Time to Call Out British Imperial Nostalgia...and Unite Ireland.

Back in Ireland, a glorious summer is in full bloom. When summer actually ends is of course one of quite a few points of disagreement between the Irish and the English, the former teaching their children that August 1st is when autumn begins, while the latter insist on September 1st. The truth is no doubt somewhere in between, but already here on Sherkin there are occasional hints of the forthcoming decline. 

     Why must the blissful days, bedecked with a riot of colour, pass so swiftly? How are we to cope with such apparent disillusion, such reminders of mortality? Some would rather push the knowledge that such is our condition from their minds, pretending that the idyll will go on forever. Anyone who refers to the facts of the matter is liable to be dismissed as a gloomy pessimist and thrust aside. Yet the same 'pessimists' may be storing their minds with happy memories, as a squirrel stores nuts against the onset of winter. Their realisation of the transient and fragile nature of the blooms will turn to treasuring their fruits. How I shall enjoy recalling my delicious swims of the last few days, when once again I look on a stormy, foam-flecked Horseshoe Bay! Meanwhile 'optimists' merely gambol on to their demise.

      What can one say to these gung-ho types who berate the wise ones for their 'pessimism'? They go around saying 'don't listen to them - summer will last forever! In fact it will get better and better. All you have to do is believe in it -  believe in me in fact, I will show you the way! I will show you how to get every goodie you might desire, and with minimal effort too! Ignore that lot with their nit-picking little brains, they're wasting time worrying about the details while they could be enjoying themselves, the miseries! What are facts anyway? Down with anyone who will not follow us - all we have to do is to stay united in the true belief!

     By now you will have worked out where this is going. The peculiar kind of spurious optimism pedalled by the new prime minister of the United Kingdom is pure poison. The best thing we can do for our friends in England is to help puncture the balloon of illusion as soon as possible. But it won't be easy. This particular balloon has been around long enough to have developed a pretty thick skin. 

      Meanwhile we in Ireland may as well turn to our own project of reuniting this little island as best we can, and work with Scotland to keep the aim of a united, peaceful and genuinely prosperous Europe on track in these islands. After all it's not as if a majority in their famous United Kingdom support either Brexit or Mr Johnson. We must help them maintain belief in real progress, based on hard work and the continuous effort to achieve consensus through dialogue, rather than the establishment of a spurious semblance of unity through the age-old methods of the bully demanding credence for his false promises. It is an unfortunate fact that with their 'winner takes all' version of politics, having tended to be so pleased with themselves, they failed to move on to a more mature form of democracy in the 20th century.  

     Mr Johnson has a real talent for standing things on their head. Unused to the continental style of politics, which on account of proportional representation calls for the establishment of consensus through dialogue and communication, he charges in with his rejection of the work of the last three years, not to mention the last fifty years in Europe, and instead insists on the acceptance of his totally unreasonable demands. What's more, he sadly bids fare to caricature and indeed endorse so much of the world's distrust of England. Even his friend the Ducky, though less erudite, is also less duplicitous; we know where he stands, as he doesn't even try to, for instance, paint himself green. But to say the least, the two chums bid fare to present Ireland with some very difficult choices. It would be so much better if we could face them with our integrity restored and our country united.

      It's going to be difficult, but maybe there is a bright side - it might finally force people to recognise that the border is a gerrymander, and the whole huge effort of the plantation was British imperialism at its worst, aimed at the heart of the Irish nation, of which the Gaelic population of Ulster under the ONeills was the very backbone. It is most important that such facts be not abandoned to men of violence. At this stage, especially since we are fortunate enough not to have found ourselves in their line of fire lately, I find it possible to be quite fond of those DUP types with their brittle edginess and their 'we won't staand furrit'; in fact I also think that we would all be happier if we finally let bygones be bygones and settled down to making a success of Ireland. 

     However, this would require the sins of the past to be finally called out; and yet there can't be much joy in being ruled by those Englishmen who, for all their talk of 'the precious union', in fact know very little about Ireland north or south and frankly care less. It will require us in the South to be rather less lazy about the North, and do all we can to make the protestant population feel welcome and wanted here. If they really don't want to come aboard, well there should be a resettlement scheme for them to go to Blighty. But an independent Scotland might help too. 

     It is quite odd how it all chimes with my own little effort to promote a reorientation of our culture to the Gannetsway, from Scotland to the south of Spain, and what's more, how in some rather mysterious way this reorientation chimes with that other one, one might almost call it a migration, from the fossil fuel age to a sustainabile one. When western culture ceased to see God in beauty and in all the marvels of the universe, to almost effortlessly perceive the amazing intelligence and love that fashions and sustains it, and to see the physical not in the sacramental way as an outward sign of inner grace but rather merely there for us to exploit, the parameters of our present predicament were laid down. A return to its catholic past will be necessary for us to get back on track for the 'new heaven and new earth' where true hope lies. 

On the Gannetsway in Co.Clare.

How to Fix the MICX.

So here I am in Nazaré, just about reconciled to the fact that I have to get Alec to move the Anna M to the cheaper and less accessible part of the boatyard, where the lift cannot go but Alec can with his trailer. There I shall simply keep her from the elements as best I can until such time as there are serious funds available to fit her out again. At least I seem to have worked through my grief at this state of affairs, and Nazaré has a fairly ideal climate for the job. While being fairly dry, there is often a good deal of cloud cover and a breeze from the north, which stops things getting too scorched.

My concept for the Anna M has changed somewhat. To save the expense of a serious bank of batteries, and maintain autonomy, the Beta diesel is going back in after all; however it will be drinking hydrogen as well as diesel oil, and an electric generator will be bolted on instead of the gear box, and the electric drive will go in as planned. One decent lithium battery should provide about three hours of drive, enough for going in and out of harbour and so on.

I have had a change of heart about my diesel engine since seeing what Alec has done with his old van. He has installed a simple electrolizer for hydrogen, which with about the same amount of battery power as the headlights, produces enough hydrogen from water to reduce his diesel consumption by about 30%, and drastically cleans up the exhaust and the engine too, with cleaner and more efficient combustion going on. There is no need to store the hydrogen or even to separate it from the oxygen - both gases are simply fed into the air intake. Alec has invented an ingenious and simple way of insuring that the electrolizer only runs and produces hydrogen when the engine is running.

Alec topping up his hydrologiser with tap water.

Especially for a boat, this is a very promising way to go. It would seem impossible for everyone to get huge battery capacity, even if they could afford it, and anyway what nasties does the production of the batteries involve? Ideally one would eventually replace the engine with fuel cells, as one gets on to producing enough hydrogen aboard from sea-water, but that too is all some way down the road, at least unless one happens to be super-rich. Similar considerations apply to land vehicles, and we need big change 'yesterday'. I realise it is already late in the day, but better late than never, and it's no use sitting around wringing our hands while one target for carbon reduction falls after another and while more and more people all over the world are finding their way of life becoming impossible.

Then there is the consideration that many, perhaps most, of the country people are far too dependent on diesel engines, and under too much pressure to survive, for them or their communities to think of buying electric vehicles any time soon; anyway, if one were to work out the carbon footprints incurred in the making of the ev's, one would surely find there is nothing to be gained from too sudden a changeover, even if it were possible.

Moreover governments will be imposing carbon taxes; but squeezing people financially, as well as trying to make them feel guilty, is not the way to pursuade them to buy into sustainability! One is more likely to make gilets jaunes of them, or have them vote for the likes of the Ducky. Then again, there is the possibility of transforming the emptying countryside, especially hot desert places with their massive resource of solar power, by means of 'farms' for making hydrogen with sunshine.

Now the first priority for the Nazaré Project is to put together a marketable kit of Alec's hydrogen gear. It looks like I shall be going back to the role of my great grandfather Aston, as a salesman! But like his son, I do enjoy experimenting and tinkering with machinery, which he did with planes; and besides, if I am ever to have the peace of mind for swanning around in my boat again, I would like to have made some little contribution to saving the planet.

The big mystery is, why does it fall to the likes of Alec and myself to do this kind of work? The internet reveals plenty of people at it, but they mostly seem to be working on a shoe-string, while any amount of money can be found for arms or banks. Old Ike, President Eisenhower in case you don't know, who did perhaps more than anyone to win the Nazi war on the western front and thereby establish the USA as 'Leader of the Free World', famously warned in his valedictory address of the 'military-industrial complex' (MICX for short). Their power today, and their unprecedented degree of connection with the current US presidency, no doubt far surpasses his worst nightmare. The only antidote he could suggest was 'an alert and informed citizenry'. We evidently need to do better, yet I suggest something similar is required with regard to climate change and all our other woes!

Of course the oil industry is in there with the MICX, but I would furthermore suggest that the one thing the whole MICX crowd hate is people they can't control, who have the effrontery to take power into their own hands! Good Heavens, if they do that, then besides not having the world 'over a barrel' for the oil, there won't be any excuse to spend all those zillions of other people's money, in no inconsiderable degree upon themselves, in order to 'defend the oil supply'*.

How much safer and better it would be if the MICX crowd stopped baiting Iran, as well as meanwhile selling arms to other equally (or more) deplorable regimes in the Middle East! And instead of fighting or being terrorised, how wonderful it would be to see people there farming hydrogen, sending cylinders of it to market rather in the way that family farms in Ireland used to send off their churns of milk! The lorry that takes them away could be delivering sun-distilled sea-water. The money is there to set it up, along with everything else to do with solving the whole climate/fuel/environmental crisis, but unfortunately it has been diverted for evil purposes.

Empty country and sunshine in Portugal.

Instead of driving up the autoroute from Faro, I came up through central Portugal, via Almodovar, Beja, Evora and Santarem. A beautiful drive, with empty roads, though very bendy in parts especially the first leg in the Algarve.

*More on the MICX here.


 

Sine tuo numine....*

I remember thinking, while listening to a sailor who had been through the Second World War, how sad it must have been to have to snatch a chance to hurriedly lay up his boat, wondering if he would ever get to sail her again, or what sort of shape she (or the world) would be in if and when, perhaps some five years later, he had once again the liberty and leisure to attend to her. The very fact that life had so overtaken both boats and sailors in this way brought home to me how appalling war is. By the time we came to the sixties, we assumed that the world had turned some benign corner and was to be our playground.

It couldn't last of course, but it has taken this long for dreadful reality to so impinge on our lives that the notion that we are free do as we please with them, with or without good reason, is fast disappearing again. 'Man proposes, God disposes', and He doesn't quite seem to be prepared to dispose in our favour the way we assumed He was!

Now I am back in Nazaré, a full two years after sailing in

here in my leaky old boat. It seems I am further than ever from getting her back to sea, and in fact am at a stage of seriously questioning how or even whether I can possibly see the project through. I am currently thinking in terms of mothballing her as best I can until such time as I have either somehow come up with a firm plan and finance to do it, or found a way of passing the ball on.

However, I have the dread feeling that the world is rapidly descending into such a crisis that all our lives will be caught up in it, and for an individual like me to have ambitious schemes of his own will be a thing of the past. While most of us will be struggling to survive, the few who do have wealth will be in such a state of seige and struggle that they too will have lost such freedom. Our whole way of life is descending into such a state of uncertainty and flux that our ability to do anything about it is being rapidly and severely curtailed.

Supposing one imagines that it may be possible to do anything in terms of politics? Where is the glimmer of sense or hope? On one hand we have a gang who flatly refuse to recognise the science of climate change, let alone to admit to any debt of solidarity with those who are being displaced by it. The same crowd very likely refuse to see the value of the European Union, and have a bit of a soft spot somewhere for the Duckie and his mini side-kicks in England. But then on the other hand you have the crowd who, also for instance, refuse to recognise that there is no magic border between being and not being a unique human life, with its own trajectory and dynamism, though science itself also clearly spells out how from our very beginning we are just this.

Again, it was generally assumed until lately that the transmission of life from one generation to the next also constitutes the basic rationale for marriage.  However the British Labour MP Conor McGinn, who just put forward the same-sex marriage amendment in the Westminster Parliament in order to foist it on the Six Counties, described it as "a fantastic victory" in these terms:-  “the LGBT community in Northern Ireland now know that Westminster will act to ensure equality and respect for all citizens, and finally give them the right to marry the person they love.” It’s no wonder that the British body politic is in such a mess.

Putting it in such romantic terms may be advantageous to a politician who likes to be touchy-feely, but like most things that lots of people like to hear (including the notion that British subjects are ‘citizens’), they just don’t stand up in reality. How many people, homosexual or otherwise, love just one person in their lives? So the phrase ‘the person they love’, is bogus. The truth is that love means a whole lot of different things in different contexts, and when it comes down to romantic feelings, any meaning is notoriously unreliable.

The only way for marriage to attain solidity and meaning that I have discovered, in 52 years of trying to practise it and the previous 21 on the ‘receiving end’ of it, is for it to be based on the covenant with the origin of life Himself, who alone can breath ongoing life into it. The covenant of our marriage takes its meaning from the everlasting covenant of humanity with God, as indeed do sex, the whole business of female and male and the procreation that this polarity enables.

That He did and continues to do a good job in creating us is sometimes open to question;  indeed according to the Book of Genesis He is said to have questioned it Himself, and long ago all but decided to drown the lot of us; but as we see all around us, it is in the context of existential despair that both marriage breakdown and homosexuality proliferate. While in the absence of the knowledge of God, we may do our best to set up our own little ‘communities’, we will only succeed in rediscovering true cohesion by getting back to that knowledge and reestablishing our lives on that Covenant.

There is not much sign of  those who have something of an objective and balanced approach, their voices being drowned out by clammering mobs. One crowd rush to label anyone who criticises Israel as ‘anti-semitic’, the other crowd rush to label those who do not accept homosexual marriage as ‘homophobic’. It is one and the same mechanism at work, with half-truths dragooned into shoring up the various bogus identities that people cling to so passionately. Who is responsible for this dividing people up into apparently irreconcilable camps? Is it simply that the internet so amplifies the age-old problem of ‘us v them’? But who is stirring it and profiting from it too?

I sometimes pine for the years I spent fishing and sailing that Anna M; life becomes a whole lot simpler at sea, and if I don’t get back there, at least I may as well die trying. Hopefully, when I do die, it will be the start of a yet more fascinating voyage, and I like to think that seafaring is a good training for that. Yet I must await the starting gun, and meanwhile I continue to place the whole situation along with the infant in the arms of the Madonna up on the hill!

*'Sine tuo numine, Nihil est in homine' is a line from a beautiful Gregorian chant that Fiona and I have been learning with our neighbour Fr Des O'Driscoll. It roughly translates 'Without your numinous presence, there is nothing in mankind.'

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!)

Lights in the Dark.

A peaceful night in Horseshoe Bay.

The Nazaré Project and work on the Anna M remain stalled for the want of funds. We will embark on a political effort to obtain funding once the new European Parliament is in place. Meanwhile, the weather is great in Sherkin, and at least I have been glad of the chance to put in some solid Spring work on our biteen of land, for the first time in some years, since I have been distracted by the crisis with the Anna M and also the business of building the West Room. Today is wet, and I am back to blogging. Coming up shortly is our John's wedding with Andreea in Rumania, and then we have an invasion of grandchildren, so it will be July by the time I get to work again on the boat.

     My old mind does keep ticking away in the background, even while I am barrowing out manure or whatever. I bear in mind one of the amazing bits of wisdom that Pope Francis throws out:-  'An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door.' What is this 'new synthesis'? Can it possibly 'seep' fast enough to save us from this same 'technological culture'? 

     The Pope speaks of the need to find a renewed 'enchantment' with nature and physical reality, to fall in love with the world again, if we are to find the necessary spiritual strength to confront the environmental and political emergencies of our time. But how often have Christians taken the line that 'the world' is a lost cause, a write-off, even if we are told that Jesus came to save it? It is not after all entirely unreasonable to regard the world as disposable; a bit like a booster rocket that falls away as we attain our immortal destiny in Heaven.

     So much depends on our personal and cultural situation. Basically things have been fairly ok for my generation in the affluent West, in spite of many 'dangers, toils and snares'. Faith in Progress, supremely a child of 19th century English and American bourgeoisie, carried people along with the sense that things were getting better and enabled confidence in a benign deity. Things looked darker from the point of view of people who for instance were starving in Ireland, whose God, if he was good at all, was darned hard to find in this world.  Hence the 'unhealthy dualism which left a mark on certain Christian thinkers in the course of history and disfigured the Gospel'. 'Jesus was far removed from philosophies which despised the body, matter and the things of this world',  insists the Pope.

     St Augustine comes to mind, living as he did in the twilight of Roman civilisation. There was a great travelling Irishman, Pelagius by name, who made the perilous journey to North Africa to debate such matters with him. The 'Celtic' Christian tradition that Pelagius came from tends to be celebrated these days for its rootedness in druidic sun worship, love of nature and independence (read, freedom from Roman dogma). But the Protestant Reformation, when it finally came many years later, was equally mistrusting of Mother Nature as St Augustine, and to judge by the subsequent course of English and American civilisation, probably yet more prone to treat her as a foreign city to be ransacked or enslaved. Oh yes, then there's that Patriarchy business again, but I shall leave the matter of the crying need for a new 'gender balance' for another day!

     The German Romantic poet Goethe bemoaned his alienation from certain 'worthy Christian souls, in a manner in which the Church has more than once fallen into dissension - One part maintained human nature has been so far corrupted by the fall of man, that to its innermost core not the least trace of good was to be found in it; therefore, man must renounce his own powers altogether and expect everything from grace and its influence. The other part very willingly admitted the hereditary defects of mankind, but wished to attribute to nature a certain inward germ which, animated by divine favour, was able to grow up to a joyous tree of spiritual happiness.'* Here then is a key element of the dualism that we have to overcome. But would Goethe have been able to sustain such optimism through the subsequent history of his country?

      Today our prospects are apparently appalling, and the future obscured in the darkest of storm clouds. At the same time, if the challenges are overcome, there are some truly wonderful possibilities. But conservatives may well object that the 'spirit of Progress', which is invoked for our salvation by 'progressives' in spite of the many ecological sins committed in its name (big industrial fishing trawlers, thinks I) tends to rely on an overly optimistic estimate of the power of merely human reason and a romantic hope for unredeemed human nature. To have any hope of a generalised 'ecological conversion', we need to be ready to make huge efforts and indeed sacrifices. We need all the spiritual resources we can muster, such as access to forgiveness so that we may recognise our sins. We need also to believe this whole shebang is actually going somewhere.

     Enter the great catholic apostle of progress, Teilhard de Chardin. With Pope Francis, he is at last achieving a degree of official recognition. He offered a narrative that reconciled 'progress and science' with 'religious truth'. We may say that he was building on St Paul's letter to the Romans - 'The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons.... From the beginning till now the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth.'  The great objection to Teilhard was that he down-played, or indeed had no place for, the doctrine of Original Sin, just as progressives today often seem to downplay the reality of human egotism. Nonetheless, he stood behind such great figures of the Second Vatican Council as Henri de Lubac, which Council is only with the present pope possibly reaching fullfillment, to the consternation of some of a conservative mindset. Secular thinkers tend to dismiss such theological controversies as 'dancing on the head of a pin' etc. In fact they go to the heart of our human dilemma, as they tear through human history, taking many different forms; but, despite its popularity these days, it is hard to believe that the narrative of a great confrontation between 'progressives' versus 'fascists/populists/neo-liberals etc' will get us anywhere good! We should certainly beware of any facile idea of a rerun of the narrative of the 1930s, or any other narrative, for that matter. 

     The Community of St Gregory, named for the great 'romanizing' pope of the sixth century who had some trouble with among others the 'wild Irish' missionaries of the time, was rent asunder around the time I left their care at Downside in 1965. The community had a history of tension between those who wanted to be 'real contemplative monks' and the demands of mission, the school and so on. Some say it reflects the difference between St John, the mystic, and St Peter, the shepherd or catcher of men. I ended up heading for Glencolmcille, in some little way under the inspiration of St Columba. I too was seeking 'a new synthesis'. I very much agree with the Pope that 'the absence of synthesis today is everywhere, especially in the political world. It results in incoherence in policies at every level and ineffective action.' Is it too much to hope that the time for a new, organic and coherent civilisation is indeed coming round at last? It would badly need to, but just what form it might take remains as inscrutable as Yeats' 'rough beast, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born'!

*Quoted by Jacob Streit in Sun and Cross, a good read for those interested in 'Megalithic Culture and early Christianity in Ireland'.

Quotes from Pope Francis' encyclical 'Laudato Si'', via 'An Irish Response' published by Veritas and available at:- https://columbans.ie/shop/
     

     

     

On Bird-song and Flower Power, Starlight and Simulacra..

The sound of bird-song coming into our bedroom early on a May morning, a sky-full of stars on a clear night with Jupiter casting a shining track on a calm sea, butterflies flitting in the garden, wild flowers blooming on all sides, only the

Bluebells by Fiona.

occasional vehicle to disturb the peace and belch forth noxious fumes as you walk along the roads - such are the joys that sustain us in our island home, and more than compensate for a lack of the 'joys of civilisation', that sadly often constitute so many ways of contributing to the multiple catastrophes that are engulfing our beautiful world. Yet how might it be possible to so turn the situation around that the joys of nature could become once more the normal human patrimony, rather than the privilege of an increasingly beleaguered minority?

The BBC brings us* the happy tidings that the British Committee on Climate Change (CCC) maintains this can be done at no added cost from previous estimates. If other countries follow the UK, there’s a 50-50 chance of staying below the recommended 1.5C temperature rise by 2100.' Brilliant news indeed! We have a 50-50 chance of avoiding outright catastrophe, if other countries follow the UK! That's a good one, considering the UK is doing all it can to withdraw from constructive cooperation with its neighbours, who at least happen to be a small bit more switched on than the relative from across the ocean whom they are about to welcome to their shores (and may he be welcomed with huge climate and proEU demos). 

If the EU were not distracted by the Brexit folly and mesmerized by the emergeance of the 'Far Right' across Europe, we might all be getting around to a sane and humane policy with regard to both the climate and the migration crisis. I mean, for instance, a kind of Marshal Plan for North Africa, aimed at creating employment there and producing hydrogen from all that sunshine in the deserts. It seems to me that the missing ingredient for the transition to electric power, practically speaking, remains the production and distribution of hydrogen, especially for fuel cells, because lithium batteries and the current means of generating electricity will not hack it by themselves.

Said the lead author of the CCC report, a Mr Stark, to the Beeb - “This report would have been absolutely inconceivable just a few years ago. People would have laughed us out of court for suggesting that the target could be so high.” Meanwhile Aunty Beeb herself goes on her sweet 'even-handed' way - 'Some say the proposed 2050 target for near-zero emissions is too soft, but others will fear the goal could damage the UK's economy.'  So much for this brave attempt to face stark reality!

At this stage I must quote extensively from Tom Jackson's** Babbling of Green Fields, since he puts the matter so very well:- 'What do human beings generally do when they are faced with a challenge they know that they must meet but nevertheless do not wish to do so? They rarely say 'oh blow it, I'm going to enjoy myself and hang the consequences'. Such indulgences of clear-sighted moral responsibility are reserved for only small crimes. Faced with great ones, they generally avoid the issue by inventing simulacra that give the impression that the issue is being dealt with when in fact it is not, and the more grand ceremony and trumpet blowing with which the simulacrum is launched the better it fulfils its function. The climate agreement reached in Paris in December 2015 is, I fear, just such a masterpiece of moral evasion. Even the UK, among the more responsible countries, is far behind on its commitments (in July 2018). The very next day after the politicians returned home from Paris full of self-congratulation, Amber Rudd, then under-secretary for the environment, announced that subsidies for renewable fuels would be cut while those for fossil fuels would be maintained. 2017 was the worst year yet for carbon emissions and 2018 has been worse.'

Violets by Fiona.

But what then are we to do about it? How are we to cope? Being overcome with anxiety and despair, or carried away by anger, are neither of them going to do any good. It is worth recalling that human life has always existed on a knife-edge,  subject to all kinds of disasters. If we are now faced with a more total and all-consuming kind of multiple catastrophe than has ever been known before, we are also gifted with the means to avert it, and a level of awareness unheard of in the past. If only we can somehow find the will and way to rise to this challenge, the possibility of a whole new and magnificent  era for humanity beckons. Never have the stakes been so astronomically high, and it is a wonderful privilege to be alive in these times. Immense responsibility falls to those who glimpse this to spread the word, to communicate it and inspire others to do so.

How might we do this? We must start by admitting the reality, and then changing our lives as best we possibly can: - working at ameliorating the situation in any way we can, while always seeking truth and avoiding those deceptive simulacra, into which indeed our entire political and economic set-up is in danger of deteriorating; - learning to really appreciate that wealth does not buy happiness and there is indeed a kind of poverty which truly enriches, while the notion that any kind of well-being can endure, economic or otherwise, while we continue to decline to acknowledge the damage that we are inflicting on the natural world upon which it all depends, is utterly absurd. Enjoy and cherish those wild flowers and butterflies, that birdsong, the soft star-light on the sea, and above these, the company of those with whom we are gifted to share them!

Flowers on the Rocks by Joe.

**http://thomj.co.uk/
*https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48122911