I raced Fiona home in the end, though I had left her over a month previously in Vila Real de Sao Antonio, on the train to Faro. She has been helping family while I've been sailing up. We came home to a very overgrown garden, and have spent most of the last two weeks taming the wilderness and getting some production going again. Quite a few dear people have tried to tell us that we cannot expect to both live the sailing life and keep a house and garden going, all on a small pension, and sometimes I am inclined to agree.
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| Taming the wilderness. |
Of course it is Fiona who is most committed to the house and garden, and myself to the sailing. Some have suggested that the solution is simple - we each do our own thing, just getting together now and again; one might call it the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ solution. They miss the point that we each value the other’s predilections, that we actually like living with the tension. Fiona does not want to be a cabbage, and I do not want to be a rootless drifter upon the ocean. So far, by some kind of a miracle, we have managed to keep our balance between the two, and long may it last, I say!
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| Hajib weather! |
It’s an ancient issue, and reminds me of the old tension between what might be called the monk principle, with its commitment to stability within a community, and the friars and missionaries and pilgrims who get out into the world. The Catholic Church managed to keep her balance between the two impulses. Again, much effort has gone into trying to achieve the right balance between the nation states and the EU.
The English like to see their country as a little garden, an enclosure of security and order in a dangerous world that is always threatening to invade and overwhelm it. One sees the point. The call to community with the rest of Europe has generally fallen back on pointing to material advantages, in trying to make itself heard. Now we see the inadequacy of this approach. Even Catholics have generally held back from expressing it in terms of basic concepts of what life is all about.
You might even ask why do I say ‘even Catholics’? Because the call to community is fundamental to our Faith. In Christ, we build the Kingdom of God with that basic rhythm, that balance and harmony of what is within and what is without. If one settles for the cabbage patch only, one is left with a stagnant pool in a river that has gone dry. Mr Boris Johnson tries to counter such thinking with talk about ‘going global’. What kind of global presence would he have in mind? He wouldn’t have the British Empire at the back of his mind, I suppose? Certainly one does not hear from his type of much repentance for its very considerable failings.* Judging by their stance on, for instance, tax avoidance, we may assume what they have in mind is a buccaneering presence in the fine tradition of the likes of Sir Francis Drake!
If anyone is serious about his own community, he also must be serious about global community, about tackling the big problems like climate change, environmental degradation of all kinds, world poverty and war. It should be very obvious that we can do so far more effectively by giving the world a lead in living in active community with our neighbours, and please, do not try to tell me we can do this while walking away from all that has so far been achieved, with much effort….
Now I had better get back to the garden, hoping to look forward to lots more lovely fresh salad with my grilled mackerel, while not leaving the Anna M too long with her strange company! 
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