Songs of Praise in The Jungle at Calais

I admit it: I'm not the biggest fan of Songs of Praise, though my wife and I watch it most weeks after cathedral evensong over a cup of tea. Put it down to my getting old and grumpy, but I find myself irritated by its relentless feel-good tone, its love of the bright, shiny and can-do, and the often jejune melodies and lyrics of its hymns and songs (and I don't just mean the contemporary ones). Sometimes it feels perilously close to religion-lite.

However, we all know that it has a devoted following. And the programme has at times achieved real depth. This has often been when it has explored the darker side of human experience such as human pain whether physical or emotional, relationships that are undergoing stress, remembrance of war and conflict, and death and bereavement. Such themes have brought out the best in presenters who show how good they are at interviewing people who are suffering with real sensitivity and insight.

This is why I was pleased to read yesterday that Songs of Praise is visiting the Jungle migrants' camp at Calais. I first read about it on the front page of The Sun. (What was I doing reading that particular newspaper? Answer: I was at our new house to see how the decorators were progressing. There it was in the kitchen. I couldn't resist the temptation to pick it up - it made a change from Friday's Guardian.) I tweeted: 'It's not often that mainstream Christian faith makes it on to the front page of The Sun'.

Then I looked inside. True to form, the paper fulminated self-righteously about what a wicked thing it was to do this. The BBC sending Songs of Praise to the Calais migrant camp amid the current chaos is like something from Monty Python. Will we get to see migrants wrestling with riot police and storming lorries as a choir stands at the Channel tunnel welcoming them with a rousing rendition of Jerusalem? The BBC is showing its trendy lefty colours once again. It shouldn't be supporting the migrants and making a political point out of them. It's the police and border personnel who are protecting our shores from migrants who are the real heroes and who deserve our support. The migrants must be stopped from trying to get into Britain. And so on. I've paraphrased.

So I want to applaud the BBC's decision to cross the Channel and broadcast from The Jungle. I have no doubt that SOP will do it compassionately and sensitively, but also intelligently and fairly. The Church already has a presence in The Jungle where a tent has been set up for migrants to gather and worship in. I'm glad that SOP can be there to give the migrants air-time in a broadcast forum where it would be so easy to pretend they don't exist. We need to hear their voices in other contexts than daily news reports.

What's the answer to the scornful Pharisees at The Sun? It's pretty obvious. Just ask what Jesus would do. He would be in The Jungle, of course, just as he kept company with a lot of other people the establishment of his day found it difficult to tolerate. It's not that Jesus didn't maintain a clear head about the weighty matters of the law such as duty and justice. Nor is it that he didn't grasp the endless complexity of human life. It's simply that where he saw people in need of touch, tenderness and a listening ear without the threat of sanction and exclusion, he was there with them.

'I am for the suffering people' said Mother Mary Pilenko, a Russian nun who championed Jewish victims of the holocaust. She herself was to die at the camp at Ravensbrück because she stepped in to take the place of a frightened woman who was waiting to go into the gas chamber. The church must always be for, and stand with, all who are victims and who are the suffering people of our time.

I'm very glad that Songs of Praise has made the courageous decision to be there too. Three cheers for the BBC once again.

Saying Sorry in 31 Seconds

There is something not quite right about the post-mortem over Maria Miller’s resignation. It smells unpleasantly sanctimonious.

I am not for a moment saying that she didn’t make serious mistakes. There are misjudgements that someone in public office can’t afford to make. This has always been true, but scrutiny is especially thorough nowadays in the aftermath of the parliamentary expenses debacle. It’s understandable that the public is not in the mood to be lenient. We are right to expect the highest possible degree of accountability. And it’s a pity she didn’t offer to repay the higher sum about which questions had been asked, even if technically she had been cleared of the requirement to do so. It would have been a welcome sign of good faith.

What I find disturbing is how Ms Miller’s apology to the House has been endlessly picked over since she spoke. Someone on Any Questions called it (if I remember aright) the worst speech from a parliamentarian he had ever heard.  Why? Because (I am paraphrasing) it was perfunctory, insincere and lacking any real sense of contrition. The assumption is that an apology lasting a mere 31 seconds cannot possibly be genuine. Ergo it didn’t do the job. ‘It wasn’t fulsome enough’ I’ve heard it said – by people who clearly don’t know what that word really means.

There’s a lot I don’t know about what has gone on in this affair, but I can’t help thinking that it’s dangerous to make judgments like this. For one thing, how long would Ms Miller’s speech have to be to carry conviction? Two minutes? Ten? Half an hour? You see the difficulty. You can’t calibrate the quality of an apology with a stop-watch. In one of his parables, Jesus compares the attitudes of a Pharisee and a tax-collector. The Pharisee offers a long platitudinous (fulsome, indeed) address to his Maker. The tax-collector simply beats his breast and says ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’. That’s a lot shorter than 31 seconds. Yet Jesus commends him for those few words. When the Prodigal Son returns to his father to make a long contrite speech, his father cuts him off in mid flow and embraces him.

I once had to apologise to a friend I’d hurt. I tried the Prodigal’s long speech but the words would not come. All I could whisper was: I’m really sorry’. Then there was silence. I did not trust myself to speak. ‘It’s ok’ he said after a bit, and put his arms around me. Just then he didn’t need to know more than that I’d said it, and I only needed to know that he had heard. Yes, it can take a lifetime to work through the consequences and make reparation. It’s hard to say sorry but harder still to forgive, if my limited experience is any guide. What mattered to me all those years ago were the few brief words that enabled something important to begin. Saying sorry is a speech-act that opens a door.

So who is going to peer into Ms Miller’s heart and say, on the basis of what she said to Parliament, that she didn’t really mean it when she said she was sorry? We can never know what goes on inside another person; it’s hard enough when we try to look into our own hearts. Is this why Jesus says that we should not judge others, lest we come under judgment ourselves? Queen Elizabeth I wisely said, against the puritans of the 16^th century, that she ‘would not make windows into men’s souls’. Nor should we.

It’s seductive to obsess about feelings and inner motivation. In today’s Guardian, Loose Canon Giles Fraser says that when it comes to forgiving other people it’s what we say and do that matters, not what we feel. ‘Forgiveness breaks the cycle of revenge and makes possible a future that is not trapped in the violence and hatred of the past.’ We can extend that to all the remembered and forgotten failures and flaws that haunt the present and get in the way of reconciliation.

Perhaps we should take an apology at face value, not try to analyse its level of sincerity but simply say: wrong has been acknowledged and publicly apologised for. The words we needed to hear have been said. It’s not cheap grace to recognise when it’s time to move on.