This morning I was rifling through my notebook – in which I scribble a line or two of an idea, and . . . usually forget it altogether, or don’t come back to it for weeks or months – I was looking for something else, while in the back of my mind reflecting on some of the points raised in the conversation we began before the Feast of the Nativity when I stumbled across a page that had one line:

What are our values?

It dawned on me some weeks ago that we hear a lot about “values” from various angles. Politicians here in the UK talk a lot about western liberal values of tolerance, freedom of speech, and diversity, in the US we hear quite a bit about “family values”. In both uses there is an implicit statement of how some communities do not share these “values”, indeed some among that group are actively (secretly) working to undermine them. The term “values” has become a watchword – a term to key into a set of ideas that the “in” group understands as a positive statement about them, and the “not so in group” knows is a not so coded attack on their . . . . “values”  . . . . their humanity even.

I don’t think it ought to be this way – indeed I think that in this morass there is something, something useful in our OC/IC context; that is this idea of “values” is a loose glue, a common ground or meeting point where a constructive, cooperative conversation is sustained.

The trick, of course is discernment; picking out from the many competing ideas and practices within our disparate OC/IC community those ideas, those concepts, or practices that we collectively hold as OC/IC values.

What do you think – what are our OC/IC values?