Last week I was in the UK for a few days and I started to get a bleak feeling. It began when I arrived in Bath. I walked the streets and noticed how everyone was so well-dressed. There were so many pedigree, designer dogs. The shops were so fancy, selling luxury chocolate, luxury furniture.
And yet on the pavement lay people in sleeping bags. Poverty was on a display alongside the latest fashions. A mongrel dog lay beside a hat with a couple of coins in waiting for his owner to return. I dropped in the last of my cash, wondering if I’d ever use it again. When I moved nearer the dog there was fear in his eyes.
My sister told me about an Italian woman she worked with, who was shocked by the level of homelessness in the UK. She said it would never happen in Italy.
There is poverty, of course everywhere.
But, Italy is different. It is more traditional. The race forwards is happening, but it’s going slower. From what I’ve heard it’s rare here for the elderly to be put in care homes. Their family takes care of them. When I see the elderly being taken out for walks by their adult children, hobbling along with a supportive arm, I think about the difference.
In Southampton I went to the student’s union shop at the university to buy cheap notebooks. On the door there was a sign saying the staff were wearing body cams to protect them from abuse. I went to Boots to buy make-up, (something I never do, but am doing a random job officiating a wedding soon, so want to look a bit more formal!), and the make-up was behind locked screens.
I often get homesick, but the home I long for, doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever really did.
It has been fallen ever since the beginning.
At Gatwick airport there was a huge display dedicated to a book on manifestation. On the blurb on the back it said, it was ‘like the secret, but more sciency.’ This is how they mainstream witchcraft in a scientific, ‘rational’ society, and it’s working. I hear the word more and more in circles I never expected to hear about it.
The new age tell us to live in the moment, that by being truly present in the here and now we can be happy. As with everything in the new age there is true mixed with lives. There’s value in slowing down, being present, and grateful for the little things.
However in a falling apart world, maybe we also need to look to the future. To the only hope we have.
I have noticed that when I feel most happy is when I’m reading the Bible, and reminded that this will all come to an end. It’s the verses about the future, that really lift me up. Like when Paul writes about the inheritance we will receive, or Matthew 5 when Jesus talks about the meek inheriting the earth, or the Psalms, with lines about the evil being cut down like the grass. (Psalm 37)
While I grieve each sign of the falling apart of this world, I know that what really matters is the next one.
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. 1 John 2:15-17