The Olympics

International sport doesn't come much bigger than the Olympics, and China has generated some incredible feats in all sorts of ways.

We've seen triumph and disaster. We've had glimpses into a vast nation about which most of us know very little.

Human rights and press freedoms have tantalised us amidst rays of hope and the shadows of despair. But one of the lasting memories for me will simply be of people from across the globe sharing a few days together.

Cynicism is easy. I glimpsed also some splendour; the sort of human mosaic God loves without ceasing. It draws me into praise…

Across the spread of geography we fashion all sorts of maps.
We are in love with borders, boundaries, demarcation, limitation, constraint and containment.
Our lists of who can be in and who must remain out are calculated and robust.
Elections get won on how tough we can appear to be towards the alien.
Fear builds walls in our minds and imaginations far more impregnable than any construction of concrete and razor wire.
So much of who and what this human family is remains locked inside mystery,

hidden behind language,
buried under prejudice,
trapped inside the prison of our unknowing.

Until, for brief and beautiful moments, we somehow manage to lift a host of veils and touch the truth of who we are in the face of a stranger.
Suddenly the staggering diversity of humanity shrinks to the size of encounters we can cope with, the chaos of so many tongues becomes translatable

meaning does not get lost.

And in encounter's ebb and flow, as we share a bit of ourselves with each other and are made richer through the sharing, we grow as the world shrinks.
Diversity and difference become treasures, sparkling with possibility and the unqenchable wonder of being.
Distance on the map, and distance in our minds, can be crossed after all.
How right and obvious it is to begin your book with the truth that everyone, male and female, is shaped and formed in your own image.
Parenting and providing, sustaining and guiding, you always live the truth we only ever glimpse in snapshots-

that humanity is always only ever one family

that nationality and ideology never shape us as fundamentally as being made in the image of God
that we are only given this one planet as our home and our hope.
And, as if we might miss the point, you enter completely into this profuse and chaotic family in Bethlehem – the image of God and God.

Thank you for the times when, even for a moment, we glimpse the wonder well.
Thank you for these Olympics in which so many have seen into the face of a stranger and found friendship.
Thank you for all who make it possible for one person to step outside their normal home and across the threshold of another's space.
Thank you for meetings and collaborations, for partnerships and colloquiums, conferences and festivals, meetings and correspondence.
Thank you for doors that get opened in walls and barricades that get breached.
Thank you for travel.

We know so much still hampers our participation truly in one human family.
But, where there are glimpses of good, we rejoice.
For the Spirit is dancing between us,
and Christ's victory of love that brings the reign of God is come a little closer.

By the Rev Neil Thorogood, Director of Pastoral Studies, Westminster College, Cambridge

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