Springs of Living Water

My old laptop has been sitting on my desk at home, unused and neglected, for over a month now, and is only clunking into life again slowly and reluctantly. I was living in the Anna M in Nazaré for the best part of the month of July, mainly working with my Siberian friend Anatole to finish reconstructing the cabin; a good job for two old men! Meanwhile Alec works on the electric drive in fits and starts, and seems to be slowly getting it together. I just have to take one day, one job, at a time, and do my best to enjoy every moment. After all there are very many infinitely worse places to be, and worse ways to pass the time!

    I cannot say this is not a challenging situation, and I have had to work quite hard to overcome my impatience and even despair as to whether the old boat was ever going to take to the sea again, complete with her autonomous electric drive. I have to keep reminding myself that our bright idea is only like a bucket that we offer to the river of life to fill; when we think we can fill it ourselves, we are quite likely to find something wrong,- rust, holes etc. Yet it is the drama of this very situation which interests me, the interplay between the water of life and our own little attempts to do something with it!

    It is odd how difficult it is for all the world to grasp such universal symbolism as that of living water. Considering how we must all constantly use water and how all life depends on it, one might have thought that it was simple and natural to carry on to the concept of 'living water' with that special quality which cleanses and enables growth - divine grace, the very stuff of life - so unlike stagnant water stuck in some bucket! Instead we are inclined to obsess about whatever ways we may adopt of attempting to subject it to our own purposes. We confuse the water and the bucket, which I am using as a symbol for our own self with all its extensions and accoutrements. The Devil's supreme achievement is to make religion itself one of our ego's or super-ego's self-aggrandizing projects.

    Of course, our buckets are important, but what really counts is the water with which we fill them. Each of us is our own bucket, we must maintain our own vital integrity, but the water is the Thing! This may all seem very abstract, but has very practical application. Jesus applied the term 'living water' to Himself. If we draw our water from His spring, we are likely to be surprised at the results. If we pray to Him and His saints, especially Our Lady, and go to Mass regularly, sincerely offering ourselves to Him, we will find He waters the tender plants of wisdom, justice, peace and joy in our lives.  The same is true for 'our neighbours', the other people in our lives; by genuinely turning to our brothers and sisters, we may find Christ and His living water through them, and thus come to God, who welcomes anyone who turns to Him with whatever bucket that they can lay their hands on, though it may look very different to ours. This is God's way of making us realise that we do not own the water, and must set aside our lethal desires to own and control it ourselves. 

    None of us can begin to make good use of the water  by ourself, so we develop all kinds of more or less conscious systems which we tell ourselves will do so, if possible under our own control; but such systems have developed in complexity and power in lock-step with human societies. When God is left out, they fall into the power of minorities who reflect current paradigms for better or worse. Now and then, they threaten to sweep away our individual buckets in a torrent. The tensions between the individual and society, and between the authentic free water of life and human systems for the application of it,  have existed since the dawn of civilisation, but lately the threat of, in biblical terms, false gods carrying away our true Holy City has become totalitarian and existential on the global scale.

    Something has changed in these last few years, even while the Anna M has been sitting on the land at Nazaré! I think the few big corporations that dominate the modern world have been reaching their apotheosis, even while the realisation is dawning that they are false in their promises and pretensions, to, for example, champion health, freedom, democracy etc. 'Put not your trust in princes'! Unfortunately, the governments of what we like to think of as 'the free world', along with their health 'services', now stand discredited. They preach about 'threats to democracy' and 'disinformation' while engaging in censorship and the suppression of dissenting voices to an unprecedented degree. The medical profession, in its official capacity, though it was one of the few that retained widespread respect, now stands apparently more interested in their own interests and reputation than in the interests of those they are supposed to be serving. The faith of citizens in their 'democratic' governments when it comes, not just to health, but to war and peace, to the handling of their economies and of climate change, has been very severely undermined. In my little world, we see allegedly well-meaning policies resulting in life being made just about impossible for the archetypal skipper/owner fisherman, and coastal fishing communities being destroyed.

    How are we to reverse this dynamic? Where do we begin? Wherever we are, with whoever is around us! One universal feature of evil systems is the way they have of 'depersonalizing'  people. Their victims feel powerless and isolated while free and open communication between them is shut down. We may counter this by renewing our own efforts to think clearly and especially with self-awareness, and to communicate openly and honestly with the other people in our lives. 

    That last bastion of personal relationships, the nuclear family, is under unprecedented pressure; surely it thrives better when not subjected to such cooking, but rather when all kinds of inter-personal communication thrive, across generations and families of different kin. We must put aside the chronic individualism that pervades the world, developing a different idea of personal fullfilment, realising how radically it depends on our relationships. A massive movement to rediscover basic communities is called for, and on such a basis even our politics and whole culture might be revived, with our politicians made genuinely accountable and responsive, and their actions rendered transparent.

   A base community is to my mind one of less than a hundred people, in itself small enough so that everyone can really know each other and eat together now and again, yet in co-operation with other such communities, mutually enriching each other and pushing that accountability and communication upwards, according to the principle of subsidiarity.  Bearing in mind ee cummings' famous saying,- 'new worlds, i suggest, are born and not made, and their birthdays are the birthdays of individuals', it is critical to avoid sacrificing individual autonomy and responsibility, but fundamentally we do have to renew our whole culture.  

   Our basic communities would do everything that they can to produce their own necessities, food, housing, power and heat, and would trade with each other when it comes to commodities, such as wood, wine or olive oil, that on one hand they produce to excess and on the other cannot produce themselves. They could even do their own banking; I don't see why they can't use the common currency, but what a great thing to be able to choose what to fund and on what terms! They would inspire each other when it comes to the higher aspects of culture,- art, music, literature and religion. They may amuse themselves with the very business  of sailing back and forth on the Gannetsway, building boats and so on. What better way is there for people to really get to know each other, to trust each other and work together?    

    We are currently witnessing an interesting political inversion. Forget about 'the revolution'; we must start with ourselves. You could say that the most effective revolutionaries are in fact conservatives. I might say that I have been working at these ideas for over half a century.  I am watching and waiting and working for 'the revolution in the revolution' to happen right now, though I am well used to being accused of romantic idealism,- I persist in restating them. In my remaining active years, I intend to 'give it the welly'!                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Hoping to be back off Culatra this autumn!