At the Still Point of a Turning World.

Some of us, at least, and by no means necessarily the well-to-do types, are privileged at the turning of the year to enjoy a relaxation of the  steely grip that the world generally holds on us. There is a pause, a moment's quiet, as one year begins to fade into the Past, and a new one opens before us. Some people of course are merely filled with panic by the merest passing glimpse into the abyss that surrounds our lives, and rush to fill it with even more inebriation than they generally employ, in trying to maintain their tenuous engagement with life; let us hope rather for a blessed occasion to stand back, give a bit of quality time to the relationships that matter to us, and focus anew on what is important to us, even as Mrs May recommends.

What will the New Year bring? The prospects have been stormy, and the same old problems will still be there, but when for a moment we get off our high horses, is there any real chance of joining the shepherds in glimpsing the new hope offered in that stable in Bethlehem? But why does it have to be in a stable? Is there any hope for those of us, such as I have to admit myself on this occasion, who have spent the holidays in a very fine house?

View from our bedroom window, by Fiona..

It was not something that might have been expected, when Fiona and I came to live in a leaking two-roomed cottage and a small caravan in Glencolmcille, back in 1973. Not that it didn't have its blessings, including as Big John had it 'the best water in Ireland', which we called Braide wine as we drank it a simple Christmas feast there. Anyway, the three wise men or kings, or whatever they were, were on their way. One of our daughters married a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, with a famous big house in County Wicklow, which is where we were this Christmas.

Whether one spends it in a big house or a humble cottage does not of course determine  the actual happiness of the occasion, and of course the big house was designed to run with an army of servants, long gone now, so despite the mechanical conveniences of life these days, running it entails a great deal of hard work. Nonetheless it was very pleasurable to sit down in the grand dining room with twenty members of the family.

The fine portrait paintings on the walls of previous generations evoke a sense of family continuity, and the formal rooms lend a certain dignity to life that, hopefully, enhances the human interactions which they sustain. So also do the sculpted views from the windows, and the magnificent tree-scapes backed  by glimpses of Wicklow's gentle mountain peaks

It is all a far cry from the 'self-made' wealth that is more generally approved of these days, but truly, if the genuine fruits of wealth are to be enjoyed, if the persona  of wise men and kings are to be truly reconciled, does it not have to be admitted that it is more likely to happen by way of inheritance than 'merited' by what passes for hard work and talent these days? Isn't wealth likely to be better used in hands into which it simply fell, than in those of people who thrust aside their fellows, used them in fact, in order to grasp it?

It is the very will to power and wealth that makes it so difficult to perceive and understand what lies outside its scope, to get off one's high horse now and again, to maintain honesty, integrity, a true sense of justice, respect for others and for nature. I genuinely have zero nostalgia for the past, but it does seem we may have to take some inspiration from unfashionable aspects of it, if we are to succeed in overhauling our ideas of democracy and make it fit for purpose again.

I spent over an hour looking at the carry-on in the House of Commons before Christmas. My default source of information on British politics is John Crace's Politics Sketch*  in the Guardian. I wanted to see if it really was as bad as he makes out. Actually I thought it was worse. In response to all sorts of real concerns, Mrs May just kept on repeating her line about carrying out the will of the British people.  I didn't see anyone nail that one with the simple fact that, even if one (unlike myself) accepts that there may be any such thing as the will of the people, and that the referendum result delivered it, that result was delivered under the leadership of gentlemen like Messrs Boris Johnson and Nigel Farrage who now repudiate her version of it. Mrs May is either deluded or downright dishonest, I hesitate to say which, in her claim to be delivering 'the decision of the people', and frankly one might say the same of a great deal that passes itself off as democracy these days.

British politics are fascinating at present because they are giving expression to profound cultural problems that our Irish politics are merely skirting over. Frankly contemporary Ireland is somewhat inflated with the capital of a handful of American corporations that exercise a deadening grip on our culture. I look to a long game of counter-balancing that influence through the European project; not being inclined to cultural warfare, I just have to hope it is not mere laziness that leaves me happy to chip away in my own little way, and grateful if I succeed in continuing to do so in 2019! 

*https://www.theguardian.com/politics/series/the-politics-sketch