These difficult days will pass and all we will remember is how we responded to such tests

 Dear Son,

You asked me some questions last night that really made me think. I’m not sure of the answers but I wanted you to know what I think and why. Then, at least you can make your own decisions in the light of that. Please don’t see this as advice. I wouldn’t presume. But I do care too deeply for you not to respond when you ask.

People do take advantage of other's kindness. Sometimes through thoughtlessness, sometimes because of their own agenda and occasionally because they’re not used to it. Every time it hurts. Especially when you do something in a spirit of kindness and others respond with disdain or just more expectations. They can even respond with anger as if you offered them a smack instead of the hand of friendship. Life is too short to examine all these responses and to understand the why of it. Better by far to move on.

If you are pulling people out of a bad place keep going. Don’t stop to argue with someone who resents that you did them a good turn. Whether they feel small, embarrassed, self-preoccupied, angry or frustrated is neither here nor there. If you did good, it is because it is in you to do so. Don’t expect it in others. They may not have it in their own lives and so cannot give it to others.

Life passes so quickly and good nature can easily be broken on the backs of mean spirits. So, don’t linger. Don’t be taken advantage of, just move on. Everyone you meet will teach you something, if only not to past too near again!

Then there are the tyrants. Those twisted so much that your kindness is not just wasted on them it is bad for them. Kindness to such types empowers and enables them to do even more damage. We have a responsibility not to reward their acts of abuse because the next one they torment needs you to stand firm. You must have the courage, in such circumstances, to hold the line like the 300 Spartans of old. You do this not out of dislike of them but because you know that giving in to a tyrant will merely perpetuate the abuse. At such times I think of all the victims of abuse I have known. Do you remember young George flinching at our table from the sound of a banging van door? In the face of such abuse, I steel myself to screw up my courage within me. What can we do? We are nothing really but, whatever it is we are capable of being at that moment, we must strive to be that. Because on the backs of tiny pebbles the great sea waves crash! We are such pebbles and despite the power of the waves, we remain. Know that long after they have smashed and raged and broken we will remain. We were created to bear and endure. Let them do their worst because we need to focus on doing our very best.

Let’s not be distracted by their activities. We have deeds to do, mighty deeds. Time is short, too short. Life passes by so quickly and the only things we will remember are all those who we love or who loved us. Grab such souls to you. Remember their sweetness and steady your stance. The hordes are coming. Stand fast, dear heart. There is no one I’d rather have at my side in the face of injustice. You have a keen poet’s eye and see to the real heart of things. Trust in such vision, believe the courage that lies within and search for truth always.

These difficult days will pass and all we will remember is how we responded to such tests.  That will be either our lasting regret or our legacy.  Know the importance of such choices.

Thanks for asking, for talking and for being you.

Home Alone

The last child has flown the nest

The emptiness is sudden.

Music has left our home

But also his mess.

To be fair he is now a man 

no longer a child

but it seems that just when

Conversations become illuminating and inspiring

Offspring migrate.

Thank God for Skype, email and text

They allow precious connection to continue

vicariously through the virtual world.

How many times do my sons take me by surprise

With their views and insights?

So much more capable in this world, than I.

Better equipped to manage this disintegrating system.

Made of stronger stuff entirely.

I watch them and try to learn from them

much needed survival skills, very late.

I learn humility is appropriate in parenting.

They are not works of art

that I can strut before

explaining their character and meaning. 

No, these are independent entities

who have found their own path.

They are of me 

but forged in climes and culture 

far from my own.

They look at this world differently,

And I have learned to respect their view 

is broader and more complete.

I was bred in a tiny village

High in the Sperrin mountains in Northern Ireland.

The road was impossible in winter. 

We had one grocery shop 

in our one street but over twenty pubs.

There were two communities, Catholic and Protestant.

I examined them both,

like an amateur anthropologist.

Alternatively, amused and angered at their antics.

An outsider whose only connection

With my communities was a deep conviction

That life had to be more than this.

Mean more than this.

I’m grateful for the regular discussions at home

On life, science, religion and the solar system

That swept around our family table.

My mother hated the heated debates

And tried to herd us to more quiet pastures.

But the arguments, the marshalled defences

the cut and thrust, blew like a healthy wind 

through our minds.

Making this table of discussion

Not village-sized but of the universe.

Shouting aloud, truth is the only community.

Being alive to everything in this world,

The only antidote to ignorance. 

Not knowing is when you’ve

chosen not to see with your own eyes. 

This changes what we are.

What we can be.

Everything we will become

Is there in that choice.

To remain like granite what we are now

Or to embrace the person we could be.

The difference between the two 

is simply light years apart.

Could one honest politician have the courage to say it anyway?

Is it ever so, the wealthy are greeted with open arms? Those who have money to spend are waved ashore.  A boost to the economy, the ring of cash registers heralds their entrance. The poor get no such welcome mat. They pile onto overloaded boats fleeing the intolerable to find the possible. They fill refugee camps around their country's borders. These are not rich enough to woo their suitor countries. They quite clearly are not wanted. They must scurry through dark places. Whatever savings they gather is used to bribe the smugglers. It is big business this trade. People used to earn lots of money capturing Africans and transporting them to be sold abroad into slavery. Now, there is a new currency in human flesh.  Money is to be earned transporting those who cannot bear to live in their homes to countries that do not want them, by those who make a livelihood from the spreading chaos. 

The deaths are a stain on Europe. It's red tide of shame. But compared to the loss of life and danger these refugees face at home, the journey is worth the risk. Does Europe bite its fingers in hatred that the victims don't die or suffer quietly in their own backyard’s? Don't these people see by fleeing to southern Europe they embarrass the developed world. We have become accustomed to the deaths, murders and atrocities of the third world but not in our own borders. However, Bosnia showed Europe could once more stomach the killing of large numbers.  Rwanda proved that even killings approaching a million caused handwringing but no action at the UN. The truth is less palatable than we imagine. The reality is hidden behind feel good charity endeavours. Our shame is not that we don't know what is happening. It is because we don't want to know.  

The system is sustainable because our focus is on our own misery and fears. Terrorism, viruses,  Ebola, bird flu, the weak economy, threatening wars. The distracted developed world is like a selfish adolescent who is concerned only with how things affect them. This mindset has no room for global awareness. No matter what environmental considerations, wildlife extinctions, global warming, pollution of our land, sea and air. Never mind human loss of life the show must go on. Unfortunately, we are reaching the tipping point on all fronts. Beyond which, many fear, there is no recovery. 

Some solutions are obvious. This flawed view that we can continue to abuse and over use the earth's resources to fuel a growing economy at whatever cost. It beggars belief that are our leaders could be so disengaged from reality. They, of course, are singing from the hymmn sheet, that the developed world insists on hearing, business as usual! Everything is limited.  The amount of gold, gas and oil is finite. Natural resources such as water, fish and crops are not only limited but fragile. We would do well to give our leaders a reality check. We cannot grow ourselves out of the present problems. The growth they proclaim as future progress will be at a cost the world cannot sustain. Politicians are obliged to tell us what we want to hear, either business as usual or business better than normal. They fear divergence from this popular script. 

Could somewhere, some leader have the courage to say the unpalatable.  Okay, they will never be re-elected. The truth will have to be their swan song. But, could one honest politician of any nation or background have the courage to say it anyway.

Startled by the kindness

Armchair twitter aficionados managed to track down a gang of thugs who had put two victims in hospital after a brutal beating.  Within eight minutes of the police releasing CCTV footage (remarkably clear compared to the usual hazy footage) of the gang walking down a Philadelphia pavement.  The sleuths used Facebook pictures to find the first thug.  Success in tracking down the rest soon followed.  The thugs like all of us post photographs on Facebook of them in large groups celebrating.  This perennial desire to take selfies, share personal information, names and details online became a breadcrumb trail to all the gang members.  The whole thing triggered by a single twitter on the attack.  The police were able to arrest the whole gang swiftly.  A tale of success is a rare event in our online existence.  Usually, online presence is a contributor to bullying, abuse, an invitation to porn, a conduit to online gambling etc none of which have outcomes usually of much benefit to mankind.

My mother’s hometown of Ballymoney in Northern Ireland has spent money buying huge live-like photographs to stick in shop windows in derelict streets.  

It has become all the rage and Belfast etc abounds in these fake shops.  You drive past a camera shop, flower shop, an old fashioned bakery that remind you of villages of childhood. All completely fake.  

Instead of boarded up premises you seem to see quaint country life around you.  Even a fake walled garden with flowers peeping around corners.  One old cinema has for several years had pasted across it an optimistic sign across its front in foot high print proudly boasting “New hotel to be built here 2012”.  No one bothers to change the date so the lie continues to boost of forthcoming non-existing developments.  

I’m not sure why but all of this plunges me into despair.  It reminds me of Catherine the Great’s 18^th century triumphal procession through the streets of Russia.  When fronts of buildings on the route were made to look grand and areas spruced up to create a pleasing spectacle for the Empress as she passed.  These hid from her sight the destitution and poverty that existed (or so the legend goes).

When was it that we learned to shut off our brains to the truth?  That having a pretence of normality was better than acknowledging facts?  In these days when the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider, the general public’s time is channelled into buying someone else’s rubbish or lining the pockets of the rich via clever schemes.  Our virtual online web placates us while a growing proportion (perhaps 37%-70%) is devoted to porn.  Turn to the local newspaper (tabloid) and find what illuminates the general public today.  They are aimed at those with an average reading age of 11, I kid you not!  The Sun is famous for many tragic covers, but remains the most popular tabloid.  For example “The Sun's coverage of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in Sheffield on 15 April 1989, in which 96 people died as a result of their injuries, proved to be, as the paper later admitted, the "most terrible" blunder in its history.”  They claimed “ that some fans picked the pockets of crushed victims, that others urinated on members of the emergency services as they tried to help and that some even assaulted a police constable "whilst he was administering the kiss of life to a patient.”  All complete rot but it took over two decades before the truth was allowed to emerge.  Another memorable release was On 17 November 1989, The Sun headlined a page 2 news story titled "STRAIGHT SEX CANNOT GIVE YOU AIDS – OFFICIAL."   

Oh yes, indeed these guys have no morals or squeamishness about publishing complete lies.  The Sun remains popular to this day but in Liverpool because of the Hillsborough coverage it is still not favoured.  The northern populace has a long memory of the Sun’s betrayal of the truth and many newspaper shops to this day refuse to even stock the paper.  Such tabloids brimming with salacious titbits and massive misinformation are I fear unlikely to produce an enlightened populace.

I started this by pointing out how technology was used to solve a crime.  There are things that, with the right call can be used as a force for good in this world.  Behind the curtain of distracting smoke screens, fears, fancies lie millions of good people.  Start talking to someone/anyone in the supermarket, on a train, bus, visiting the hospital and you will be startled by the kindness that is there in almost every heart.  So, I choose to look at all the crap we are awash with in video/print/audio and feel it has become the scum on the surface of society.  It no longer reflects the reality of what lies within but the churned up pollution that floats to the surface.  Just beneath, I want to think there is an ocean of kindness.  Good people all around the world who do their best in spite of a system that seems to play by its own corrupt rules.

Man's Search For Meaning

Celebrated Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, was born on March 26, 1905 and remains best-known for his uplifting 1946 psychological memoir “Man’s Search for Meaning”— a meditation on what the gruesome experience of Auschwitz taught him about the primary purpose of life: the quest for meaning.  His wife died in the camp and he endured the unimaginable but managed somehow to convey magical moments in the midst of pain and loss that speak to the heart. 

Where can you run to?

With whom can you take refuge?

To whom will you look?

What country shall you live in?

In what direction shall you go?

At what hour shall you find rest?

What will become of you in the end?

To what will you be faithful?

If you find the truth will you be obedient to it?

“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, “I have nothing to expect from life any more.” What sort of answer can one give to that?

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

Viktor Frankl

If the fire of the love of God is ignited in your heart

You would neither rest nor relax,

Nor be distracted or held back from divine nearness, sanctity and beauty.

Your longing soul would weep as one bereaved

Longing to determine the truth you would find no peace

Until, God lays bare the divine path before you.

“We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 

“The light shineth in the darkness.”

For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.”

Viktor Frankl

PS Words in itallics are paraphrased from the Baha'i Writings