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There we were on the Friday before Christmas day, sitting in an Italian restaurant with perhaps 40 others. We all looked impeccably middle class, white and, I guessed, were all having a meal prior to the start of the Christmas concert in the neighbouring St Paul's church in the jewellery quarter of Birmingham. At 7:15 the groups of people in the restaurant started to move out, went down the street a hundred yards, headed for the main entrance to the Church and went in. We carried punch and cushions to mitigate the effect of prolonged sitting on the hard oak pews. That night the choir ‘Ex Cathedra' were performing for the fourth time that week a programme of Christmas songs, cantatas and carols by candlelight. They sang brilliantly as always, in Latin, Spanish, Czech, English and French. As always, the audience of 500 joined lustily in the last carol as the lights gradually came up. As an encore (there is always an encore) the choir sang the song from their latest CD which was being played on Classic FM so much this December. And yet... the people going from the restaurant and into the church were not all the same. Just in our group of 9 people, there was one who has a car repair business and whose wife provides B & B from their house, another who used to be a social worker, her husband who did designs for technical publications, a divorce lawyer and so on. And even that was not all. For the car repairer tells bad jokes, loves to cook and will exchange recipes with you. The extrovert retired social worker loves films and dancing and her husband, the technical designer, in his spare time played guitar with his band at weddings and birthdays. Then there is the somewhat reserved, retired lawyer whose role was to create documents and understand laws of crossword complexity but who is now starting to use words to different effect. All had lived lives which had involved children or not, which had been touched in very different ways by death and illness, by disappointment and by success. So what brought us together at the concert? Well it was not shared belief. Some were churchgoers, others lapsed Christians, some had never really been involved with any faith. The nature of our appreciation of the music varied from very informed to something which only skimmed its surface. But then it was more than just a musical experience. Did we enjoy the occasion, the sentiment, the candlelight and the perhaps false memory of a happier time or a wish that life could always be as certain? In fact, although we were a group and one of many groups there, we were not a homogeneous group of people. Some would be able to talk far more easily with one than another: would have more things in common. And so we were a group almost despite our differences, but a group which enjoyed being together for that evening. And yet... there are groups which define themselves by what others do not have in common with them. Whether they are white or black or of a particular class, they stand for the exclusion of others who are different. They are often loud in their views. Those who are not like that do not make a fuss about their own inclusiveness and so when the others start blaming another group of people for their misfortunes, it is all too easy for the rest of us to say nothing. It is not in our nature to demand to be heard. But we should, because arguably the combination of hatred of others and conformity with the views of those having the loudest voices has caused most of the worst human atrocities seen in the last century and which are already marking this. But being a group does not have to mean this. It can mean instead an openness of spirit which can thrive on difference and which rejects that meanness of spirit which ultimately can cause the break-down of society. Perhaps this should be the subject of my new year's resolution. |