The title for this post is borrowed from a beautiful Martyn Joseph song. which feels like it sums up much of what my life feels like at the moment (and I'm not just talking about the British summer weather): the darkness and the lights that shine through it, the dead ends and the long winding roads, the heartache and the hope.
This isn't new. I've written before about the juxtaposition of joy and suffering in my life and work. Last week felt like it brought that reality into particularly sharp focus so I'm writing about it again.
The week began with something of an adventure involving 43 people, three buses and some spectacular rainstorms: I joked with colleagues that if I ever write the sitcom of my life, that journey would definitely feature! But we made it ... and the rain had stopped by the time we turned the corner into a park. The kids were off, running and playing; and the grown-ups were no less excited: I wouldn't want to even begin to try and count how many selfies were taken! But then, in between the sound of shouts and giggles and kids calling out to me, I ended up in conversation with one of the parents, who told me how this little bit of woodland we were walking through reminded him of the thirty-something days he'd spent living in a forest on his journey to the UK.
It reminded me of another trip a few weeks earlier when the little girl skipping along beside me had broken off from whatever incidental thing we were talking about to look out at the reservoir and tell me "we were in water like this when we came to England but then they rescued us" before, barely missing a beat, before I'd really had chance to catch my breath sufficiently to think of an appropriate way to respond, going straight back to chatting away about the kind of things 6-year-olds usually chatter about.
The new 'illegal' migration bill is so hideously awful that I think somewhere in the midst of preparing for what it might mean, we were somehow clinging to a sliver of (admittedly probably misplaced) hope that at some point they'd realise and just call the whole thing off, but on Tuesday it was confirmed that the Lords had capitulated and it was indeed going to become law. The same morning, the barge / floating prison arrived in Portland harbour, another symbol of the hostile environment the current regime seem determined to create, and the antithesis of the welcome I want us to offer. It was not lost on me that Portland is a place of many happy childhood holiday memories and that I went there only last month. I walked in the sunshine, clambered over rocks and rode on an open-top bus: it was a wonderful, memorable day with some of my most precious friends: precious friends who the government would prefer me never to have had the privilege to meet. It was a fabulous place for a holiday: it is not a suitable place to accommodate 500 people seeking safety.
A couple of days later, after a late evening counting out hundreds of sunflower seeds with a good friend for company, on Thursday I was at the Birmingham REP. Everybody: the creative learning team, box office and front of house staff, stage managers and tech teams put these people and their stories, my friends, who are so often pushed to the margins, centre stage, quite literally. We stood on this stage, no treated no differently to the professionals who grace it on other occasions. We looked out on an audience of hundreds of school children. The performers excelled themselves and, equally importantly had a lot of fun in the process. It wasn't lost on me that it was the same day the new law received royal assent ... but that was easier to put to one side on what was an incredible, exhilarating morning. Even the weather cooperated, allowing us to relax and enjoy ourselves afterwards at a post-show picnic in the sunshine.
After the sheer joy of Thursday, almost exactly 24 hours later, on Friday morning, I broke down in tears in a meeting about hotel accommodation as we confronted the enormity of the detrimental impact of long periods of time in unsuitable accommodation on people's wellbeing, and my sense of utter powerlessness to make a meaningful difference. I accept that being rather tired was probably a factor in my struggle to maintain my usual equilibrium, but I think it was also a reflection of the reality of just how challenging working in this sector is at the moment and the weight, and the guilt, we are carrying with and for the friends we would like to be able to welcome better. I know I am not alone in this: conversations and WhatsApp exchanges with friends and colleagues and others suggest that relentlessness of the chaos and the cruelty is getting to us all.
By the same evening I was back at the REP for the kind of swanky event I don't often attend for the official opening of the Hub space and presentation of their theatre of Sanctuary Award. And the following morning I woke up to see one of the amazing schools we have had the privilege of working with were featured in the national press for taking on Robert Jenrick's heartless gesture of painting over the cartoons in the Kent Intake Centre and the reminder that these school visits really do make a difference.
There is a lot of thunder at the moment.
There are, fortunately, however faint they seem, always rainbows too.
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