The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 73,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Life is too short for magnolia
Let’s splash the old walls with new paint
Mix me purples and blues
Like a two day-old bruise
And gold like the robes of a saint
.
Where does it come from, magnolia?
Not from the wild places I’ve been;
Brown eggs in a nest
Bright robin red breast
And oceans of deepest sea-green
.
What is the point of magnolia
When rain is by rainbows replaced?
It’s the space left behind
When colours go blind
It’s like life being leached from a face
The lovely low days between Christmas and New Year offer to some of us the privilege of a bit of stock taking- asking those important questions about where we are now, and where we might be going.
I have been doing a lot of this of late, and will be doing some more- but one thing I am increasingly convinced of is the need to consume less, to make more with my own hands, to produce, to craft and to live more simply. Unfortunately over the past few weeks this has actually meant repeated trips to consumer-hell; IKEA and other temples to Capitalism. This is because we are setting up a guest house in a relatively out of the way corner of Scotland, and there are only so many things that you can knock together out of driftwood. It feels very wrong though.
I came across this today;
“But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of kind and quantity, the security sought is still the security of numbers, and the chief motive is still the consumer’s anxiety that he is missing out on what is “in.” In this state of total consumerism – which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves – all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Which chimed with something else…
I read somewhere that Journalist Mark Hudson proposed 4 stages in our relationship with stuff;
And of course, we can not take it with us on the next journey. How many journeys to the tip and the charity shops will we all be making in the next few days?
The problem is- how on earth can we do it differently- how can we live a better way of being?
Time for another quote;
“We have to create culture! Don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own road show The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you’re giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told ‘no’, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. ‘Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.’ And then you’re a player, you don’t want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna
I don’t know much about this bloke- I think he was a bit of a Hippie ‘herbalist’, but I find myself in agreement.
I am longing for life that does not conform to the same tired, self destructive, addictive patterns. Not just talking about this kind of life- but actually starting to live it, now, in the new year, 2013. Because how much time is left?
Next year is going to be our year of new beginning. I am not exactly sure how this will go, but let the wild rumpus begin…
I am very proud of Michaela- and so here is a chance to show you some of the things she does in her day job.
Recently she was speaking about a local project she has been working on- a local Timebank. (You can watch her whole presentation here.)
The bloke from the NHS talking on the video seems to have totally missed the point- the emphasis is not on ‘services saving money’, or ‘sick’ people doing something to make them better- rather a Timebank is a level playing field to allow everyone to build community connections- where everyone can contribute.
We joke in our family that the first ‘exchange’ of time in Dunoon was a few years ago when Michaela came home with a rusty Shopper bike and told me that I was to make it work again. And they were off! It has become a really great local programme, with some fantastic stories- including a whole wedding- flowers, photography, cars, catering- all arranged through time exchanges! People have some amazingly diverse skills to offer- translation of a document from Russian? No problem. Fix a computer? Easy. Proof read a document? When do you want it finished? Others have involved an older lady who learnt how to write properly using her handwriting skills on certificates, or another person teaching woodcraft skills. It is great.
Michaela would never agree that a lot of this is down to her- she would point to all the others who have worked so hard to make it a success- but I know different. She is just one of those people who makes other people feel safe and included, and by her own dedication makes other people stick in there.
I would have joined in (with the singing that is!)
Something I wrote for a Greenbelt event a couple of years ago- which came back to me recently when discussing brokenness. Originally it was written to make comparisons between organised church and psychiatric care.
There was a concern in the land
In every town the roads were lined with beggars
There were homeless orphans and widows cast out onto the streets
Lunatics were stoned by children
And melancholics drowned their sorrows with gin
The pain of it all was in the middle of us
The Jesus in the least of these
Was weeping
So the good people gathered
“What is needed” they said “Is asylum.”
A safe home where broken people can live out their lives in care-
Protected from all of the mess of life,
Fed and warm and watered.
So money was gathered
Stones were shaped and raised
Staff were retained and clothed in starched clothing
-The heavy doors were opened wide in welcome
And so they came- the halt, the sick, the lame
The motherless and the pregnant child
All those broken by worry and grief
The shakers and the mutterers
All the awkward squad
The outsiders now came inside
They were home at last
It went well for a while
All was orderly and planned
Starved frames filled out
Songs were sung again in the entertainment hall
Gardens were laid and tended
Sheets danced in the evening sunlight
And a bell rang out to warn of the dowsing of night candles
But time passed, and shadows fell
Budgets were tight, and the paint peeled on windows
The good folk who had once been so generous had other calls on their coin
A few still visited on feast days but for the most part
Out of sight became out of mind.
And there was trouble
The awkward squad was still awkward
The asylum split into ‘us’ and ‘them’
‘We’ had roles- uniforms and clipboards, rotas and registers
Big bunches of keys danced at our belts
We had dreams- of advancement, romance and families
We had homes away from this home
‘They’ stood the other side of our desks
Dirty and lacking in motivation
Ungrateful and manipulative
Un co-operative with our assessments
Lacking insight into the nature of their dysfunction.
They had ceased to be like us
Rather, they lived out regulated half-lives
They ceased to be flesh
And became instead a collection of paper
In manila folders
Despite all the material provision- something was missing
Despite all the person centred plans, the person was not at the centre
Despite the close press of humanity, there was no family
Despite all the risk assessments, there was no adventure
Despite all the planned activity, there is no purpose
Despite the safety of the high walls, I am still destroyed
So it was that care became captivity
Individuals became invisible
And home became hollow
And toxic
While Jesus in the least of these
Was weeping
Soren Kierkegaard had this way of throwing stories into the middle of his philosophising. Here is one of them;
What is a poet?
An unhappy man who in his heart harbours a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music.
His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant’s ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music.
And men crowd around the poet and say to him, “Sing for us soon again”—which is as much as to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music, is delightful.
Kierkegaard is describing something that most familiar- art arising from introspection, sensitivity, dysfunction, hurt. Art that does not heal, but rather is a plaster over an open wound.
Poetry like this has no choice but to be written. You might as well tell a cut to stop bleeding.
Hmmm.
Work is progressing on our second B and B room (although this is a photo of the first!) Just carpets and curtains to sort out now, and then we can get everything put together.
We are hoping to offer some weekends of themed ‘creative breaks’ over the next few months. These will be a chance to escape to lovely Dunoon and make something beautiful. It is amazing what we can achieve when given space to do so. This bowl was made by Issy in our pottery a couple of weeks ago, on her second ever attempt at moulding clay;
The idea is that we will be setting out a list of creative weekends people can book in for, but also guests in the B and B, or our holiday cottage, will be able to get creative too- making some pots, or a range of other activities.
More info to come!
Details of the 2011 UK Census are filtering out of the Office for National Statistics. The Guardian is teasing out some of the headliners- here are a selected few;
• The population of England and Wales on 27 March 2011 was 56.1 million. This is a 7% increase (3.7 million) from 2001, and 55% of that is due to immigration.
• The number identifying themselves as Christians is down 13 percentage points. In 2001, 72% (37.3 million) called themselves Christians. In 2011 that had dropped to 59% (33.2 million).
• Interestingly, Christianity is not down everywhere. Newham, Haringey, Brent, Boston and Lambeth have all shown increases in the Christian population.
• The number identifying themselves as having no religion has increased by 10 percentage points from 15% (7.7 million) in 2001 to 25% (14.1 million) last year.
• 13% of residents were born outside the UK (7.5 million). Just over half of these (3.8 million) arrived in the last 10 years.
• The census shows 2 million households in England and Wales where partners or other household members are of different ethnic groups, 47% more than in 2001.
• India, Poland and Pakistan are the top three countries foreign-born people in England and Wales come from.
• The Muslim population was up from 1.55 million to 2.7 million, an increase of 1.15m from 2001 to 2011. Muslims now make up 5% of the population, compared to 3% in 2001.
So we are seeing a picture of an increasingly ethnically diverse nation, which intermarries more and increasingly sees itself as not needing organised religion.
However we also see a rise in people who view themselves as Muslim, probably through immigration rather than conversion.
The British Humanist Association have already commented on this change;
In spite of a biased question that positively encourages religious responses, to see such an increase in the non-religious and such a decrease in those reporting themselves as Christian is astounding. Of course these figures still exaggerate the number of Christians overall – the number of believing, practising Christians is much lower than this and the number of those leading their lives with no reference to religion much higher.
Religious practice, identity, belonging and belief are all in decline in this country, and non-religious identities are on the rise. It is time that public policy caught up with this mass turning away from religious identities and stopped privileging religious bodies with ever increasing numbers of state-funded religious schools and other faith-based initiatives. They are decreasingly relevant to British life and identity and governments should catch up and accept that fact.
Andrew Copson, quoted in The Guardian.
I have some sympathy with Copson’s comments. The age of Christendom is over.
But the Kingdom of God is near.
I read this in The Guardian today;
The late philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in the 50s that if prevailing trends that put economic production before human engagement continued, we would all eventually occupy a dangerously unbalanced society, peopled by alienated individuals living atomised existences, lacking in empathy, quick to judge because judgment by others is always anticipated, equipped with “the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it”. What might halt the march to misery, he argued idealistically in The Sane Society, was sharing experience, living by “love, reason and faith”.
Very prescient. In the UK our morally bankrupt government is attempting to buy it’s way out of a triple dip recession using a combination of benefits cuts to the poorest and tax cuts to the Corporations whose greed led us into this mess in the first place.
Fromm was a Jew who grew up in Germany, before the rise of Nazism forced him to flee. His writings often struggle with the reality of what world war and genocide can teach us about the development of humanity. He proposed a list of eight basic needs that we all have in order to live a fulfilled life;
Relatedness Relationships with others, care, respect, knowledge.
Transcendence Being thrown into the world without their consent, humans have to transcend their nature by destroying or creating people or things. Humans can destroy through malignant aggression, or killing for reasons other than survival, but they can also create and care about their creations.
Rootedness Rootedness is the need to establish roots and to feel at home again in the world. Productively, rootedness enables us to grow beyond the security of our mother and establish ties with the outside world. With the nonproductive strategy, we become fixated and afraid to move beyond the security and safety of our mother or a mother substitute.
Sense of Identity The drive for a sense of identity is expressed nonproductively as conformity to a group and productively as individuality.
Frame of orientation Understanding the world and our place in it.
Excitation and Stimulation Actively striving for a goal rather than simply responding.
Unity A sense of oneness between one person and the “natural and human world outside.”
Effectiveness The need to feel accomplished.
If he is right, how do we achieve these things in a society captured by commercialism and disembodied lifestyles?
Fromm was a Socialist humanist who nevertheless also said this;
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
this fragile tent 