School Christmas service

This is one of my favourite events of the Christmas period: the school's service held in the spectacular Norman (in parts) church in Kirkby Lonsdale. It has a high vaulted ceiling that resembles the inverted hull of a ship, complete with wooden beams, but the rest of the church is built from stone, with huge, thick columns supporting the roof and an unusual enclosed area for the choir, unlike anything I've seen elsewhere.

This year, the theme was refugees, a subject that dovetails neatly with the nativity story. So, in addition to the traditional hymns and stories, and musical performances by various school groups, we also had the stories of various refugees from Syria. Sad though the tales were, I thought that it was good for everyone (including me) to be reminded that these refugees were people just like us, with the same jobs and families, habits and backgrounds.

One of the narratives was delivered by a young woman reading as a Syrian mother. The story concerned her little daughter, who had loved to draw but whose drawings had started include weapons before she stopped drawing altogether. I looked down at Dan and Abi - a routine, unconscious parental gesture - only to see that the little fellow had tears rolling down his cheeks, his nose running. It gave me a sharp pain in my chest to see him so saddened. As we grow up, we mostly learn - or teach ourselves - to suppress that kind of compassion - albeit with varying degrees of success - and it pained me to see him feeling it, unprotected by the regrettable scabs of maturity. 

Ironically, the next reading was by a young, male teacher reading as an MP, explaining why we could not help the refugees. It contains the chilling phrase that "values don't change but times do", an admission that our government - left, right and centre - knows that what we are doing is morally wrong. It was so stark, so appalling, and contrasted bluntly with what was obvious throughout the rest of the service: that we are blessed by the accident of our birth and that we should help everyone who was born somewhere more hostile, where the basics of food, shelter and safety are denied them.

And it made me realise that whilst I instinctively want to protect Dan, and can't help but want him to defend himself from such angst, that really what we acutely need are more adults with that youthful, uncompromised compassion.