大象传媒

Greater Manchester has been upstaged. It鈥檚 two drivers from the West Midlands who joined teams from 21 other nations in Frankfurt this weekend to be the English competitors in the European Tram Driving Championships. I鈥檓 delighted that trams now have their own sporting competition, and with almost four years before the next Olympic Games, who knows what the future may promise.

Living in Salford, I use trams pretty often. As I do buses and trains. Not only are they greener and less stressful than urban driving, they鈥檙e more sociable too. People talk. Most conversations may not be on matters of great consequence, but chatting about the weather, what the day ahead holds, or even sharing stories of some previous much delayed journey, warms my heart. I feel connected, part of a common humanity. I suspect similar reasoning lies behind the decision of a large Academy Trust this week to ban its pupils from using mobile devices at school.

The Christian scriptures tell of how God, having sent many messages and messengers, and even inscribed key commandments on tablets of stone, takes another track. In Jesus he meets with his creation face to face. The four gospels give glimpses of what he and his companions talked about along the way. But I imagine them spending a lot of time simply building deeper relationships through casual conversation. I suspect it was that, as much as the content of Jesus鈥檚 teaching, which held them together through that critical period, post Easter and his Ascension, when he was no longer with them in person.

This time last week, I鈥檇 just landed back from Barbados . My weekend had been spent in meetings seeking to address the legacy of a church based charity that had, until the late 1830s derived much income from a sugar plantation which used enslaved Africans for its labour force. A significant sum has been set aside. My role is as part of a steering committee, both local and international, which will oversee how it should be spent. We need both to mark a dreadful past and to build a better future. Most of our meetings will, inevitably take place on line. But spending a weekend together, on the actual plantation site, proved vital in building our sense of common purpose and our trust for each other.

So, if you鈥檙e listening whilst struggling through the Monday morning commute, it might not feel like it, but it鈥檚 probably worth it. Not because you will work more efficiently than from home, but for the human contact you will make. And if you鈥檙e agog to know who are the 2024, European tram driving Champions, maybe the sports news, later in the programme will tell us.

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