Personal working assumption

Daily trek for water. Ethiopia (photo M.H. Glantz)
Picture credit: FragileEcologies

Though I am always ready to challenge religions and New Age therapies, I run my life on two working assumptions:

1) To get what I need, I send out a message to the Universe.

2) Un-ease is Nature’s way to get me to do something.

Re (1): Time and again, I have found that as soon as I can formulate my need with reasonable clarity, and pursue it to my own limited ability, then I am helped the rest of the way. Is it like phoning to order a pizza? Simpler. Are there all sorts of conditions attached? I expect so. Have I always known this? Not consciously. Have I always practised this ability? Absolutely not. Discovered it very late in life. What’s the catch? Well, we are constantly sending out messages to the Universe, so when many of them are negative, we suffer as a result. So does this mean that actually I am one of those who believe in “positive thinking”? No, a definite NO. Why not? I’ll explain another time.

Re (2): We accept the message of pain as a warning not to cut or burn ourselves. If something in my head nags at me, it’s a message to take action, and so on. And yet we are complicit in a conspiracy which treats the un-ease as something for which we can obtain (usually purchase) a Solution. If I am not mistaken, the idea “You can get something for that [problem]” is a modern idea, and owes everything to marketing.

I’m not saying that un-ease is anyone’s fault. I’m certainly not saying that those who suffer oppression and hunger have themselves to blame. I am not selling a solution. I am not saying that there is a universal law which validates my working assumptions. That would be pre-sumption, a quite different thing. Sometimes I would like to take those who go on about the “law of abundance”, bundle them into a sack with nothing in their pockets and parachute them into the Sahara Desert, so that they could demonstrate their principles to the local residents.

Angels and Grace

The Guardian Angel, Araldo di Luca
Picture credit: Candida Martinelli

This is a revisionist version of my self-censored post from yesterday!

Personally, I’m glad to be able to say “What happens, happens” than “What happens is God’s will”, or “What happens is corrupted by the Devil’s influence.” In other words, I want to taste reality unmediated and unpolluted by beliefs.

With that always in mind, I've never denied my sense that there is more to reality than what the rationalists – scientists, atheists, humanists and sceptics generally – claim. Take away belief and you still have the raw experience. I won’t give you my anecdotal evidence of angelic assistance and Grace that I have received, possibly a miracle too. In almost every case, it is too personal and too circumstantial to relate; or else it is too hard to describe. And in any case, it’s tricky to use the words “angels”, “Grace”, “miracle” when you are outside the specific religious traditions which colour their meanings. So please accept my usage as a convenience. If I had nothing else to wear, I’d use the robes of a Bishop to keep warm, but it wouldn’t mean I had adopted a bishop’s role or outlook. There’s a scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon in which the young Francis, in a gesture of renunciation of his merchant father’s wealth, strips naked in a piazza in Assisi. The bishop, shocked by this indecency, takes off his own cloak, richly embroidered in gold and silver, and places it gently over the shoulders of this shivering youth, who’s portrayed by Zeffirelli as a 12th century hippie.

The notion of angels in some manner fits experience and provides a handy way to account for otherwise inexplicable happenings. Grace is a kindred word, and I used to love the idea of a gift from God which we cannot earn by effort. It seemed my only hope! Some twenty years ago, involved in a religious cult, I read Treatise on Grace by Jonathan Edwards, an 18th century “saint and metaphysician, revivalist and theologian”. At the time I interpreted it in a manner which fitted the beliefs I held. As the Rev Vera I. Bourne writes, “Grace is a free gift. It cannot be earned by any effort on our part -- by fasting, celibacy, acts of kindness or by prayer vigils.” So far so good, but Edwards goes further and touches on a secret belief of Christians and cult members everywhere: “The reason why natural men have no knowledge of spiritual things is because they have nothing of the Spirit of God dwelling in them.” Well I’m proud to be “a natural man”, just like everyone else. The idea of being one of the elect is one of the most tempting but yet the most poisonous there can be.

But these ideas - angels, grace and so on - don’t just hang unsupported from a blue sky. What happens to us is a mess of inchoate reality that we spin into a tidy coherent pattern, complete with its own aesthetic value, positive or negative, and its own meaning. I try, but I can't help constructing reality in this way. All art, all language, all falling in love or hating one's enemy tidies up reality to make a pattern.

So I would say to the members of religions & cults who consider themselves the elect: “No, you are just natural men and women like me, no better no worse." And I would say to myself: “I’m as tempted as any fundamentalist or indeed any scientist, to tweak the evidence to fit an attractive theory when it comes along.” And if I had been suckled by a wolf, and lived in the jungle on all fours, my perception of reality would be constrained partly by wolfhood.

"But I do believe in Grace"

This must be a terrible thing to do in the world of blogging, but I'm censoring what I wrote yesterday. I realised on rereading the original of this post and in particular the comments from Darius and Hayden, that I had communicated badly. Not only that, but I saw in myself remnants of a certain way of thinking which I'd reinforced through habit and never questioned for 30 years. I've left Hayden's and Darius' comments intact. A revised version will be published today. It's not just a rewording of the original post but a revision of where I stand. Oh yes, dogmatic views would be so much easier, and U-turns are embarrassing. But frank admission is more cleansing.

Psychological stuff

Vincent van Gogh: self-portrait
Picture credit: WebMuseum Paris

I wanted to write something inspired by Darius’ comment “... most of us have psychological stuff that interferes with getting in touch with the depth” but had no opportunity to post anything till now. Who in the world can be classed as normal, I wonder? Jung, in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ascribes the theory of sexuality to an incurable neurosis on the part of its author Sigmund Freud. For his part, Freud thought Jung’s seduction by the occult invalidated his theories. What chance for the rest of us, trying to understand the difference between sanity and madness?

There are all kinds of “psychological stuff”, i.e. what Freud and Jung would call neuroses, and we may start with the assumption that none of us are free of it. Some varieties get in the way of our contact with the depth. But if we are too much in touch with the depth, we may have to retreat to the asylum, like poor Vincent van Gogh.

I’m watching that excellent 1956 film, Lust for Life, based on Irving Stone’s book written in the 30s. Vincent is portrayed with the same enthusiasm, in its archaic sense of “ecstasy arising from supposed possession by a god”, as Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ. In both cases, passionate intensity is a kind of madness, if you measure it by the loss of touch with “reality”. The individual is possessed by a fiery impulse which transcends the instincts of self-preservation that make most of us lead sensible lives. I’m not saying that Van Gogh was like Jesus or that either of them was mad, just commenting on the fictional characters so effectively portrayed on the little home screen via the wonderful invention of DVD.

The “psychological stuff that interferes with getting in touch with the depth” is so common as to be endemic, so there is no name for it. Gregariousness and extraversion are not forms of mental illness. Conformity to the prevailing culture is unlikely to be listed on any taxonomy of psychiatric conditions. Yet these tendencies keep us on the surface of life. The Gospel stories of Jesus going into the desert to pray have inspired hermits and monastics ever since. This site, Hermitary, is worth a look.

That is enough for today, even though I had wanted to weave in other topics such as Angels and the State of Grace.

Depth

Violets April 30th

Kathy was puzzled at my proposal that some things, lumped together under the word “spirituality”, are too precious to be spoken about. I’m grateful to you for picking me up on this, Kathy. You are right to say that we need to speak up on behalf of the dumb trees and animals. But when we enter into their world deeply, we become dumb too, and I am struggling to find words.

One the one hand, there is a vast web of concepts, woven over thousands of years into cultures and beliefs. It’s impossible to use language without invoking that web of concepts, because they have shaped language and been shaped by it.

On the other hand is our own private experience. When it flourishes in a place where language does not reach, when it joins that silence in which the inanimate is eloquent, or in which the past is just as real as the present, it does not fall naturally into language.

The word “spirit” has a long history. It relates to breath. Spirit for the ancients was that invisible substance which gives life when we breathe, and leaves our body after we have breathed our last breath. As a symbol or an article of faith, spirit has sustained and inspired religious movements of the past, and continues into that post-religious movement which some call the New Age spirituality: a synthesis of the major religions, shamanism and traditional medicine.

Beliefs sprout ultimately from a hidden root of private experience, and are always falsified when they are made public. Language cannot reflect raw experience without interpretation. “Spirit” says too many things to too many people. It meant something to the mystics of old, but now we glibly set it up in opposition to “materialistic”, “sensual”, “gross”.

“Spiritual” all too easily becomes a new elitism, a new way to divide sheep from goats. I don’t want to be involved in that kind of judgement. I find myself using the word “deep” instead of “spiritual”.

Darius in a previous comment said: “That response to nature is fascinating to me too. It seems as though while a lot of us have it, some don’t.” Yes, but my point is that everyone can have and does have deep experience. Being with nature, or specifically walking the earth under the canopy of the sky, is one way to feel depth, but it is not the only way.

Kathy says, “we need to speak up” (on behalf of peace and nature). Yes, we who feel called do so, need to speak our soul truth. Just as a tree knows how to grow, I know in my deep self (which I refuse to call spirit or God) how to be me.

The word “spiritual”

Darius commented on my previous post, thus:

That response to nature is fascinating to me too. It seems as though while a lot of us have it, some don’t.

You almost never hear the spiritual importance of nature brought up in discussions about preserving the environment.

“Nor should the spiritual importance of nature be brought up in such discussions!” That was my instant reaction on reading his comment.

Why such an emphatic reaction? Well, do you too feel a little uncomfortable with the word “spiritual”? And why is that? Isn't it a kind of dump for all that is unnaccounted for but also most precious? And should we then let it be officially recognised as a commodity which can be traded by those who do not touch and taste it?

Religion: trading in the spiritual commodity.

It is better that the deepest things shall have no name, no intellectual weight whatever in the equations of commerce and culture. Then you can’t trade them, judge their presence or absence, pontificate about them, pretend to know what they mean. Then it can be tacitly acknowledged that they are distributed equally to all and omnipresent: except where civilisation is blind to their presence and blocks them out.

Whatever it is that makes life worth living, whatever touches us and makes profound music in our soul, let it remain a mystery, that cannot be discussed, only felt. We don't need theology or “spirituality”, but only to retain our sensibility intact.

Nature is not “important”. It is the ground of all. I like Jung’s description of plants as “God’s thoughts”. He says “Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life.” Land and sea are not possessions to be owned. They are mysteries to be honoured with awe. The foolishness is a blind “civilisation” which blocks out natural reverence and then claims to rediscover it. I cringe at the obscenity of European missionaries who dared tell the aboriginal populations how to worship, whilst stealing the land.

Thank you, Darius, for your comment.

Paths that cross

An ancient path in Downley

On a morning where the weather didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, I braved its occasional tears and walked in Downley. At Gosling Grove is a pond where two mallard drakes (see banner illustration above) disputed bitterly over one duck. Another seven drakes looked on, would-be suitors all, while the duck kept fastidiously out of the way, loudly quacking her vow to favour only the bravest.

Along a woodland footpath, back of the houses, was a sign pinned to a tree: “DANGER Do not enter. Booby traps in area.” A skull and crossbones emphasised the point. I had to leave the path and go through the undergrowth to see the sign clearly, and though convinced it was only a child’s prank, I proceeded very cautiously.

I got lost. My nose dripped, with no tissue to wipe it. Both circumstances reminded me of childhood wanderings. I passed certain people twice and recognised the same scenes from different angles, realising eventually that my path must have crossed itself like a figure of eight.

In his Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung talks about his (and sometimes his mother’s) “no. 2 personality” – that archaic part which he related to Nature, countryside, and God. I wondered what state I am in when I go walking under the sky. In town, the sky still arches overhead, but the distractions of people and shops take me away from that deeper self that’s so hard to describe. Yet in so many places hereabouts, I’ve only to step out to be transported. Where to? There is a strong feeling of reconnecting with a past. Gazing at the matt blue-green of the growing cornfields, I recalled when I must have been 6, in a situation when I roamed free and alone. But it goes beyond that too. Even then, there was a recognition of a still earlier time. What is that state of being that Jung called “no. 2”? I prefer to leave it unlabelled and unmapped.

Then I returned to the pond. At least four of the drakes were marred with the signs of contest, their breast and neck feathers tattered. The fight continued bitterly: any drake approaching too close to the lone duck was immediately challenged. It could go on all day, for there was no time bell, no referee.

Last temptation

I finally got to watch Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, after wanting to see it ever since it first came out in 1989. Wonderfully poetic fiction and superior to the official fictions so jealously guarded by the churches. As for the Da Vinci Code, I got as far as opening it in a bookshop a while ago and instantly found it unreadable, in exactly the same way that I’d never been able to read more than a page of the Celestine Prophecy. Both books invited me to look through the contemporary eyes of fatuous characters, the author presuming I would identify with their points of view.

Kazantzakis and Scorsese have it exactly right for my taste. Jesus is believable in every scene where he deviates from the Gospel texts, and is somewhere on the spectrum between deranged and megalomaniac the rest of the time; but then, you can feel afresh the astonishment of his audiences. Clearly, his family life with Mary and Martha (left) is far preferable to his triumphant cry (right) of “It is accomplished!” We are left to speculate how everything would have been different if he had succumbed to the temptation, and taken the lovely angel’s invitation to get down from the cross and live till old age. We discover the angel is another trickery of Satan, but it's clear that the world would be a better place today if he had given the flesh its due like normal people. And that is the beauty of the film’s poetic vision. Despite Kazantzakis' intention, the films unintended consequences live on, and I feel like the little boy who sees that the Emperor has no clothes.

Jung - short of idolatry

The Last Supper*
Picture credit: dhushara.com

I am reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections by CG Jung, a work I had avoided till now, partly because I felt that the Jungians were the most terrible idolaters on the planet. However, this is mostly not Jung’s fault, just as being turned into a god was mostly not Jesus’s fault.

The beauty of reading Jung in the original (almost - I don’t read German, but the translation is good) is discovering that Jung was himself an original. Everyone else plays the academic game of quoting references all the time, as if by quoting someone else you get nearer to truth than just saying what occurs to you.

The old man reflects on his own childhood experiences, and his writing has a lot of power. At one point it makes me think, “Oh, why do I bother? He’s said things so much better than I could ever do.”

And that’s the point where idolatry creeps in and has to be nipped in the bud. No one else can say things for us! But whilst we nip idolatry in the bud, if we are honest, we recognise the inbuilt tendency to worship, to follow a leader, which is understandable from an evolutionary point of view but has been ruthlessly exploited through the ages by secular and religious leaders alike. I’m happy following nobody and having nobody following me. It's a lonely path, which makes it all the more pleasurable to share here.

*What was the point of this wretched memorial service with the flat bread and the sour wine? Slowly I came to understand that this communion had been a fatal experience for me. It had proved hollow; more than that, it had proved to be a total loss. I knew that I would never again be able to participate in this ceremony. “Why, that is not religion at all,”, I thought. “It is an absence of God; the church is a place I should not go to. It is not life which is there, but death.” (Page 72)

In praise of inchoate reality

An early April sky amid the Chiltern Hills

What we are accustomed to call “reality” is an interpreted reality, one which accords with a culture, and can be communicated in words, and shared. Our culture may assure us that reality is “rational”. What do we do with the perceptions, hints, feelings, that may move us greatly but which fail the rationality test?

This is no philosophical game, but my life-long quest. In poetry, it was the Romantics, or the mystics: in fiction and film, it was those works whose ambience were more significant than plot or character. In art as in life! for I have never been able to explain what I find most exciting & beautiful. This is what drives people to the arts and to religion and to creative pursuits.

Religions and arts and demigods and fairies and angels and auras and myths are all interpretations of aspects of reality - as are paranoid delusions on the dark side. The logicians and scientists and atheists and sceptics who deny that the “irrational” partakes of reality may be right or they may be robbing themselves. They may be justified in rejecting our interpretation, but shouldn't try to deny our experience. And if of necessity I choose a ready-made interpretation of my inchoate reality, let me not fall under the sway of some tyrant or parasite who wants to put fear in my soul.

I have known miracles, angelic manifestations, premonitions, telepathic communications and irrational feelings galore. I have experienced what others might call the “love of God”, though there’s no way of knowing. But I don’t care to interpret, I prefer to enjoy.

How do you take your reality? With a spoonful of sugar? With some New Age zest? With traditional condiments? No thanks. Inchoate* is fine.

*Inchoate: not yet made complete, certain, or specific : not perfected: imperfectly formed or developed.

And after reading this, you may say, with a certain justification, “Oh well, back to the real world”.

Is it just evolution?

Am I the only devotee of chestnut blossom in its close-up form? My interest started in about 1992, when I observed the phenomenon in Brent Lodge Park. After that, an illness prevented me from going out and about much. Walking the earth and admiring the handiwork of its creator (so to speak) became a defiant act of imagination, as opposed to a real activity. So now, when the season and opportunity coincide, I can’t get enough of these flowers, gazing in wonder and pondering their mystery.

So let me ask. Why do adjacent blossoms have different colours? If Darwin is right, there is some evolutionary advantage. I wish I knew how to find out.

PS "Many flowers that are attractive to bees have an irregular shape that provides a landing platform. They also have flower markings that guide bees in to land on the part of the flower where it can deliver and collect pollen grains. Horse-chestnut tree flowers are cream colored with a yellow honey-guide patch on the petals. When nectar dries up, the yellow patch turns pink, becoming invisible to bees. Bees visits only the flowers that need pollination." Thanks to Massachusetts Agriculture In The Classroom But I don't think this is the full story, because there are at least three colours as in my illustration, and they are like this from the start. I have not seen any blossom clusters where all are yellow or all are pink.

PPS Here is a link to a UK site which provides some clues and some experiments to conduct.

The bluebell wood

Walked from Great Missenden to a wood where bluebells grow in the beech trees' shade. I'm neither a photographer nor a haiku poet like Basho, who wandered through Japan in the 17th century like a nature-tourist, though he was more of a Zen mendicant pilgrim.

It wasn't the bluebells themselves which conveyed the sense of joy that I felt in this morning's sunshine. It was much more a gratitude for my life. And this gratitude and joy, which comes late in life, demands to be shared with those parts of creation which remain in pain and grief even on this day that's so glorious in Buckinghamshire, England.

There is a flow. I may have trashed the New Age formulas I referred to yesterday, but whatever is true, I let it flow through me. As Douglas Adams said, all we know is, "What happens, happens". And by the same token, what's true is true.

As it happens, the calendar on the wall has this to say for May 2006:

"When you are alert and contemplate a flower, crystal or bird without naming it mentally, it becomes a window for you into the formless. There is an inner opening, however slight, into the realm of spirit."

And it says this comes from Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth. I'm not endorsing Tolle. I haven't read his book and the calendar was a gift. Like Descartes, I am trying to doubt everything, and I am not sure about "the realm of spirit". "I feel, therefore I am" would be a good motto for where I'm at.

Are you a non-believer?

A Memorable Fancy
Picture credit: The Alchemy Web site

In the way I was brought up, what you believe was important. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and ye shall be saved." Was it St Paul who invented that mantra? Anyway, you were called upon to "stand up and be counted" in terms of your "beliefs". Even on the last government census in the UK, which inquired as to your religion. Even what social class you are in, these days, is determined by which one you believe you are in. That puts me in the aristocracy: not the ermine-clad, coronet-topped toffs. No, I took a different turning on life's track, quite early on, and joined the anti-social classes. I found my peers in books and works of art.

It seems to me perfectly obvious that the fewer the beliefs the better, if a belief is something we depend on but don't know for certain. I have never believed. Instead, I have cherished Memorable Fancies, in the manner of William Blake.

New Age Beliefs?

New Age stuff?
Picture credit: Online-psychic.biz

A friend - let me call her Epiphany, or Fanny for short! - lists 21 characteristic beliefs defining that rather journalistic label "New Age". Her question is, "How many of these do you agree with?" Here is my answer.

#1 We are all interconnected. Oh yes, I do know this. It's one of the basic principles of my new life. But I don't feel any need to use the word "God" or even "energy".

#2 I do believe in angels, but in my own way, without the palaver of ascended masters and so forth. Angels in my view are a metaphor and a poetic way of expressing certain wonderful phenomena, which have a special vibe. Oh yes!

#3 Deep levels and vast powers: yes, but I would not say of the "human mind". As for "you create your own reality", I agree and disagree, for it's a concept open to abuse.

#4 The law of Karma: poetic justice and so forth. Follow it through and it implies previous lives and reincarnation after this life. That is all speculation.

#5 We have the lesson of love to learn. Well, yes, maybe. But some are born with that lesson already learnt, and have other lessons to learn. To say we have a purpose on earth is not so much a discovery of the universe's own rationale as a way of trying to make sense of our own lives. Analogy: we find bird song beautiful - at least in the country I am writing from, a land of blackbirds and nightingales and skylarks. But birdsong's beauty to our ears gives us no clue as to why birds sing.

#6 "Death is not the end". Well, this is a surmise, a feeling, an attempt to make sense of life. It is not knowledge, and those who say it is are using certain phenomena and / or feelings to jump to conclusions.

#7 "Science and spirituality are ultimately harmonious." What is this supposed to mean? I know what "and" and "are" mean but not the other words. I've always been suspicious of scientists who knock spirituality, whatever that is, and sympathetic to those, like Blake and John Cowper Powys, who have pointed an accusing finger at scientists or industrialists. But I am even more suspicious of those who talk about quantum physics as confirming their pet theory.

#8 "Intuition or 'divine guidance' is a more appropriate guide than rationalism..." "Western science wrongly neglects such things as parapsychology, meditation, and holistic health." I'm sympathetic to something at the back of this but it is so badly put I prefer to rubbish it. Western science can neglect anything it likes, surely. There is no mechanism which forces governments or companies to force "western scientists" to study meditation etc. On the other hand there is the very obvious anomaly that in this world there are many rival theories of how to treat ill-health. When there are rival theories, I suspect that no-one really knows.

#9 "There exists a mystical core within all religions, Eastern and Western. Dogma and religious identity are not so important." Not so important to whom? This is crassly expressed. What the writer points to as a "mystical core" needs no religion to contain it. You might say that religion has hijacked parts of man's soul for its own ends, I mean human efforts at power and control and order and morality.

#10 "The Bible ... is a wise or holy book." The Bible has had a huge cultural impact on European and other peoples for many centuries. But it has been held in such awe that all sorts of magical properties have been assigned to it. I would not call it either a wise or a holy book. People see in it what they want to see.

#11 Renaissance of the feminine. This is fashionable claptrap, feminists latching on to C G Jung, probably.

#12 Atlantis, Pyramids etc. All this is fanciful & does not help anyone.

#13 "There are no coincidences ... Everything around you has spiritual meaning ..." Yes. I use this as an informal rule of thumb, just one of those things. My wife and I both have the ability to guess the time to within two minutes, most of the time. We don't bother our heads as to whether it is coincidence or not.

#14 the mind has hidden powers etc. Isn't this the same as #3?

#15 Meditation etc. I did meditation for 30 years. I wonder if it did any good. It's nice now I've stopped, and rejoined the rest of the world.

#16 "The food you eat has an effect on your mind...". I think everything you do has an effect on your mind. I'd suggest that you are more affected by the love used in the food's preparation, and your own ability to appreciate it, than the ingredients. Either way, I would not recommend too many McDonald's burgers.

#17 "Ultimately every interpersonal relationship has the potential to be a helpful experience in terms of our own growth." Why interpersonal? I have meaningful relationships with flowers, trees, places and fetish objects too.

#18 "We learn about ourselves through our relationships with other people..." Why other people? Why not "we learn through living"?

#19, #20 Again an insistent stress on "relationships". So if you are a hermit you can learn nothing?

#21 Numerology, kabbala, gnosticism, etc. Why was this thrown into the pot?

Overall, I think the New Age stuff as defined in the 21 points is a way of looking at life which has very little basis in anything except for assertions by people who have turned the vague intimations which we all have into a dodgy set of dogmas. It is also worth pointing out that Fanny's list comes from Wikipedia and has probably been hacked about by pro- and anti- New Agers, bless them all.

Sacrifice and Conscience

Crucifix by Michelangelo
Picture credit: BBC website

In an "utterly insane world ruled by a capricious and indifferent deity"*, the only thing we can keep swept clean and fresh is our own doorstep. To follow our own conscience is a comic-tragic defiance of the gods. It is the Absurd, symbolised by Albert Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus.

Where god is capricious, indifferent or perhaps even vicious, there is even more scope for individual significance: not sacrifice to the powers that be, but simply to follow our conscience.

Above all I abhor sacrifice, that primitive burnt offering which is the beginning of religion. We sacrifice a lamb, a goat, our own firstborn son, decent behaviour, public safety (because we the British took sides in someone else's fight, and helped invade a country which was not our enemy).

Conscience is not about sacrifice but about being true to my deepest humanity, my instinct of rightness. God may have the power, but in an act of conscience I spit in his eye for all the injustice and cruelty. This is equal to saying I don't believe he exists, except as a monstrous bogeyman that haunts the dark recesses of man's unnecessary guilt.

In a world of sacrifice, suicide bombers thrive. In a world of conscience, armies can't recruit, factory farming goes bankrupt.

Christianity has sacrifice at its core.
_______

* This was my latest response to a thread on DestinyDiscussion.com whose first post was Do Fish Have Souls?

Learning how to live

Bob Marley
Picture credit: Rage of Reason

We don't learn how to live any more. So much has gone or is going. We are losing handwriting, spelling, grammar, walking as a mode of transport, playing on the streets. We are unwittingly performing experiments on our children, for we don’t know what the outcome will be, for them or the world.

Does this sound like a grumpy old man railing at change? Please don’t see it that way. I am proud to be part of this astonishing era. Like you, I have my part to play. Like yours, my perspective, from an exquisitely beautiful part of England (yet craning my neck to include the ugliest and most desperate situations of my brothers and sisters everywhere), has its unique value.

We are gaining more than we are losing, if only we know how to adjust. On the plus side, we are gradually losing religion. What shape of hole does it leave? It leaves a search for happiness.

In the United Kingdom, our Government for the last nine years has been telling us how to live, in so many ways. Margaret Thatcher had imposed her stamp in the Eighties and now it is the born-again Blair. The British, who boast that they “never never never will be slaves”, do seem to behave like sheep all the same. The media set the agenda, and the people seem to think they have done their bit when they say “yes” or “no” to whatever issues the media serve up, as if marking an “X” on a succession of ballot papers. It’s not surprising, because we have sheepishly accepted that this the only democracy we are allowed. Meanwhile, on every issue, whether locally or on the world’s stage, it is violence and unfair use of power which is the most effective way to get things done. Well this is not news! It’s the oldest fact in the human world and nothing has changed.

But in all the horror of the 20th century, there was Gandhi, there were pacifists, there was the Gaia hypothesis, and there was the birth of a global consciousness. There were freedom marches, desegregation, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley. We the people do have power, but we must know how to live.

Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
’cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.

Suffusion of yellow

Landlord came with 2 tall Poles who piggy-backed up into the loft space and swiftly hatched a plan to mend my leaking roof.

So then I went to find a field of yellow (oilseed rape), and its neighbour (such a profound green - the young leaves of corn). A deer with big rump and white tail bobbed away like a rabbit. Was it a muntjac?

I pondered the joy of doing what you like as opposed to the sacrificial virtues of a religious approach. It's taken me nearly a lifetime to understand. Why so long? You would think that each generation would discard those aspects of its inheritance that taste bitter and only keep what tastes sweet. How come religions are so focused on swallowing bitter pills? I suppose it is not their fault. This earthly sojourn is after all a vale of tears for many, religious or not.

But isn't following your nose the most important thing you can do: to be guided in everything by your "gut feeling", discarding the head-driven "oughts" and thoughts till you reach pure existence? No more sacrifice to any gods!

PS It was Douglas Adams who had the brilliant conceit of an I Ching calculator which output the text "A suffusion of yellow" for any calculation result greater than 4. And it is Douglas Adams who has valuable comment on the role of religions, irrational as they are, in the human scheme of things.

PS. I really think that the main purpose of religion has been to prevent us demanding happiness. Because when religion is allowed to dissipate like morning fog, happiness is precisely what we seek. (A topic I take up in my next post - see above.)

Wet day

It's wonderfully rainy today and I want to get out there in boots and raincoat, investigating this brilliant yellow field of oilseed rape that we saw yesterday evening from Hughenden Park, whilst we wandered through budding buttercups. I love that blue-green crop adjacent to the yellow of the rape, too.

But I have to stay in for the landlord to come and look at why the ceiling is bulging and stained with leaks. We suspect a blocked gutter but since I have nagged him about it for six months and he's done nothing, I felt justified in waking him this morning and threatening to hire a ladder myself and charge him for labour and expenses. He was rather against this, and suddenly worried for my safety. So I suggested that I might phone the Council and tell them of my negligent landlord forcing me to live in damp conditions. It's rather an exaggeration, but necessary to get him to do anything at all. He knows I am too good-natured, despite the bluster. And there is no sign of the expected workman yet . . .

What experiment?

I had another blog for a year or two, called Discoveries. I destroyed it and that felt good. This one started off being called "An Ongoing experiment". I've made different rules for myself this time. I can amend any entry! So it's a constant re-creation. It's not a memorial. It lives and breathes, like life itself. It bows to the influence of its readers. So I don't know where it will go.

Spring unfolds (2)

There are various products of evolution which fascinate me endlessly - the domestic cockerel gallus gallus, the peacock, the cock pheasant, the horse chestnut, especially its blossom; the durian, that aromatic fruit from south-east Asia. There is mystery about their showy natures, their gratuitous glory.

Here the chestnut cycle unfolds daily and there is one at the back of our flat, overhanging the car park. Share with me its extraordinary beauty!

Talk that never was

My head said I should have been nervous about giving that talk. Yesterday morning, I went into the park and spread the picnic rug near a great swathe of now-withered daffodils. Here in the sunshine I jotted my notes, and a couple of grey-haired ladies came past and asked if I was "doing a Wordsworth" - writing an ode about daffodils I suppose. I told them about the imminent talk. "Shouldn't you be in a darkened room for such a serious task?" I can't remember how the banter continued but I found myself saying that I might just give a talk on happiness.

Later in the day I realised that whilst the my script for the first part of the talk was OK, the rest was hampered by lack of adequate preparation, and there was no longer enough time. K agreed with this verdict when I rehearsed it with her. All the same my mood of lightness, gaiety - let me grasp the bull by the horns and say profound happiness - was undimmed by nervousness.

As it happened, no one at all showed up for the talk! There was only D, who runs the place, and she didn't mind opening it up for a conversation à deux, which more or less covered the script topics.

Here is an update on chestnut blossom. The buds appear on the frond in groups of eight. The eight consist of four pairs. Within a pair, one is pink centred and the other is lemon yellow. The same miraculous phenomenon occurs regardless of the main blossom colour of the tree. I saw somewhere a tentative explanation. Apparently the colour changes when fertilisation has taken place and this tells the bees that the nectar has been taken. Can you believe such a thing?