This is the script of this morning's Pause for Thought on the Chris Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 (following last night's Sandford St Martin Awards ceremony at Lambeth Palace):
If truth be told, I'm a bit on the tired side this morning. Last night I was presenting awards for excellence in religious broadcasting and my head is full of great stories. We had some brilliant examples of radio and telly that got under the skin of how people live – and why they live the way they do. After all, religion is about life, not a niche for weirdos.
And perhaps that's why when we get to anniversaries of momentous events, some sort of religious celebration stands at the heart of the remembering. This week is particularly poignant as it ends on the seventieth anniversary of D-Day – a day of triumph, but a day of blood.
But, this week also sees a musical anniversary. Today is the thirtieth birthday of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. I can't believe it is thirty years since the Boss attacked my ears and got me hooked on music that gave words to memories and took seriously the importance of place for human beings. We need to know where we belong – that we belong somewhere.
I wasn't born in the USA – surprisingly. I was born in Liverpool when the Beatles were getting together and Merseybeat ruled the airwaves. I know where my cultural roots are and they partly tell me who I am. And what Springsteen did was to open up to everyone – wherever they come from – the need to remember. As a rabbi once pointed out, when a generation dies out, memory becomes history – and when that happens – inevitably – history becomes a commodity over which people fight.
The point is we need to know who we are. Way back in the Old Testament the people had to divide the year into rituals that compelled them to remember where they had come from – that when they prospered, they recalled that once they were slaves and had nothing. This was supposed to root within their consciousness a sense of humility and generosity that shaped their politics and economics as well as their culture.
Anyway, Bruce Springsteen isn't that old. But, Born in the USA invited us to do the same task: to remember who we are and that all of us were born somewhere.
