This Generation

TO WHAT shall I compare this generation?

To what shall I compare the strong of our nation?

They are like clowns, clambering to reach the top of a ladder, heedless of whom they trample in their race to the top; and when they reach the top — look out! The ladder falls! For those who should have been holding it up are gone, bleeding, wounded, dead, trampled to death by the very ones who needed them.

And then they do it all over again.

Wealth does not trickle down: it topples — again and again and they never learn.

What then can we do?

We can start again.

Those who are poor, those who are weak, those whom the wealthy have trampled: look not to the ladder but to one another. The ladder is a fool’s game: let it lie where it has fallen. Start again.

How, you ask? I say it again: look to one another. Behold the angel’s face in your brother, in your sister, in those weaker than yourself — for in their weakness lies your strength: lend them your strength and your strength will grow.

How, you ask?

Start small. £5 per month. Less than many spend in coffee shops each week: even you, perhaps?

You know my chosen cause: 5 Quid for Life, a mental health safety net. It saves lives. It provides crisis support for people who’ve had everything stripped away: finance, dignity, hope. Everything stripped away by a government so wrapped up in its austerity measures and so lacking in imagination that the only way they can see to offset the crimes of the rich is to punish the poor. If you’re not in that place, you’re only a hair’s breadth from it: do you think that if the company you work for falls, that if your business fails, this government will care, will help you to pick up the pieces of your broken life?

Not so, my friend, not so. Go read my friend Boudicca Rising’s latest 5 Quid for Life blog post: Where we are. As you read, reflect: it could be you.

The time has come. Time to get down off that ladder. Time to let it lie. Time to stop scrambling and fighting and trampling. Time, rather, to love. To give. To stand alongside the poor, the vulnerable, the weak and the outcast.

Lend the weak your strength and your strength will grow. Trample them underfoot and you will land face down, a fallen clown.

Which is it to be?

Choose wisely: choose life.

Finally: I understand that 5 Quid for Life may not be for you. There are many, many other worthy causes. If 5 Quid for Life is not for you, choose one of them. If you can, choose several; for the more you give, the more your strength will grow.

May God grant you grace and the wisdom you need.

My thanks to Jean Vanier for his words of wisdom as he was interviewed this morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, words that inspired this post: the strong need the weak.