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IN THE SILENCE

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Autumn was our favourite time/Picking fruit and kicking leaves/By the long walks in the afternoons/And our games between the trees/Now the branches stiff and bare/And the hills so cold and plain/losing you was losing everything/But it must be heaven’s gain

It’s a massive hole as big as Rubislaw quarry where the granite was gouged out to build the silver city. You can peer over the edge but you can’t see the bottom. It’s as deep as the Mariana trench and I don’t know how it could ever be filled. Words and music and poetry don’t cut it and only serve to accentuate and magnify the loss. Art and architecture and doing things are simply distractions. Even the extravagant love of friends and family and neighbours won’t do it either. Another love? The idea is both preposterous and, in this moment, obscene. My imagine can’t stretch that far. Someone has said “Why don’t you get a dog?” In the biblical picture two have become one flesh. How then do you cope when half your flesh has been ripped out? A fellow travel has said perceptively “ I knew who we were, but I don’t know what I am”. Others have said “ Yes, it is a massive hole but you learn to live with it” I don’t want to learn to live with it.

It is the silence that is unbearable. I can speak. I can say the words out loud but I know she won’t reply. I can tell her all about my day but she won’t respond. She is not here. I don’t want to be the one who goes up each week to that beautiful spot on the south slope with the hedge of trees in the horizon to lay new flowers on the ground and speak to her as if she was there. That’s what they do in the movies. Its not a game I can play.

Strange how the words people say to comfort are no comfort at all. Wonderful words of scripture. I know they are good, solid and true. I know they are God’s words, they are the words of life, I believe them with all my heart, I truly do, but, and this is the thing, I don’t feel it. I don’t feel it and I have to feel it to be comforted. These are somehow harder to bear than the lies written on cards. “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday”, heartfelt, well-meaning, loving words, but I know they are lies. She doesn’t walk beside me every day, she has gone away.

Yet there is so much I want to tell her and keep telling her:  how thrilling it was to meet up with A and see how she had grown and matured into such a lovely confident young woman, how kind it was of G+J to think and to ask and to invite me round for diner, how nice it was that F said nothing just offered a hug when we met in the street, how thoughtful of C to take time out of her very busy life to come round and talk, how special that A was up for a long walk along the front and speak about deep things. how nervous I was to be with our group and yet how easy it was in that time, how I desperately didn’t want to be the sad old man in the corner, how easily I was hurt by some of the things folk said and did or didn’t do, how possessive I felt when they spoke about you as if they knew you better than I did myself, how people promised to pray and I know they did and more so much more: the lovely walk with S through the carpet of leaves that jewel the ground along the burn with the translucent red and yellow ones still hanging in space or the way the sun rose over Fife and  cast its shimmering light across the river while the morning car lights twingled as they sped over the bridge.  How blessed I am, and how lost.

In the silence, I call out “Where are you?” But there is no reply.

And then barely audible at first but soon as clear as day I hear a voice, a still small voice. “I am here, I have been here all along, long before you ever knew me.  I loved you from the beginning and I know all about your pain and your loss but come to me, speak to me, take this new found time and space I have given you to share with me to listen to my voice and learn of me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light and there you will find rest for your soul”

And I find John Newton’s letter he wrote to Mrs Talbot on the death of her husband in March 1774:

“…Though every stream must fail, the fountain is still full and still flowing. All the comfort you ever received in your dear friend was from the Lord, who is abundantly able to comfort you still…The lord who knows our frame does not expect or require that we should aim at a stoical indifference under his visitations. He allows that afflictions are at present not joyous, but grievous; yea, He was pleased when upon earth to weep with his mourning friends when Lazarus died. But he has graciously provided for the prevention of that anguish and bitterness of sorrow, which is upon such occasions, the portion of such as live without God in the world; and has engaged that all shall work together for good, and the yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness. May he bless you with a sweet serenity of spirit, and a cheerful hope of the glory that shall shortly be revealed.”   

PRECIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL THINGS

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THE PAINFUL REALITY

It was not how I had it planned. It was not the way it was meant to be. I was to be first. When the evil mass took hold of my liver three years before and left me surrounded with doctors and nurses in full-on emergency gear, trying  to keep me alive, I was convinced that this was it. But it was not to be. With their skill, the prayers of the people and the good and gracious hand of our God, I survived. But later, later that same year, the cancer made its presence known in her body. From then it continued its sinister and relentless pincer movement throughout her delicate frame, spreading its tentacles to the most important organs, till there was nothing left that could be done.  The painful reality had to be faced, it was just a matter of time. Despite the treatment, the chemo, the radio, and immunotherapy, this thing inside her was slowly killing her and it would not let go.

HEARING BUT NOT LISTENING
I had three years to prepare for this event, but I wasn’t prepared. Even when the consultant told us it was weeks rather than months, I wanted to scream out in disbelief. Yet she knew and she tried so hard to tell me, to prepare me, to help me see, but I wasn’t listening and I didn’t see. It seemed like the cancer had been kept at bay. Life was as normal, nothing had changed and we could go on like this for years, maybe even decades. Yet she knew, she was right all along and I was wrong.

Nobody had told me about it how it would be or how I would feel. No one had explained to me what bereft actually meant. But, the thing is, they had, in words, in books, in poetry, in songs. It was all there it was just that I hadn’t listened. I couldn’t hear. I even wrote these songs myself. Ten years ago I wrote a song about bereavement through the seasons, but I never knew what it meant until now. I remember reading Bob Dylan’s comments on songs on one of his early album, which were preoccupied with death. He said he was too young to write songs like that, so they must have come from somewhere else.

THE EVENINGS
In the evenings, when we are alone and nothing else was happening, we would read the bible, with a devotional book someone had given her and we would pray together. It was a practice that was fitful at best throughout our married life but became a regular habit in the later years. It made me so happy. Each time I heard her pray, I cried. It was in the evening too, that we talked. We talked about the things we did that day and played the game “ Guess who I saw in town today?”  A song by John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful came to mind. It was written back in the sixties and called “Darlin be home soon”. The recording seemed a bit cheesy, even at the time, but the song got to me then and strangely it came back to me now, with the opening lines “Come, and talk of all the things we did today/Hear, and laugh about our funny little ways..”   It occurred to me too that this was what happened in the garden. It was in the evening of the day that God came and walked and talked with Adam and Eve. It is in the evenings that I feel most bereft.

HOW SHORT HOW SHORT

It all happened so quickly in the end. Sunday, we were sitting out having lunch in the garden. Monday brought an emergency GP appointment and a swift referral to the oncology ward. She was visibly relieved to lie down on that bed and be surrounded with the care she needed.  By the Wednesday evening, I was so exhausted and distracted, she pleaded with me to go home and rest. On the Thursday morning, I was taking notes with her instructions of things to do that day, while she was messaging people with arrangements for a meeting in the following week. It was a busy day, people were coming and going and I had now grasped that time was short. I resolved to be awake when I returned in the evening and to make sure that I packed my bible and the book. When we were alone in the stillness , when the buzz of the ward had quietened down, we could read and pray together, just as we had done before. But it was not to be. By lunchtime she was gone.

THE EMPTY HOUSE
When I opened the door of the empty house for the first time, I was hit with the banal absurdity of it all. What was this place now for? What was the point of it? It was our home, now it wasn’t. It was my “stop all the clocks” moment. There was no need for this anymore. The newly decorated room, the restored windows, the Morris paper, the walnut floor, the Louie Poulsen lighting, the hand-crafted kitchen the carefully selected colours and fabrics, they were all about a place, our home, where friends and family from far and near would be welcomed, to share a meal, a rest for the night or longer. We wanted to be like the Shunamite woman who had a room with a bed, a chair, a table and a lamp for the prophet Elisha when he passed that way. Now it’s purpose has dissolved and I don’t know what to do.

THE OBSERVATION

Too soon, much too soon I read again C S Lewis’ “A Grief Observed”. It was brutal: grief was being like a “rat caught in a trap”, the bereaved were such a problem, maybe “they should be isolated in special colonies like lepers”, God must be a “giant vivisectionist” and worse. But he works his way through all of that in the most astonishing way. He climbs through the self-indulgent grief the self-pity, the flawed images and the house of cards to finally seeing “ I need Christ not something that resembles him” I hope I can get there.

THE PRECIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL THINGS
I love the proverb in the Book of Proverbs 24:3+4 partly because of its architectural reference. It goes: “By wisdom a house is built/By understanding it is established/By knowledge the rooms are filled with precious and beautiful things”. Together we built the house, she filled it with precious and beautiful things and the precious and beautiful things were people. My task is to cherish these precious and beautiful things.

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE LANGUAGE

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If you want to make something distasteful into something more palatable, changing the name helps a lot. It might not be etymologically correct, but if you get it accepted in everyday discourse your battle is pretty much won. You can change people’s view of something by changing the name. That has long been the case. We used to build large tower blocks and call them “courts” which they never were, but it sounded better to live in a court than a tower.  Killing civilians in wartime didn’t seem so bad if we called it “collateral damage”. Same sex marriage could get over the line if we called it “Equal marriage”. If you are pro-abortion a “foetus” sounds better than an expected baby. You know how it works. Flipping it the other way, also works.

Nothing epitomises that more than the media and governments inversion of language when it comes to the current war in the Middle East. Here you have a whole slew of descriptive words that have not only drifted from their original meaning but been upended and become part of almost everyone’s conversation. Our language has been so massaged that we end up adopting terms that bear no actual relation to reality. The power of the media with its subtle infiltering of a mindset pulls us into the absurd situation, where we find ourselves believing something which is manifestly untrue and the simplest of investigation would show it to be so.

Images play a big role here.  The manipulation is clearly effective.  People will protest  “We have all seen the pictures daily on our screens” without a second questioning if what we see on these screens might not actually be true.  We have this strange ambivalence to the visual image, be it still or moving. We have no trouble seeing videos of Putin and Trump romping around on sledges in the snow and hugging polar bears in Alaska, knowing that they are fabricated. At the same time, we are convinced that a picture of an emaciated child in the rubble of a building, tells a true story. A story of deliberate mass starvation, even when the picture in question, featured on the front page of the New York Times is completely false, as the paper later acknowledged.  It was too late, of course. The picture was false but the narrative was believed.  

You know the words: ethnic cleansing, starvation, indiscriminate, massacre, apartheid, and genocide. These are universally used across the board and accepted as fact without question. When I hear the media use these words in the context of Israel’s war against Hamas, I realise they are speaking a different language from the one I know. In their classic usage they bear no resemblance to reality and are an inversion of it. It makes it hard and pretty much impossible to discuss or engage with the issue in any rational way.  When the common language is lost, we are left with shouting, name calling, flag waving, flag burning and the babel of hatred, with Jackboots waiting in the wings.

First, they came for the language, but it was only words, so I said nothing.

LOVE AND LEARNING

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We met in a café at the west end of Union Street in Aberdeen in the late sixties. It was place often frequented by students for coffee in late evening, called The Pharaohs, decorated in Egyptian style with hieroglyphics. There were four us ending up together after a student meeting in the commercial college nearby. Two guys from the school of architecture and the girls from the college of education. My friend was a year my senior super confident and sophisticated, a great talker and natty dresser. I was in his train, just listening most of the time. One of the girls had caught my eye and I was intrigued by her taste, unusual at the time, for black coffee. My friend was not so impressed. As we left and made our way up Albyn Place, I asked who were they? What were their names? We hadn’t even asked! I don’t recall what he said, but he didn’t know and he wasn’t really bothered. It didn’t really matter to him, but it did to me and over the coming months, I not only found out her name but learned a lot about her, took every opportunity to spend time with her and as we walked past the rendezvous café on Cromwell Road one late Sunday afternoon, I found her hand.

A year and a bit later. I proposed. We had been out walking on a glorious spring day from Kilchoan to Kilkieran on the west coast of Islay. The sun was shimmering across the sea, seagulls gathering and gannets diving over a suspected shoal in the waters, lambs were bleating and a dog barking in the distance. We stopped on a little stone bridge over a burn and I asked her if she would marry me. I don’t remember her exact words but I took it as “yes” and for the next 50 plus years she was a constant in my life. I could fill the page with many justifiable superlatives and words of gratitude and admiration but that would simply be a parody of the reality of a relationship that simply could not be put into words. 

One of the unusual aspects of our bond was the she did not share any of my creative interests and passions.  Art, music, poetry and literature didn’t seem to touch or move her. That would be considered, by many, to be a severe handicap. Strangely it was our strength and perhaps was the singular thing that saved me from drowning in a pit of my own self-indulgence and self-importance. It sharpened my pencil and honed a self-critical tone to what I tried to do.  Her creativity was not with the ephemeral arts but with people and it was that interest in and interaction with other people from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures and languages and traditions which was the singular factor in drawing me out of what could have been a very insular and self-absorbed life.

We were married in the Baptist Church in Perth in 1971, by our minster William Still of Gilcomston South Church Aberdeen and he took us through our vows with his inimitable sonorous voice. The building was destroyed by fire some years later and most of the 80 guests who joined us, on that day, have since departed, but the details of that event are permanently imprinted on my mind. It was the experience of finally moving into a home of our own, however, that really got to me. We tried to rent a flat which was difficult at that time, till our solicitor suggested we might buy. It seemed completely out of the question to us, but with help from my father-in-law and a loan from a finance company we managed to gather the £850 to purchase a ground floor two roomed flat across the river Dee in Torry, just two weeks before our wedding day.  It had a toilet in the close and a single cold water tap and sink in the kitchen. We purchased a bed, a cooker, painted the floor boards kingfisher blue, laid down rugs and with generous wedding gifts, put together the semblance of a home. We were so happy. On the first Saturday back, I remember very clearly watching my young wife walk across the street and down the lane, with her crocheted top and short skirt and shopping bag going off into town. I was overcome with the indescribable feeling of warmth that she would be back soon and it would be to our home.   There was something about the drama of courtship, having spent each night apart, each evening having to say goodbye, each time going back to our separate accommodation and then, finally, to experience the completed joy of being together.

We did our best and felt it our duty to share that joy whenever we could. An older and wiser couple in the church explained to us how they believed that their home was not really theirs but a gift from God to be used for others, a haven in an otherwise hostile world.  We tried our best to emulate that principle. In the early 2000s this took on a new dimension when we were asked to host international students who came to our city’s universities. A friend in our church asked us if we wanted to be part of the hospitality scheme. The idea was that students, strangers to a foreign country could be linked up with local families.  It was a simple act and one of the main thrusts in the establishment of Friends International. Our first attempts to make contact were fraught with difficulties. This was, of course, in the age before emails, mobile phones and social media. We failed miserably at first and seemed unable to make any serious connection and wondered if we were cut out for this sort of thing.  We were on the point of giving up and telling our friend that it wasn’t going to work, when we were linked, first, with students from Greece and Turkey and the following year with two master students from Kosovo. They had come to study with a professor of forensic medicine after being directly involved in the identification of bodies following the Balcon genocides.

And so began an enormously privileged experience, over more than two decades with international students, some of whom have become life-long friends, some who invited us to their weddings, some whom we have visited in their own countries and many who we still communicate with regularly. They came from almost all parts of the world from: Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Egypt,  and Algeria in the African continent, from Asia: China, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Uzbekistan, Iran, Australia, India and Pakistan, from the Americas: Canada, the USA, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, and Haiti and from Europe: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic , Slovakia, Austria, Spain, Romania, Hungary and the Netherlands.    This usually began with the offer of a simple meal in our home. It was such an easy thing to do and yet seemed to be so appreciated by the strangers we welcomed in. When our son and his wife left to work in Hungary and latterly Romania, we began to understand why this was so. Somehow the unnerving strangeness of life in an alien city, with the sounds, the colours the smells the cultural peculiarities and sometimes the threatening air, were instantly tamed when you were received into someone’s home and into the bosom of a family.

With the expansion of the work of Friends International we were asked to host a small group bible study in our own home. This was a simple meal together followed by a discussion bible study around a passage in the bible. The idea was that this would provide an opportunity for those who wanted to know more about Christianity, “seekers” as they were called. Quite quickly, however it was Christians who wanted to join us and a place where they could invite their friends from the library and lab. All we would do would pray and read the bible together and talk about what it said, what it meant and what it meant to us. While the majority of those who came were Christians, followers of Jesus from various backgrounds, Protestants, Catholics Orthodox and Pentecostals there were always one or two and maybe more of other faiths, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Atheists. There was something wonderful about sitting round in that small group with the freedom to talk, discuss faith and share deep things. For me, It was the highlight of the week. I was energised and excited about what was happening; about what God was doing. Often, we would have people from four continents share in prayer. On one occasion we listened to  the Lord’s prayer in seven different languages. At other times we had students whose countries were literally at war with each other, sit side by side. To be involved in all of this had to be one of the great privileges of my life. And all of it would not have happened had I not met up with that young student in the café in Aberdeen with her shy dark smile and her black coffee.

But there was much more that would not have happened without her. Together we encountered the miracle of new life. At once it was an intimate and deeply personal experience yet filled with cosmic significance. The moment there holding that fragile little life, wholly dependent, its tiny face creased in a smile, eyes just opening and perfect fingers with finger nails already needing cutting. Knowing that we were strangely connected yet separate and the overpowering desire to protect the little creature that eclipsed all the other responsibilities. In that moment the world changed. I have observed, over the years many parents, fathers in particular, often when we shared a common interest in art, music, politics, theology and world affairs, suddenly discover that their enthusiasm and interest seemed to be blanked out over the period where they had very young children. Perhaps it is a natural coping mechanism. The world can go it’s own way, all I care about in this moment is my little family. And when I look back, I can see quite clearly the gaps in my own interest or even awareness of big things happening. These were curiously erased from my experience during these periods which were dominated by the interruption of a new life, one that demanded our full concentration.  It takes photographs to rekindle the memories, not so much about the events, but how we felt in those days and leafing through an old biscuit tin of photographs can leave you lost in a whirlwind of deep emotion and tears.

The babies grew into toddlers and children and adults finally disappeared out the door to find their own lives. In a short space of time, we had six grandchildren and it is a constant wonder how this all came about and how it some way we had a part in it. Recognising the familial characteristic and traits is at times comforting at other times scary but always humbling. The spread of gifts is astonishing, two are already talented musicians, one a writer, one an already decorated sportsman and another an unconscious actor and comedian. And the sixth? We have yet to see.

This all came rolling back to me when I met up with a good friend recently. I like him a lot, but he sometimes tires me out when he goes into a one of his nonsensical irrational tirades. I just listen and let him ramble on until he runs out of steam and then If there is anything to say by way of response, I will say it. It was like that this day. He was in rambling rant about his love life or lack of it, speaking just a bit too loud for my liking in the crowded café. It was not only irrational it was a mess of misogynistic misery. The girls were teases, devious, playing along and only after your money. At times it was quite comical like Bob Dylan’s dream:

“I got a woman, she’s so mean/Puts my boots in the washing machine/Fills me with buckshot when I’m nude/She puts chewing gum in my food/She is funny/Calls me honey/wants my money”

Finally he said calming down “Anyway, you can’t commit to loving someone all your life. No one can do it. It’s an impossible dream.”

I had to respond. “ Well, I don’t know, but I met her when I was still a teenager, we have been married for 50 plus years. I love her more now than I ever did and I don’t want to lose her.”

Marriage is about loving and learning to love in sickness and health, in riches and poverty, till death.

Crawford Mackenzie

A CLUTTER OF CONUNDRUMS

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1 The Death Cult

On an evening last week, I watched the late evening news broadcast on the BBC. You will probably wonder why I do or why I still pay the licence fee, when the corporation is, in my view, unashamedly institutionally biased. But it’s complicated. I am not the only one in our household and I also want to hear how the BBC report the news. I want to know what they say, how they say it and what they don’t say. On that evening there was a report by their medical editor, Fergus Walsh on his trip to California to see how Assisted Dying was doing there. They interviewed a man who had chosen to die and he explained the reasons why. He didn’t have long to live, he hated hospitals and didn’t want to be hooked up to tubes and machines etc. He apparently suffered from a multitude of serious, chronic and painful conditions, although in the interview he looked remarkably good. There are times when I have looked a lot worse. It was all the usual less-than-subtle propaganda we are well used to from the corporation. But what followed still shocked me to the core. The crew came back to film a second interview but this time it was to allow us to witness his death in real time. The horror was compounded by how reasonable and even compassionate it was portrayed. It was simple and easy a mixture of white powder in a jar (guaranteed to be fatal) with some fruit juice. He swallowed it closed his eyes and that was that. 30 minutes the doctor said. The family hugged and the crew left with a sweet shot of a bamboo branch waving in the wind against a cloudless Californian sky, but I felt sick to the bottom of my stomach. 

Tell me please, if you can, because I can’t make sense of it.

We are exercised about harmful material on- line, we have an on-line safety bill and an on-line regular in place ready to take action against a pro-suicide forum which is believed to promote and facilitate suicides, has tens of thousands of members and is linked to more than 50 deaths including children. (I got that from the BBC) . At the same time the main evening news shows the video of an actual suicide, someone taking their own life and explains how it was done.

There is something here that I just can’t make sense of. How can you hold these two things together without doing violence to any sense you might have of reason or integrity?

If you can explain it, I would love to know.

HISTORICAL GUILT

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The denomination to which our local church belongs recently found it necessary to carry out an audit and examine what links the church may have had with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  As a relatively newcomer in the denomination, I was unaware of the controversy, that dated back to the early days of the church, which was founded in 1843. What at first was puzzling was that Slavery had already been outlawed in the antis-slavery act ten years earlier (though this only covered part of the British Empire) and it seemed strange that the church could be complicit in slavery when it was still unborn.  The reason for the controversy, however, was explained, by a visit which a delegation from the new church made to the American South in 1846. This group which included Thomas Chalmers were seeking the support of churches in America and you can understand why a secessionist movement would get a great deal of sympathy in the South. The delegation returned with a not insignificant gift of £3,000, but many within and out-with the church considered this money to be “tainted” as it likely came from slaveholders and a campaign to “Send the Money Back” was initiated. Fredrick Douglas, the abolitionist, was a strong and vocal advocate for the campaign, and lent his support while in Scotland, which included an attempt, with others, to carve the slogan on the cliffs of Salisbury Crags. His portrait now graces a wall in Gilmore Place, close to where he once lived. But the “blood money” was never returned. How the church resolved this at the time, I am not sure, but I suspect that a degree of pragmatism was involved. Even if an error was acknowledged, returning the money would not have helped the cause of those still enslaved in any practical way.

But why, more than 150 years after the event, the issue has now had to be revisited?  It seems strange in the extreme. Afterall, the history of these events has been well known to the church and this assessment could have been done at any time. Why now?  And why is that while the history of this hideous trade has been taught in school and accepted for what it is a heinous sin in our nation’s history, one on which there was national admission of guilt, repentance, the passing of anti-slavery laws and the costly efforts to have the trade banished world-wide, why now is there to be a another reckoning? 

Is it simply to do with the way these things come in waves in the public consciousness?  I remember in the 60’s the campaign for nuclear disarmament was a very hot issue, but strangely over the following decades, despite increased proliferation, the issue slipped into the background and only resurged again in the more recent decades. I remember one of my colleagues in our Architectural practice back in the early 70’s arriving at the office one day sporting a CND badge. We thought that rather quant at the time.

Could it be the very subtle infiltration of a way of thinking that owes more to Marx and Lenin than our Judeo-Christian heritage? A way of thinking that views the act of de-humanising another human, made in the image of God, not so much as a sin but simply part of the worldwide class struggle? The never-ending battle between the oppressed and the oppressor, the powerless and the powerful, the victim and the victimiser.  Guilt is not so much personal but historical and in Marxism there is no forgiveness. Czeslaw Milosz, in his classic work “The Captive Mind” which must stand alongside works by Orwell, Solzhenitsyn and Havel in exposing the depravity of totalitarian culture, explains this succinctly in a chapter entitled “Man- the enemy”. Here the real enemy of the Marxist-Leninist project turns out to be humanity itself.   

“The contradiction between Christianity and Stalinist philosophy cannot be overcome. Christianity is based on a concept of individual merit and guilt; The New Faith on historical merit and guilt. The Christian who rejects individual guilt denies the work of Jesus and the god he calls upon transforms himself into History”

The enemy then is the reactionary.

“The sin of the reactionary is argued very cleverly: every perception is orientated, i.e. at the very moment of perceiving, we introduce our ideas into the material of our observations; only he sees reality truly who evaluates it in terms of the interests of the class that is the lever of the future, i.e. the proletariat. The writings of Lenin and Stalin teach us what the interests of the proletariat are. Whoever sees reality other than the proletariat, sees it falsely; in other words, his picture of reality is deformed by the pressure of the interest of classes that are backward and so destined to disappear. Whoever sees the world falsely necessarily acts badly; whoever acts badly is a bad man; therefore, the reactionary is a bad man, and one should not feel sorry for him.”

So you can feel indifferent to the sufferings of those whose only crime is the blocking of “historical progress” and Milosz concludes :

“This line of reasoning has at least one flaw – it ignores reality”      

But I suspect there is also another reason. It is much easier and less troublesome to focus on vague historical communal guilt and show virtue over our passion for the sins, than it is to confront the brutal reality that slavery exists today. Added to that is the disturbing thought that we could in some way be complicit in and benefit from it.

My contention is that instead of wasting our efforts, handwringing and agonising over the crimes of the pasts, we should be grappling with the brutal reality of slavery today. Instead of exhuming skeletons, historic crimes, which have been acknowledged and confessed, which have been forgiven and forgotten by God, we should apply ourselves to the very real live suffering of others. I am thinking of trafficking of children, the sweat-shop factories and the mining of toxic minerals. Minerals, which are necessary for the production of our mobile phones, electric cars, and all sorts of devices, including the one that this is written on.

Crawford Mackenzie

THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER

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I thought it was all over. I really did. I really hoped. I fully expected it would be the end of the matter and I wouldn’t have to shout and moan anymore about Covid: about the lockdown, about the masks, about the vaccine. The truth would eventually out and people would make their own judgement on the whole sorry business. The movers and shakers would finally confess to their duplicity, an amnesty declared and we could move on.

Apparently not. A letter from our Public Health Director came through the door the other day, inviting me for a winter (Covid and Flu) vaccine, explaining, in the predictable language that we have gotten used to, that this was the best protection against the disease, with the mantra “safe and effective”. My appointment was already made. It was up to me to accept or cancel.  I had a similar letter the previous year and wrote to the Director explaining my reason for refusing it and my misgivings over why the MHRA vaccine was still being promoted by our National Health Service. When there was so much concern over its safety and efficacy, why had the roll out not been halted?  I had no reply. I understood, of course, that Directors of Public Health would already have too much on their minds to respond to a dissident patient. 

So, I hesitated from responding, this time round, but decided to try again and seek a response to my concerns. In my letter I again detailed my disquiets and challenged the director to take the issue seriously. I thought it was her job to do just that. To her credit, I had a reply by return.  It didn’t answer my questions directly but pointed me to the reports and analysis which justified the continuation of the MHRA vaccine. It was the classic case of passing the buck. She has to follow the guidance offered further up the chain and wasn’t in a position to give personal opinions. Even if she had some misgivings herself, she wouldn’t feel it was in her gift to go against or challenge the given line. It is disturbing and destructive trend in much of public life when common sense is eclipsed by protocol. When “whistle blowers” have to be protected you know how deep corruption has set in. “Theirs’s not to make reply, theirs’s not to reason why, their’s but to do and die,” As someone has said.

But the truth will out and it is already seeping from the rancid bags of lies that have been festering over the past five years. Bit by bit people are quietly coming out with admissions of “errors of judgements”.  Chris Wittie now says that masks, out-with the health care environment, were always ineffective, Patrick Vallance openly admitted that lockdown could do more harm than good, Rishi Sunak protested that he was always against school closures, Pfizer admitted that they never tested the vaccine for transmission, the World Health Organisation downplayed the aerosol theory of transmission, all the key players showed, by their own lifestyles, that they never actually believed in the message, Mark Zuckerberg regretted that he supressed anti-Covid messages on his Facebook platform and Neil Ferguson confessed his surprise that they were able to get away with enforcing the lockdown. Well it seems he did and all the others too.

It is the classic state of a corrupt institution. Those who were found out, whose untruths and deliberate lies directly caused so much damage and suffering, are still there, moved sideways, perhaps, into equally remunerative posts while the much vaunted Public Enquiry trundles on tip-toing around the edge and staying clear of the real questions.  No one can speak out, it seems, or it will bring the whole thing down and the foot soldiers, those loyal to the organisation and faithful to the protocol, are left to answer the difficult questions.

I thought it was all over, but it looks like it won’t be.

THE FLAG

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When Ronan Hale stepped up to take Ross County’s penalty against Celtic at the weekend, the opposition supporters, massed behind the goal, were doing there best to distract him. The tactic worked; Schmeichel, saved the penalty. The third official, however, spotted that the goalkeeper had moved well over his line, so the penalty was retaken and this time Ronan scored.  There was nothing remarkable about the away crowds’ antics behind the goal. Unlike other sports, in tennis or snooker, where the spectators are urged to be silent at critical points, shouting chanting and waving flags, to influence the play at football matches goes with the territory. There is nothing extraordinary about that. What was extraordinary and incomprehensible was the giant flag being waved constantly behind the goal. It was not a flag with the Celtic colours, or their crest, nor was it the Irish tricolour which relates to the clubs’ historic roots or was in any way connected with football at all. It was flag of Palestine in support of a war several thousand miles away.

It would be hard to explain to a visitor from Mars what was going on here. If it was possible to interview the individual hoisting the flag or their compatriots and ask what it was about, I guess they might be at a loss to know what to say. Like the protestors chanting “From the river to the sea…” who weren’t sure which river or which sea, they might not know what it was actually about. Did they know that they were taking sides in a war where innocents were being killed, homes destroyed, women and children massacred, bodies mutilated, babies sacrificed and it was happening in real time? Did they know that this was the eve of the event that triggered the war? Did they possibly understand or have empathy for those who would see this display as the worst sort of outrage? Did they know that they were effectively supporting terrorism and barbarism? Did they actually know the difference between football and war?

Our Martian friend wouldn’t be able to get what the flag meant, but we do. We see it on our Streets every Saturday. We know, in the current state of affairs it doesn’t simply embody the hope and pride of a nation or people, it carries a much more specific narrative, it stands for the oppressed people of Palestine in their battle against their Zionist oppressors, the fascist Israeli state, which practices apartheid and genocide, wilfully destroying schools, hospitals, places of worship and the deliberate targeting of civilians. It looks to the final triumph over the Jews articulated by Iran’s spiritual leader when he said “Israel won’t last long” then from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea Palestine will be free. In today’s context that is what the flag says. But I wonder if the flag waver knew that.  

That’s the worrying thing. Do people actually know what is going on before they nail their colours to the mast or it is little more than a display of virtue or a fashion statement? Or does it represent something deeper and viler, a visceral hatred of the Jews. To the visitor from Mars this would be even harder to explain. Why are the Jews of all peoples so consistently hated throughout the centuries? There is no convincing logical reason for this odium. The faults that can be laid at the state of Israel are common to all nations and often to a far greater extent. How many civilians were killed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What about Libya, what about Russia and China and Syria and Sudan? Why are the jews so hated? Could it be envy of their success? That such a small nation could outstrip its neighbours in just about every achievement and in such a short time.  Or could it be that they have a story as victims that surpasses any other and there is envy of victimhood? “Why do they always claim the high spot on this chart with their holocaust?” It could be both of these as well as the other issues over land, but I suspect there is something much deeper that is going on. There is a supernatural element and here the Bible throws its light on the case. It is not in our gift to know how things will work out in human history, but it seems clear that the Jews remain a people special to God and it should not surprise us that the epicentre of the world’s conflicts should settle on the Jews and the tiny land of Israel.

I wonder if the flag-waver really knew what he was doing.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

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I remember being drunk once. I am not proud. It was the last evening of a field trip with fellow students in my fourth year in Architecture and we were drinking in a barge moored on the Ouse in the centre of York.  It was a riotous evening and for the first time I was right in the centre of it and shared a wonderful new-found bond with my compatriots. There was a piano on the barge and when the landlord was trying to usher us out at closing time, (there was “closing time” in those days), three of us got onto it and started to play. One of the guys was actually an accomplished Jazz player, but together it seemed we produced the most amazing thrilling. When the only guy with a car drove us home, he was also drunk, we were doing some crazy things at speed around parks and up-side streets. I remember the terrible feeling that things were now quite out of control. Finally, when we got to our accommodation, I climbed the rickety stairs to the room in the attic, which I shared with three others, and threw up in the sink.  The next day, on the journey home, I felt terribly ill.

I remembered that event, recently, when thinking about what Paul said in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus “Don’t get drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit.” We often refer to people who have had too much to drink as “being under the influence” we don’t need to say of what, we know. Paul seems to be saying don’t put yourself under the influence of strong drink, which can change your mood and your manners, sometime quite spectacularly. It can take over control of your mind and your body and your tongue, but put yourself under the influence of the Holy Spirit, let him control you.

It is not insignificant that potent alcoholic drinks, whisky brandy vodka etc are classified a “Spirits”. And you can see why. It begs the very difficult question “whose control are you under?”. Most people would answer “Me, of course, I am in control of myself” I decide, I chose to go and do and say and think. I chose to drink or not to drink. My life my choice. but if we are brutally honest with ourselves, do we really believe that? Do we really believe that we have full control of ourselves? Have we never regretted what we said or did or thought? Have we reacted in the way we wanted to:  when thrown a curved ball, when someone cuts us up on the road, when we suffer unjustified criticism, abuse, and slander or when our kind acts are returned to us with ingratitude?

When Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit, later in his letter, he puts in self-control as the final facet of the fruit of the Spirit.  And it follows that it is only under the influence of the Holy Spirit that we can have true self control.

I want to be under the influence of God’s Holy Spirit today.

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF BRITAIN

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Bernadette Spofforth was not exactly a household name until, that is, she was arrested and spent thirty-six hours in a police cell charged with fomenting the Autumn riots, the “Far right thuggery” as our Prime Minister called it, that erupted in Southport, London and other cities throughout England. She was given bail on the condition that she did not speak to the press or make any comment on-line and it is only now, when the charge was dropped for want of sufficient evidence, that her story has been heard.

Her account of what happened is quite disturbing. The crime was sharing inaccurate information on the identity of the preparator on-line. She copied and pasted fake information with her own words “if this is true, there will be all hell to pay”.  She said she was distracted that day, quite angry at the possibility of another tragedy linked to mental health. She hadn’t, however, checked the source, deleted the tweet soon afterwards and apologised for it. It was the account of her arrest and time in police cell that was most troubling.

Why she would be treated to a full-blown offensive by the law, five police officers, two cars and a police van arriving at her door with the rigours and humiliation of being searched, and left for a day and a half in a concrete cell, unable to be in touch with her family of friends, is beyond belief. She was allowed one book and her first thought was to take her bible, but decided against it, she now thinks that was silly and regrets it. But she feared it would be used as evidence, against her, that she was “far right”. That was only her perception, but it gives some indication of the insane place we have come to

Many people are arrested and spend time in police cells for longer and under harsher conditions. People who commit crimes must have this already factored this into their minds, as must those who go on protest marches and public disorders, blocking roads etc. They must be aware, depending on how it goes, that being arrested could go with the territory. Some are actively looking for that, to give publicity and to promote their cause. But you cannot underestimate the shock that this treatment has on a regular middle-aged women, wife and mother, because of something she posted. Shock was the result and she suffered terribly for weeks afterwards.

Of course, of course, her suffering does not compare with the sufferings of the families whose little girls were maimed and murdered in the attack. Of course, it doesn’t compare, as she so clearly says, but it is an indication that there is something seriously wrong with the law and how it is enforced.

And it begs the question, why? Was it just that the police’s heavy-handed manner was a mistake and just one of these things that happens? Was it panic instructions from further up to silence fake information? Was it because this woman already had form? She had publicly expressed opinions that didn’t follow the narrative over Covid, Gender, Net-Zero and other doctrinal issues. Was it an opportunity to silence her?  If this was the real reason, it didn’t work because she fully intends to continue what she does. But it might work in silencing others.

Whatever the reason, the chasm between how she was treated for what was, at worst, a mistake with keyboard and mouse, and how others in higher places can make any number of mistakes, tell lies, only apologise when they are found out and still hold public positions, salaries and pensions is a signal that something is quite rotten in our state.