Splinters and Planks

In the magical, mystical world of childhood, which we never quite grow out of but sometimes hide for a while, we can be anything we choose to be - a princess, a fairy, a wizard, a king - and we can take any situation and turn it into a fabulous realm where we play the hero, victim or narrator or whatever role we choose. There are no responsibilities there beyond slaying the dragons of our own imagination, or ruling our kingdoms with justice and peace.

Fact is, it seems to me, that fairy tale kingdom is really the Truth about how we live our lives. We come into this world without any responsibilities but, at an early age are taught that we are responsible for one another....and there begins our decline into the idea that somehow we are omnipotent and everything is laid on our shoulders and we grow up. That's the point where we eat the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden - that's when we turn away from our natural playfulness and peace into the idea that we, not God are responsible for what happens around us. And religion encourages this. It's somehow our responsibility that someone is starving, that someone is suffering, that someone is in pain. We must stop our games, and subject ourselves to all kinds of sacrifices to correct this terrible thing that has happened to someone else. It's my fault that someone else hurts. It's my responsibility to care for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed. This is taught from pulpits every day.

And along came Jesus who said, "Why do you attempt to take the splinter from your brother's eye, when there is a plank in your own?" I always took this to mean don't judge other people when you make bigger mistakes yourself, but nowadays it takes on a new meaning.

There we are playing and, while playing, gathering splinters of ideas - ideas about original sin, about debt to society, about how we need to obey people who are cleverer than we are, about how wars are necessary and people are aggressive and not to be trusted, and we need to listen to masters and mediators between us and the Divine - and gradually building whole forests of lies about about who we are, what we're doing here, how we are sinners and have to appease a God who sacrificed his son so horrifically to pay for our sins....and at the same time try to help each other and take the splinters from someone else's eye.

Supposing it were different. Supposing we all cleared our own vision of the world; cleared out our planks, our vision and how we view the world; and more than that, cleared out all the old ideas of how we are supposed to live, then indeed we would see clearly enough to say to one another, "Want to come and play?" There would be no poverty then; there would be no one in need. Sometimes it's easier to feel good about 'doing good for others' than it is to clear our own shadow side, but unless we clear our own planks first, we can never see the beautiful expression of the Divine in others.

Armistice Day

On Armistice Day, in memory of the lost generation of World War I, and those who gave their lives on all sides in so many, many wars.

I love Rupert Brooke's poetry - and his is one of a million tragedies of young men whose lives were cut short 'in foreign fields'.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Is it Interesting?

Is it interesting that those who speak most vociferously of the 'redistribution of wealth' are either those in positions of luxury who have no intention of parting with their own, or are those in positions of envy, who feel an inadequacy about themselves - equating who they are with what they possess?
Is it interesting that those who speak most vociferously of 'national security' and keeping us safe, are those whose actions made us targets for other people's anger?
Is it interesting that those who march most vociferously against poverty are often those who step over or by-pass a person begging in the street? Or wouldn't lend you a penny and turn their noses up against someone who doesn't fit their image of the grateful pauper?
Is it interesting that those who speak most vociferously for what Christ stood for, and have such a need to convert the world, are often the least tolerant people of all, and condemn all other beliefs and ways of life(forgetting that Jesus was accused of mixing with Romans, tax collectors and sinners)?
Is it interesting that those who speak most vociferously in praise of a late prophet, are the very people who vilified, stoned or even crucified that prophet in his lifetime? (it's always easier to love a dead prophet and turn him/her into our own image).
Is it interesting that those who speak most vociferously about anything, are often the most insecure people of all and those who have not yet sorted out their own 'demons' so project them onto the world?

No, it's not interesting because it has ever been thus.

What is interesting is the way that someone opens a door for someone else to pass through...and then smiles; or a stranger, seeing someone trip on the pavement, automatically opens their arms to help; or if someone you have never met before and might never meet again, for no apparent reason, suddenly talks to you in a friendly way about whatever they happen to be thinking; the casual conversation in a queue; the person who lets you go in front of them because you have fewer things at the check-out; the person who tells you, you just dropped your purse, or the person who lets you stroke their dog and tells you how old he is, how naughty he is, how much s/he loves him. Interesting, too, the way that they bulldoze buildings and suddenly greenery sprouts through the cracks in the concrete - tiny flowers, little yellow-headed leaves and small shoots, forcing their way against the odds towards the faint November sun (even on cold days this happens!). Interesting how the ducks and birds and ancient trees don't give a fig for the pettiness of who is supposedly 'in power' - they just go on growing, floating, flying and being wise - and they are ever interesting and ever new.

Really, some little boys or girls playing their games of power becomes very tedious. True wisdom often looks like foolishness but the wise things are very different from what appears to be wise, don't you think?

A Dilemma about a War Memorial - Just Some Thoughts

There's an outcry about the student caught on camera urinating against the poppy wreaths on a War Memorial and the suggestion that he could face a prison sentence (however unlikely) for this offence. The student, utterly ashamed, was apparently so drunk at the time that he has no recollection of the offence and, wearing his poppy to court, expressed his remorse. This, I read in the papers and have no knowledge of the 'accused' other than that.

But it raises all kinds of questions. The fact that someone in a state of intoxication was incapable of seeing where he was relieving himself - for surely it was not meant to be any kind of insult to the 'glorious dead' - is as old as time. The fact there is now a backlash to what the newspapers have chosen to call 'binge Britain' and this particular person was caught on camera, panders to the scapegoat mentality. The indignation of the British Legion and the families recently bereaved by recent wars is absolutely understandable but, putting all personal agendas aside, this was simply a drunk student relieving himself and he happened to do it in the wrong place with no harm or insult intended.

To whom was that Memorial dedicated? To the young men who gave their lives for their country. Many of them - particularly in the First World War - were exactly the same as the student who was arrested. In 1914, young men were intoxicated by the belief that they were going to participate in the 'war to end wars'. They believed in a better life for themselves (and the idea of travelling abroad and coming home as heroes) and were caught up in the dream that what they were doing was heroic. Some short time later, some of them awoke to the reality of what had happened - in much the same state of hangover as that young fellow awoke to his arrest.

In the case of the student, he had offended the sensibilities of decency and what is seen as the honour of those who died. In the case of the volunteers of WWI, they awoke to the realization that they had been sold a lie and had been involved in mass slaughter for someone else's dream. The hangover must have been much the same.

So much spilled blood - for what?? What did World War I achieve?? Only World War II. Had the student lived a century ago, he would have been one of those young men...instead he, without murdering anyone, without depriving a family of a son or a brother or husband, had the opportunity to get drunk and happened to pass water on those poppies. No harm meant. I'll bet some of those soldiers would have given anything to be in that position, rather than squirming in trenches on the Somme. Would they care that someone later urinated on their memorial?

Of course, I don't think it's alright to desecrate memorials, and I have absolutely utter respect for those who gave their live to allow me the freedom to write this, but the average soldier in 1914 (and, like everyone else here, we have our own family members who gave their lives in that war) would probably much rather have joined that boy for a whiskey and have weed on a grave, than to have spilt so much blood in some political war. The student is repentant; enough said.

Siegfried Sassoon (himself a war 'hero') wrote a brilliant poem that speaks many more volumes about what is truly a desecration than the action of the scapegoat student:

The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’

I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home’,
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

Ever in the Field of Human Conflict

Now, as it is poppy time again, and already fireworks (in the pre-Bonfire Night days) are exploding all evening - reminiscent of the battlefields of the Somme - I was thinking of Churchill's much quoted lines and would like, without taking anything from the bravery of those RAF pilots of WW2, to turn it around.

Churchill said, "Never, in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few."

Looking back at the slaughter throughout history, it is apparent that ever, in the field of human conflict, so much has been given by so many for so few. The average soldier, and later the average conscript of the First World War, was misled by the lie that this was the war to end wars. So few people manufactured that idea, and yet millions marched off with some ideal that this massacre could bring peace on earth. Millions more suffered the loss of a father, brother, husband or friend. These men were just going about their lives, had no axe to grind with the Germans or Austrians or anyone else from another country. Nor did the average German conscript have any axe to grind with the British, French or Russians...Yet somewhere, a few people had a disagreement, felt a need to dominate, and invariably those people had a sense of their own inadequacy and a total inability to look inside themselves at their own problems and so played them out on the world stage at such a cost.

Hitler - poor little, weak fellow - found the means to attract to himself like-minded people because he appealed to the sense of weakness in a nation (a sense of weakness brought about, of course, by the terms of Versailles). Churchill was, I think, no less a megalomaniac - he just happened to be on the 'right' side, but would have done anything to ensure his own sense power - external to himself - to make up for the lack of self-esteem he felt in childhood. Ivan the Terrible - identical story. Alexander the Great - identical story. William the Conqueror, Richard the (so-called) Lionheart....The list is endless

And for the internal conflicts of these men - and such people throughout history - so much has been sacrificed by so many.

Okay, supposing I am wrong....well, here's a question. How come that the people in power, presumably those who are most intelligent, capable and aware, have again and again and again been unable to speak with one another to reach amicable conclusions. I have seen little schoolboys so angry with one another being brought to sit together and in five minutes they make an amicable agreement and become friends. Neither goes away feeling humiliated or having had to compromise their own beliefs. In five minutes, children can sit beside one another and become friends again. Yet some so called heroes of history couldn't do that?

Truly, ever in the history of human conflict, so much has been given by so many to ease the wounded child and ego of so few.

Hallowe'en

The night is so dark and misty - the perfect setting for the lead up to Hallowe'en, and what a set of bizarre reactions there are to that night! Here in England, I have heard from several quarters, a strange sort of backlash against this 'American import' this year. A few years ago, I heard a priest raging against it - calling it 'dangerous' like some kind of satanic ritual.

It's true that until maybe five or ten years ago, beyond the scary ghost stories and occasional pumpkin in a window, it seemed to have died out in England. There were no 'trick or treats' - instead there was (on November 4th) Mischief Night - which really meant stealing the wood from other people's bonfires before November 5th. Mischief Night escalated into putting treacle on door knobs, then throw eggs at windows or stealing someone's gates. People said how bad times were - forgetting that right back to the Middle Ages any excuse for disorder was welcomed! Trick or treat is mild in comparison and, personally, I think it's fabulous fun for children and a great American import Thank you, America!

The priest's reaction seems to go back to another era. The era when we didn't all live so indoors, hiding behind central heating and double glazing - when the dark night wasn't scary and the change of seasons was celebrated; when animals were brought indoors and there was no separation between humanity and the other creatures of the earth: the era, perhaps, before Christianity in its impurest sense arrived on these isles. The darkness of the night, the respect of the seasons was not something to be feared, but something to be respected. It spoke of the darkness within us - the fears, the judgements, the bitterness and the need to hide from ourselves. Samhain, like the May time Beltane, simply marked that contrast in Nature, that is reflected within us. It spoke of our fears as surely as springtime speaks of our hope. And here's an interesting thing: in the days and cultures where such things were acknowledged, respect for the wisdom of the elders was profound. Now, in our culture that fears the dark, we treat elderly people badly. We want only spring, only to be insulated from the natural flow of the seasons, and wonder why the world is as it is.

Hallowe'en - All Hallows Night - Hallowed (the same word that appears in The Lord's Prayer to describe God's Name) is not a nasty scary thing of ghouls and vampires and skeletons. It's no less a Feast Day than any other. Unless we face our fears, we are destined to be haunted by them, and it seems to me that our greatest fears are facing up to our own shadows - our own resentments, judgements, unforgiveness.

So...thank you again, America, for reviving our ancient tradition of remembering All Hallows Night - after all, if God/Life is omnipresent, everything is holy!


(Photograph courtesy of Andre Hilliard www.andrehilliard.com )

Heroes

I know an elderly woman who dislikes most people she meets but the moment that they pass from this life, she turns them into saints and won't hear a bad word spoken of them. In some ways she resembles Queen Victoria, I think. Although she adored Prince Albert, Queen Victoria made much of his life so difficult by her mood-swings and criticism and her own neediness. The same is true of her daughter, Alice, who - because she had criticised John Brown - Queen Victoria described to relatives all over Europe as having 'too high an opinion of herself', but the moment she died, she was suddenly a perfect example of humility!

How odd people are in their worship of those who are no longer physically here, and how quickly someone who was vilified in life can be turned into a saint once they have passed on! It's fascinating how many so-called 'saints' were hounded by bishops during their lifetime, and only later the good they did was recognized. John of the Cross, for example, was imprisoned - I believe - by the Church. Julie Billiart was constantly criticised by bishops; Bernadette of Lourdes was all but banished to her convent to keep her out of the way (and typically thought suffering was the only way to heaven, so died young). Jesus was crucified by the Church authorities.

I wonder why it is that people are so drawn to messages only after someone is no longer here to expound their message further?? Is it because it is too challenging to face when they are still here? It's safer and easier to create the image in our own likeness when there is no possibility of that false image being challenged?

In my opinion, heroes are never really heroes - they are all the products of our own image of what we would like to be and believe about all that is finest in ourselves. Dead heroes don't challenge that so it's easier to enshrine them and fit them into boxes. Truth be told, there are thousands of heroes - people who have lived out their lives according to their own lights, and bringing more joy and wonder into the world. The heroes established by 'history' - which often means by the government of the day - are seldom any more or less than the small child walking past their monument, doing whatever we do to get by, to improve our understanding, to be who we really are, unswayed by the need to fit in or fit someone else's mould of how we should live.

I like statues of heroes (and England is littered with them!), and what is most interesting, is scraping the surface to find, underneath, a person who is no different from all the everyday people we pass and talk to as we go about our daily business. We don't have to be dead to be heroes. We just have to be our true selves.

Nursery Rhyme Heritage

A bizarre row is going on because the BBC changed the last line of the nursery rhyme 'Humpty Dumpty' for a children's programme. The original ends with 'all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.' The changed version gave it a happy ending with the king's horses and men making Humpty happy again.

The row is about changing age-old rhymes to make them less frightening for children and making everything jolly. Apparently, another nursery rhyme about Miss Muffet being frightened by a spider has been changed to make the frightened woman make friends with the spider. Nanny state gone mad!!!! Children are scared of many things - fairy tales are filled with scary characters to help them deal with that. Wrapping them in cotton wool and pretending everything is lovely, while news programmes and political propaganda is creating an atmosphere of fear is utter nonsense - creating people who are unable to cope with something as shocking as a spider or Humpty Dumpty falling from a wall! In the age of double-glazing and super-clean environments which don't allow children's immune systems to develop, this hardly seems surprising. A nation of ninnies will be all that is left, and they will be at the mercy of any tyrant or control-freak who chooses to take power.

However! In this case, the BBC said they were only being 'creative' with their alternative ending. That is all very well but someone somewhere in the corporation must realize that there is a lot more to nursery rhymes than simply nonsensical verses. In the ages before newspapers, TV and radio, the best means of communicating the news was by stories that were easy for the messenger to remember. Rhyming verses are easier to remember than prose and so it was by verses that news travelled the country. Obviously unbeknown to the people who decided to change the end of the verse, Humpty Dumpty tells the story of a cannon that was smashed to pieces during the Civil War. Changing the end of it is rewriting history. It's not a matter of being creative, it's a matter of preserving the ancient traditions of the country. Folk songs carry the same historical traditions, as do Morris Dancers, Maypoles and Mummers. It seems to me really important that these things are preserved as surely as we preserve old buildings and other parts of our heritage. Please don't start messing with nursery rhymes!!!

Meaningless Trophies and Jobs for the Boys

I once had the good fortune to be invited to an award dinner for something I had done. I didn't win the award but thoroughly enjoyed the occasion and was honoured to be there because the people I met were very pleasant. Afterwards I was told confidentially by one of the judges that it was quite exceptional that I was there at all because - I quote - "...they like to keep this among themselves and promote their own. It's not a matter of how worthy you are or what you have done, but about how they want to promote their own things with people they control or know." Being naive and young, I just took that as a compliment that this outsider had somehow broken into a closed group. Now, still happy to have had that experience, the meaninglessness of such trophies handed out by little groups becomes more and more apparent.

On the one hand there are programmes like "The X-Factor" where people with talent find an opening. Such programmes are viewed as 'tacky' by some people, and it is true that the public vote always runs the risk of mass hysteria or being swayed by the media coverage. All the same, a person of talent gets up and people all over the country can have their say. This, though, is scorned by the intelligentsia and seen as hype and tacky.

On the other hand, there are prestigious awards that are seen as having more meaning. The Nobel Prize, for example....It's interesting that Alfred Nobel was the chemist whose work with the armament industry and his association with explosives led him to want to leave a better legacy after his death and so he instituted the prizes. The Peace Prize, he said, would be awarded to to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses..."

The nominees for this year's award were:

Sima Samar, women’s rights activist in Afghanistan: “With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women’s Affairs.”

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: “These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon.”

Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for ‘inciting subversion of state power.’

Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. He now lives in the United States.

And President Obama who has er.....talked a lot. What was it that person said to me at the award I attended? Ah yes, I remember now.