How much life sparkles when we meet new people, disagree, and respect them anyway

I passed my driving test last week, having made it to my grand age without needing more than two wheels because, until I met the sisters, my greatest responsibility for the welfare and well-being of another was for Chirps, my cat.

I passed first time (she bragged) because I had a phenomenal teacher, a former HGV driver who believes, I think, that everyone has some kind of Platonic driver within. He and I disagreed about almost everything – veganism, immigration, Reform – which is quite something to articulate when you’re merging on to the M1 for the first time. We became huge friends.
I was beside myself when I passed: no more wrangling the accursed DVSA test-booking system; a faster track to family and distant sisters; an Uber-less way to support my community with pick-ups and drop-offs. But I thought: how much I will miss arguing with Lee for two hours a week. He taught me how to parallel park, and emergency stop, and say “Thank you” with the crook of a finger. He also taught me how dull it is always to think one is right; how much more life sparkles when we meet new people, disagree, respect them anyway, and so get an entirely better view on the truth by circling around it.

The Tablet has covered the shooting of Charlie Kirk, and laying out my own thoughts on the matter now would be crass. I am a Sister of Peace, so my identity is bound up with the horror that I feel when I hear that anyone has died by a bullet, whether they be a right-wing racist or a toddler in Gaza.

In the wake of Kirk’s shooting, the Right and Left, liberals and conservatives, have fallen into a kind of manic paranoia. Last week, Nottingham’s beloved annual Green Festival was summarily gutted by its insurers hours before it opened because of fears of violent clashes with the far Right. After the shooting, Event Insurance said that it could not insure “stalls of activities with political affiliation”, and so organised events that included – and I kid you not – Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Refugee Forum, the Bahá’ís, Stand Up to Racism and, for some unfathomable reason, Open Homes, the homelessness charity we host for, were banned from participating. The event went ahead as an unrecognisable Green Fair and sold a few vegan cakes. This was not the fault of the deeply honourable organisers; it was a change in climate brought about by the Kirk shooting; by the extraordinary fear that, in retaliation, a fascist militia might annex the East Midlands and open fire on Friends of the Earth.

As we saw in London recently, there are noisy fascists in England. There are also noisy socialists (I am one). I cannot help but wonder if part of the escalation from disagreement to bloodshed might be the availability of bullets themselves, at the DSEI arms fair in London last week, for example, as well as the political meta-narrative that the best way to win an argument is to shell people who disagree with you. My sister Katrina, chaplain to Pax Christi England and Wales, helped run a training day ahead of the DSEI called “How to Talk to Arms Dealers” and then, early on the day the fair opened, patiently and persistently approached people in the queue for security to see if they might talk about security and conscience.

Some did. In the shadow of turrets and tanks and nuclear warheads and armed police, she walked up to strangers with opposing views and asked if they might like to talk. I think this is one of the bravest and most vulnerable acts of non-violent direct action I have heard of. In activist circles, we call it non-violent communication.

The thing I am most afraid of as a new driver is merging on to a motorway. The first few times I did it, I assumed it was me versus the rest of the traffic. Then I noticed that everyone rippled out of my way (perhaps I look very desperate). There is one school of thought that says the safest way to drive is to believe everyone else on the road is out to get you.

Lee taught me another: everyone else on the road just wants to get home, too. All of us want to arrive safely; and we want the same for our children and wives and husbands and friends. Perhaps if we communicated a little better, with a flick of the indicator or a nod to say thanks, we might find the journey a bit less frightening.

Liz Dodd is a sister of St Joseph of Peace. Watch or listen to the latest podcast featuring Liz Dodd and Ruth Gledhill, also available on all the usual platforms via this link.