I was invited to speak at a gathering of faith leaders close to Grenfell Tower yesterday. I went, mainly to listen. We were Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Bahais; we were just people, but people together.

On walls and railings all around are pictures of the missing, children, young couples, all ages: ‘Have you seen…?’ ‘Marco and Gloria, Italy is praying for you’. In the streets, people talk in small groups, residents, school children, police, helpers, chaplains.

There were powerful calls for justice; for all questions to be answered in all aspects; for those responsible to be made accountable. Yet the spirit was solidarity, not anger; togetherness, not division.

Pain knows no age, no colour, no gender, no religion, said the local Sikh leader; humanity is one. He told me these were the words of a colleague who was volunteering among the dispossessed in Syria and Lebanon. London, too, has its dispossessed.

‘We’re here for the long haul’, said the Bishop of Kensington, Bishop Graham, speaking for the local clergy, who’ve been remarkable. ‘We believe in community; we believe in a God who gives hope’.

‘I’m nobody’, said a local young man, ‘But I’m somebody.’ He grew up nearby; as a child he’d played next to, in and beneath the Tower: ‘I’ve friends who didn’t get out’. We’re all responsible for our communities, he said; if only we’d realised earlier; if only we’d done more.

On the walls, among the pictures of the missing, are small hand-written posters:

Broken but United with My Neighbours (in many colours)
Life does go on. But now it has to change
Listen. We are still here…

I spoke about listening; ‘Shema; Listen!’ is the first word of Judaism’s most important meditation. I told the story of the man whose friend assures him that he loves him. ‘If you love me’, he replies, ‘tell me where I hurt?’ ‘How should I know?’ the man remonstrates, ‘I’ve no idea where you hurt!’ ‘Then you aren’t truly my friend,’ says the man.

We must not become a city so separated into sub-communities divided by ethnicity, religion, income, prospects and such different daily realities that we’ve no idea where others hurt. We must not remain a society in which, when one group cries out ‘I don’t feel safe’, the rest don’t hear, perhaps don’t even care.

We all have the power to turn a nobody into a somebody, by listening and caring. We can also make a somebody feel a nobody, by closing our heart. It happens all the time and we are all responsible.

Before the gathering, I met Father Alan Everett, who’s coordinated much of the support. We talked about resources for the long-term… As for lessons, he said: Be organised and prepared. Know each other; know your local communities, councillors, faith leaders, police, fire services, teachers. Meet, discuss, plan for eventualities. Have up-to-date contact lists; keep them up-to-date.

Above us all is the tower, charred and silent; full of stifled voices which will cry out in the hearts of parents, children, friends, neighbours, firemen, rescuers, forever. I think of Rachel Bluwstein’s words, written soon before she died:

Will you hear my silence, –
You who did not hear my words?