1. Because Sometimes We Cannot Hear Each Other

The last time I went to a church service was maybe two years ago. ‘Two years too long!’ for some of my friends; ‘As recently as that?!’ for others. I had been talking to a friend from Syria, trying to explain this aspect of my life, my background, that still shapes so much of what I do and how I think. So I said, let us go. And she said, yes. It was a pity that I couldn’t take her to a Jamaican church – we were not in Jamaica – but this one would do. It was a lovely church community of people who didn’t just practice their religion on a Sunday morning but were committed and engaged in broader programmes of social justice – building schools, sheltering immigrants in their homes, inviting those who existed on the periphery of society into…