Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland

Radio Scotland

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Good morning

"Why are you looking for the living among the dead?"

That’s the question the two angels asked the women who came to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus? It changed their world even though (or maybe because) the question is not easily answered. There’s no box to tick, no first, second and third choice. The question is meant to excite and provoke – to change what we think we know about life and death and the world and usher us beyond our disappointment and beyond the small world we inhabit.

In 1995 the Quebec nationalists were exhausted and embittered after their loss in the second of Quebec’s two referendums by the smallest of margins. Everybody limped home. The leader of the day promised the populace that he wouldn’t hold another one until he was sure he would win. Until there were, as he said, ‘winning conditions’. You can’t always predict winning conditions so you want to go into a referendum with the right question. If a referendum ever goes ahead here we in Scotland can expect a lot of discussion about what sort of question should be asked. Unionists will want a tough question that makes independence look like a jump from a very tall building onto broken glass and snakes. Their opponents will want a question that makes independence sound like it has few risks or consequences.

When the questions are proposed by either side they’ll have been created with a marketer’s professional skill – to be the sort of questions which ordinary voters will vote on with predictable results – because that’s just the way we are – that’s just the way we are inclined.

Forgive me if I stay a while longer in the glow of the Easter candle where angels and even the risen Christ himself asked folks like me the sorts of questions which push them beyond the particular street they were inclined to be walking down.