'Woke'

      It's over a year ago now when, visiting our Cristíona in London, she announced that 'Daddy is woke'. I hadn't a clue what she meant, but it was not said unkindly,- I think I earned the sobriquet partly for my attitude to climate change, also for making some remark about black people having had a rather hard time, in defence of some Black Lives Matter denigration of colonial era statues and so on. 

     On the other hand, I got into fierce trouble for remarking to someone else that it was a bit of shock to find the streets where my Grandma once lived in south London chock full of 'darkies',-  and despite the fact that I was taking the mickey, immitating certain people - trying to be humorous on such a subject is evidently dodgy these days! Anyway I couldn't help being reminded of the time I got off the bus in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in an area where there was no other white person to be seen, and a big friendly man said 'Don't be here by yourself after dark, man!' I was looking up a priest from County Clare at that time who was running a busy parish, alone, in his seventies, having retired from running a school. He walked me back to the bus, being constantly greeted and often stopping to chat. Across the Gulf of Paria in Venezuela, I found in the eyes of local Indians a desperate spiritual hunger, especially in a mother struggling to get her child baptised because the Church has such a scant presence in those parts. 

     Then there was a hero of my youth, Dom Michael Smith, who when the mission he was on in Peru was closed down on account of the Shining Path insurgents, instead of retreating to Lima, headed off into the jungle with his knapsack and spent years travelling about bringing the sacraments to the Indians. Missionaries are often disparaged in 'enlightened' circles, as flag-bearers of colonialism, but sorting out the heritage of empires is not straightforward, any more than that of the scientific and technological revolutions which stemmed from them, and which by and large the whole world is all too eager to embrace.

    Until machinery seriously began to alleviate the heavy lifting of life, slavery was taken for granted in most civilisations; most people in a position to avail of it did so, whatever their race. Our modern civilisation has swept the globe, and even as it risks making it uninhabitable, there is little credibility attached to opting completely out anywhere, nor appetite for doing without its benefits, despite the fact that it was built on the backs of mostly black-skinned enslaved people. This was a vicious business, though kept out of mind when possible, but left its scars on everyone, particularly those who carry the memories of it in their heritage, and still frequently find themselves at a distinct disadvantage; but such scars also remain in the very structure of our societies and cultures; it is not after all just black people who were and still are exploited, and of course the slave driver was brutalised as well as the slave!

     Now however we find a veritable industry being made out of constructing narratives of victim-hood. It may be as well not to mention any names, but this is where the 'woke' business does become objectionable, especially when the 'victims' are parading wealth and privilege for all it's worth. Meanwhile, we do well to consider those scars, search those old wounds, rather than continuing to ignore them with the rationale of 'not opening old wounds'. Still we might be better off doing so quietly rather than on the biggest stage that we can reach, which is hardly conducive to any real attention to truth. There it is more than likely to become a big distraction from the serious work that needs to be done.

     The rush to 'speak one's truth' is as ever problematic. Anyone who kicks up about anything, let alone an oppressive system, is going to get into trouble, and the suppression starts early. What child has not been told to 'shut up', 'wrap up', 'dry up', 'put a sock in it' etc? The fact that we have so many ways of saying the same thing is surely significant. When was this ever appropriate, or on the other hand, when was 'oh darling, what's the matter?' the appropriate response? No doubt we need both, and maybe needing both a Daddy and a Mummy comes in here, which comment will earn me a another ticking off in some circles. Soon we will not be allowed to refer to Mummies and Daddies at all, the way things are going! The fact remains, coming to grips with the past starts in our own psyche, whatever our skin tone.

      Meanwhile to thine own self be true' stands, unless we give up on the whole idea of seeking truth and justice. Actually it seems that the Bard did not attach much psychological baggage to this famous injunction, it being tossed off by the mouth of silly old Polonius as he lectured his son. Polonius didn't follow it through anyway, ending up being run through by Hamlet's rapier as he hid behind a curtain spying for the King. But it comes just after 'neither a borrower nor a lender be',*  to which today we might be even more inclined to respond with Good luck with that! The kind of ontological angst we go in for today does not seem to have troubled previous generations to the same extent; even if they feared going to Hell, they tended to take the existence of their own soul for granted, along with that of God. In this matter of being true to oneself, Shakespeare seems to have been referring to the relatively simple matter of living within one's means and not trying to be what one is not,- just about the polar opposite of what our modern societies are mostly up to, one might add.

     If one did happen to be so fortunate as to live in a society  which lived within its means, ecological as well as economic, chances are it would present less of a threat to others,- would not be trying to make them pick up the slack, or indulge in flights of chronic imperial nostalgia, blowing billions on warships and silly adventures to the Far East while cutting aid to the starving and failing to run one's own society justly, concentrating instead on working constructively with one's neighbours. This would be the way to convince others that one is serious about finally leaving colonialism behind, while building up credibilty and respect, and the means to make helpful contributions to the world. One might finally discover how to live happily in one's own country and with one's own neighbours.

     One would likely also find in a sane society that, though undoubtedly there would still rich and poor, they would still be 'on the same planet', able to understand and respect each other; there would not however be a lot of claptrap about 'equality of opportunity'. Opportunity for what? Getting 'a foot on the ladder', and achieving the opposite effect of what is allegedly intended by very effectively segregating people into those who proceed to 'get a good job' and those who do not, each to their own miseries! Anyway there would be no shame attached to working with one's hands, indeed we might consider 'a real gentleman' not as someone who never got his hands dirty, but one who achieved a balance in his life between manual and intellectual work, and did his share of his own physical labour. Surely his intellectual work would be all the better for it! Then again slavery will only be definitely consigned to history when we do not have to sell ourselves, dedicating ourselves to that authentic vocation which only the mysterious relationship between the self and God can evoke, and which uniquely gives sense to ideas of being 'true to oneself' and free,- dare I say, really and truly woke.                                                     

Sunset over Horseshoe Cottage

*Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.

What Kind of a Stage is This?

 

'All the world's a stage....'

     I have to admit that this lockdown is rather suiting me, in a way. To be stuck here at home means I am more immersed in this place than ever,- now that the weather is picking up, I live in an extraordinary dialogue between the house and garden on one hand, and the sea on the other. In our faces the whole time, this sea is like a mirror held up to the soul, within us and beyond us, reflecting, beyond the grey ennui that sometimes engulfs it, now the turmoil and confusion, now the sublime beauty and serenity that together inseparably inhabit it. 

      Over there are the soaring seagulls and gannets, giving piquancy and depth to the little corner of peace and fertility which we try to nurture here in our garden, with our tits and finches, robins, wrens and dunnocks. They reflect the everlasting conversation of Father and Son, the transcendent and the immanent. Meanwhile the way those rocky outcrops defy the waves, attempting to shelter the bay within, remind us of the grim struggle that keeps the waters at bay, leaving us free to act for a while as if we had no need of their defence, even while we depend on them, both the rock and the waters, to maintain this stage, to keep this space open. 

      We tend to prefer to forget the threatening waters on the whole, but if we succeed in doing so, then our human dramas become mere affairs of play-acting and vacuous strutting,- we do indeed become 'mere players'! Some do believe this is all there is to the human condition, and more act as if it were. It is by attending to, indeed participating in, the above-mentioned conversation that we discover that actually truth and beauty do exist, that the stakes in our games could not be higher and that the ultimate prize is barely imaginable,- for humanity has eternal potential. It is Holy Baptism that initiates us into this conversation, in its full dimensions, and the other sacraments are there to give us the grace to follow through with it.

      To return to my own small share in the drama, in a much more limited dimension of it, I have explained before in this blog how in my youth I was immersed in the sea by crossing the Channel back and forth in a 27' wooden sailing boat, with no electronic aids whatsoever, other than a transistor radio, which gave us the BBC weather forecast, - Thames, Dover, Wight... was the litany.  At least it meant we should be able to avoid gales, but my Dad would be under pressure to get home for work on Monday morning; the biggest problem was fog. Those big throbbing engines, the swish of a bow-wave, the glimpsed looming dark shape with a white moustache.... Then there was the little matter of making a landfall in the fog, and the time when we mistook Le Tréport for Dieppe, or a man wading in the sea fishing for the beacon at the entrance to Rye Harbour!

     Yet more often than not, the one side receded and the other rose to meet and embrace us quite gaily. Two different stage-sets; different languages, customs, ways of doing things, mais plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! Yet some things are different, and some actors reflect truth more authentically than others who merely parrot the lines. One all-too-common illusion in the England of those days (not to mention today?) that was soon exploded for myself was that the wogs begin at Calais! Didn't they have huge and magnificent steam engines there, that could pull trains all the way to Moscow, and such pretty girls! These days it might be expressed more subtly, but it is an illusion that all too often afflicts us, that our own stage-set is the true and right one. The moment we forget that our lines are part of a conversation with Another, then we are merely parroting them. By that immersion in the sea, that baptism, one learns to attend to the conversation, the Other, and so we may distinguish what really does grow and endure,- the green wood from the dead.

     Forever seeking the reality behind the appearance, one finds oneself a bit of a stranger everywhere, since all too many people settle for parroting their lines. Conversely, however, one learns the skills of being at home everywhere even as a stranger. In fact most people do respond to authenticity, and of course humour is a great help, as it hinges on and highlights the disparity between reality and appearance. But of course so many are actually possessed by the narrative in which they find themselves; they become defensive when challenged, and this is how we all tend to get into trouble. We do not allow for the possibility that what we see as Dieppe might in fact be Le Tréport, which has a shallow bar!

     It is the finding of other points of reference, preferably at right angles to each other, that can finally put us right. Hence the wonderful value of learning different languages and getting to know different cultures; yet this does not detract from the primacy of the Word of God. He, She, Them (dare I suggest we call them Heshem?) infuses all situations with the same ongoing dialectic, whereby we may discover Truth. Meanwhile, it is essential to believe in this possibility, even as we struggle with all the false narratives that plague and even appear to dominate the world! Heshem after all created us, completely understands us and our needs, wants to help us and is all powerful; however, He respects our freedom, above all wanting us to enter into a real conversation!

     It was poor Dom Luke, more than anyone, who alerted me to the possibilities of a fatal collision between differing narratives,- while the one outstanding thing he had insisted on was the vital necessity of paying heed to those gleams of light which penetrate our clouds from the Beyond, he found that the boards on which he walked could not tolerate the light within him. Education has a fatal tendency to tell us No, never mind such luxuries, such dreams,- you must learn the worldly talent of telling people what they want to hear! As a journalist, briefly, I saw even more clearly that this was the way of the world. It occurs more subtly and therefore more dangerously in our market economies as in totalitarian states, but Luke insisted that the very survival of life depends on people finding the strength and courage to be true to themselves,- to attend to the reality behind our games, the light within.

     Maybe, just maybe, one might hope that some rays of light are shining through the clouds of boredom and disruption that seem to engulf our youngsters in these lockdowns. Surely it should be obvious at this stage that the system of swotting to pass exams is futile and broken, and as in so many aspects of life, a big reset is called for! When we lose contact with the Everlasting Conversation, education in the humanities turns on its head, spoiling imaginations, undermining moral awareness and conscience, in the same way that the Church can find itself losing souls instead winning them, and allopathic medicine sabotages our immune systems instead of enhancing them. So besotted with our power and obsessed with our comms are we, that we seem incapable of paying attention to the simple fact that we are in immanent danger of destroying life on Earth itself. We have to learn humility fast. 

      It is a start to pay attention to Nature. Indeed there is much to be said for heading to the general territory where I seem to be finishing up, in a secluded and beautiful spot, with some bit of intellectual work set in the context of physical survival work like growing vegetables, doing the odd bit of building, and when possible doing some sea-faring. I think we have to help people who have the inclination to do so, and Fiona and I welcome guests to participate here. There is no shortage of things to do.... If anyone is interested, contact us by email, gannetsway at gmail.com .