The Golden Gates and the Ragged Rock; the World's Strange Reversal of Truth.

St Martin’s Day was being celebrated with wine and chestnuts on the landing at Alcoutim. So down we went, and had our share from the flagons of wine and loads of chestnuts being roasted on two barbecues. It was very pleasant, just making me wish I could speak Portuguese properly, as boat-people and travellers mingled with the locals. I asked who to thank, and was answered with a shrug, and a gesture indicating a communal effort.

Chestnuts and wine

No money-making, not even any advertising! This is positively subversive, I said to myself, but the couple of cops present in uniform with their guns were just joining in the fun. Just relaxed human beings trying to reach out to each other in peace! And so the weekend went on, sitting around chatting, eating and drinking with both friends and strangers. Some of them hold views very different to mine, but it did not matter. What mattered was people trying to communicate, and enjoy themselves, relaxed and at peace.

Meanwhile, from another world that really is perhaps in irrevocable opposition to all this, the photo came out of the two boyos, Messrs Trump and Farrage, extremely pleased with themselves, posing in front of a pair of very ostentatious - and closed - golden gates in the Trump Tower. All it lacks is Mme Le Pen, Messrs Putin and Assad, a whole host of other would-be tzars, and Mr Boris Johnson trying (unsuccessfully) to put a civilized face on it all….

My shipmate Anna went off, complete with her (from my point of view) barmy baggage of arty, 'progressive' Ireland, in spite of which we had got on fine together. What does it take? I suppose we know that, in a confrontation with the Keepers of the Golden Gates, we would be on the same side; but we start from the acceptance that there are reasons why people feel and think the way they do; these must be attended to; nobody has got everything right. Respect is the key, with a basic sense that nobody is trying to take the other for a ride!

It is easier however when the sun is shining, the sky a perfect blue by day, with the huge moon smiling down at night; the wine and the food are cheap and plentiful. What a blessed place this bit of Europe is! But must such ‘freedom zones’ always be privileged exceptions, in constant danger of subversion and eradication, or is it possible that they might consolidate and grow?

Such must be the deep aspiration of every sane person, yet what a mess we tend to make of expressing it! It is all very fine chuntering on about seeing the other point of view, but it takes something more to actually establish ‘freedom zones’. The cry of those who favour Brexit etc is that they are reclaiming their freedom, while the European Union also was set up as a freedom zone of peace and prosperity.

Those who established the EU had in the main Christian values, but chose to concentrate on no-brainers like peace and prosperity, without asking hard questions about what they depend on. We know that it would not be much fun to come back from the wine and chestnuts to find the boat had been robbed. Oh yes, thou shalt not steal might seem pretty obvious,  until you get down to issues like tax dodging, and thou shalt not kill turns out to be less straightforward than one might think. As for that Jesus man with his Sermon on the Mount..... The trouble now is that the soft approach, saying as little as possible of substance, like the Irish politicians who sold the idea of Europe on the simple basis that it was going to make everyone rich, has lost credibility now - and anyway we've got our fancy roads out of it, thank you very much!

With the new regimes in the UK and the USA, it has become questionable whether Ireland’s place in the EU will remain viable for long, If Mme Le Pen becomes President of France next year, this EU will be pretty much finished anyway. Can this crisis possibly be turned into a great opportunity?

A most important, though downplayed, card is handed to the likes of Mr Trump and Mme Le Pen when they are left holding the ‘Christian’ constituency. In my own little excursion into politics, back in the 90's when I stood for the Irish Parliament as a Christian Solidarity Party candidate, my worst obstacle was sadly other pro-life people in the National Party, an outfit we shall likely see more of again these days. They put up a candidate competing with me for that constituency, which dished both of us; but there was the further problem that the CSP itself was divided about the EU..

For my part, I consider it a kind of blasphemy to identify Christ or God with any particular nation. God of His nature transcends all earthly set-ups. As for Mr Trump and his friend Mr Farrage, if they believe in anything beyond their ego-trips, it appears to boil down to good old crony capitalism, in which interest they are quite happy to exploit the fears and the baser instincts of humanity. On the other hand it is strange that ‘the Left’ manages to dress up in positive clothes the killing of millions of helpless and innocent human beings, or the trashing of marriage. Does the likes of myself really have to remain in the political desert amidst such contradictions? Such matters must be revisited and rethought if the rush to the Gadarene cliff is to be halted.

Meanwhile so many people are suffering personal and family breakdown that these are fundamental to the current malaise. Since in Christian understanding, the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman is the basic unit of society, it is connected with the idea of subsidiarity. It is not the state’s business to define marriage, only to ensure that this basic unit is respected.

There are plenty of areas where liberal as well as authoritarian governments, and the EU too, have at once usurped power and failed to uphold due structures of responsibility. I return to the case of commercial fishing. In the state of naked capitalism, big trawlers will move into an area, clean it out, and move on, leaving the seabed and the indigenous fishing community devastated. Big business generally finds it possible to at once dress itself up as progress and suborn the powers that be. Anyway it is all about ‘the survival of the fittest’, don’t you know? It's just a pity that the Common Fisheries Policy was a flawed and largely ineffective attempt to do something about this situation. Certain imperialistic instincts do die hard.

If you believe of course that life is indeed a matter of the survival of the fittest, there is not much to be done but to try to make sure that one is in there with them. What indeed is truth? Manipulation is the name of the game; to fan the flames of resentment and discontent is easy, direct them at those faltering and inadequate attempts to find a better way which hinder the rich and powerful, and try to pretend we can go back to the situation before the explosion of technology rendered the buccaneering approach impossibly destructive.

The same explosion of technology might empower another way, which needs to be adopted and promoted by the EU big-time, if it is to survive and prosper. It is known as subsidiarity, and so far has been paid more lip-service than anything else. It is a matter of empowering, for instance, the stakeholders in a given resource, the people who live by it, to themselves take on the responsibility of managing it in a just and sustainable manner.

The best way to destroy democracy is to make nonsense of it; Americans voting for Trumpland, English for their own brave sovereign Brittania, Irish for homosexual marriage are all living in what has been called the 'post-truth' world. It is conditioned by the view on their own little screens, which may be wonderful but are ordered to in-built priorities and preconceptions. Actually even the AIS is an example of this (see A Biscay Waltz). It's just tough for the little boat in your way that is not on your screen!

I think of the Anna M, my leaky little ol' boat, as my antidote to all this, my truth-capsule. She at once shakes me up, opens new perspectives and wondrous horizons, then constantly brings me back sharply to immediate physical reality; and she brings me to both trouble, peace and some downright bliss.

Heigh-ho, it's the Spaniards' turn to throw a party this weekend, when the people of Sanlucar will be tasting the new wine. What fun it is to freely circulate where the old castles on their opposing hills glare at each, with people cooperating in friendship instead of shooting at each other! Is this real progress, indeed what life's about, or is it not? Hereabouts, I say, is the Ragged Rock of human solidarity, waves washing over it, fogs concealing it, but where the bedrock of our lives is to be found. (see On Crossing Biscay.)

Photos by Fiona.

An Addendum to the Universe.

Cape St Vincent

The trip down the Portuguese coast was calm, until we rounded Cape St Vincent into an easterly breeze. We spent some pleasant days in Portimão and around Olhão, where Fiona rejoined us. Now Anna M is swinging to her mooring in the Guadiana again, an addendum to this amazing universe, responding to the pull of the sun and the moon, with the bright stars shining down on her. Mostly in the day-time the sun shines warm and dry, but a chilly blast of air from the north reminds us that winter is closing in; early snow has come there, and we have dodged the North Atlantic just in time!

One of the Wilos below Sanlucar.

The mooring had a bit of a branch tangled in it, but otherwise is fine. Wilo Paul from Galway, who couldn’t be called Irish Paul because there already is one of those on the river, came aboard for dinner yesterday evening. He is back on his mooring nearby, having come down from Ireland in July, straight from Kinvara to Sagres in two weeks; good going, showing that the old wilo, big lump of steel that she is, can shift very nicely with the right breeze!

So we are soon catching up on the comings and goings of this little community, if one can call it that! Interesting times, especially perhaps for we who have more or less moved on from nationalism, and count ourselves to some degree Europeans. How does it feel for the ones from our neighbouring island up there in the northern mists? I shall be trying to find out with interest, but I don’t imagine it is good. Admittedly there are an awful lot of Brits in Spain, and they are hardly going to be chased out of it; but maybe they will be here more on sufferance rather than by right.

You may say that that is only to the good! Indeed as for the ones who look down on the locals, and don’t even try to learn the basics of their languages, you may have a point. But for those of us who enjoy the interplay of cultures and languages, and see the different tribes of humanity as complementary rather than threatening, it cannot be nice to find oneself suddenly in danger of being regarded as a non-person!

I was lucky enough to get to Mass for All Saints day in Portimão; it was a high, sung Mass, and the singing was beautiful, with the packed congregation joining in with an excellent choir. Rarely did the Communion of Saints seem so close to me; one could really feel the possibility of that mysterious and ecstatic fulfillment of humanity ‘from every nation, race, tribe and language’, as St John put it so long ago.

At least the Catholic Church cannot be accused of hypocrisy in this respect, for in her churches, there they are, all caught up in the same simple yet profound emotions and thoughts. As we contemplate the disintegration of the liberal consensus of recent decades, I believe we shall have no choice but to revisit such little matters as Heaven and Hell, and discover what they really mean for us!

Evening at Alcoutim.