Wilting Shamrocks and Twelve Stars.

Brave Marchers

The combination of religion with nationalistic enthusiasm always made me slightly nervous, even when it was just a matter of St Patrick’s day. At Downside in Somerset where I went to school, the brave contingent of Irish lads would sport their shamrock specially sent from home, likely to be slightly wilting after their journey in a little box; of course this was the occasion of some gentle ribbing, of which yours truly no doubt did his share.

It was not that I wasn’t interested in St Patrick, who indeed might well  have come from Somerset. He was a Romanised Celt, which is an interesting combination for a start, and the poetry of his bits of writing and the story that he was first taken to Ireland as a slave and then returned to preach the Trinity with the little leaves of the shamrock appealed. My dear friend Ken Thompson went on to make a beautiful statue of him as a shepherd, which is atop a column in Westport, Co Mayo. The question was, what had that lark of parading round chilly streets waving flags got to do with it? Half the time it seems to parody St Patrick rather than honour him!

Ken rounded off his career as a sculptor with a magnificent Stations of the Cross for the restored Cathedral of St Mel in Longford, and has just given me a copy of a beautiful book with his reflections on them as well as photographs of them, which is available through Veritas Books. I have only had time to read what he says about the First Station, but I love his comment on Pilate’s question, 'What is truth?' - ‘Significantly he didn’t wait for an answer’.

One often meets people who quite proudly announce that 'they don’t believe in anything!' One has to ask, have they asked themselves that famous question at all, and have they really looked for an answer? It is in the vicinity of such questioning that one can glimpse the difference between mere tribalism and genuine community, indeed the very oneness of truth and love.

Love of course unites; however the first thing our culture does with knowledge is to divide it up into ever proliferating compartments. Along come the educators, often without the foggiest idea of an holistic principle that might enlighten them, and all they do is teach youngsters to assimilate and manipulate information within these compartments, so that they can produce as necessary whatever components that the market may require. No wonder they don’t believe in anything; they cannot even know what believing is! Is it not largely a matter of establishing connections?

When the victims of this fragmenting and compartmentalising education come for instance to being journalists, what language, what terms of reference have they which will enable them to stand up to the newspaper proprietor whose main interest is to exploit the prejudices of the tribe that he targets, for money and for power? Journalists get on who have a good nose for it all. They please editors, and editors get on who please their owners, and one can pick and choose one’s elected ‘facts’ to say just about anything. Even if the journalist has done his best to say things as they are, a cut here and there, a headline and a shift of emphasis can quickly change the sense of his report.

The most obnoxious newspapers are the ones with the most obnoxious owners, whether they are the plutocrats of the ‘free world’ or the dictators elsewhere. Take the British papers advocating Brexit. We know the great lengths some of their flag-waving owners go to in order to avoid paying tax, as well as to evade their beloved fellow countrymen as much as possible.  I might mention the ones who built the mansion on the small island of Brecqhou that I have referred to previously in this blog. Could it be that their patriotic zeal stems primarily from the EU gradually making tax-dodging more difficult? Then there’s all 'that damned continental socialism'!

The Brexit  thing does have a long tradition to build on, notably represented by King Henry VIII wanting to suit himself in the marriage stakes. Once the authority of the Catholic Church was overthrown, the attempts of Britain’s neighbours to ‘put manners’ on the islanders became more and more crude, through King Philip II of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler. Unfortunately nobody had properly figured out the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity yet, and though the founding fathers of the EU sneaked it into its ideology, in practice the said EU does remain somewhat stuck in the over-centralised Napoleonic mode. The disastrous Common Fisheries Policy is a good example.

It’s a pity the French never really repudiated their grand homme, as the Germans did Hitler. Of course the two were not in the same class as to sheer evil. When it came to constructing the EU, it was perhaps only the trauma of the world wars that had sufficient effect to overcome the resentments on all sides. The English had to recognise that after all their fate depended on that of Europe, and the Continentals that after all those maudits Anglais did have their value in counteracting the grand excesses. Now that the memories of all that are fading, it is a tall order to sustain the catholic project for a universal community.

One might ask why it is easier to do so in Ireland and Scotland? I think simply because here it is the English who have not just threatened as they have themselves been threatened, but who have actually carried out the invading. The Celts were not only pushed out of England in the first place, but they were not even left alone in their damp and rocky retreats. That Romanised Celt, Patrick, turns out to have been a very significant figure, a prophet who might have averted much subsequent grief had he been attended to better; you would hardly gather it from the parades, but perhaps he can still do much to help unite the peoples of these islands within the latest edition of the Pax Romana! Let me testify to the fact that while my genes come from both the Celtic and Germanic blood-streams, though marginally more from the latter, my life experience has led me to identify more and more with him. 

Meanwhile, the twelve stars from the crown of 'the woman adorned with the sun and standing on the moon' and giving birth, in the Book of Revelation, make a more meaningful emblem to me than any national flag! If we want the project it represents to have a new lease of life, we need to recall her; we also have to take Pilate’s question much more seriously and somehow find our way back to the only realistic and holistic concept of truth available.

Whereas my mind was nearly splitting with such preoccupations as a journalist, I found fishing for a living very therapeutic. Either one caught fish or one did not; there was the physical reality that could not be fooled and there was one’s own thoughts and actions in relation to it; no room for fantasies and meanwhile one’s mind was one’s own.  But the old thoughts were trundling along in the background.

The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno said somewhere words to the effect that ‘good writing is the fruit of successful living’. No, he didn’t mean two cars and a nice house. I hope these last fifty years of mine have constituted what he did mean, but what of the fruit? If I don’t do something with my little stock of it now, it will only rot, but I have so far not found a market for it. Technology to the rescue! I for one shall not be crying if newspapers die out, but it remains to be seen where the internet will take us. I wonder where this blog will go? It is easy enough to get it out; the biggest problem is that everyone’s mind is getting saturated. 

It is a bonus that I can monitor where the posts go, but I would like to get more comments back and find out who appreciates what! There does seem to be some interest in the high-falutin' stuff like this one, but others may be relieved when I get back to sea next month!

Where is it going?