In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: pychology

  • Wrestling with the Dark Angel – a series of poems

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    This drawing by Gustave Doré is one of several depictions by well-known artists of an incident recorded in the Book of Genesis, in which Jacob wrestled with an angel for a night. Towards the morning, the angel touched Jacob on the thigh, which left him “halt” (lame). But afterwards, the angel blessed him and changed…

  • I Came Running

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    When Theresa May, the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister, called an election for June 2017, her manifesto included an opportunity to repeal New Labour’s ban on fox hunting. The Conservatives had expected to increase their majority, which would have eased May’s ability to push through Brexit. Instead they lost it.   I came running. I’d heard…

  • The History of the United Kingdom

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    Click here for a summary of this piece, consisting of just over 700 words. Are You Sitting Comfortably ? The history of the United Kingdom (whose every seam is under terrible stretch and strain just now) continues so fast, so scattered, so hurt, so incoherent, so unguided and ill-advised, that it is hard to keep up,…

  • That Child Alone in the Tower and Out on the Golf Course

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    … continue reading

  • HATRED : A SESTINA by Robert Friend

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    Hatred is wanting to hurt and its fulfillment dancing on someone’s grave.   Because the insult was grave, I must repay hatred with hatred, abandon all pleasure: the dancing, the flirting, the wallowing wantings of every day. How drab their fulfillment when compared with the pleasure to hurt.   I plan to avenge the hurt…

  • Shavings from The Rainbow

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      What is God, after all ? If maggots in a dead dog be but God kissing carrion, what then is not God ?   And when the war began it seemed that the poles of the universe were cracking and the whole must go tumbling into the bottomless pit.   You feel an agony…

  • Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?

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    Can liberal democracy survive our tumultuous, bewildering, frightening, dangerous times ? Can it surmount them ? Can it contain and even direct the flailing social forces at work towards positive solutions, a viable human future ? As things stand, it seems not to be coping at all. It is surely in great danger of allowing…

  • Where to Look for Answers ?

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    Post Brexit, despair floods in, layer by layer ; the lamentable result itself, how it was arrived at, and the background from which the mayhem welled up, now cascading all over us. Any space anywhere for hope ? In search of hope, where might we expect to look ? To the steppe from whence the…