No, hope is not a crime

(though it may feel silly in so cynical a world)

So I go to church.

Because that, after all, is what church is supposed to do: give meaning and hope and a reason to carry on.

It doesn’t help, really, that it’s failing so catastrophically. That it’s mostly become a repository for the most damaging, repressive and reactionary beliefs.

That it has, and continues to be, so often complicit in exploitation, injustice, and abuse.

To the point where I feel a bit embarrassed saying: I’m Christian. And: I go to church most Sundays.

But then here I am. Going to church.

And I’d guess I’d also say: my church is different.

It’s pretty full, in a socially distanced sort of way, and I’m happy to be back (for months I’ve been going online).

When i was forced to live as a boy, and when later i was frightened enough to go on living as a man, church was always a pretty horrible place: because it was dull, because i was supposed to behave, because i was forced to pretend to be someone i was not.

But here and now I can be myself. And the minister talks of freedom and acceptance and justice.

Love is not conditional she says, love does not depend on believing the right things or being the right kind of person. Love extends to everybody.

And the fulfilment of love is justice.

In the bus on the way home I pass a shuttered theatre.

Above the entrance is a sign that reads: WHITE CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED.

Making theatre. Another of my eccentric occupations.

Theatre’s existence in this society has been so problematic all the time I have been working in it.

Problematic because it is labour intensive in a capital intensive economy; and because it insists on being a collective occupation in a society that rewards individual effort.

That is why creating theatre is an act of resistance. That is why it matters.

And that is also why it is so difficult.

But theatre is a sacred space to me. It is another church. I meditate each time I create for it.

And the silence I try to enter in meditation is also the amazing fecund silence of the creative universe.

It is because I create that I continue to love. Because I love I continue to create.

And because I love and because I create that is also, in spite of everything, why I continue to hope.