week 38 US billionaires have pledged to give at least 50% of their wealth to charity either now or after they die. It is part of a a campaign called The Giving Pledge. Some of these 38 will not be unknown to some of you and include Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Lucas and Michael Bloomberg. They are committing time and their money to causes such education and healthcare for all.

Last week we began to explore what makes us rich. We heard Jesus tell us that he hasn’t a problem as such with wealth and possessions as such. His problem is when we allow them to lull us into believing that they can make us feel independent. It promises us that we can transcend the everyday vulnerabilities and needs that remind us that we're mortal, created beings ultimately and always dependent on others and, most especially, on God.

We have pretty much bought into the assumption that equates money with personal worth and yet Jesus reminds us again this morning that our to riches should be found in God and He challenges us to fill our lives with things that have eternal value, ‘...unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also....’ We all have to make a choice between earthly and heavenly possessions - where do we trust? In possessions in this world or treasure in heaven? No wonder the unknown author of Hebrews celebrated Abraham - not just for his trust in God to provide him with descendants but also for his willingness to leave behind all the securities of his past life and to place his faith and trust exclusively in God.

What is faith? We talk a lot about it as Christians, and we speak about it as though it was something that everyone understands; as though it was something as tangible as money in my pocket. Faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. Faith provides a guarantee, the peg on which we hang our hopes. Because of faith, our hope is no flimsy dreaming; it has substance and reality. Faith provides a ground to which we may hold fast. But that grounding also points us toward the future and gives us courage to move forward, launching out into the unknown. Faith moves us forward. By faith we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to the last truth….

The author of the letter to the Hebrews is not interested in leaving faith as some sort of abstract concept. He does more than provide a definition. He skillfully calls to mind stories that clothe these two dimensions of faithfulness with flesh and bones and sinew and breath. To know fully what faithfulness is, we must remember the stories about Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abram and Sarah. In the lives of this couple especially, two dimensions of faith shine forth. They show us that faithfulness requires both holding fast and moving forward.
First, faithfulness is holding fast to the promises of God. God had promised Sarah and Abraham countless descendants and a land that God would reveal to them. But both promises were "things not seen.” 

Would God give these wanderers from Ur descendants as numerous as stars in the sky even in old age? That is why Sarah laughed so hard the first time she overheard their visitors tell Abraham he was soon to be a father. That is why their son's name would be Isaac, "Laughter." His name marked God's joy in upending human expectations.



Abraham and Sarah also held fast to a second promise of land. That promise was equally impossible, for these two were wanderers, pilgrims who set out not knowing their destination. Even when they arrived in the promised land of Canaan, they lived like strangers in a foreign country, in tents, always ready to pack up and move. 

But they did more than hold fast to this promise. They knew that the promise of God is also a call, and so they lived out the second dimension of faithfulness, that of moving forward. They lived in tents because they were not ultimately called to the land of Canaan. That was not their final destination. The journey was part of their obedience, but Canaan was not their home. They were looking for another city, the city with foundations not made with hands, "whose architect and builder is God.”

They did not receive that promise in their lifetime. They only saw the promise on the horizon, beckoning, calling them onward in their journey. Because they experienced the promise as a call, they held fast to the promises of God, and they also moved forward in response to God's call. They knew that faithfulness is a form of courage that launches out into the unknown, moving into the future with God, knowing the future is God's. 

So how do we measure up to these two dimensions of faith? Some of us find it easy to "hold fast." We know the stories—stories of the Bible, stories of faithfulness and sacrifice. These stories matter because the stories we tell and make our own give us our bearings. They help us work out where we stand, who we are, and what we ought to do, but we find it harder to "move forward" into the future. We are not that fond of tents, and we travel with lots of baggage.

Others of us have little trouble moving forward. We like to camp. We travel light. We ask, "Where can we join what God is doing now?" We are a people on the way, on the move, knowing that the future belongs to God, but we need help "holding fast," learning the story of God's faithfulness to promise. We need to know of loyalty and endurance that persevere even when the path is rough and long. Friends we need both dimensions of faith. We need to hold fast to the promises of God and to move forward into the future which is God's.

Beneath it all, however, there is a greater and more powerful but unseen reality for us all that’s not about being billionaire or giving away your fortune. I wonder what drove those rich to do as they did? To generate headlines? To do the right thing? Or because they felt a discontent deep within them?

We all sense that discontent from time to time. We're all homesick for what we cannot see but what we know, deep down, awaits us. In our lives, we have glimpses of what's in store for us in every moment of love, of light, of peace we experience here and now. And we have glimpses in every moment, every taste, of justice and healing in our lives and in the life of our communities, glimpses of the "new Jerusalem," a home that is shining and beautiful to which God calls us all. Amen.

Tears in heaven...

...seems and appropriate song to be playing today - the 5th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London.

I remember seeing the footage on the tv, seeing busses ripped open like sardine tins. Carnage. And I was nowhere near what was being shown on my tv.

How would I feel if caught up in it all? I have no idea, but I feel outrage at the fact that it could happen there, at Ground Zero, in Israel, Iraq or Afghanistan. The fact that we can do these things to one another in the name of religion or politics, or supposed freedom.

I am especially moved by the stories of people affected by this sort of tragedy and who find it withing themselves the power and/or need to forgive their perpetrators as the only way to move on and heal.

I was particularly moved by Gill Hick's story, from the Forgiveness Project website. She was caught in the blast on the Piccadilly line train and miraculously survived but lost both her legs due to the explosion.:

I wish the world would Stop – just stop and give us all the time to see what is happening. Why are we killing each other – everyday? It may sound naïve, simple, maybe too simple to take seriously – but – I don’t understand why we are ‘accepting’ and ‘tolerating’ war and destruction and famine and poverty and oppression. When will the final bomb explode? When will enough be enough?

The cycle has to stop – I can not hate the person who has done this to me; the cycle must end with me. I don’t see it as my place to forgive the act, yet I am compelled to understand – to offer an open heart, to try to hear and ask Why?

As I lay waiting, trapped in what resembled a train carriage – but was now a blackened, smoke filled indescribable ‘room’ of destruction and devastation – I was able to think. This period of time, some 40 minutes, was to prove to be the most insightful and blessed gift that I am yet to receive, apart from the ultimate gift of a second chance at life. As the blood poured from my body (despite the scarf I had tied on each leg as a tourniquet to stem the flow) I felt incredibly weak, fighting to hold on, to survive. There were two voices holding a very powerful, conflicting conversation in my head – one voice willing me to hold on, to remember those who love me and need me here, the other calling me softly to let go, to drift away into a peaceful deep and permanent sleep. Both sides were stating their case – asking me to choose between life and death. I thought about all the things that mattered to me –my then partner and now husband Joe, my brother Graham, my family, my dear friends – I wanted to spare them this pain. They gave me the strength to choose life. I made a decision and the conversation ended. I wasn’t going to die in the carriage, not there on that day; I had to wait for a light.

Help did come and each person who ’saved’ me did so not knowing who I was. It didn’t matter if I was rich or poor, black or white, female or male, muslim or jew, religious or not – what mattered to each of them – the police, the ambulance, the paramedics, the surgeons, the nurses –was that I was a life that hung in the balance, a life they were so desperate to save. I arrived at the hospital as ‘One Unknown’ – an estimated female.

When I awoke I was euphoric to be alive and to have survived. I feel like a very blessed person – filled with emotions of love and compassion and joy. I am able to appreciate life – but a different life than I had before, one that is rich and fulfilled and not consumed by anger and hatred.

I am committed to building Peace – to endeavour to eradicate ignorance in the world and to encourage mutual understanding. I don’t want to accept terrorism, we all deserve to live in a world that is not plagued by war and famine and poverty and oppression. We can change that – each and every one of us – each ‘one unknown’.

She has discovered an ability that most of us crave. To find our lives over-flowing with compassion and joy. This I believe is the power of forgiveness, the power to recognise each other not as 'unknown' but known to each other, and for those of us of faith, by God... Not the God of terror, or in whose name war is waged, but the God of love who accepted death, and transformed it into life and hope. I believe that every time that someone carries out an act of violence on another, on one of God's children... there are tears in heaven...



Forgiveness lies at the heart of the teaching of Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that I too might forgive like Gill Hicks.