I’ve been thinking about social media, its uses and abuses, not least because of the misuses over the last couple of weeks - or rather the ongoing misuses which have been thrown into relief by recent events. I’ve come off X, appalled by the encouragement of hatred and violence coming from the top, wondered what else to use, what to stop using - and then, on Facebook, I came across an invitation to an open day from my local Mosque, a reaching out which requires a positive response. I will be going.
This reminded me of some of the content of the show The Causeway, which I wrote a couple of years ago for a community project in Gateshead, and the wonderful experience of sitting in on a series of video interviews with faith leaders in the area organised and conducted by my good friend Karenza. The interviews were really conversations between friends, centred around sacred texts or equivalents and this interviewed included Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Quakers, Anglicans, Pagans, humanists and more - and what a lovely bunch of people they were.
I came away with a better understanding of these faiths and philosophies, a sense of how much we all had in common, and a feeling of being uplifted by the goodwill and love centred nature of these thinkers and people of faith. I also came away with a strong sense of how important music was to so many of them - chanting, singing, playing - and celebrated this aspect in a section of the script which is reproduced below and which says something which feels ever more important
and so we sing we sing as we read sing for harmony sing in harmony we sing the words of the guru the psalms of old and the teachings of the new become our hymns we sing a mantra to free our minds the words of the prophet to steer our thoughts we sing for the homeless and oppressed for the stranger in our midst we sing a common humanity we sing sing a love story between humans between humans and creation between humans and creator if there is one if we recognise one if he calls to us if she calls to us if they call to us we see the gospels as a love letter the Guru Granth Sahib as a living being the words of the prophet peace be upon him as sacred texts we sing a love song we sing of Nutt goddess of the sky of Gaia of the earth we sing we sing of life sing of death sing of laughter better than birds in the morning we sing of freedom sing of peace sing of equality gender to gender sexuality to sexuality black to white we sing