And at a time of increasingly tragic conflict around the world, I pray that we can also do all in our power to protect each other. The words of Jesus seem more than ever relevant: ‘do to others as you would have them do to you.’ Such values are universal, drawing together our Abrahamic family of religions, and other belief systems, across the Commonwealth and wider world. They remind us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of our neighbours, and to seek their good as we would our own.
King Charles III
from his Christmas Broadcast, 2023
There’s something delightful, universal, and importantly on point about a ‘Call The Midwife Christmas Special’ – my heart fills to overflowing with a rush of goodwill upon every infant’s miraculous arrival, every skilled medical or nursing angel’s intervention and assistance, every listening ear, word of comfort, or compassionate, empathetic presence.
All of this helps me understand, in this beautiful but tragically also war-torn and broken world, that we must learn to move beyond ‘call the midwife’ to being the midwife. It’s vital that we humans learn to bring to birth a new kind of living – one that has no tolerance whatsoever for anything less than it takes to welcome and to cradle and to sustain an infant, ANY and EVERY infant, as though she or he were the very presence of God on earth, from their advent here until their last farewell – because that’s who she, and he, and we, are.
There’s a mighty sea-change to be undergone, by all of us, of course. I doubt there’ll be one of us that doesn’t need to make some seismic changes in their lives. But we can begin quietly advocating right now. When we come anywhere near beginning to set aside divisive rhetoric and start to feel what it is to stand in another’s shoes we begin, in that instant, beneath a starlit firmament, to be drawn towards a different – perhaps an original – kind of hope, a different kind of promise, an eternally guiding light … something less to do with religion, politics and power, and much more to do with cradling humanity. All humanity.
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Merry Christmas dear friend, and in enthusiastic agreement for us to never turn a passive eye, waiting for someone else to do what we know to do…xx
Doubly agreed. Thank you. 🙏. Thank you 🤗✨x