'In the Name of the Most Holy One, Father, Mother and Son.'

    For the first time in nearly thirty years, I found myself yesterday in the wheel-house of a fishing boat, at the controls while we hauled some 6 miles of tangle nets. The circumstances were such that it was the only way those nets were going to be hauled, due to the absence of sufficient crew on the 'Tricky Business', a catamaran that one of our sons is skippering. 

Tricky Business alongside at Carrigaholt.

     James had started fishing the nets some fifty miles off the south coast, but even there his meagre catch had been destroyed by seals, so having decided he woul be better off at home here on the west coast grounds where I used to  make a living, he steamed up to Cappa pier at Kilrush, which was more convenient for his crew and for supplies, and also not a bit congested with small boats like Carrigaholt. A problem

seal damage

with Cappa is that the Shannon pilots have it practically to themselves these days, and they do not like sharing it with fishermen.

    The last time that they had to do so was back in the 1980s. A flotilla of boats around 56 feet long had landed down from Donegal to partake in the spur-dog fishing bonanza, when Finbar Murphy and the West Clare Development Coop had established a lucrative market for them. The pilots got their answer to their complaints when some half score of the Rosses boats tied up outside their cutter!

    Anyway our James got a fine welcome home after flopping down to snooze after tying up at Cappa,- Guards jumped into the boat, hand-cuffed him and, leaving the boat's engine running, dragged him off to Ennis for questioning, after someone had reported the boat for suspicious activity. Needless to say, the Guard's search of the boat for drugs, and indeed their subsequent search of our property here in Rahona, yielded no results. Three weeks later, James is still waiting for his mobile phone to be returned.

    In the 1980s when we had a community guard here, with whom I had a good relationship and incidently to whom I reported a suspicious sailing boat that was arrested off Loop Head loaded with drugs, this would not have happened. In those days of course fishermen had more respect for the difficult work that they did, bringing much needed income into remote communities of the West. Nowadays it seems to be mainly those with a nice reliable government income of some kind who have cudos. Meanwhile, the governments of this world have been getting away with running up massive debts with impunity. 

    Fishermen are now a demoralised remnant on the whole, their industry regarded as a dodgy hang-over from a past age, like, say, cutting turf (in the way of being banned, though this is still a vital part of the economy of some country households), unless perhaps the fishermen get on the bandwagon of the few millionaires, whose ships may cost some €15,000,000. This situation has been a long time in the making. I remember Sean Keaney up in Teelin saying "It will have to get a lot worse before it gets better", back around 1980. Well, now it can hardly get any worse. 

    The boat James is fishing represents the culmination of a spectacular process of technical innovation in the line of fishing gear, especially in electronics and hydraulics for hauling and handling nets. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to catch enough fish to make it pay in that way, or to find crewmen to do so. This is not just a consequence of the shortage of fish. Blindly following in the wake of technology, the men have on the whole lost something even more important.

    The smoking, drinking, cursing fisherman has always been around. Fishing has always been difficult and dangerous, and I do not wish to overly romanticise the Donegal fishermen with whom I kind of fell in love in the 1970s, but the fact is that they inhabited a culture that was profoundly spiritual and Christian, even if it was something of a remnant even then. They had a routine in Killybegs of only fishing four days a week, of attending to their boats and gear on Fridays, to their home and family on Saturdays, going to Mass on Sunday morning and a football game in the afternoon, before heading to sea with a Sign of the Cross on Monday morning. 

    The likes of John Maguire in Glencolmcille, who taught me more about fishing than anyone else, always made that Sign of the Cross before shooting a net, and indeed the Port men consciously did it on the water with their boat, making a sun(clock)wise turn to seaward, having launched stern first. It is extraordinary how such little acts condition what follows!

    When I gave up fishing for a living, after 26 years at it, and as long ago as that today, I made two main efforts to address such problems. One was political,- I stood as a Christian Solidarity Party parliamentary candidate here in County Clare. I was never going to be elected, but hoped that I was paving the way for something. That Something may possibly be arriving shortly, if those who currently tend to be dismissed as 'the far right' can get finally get their act together.

    What put the cabosh on my little effort, more than anything else, was the split between those, like myself, who believed in the European Community while believing its direction as the European Union was dangerous, and those who considered it as damaged liberal goods past redemption. I note that Victor Orban of Hungary seems to have hit a good note with regard to this problem, with his line that the Brussels Blob has 'stolen our dream' of a community of European nations living in peaceful and prosperous harmony, with subsidiarity and mutual respect, not to mention the Christian heritage upon which European civilisation was founded.

    I was addressing more than the problems of politicians, needless to say. My other effort was to write a novel, Wavedancing, a story that would lay out the narrative of our situation as I saw it. We have been living through a time of crisis in all of our lives, not least in the life of my beloved Catholic Church. Hoping that my notions may have lately acquired new relevence, I am bringing out an audio version, and while I am at it, doing some re-writing, Here is an extract, mainly about an idea that perhaps we might take a look at the form in which we make the Sign of the Cross. Here is the new and expanded version of Father John's conversation with Liz in Book I, Chapter 5, -

“Not bad,” said Father John, “that's the form of the Sign of the Cross that the early Pulawayans adopted; they realised that to achieve wholeness, we must relate to God with both our heads and our hearts; they revelled in the idea that our natures do indeed reflect God's, for we are made in His image. In a way it's absurd to apply the concepts of sex to God, since He is all in all and transcends all polarities; but that's not to say that the whole business of gender does not derive from His nature. What's more, how we imagine God and attempt to relate to Him is fundamental!  It seems to us Pulawayans that there has been a widespread suppression of the feminine principle out in the wide world, sadly reinforced by certain concepts of God which have done a great deal of damage, making a bunch of unnecessary obstacles to His grace.

 "Do you agree that it is not unreasonable to associate Nature, and our own emotions, with the Eternal Feminine? And to associate our minds with the masculine side of our natures? As humankind emerged from Nature and a purely instinctual way of going on, we had a struggle on our hands! We found that we had minds, with terrible choices and responsibilities. God wanted us to be free creatures, so He had to let us make the mistake of imagining that we could ‘go it alone’, as had the Eternal Temptor before us, and for this we had to elevate Proud Intellect and suppress the Feminine side of our nature, which was always calling us back to our feelings, to solidarity with our fellows and to enmeshment in Nature.”  

“For all that, I notice that you do not have women priests.  How come?” asked Liz.

  “Maybe we might say it’s simply a matter of the right old way to dance the Great Dance! Now at last we do indeed have to face the fact that our proud intellect is doomed to failure and absurdity unless we find our way to harmony with Nature, and to do so we need to recognise that God is immanent as well as transcendent, hence the magnificent revelation of his three-in-one nature. We need to recognise the Holy Spirit as God the Mother, inspiring and, as it were, haunting Nature, engaged in passionate love with the Father, without whose knowledge not one sparrow falls to the ground according to Jesus in the Gospel of St Matthew,- the two of them constantly bringing forth Jesus, the Son, the Word, Consciousness.

  “So we start  from a profound respect for gender, and the sexed manner in which we humans relate to each other, to Nature and to God. We need to 'plug in' to His power the right way round; to realise that though He speaks to us through matter, He transcends us and comes to us from without; in the first instance, His Word, as a male seed, is inserted from the great Beyond into our human condition.  We do not carry the seed of Life within ourselves, and we must be fed constantly from without; we may not like to accept these facts, but unless we align our minds with that of the transcendent Father (for which, their nature being one and the same, we must equally love and respect the Mother), we will find no peace.

  “She speaks to us primarily through our feelings and through Nature as well as through our minds and our conscience; but even so, the first and last word, the primacy, has to remain with the Father, and in our personal lives, with our own minds! Yes, sometimes in our fallen state, our feelings and our minds conflict. Our feelings must be attended to, but our mind and conscience has to have the last word.”

  “Humm”, said Liz, “This is a big mouthful! I wonder how Our Lady fits in?”

  “She is the pattern and exemplar of the response we all need to make, and our first help in making it! It may sound complicated, but it’s really very simple, and is not so very difficult, if only we are able, following Mary’s example, to get off the high horse of our illusory self-sufficiency as human beings. By the way, if you are worried about messing with hallowed tradition, it’s worth recalling that the Orthodox tradition of touching forehead, chest and shoulders with three fingers held together fits well with our Pulawayan tradition. Jesus is our strength,- the manifestation and the action of God's grace, but the Three are indivisible!     

“Even in humdrum ways, we may see the basic pattern replicated everywhere, down to electrical machines and even those famous internal combustion engines; as if they were of any use without power or fuel! You have a machine - a Concept, you bring Energy and you get Action. Note that we do not worship Nature, nor identify it as the Mother herself, who dwells with the Father in transcendent bliss which is unapproachable for us here on Earth, except through the Son. But through Him and His church, we may get to perceive the Father and receive the Holy Spirit!'

* * * * *

I find that the people with a 'scientistic', materialist world-view, who think technology can solve our problems, quite apart from the generalised crisis with our whole culture that is vividly illustrated in the fishing industry, are the ones who especially want to forget Covid19 and move on. Well they may, ignoring the fact that the results of the response are very much still with us, with many people suffering from them, and huge lessons needing urgently to be learned, before the next such crisis is upon us. I recently made the following submission to the public evaluation of the Covid19 response;-

'Personally I only suffered a mild dose of covid, having caught it from a double-vaccinated son. He did not want to be vaccinated, but said he had to be on account of his job. He has a young family and a big mortgage.  My wife and I only suffered from mild social ostracism on account of being unvaccinated, however the experience gave us a glimpse of the very nasty possibilities. The logic of some fully vaccinated folk asking us to stay away from them on this account continues to elude me.

    We were very fortunate as fairly self-sufficient retirees living in the country, and moreover being sufficiently informed to stay away from the ‘vaccines’; however, I was deeply scandalised by the closing of churches, the isolation of very sick and infirm people, the inability to bury the dead with dignity, the ruination of small businesses, the explosion of public debt and many other results of the lock-down. In fact I completely disapproved of the entire handling of the pandemic, though this remains an uncomfortable place to be. For a start the deliberate spreading of fear was apparent, which is no basis for sound action. 

    It soon became further apparent that this was part of a coordinated global effort, which swept aside all national or local responsibility or room for disagreement, as well as the Nuremberg Code. I completely disapproved of the entire handling of the pandemic, let alone the mandatory vaccination touted by, among others, the President of the European Commission, and which was inflicted on many citizens of countries that we thought of as free democracies. This opened a seriously scary prospect to the likes of me, with the prospect of civil disobedience perhaps becoming necessary to stand up to intolerable totalitarianism, in an atmosphere reminiscent of communism and nazism.

    There was no public debate between experts, perhaps because the only people who seemed credible were on ‘the wrong side’, and they were demonised.  I have my doubts as to how seriously your consultation will consider their evidence, even now! The mainstream media meekly abandoned their duty to investigate and criticise the authorities. 

    The origin of the disease was claimed to be natural, until it became more and more obviously the product of deliberate research. The vaccines were touted everywhere as ‘safe and effective’, and even promised to be so by the President of the USA, even when the little  evidence available at the time was to the contrary. Effective early treatment was actively discouraged, with successful physicians being fired. The lockdown was against established advice and practice, and hugely destructive in very many ways. If there may have been some justification of it for a couple of weeks, there was none for two years.

    The legacy is a mind-blowing collapse in trust of governments, democracy, media, medicine, science, every kind of authority. We can only begin to remedy all this with far more accountability and recognition of what went wrong. The signs are, however, that the powers that be are only doubling down, with such tools as the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty. Whatever hopes may be derived from political developments in the USA are of a somewhat ambivalent nature. While most people in Ireland seem to want to forget the whole business, this is the very time when the truth needs to be recognised and asserted!'

* * * * *

    In the spirit of William Blake's minute particulars however, I continue to dream of a fishing boat that uses sails, for charging batteries for general use, as well as for an electric motor to get around with, fishing mainly with lines and hooks. Anna M is by no means forgotten, but I have had to scale back the time frame again, and am now looking to make a big effort in August and September to get her back in the water and down to the Algarve for the winter. This Shannon Estuary is a beautiful place, but it's no fun beating down it against the prevailing west or south-west wind, neither in a sailing nor a fishing boat!

'The High Rocky Banks on the West Coast of Clare'.

A new edition of 'Wavedancing'?

 When I wrote Wavedancing in the very early years of this century,  I could not find a  publisher, and published it myself in the name of the Gannetsway Press. It is a story of the finding and the loss of a viable and inspiring context for living,- of a place  and a language of meaning and value- and it points to some possibilities for recovering some such again. Like any story, it aims to entertain, but not merely for entertainment’s sake,- not to provide a momentary sop to the general vacuity of a life with no access to the Divine, but to celebrate and further inspire those willing to confront the restless ocean and embark on the voyage to the land of Truth, Grace and Freedom, to Eternity.

It occurs to me that maybe Wavedancing has an advantage in having been written at a time of, for myself at least, relative innocence,- before, for instance, it might bear any relationship with the politics of the United States of America or I had even heard of one Donald Trump, and before the massive acceleration in the collapse in confidence in our institutions since Covid, and just to think, such a short time ago, it was before the internet had swept over us. Still, perhaps we are now, in all our brokenness, a little nearer to God, even if we are also even nearer the U.S.A,- pace, Garcia Naranjo and his ¡tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de Estados Unidos! Yes, Bob Dylan, times do change, but what goes round, comes round!

Ever more decisively, we are now being shown that there is more to life than ‘scientific facts’, that we cannot take the world and its denizens at mere face value, and that we cannot live on bread alone. Bit by bit, a massive edifice, conspiracy even, of lies is being torn down, but not before it somehow managed to enlist all the great and good, including the Pope, all the democratic governments, the medical and media establishments, and succeeded in trampling all over our rights and undermining the prosperity, health and well-being of millions of human beings.

Tu es Petrus.

Where to begin to rebuild trust? Is it remotely feasible that Donald Trump would do so? It would be a highly significant development, though I fear it is highly unlikely, if President Trump were to join a new Pope in apologising for his predecessor’s bringing moral pressure to bear to make us take those jabs. However, what I have tried to do is to get behind that failure, to the narrative which enabled it. 

It has been almost universally presumed for the last couple of centuries or so that Science provided the only generally valid terms of reference, the only basis on which authority could make rational decisions. In fact it has become increasingly apparent that most decisions by the powerful are taken on the basis of some form of graft, while even the name of Science, as the disinterested pursuit of Truth, was generally being taken in vain. As has so often been the case with God Himself, its name was invoked but rarely was it actually heeded. 

Post Covid, there is a mighty struggle going on, between those who are still possessed by ‘Scientism’, along with the massive urge for power and control that goes with it,  and those who are resisting it and seeking alternatives. It may be hoped that ‘Scientism’ peaked with Covid, but the struggle very much goes on. This of course is not to dismiss Science, just to get it back in its properly subordinate box.  Indeed there is  an urgent need to rehabilitate authority; but there remains the question, what kind of authority do we need? The attempt to portray this struggle as a tug-of-war between ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives’ seems to me another distraction.

Here I somewhat reluctantly return to another beef that I had with Pope Francis. I thought his jibe at President Trump, about Christians building bridges, not walls, rather cheap-jack and unworthy. After all one doesn't have one without the other, and I like the old farmers' saw about good fences making good neighbours. As a sailor I can be a bit snotty about the fence builders too, my preferred environment being the sea, where there are neither bridges nor walls, except however the walls of one's vessel. Surely the skipper's first duty is to make sure the water does not enter! Which all goes to confirm that the political question is highly fraught, and I would rather a Pope who stays out of it.

What is universally required is the fearless quest for Truth, and I seek to try to reframe our options in such terms. It is in such endeavors that we achieve our true humanity and dignity. Stories like this novel of mine are as ever apt to be dismissed as merely fantastic ‘mythologies’,  but I hope that my work is in the very long tradition of these stories. In the footsteps of Jesus Christ, we aim to fortify, encourage and celebrate ‘resisters’ who, in the very act of confronting lies, greed, evil and chaos, emancipate themselves and more clearly delineate transcendent truth.  I hope that this little effort may prove more widely accessible now than when I wrote it some twenty years ago. 

A literary friend of mine commented on Wavedancing that 'it is well worth rewriting'! It has taken me a while to get over that, but to some extent I am now attempting it. I am also recording it for an audio edition, so there are now two biggies to look out for on this blog,- this and the Anna M getting back in the water. This old man has never been busier, even while trying to keep his wife happy and working on our little bit of land,- one might say that the sailor and the farmer in me are still battling it out!

Face to Face with Edom?

 

Who will bring me face to face with Edom? (Psalm 107)

We are told that the bulk of the Russian population still supports President Putin. Most of us have little difficulty in perceiving that they are either the dupes, or at least merely the victims, of a massive edifice of lies. When it comes to confronting the injustices perpetrated in the name of those lies, things get more complicated, but the consensus is that it has to be done with missiles, drones, tanks, jets etc. 'Who will lead me to conquer the fortress?'

    The people who founded our modern Republic of Ireland had somewhat different ideas. They were not impressed by the slaughter of young men in France, in the name of what? They were suspicious of that cause, allegedly the freedom of small nations, but which looked to them more like a simple clash of empires. Still, they went on to establish a small nation on Catholic principles, which the modern Irish establishment however has been doing its best to row back on since I came to live here in 1973. They evidently have other fish to fry! One of the last of these principles to survive, in theory at least, is the cherished tradition of Irish neutrality.

    The British shot the leaders of the Uprising, and hung onto six counties, but let's say that an element of decency, and the pressure of the Americans, caused them to tolerate this independence and the neutrality that went with it, even through the Second World War. It is however about to be tested again. The question arises, does Ireland not care if Europe is overcome by tyranny? Or supposing China invades Taiwan, is it anything to us? Supposing the world succumbs to a third world war, an existential conflict pitting the democracies against China, Russia and a few hangers-on, like Iran and North Korea, will we be able to sit it out securely on our little island, keeping ourselves aloof? 

    We could have our work cut out, even keeping our own infrastructure secure, and other nations certainly would have a big interest in what's going on on the sea-bed around here, not to mention Shannon airport. If it comes down to actual self-defence, co-operation with our neighbours would be vital. Is it possible to sustain a distinction between that and joining NATO? In the big scheme of things, might there be a better contribution we could make, rather than a handful of jets etc? If so, what is it?

    The truth is, it's not just the Russians and the Chinese that are stuck with big lies; and it is lies that cause the warfare, for they invariably conflict and are very stubborn. It is for instance just about unthinkable that Putin should abandon his lies and admit he made a colossal mistake in invading Ukraine. He lives or dies in his lies, but then again he will probably only be confirmed in it if the West mounts a crusade to bring him down. Wars occur when instead of confronting the lies within, which is so very difficult, we find an enemy to project falsehood onto and we band together to fight them. This unites our tattered societies, gives us a cause and a reason for living.

    Where this confrontation with Russia and China will end, we do not know. I do not for a moment want their version of human society to prevail, but I think Ireland has potentially a far greater contribution for the cause of freedom if it remains neutral. I hear it said that there never was any civilisation that was not based on some kind of an empire,- and they take many guises these days. 

    It will indeed be interesting to see how modern Ireland fares, if we lose those billions that come from Big Pharma. Nonetheless, we should simply opt out of the attempt to reduce human life to competitions for power. We may be poorer, but not in the long run. We must dust ourselves down from our recent bad trip, and stand for the one and only empire that counts, based not on the sword but the Cross of Jesus. 

    This involves helping everyone to escape from their lies and the power systems that they support,- but the place to start is with our own lies. It happens that just now, the Irish establishment is in a panic about President Trump's threat to our share of the Big Pharma cake. 'Things will never be the same again' was according to RTE 'the Taoiseach's unnerving message',- not of course because of any questions about Big Pharma's motivation, past record, criminal convictions or approach to health,- oh no!

    To even ask such questions is widely regarded as an unpatriotic nono in Ireland today. We who refused the covid vaccines, and have been questioning them since they were foisted on the whole 'free world', find ourselves in a kind of alternative reality, subject to the same kind of social repression, in a more subtle form, as those in Russia who question Putin's narrative. But what was the self-destructive madness that swept the 'free world' with covid?

    Where does the politically correct covid conformity come from, begin and end? If we don't want it to end very badly, let us all start by listening to each other,- not to mention to ourselves,- but it's an uphill task. It seems one is not even supposed to  mention death anymore, let alone investigate excess mortality. Have you noticed, the correct crowd now refer to 'passing' instead of dying? Let us not shy away from confronting our own lies, along with our own mortality, and getting 'face to face with Edom'! 

    Allelujia, it's making a lovely Spring here in Ireland! I must get out into the garden, and am intending to concentrate on the Anna M, after Easter.

Ailsa Craig, as we returned from a wee visit to Scotland

Frozen at a Crossroads of History

Just occasionally, we find ourselves at an historical crossroads of such moment that we may feel overwhelmed by it. Even our familial and day-to-day relationships can become paralysed; there is no escape unless one is very adept indeed at burying one's head in the sand! So let me attempt to summarise some of these polarized perspectives:-

Scenario a):- President Putin is an evil dictator, and if he is not emphatically defeated he will go on to threaten at least the Baltic States, Moldova, probably Poland and the whole of the old Soviet Empire. Tyrants everywhere will be emboldened, especially Chi in China who will take Taiwan. Even President Trump himself will achieve his dream of becoming a dictator. The rule of law and all moral principles in international relations will be irreparably damaged. The West must stand up to tyranny just as it did in WW2. We must get behind President Zelensky and enable him to win. 

Scenario b):- Putin may be a dictator and Russia corrupt, but there is some doubt as to whether things are so very much better in Ukraine. Instead of embarking on a quixotic campaign, we need to be realistic and pragmatic about the facts of power  politics. It is the height of folly to risk the mother of all forever wars, possibly ending in nuclear armageddon. We also need to take the beam out of our own eyes before trying to get the splinter out of our neighbour's. There will be time enough to build the great new world order if people can only be stopped from blowing each other to bits. Trump may be a bit rough, but at least he is focussed on stopping the killing and not toboganning into unsustainable debt....

Let us, for once and for all, try the Gospel trick mentioned above. The war in Ukraine is by no means a simple matter of Russian aggression. Professor Jeffrey Sachs in his address to the European parliament spelt it out much more authoritively than I could. However getting our head around the big picture, in which that part of the world has been fought over since time immemorial, is frankly beyond most of us. What is clearly unacceptable is to go on fighting over it, especially with modern technology. Trusting that peace will allow us to improve our relationship with neighbours is infinitely preferable to destroying our country by fighting over it. This is a truth that we in Ireland should have learned the hard way! 

Instead of indulging the widespread russophobia, we need to renew our efforts to understand and appreciate Russia. There are the great works of literature to revisit. There is the obvious and simple truth that European prosperity and security requires us to live in peace together with our big neighbour to the East.

Let us also accept that it is long passed time to recognise that Western, aka American, policy needs a radical overhaul, to say the least. Must we everlastingly remind ourselves of the litany of disaster,- Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza etc? We may take comfort in the heroic stand against Hitler; we remember with gratitude the role of America then, but let us remind ourselves also of the massive part played by Russia. When we are told that Putin is not to be trusted and it is a waste of time talking to him, let us remind ourselves of the role played by one Joseph Stalin. I daresay the British were not too nice to address him with diplomatic courtesies when it suited them, but I fear that people whose whole worldview is shaped by nostalgia for those heroic times, when 'Britain stood alone against tyranny', are apt to forget this.

Whether one may be peering through murk to take the bearings of some established marks, or using a machine that takes the bearings of satellites, the more cross-bearings, the better.  One may wonder why it is that a person's orientation with regard to the above bears a strong relationship to their attitude to a few other big issues, unrelated as they may appear to be, such as covid and climate change. In the case of covid, the situation is still evolving fast; much that used to be 'disinformation' has been quietly shelved, but let us consider the official narrative from start to finish:-

Scenario a) - The virus was a spill-over from nature. The vaccines were a triumph of technology that saved countless lives, and not alone protected the recipient, but prevented the disease from being passed on. The lockdowns were nonetheless essential for nearly two years, and together with the vaccines eventually defeated the virus. The chatter about vaccine harm is largely disinformation.

Scenario b) -'The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media and international agencies.' - Russell L. Blaylock in February, 2022. Anyone who still believes those lies no longer has much excuse for doing so, thanks to the 'disinformation' provided by a courageous minority of scientists and doctors on the internet - for which let us thank God. Here is just one recent example. 

What a long way we have come since I wrote 'Sorry Doc, I won't be taking the Vaccination' on this blog back in January '21! How innocent I was! I had no idea how horrific the extent of the deception was, and how I would be gradually forced to recognize that there is a World Economic Forum and World Health Organisation cabal out there, including people like Gates and Fauci, who managed to subborn all the so-called democratic governments. Furthermore, they mean what they say about reducing the world's population, in the grand Rockerfella tradition of eugenics. 

Actually they have made no secret of their intentions. Pandemics and wars mean nothing to such people,- ordinary humanity can suffer and die, while they adeptly make money every way. If there is war, they make money out of arms while getting rid of plenty of people; if there is peace, they are capable of orchestrating a fake pandemic with a remedy that kills far more people than the disease. The same crowd are making vast fortunes while driving the masses into poverty, and meanwhile are busy buying up farmland and making people eat their extremely dodgy food.

A particularly disturbing aspect of it all is the way it is bound up with the narrative of climate change, as in Gates' Ted Talk in which he made the curious boast about 'using vaccines to reduce the world population'. That we have a severe problem of pollution and bio-diversity loss is undeniable, but the proposition that addressing it is mainly a matter of radically reducing the world's population, or even of attempting to reduce emissions to net zero, is highly questionable to say the least. Unless one considers that one's own folks are exempt from the cull, or one is just deep into nihilism, such a proposition will only alienate one from the tasks in hand.

In short, scenario a) tends, whatever the grand intentions, to actually mean death, ill health, dreadful food, ugliness, environmental degradation, extreme individualisation coupled with totalitarian control, polarisation, the collapse of families and general misery.

Scenario b) offers life, health and well-being, real organic food, beauty, sustainability, harmony with thriving nature, reconciliation, community life, freedom, family and fun all round.

'I set before you life and death, saith the Lord. Choose life!' (Deuteronomy 30:19)

It comes down to a choice between the idolatrous worship of technology and power, or the love of one's neighbour and of God,- an exercise that, indeed and alas, is by no means free of cost!

                          

Of Emperors and Fishes.

I have just responded to the request for input to the upcoming review of the CFP (Common Fisheries Policy). This may seem to be an esoteric matter, but hang in, dear reader, and you may see it as archetypal, and of very immediate relevence to our more general concerns. Besides having a very real impact on the lives of small coastal communities such as my own, it sheds light on our day to day struggle to keep our lives together, and other ways in which the overall politics of today affect our lives.

    I realise that even if some minion in the Commission actually gets around to reading it, and even if that minion broadly accepts the truth of it, one can just imagine him saying to himself 'Hum, he may be right, but pushing that kind of stuff up the line is not going to get anywhere'! Yet, especially in times like these, I believe that everyone who can raise their heads above day-to-day tribulations and trivialities must do so, and then try to make the results of their experience heard. Here are the comments which I submitted:-

CFP Review

While I retired as a full-time fishing skipper in 1998, I have remained in close contact with Irish west coast fishing communities, through having lived in three of them. I continue to do so, through the fact that I have a son still actively engaged as a commercial fishing skipper, along with a more general involvement with matters of the Gannets' Way and sailing.

    It was already obvious towards the end of the 20th century that the fishing industry had serious problems, stemming in part from the same kind of factors that have brought about the general biodiversity crisis, and especially from the brake-neck pace of technological development, particularly in the context of hungry capital anxious to facilitate and promote it in the name of Profit and Progress. Evidently our sense of self-restraint and communal responsibility was failing to keep up. In spite of many fine intentions about conservation and subsidiarity, instead of seeking out a different path, the EU responded in the only way it apparently knew how, with an elaborate system of Command and Control, quite beyond the mind-set of an artisanal fisher.

    The results are clear and are not good. All around the coast, the fishing communities are in a state of decline and demoralisation. Ownership of fishing vessels has become only accessible to big companies or the very well-off; and they need the resources to conduct lawfare, because it is frequently impossible to make a living within the law! Our seafood restaurants now mainly get their fish from many miles away, and it is very expensive, despite the fact that here on the Loop Head peninsula for example we are nearly surrounded by the sea. There are precious few young fishermen hereabouts; they have gone away while some have sadly even taken their own lives. The navy and other maritime industries will not find the young recruits that they used to from these communities.

    There are other paths open to us. Somehow a sense of fun and adventure needs to be rediscovered. ‘Small is Beautiful’ and intermediate technologies may be revisited. Here at Gannetsway Marine Services, we want to develop a sail/electric fishing vessel for fishing with hooks or traps, with the propeller charging the batteries when under sail. Every small port around the coast could support a fleet of such craft. The concept of the skipper/owner, which as of now has all but died out, could be resurrected. Fishermen would no longer need to work to pay for diesel fuel for up to half their time, nor would they need to worry about the notions of distant bureaucrats telling them to stop catching this or that species all of a sudden, while tons of good fish get thrown away dead.

    Conservation measures need to reconnect with the fishers, but any real responsibility depends on a sense of ownership. Subsidiarity is a vital principle for any solidarity, yet it has been mainly honoured with neglect. All this is of course part of a wider malaise. As a supporter of the European project, I consider that real solutions need to come as part of a massive change of attitude; otherwise the EU will not survive the erosion, not to say collapse, of its popular support, which is already occurring. Let us hope that this CFP review may be part of a genuine change of heart and of direction. If it is not, it is very doubtful if there will be another chance!

*****

    

    The CFP for sure has failed to deliver good results for Irish fishermen, yet when one comes to consider what they have been doing wrong, and might do better, one has a problem with recommending alternatives other than pulling out. I have to conlude that a better future can only come from a radical paradigm shift,- a change of attitude and approach which is not perhaps so very far apart from that which we are 

witnessing in the USA lately. 

    Let it be remembered that the CFP, like the EU itself, was full of the grandest intentions. I now have considerable difficulty in defending both the one and the other to many, probably most, of the people I meet from day to day. I suspect it would now be the same on the ground in most of the member states, especially in the heartlands of France and Germany, and we have already witnessed Brexit. J.D.Vance was spot on in Munich the other day when he recommended that Europe had better figure out what it really stands for, if it wants to prevail in the forthcoming struggles.

    Can there even be some sense to President Trump's statements about Gaza and Ukraine, let alone relevence to the future of the CFP, and what can Europeans possibly have to glean from them? We are in a weird situation, likened by a wise Spaniard, whom I came across online, to a new variant of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which it is the Emperor himself who is saying,- Can't you see that I'm naked?

    Here in Ireland, the bien pensants, the right-thinking people, are busy wringing their hands, and sadly will probably be among the last to get the message.  Some working people who do after all remain in contact with reality, will remember that if Ireland has one valuable role, it is to act as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. Yet we Irish, who pride ourselves on our ability to relate to other people and to handle big-wigs to boot, know only too well how to keep our mouths shut. 'Say nothing!' may after all be better than 'Tell 'em plenty lies!'

    Today the largest political party in Ireland, Sinn Fein, is going to boycott Washington DC on St Patrick's Day,-  but whatever one thinks of President Trump's habit of making somewhat wild, provocative and over-the-top statements, surely this kind of folly in the grand cause of virtue signalling is hardly sensible either? I recall that in covid times, not content with urging measures to 'ensure maximal access and vaccine uptake', Sinn Fein actually wanted to prolong the lock-down, when at last our Government was bringing it to an end.

    Mention of covid brings me to a matter that is rather more germane to the current crisis of meaning than the CFP, even for myself. We observe how this crisis divides not just America, nor just Europe from America, nor just so many families and communities, but even one Donald J. Trump himself, who in his last presidency boasted about Operation Warp Speed getting out ill-tested vaccines so fast, and in his current presidency appointed Bobby Kennedy as his health czar.  Just tacking with the wind, or a genuine change of heart and policy, Mr President? If so, the world deserves an explanation and an apology! But even Pope Francis flunked his prophetic role, when he urged us all to get the shots. I would humbly suggest that an apology would be good for himself and the whole world, before he goes to meet his Maker! 

    We are in a weird situation, likened by a wise Spaniard whom I came across online, to a new variant of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which it is the Emperor himself who is saying,- Can't you see that I'm naked? But precisely who or what is this naked Emperor? How may we identify and characterise him? We must take care not to be projecting stereotypes onto anyone, but I cannot think of any civilisation without some kind of emperor; we also need a pope who is ready to defy him!

    In this little blog, I can only offer a few suggestions. Firstly, as indications of the old naked emperor's presence, we can look wherever someone is resorting to demonising, cancelling, locking-up, murdering or otherwise attempting to do away with their enemies, other than by engaging with them and seeing if indeed there is any chance of appreciating each other's vestments, or perhaps one might say, respecting each other's investments? But what then happens, when they only seem to do harm, when for instance these investments are in arms, of either the explosive or injected varieties? What happens when the people find that the fruits of them are bitter or downright poisonous? Where do we turn for a more befitting emperor and a more effective pope? Well, a spot of retrospection all round might help! -

                  

Salamanca cathedral.

    

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,    

    let the sea and all within it thunder praise,

let the land and all it bears rejoice,

    all the trees of the wood shout for joy

at the presence of the Lord for he comes, 

    he comes to rule the earth.

With justice he will rule the world,

    he will judge the peoples with his truth.

- Psalm 95.

    

The Turn of the Tide?

The River Rother at Rye Harbour in East Sussex dries out at low tide, so that one could wade across it. My father used to keep his boat tied up to the Admiralty Jetty, a long wooden structure that had been constructed  during WW2 to accomodate air/sea rescue vessels, since there was much action in the Channel off Rye, where a lot of pilots were shot down in the dog-fights of the Battle of Britain. Such memories were still very fresh in those years of the 1950s. Anyway his boat and those of the little community of sailors there used to dry out leaning against the piles of this structure, and only float for about three hours either side of high water.

    It's easy to imagine how the whole atmosphere of the place changed with the rhythm of the tides. Unfortunately the fishing boats from Rye, another couple of miles up the river, were inclined to belt up against the ebb at the last minute possible, just when those wooden sailing boats were taking the rather firm bottom. That ebb was at its strongest, probably around four or five knots,- the fishing boats would make a big wash, which frequently lifted the sailing boats off the bottom and thumped them down on it again. The yachtsmen would curse and the fishermen would not take a blind bit of notice. Class warfare, you might call it.

    It's not easy for toilers on the sea to respect those who go there for pleasure, and especially those who merely play at it, but just occasionally the fellowship of the sea and mutual respect prevails over such little problems. Fishermen may sometimes find it in their hearts to recognise that toilers in offices have their problems too, that they too are necessary, and might possibly do their jobs a lot better if they retain grounding in physical realities such as especially the sea. I reckon that our politicians and civil servants would do a much better job if they spent more time with Nature and less chasing their tails, trying to please everyone and for the most part failing to do so! 

    I'm somewhat fascinated to watch where the Trumpian change in the political tide will take us. I would be happier if he went sailing rather than playing golf, yet I could not but admire his fighting spirit! I tried my hand at the political game briefly, after I gave up fishing. The experience brought home to me how 'fighting the tide' is to be avoided if possible, despite the necessity of keeping faith when the tide is out, preparing for the next flood. We should beware of those trying to force their way against the ebb, who may lift you for a moment and then dump you on the bottom again, shivering those timbers! 

    I am disgusted to see Palestinian representatives who fail to condemn the October 7th attack, continuing to attack Israel while playing the victim tune for all its worth. How on earth did they expect the Israelis to react,- which is not to condone what they have done either! Jesus surely had the only answer, which is to love our enemies. Apparently impossible, but there really isn't anywhere else to turn!

    The eternal rhythms go on and on,- home and away, friend and enemy, day and night, summer and winter, calm and storm, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, life and death, - mostly sadly out of sync. Indeed they can make a ghastly cacophony, pulling one this way and that; it is a life's work, and an extraordinary feat, to learn to embrace both sides, so that we can get them in sync and learn to dance to the cosmic beat. As good a place to start as any may be in a sailing boat that does not assume the power of beating that tide by force, but is content to work with it and use it, with humility. However one way or the other one does have to come to terms with contrary currents, even if this inevitably involves fighting them! 

    There's not much sign of a strong fair tide for the Anna M yet, still no sign of finance for the electric drive project, but nonetheless I hope to be in a position to sail her home to Ireland this year. Then either the Gannetsway Sailing Association and Marine Services will shape up, or I fear she will have to be sold. Meanwhile, however, perhaps you too might like to adopt the sobrequet 'Gannet', indicative of an attitude of encounter to all dancers on the waves of the 'Gannetsway'. We still have to clarify what this will involve, but it is significant for me of an attitude that, though based on the sea, transcends it,- of a cultural and spiritual dance that reconciles all those opposites. 

    Our photographer friend Nutan, with whom I sailed the West coast of Ireland making his photographic book about them, bestowed that sobrequet on our family long ago, though especially on our Luke, because of the way he pounced on food. They had a great time slagging each other off. Little did 'Swami Nutan' realise what fun I would have with it in due course! 

    To enable you, dear reader, to follow and perhaps participate in this effort, Dominic Peer and I are getting a podcast together. Here is the link:- https://www.youtube.com/@FollowtheGannetsway/videos

And here is the link for the talk in Kilkee:-

https://vimeo.com/1051930066/6566a46337?&login=true#_=_

Self with Dr Simon Berrow of the IWDG and John O'Mahony of Belco Marine electronics 
on stage in the Sweeney Library, Kilkee.

Layered Like an Onion

 

25 years ago at Carrigaholt

In the photo above the 'Anna M' is tied alongside my old fishing boat, the 'Whitebank', the ice plant indicates that some fish is being landed, thanks to Finbarr Murphy, recently deceased, God rest him. Ahead is Geoff & Sue Magee's (then) new dolphin-watching boat, the 'Driocht', and as well as the fishing boats there is a new sea-angling boat that I was involved with. I handed on the 'Whitebank' to our son Luke, but after a few years, he felt the fishing was getting too problematic and found easier ways to earn a crust, including his angling boat the 'Clare Dragoon', B&B and beef. 

    My own living, which principally was a matter of taking people dolphin-watching under sail, also involved various efforts like taking Nutan on a cruise to make a photographic book on the 'Islands of Ireland', and Tony Whelan to the Cape Verde Islands with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group  to research and film breeding humpback whales. All these were exciting and fun, but did not exactly add up to a viable living,- too much of the '60s, not enough '80s, you may say. 

    I also engaged in various other somewhat fruitless activities, such as standing for the Christian Solidarity Party in a general election, and writing a novel that nobody wanted to publish. (I did get some copies of 'Wavedancing' printed myself, and will be giving them away at my forthcoming talk on Wednesday 15th January at 7.30pm in the Sweeney Library, Kilkee.)

    We ended up selling the lovely house we had built beside the sea near the castle, but we bought a cottage in a magical spot overlooking Horsehoe Bay on Sherkin Island in West Cork, where we were able to keep 'Anna M' moored in front of the house, doing sailing trips and B&B. We lived there very happily for 16 years, many of them with no car, and of course eventually found we were in a great place to live through a pandemic. Luckily we were on the pension trip by then,- 'a whole new journey', said the lady in the social welfare office; 'Ay,' says I, 'with a one-way ticket!'  Then this house in Rahona near Carrigaholt, between two sons and their families, came on the market, and it was too good not to take. I have always been advocating living in clachans, and here at last we are doing so!

    I don't fancy myself as a politician, nor hardly as a writer, but the preoccupation has stayed with me all my adult life of pondering how the presence of God, and catholic Christian culture, might be better mediated in our present world. Frankly I underestimated the resilience of the present cultural set-up, with its chronic individualism, consumerism and materialism, but now as I run more or less the last lap of my life, I am hoping that the world may have become more receptive to my way of thinking, and I had better make another effort!

    I have to confess myself at this stage somewhat encouraged by my bizarre but extraordinary contemporary, Donald Trump. Having poured scorn on him as 'the Ducky', I have come to hope that he may succeed in turning some kind of a corner for America, and also for the rest of us, in Europe and the world as a whole. It is very encouraging that he seems to have given up the hankering to try to do so as a one man band, which would indeed set him on a Putinesque path, but also that, with his coterie of lapsed Democrats, he has practically collapsed the now tedious and irrelevent left/ right wing political party thing. Still,  this new beginning cannot be achieved by a handful of men and women any more than by just one man, so his famous 'fight, fight, fight' struck a new and welcome note for myself and I hope many others.

    So what is this corner to be turned? I would rather not over-dramatise, but I did come to Ireland in 1973 somewhat in the spirit of a defeated revolutionary. In the late sixties, I had been at Cambridge University at the height of that cultural and spiritual upheaval that was popularly trivialised into 'flower power' and 'the sexual revolution'. For a time, it had held out hope of collapsing the barriers to human freedom and autonomy, of liberating great potential from the storehouse of our collective subconscious, until it collapsed into the rather miserable seventies, to be followed by the even worse eighties. Mamon ruled, get back to 'reality' and making money!

    Well, what goes round comes round, but now indeed we find ourselves peering into the abyss of war and societal collapse. Making money is only working for an ever-decreasing minority. The inadequacy, not to say impotence or incompetence of governments everywhere is being revealed more and more starkly. At which point, you may be asking what has all this got to do with dolphin-watching under sail?

    For a start, one of the basic tenets of our famous flower power was that whatever one does, let it be fun, but there are other considerations,- for example, instead of getting bogged down on a left wing which claimed to take its stand on social responsibility, or a right wing that champions the individual, we have to find out how to harmonize them both. Dolphins and whales seem pretty good at doing so. They seem to be highly socialized,

even in the case of some whales when they are many miles apart, but also they seem to be the epitome of autonomy. Add to this another theme, that of 'getting back to Nature', or let us say in harmony with Her, and you have enough to be going on with!

   


As for the sailing bit, there is a huge difference between just going places under power as one wills- as a consumer of thrills- and subjecting oneself to Nature's whims, working with the wind and currents, and humbly seeking relationship with nature, and those creatures at the head of the natural pyramid. It is in this spirit that I champion the transition from diesel engine to electric drive, especially when one uses the sails to generate the power for it. Not that there aren't plenty of other reasons which I could expatiate on, and indeed have done in previous blogs. 

    Meanwhile it is a very serious proposition to make a hub for developing and implementing this transition here in the Shannon estuary. I'm all for making jobs and for sound industrial development, and most surely developing our own power supplies is fundamental, but vigilant environmental sensitivity must be in there too, so as to avoid disasters such as that at Aughinish, where they are still busy making alumina for Russia,- a good example of environmental vandalism going hand in hand with health damage and injustice too, as well as hypocrisy!

    The way things are shaping now, we will have a Gannetsway Marine Services Ltd to

Our onions

develop and fit electric drives, and a Gannetsway Sailing Association to administer trips in the 'Anna M' and cooperate with the Marine Services. We might take note of the way the Kerry Group is structured,- the cooperative which it came from is still in there, its members having shares and representation on the Board. Brittany Ferries, initiated and as far as I know still run by a farmers' cooperative, is another inspirational company for me. They have come a long way from the Breton farmers who took their onions over to England on fishing boats after WW2, and whom I recall going round the streets selling them hanging in strings over the handlebars of their bicycles,- I'm still inspired by them!