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Good Morning

I have found the news in recent weeks to be even more heart-breaking and disheartening than usual: the situation in Israel-Palestine; the beheadings in Iraq; the continued violence in Syria and Ukraine. Perhaps I have been particularly sensitive this summer because in the space of a few weeks I have visited Hiroshima, Ypres and Auschwitz, for in the face of such stark evidence of the human capacity for brutality and destruction, it can be difficult not to despair and tempting to want to escape, whether by switching off the radio, having a stiff drink, or plunging into some diverting activity.

Despair is one reaction to terrible news, resignation is another. A third possibility is to hear bad news as a call to responsibility and to action.
Whilst I was in Poland, visiting Auschwitz last weekend, I joined a walking tour of the city of Krakow, where, on the hour every hour, a member of the fire service sounds a truncated trumpet call from the cathedral tower to the four corners of the city, it is said, in commemoration of the thirteenth century bugler who was killed mid-tune whilst alerting the city to the approach of invading Mongol forces.
The bugle call has become a symbol of identity to Krakowians the world over, so much so that they can now hear the trumpeter, not only broadcast on national radio each day, but at any time by downloading the relevant app – its notes a call to freedom and responsibility for Poles, whose history bears the scars of many occupations and partitions.

Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist sent to Auschwitz in Poland whilst it was under German occupation, concluded the 1992 edition of his book, ‘Man’s search for Meaning’, with this sentence:

Let us be alert – alert in a twofold sense.
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of
Since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

We are most likely to be alert, not only when we perceive immediate danger to the things or people important to us, but when we see ourselves as responsible agents with power to affect a situation. It may seem to many of us that our small efforts to resist bigotry or contain sadism or promote nuclear disarmament can make little difference to the events of the Middle East, or the radicalisation of young people in our own country, or the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

But Victor Frankl, even though he knew the powerlessness of the concentration camp, came to believe that though forces beyond our control can take away everything we possess, they cannot take away our freedom to choose how to respond, saying, ‘the world is in a bad state, but everything will become worse unless each of us does his best.’

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, also a great advocate of responsible action, put it more positively, ‘Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.’

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