In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • West of Caritas

    “The Conversion of Saul” by Michelangelo, Pauline Chapel fresco, Vatican City.

     

    This “I” we each inherit, made spine

    of the world, axis, pole,

    look-out from the world’s helm

    gazing on the universe,

    gazing on you,

    gazing on death…

     

    “Mummy,” I said,

    seven or eight years old,

    “I have decided

    that I am God.”

    We were walking east

    along Glebe Road

    towards the shops on Upper Mulgrave,

    my right hand held in her left.

     

    “Oh, what makes you say

    a thing like that, dear ? How

    can you think that you are God ?”

     

    “Because I draw

    everyone’s eyes, somehow,

    towards me. It can only mean that they

    know that I am God. And then I close

    my eyes and they

    just disappear. Further proof, you see,

    my mother,

    that I am God.”

     

    My mother’s mind –

    destined in her last years to shrink

    and leave her

    speechless and helpless in her bed –

    had been engaged, just then, on other concerns

    than holding hands with God.

    “Surely it just means

    that their eyes are idly resting on you

    while their attention wanders

    down secret avenues

    miles away,” she said. “And, my son,

    it is quite enough for me that you

    are just you,” she added.

     

    “Just me ?” I felt let down.

    I and all those other people knew

    quite well that I was God.

    Yet my own beloved

    mother refused to recognise

    who it was here walking at her side

    eastward along Glebe Road

    aiming for Upper Malgrave.

     

    “There’s no such thing as ‘just me,’

    I said to myself. “‘Just‘ means nobody.

    I am I.

    ‘I’ means God.”

     

    Rogan Wolf, July 2020

     

    The poem’s story is true, as best I can remember it. I wonder how my mother felt.

    And I think I’m talking psychology here, or what is often called “human development.”

    At the time described by the poem, I was clearly old enough to have become dimly aware of some of the momentous issues and questions that surround us all and I was trying to make sense of them. And my conclusion on this one, the wonder and miracle of  Selfhood and the mystery and difficulty of its relationship with Other, seemed the only logical one available.

    How else to make sense of my growing inwardness, the wild and shadowy world of it, all my own, as compared to, and surrounded by, all these other living forms, so powerful in their different ways, many looking a bit like me, but never of me, always outside of me, and outward in themselves to me, coming out of the world, at me ? 

    But then at some point, you move past that child’s position which assumes “I” is essentially different and singular, pole of the universe, surrounded by the world and, beyond that, by the universe ; you reach past that child’s delusion (and  terror ?) of omnipotence and realise – whatever the word “realise” really means – that the universe did not appoint you as its single and central pole and axis. Everyone you meet, even every thing you meet, is as much pole of the universe as you are, and all look out at you, just as you look out at them. As they might seem your objects, so you might be theirs.  

    It is thus the case and the fact that you, and all else outside of me, matter as much as I do. That is the adult fact of the matter. As I matter, so do you. We are members one of another. That is the fact. Anything else is delusion, a retreat from the wonderment and bewilderment of reality.

    But how on earth do you get to that adult position from the one experienced on Glebe Road, aged seven or eight ? And do you really arrive there by a certain age, and then stay there ? And do we all get there, or do some of us never    arrive ?  And if it turns out to be too difficult to stay solidly and consistently in this adult state of awareness of reality, how much of each day do most of us spend in a state of retreat and relapse into the ego-centric child’s delusional world-view ?

    I am no Christian. I do not “believe” the tenets of the creed which those shrinking congregations speak together during their age-old assemblies. For instance, I have no doubt but that death is final and complete. And I cannot, and have no need to, believe that Jesus Christ was conceived by any process other than the usual human one. And I cannot, and have no need to, believe that the stone literally rolled away and he was literally resurrected.  I do not associate myself with this or any other formal religion, or belief system. But neither can I deny that when I take part in Christian liturgy worthily conveyed, I respond with a deep sense that what I am hearing, is closer to human reality and our condition than anything else I hear in my life as I go about it in our present times. The standards, priorities and insights being articulated here are right in their essence. The images are accurately evocative, more accurate than anything else I encounter. The essential vision seeking expression here is the truth and is still radical and profoundly questioning. Holy is real, here. And this air of reverence is apt and good to breathe..

    But I have trouble with the Christian use of the word “love.” It has too much human history trailing after it, weakening it. Too many instances of hypocrisy. Too strong an association with mere self-righteousness and the repression of true emotion, a drawing back from passion. Too strong an association, too, with a mere cuddly personal feeling, a limp mildness. You don’t need a halo, or a cowl, to look reality in the face.

    I put more faith in cooler words than “love.” Words like “recognition” or “realisation.” That state of awakeness reached when you see and begin to act in recognition of the fact and reality that I am not the only centre of the universe, that you and all else outside of me matter as much as I do.

    I even presume to think that this is contained in the shadow, maybe even the kernel, of St Paul’s majestic words in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, ending : “…And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (Authorised (King James) version). 

    The Latin for charity is “caritas” although it can also be translated as love and most present translations follow the latter reading. And the New Testament was originally written in Greek and the word Paul actually wrote was apparently agapē (ἀγάπη) meaning a personal, passionate form of love. The love a parent might have for his/her child, as for someone infinitely precious, closely connected in flesh, blood and spirit. 

    So I am on shaky ground here, in questioning this word “love”. But being a parent does not require you to be blinded one day along the road, or wear a dog collar or a halo, to be “holy.” It does not need you to be meek, or passionless, or “pure.”  It does, however, need you to be reasonably adult and to be able to treasure, appropriately, a life that relies for a viable future on your nurturing and recognition and loyalty.

    So the eight year old who thought that he was God, as the only way he could explain to himself the mystery and wonder and immeasurable preciousness of selfhood, learned later than everyone else has the same experience, and is as central as he. He may shut his eyes as often as he likes ; in truth, those other people don’t disappear. That step, from delusion into realisation, was a momentous one and I think it took me a while. I think quite possibly, in fact, I am still taking it. When I have finished taking it, I shall become an adult. 

    “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

    “For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

    To deny the preciousness, the equal centrality, of those around you, those “Others,” is to deny the truth and reality of your own preciousness. It is the infinite preciousness of our plain, shared, endangered reality.

     

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  • A Sentence Called Humanity

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  • Word Play

    “What is the purpose of poetry ?” I ask myself. Sometimes I find this question simple to answer. And sometimes the answer itself  is simple. The purpose of poetry is to work.

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  • I See Everywhere the False

    I thought this was true in 2014, when it was written. I did not know then that the truth can become truer.

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  • Counting

    This poem seems to follow on a bit from the previous one uploaded here. But whereas I wrote “I Insist my Ribs…” over three years ago, “Counting” has been written in the last few days.

    I have a vague idea of what was in my mind as I wrote this latest poem. And looking at it now, I’m increasingly seeing things which were not in my mind at all, but which inserted themselves anyway.

    I suppose it is a bit of a “what am I ?” poem. Or “what is my value and where shall I find it ?” And I think the main impetus for it comes from the context in which we are all now living, at least here in the UK. An incessant and utterly reductive quantifying of information at all levels, but used by the market and by those presently in political power to manipulate us without principle and without care, purely for the sake of their own immediate (and hollow) advantage.

    Of course, the poem rests to an extent on a humble pun, or double meaning. The verb “to count.” It means to tot up, to add up ; but equally to matter, to have significance.

    But the poem also rests on a much more fundamental dichotomy, or duality. I am not just a list of measurable quantities, it says, although those do exist and I do belong in them. Much more than that, I am a carrier, a source and messenger, of qualities. The world is of quality, not just quantity. It is in the the world of qualities where I can best find myself and am best found. In the how of things, not just the what.

    Which brings us to other dichotomies, such as the two brain hemispheres, the left and the right, the left in denial of the crucial primacy of the right, even of the need for the right to exist. Our nation’s essentially fraudulent and fundamentally unworthy Prime Minister is called Mr Johnson (I call him Mr Toad). Mr Toad’s very dangerous senior advisor is a human exemplar of the left-side brain hemisphere bursting its banks and running amok, and of the abusive felonies which result.

    Cummings fights for, and glories in, a world run according to the left hand side of the brain. In his case, this seems to go with a virulent hatred of, and contempt for, anything or anyone living according to different and saner principles. Having “taken the measure” of the creation he sees before him, he’ll seek to manipulate it so as to control it, reduce it, “whack it,” subsume it. Chaos and division result.

    He “couldn’t care a flying fuck,” a PR agent told Adam Forrest of “The Independent,” on Cummings’ reaction to the uproar that followed his Durham/Rose Garden excursions. He has a “very thick skin,” apparently. It’s almost as if not caring – or rather, “not caring a flying fuck” – is a new desirable. Being a miniature dinosaur in service to AI really “gets it done.” It’s the ultimate triumph. A perfection of control.

    Towards the end, the new poem quotes the greeting “I see you,” a traditional Zulu greeting. This link is to some thoughts on the subject, written by a South African, Bridget Edwards.

    Here’s a paragraph from her piece : “According to Peter de Jager, the Zulu greeting ‘Sawubona’ means ‘I see you’ and the response, ‘Ngikhona’ means ‘I am here’. As always when translating from one language to another, crucial subtleties are lost. Inherent in the Zulu greeting and our grateful response, is the sense that until you saw me, I didn’t exist. By recognizing me, you brought me into existence. A Zulu folk saying clarifies this, ‘Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu’, meaning, ‘A person is a person because of other people’.”

    Bridget Edwards, also mentions another traditional greeting, this originally from the Sanskrit, and still used in India by Hindi speakers : “Namaste.”  The greeting is accompanied by a bow, with palms pressed together as if in prayer. I bow to the god in you, the divine spark I see in you and seek and serve in me, knowing it is there, connecting us.

    Now back again to the African continent. An encounter between bush men of the Kalahari, recorded by Laurens van der Post. The one begins with an ancient greeting : “Good day.  I saw you from afar and I am dying of hunger.”

    The other’s right hand is raised, palm open, fingers up.

    “Good day!” says this other person. “I have been dead, but now that you have come, I live again.”

    In a very real sense, these formalities express a recognition of the human individual’s place in community which has been shared across the world, in all the major faiths and traditions.

    Here, for instance,  are words written by the late David Jenkins, as Bishop of Durham, (“the Red Bishop”) making reference to St Paul’s letter to the Romans” : “We are members one of another.”

    And here’s Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker and writer : ““As I become I, I say Thou…All real living is meeting.”

    What clear-seeing there has been in human history, despite its horrors. Where has the clear-seeing gone ?

    “Hi !” we say to each other. And our Dom, (I call him the deathwatch doom beetle), senior advisor to a UK Prime Minister, couldn’t care a flying fuck.

    The poem also mentions a panther. It is of course a reference to Rilke’s great poem. The panther encaged in a tiny space, pacing without end.

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  • I Insist my Ribs Contain Stars

    I like the idea of mayhem in the crematorium…

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  • Might Labour be the Force to Renew UK Politics ?

    Our democratic politics isn’t working and, in my view, its dysfunction is one of the major causes of our present national crisis.

    In so many ways, our political structures and democratic processes – not just here in the UK, but manifestly in other countries too – are under attack and also in question. We have to renew them, not just for democracy the better to defend itself and survive, but for our own sakes, that it may work properly for us and help us flourish. Mr Johnson and his dreadful gang of dishonourables have no incentive to do this work. They profit from and abuse our present unfitness. It is our unfitness that has inflicted them on us.

    I see the UK’s Brexit saga as more an illustration and manipulation of our general malaise, disorientation and disenchantment, than a coherent choice or political decision in itself. It is on a par with America’s surrender to Trump and with lurchings to the far Right elsewhere, a mere symptom of ill-health, of things gone wrong. And one of those things “gone wrong” is our democratic system itself, left behind by rapid change and failing to connect and to deliver.

    For years, those systems have simply and on their own account lagged behind contemporary conditions, in many aspects far behind, merely adding to the social breakdown and fragmentation. Furthermore, we now face global emergencies that demand effective action and international co-operation on an unprecedented scale. For all our sakes, and above all for our children’s sakes, our systems need both to be capable of effective action in co-operation with others, and to facilitate those things. They are presently in no fit state to do so.  

    I am not qualified to cover all the ground here and anyway should not try. The ground ranges far and wide. Some of the issues are already very old chestnuts, but still left unresolved, still hanging provokingly on the tree, dried out and wizened. I’ll simply name the obvious ones here. The Labour Party under its new leadership is presently engaged in a policy review and surely needs to consider carefully each one of these chestnuts, as part of the exercise. Where is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party going to stand, in relation to them ?

    • Proportional Representation
    • Reform of the House of Lords
    • The role of the Political Party, of Party management, of “advisors” to the minister, the Parties’ powers and rights over their MP’s, the purpose and proper function of the Whips and also the lobbyists.
    • Citizen Forums and public participation generally
    • Regional Devolution
    • A Constitution for the UK, yes or no ?

    The above is just a list of political body parts obviously in question and ripe, or over-ripe, for resolution and decision, each part (and question) vital and demanding of conclusive address. And below, I want to add a few more, just as vital.

    But beforehand, I think we need to ask a few questions about the business of democracy as a whole, in terms of general principles and our understanding of those. A viable political force needs to take and communicate a clear position on these issues, no less than on the “body parts” listed above and below.

    So what would the Labour Party’s stated position be on the meaning of democracy/party/representation/ accountability/sovereignty ? Would it be able to make clear statements in response to the following propositions :

    1/ democracy is something more complex than delivering slogans and propaganda and then counting votes via plebiscite and referendum ;

    2/ seeking popularity at any cost, is not the same thing as being truly “democratic” in response to expressed need or opinion ;

    3/ an MP is more than delegate or mere mouthpiece for his/her constituents or party members on the one side, or Party whips on the other ;

    4/ a political Party is a present and maybe temporary alliance for the achievement of agreed goals, rather than some fixed and backward looking comfort zone for lost souls and nostalgic fundamentalists ;

    5/ Parliament is more than just a counting house, or quaint theatre filled with rival choruses yelling hear hear at each other. It is where the People in authority resides, and where accountable decisions are made, cleanly arrived at, in good faith…

    For, lurking behind many of the present-day arguments and shouting-matches, there seem to be all sorts of conflicting understandings of what democracy actually is or should be, in present conditions. The EU referendum of 2016 was a dog’s dinner, a mockery of democratic due process. To conclude afterwards that “The People have spoken” (a statement made in a hushed tone as if speaking of a deity, or oracle) was just another step along a way of utter madness and abuse and disgrace. On these matters of national and international import, we need decisions made that are properly informed, inclusively arrived at and above all wise, for everyone’s sake ; we need ways and means of arriving at those decisions that are fit for purpose, respectful of all parts of the community, and connected to reality.

    Might the Labour Party prepare some clear position statements on these topics, thereby making competent and responsible governance more possible and more likely than it is now ? The Party’s present consultation exercise is a precious opportunity to make our whole governance better. If  the exercise is just about  how to unite the Labour Party itself, or merely what policies the Party should follow, that opportunity might well be squandered, to everyone’s enormous and immeasurable cost, including that of the Labour party. I shall resort to imagery to emphasise my point here : the Labour Party restricting itself merely to self-renewal, would be like restoring a single tower in an old castle fallen into ruin. We have to build something new and for our present times, from the foundations up and overall. 

    I have left until last a few bees that buzz especially loudly in my own bonnet :

    Above all, I am concerned with the issue of truth-telling in politics. “The People” need to be able to trust the leaders they vote into power. So the lines of communication between the leaders and the led need simply to work better, they need to be kept clean and open. If they are not, then the tools and currencies of democracy turn to dust in all our hands.

    And indeed, right here in front of us and on a daily basis, they don’t work, they are not clean and clear. Present-day democratic politics is largely given over and surrendered to Hard Sell and endless Spin, dodgy sales techniques, working on “The People” rather than working with and for them, exploitative, de-humanising, deceitful, mendacious. These things are said easily and often, but nothing changes.

    Truth-telling. Truth-serving. Being open and unguarded. Not speaking as a technique for misleading, evading, withholding, lying. Speaking for the sake of serving the truth, rather than serving the self, or – for that matter – the Party, as an extension of the self.

    You can find the Seven Nolan Principles of Public life here on the gov.uk website. The sixth is plain and simple : “Holders of public office should be truthful.” It is simply astonishing that such a statement can  be made public on the government’s own website – and simultaneously be so completely ignored by the politicians who form that government, right up to the top of the tree and perhaps especially at the top of the tree.

    Thus, our own Prime Minister has been sacked twice for lying, making him justifiably unemployable anywhere. And yet, here he is, the nation’s leader.

    And one of the first things he did as Prime Minister was to lie to the nation’s constitutional Head of State. And time and time again, he scratches his head and tells us more porkies. Maybe he thinks we like it. To judge by the way we voted a short while ago, he is surely right.

    Very occasionally, you hear the Nolan Principles being quoted by politicians, usually obscured under the title of the Ministerial Code. And, even more occasionally, some member of the cabinet is actually stripped of his/her position, by the party’s leader, with lying cited as the reason. The latest was Damian Green, I believe. So the politicians do seem to know that it’s wrong to lie ; but only when they themselves are at the receiving end of the dishonesty. The electorate are not so lucky.

    As far as the electorate are concerned, the words of the Nolan principles are empty and toothless and can be, and are, ignored all the time and with impunity.

    Thus, earlier this summer, still only a few weeks ago, a large proportion of Johnson’s cabinet were trotted out to lie to the electorate on behalf of Dominic Cummings, who found the Rose Garden in Downing Street a conducive setting for further brazen lies of his own.

    The incompetent and irresponsible cabal at the head of the UK’s present government are especially uninhibited with regard to the Lie. But the use of language merely to sell and obscure, defraud and deceive, rather than as a medium for truth and connection, runs through all our politics. In a sense, the Party system itself depends by its nature on making truth serve Party rather than the other way round.

    I believe that it should be made a criminal offence for any elected holder of public office to seek deliberately to deny, pervert or withhold the truth, for their own or their Party’s interests. I am not alone in this belief, of course. “Democracy in Politics”, Plaid Cymru and a campaign called “Stop Lying in Politics” have all proposed the same, and there may be others.

    If the Labour Party were to add its authority to these voices by making it party policy, I believe the nation would respond positively and would certainly benefit. In fact, the move would be transformative. The Law itself has given a lead on this issue, by defining perjury and making it a punishable offence. So this is do-able as well as necessary. Lying in politics is a poison and needs to become a dangerous venture for any perpetrator. Until it does, our politics and our country are diseased and debased.

    For what it’s worth, I have set out the argument about lying in more detail here on this blog.

    In the same piece, I have also proposed that no one should be able to enter politics who has not first worked for a significant length of time in another and very different paid occupation (though perhaps not journalism !) and each new applicant for the MP’s role must be able to prove a spotless record in that previous work, above all with regard to ethical conduct. For example, an applicant whose employment record includes being sacked for lying would be banned from any form of public responsibility, at any level, ever.

     

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  • Kenwood in May

    Kenwood is an impressive mansion on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, London. It and its grounds are managed by English Heritage and open to the public. It is a deservedly popular place to visit and on the day in question, I drove my dear friend the late Mary Young there. She lived nearby.

    Mary was a psychotherapist and a (belatedly recognised) historian.

    Maybe it’s Covid-19 that’s bringing these words back, these moments of vividness and expression now in the past. The virus has claimed and taken off so many people, literally without ceremony. But it can’t take the moments away.

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