It is timely to upload this just a matter of weeks after violent Racist and Islamophobic riots threatened to spread like wildfire through the cities of the nation. I would add that coming from one of the provinces, visiting London for a holiday is a shock to the system. One more contextual comment: we do church, Lizzie better than me. That suggests that we are people of faith. For both of us, the friendship that God has with us defines who we are, sometimes at great cost.
I write this on the last day of a week’s holiday. Not in some hot, luxurious resort, or even in the lush countryside of the UK. Oh no. Instead we left our provincial town on the south coast of England and travelled into London to stay in our daughters house and cat-sat while her and partner basked in the sun of the Dominican Republic.
Our – sorry, my – provincial mindset had painted a picture of what to expect in London. My fragile relationship with anxiety then enlarged the images to become a gross distortion of the reality. Thoughts rattled around my head for days before we left. Is it safe in London? How will we get around? What about the crowds? And other less savoury questions.
What I discovered was sensory overload and not just the views and skyline. A kaleidoscope of faces and colour, of sounds and languages, and the fragrance of food from all over the world. Kindness in the diversity of people and lives lived in the bustle of a major city. People helping each other on and off the bus, standing to let a woman or an old man have the seat; music rich and deep from the merging of different cultures; food, a cacophony of tastes and smells my nose, my tongue and even the skin on my hands were overcome by; the adventure of trying to work out where somebody was from by the language they spoke – I failed miserably. And families, all spending time together, having fun together, sightseeing as we were, eating out as we were; mothers berating their children, as we would have done ours; fathers kicking a ball in the park with their boys, as I often did with ours; the grandma of Asian descent playing a game with her grandson on the DLR to keep him occupied. We smiled.
And then there was, and is today, the universal sadness – the old man struggling to get on the DLR, his stick almost a hindrance rather than a help; the far-too-many homeless on the streets, in the train stations, on the platforms of the underground. We were surprised that there were so many women – I have no idea why; everybody on their phones, most with headphones, as the world and humanity passed them by; food banks everywhere, just as it is back home – poverty and addictions are no respecters of person; the almost constant blast of sirens – if it isn’t an ambulance or three, then it is a police car or four. And I wonder about where they are going and who is in distress, whether that is in London or back home in Gosport.
A proper potpourri of life, the only difference being the location and what that location carries within it. My memories of living in London as a child are greyscale. Black and white and no colour. As I write, I am strangely proud of being born and bred a Londoner, not because of how it was then, but because of what London is today; a cosmopolitan city up there with the best of them! There is a vibrancy, aliveness in the city that a small town in the provinces can’t match. While a city reverberates with so much variety and diversity, life away from the city can become beige, bland, tasteless, greyscale, one-dimensional in comparison. Could I live in London? Probably not, but I will return home with a new commitment to My People and My Community, whoever they might be. For the record, they may not be who you think they are, but I return home with a longing to embrace and love and be kind to all of humanity, even all of creation, for there I find the image of God imprinted on the hearts of all.
The Papa Journey 