麻豆约拍

From the Reverend Richard Coles:

Forty years, I realised this week, since I made a terrible mess of my exams, O Levels as they were then, and the worse humiliation among them, General Science. Our school lab looked like something from an HG Wells film; what I remember most vividly was a hand cranked electrostatic generator, with which we鈥檇 amuse ourselves by giving electric shocks to smaller kids, and a centrifuge, into which we would place test tubes full of a mixture which would then separate into its different parts as it whirled round and round.

I thought I was done with centrifugal forces when I span out of school at sixteen, half educated, and without any science qualifications at all. 听Wish I had stuck with it now, because centrifugal forces are back with a vengeance. Not in the lab, but in life, for never before have I felt so strongly forces which pull us apart. Forces that derive from the intensity of our disagreements: Brexit, the General Election, Ed Sheeran at Glasto, and whether Ivanhoe Spangle Filioque Fidgetspinner Rees Mogg III is a suitable name for a child.

Regardless of their significance or insignificance, the disagreements provoke a sort of unbridled rage that is quite startling in its intensity. And suddenly we鈥檙e lost to the shoutiness of social media, with its hair trigger fury and drama queen tantrums, as we rub each other up the wrong way. Why should this be? In Britain we鈥檝e had plenty of practice at learning to live alongside each other with wildly divergent beliefs - we鈥檙e world leaders in it - it鈥檚 how we came to be so good at 70s TV situation comedy.

Some anger is righteous, Jesus reminds us, firmly regulating banking enterprise in the Temple precincts, and castigating the Pharisees for their short sight and hard hearts.

But I think much is manufactured, storms in tea cups, tirades in test tubes, the hollowness or narcissism at its heart exposed, suddenly, when were faced with a real crisis, like the evacuation at Dunkirk - and recall that in the middle of a terrible conflict tearing the world apart, we found solidarity and generosity and good humour: and, there right in front of us, on that raging shore, the peace with passes all understanding.

听