We need our bursts of joy and relief. That’s what Watkins’ great goal in the 90th minute of the Euro semi-final did for England on Wednesday, – though it may have felt different in Holland. It doesn’t spell an everlasting end to war, or no more human misery, but we all need such moments of reprieve.
‘Write about hope and resilience,’ my agent told me, ‘That’s what people want to hear.’ So that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ve ditched the serious piece I just drafted in favour of what follows, especially as I’ve been lucky enough to have wonderful moments of positivity this week.
‘For those few seconds we were eye to eye,’ said Hugh Warwick, in a delightful talk he gave at my home last Sunday, during EcoJudaism’s awards ceremony at which our synagogue got gold. He was speaking about close encounters with hedgehogs. After all, he’s the author of A Prickly Affair (as well as many other books, including a recent best-seller).
He’s also the champion of the British Hedgehog Society. I cold called him a couple of years ago. As I struggled to explain precisely why a rabbi wanted a lecture on hedgehogs, he took the initiative by listing every single context in which the charming creatures are – arguably, very arguably indeed – mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
Why hedgehogs? Because, Hugh Warwick answered, ‘I love them.’ It was that eye-to-eye, creature to creature, moment that sealed it. And, he added, you can only truly fight for what you love.
Others love hedgehogs too, he continued. ‘Groups won’t invite me to talk about climate disaster, or biodiversity loss. But champion Britain’s favourite animal and they’ll ask you gladly. And once on the platform, I can talk about everything.’
It’s what the great environmentalist Wendell Berry wrote: ‘Maybe the answer is to fight always for what you particularly love, not for abstraction, and not against anything.’
The following day I attended an event for Tree Aid. It focussed on their work in helping local groups in Ghana, particularly women, plant food-bearing trees as part of the Great Green Wall, the 8,000 kilometre long, 20 kilometre wide, tree belt intended to stop the southward creep of the Sahara. It was an evening of music, joy and love for what everyone was achieving. We felt we were watching the young trees and the strengthened communities grow together.
This may all sound stupid when there are wars on, when Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, a good friend, sends me a picture from Kiev of his Cathedral with smoke rising from a bombsite in the background, and when there’s fighting in Gaza and the north of Israel, and the hostages still remain captive after nine bitter months.
But Ayelet, mother of Naama who’s still held by Hamas in Gaza, sent me a video of their dog. So I sent back a photo of Nessie. Stupid? Yes, I felt foolish taking that photo. But it’s a moment of reprieve, of closeness, and we need them in order to survive. There are times, and parts of the world, which are so cruel that minutes, even seconds, like that are almost unattainable. But when they’re possible they must be seized and relished. If we can, we should share them others.
Every morning we say in our prayers, ‘With great love, God, you have loved us.’ That love may take the micro form of a close encounter with a hedgehog, sharing a film of our dog, a kind word posted, a WhatsApp, or whatever. These may be small things in the global scale, but without them neither we nor the world can survive.