Commissioner Keith Banks (Salvation Army Chaplain,
Glasgow Airport): I thank you for your welcome and the
invitation to be here today, which I consider to be a great
honour and privilege.
After nearly nine years in my role, one thing that I have
discovered for sure is that I need to be human at all times:
natural, unstuffy, approachable. I need to be not pious,
pompous or holier than thou, but to know what is going on with
Rangers and Celtic, and with Hibs and Hearts.
If it is true that the whole of human life is found in an
airport—and it is—it follows that all human emotions are
reflected there: human joys, sorrows, disappointments, anger
and aspirations. Experience has shown me that training and
academic attainments, though incredibly helpful, are not
paramount. What matters most is that I am seen as a
flesh-and-blood human being as much as is humanly
possible.
People talk to me about all things human: the pain of
grief following the loss of a loved one or a work colleague; an
addiction that they are struggling with; concerns about the
workplace, such as redundancy; fear for their mother’s health;
anxiety about a child’s education; or a gender or orientation
issue. People share
their happiness, their jokes and their frustrations. They ask
questions about God, about worrying things in the news, about
the relevance of faith in the 21st century and about things
that have been said in this chamber. There are
always passengers who cannot understand why their plane has
been delayed or why their luggage has gone missing, and there
are those who cannot find the toilets. That is all very
human.
When I escorted from a plane a grieving 85-year-old woman
who had seen her husband pass away mid-flight, what really
mattered was a caring human presence—a human ear and a human
arm.
As a Christian minister, I do my best, as an ordinary
human guy, to follow Christ. He was truly and properly divine,
but he was truly and properly human, too. My task is to reflect
the divine nature of his love and his humanity without
discrimination, which, of course, was the way in which he did
it.
I guess that that is how it should be for all of us who
interact with people. Whether or not we are people of faith, we
should never be so lost in the clouds that our feet lose
contact with the floor, because that is where people are.
People need chaplains—and politicians—to be real people
themselves as much as is humanly possible. So may it be.
