Last Post in the Hardy Country

John Hiscox RIP

‘Arr, two teats bain’t enough for ‘e, ‘e gotter ‘ave twelve!’ Recalling John’s warm voice saying that takes me straight back to Somerset; he was the married dairy-man talking about another neighbour, a younger man who worked every hour God gave him with his pigs, after he had done a dairy round in the morning, and to John’s disgust never went out at night. Not that John, and Hilary his wife, didn’t work very hard, rearing five children on the sixty acres owned by a limestone quarry of which he had inherited the tenancy.

A day at the sea-side was all the holiday they got, like the one when we all went down to Weymouth on the train from Frome; Hilary was wearing hot-pants and John bought a top hat bearing the message ‘Down With Hot Pants’. I often used to wander up the lane past his farm browsing our herd of goats on the long acre; later he said to me ‘When I were in a good mood, I would say to myself Why that’s the life! When I were in a bad mood, I would say There goes that darned lazy hippy again!’  He was always up for fun and they were happy days, but there was another dark side to him as well.

I think I got to understand him better one evening when I was helping him with the hay. As the last trailer-load pulled away, he said ‘Come over and have a look at this then!’  You had to go to the very edge of the field to see down into the vast quarry, like a sudden vision of Mordor. ‘A girt cancer eating up the land!’ was John’s comment. It was taking about an acre a year, though admittedly the landlord did find some more land a bit further away to make up for it.

The story that we heard, as the years after we left went by, got darker. Maybe someone will make a novel of it one day, a kind of post-script to the work of Thomas Hardy. Learned commentators of a sociological disposition might chunter on about the final demise of the old Wessex and its family farms. It does seem as if something besides John has passed away.

These days it is fashionable to speak of this person's story and that person's story, of my truth and your truth; yet there remains the hope of some final distillation, in which whatever real goodness, truth and beauty there is in every story will be reconciled, combined and crowned with immortality. If this be so, John's love of his family and of the land will be in there!

Quiet, Desperation and Bliss.

This is a photo of our James, after landing fish in Baltimore in brutal weather a few days ago. His crew these days frequently consists mainly of Egyptians. He says that when it is foggy, one of them will come up to the wheel-house first thing in the morning, to look at the compass so that they can say their prayers facing east. Is this a clue to what gives them the inner resilience to be good fisherman, so far from home and in such an alien climate? Or is it a case of sheer desperation? I do not think the desperation by itself would suffice! I am reminded of the Donegal men with whom I started to fish, who would trace a Sign of the Cross on the water with their boat as they put to sea, and shoot their nets ‘in God’s name’.

Now I am retired, and back in my island home with Fiona; it is very quiet here, the weather is lousy, we have neither radio nor tv nor any electronic racket in the house. We do have the internet and keep ourselves reasonably well informed about this troubled world. There is not much to cheer one up there. It is even more depressing than what has become of the Irish fishing industry. Yet in spite of it all, we find ourselves often in a state that can only be described as blissful!

I generally end each internet session by some little reference to something encouraging. One can always fall back on what the Pope is saying; I am amazed and enthralled by his knack of pointing up the astonishing experience of God’s merciful love, which seems to be erupting in so many hearts even as the turmoil of the world worsens. The rich may be being ‘sent empty away’, to use Our Lady’s words, but just what is it that can fill ‘the poor with good things’?

Surely it is that spring of living water within, that astonishing inner sense of bliss; an extraordinary gift. It is the treasure beyond price, a little seed within us, the one thing needful that unites all people of good will; the experience of God’s love, the assurance that despite all the appearances to the contrary, our lives are not in vain, but will enjoy some scarcely imaginable consummation beyond death. The Gift lights up this world too, making us appreciate what a wonderful place it is, still full of amazing possibilities!

At the same time, it makes us more sensitive to the appalling results of greed, pride, lust and stupidity; and not to put too fine a point on it, it really is odd how much of these appalling results these days centre on just one commodity; oil. Take the fields of doom which particularly get to me; the Sea, the Climate and the Orient.  Leaving climate change aside, by a completely different evidence chain, excessive co2 largely ends up threatening the oceans with acidification, as if over-fishing (powered by oil) and plastic waste (produced from same) were not threatening their once teeming life badly enough.

As for the Orient, pouring all that oil money into the hands of those desert tribes has been catastrophic, compounded by the fact that developed nations recoup some of it by selling them modern weapons. The news that the British sold over a billion pounds’ worth of bombs to those Saudi Wahhabis last year is profoundly disturbing. Just supposing that instead of bombing  and selling bombs, the world agreed to shut down the oil and the arms trades with the Middle East, and concentrate all possible resources on developing the alternatives, would not the prospects for our grandchildren be radically transformed overnight? And why should it not happen?

Erza Mary, the latest grandchild.

Well one way to nourish that little seed of bliss, I have found, is to make sure one gets to nurture it with plenty of silence. This of course is by no means easy, especially in this oil-fired world, but that is one of the main reasons why we have organised our lives the way we have, between our house on Sherkin Island and that old sailing boat; and I just wish family and friends would avail of them more!

Anyone can get in touch to see how they might do so. In particular, coming up, I hope to get the shell of the new sun-room here up in March, then later on to cruise eastwards from the Guadiana in May and June; and then back to Ireland, if the summer is reasonable, to hopefully finish the sun-room and reorder the kitchen, with access out into the sun-room, in July and August. Then it will be time to sail back south again. For anyone who would just like a chance to be quiet, especially if they are gardeners, it would be a great opportunity; we would love to have someone living in the house and tending the garden while we are away in May and June. Any of our old wwoofers hearing me?

Confession of a Catholic Socialist

For a while it looked as though we might leave it to those nice benevolent market forces, and in particular the then soaring price of oil, to push us all into doing what needs to be done to avert the likely scenario of catastrophic global warming. It turns out not to be so. It never was a likely story, for capitalists require us to consume ever more of their products. How can the Gordian knot that ties capitalism with environmental disaster be untied?

Certainly not by some international version of state control; its record is even worse than that of liberal democracies. I have generally lived by the assumption that the best we can do is to hope and work for a spiritual transformation of the world, but I have also been mindful of Marx’s gybe about ‘the opium of the people’. Certainly, there are very many worse drugs than religion about, but it does seem fair comment that an elitist withdrawal into ‘a state of enlightenment’ is a danger for the spiritually minded, though there have been plenty followers of Jesus who have not shied away from his example of bloodied engagement with political reality. As a matter of fact, political power, with no sound spiritual  basis nor robust framework to counter-balance it, has to be one of the most dangerous drugs of all.

A warning sign is when sloganeering and party politics take the place of any real dialogue, so it is encouraging when, on the contrary, a political leader really does seem to focus primarily on issues of justice and truth. The British Labour Party seems to have come up with such a leader, while taking the unusual step of getting in touch with its founding principles. Having spent the last few weeks in England, I profess to be impressed. Here are a few issues on which I agree with him:

• Trident. Obviously the use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the principles of a ‘just war’, and the argument that they can act as a deterrent while never having to be used seems even less convincing than ever these days . The money could be spent to improve security more effectively in other ways. The example of giving them up would help to strengthen international efforts to rid the world of that particular menace, with a policy of zero tolerance for their deployment.

• Trade unionism. Aside from the fact that if a man cannot withdraw his labour then he is a slave, strong unions are essential for putting manners on the Plutocracy. A degree of public ownership of industry and essential services, though not necessarily by the State, also helps to do so, as do efforts to foster worker participation in the management and ownership of their companies. There is a need to foster the idea of work as both a form of self-expression and of service to others rather than a matter of merely making money, whether for the capitalists or for oneself.

• Austerity. Any organism, from a fish to a nation, does in the long run have to balance its budget: its intakes with its expenditures; but this is no reason to run a country like a grocery shop. In fact the present situation of so much hardship and dependence on credit, contrasted with monstrous amounts of cash slopping around with the plutocrats, points up very serious imbalances. If the policy of austerity ever had any validity, it won’t stand up any more. Let’s just say that if there is belt-tightening to be done, it is no use confining it to the weaker members of society, even if only because at least they spend it rather than gamble with it in casino-style stock markets!
• Europe. Whole-hearted participation in the European project is the only way to achieve any real political traction with regard to issues like climate-change, security, tax evasion and generally holding international capital to account.

I might add that when the plutocrats’ newspapers are so intent on rubbishing Mr Corbyn, I for one am inclined to be interested in him. One does have to recognise that he certainly faces an uphill battle to get elected, but let’s hope that the great British electorate might finally get around to seeing that we all need a change of tack. It is sad to see the widespread political unease wasted on nationalism and the likes of UKIP and  in France the National Front, but things seem more positive to me in Spain and Portugal, for all the untidiness there.

I’m back in Ireland now, where the Labour Party are a crowd of bourgeois socialists obsessed with their Liberal Agenda, as if abortion and euthanasia and the rest of it ever did any good for struggling humanity! Hopefully they’ll get a right kicking in the upcoming election, for getting into bed with Fine Gael, the nearest thing in Ireland to the Tory Party. I note that poor people are not inclined to support that Liberal Agenda, especially when they are not demoralised and understand how it subverts their struggle. I count it just within the realms of possibility that Fianna Fail will eventually rediscover its principles!

The sorry old antagonism of Catholicism and Socialism, in the tradition of the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, is really an historical accident whose time has passed. Actually if anyone cares to study Catholic social teaching, which has been steadily developing since Rerum Novarum in 1891, with Sustainability now added to make three Ss with Solidarity and Subsidiarity, I think they will find about the best formulation of a sound socialism that there is; I hope it represents a way of responding to the world whose time has come.

Meanwhile, it will soon be time for me to be thinking of seafaring again! I’m currently cowering from the wind and rain back in Sherkin, but thinking of a spin eastwards as far as Crete in May and June, so let me know in good time if you are interested in participating….

Daffodils at Christmas

As we boarded the turbo-prop plane that took us to Guernsey for Christmas, there beside the door on the fuselage was a notice that informed us that for each passenger it would on take-off inject an average of 10.5 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. This seems an awful lot to me, but evidently it is supposed to be something to be proud of. Anyway we landed on the splendid new runway at Guernsey, which is able to take jets. When they take off one even gets a good whiff of them at our daughter’s house over a mile away; no doubt they deliver plenty more of the dodgy stuff into the atmosphere, but they get the hard-pressed worthies of Guernsey to London ten minutes quicker, and should a chap happen to be making a million a year, time must be rather valuable!

Guernsey is a beautiful island and the weather was a whole lot kinder than in Ireland and the north of England. Going down the sheltered hill into St Peter Port from the south, there were already quite a few daffodils out, before Christmas! There are plenty of sweet and environmentally aware people there, and much talk of ‘a sustainable future’ and so on. Meanwhile there are three cars for every two adults on that small island, many  of them great big gas-guzzlers entirely inappropriate for the narrow roads. No matter, petrol’s not taxed!

‘The States’ is what they call the Government there, duly elected democratically. Funny thing is that any real islander whom I met grumbles about it no end. “How’s it going J….?”  “Fine, still battling the Gestapo!”  He was very fed up about the new marina in St Sampson’s; blokes that used to keep their wee boat on a running mooring there for 70quid a year are now expected to stump up 500 or so for a berth on the pontoons. Another friend mentioned the fancy new police station, court house, gaol, helicopter and flashy cars - “but the policing was much better when you had  a few bobbies doing proper community policing! Some good people get elected, but they don’t seem to be able to change anything. The place is run by the Masons!”

Everyone was complaining about the new Condor ferry ‘Liberation’, which let a lot of people down in the run-up to Christmas because it was not fit to battle the gales. It’s a trimaran but apparently has an awful corkscrewing motion when it gets lively and, like the big catamaran that was withdrawn from the Dun Laoghaire/Holyhead run, has to be regularly inspected by divers for cracks below the waterline. If it does succeed in the end, Condor ferries will reap the profits - but not to worry, the States has underwritten the loan on it. It’s the new whizz form of capitalism that we’ve seen in action so much lately: profits go to the capitalists, liabilities go to the tax-payer.  Bankers love it!

I was asking an old boy about it all, when I fell in with him walking the cliffs. He was one of those lonely old widowers, who made me feel young with his wheezing, but full of stories. He was a few years older than me anyway, and had witnessed the liberation of the island as a small boy. “Well what can you expect, Guernseymen had to scratch a living any way they could. That Saumarez crowd got the best property on the island from Queen Elizabeth I because they were on the ball rescuing a couple of ships laden with gold robbed from the Spaniards, and delivering it to Herself in London.

“The Bailiffs and top men made big money towards the end of the war, exchanging millions of Reichsmarks and gold robbed from Jews (or their corpses) for Pounds Sterling. The Germans actually kept meticulous records, which were taken away by the British after the war, but nothing was heard of it after….”

It’s a proud boast these days that ‘everything is kept within the law’, and lawyers on the island earn a fortune by making sure of it. The place is awash with money that has been kept safely and legally out of the hands of those greedy taxmen. But in spite of that and of all the expenditure on big projects of doubtful benefit, besides the fact that the States are not in debt, I read in the Guernsey Press of ‘a radical new tax plan that would see islanders working until they are 70, an end to family allowances and a cap on how much the States can take in total in taxes and charges.’

Sounds like a Tory Government on steroids! However, according to an old lady from Sark, the battle on that island with the Barclay brothers seems to be winding down. The islanders’ reflexive tactic of wearing them down and frustrating them has apparently reached a point where the Brothers have fallen out and one of them has lost interest. Meanwhile they have four newly refurbished (and empty) hotels on Sark. The Brothers were hoping to bring visitors in from France direct, but this bright idea ran foul of the need for customs officers to supervise it. Not being in the EU evidently does have its disadvantages! To get to Guernsey, that particular retired widow has to stump up the full 30pound fare….

Meanwhile, on the big island to the north, the main battle is warming up. We were quickly reminded of another example of that whizz modern form of capitalism that I mentioned, and its failure, when we took the train from Manchester Airport to Chester; of the three train journeys in Britain that we have made in 2015, this was the second that failed to run smoothly and on time; our connecting train was simply billed as cancelled as we stood on the platform awaiting it! Yet I read that in fact the British Government has spent much the same amount as the French on its railways this year, ‘privatised’ as they may be!

While we were in Guernsey, in memory of Victor Hugo who was exiled there for many years and loved the island, we watched the film of Les Miserables.  It’s fairly true to the original as far as I remember (having read the novel about 50 years ago). It’s a powerful story, but it’s a pity that he muddles the Kingdom of Heaven up with the Revolution, the Democracy or whatnot. One would have thought he had seen enough of the first French Revolution to have learnt that Heaven is always way beyond any such efforts! And yet, neither can it be said that they are completely unrelated; the desire for social justice and the love of truth do sometimes point in the same direction. Indeed, if this Corbyn effort is to get anywhere, it will need all the spiritual energy it can muster; in order to rouse a sufficient majority of the British populace from the torpor of tv, consumerism, cynicism and anxiety, it would help enormously to get that relationship right!

Tra-di-da, and a Happy New Year to ye all!       

Advent Hope, 2015.

Happy Christmas to you all, from Guernsey!

There is such a lot of madness around in the world these days that it’s hard to know how to deal with it. For a poor scribbler like myself, it must be a forlorn hope that my few words can make even the least little contribution to straightening things out. Our minds are all but buried under whole avalanches of words. You may well ask, on what basis do I venture to add yet more, and ask you to read them? I can only tell you that these little pieces come into my head in the early hours, unbidden, and I feel impelled to share them.

What have they got to do with the Gannetsway? Well, Europe is rather too big a mouthful for me. I could not begin to keep track, for instance, of the politics and media of all the countries of Europe, and neither would I have the interest to do so. But, on the other hand, my own country of Ireland, and indeed Great Britain, are too, well, insular by themselves. The essential Gannetsway countries of Ireland, Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, taken together with the catholic sea, provide me with a patria, a portal to the universal, which suits me; in my inadequate way, I try to follow what goes on here and use this basis for taking my fixes, my triangulation.

  
Still preoccupied with Islam and Isis, this piece at least ends on a more hopeful note than it begins!

Advent Hope, 2015.

I have previously expressed my dismay at the way in which the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was dispatched in response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. President Hollande, making scant progress with his economic and social objectives, seems to believe he has to counter the threat from the National Front with rushing about the world, his jour de gloire come round, thumping the drum for all his allies to join in the bombing of Syria.

Not to be outdone, the House of Commons has voted to do so as well. We don’t have to look far for conclusive evidence that their leading men have lost the plot, with the honourable exception of Mr Corbyn and those who voted with him. Both the Foreign Secretary and his Shadow saw fit to compare the battle with Isis with the Hitler War, and actually compared the sending of bombers to Syria with the Battle of Britain! Quite frankly, from the point of view of ‘the Few’ who fought that battle, and as it happens I knew one of them, this can only be described as impertinent. They fought, and many lost their lives, in a desperate battle against a threat of imminent invasion, and it was the invaders who were doing the bombing.

They were battling against the odds, but this Syrian affair is entirely asymmetric. The massively superior resources and technology of the advanced nations are pitted against a few crazed men, whose principal asset is indifference to human life, their own included. This needless to say is not a weapon that bombs can destroy; what they do do is promote the conditions on which that attitude thrives.  The terrorists are left with even less to lose and more hatred of the West. From the point of view of protecting our own populations from terrorist attack, the bombing is likely to be counter-productive. It is the proverbial stick stirring the wasps’ nest.

However, Arabs may already have plenty of understandable reasons for hating us. Beyond the matter of Israel, and divers problems like the fact that the developed world bears the responsibility of slowly cooking them by way of global warming, we exercise a cultural kind of colonialism that strikes at their religion and culture, their very operating system.

At this point Mr Cameron solemnly accuses the likes of Mr Corbyn (and myself) of ‘sympathising with terrorists’.  We are told that they ‘reject our values’; but precisely what are these values that they reject? I noticed a typical western reporter actually citing homosexual marriage in there, along with, it may be inferred, the rest of the ‘progressive’ agenda, such as our ‘rights’ to divorce and abort babies. Having disposed of fidelity, as of the permanent, generative and heterosexual aspects of marriage, we also apparently feel free to dispose of its offspring, and this is all supposed to be a matter of ‘western values’? But these are not values at all; rather they are anti-values. As a result there is in fact an appalling spiritual void at the heart of contemporary culture, that manifests itself in all kinds of self-destructive behaviour, which hardly need to be enumerated.

Real values are such as truth/honesty, justice/mercy, fidelity/peace, sustainability and life itself; and as a matter of fact they may be cherished by people of all faiths and none. However deeply buried, they are present in all human beings, even the Isis crowd; the task of people of good-will is to seek them out, especially in their enemies, and see what can be done to apply them to the horrendous difficulties of actual living. We may then be surprised by the potential for joyous transformation in us all. It is in the struggle to realise true values that friendship is formed and brotherhood discovered.

On the other hand it is painful for anyone to find that some people are intent on sweeping away their version of value. Admittedly, the fact being that breakdowns occur between differing narratives of what is of value, the first thing that anyone in a state of war does is to deprive the other side of their humanity, by denying them any true values, as opposed to our own good selves. In this case, we must first of all get very clear about what our values really are, and then go on to doing our best to appreciate those of our opponents and seeing if it is possible to find common ground.

For my part, I believe that it would help the West’s case no end if we junked the anti-values of the progressive agenda. It is precisely these that give power to Muslim fanatics: they have found our Achilles’ heel and how to prick it. Furthermore, the West’s amnesia about theology complicates the problem of conversing with Muslims no end. The sane way to tackle our problem with them is to begin by renewing and redoubling dialogue with them.  They are the only people who can effectively deal with their own fanatics, as we have to deal with ours.

Perhaps the worst feature of the whole business is that one suspects the likes of President Hollande and Prime Minister Cameron know very well that the reasons they put forward for sending their bombers are bogus. These reasons seem to me to have more to do with prestige and influence and selling arms and not letting the Russians have it all their own way than anything else. There is the risk that the West will be sucked into a war behind the Sunnis, while the Russians and eventually the Chinese fall in with the Shias; the world shambled into the First World War on an equally bizarre basis! I don’t really understand the Shia/Sunni thing, but once one tries to identify the Kingdom of God with any earthly set-up, one is bound to run into this kind of problem.

Let us try to clarify the real issues.  I am no theologian, but just possibly a seaman’s eye is good for spotting the essential ones, rather than submerging them in oceans of words. One such matter of metaphysics has to be the question, ‘what comes first, the acorn or the idea of an oak tree?’ Scientifically and logically, it would seem, it has to be the idea, and how can one account for this but by believing in God? Thus far, we can agree with our Muslim friends; but whereas they may be stuck in the desert with nothing but the idea of fresh green growth to torment their minds, we in Europe have it everywhere under our noses, even if we fail to give it the appreciation it deserves. However, in the very same reciprocal movement, in the same dynamic relationship between God and his creation, during Advent Catholics sing a wonderful old hymn to Our Lady, which includes the incredibly tight Latin words: ‘Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum genitorem.’   I make bold to render them inadequately: You who bore, with nature looking on astounded, your own holy creator.

It would seem to be impossible for Muslims to accept the paradoxical mystery of the Incarnation, whereby Almighty God became a humble human being who died on the Cross; however, this difficulty does have its counterpart in the difficulty that Western civilisation has with the absolute and transcendent authority of God.  Perhaps being a seaman also helps me to imagine what effect the desert has on people, the sea being a kind of desert; and surely, whatever else it is, Islam is primarily a religion of the desert; a land where the sun, that most powerful physical image of God, burns in the sky but little grows; it may be contrasted with temperate Europe, where the sun is often obscured by cloud but lots of things do grow upon the land.

We may insist that God in his mercy does not choose to assert His authority by force, and it is not for any human being to do so;  we may reserve the right to resist any such attempt, meeting force with force if necessary. Much closer to the spirit of Jesus it is, in humility and mutual forgiveness, to work hopefully for that realm of truth, peace and justice which some call Islam, some the New Jerusalem or the Kingdom of God!

Joe Aston,   December, 2015.

Fighting the Fight

Back in Horseshoe Cottage with the wind and rain outside, we might ask ourselves why didn't we didn't stay below, enjoying the winter sunshine on the Guadiana? What I reply to myself, over and above the family and practical reasons, is that there is time enough for perfect peace in eternity; meanwhile, in the few short years remaining to me, there is perhaps some small contribution I can make to the battle of life, even if it is simply a matter of attending to it and suffering it. Once aboard my boat, it has a certain habit of drifting out of my ken like a cloud of smoke!

This weekend I find myself more interested in following the fortunes of the British Labour Party than I ever have been before. While I would have my reservations about Mr Corbyn as a potential leader, I follow his story with interest for the simple reason that he appears honest and largely, in his attitude to the Syrian war, correct. He currently appears to be fighting for his political life. I expect he will lose it, but that only increases my sympathy for him.

I'm going to paste below a piece that I have just written for the Brandsma Review. I found myself giving the controversy about all the forgoing a rather novel twist, setting it in the context of another cultural war....

Yours etc, Offended!

and why Jeremy Corbyn should be attended to.

I know a grandmother who got into trouble with her daughter-in-law lately for trying to tell her grandchild that he had been made by God. ‘Nonsense, don’t ever mention that stuff to him again. Jim and I made him!’

Some people are going one better, and insisting that they make themselves. The media seem to reckon that their consumers are getting bored with photos of homosexuals getting ‘married’; they’ve moved on to holding up transexuals for our admiration. I used to take transvestites in my stride, not without sympathy for the  poor confused individuals, but something has changed with the ‘transexual’ variety; they insist we all buy into their self-mutilating fantasy-life, along with the media, the UN, and all the great and good of the enlightened democracies.

That old killjoy Technology  may be spoiling the fun with its sex-prediction, but up until very lately the first Word that was said about us, the moment when we entered human society, was either ‘it’s a boy’ or ‘it’s a girl’. A sane voice like that of Dale O’Leary in The Gender Agenda may add that ‘biological sex is not determined by external organs, but by genetic structure. Every cell of the human body is clearly marked male or female.’ That only confirms, should it really be necessary, that our sex is an objective fact, bestowing a particular kind of orientation which in a coherent person follows through our whole personality.

We got the Gender Agenda - it’s all only a ‘social construct’- stuff trotted out with depressing predictability from our own grand-daughter, just down from reading psychology at UCD. “Is that what they’ve been teaching you?” “Oh no, it’s just what I think.” Well I say, when such facts as those of our sex are dismissed as mere ‘social constructs’ which a person may change at will, then language loses its meaning, along with everything else; it is hard to find any basis for conversation within our own culture, and we are confronted with the death of a civilisation; if we value it, being offended may be rather too mild a reaction.

Martine Delaney, a transgender Green Party candidate in Tasmania’s Federal Election, has lodged an official complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Commission about a booklet produced by Australia’s Catholic bishops entitled Don’t Mess with Marriage. He claims it is ‘offensive, humiliating and insulting’. They’re all off to a ‘conciliation conference’. Da-di-da; it’s sad to see even the Aussies flailing about in such mire. Maybe Germaine Greer hit the appropriate response over in Melbourne, where she ruffled a lot of the politically correct feathers by remarking that “I don’t believe a woman is a man without a cock!”

But there is a lot more to the fantasy-life that we are expected to buy into than such matters as transexuals and homosexual marriage. I might mention the notion that the USA and western democracy embodies all that is good, and has some divine right to decide who shall be permitted to exist and who not. It’s not immediately obvious to me why a Mr Trump promising to “bomb the Hell out of Isis” should not be labelled a terrorist; actually he frightens me rather more than the Jihadis.

In point of fact it is neither easy to find an appropriate response to homosexuals, transexuals and their pc friends, nor to Jihadis intent on destroying Western civilisation in a different way. Hard enough as it is for the likes of us Brandsma readers, I imagine it is just about impossible to do so if one happens to be a young Moslem in the West, constantly exposed to put-downs of his religion while struggling with serious issues of identity; and if we ‘Christians’ in the West have lost the ability to communicate with each other, what possible hope is there for dialogue with them?

When one is comfortable and affluent, with all the props for one’s ego that could be desired, it is very difficult to realise how important even warped religion can be to a person who has nothing else going for them. One is threatening to deprive them of their very operating system. It is not at all surprising when their anger and confusion spills over way beyond taking offence and into terrorism, and if we want to see an end to it, we had better start by getting the planks out of our own eyes. We might make some kind of a start by distancing ourselves from the overgrown adolescents who thought it was clever to lampoon the Prophet Mohammed. In Ireland, we of all people should understand the dynamics of ‘terrorism’. Suppose the RAF had been sent to bomb the Bogside in order to get rid of the IRA? We might recall what it was like being Irish in England, when the Provos were on the go.  Pcdom is in danger of forbidding  that we should recognise any reason or humanity in Moslems.

Presidents Hollande and Obama’s rhetoric about ‘destroying Isis’ is pretty much on a par with Mr Trump’s. I find myself again going where I might expect only opposition, to the left-wing of the British Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, to find a sane voice on the matter. As he said in his response to Mr Cameron’s call to arms: ‘The PM did not set out a coherent strategy, coordinated through the UN, for the defeat of ISIS. Nor has he been able to explain what credible and acceptable ground forces could retake and hold territory freed from ISIS control by an intensified air campaign. In my view, the PM has been unable to explain the contribution of additional UK bombing to a comprehensive negotiated political settlement of the Syrian civil war, or its likely impact on the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK.’

That the political/media elite do their best to rubbish Mr Corbyn only confirms the impression that he is someone who is really trying to see the truth of the matter. Almost alone among Western statesmen, he puts his priority where it belongs, on putting an end to the crucifixion of Syria. What more jets there are supposed to contribute to security in Paris or London is beyond me. The only justification for military force is to secure the Peace, and the question to be asked about any proposed use of it is this:- Is it primarily going to secure the Peace or amplify the Chaos? The more remote and depersonalised the force involved, the more likely it is to do the latter.

One immediate responsibility of us Catholics is to give the lie to those seeking to promote a populist agenda of the ‘clash of civilisations’ and war between Christians and Moslems. As I tried to indicate at the beginning of this article, ‘the West’ has anyway just about lost its credibility as the bearer of Christian civilisation. The future is there to be secured by building dialogue and trust, and the less bombers of all kinds have to do with it, the better, as indeed our Popes have ceaselessly tried to make clear.

The ground is clearly shifting under our feet, and if we are to build a new civilisation on the ashes of the old, there’s no knowing where we will find allies.  I would suggest the first move is to use language carefully, recognising that words mean something beyond what we would like them to mean; but if people insist on using them purely on their own terms, and interpret life only in terms of their own interests or obsessions, it is impossible for others to relate to them, and it is I’m afraid too bad if they choose to take offence. They might possibly learn a thing or two from Catholics - we are only too accustomed to being insulted, and worse!

Such misuse of language is the beginning of the process of dehumanisation that enables evil, which is so little understood in our contemporary Western world, to flourish in all its many forms. It is vital that our words should represent, not what we may think politically expedient or to our own advantage, as indeed most have been schooled to do, but rather our best effort at speaking truth. In the beginning was the Word. The good news is that the little flowers of truth pop up in all kinds of unlikely places, and it is not that difficult to recognise them.  Forgetful of themselves, they are orientated to the sun! And the Word was with God.                                                                      

Joe Aston,       

27.11.2015

Season's end on the Uadi Ana.

Some people don't like going anywhere twice, for without the factor of novelty, they cannot vividly appreciate a place. Well, a place does indeed feel different the second time you go there, and I was in a way fearful that I would find the fairy kingdom of the Guadiana (from Arabic Uadi Ana) had lost some of its magic, with its fancy new metal perches all up along it. But we soon settled in, and five weeks whistled by there as we pottered about in great contentment.

The moon waxed and waned, as it sent the tides pulsing up and down the river; the bright stars circled overhead and the birds went about their business up and down the river, all in the same old dance together. They twitter and sing blissfully in the riverside trees at dusk, giving way as night falls to the chorus of crickets and tree-frogs, with the odd heron screeching and owl hooting. In late October there came some rain and wind to ruffle our feathers, then high pressure reasserted itself and chased the clouds again, as the hills turned green and the sun turned less fierce and more smiling!

The morning mist is often slow to clear, giving us time to say and sing some prayers and even browse the web for a while before the sun comes over the hill, chasing the mist, drying the night-time damp and calling us to work. 

I chip away at the lists of jobs-to-do; the worst was to replace the rusty exhaust manifold that I found to be caput. We are slowing down, as another year dies, but thoughts are turning to the new one, and personally I feel good for another ten years or so of sailing, with the help of God! Fiona too is enjoying the life, and her company is very good. She however feels the sense of being in a kind of no-man's-land less positively than I do.

As well as being on water and between two strange lands, at this season, between one year and the next, one is in a bit of a temporal void. Memories well up from the past. A converted Irish fishing boat, the Ros Alither, has pulled into the river. She was built in Killybegs, the classic BIM (Irish Sea Fisheries Board) build, like all the Ros boats and our old Eiscir Riada, of which I became the proud skipper/owner in the late 1970s. 

When those little ships were being built with pride and joy in the BIM boatyards in Killybegs, Arklow, Dingle and Baltimore, and owned and crewed in the same tight-knit communities, with a sense of purpose and optimism, feeling themselves effectively supported by the State, what a different scenario was presented by the Irish fishing industry to the grisly scene evoked, exaggerated as it may be, in the recent Guardian article Revealed: trafficked migrant workers abused in Irish Fishing industry!

Of course the fish stocks were much better than now and the markets improving too.The white-fish boats in Killybegs had a fine time of it, even a fairly steady routine, fishing Monday to Thursday, servicing boat and gear on Friday, Saturday about the house, Sunday, going to Mass and a Gaelic football game in the afternoon. I vividly recall one crisp winter's day when I went out with 'Forty' Murrin on the Ros Alainn, for a day's seining at the back of St John's Point. We were back in Killybegs with a hundred boxes of fish before nightfall!

A Leprachaun postcard of Killybegs in the 195/60s.

Too good to last, you may well say! Once the bankers and the Government start to smell money, there's trouble ahead, especially in the context of an explosion of technology. Big loans were handed out to the select few. A class of millionaires emerged, while the majority of fishermen had to find work in factories or whatever. Not that they were able to make a steady living there. The women of course had to become wage-slaves as well.... Wonderful liberation!

Small boats were practically eliminated, markets rocketed upwards and then collapsed, places like Donegal Bay became fish deserts. The BIM yards were first nationalised and then mostly closed, while the big new trawlers were built abroad. Those fishermen who survived seemed to be serving the bankers and the machines, rather than the other way round. Needless to say, they mostly no longer found time to go to Mass on Sunday; perhaps that constituted some kind of 'tipping point'?

What conservation measures there were proved ineffective, while politicians collaborated in the process, with the odd brown envelope thrown in to encourage them. Some of us had dreams of doing things differently - Small is Beautiful and all that. Were we just impractical utopians? Maybe. Humanity, it seems, has to learn the hard way; but can we even be bothered to learn at all? Just how hard does it have to be? Well, I did not prevail with my ideas, but maybe I should be thankful for that too; it's hard to see how life could be better for us right now!

Delivering supplies

So long as the politicians manage to keep those pensions coming, it is hard to complain; but let us just remember that many of our fellow human beings have little or nothing coming; they have nothing to lose and are in danger of inheriting a bombed out world. If they rise up and try to destroy us in their anger, it is not good enough to respond in kind. I am writing this in the wake of the latest outrage in Paris, and I am distressed at much of the response as well of course at the murderous acts themselves.

Those crazy Moslems also have a story that must be listened to, and if we want Western civilisation to prevail, we must firstly attend to our own very serious shortcomings, and secondly make the effort to understand them. Maybe we just might be then able to make a wonderful new civilisation together, that will enhance the world rather than destroy it. Indeed there are many traces in the landscape and the towns of Andalucia (Al Andalus) of an Islamic culture worthy of considerable respect!

Fiona in Castellejos.