Take Your Seats, Ladies and Gentlemen, With a Drop At Hand.

In the England that I grew up in, one had become accustomed to getting by on some vague assumption that for all their faults, the people that we elected to lead us act basically in good faith. Some people might darkly aver that foreigners were different and one could not trust them - but Englishmen anyway were somehow supposed to be different. One was widely expected to be leftie in youth, main problem being to get a slice of the action for oneself, and conservative once one acquired a little property, main problem being to hang on to it. We might disagree, but on the whole, we could see where the other lot came from and generally managed to respect them. When push came to shove, we could agree to differ and pull together.

Have I merely got old, I ask myself, or is it true to say that such basic trust has largely evaporated? How can it be that the Conservative Party, that liked to think of itself as the repository of national values, seems to be on the verge of choosing a leader devoid of the basic principles of truthfulness, good faith and responsibility, and who in the interest of 'taking back control' is foisting this leader on the country as an unelected prime minister and insisting that he pursue to the bitter end a discredited* and most damaging fantasy? I look on from my Irish island home, aghast and appalled.

I realise that we are hardly dealing with a new phenomenon. Public life, with the opportunities it presents of getting one's fingers in the communal pot, has always attracted a share of two-faced, self-seeking chancers. On the other hand, is it just my imagination that something new has happened, when the Tories do not even feel the need to pay lip service to those basic principles, and a potential leader can openly flout them, and even garner some votes on the principle that, being 'a bit of a lad', at least he is 'one of us'? The only value that seems to be generally recognised today is that of personal autonomy. Well Mr Johnson just about sums up where that trip ends up. Undoubtedly he will sooner or later self destruct, but how much damage will he do in the process?

If this is the price that has to be paid, I think I might even be tempted to say, 'could we have a little hypocrisy back please'? Maybe that's a lazy attitude though. What we really need is a whole new commitment to truth, and it may well help us if we realise that failure to recognise the truth is invariably sooner or later punished, unfashionable though such a conclusion may be. 

At least old Father Neptune teaches that. I am surely not alone in having had recourse to the sea, as a remedy against chaos, insanity and a pervasive disconnection with any sense of reality. It is precisely the opportunity it provides to confront chaos in a tangible and physical form that is therapeutic; it's a case of healing like with like. But time goes by. I cannot even be sure that I will be able to go seafaring again, in any serious way.

When one is young the physical and the spiritual are so tightly knit together that it is difficult to distinguish between them. A process of distillation occurs with time. The physical inexorably reverts to the dust from which it came. What is left, as we cast around more and more desperately for whatever still floats amidst the wreckage? Is there anything to life other than futile, inevitably drowning egos? Is there an indestructible spirit in us, and might we even take some distilled essence of the physical with us, if we do succeed in breaking free from everlasting disintegration?

Meanwhile, humanity has to learn the same old lessons over and over again. As my mother used to say, 'God is not mocked'.  I for one am settling in for this morality play in London with both a grim fascination, a frisson of amusement, and a fair degree of trepidation. Ladies and Gentlemen, let us take our seats! Here comes the ogre, but where is the hero who will slay it?

I find that I am fonder of my old country than I realised, do not like to see it thus debased, and can only hope that somehow it will find it's way back to what was good about it. Meanwhile, in another couple of weeks, I shall be back to Nazaré, and trying to get that Anna M back on the water. But is this yet another unreasonable fantasy? It's not that I am unable to do without that basic prop or extension to my personality which she represents. If I have to give up, I will do so with good grace - there is another sea, that I am even more interested in. 

Actually, at this stage, it is not so much that I miss sailing her a great deal, but what this project represents; at once an assertion of the world of the Gannetsway, which means more to me than any old nation, and of the kind of approach to Nature as well as to social organisation and technology that offers an attractive and fruitful prospect for the future. That other sea, that other world, can only be accessed if one is true to the immediate ones to the very best of one's ability. The Great Still only yields up the magic spirit in its own time!

*In this respect, do see Carole Cadwalladr's TED talk.

Happy Days!

Politics on a Summer Evening.

Photos by Fiona.

It may seem perverse and foolish to be thinking of politics on a fine June day in Sherkin, but between my own frustration vis-a-vis the Anna M, the difficulty of progressing a simple project to move that part of my life in a sustainable direction, and the frustration I also suffer with regard to the whole situation in the West of Ireland, where farmers and fishermen seem to be on the way to extinction, I find politics impossible to ignore - even across the sea. We are likely to find out that they affect us much more than we would want them to, what with, for instance, the threat that Mr Boris Johnson will be the new prime minister of the U.K.. The fantasies which he promotes are to my mind diametrically opposed to any chance of turning things around; what hopes I have of doing so depend on a backlash against such delusions, hopefully before they do too much more damage. 

     How does he do it? What is this 'charm' or 'charisma' that somehow manages to overcome the many failings that would have sunk most careers by now? I think it is simply that he knows how to spin a good yarn, presenting a narrative of hope to people who badly need one in a situation that offers very little in the line of sober and rational grounds for it. They will forgive him anything, if only he can make their idols stand another while.

     That the same idols have feet of clay is beside the point; thus Johnson gets away with reasserting that his famous 'great country' can have its cake and eat it, claiming to be able to unite it while painlessly leading the way out of the E.U. before the end of October. He and Farage told them how to do it over three years ago, but unfortunately they weren't listened to, and the crowd of incompetants who failed to heed their brilliant foreign secretary made a mess of it.

      Actually it was all Ireland's fault. That backstop will have to go. Wait till you see if a Johnson/Trump team can't sort it out - a small problem,  “easily capable of solution”.., “The obvious way to do it is to make sure that you have checks on everybody who breaks the law, but you do it away from the border.” as Johnson put it at his campaign launch. There's nothing that belief in oneself and one's country can't achieve! No doubt with such a great man in Washington, it will also be easy to sort out Iran and Venezuela while they are at it.

     How do you have 'checks on everybody who breaks the law' without having checks on everybody? Will those who break the law go around advertising the fact, saying 'here I am, check me?' It's a good job 'the full details can be left to work out later'! Not to worry, says the Duckie as I mentioned last week, "There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it's going to be just fine." Like the good minds in Israel I suppose, who became very adept at monitoring mobile phones, even if they are switched off!

     Naturally, the cost of all this did not go up on the side of any bus! But far from being just fine, it sounds like a dystopian nightmare for anyone next or near the border, far worse than having the odd ignorant customs officer or soldier to contend with, as in the old days. I get a similar feeling to that when, for instance, I was hauling away at my nets in a small fishing boat when a great big ship appeared, bearing down on us. What hope for little Ireland, with a Trump/Johnson monster heading our way? And what of Johnson's "friends and partners" in Europe - are they capable of really standing up for little Ireland?

     Johnson's nauseating hypocrisy, after all the lies and venom about Europe that he has poured into British ears down the years, cannot hide the fact that some kind of confrontation between Europe and the Trump camp looks very likely, probably in the form of a trade war. Whatever about the faults of those who govern Iran and Venezuela, it is American trade sanctions that are destroying their economies. Is Europe in a position to resist similar pressure? In the process, we will need to genuinely make the transition to a carbon-free economy - but then, perhaps this is the only way in which this may be made to happen! 

     To go back to the lessons of sea-faring, besides the merits of staying out of the way of big ships, it also teaches that it is much easier to avoid dangerous situations by anticipating them than to get out of them once they have come about. Let us use this threatened crisis to finally build a strong and united Europe, a space where a sustainable way of life, orientated to a genuine and inclusive well-being rather making money for the few and leaving the masses in misery!

     There will be a great deal of pressure from certain quarters to stop this from happening, and the cost in Ireland could be very high. To make the necessary effort, we must for a start erect our own effective narrative, firmly based along the above lines, finally ditching nationalism and that tissue of lies which is commonly used to mask the doctrine of the survival of the fittest and richest, and also the facile divide between 'conservative' and 'progressive'. How can we possibly build a worthwhile future without learning from and cherishing the lessons of the past? I don't doubt that there are plenty of people all over the world desiring such a project - most likely indeed a majority even in Britain and America - but how come that their voices tend to be both subdued and confused? 

     It does have to be admitted that I would much rather spend a while gazing at the drama of a summer evening over Horseshoe Bay than bothering my head about such things; still, there should be sufficient time and space for both if only we didn't waste so much of them!

 

A cloud appears...

   
      

and swells to greet the moon.

Which Side Would We Be On?

Jesus famously dismissed persons who called on the name of the Lord, while failing to obey His commandment that we love one another. His followers are called to be bridge-builders and peacemakers. While I have been preoccupied with the North/South axis, 'bridging' the Bay of Biscay and the gulf between, let us say, Anglo-Saxons and Latinos, we might say that our John has been at work on the East/West divide. Here he is with one result, marrying Andreea in the exquisite little Orthodox church of their local village in the midst of the luxuriant countryside of Transylvania.

The array of icons on the walls and the rood screen certainly made an impressive contrast with the somewhat pantheistic painting that we have on the wall above the altar in St Mona's church on Sherkin; and though on the whole I enjoy the folksy modern hymns that we sing, I have to admit that the Orthodox chant which accompanied the wedding was much more spiritually impressive. We do have wonderful chant in our own Roman Catholic tradition; we should try to use it more.

It all reminds me of the struggles at the time of Vatican II. The cry was to make the liturgy 'accessible' and 'relevent'. The problem arises - accessible and relevent to people living in what kind of cultural wasteland? There may sometimes be a lot to be said to keeping one's God shut up behind the rood screen, instead of interfering in one's dealings with, say, a communist dictatorship, which could be very dangerous indeed. What of our own relationship with the secular realities of our own time?

I understand very well what the people of Doonbeg owe to the Trump organisation, and the benefits of an investment like theirs in a remote and struggling community. I happen to have been the chairman of the West Clare Development Coop for a number of years. Apparently the resort is well run and the economic benefits enormous. Meanwhile do we just close our ears to the dangerous garbage that the man himself spouts, for example about climate change or the Irish border?

Said the Duckie at his press conference with the Taoseach in Shannon -"I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here.... There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it's going to be just fine. It ultimately could even be very, very good for Ireland. The  border will work out."

Where does one go, what can one say, about such an ignorant statement from supposedly the most powerful man in the world? What sort of a grasp of reality can he have in the much more complex situation of the Middle East? If there is a total breakdown between power and truth, then necessarily democracy is dead. One is left with a situation where truth is merely a matter of what suits Il Duce. Give the salute, or else! The Great Leader of the Free World is now perilously close to that situation, though at least there are plenty of protestors but no cheering crowds for him in Europe; meanwhile Doonbeg gives him his best chance of basking in a little approbation. 

It is highly ironic that from there he popped across yesterday to celebrate the anniversary of D-day, unlikely though it is that his imagination might stretch to the situation from which so many gave their lives to liberate the people of Europe. Yet could it be that the attractive story of the result of big investment in a rural community in the West of Ireland is being deliberately used as cover for a much more sinister agenda? We know that many people in occupied Europe profited very well from collaboration with the Nazis, while the fate of those who stood up to them was often unspeakable. Which side would we have been on in their shoes? Where will we stand if, via Iran and so on, the Duckie stumbles into a massive conflagration? Yes, the Pope was very right to ask us to 'pray for Europe' , (and yes, Francis is right again, 'do not let us fall into temptation', as is already said in Portuguese and French, is more to the point than 'lead us not into temptation', though maybe 'let us not be led into temptation' would work too!)