Weekend essay
Culture
Generosity
5 min read

From family to flourishing community, why relationships count so much

Little local acts of listening and kindness shed light on an age-old question, writes Rob Wickham - am I my brother’s keeper?

Rob Wickham is the CEO of the Church Urban Fund, a charity helping people access a community of support. He was the Bishop of Edmonton, and has participated in community building in London and Tyneside.

A group of old and young men sit on red sofas, listening to one of themselves.
Stoke FC's Place of Welcome.
Church Urban Fund.

Every week a group of 20 or so older people gather in an ordinary church in Walsall. A small handful also attend church on Sundays, but most do not.  Amongst them are clear signs of poverty, mental health issues, struggles, broken relationships, and grief. Each person has a profound story. They come to sit in a place where strangers can become friends and will listen. For almost half of this group, this moment would be the only one that week when they are personally noticed and acknowledged by another human being.   

This safe space is therefore a transforming blessing. It is life enhancing and hope creating.  It was born out of a simple instruction, heard weekly by the church’s congregation - “Ite, missa est” – ‘Go the mass is ended’. This simple instruction, and a belief that their role was to build community as a result, has led to lives being transformed, fueled by the Bread of Life. 

But it is not just churches. Stoke City Football Club opens its doors leaving Yasmin to reflect about her Grandmother, Sandra, who has dementia:  

“My Nan has made friends and this place has helped her with talking and socializing more. Especially since COVID she stopped socializing and was feeling lonely. I think this has really made a difference”. 

Or in Lichfield where the local theatre provides the same hospitality, leaving Jean to reflect that:  

”You get to know people don’t you, coming here. It’s lovely.” 

Churches, theatres, football clubs, libraries, mosques, temples, community halls, all of them can become places of welcome, centres of hope.  Countless conversations, countless lives transformed, with the majority so simple and basic that they go unnoticed. 

Relational capital goes beyond self to acknowledge that together, the other is a precious gift and not a problem that needs to be solved.

Towards the beginning of the book of Genesis, just after the first murder occurs with the death of Abel at the hands of his jealous and angry brother Cain, God asks Cain “Where is Abel?” Cain’s response is a common response, a response of one who judges or ‘others’, and then washes their hands.  

“My brother is not my problem, Am I my brother’s keeper?”  

 It is a fundamental question to human flourishing and the principles of living for the common good. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s extraordinary book, Life Together, shares that any act of love or generosity to another person begins with a posture of holding your tongue in order to listen and to understand.  Bonhoeffer then speaks of meekness, bearing, listening and ultimately, and only then, to be in a position to speak. All too often, we jump to speaking before doing the hard work, emphasizing an engrained paternalistic power dynamic, and thinking that we know best.  For Bonhoeffer, this is an act of service which is relational, built upon trust and a relational capital that says that each person matters.  Relational capital goes beyond self to acknowledge that together, the other is a precious gift and not a problem that needs to be solved. Bonhoeffer also recognizes the prophetic wisdom and complexity of this as he shares that:  

“in order to flourish, every community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The marginalization of the weak leads to a broken humanity”. 

At the heart of this dynamic, a posture is decided.  If I am not my siblings’ keeper, and my sibling must look after themselves, then the weak will, of course, be marginalized. A broken and privatized humanity will be the ultimate end result.  

But, if I am my siblings keeper, the posture is very different.  Open arms, a desire to listen, to understand. 

A clear example of this remains in many housing or immigration policies, or in a highly profitable banking sector - benefitting from the spoils of the cost of living crisis, adding to the misery of the majority. Like Pilate, hands are washed, in the pursuit of profit, thankfully challenged by the growing Just Finance Foundation.   

Furthermore, in housing, regeneration for human flourishing, rooted in the call upon a person’s life given in the simple ceremony of baptism, often gives way to gentrification, in which fragmentation and broken relationships become the norm. This is a far cry from the vision of Fr Basil Jellicoe, where ‘homes for heroes’ were redeveloped in inner city Euston, rented at the same price as their slum predecessors as a symbol of action and justice for human flourishing. 

But, if I am my siblings keeper, the posture is very different.  Open arms, a desire to listen, to understand.  This reflects something of the resurrection, where generosity is found, quite simply because God so loved the world. It is often in the most deprived communities that this is demonstrated, echoing a bias to the poorest, and a desire for the justice that Mary promises as she sings at the beginning of her child’s life. 

In essence, our broken and fallen self often looks inside ourselves for fulfilment, but the transformed, loved and forgiven self looks to others as an act of self-giving love, humility and grace.  The vision is often to live out the fundamental challenge of Jesus to the Church, personified in its founder Peter. “Do you love me… Feed my lambs”. Jesus, depicting himself as a shepherd, says to Peter, one of his closest followers – “if you love me, feed my sheep.” This is made all the more extraordinary as Peter himself had recently carried out a knife attack, yet he was still breathed upon with the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. 

The stories from Places of Welcome, and the testimonies from the communities who have used the  Growing Good resources which exist to provide a framework as to how and why churches can and should serve their local contexts, are a reminder that relationships matter, people matter and love matters.  Much hidden Christian ministry, alongside that of other faiths, as Near Neighbours testifies, strive for this different vision. Their stories demonstrate that living the principles of presence, perseverance, hospitality, adaptability, participation and action can lead to organic altruistic and flourishing communities. Daily, safe spaces are being created for the broken soul to rejoice, dance and sing.  

The human urge to be in relationship with others is paramount.  When such relational stories are told, actions follow.  Good action is justice focused, co-created and participatory.  This requires a mutuality, and a desire to learn, knowing context, listening to the local, and daring to ask the difficult questions of why certain communities are impoverished in the first place.  It is in asking these questions, developing a learner’s heart, filled with curiosity, that will lead to the flourishing of all. Staying quiet when you have heard is not a viable option.  

The posture is simple.  Am I my siblings’ keeper?  The answer no inevitably leads to death of relationship.  The answer yes has the potential to lead to true human flourishing.   
 

Review
Culture
Film & TV
Freedom
6 min read

I’m Still Here is a celebration of Brazilian resilience

The Brazilian Oscar winner is an act of remembrance.

Matt is a songwriter and musician, currently completing an MA in theology at Trinity College, Bristol.

A woman, wearing 70s clothing, stands, looking apprehensive.
Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva.

The other week in Brazil, crowds were heard jubilantly celebrating: “Brazil! Brazil!” The characteristically enthusiastic nature of their celebration might make you think there had been a football victory. But the victory was in fact the Oscar win for I’m Still Here, the Walter Salles directed movie – a first time win for Brazil in Best International Picture. And Brazil should be proud. As the credits rolled in an independent cinema, I sat in stunned silence. I’m Still Here is a moving and expertly crafted portrayal of family life under tyranny. The film gives a tragic account of the insidious and destructive nature of authoritarian untruth - yet also a celebration of the defiant resistance of unsung heroes in the face of evil. 

Set in 1970’s Rio de Janeiro during a military dictatorship that lasted for 21 years, the film centres around the true story of the Paiva family. The father, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former dissident congressman, is abducted by the military for interrogation and disappears; the mother, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), who herself is imprisoned and tortured for 12 days, is left to keep the family together and continue the search for her husband.  

At this point, I should admit that this review is not unbiased, as I have been to Brazil six times, and have an enthusiastic interest in its history and culture. And despite the sombre tone at the heart of the movie, I’m Still Here felt like a celebration of Brazil. The film opens with an ominous helicopter flying over a Rio beach, which leads us to the Paiva family enjoying the sun with their friends. The fun, vibrancy, and warmth that permeates the family gathering reminded me of much of what I love about Brazilian culture. Even in the midst of a repressive regime, at least for this family, the party goes on.  

Unfortunately, the party doesn’t last for long. 

Thirty minutes into the film, the relative harmony of the Paiva family’s world is sharply interrupted, when the military police arrive at their home and announce that Rubens is wanted for interrogation. As the intruders close the curtains and doors, the light, warmth and music that permeated the start of the movie are muffled and suffocated. This scene plays like a microcosm for Brazilian society under authoritarian regime.  

Historians Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa Starling, in their book Brazil: A Biography document how on 14 December 1968, the Jornal do Brasil, a leading daily newspaper, published a special edition to surprise their readers, including a false weather report: ‘Suffocating temperature. Air unbreathable.’ The previous day, the military dictatorship had announced a law which suspended habeas corpus and freedom of expression, permitted the annulment of citizen’s rights, and determined that political trials would be conducted by military courts, with no right of appeal. This allowed the dictatorship to repress political dissent, and led to the mass disappearances of individuals suspected of anti-government activity.  

We see this suffocation slowly take hold of Eunice Paiva. Here Fernanda Torres’ subtle yet arresting performance as the Paiva mother cannot be understated. As she tries to maintain a sense of normalcy in her family, protecting them from the truth, while also quietly and defiantly seeking her husband’s release, we hang on to her every word and nuance of expression.  

Every confrontation she makes to the police is met with deflection, lies, and cover-up. We watch as the insidiously persuasive untruth of authoritarianism seems to triumph over integrity. We get this sense from the world around the Paiva family too – the radio only relays state-sanctioned news, and censors music deemed subversive. I’m reminded of George Orwell’s depiction of the Party in 1984, which enforces ‘doublethink’ on the populace: ‘to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies … consciously to induce unconsciousness.’  

Eunice can be seen as a counterpart to Orwell’s protagonist, Winston, who claimed ‘There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.’ This refusal to let go of truth carries Eunice Paiva, and us along with her.  

While a song won’t take down a dictatorship overnight, it can get into your head, and stick there long enough to inspire some forms of resistance. 

The presence of music in the movie likewise represents a significant thread of resistance to the regime’s propaganda and shrouded crimes. This is heard not just in the vibrant soundtrack of resistance music from the period, but also in the dark and hostile prison where Eunice Paiva is held. Amid screams from other inmates, Eunice hears a man sing out from another cell:  

Samba:

Black,

strong, fearless,

Was harshly persecuted

On the corner, in the bar, in the yard.

He is quickly silenced by a guard, but the refrain memorialises the cry of the oppressed. While a song won’t take down a dictatorship overnight, it can get into your head, and stick there long enough to inspire some forms of resistance, to combat the ‘official’ narrative of events with a subversive counter-narrative.  

Yet in I’m Still Here, the clearest act of resistance comes from the quiet but resolved determination of Eunice Paiva in her refusal to forget her husband, to let the untruth of dictatorship have the final say. I’m reminded of Hannah Arendt’s diagnosis of the ‘banality of evil’ in Nazi Germany. Under dictatorship, with the state’s obfuscatory erasure of its misdeeds, evil becomes normalised, losing its shock, its horror. In this way, atrocities can continue to be committed with impunity.  

But Eunice Paiva’s story reminds us, in Schwarz and Starling’s words: ‘nothing can be completely extinguished, and no one disappears completely without someone remembering their name.' As Chico Buarque, a Brazilian musician foresaw: 

The banal of today 

Will be in journals someday.  

One aspect of Eunice’s story the film does not portray is her faith. According to her children, she would attend Catholic Mass every week, partaking of bread and wine to remember Christ’s death.  I’m curious what influence this continued reminder of the crucifixion of Jesus had on her.  

There are other examples of resistance in Brazil that were explicitly motivated by the image of the cross. Schwarz and Starling recount the opposition of a group of Catholic bishops who used the Church’s communication channels to disclose internationally what was happening in Brazil. One Catholic father, who was personal assistant to the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, working on international human rights, was kidnapped, tortured and killed. 

In 1970 the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church in Paris displayed a handcuffed Christ on the altar with a tube in his mouth and a magneto (small generator for applying electric shocks) on the top of the Cross. Above the Cross the words from the Brazilian flag ‘Ordem e Progresso’ were inscribed.  

While we can see the strong parallels between Jesus’ death at the hands of Roman imperial oppressors and the unjust torture of thousands under military dictatorship, the message of the Cross goes even deeper than this. 

The Cross has been throughout centuries a revelation of all of humanity’s deepest wickedness, and not only that, a confrontation of our tendency to evade accountability, to create untruths to hide atrocities, to make evil banal. Yet as Christians of different denominations commemorate the crucifixion at Holy Communion, Eucharist, Mass, we are reminded of a God who suffers for the sins of the world. Perhaps this meal nourished Eunice Paiva in her fight against tyranny. Perhaps this memorial of a suffering saviour served as an inspiration to retain the memory of all those who suffer, to expose the evils that so often go unseen.  

In any case, I’m Still Here, while giving an honest critique of Brazil’s history, ends up being a memorial - even a celebration - of the resilient, Brazilian spirit, exemplified in the lives of families like the Paivas. 

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