Christmas

Hey

This is just to say I'm going to be offline for Christmas and New Year.

I'll be back to posting in January

Maybe there is Hope

I was intending to do a blog post about Egypt and how it seems that the Egyptian people really hadn’t learnt from the past thirty years.  But then I was reading the paper and I found a story that prompted a change in direction. There’s too much depression and darkness in the world. Let’s have a bit of hope.

Totnes in Devon has always been a place that has gone its own way. A centre of the new age and bohemian lifestyles, it issued its own alternative currency a few years back and it was most recently in the news for fighting off Costa Coffee’s attempts to open a branch in the town famed for its unique self-sufficient style.  But this week it was in the news again, for a startling act of compassion.

Michael Gething, a homeless man who had been living on the streets of Totnes for the past eighteen months, died last week of suspected hypothermia. Some might say that it was his own fault – he had been offered accommodation in Dartmouth and refused to take it up – and others may simply have let the matter slide. Homelessness is all too often a problem that we, with homes and heating and food, see but ignore.

Instead, in a moment of a solidarity, rather than turning their back on him, the people of Totnes, even those who had never met this man, came together to organise a funeral for him, granting him the respect in death, that he may not have received in life. A former homeless man now living in Totnes, Graham Walker, slept rough for two days to raise money for the funeral, as well as money to help other homeless people in similar situations.

Local undertaker Robert Callender said that he hoped that  “people might put their judgements aside about what life on the streets is like, and what people who live on the streets are like……they are ordinary people who have fallen on hard times."

This strikes me as something especially important to remember as we go into the Christmas season. While many of us will be enjoying time with our family and friends, far, far, too many people, even those who do have somewhere to live, will be sad and lonely this Christmas. For too many Christmas is not the joyous happy time it is for the rest of us.

All too often the news is full of depressing, dark stories and at times the world can seem like a depressing dark place. But the people of Totnes have proved that it isn’t always. That sometimes it is the smallest things that matter.  That people can do good and bring a little light into the world.

Christmas is a time of hope, of change. Of second chances. As we head into Christmas and lose ourselves amongst the turkey and presents, I would urge you to take just a moment to remember those who aren’t as lucky as you. Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy. What can you do to spread that joy about a bit?