December 19th

The 17th and 18th are in transit. I’d like to tell you about Christingle oranges and taking Robin climbing. But for now, here we are. A gap of days. But there are things to say about today.

When I decided to write these emails, determined to make a pilgrimage of words amongst all the business and bracing of the end of term and run up to Christmas, partly, I wanted to not shy away from How Awful The World Is. Or rather, I absolutely wanted to shy away, thought, is this really the moment to try to say things about hope, what things are there to say, how can I, in all my complicities, say them?

I woke up to news that Freedom Studios in Bradford, and other arts organisations are closing, after being devastated by government cuts. It reminds me of the pain and fear of seeing the theatre industry devastated during the pandemic. Much happened that bore hope through that - and it was also, is also, often unbearable. When I think of the artists I know, they bear hope. But the landscape, I’m less certain.

All day I have heard and seen Gisèle Pelicot, in her extraordinary, almost indescribable courage, and the chapter of her story that happened today. If you can get to the end of this excellent piece by Rebecca Solnit (all the expected content warnings), in story of a world of evil, she rightly ends with a spark of hope. Gisèle Pelicot’s is a story that bears enormous hope, in her incredible generosity and bravery, and the impact she is making. I feel tentative to write about it, when this hope is already so vivid in her. My words feel clumsy.

And also. That world of evil. It is vivid too. The horrors of the world. The horrors of men. The Not All Men. And, and, and… Can anyone ever bear enough hope for all this?

I believe here I’m meant to say something about Jesus. Is there something in between the erasing “God will fix it” and the complicit “the world is fallen, just focus on heaven”, and the fucking bullshit “everything happens for a reason”? I don’t know what it is. I do think it is there, somewhere amongst it all. Emmanuel, and extraordinary women.

That unknown something is why I’m writing, a pilgrimage towards that something. What on earth hope can be, in all this. The something Gisèle Pelicot bears, the something we want to be true, and have to make true, somehow.

[Image description: just after dawn in Snowdonia. A small break in grey clouds over a bleak wetland, dark mountains in the distance. Green scrub in the foreground.]