Mel Adams’s evocative description of childhood Harvest celebrations in a mining village in last week’s newsletter looks back to a time when communities coalesced around the identity of shared occupations. The deprivation that can arise with unemployment and the loss of the dignity of shared work is the backdrop to Ken Loach’s new film The Old Oak. The film portrays the impact of the arrival in 2016 of a group of Syrian refugees in an ex-mining community in County Durham.
Much of the reaction is grittily negative and the stresses of living in poverty which contribute to this reaction (the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirms that the North East has the highest poverty rate of all regions of the UK) are vividly portrayed. The bitterness of some of the dialogue might be used by our current Home Secretary as evidence for her recent divisive assertion that ‘multiculturalism has failed’.
But in contrast to all the ugliness and xenophobia emerges a parable of hope. A small band of disciples gather, there are Eucharistic moments when hospitality is offered and the harvest of the community’s generosity culminates in a shared meal. Hope, it seems, is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. There is betrayal too and what seems to be ultimate failure but in the end human solidarity – love – endures.
Some might say the film is naïve. Is creating moments when we share the harvest of our lives with others naïve or at the centre of the Gospel? No grand gestures perhaps, but small offerings of what is possible – opening up the kingdom of God in our midst.
Jim Sikorski
