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| Late October! |
Here we are at the end of October in Nazaré, and I am wandering around in shorts and t-shirt, with temperatures getting above 30 degrees in the afternoon. The sea has settled and I've just had a gorgeous swim; it seems to me the weather is better than it was in the summer. However this reprieve from winter comes with something of a vengeance, in the form of fires up the country and the threat of serious drought. It may be great for working away at a wooden boat in the open air, though maybe just a bit too good for working at all, and also it’s a pity my boss Alec has been knocked off course, firstly by his farm being burnt, and then by having his hand nastily cut by a falling chisel when he did land back into the boat. Not that I haven’t plenty to do, in the tedious and dirty form of removing all the paint from Anna M’s underwater planking. However just now I’m taking a long weekend off to enjoy the weather and also to practise my other hobby, if that is the right word; reflecting on what’s going on around me with a spot of writing.
It was good to have a visit from a friend on her way home to Ireland from the goat farm where she has been woofing for the past month, and interesting to talk to both her and Alec about what is happening in rural Portugal. As life in the dysfunctional post-industrial parts of Europe, and particularly England, becomes more and more difficult and unsatisfying, both Ireland and Portugal have been getting a fair share of ‘refugees’. Indeed Fiona and myself could be counted among them; but when we came to Ireland in 1973, we deliberately did not head for West Cork because we did not want to merely join a community of ‘expats’, but wanted to try to integrate with the local community.
We sent the children to school in Glencolmcille in this spirit, despite serious reservations about so doing. Crucially, we got around to going to Sunday Mass again. ‘A mere social ritual’ is how a lot of people see it. The fact is, it refers our lives to a single central and coherent reality, mysterious indeed, but which has stood the test of time and actually continues to work for those who choose to go along with it/Him/Her, as anyone who wants to may find out for themselves. With such reference points everywhere apparently in decline, the disintegration of our societies proceeds apace.
The English Crusties that a friend encountered in recent years in rural Ireland had no such desire to integrate with the local community, she said, setting up their own school and if possible replacing the money economy with barter systems. In Portugal of course with the language barrier this situation is even more extreme. Then there may be a further dimension of mutual disesteem when it comes to the matter of sexual mores. Though of course in politically correct circles one is not supposed to admit it, even arty, liberated types, have been known to be shocked by the antics of some of the blowins.
Now that Ireland has thrown off 'the dreadful weight of Catholic repression', our young Taoiseach has famously stated with reference to homosexual marriage, ‘It does seem a bit strange at first, but you get used to it’! Yes, I suppose for that matter that you can get used to just about anything, and people do so, blowing each other to bits as in Belfast in the ‘70s for instance, or, well, the list could be endless. The solution to such problems recommended by some is to adopt the enlightened attitude, that’s life, get used to it! And so on, down to Professor Veronica O’Keane of Trinity College informing the Government Committee on abortion lately that "We need a real-life solution to the real life problem of unwanted pregnancy and not a moral, ethical, metaphysical, philosophical discussion about abortion.”
Who, let alone a university professor, would need to be bothered with all that boring stuff? Well then, if we don’t, but on the other hand are too sophisticated for settling for such simple formulae as ‘Thou shalt not kill’, not to mention more positive aspirations to, say, protect the innocent and vulnerable and also the dignity of women, how are we to constitute society and establish that essential basic trust, the absence of which is something all of us must hope, however dimly, we do not have to endure?
My country, right or wrong! was the cry in the heyday of the nation state, and one was supposed to believe that the nation's interests constituted an adequate basis for our conduct, but that is a very tattered notion at this stage, irremediably so indeed, and good riddance to it! Meanwhile, we all of us must come back eventually to the imperative to address such little matters as just what is right or wrong. As Dostoevsky had his Elder Zossima say:-
"To consider freedom as directly dependent on the number of man’s requirements and the extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless, stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions."
Is this business of ‘independence’ for Catalonia, like 'choice', a matter of ‘senseless, stupid desire’ or not? It does seem to me to have a good deal in common with Brexit; indeed some strange bedfellows emerge these days. When one considers them as related to the depth of disillusionment that now exists with what until recently tended to be considered exemplars of civilisation and democracy, such as the USA and both the UK and the EU, maybe they also have common ground with those communities of Crusties.
The bedfellows I have in mind tend to relate to utopian hopes that surround the internet. The Brexiters appear to think that technology will somehow enable a borderless border in Ireland. Catalonian independistas believe that they can bypass much of the cumbersome machinery of the old nation state, not to mention the likes of the banks, and thus, with the help of the blockchain technology that underpins bitcoins, create a parallel economy, based on what is called ‘digital trust’.* Is this a visionary leap into the future or just another ‘preposterous invention’?
Trust is trust and unity is unity, and without them there is only war and destruction. That is what we all must focus on, while the things we make, be they of wood, gold or bits, cannot stand in the end by themselves, nor substitute for those intangible goods. Which is far from denying that we must keep ourselves and our societies anchored in physical truth; curiously this is a condition for justly appreciating metaphysical reality. No amount of blockchain would keep the old Anna M from being blown on the rocks in a gale, and I would have very small hopes of it keeping human society in safety either. That Committee declined to watch a film of an abortion being carried out, and do the warmongers of this world really understand the physical effects of their weapons?
As my waiter, while serving me delicious sardinhas assadas, commented on the news from Spain on the tv: ‘ha que fallar’. Yes indeed, hay que hablar, il faut parler, cal parlar, they must talk! Anyone who worships the Word made Flesh can only agree. As their society dissolves in chaos, I reckon that even those enthusiasts for blockchains will have in the end to listen to such words as these from the prophet Isaiah in today’s Liturgy of the Word:-
Announce it – come, ponder it together –
who was saying this from the beginning, who foretold this from the start?
Am I not the Lord?
Is there any other God but me?
Do you seek a just God who will save you? There is no other.
Turn to me and you will be saved, all you ends of the earth;
for I am God, there is no other.
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| Nossa Senhora da Nazaré. |
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