The Armour of Amour

As the sound of gunfire hit Paris, I received an email with the subject heading ‘love’.  Inside, the words breathed its opposite: someone who decided that my writing about love was a sign of evil.  I had been ‘noted’ it accused – unlike the writer, instantly dismissible among the horrors of the night.

Like all coincidences, receiving an unloving email at a moment of such tragic significance must have a meaning.   Somewhere between young men firing machine guns at a culture they rejected with such profound hate, and our growing mistrust of what is and is not good around us, there will be a connection we need to make about trust, belonging, and love or 'amour' as they say in France.

There is lots to feel proud about in our collective response to Paris. But it can’t remove our focus from an age where the connections between people, our sense of social inclusion, grows increasingly fractured through the economic and social challenges that face us.  The roots and foundations of our social values are shaken on a daily basis in tiny ways that the horror of Friday explodes into consciousness from a different but linked perspective.  While we defend ourselves with the notion that these people we call terrorists were not human, we fool ourselves from the truth that the atrocity committed perpetuates throughout history our dangerous capacity for exclusive extremes.  The question is, how can humans be driven to commit actions of such inhumanity?  The ability to love and hate at the same time, to do and be in entirely different ways, is the darkness within which everything inauthentic, manipulative and deceitful lives in our history.  Exploitative fundraising practices and the policies of austerity might feel a very long distance from suicide bombers on the streets, but they are all on the same tarnished road to an extreme place where our humanity for each other slowly dies.

It would be easy to think that charity has no purpose to offer at a time when missile strikes and security become the order of the day.  But I can think of no other moment when there is such a desperate need for charity to shine out the leadership our age calls for.  The real war is far bigger than a country or cause. The war for our future is as much with ourselves, our concept of what it is to be human, and our capacity to create the conditions to maximise love, trust and belonging in our society and world.  It is not just additional armed guards that will protect us now; it’s also the arming of values and purpose for a better world. The armour of 'amour'.

I feel no shame to believe in a sector that should nurture communities of love within itself and those it cares for.  I feel nothing to hide about demanding that youth charity should be shaping communities of greater belonging and authenticity, for which its ability to collaborate, create meaning, harness diminishing resource, and believe in what young people can do, all need to be upped in urgency. 

At the time of the London riots in 2011, the Foyer Federation wrote a powerful analysis about the importance of giving young people a stake-in-society, and the positive effects for us all when young people have something of value they do not wish to lose.  It’s a vision worth holding onto over the winter ahead of us.  While we react to the threat of terror around us, we must also pro-act to create its opposite through an equal intent for good.  How we choose to love and invest in our young people now might never have been so important.

www.inspirechilli.com