Hello Democracy

I came here to delete this blog.
I read back through the posts
with scorn
but then
found that I wasn't entirely
embarrassed about what I had written
wasn't entirely embarrassed about
the topics
the language
but maybe only embarrassed
about never posting more.

I came here to delete this blog.
I read back and read
that I had Iran and Syria
and Libya
warring in my heart.
I still do.
But it's different now.
I've read more now.
Re-read more now.
Read too much now.
Seen too many things.
The wrong kind of things.
Syria and Libya are
different now for me.

Whose flags are those?

Libya -
I'm sure about this -
is not what we've been told.
Libya -
I hope I'm wrong about this -
is no local uprising
but an imposed clamping down
is no spontaneous upheaval
but an engineered regime-change
is no people's movement
but is an Al-Qaeda power play.
Libya -
was always a problem
for certain other powers:
a problem
for US and European investments
in Africa
because of Libya's nationalism;
a problem
for the colonial order
because of Gaddafi's heresy -
the heresy of liberating
African economics
from foreign controls.
But now
Gaddafi is dead -
brutalised, you watched it -
and Strauss-Kahn,
stepped-down from IMF,
and the heresy of
African self-interest
and economic autonomy
is squashed.
An Al-Qaeda flag
was caught flying above
Benghazi. Nice.

Syria - 

I'm not as sure about this - 

could be a parallel.

Syria - 

I hope I'm wrong about this - 

is no local uprising

but an imposed clamping down

is no spontaneous upheaval

but an engineered regime-change

is no people's movement

but is an Al-Qaeda power play.

Syria - 

is currently a problem

for certain other powers:

for US pushes against Syria's

ally, Iran,

which should be

isolated - 

and thus Syria is to be

crushed;

for Saudi Arabia

who also push against

Iran, Syria's ally;

and for Israel

who also push against

Iran, and against

Iranian funding of militancy

in Syria and Lebanon,

militancy which threatens

Israel.

Syria is important

important to certain others,

other powers,

whose interests contravert

those of the US

and Saudi Arabia

and Israel;

Russian interests
Russian bases in Syria

Russian desires to dominate

the region

pitted against American

desires;

Russian allegiances to Iran

pitted against American

allegiances to Israel

and the Gulf States;

and Syria gets crushed in the middle

by Al-Qaeda mercenaries

who see something in it for them

and Syrian government forces

who are not innocent

and are pitting brutally against

the mercenaries;

both sides using civilians

and crushing civilians

in an orchestrated turf war.

Perhaps these were,

at one moment,

real uprisings.

Perhaps,

for one moment,

but then they were taken

and turned

into something else

taken and run with

in a different direction,

given a different kind of life

bent on different aims:

and one wonders whether

democracy and freedom

could possibly come from

the wreckage

could come after the militants

the "freedom fighters"

take over.

Hardly anyone I know
who knows about these things
believes Libya has been real.
Hardly anyone I know
who knows about these things
believes Syria has been fake.
But I've been convinced -
no, half-convinced -
maybe, not convinced at all -
that both Libya and Syria
are Western-Gulf State-backed
mercenary assaults,
strategic and staged.

Either way,
the prospect for peace
in Libya is...
with that Al Qaeda flag
with the new allegations of
abuse against Gaddafi-loyalists
Gaddafi loyalists in hospitals
tortured, interrogated, no tortured
for being loyal or for being African
(and not Arab?) Tortured, for being
the old oppressors?
For representing a monster?
Or because there are
new monsters
radicalist opportunist Al-Qaeda
mercenaries in power?
Either way,
the prospect for peace
in Libya is ...
new flags and more torture?
The speculations,
the guesses I have,
are controversial,
but the flags and the torture
are common knowledge.
I guess it's all a matter
of how you
join together the information
and what picture you make.

The last post was in August. Too long ago.
I cannot keep up with a blog, because there are always
too many things to write about.
Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iran, India - these are one my mind,
almost constantly.
Assignments have fallen by the wayside.
Preparing two sermons on "looking after widows and orphans" (James)
is destroying me
because I want to talk about Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iran, India,
but I know that I cannot, because no-one can bear to hear about those people,
those places.
To have to listen to the data
either destroys
or
bores.
I do not want to bore the youth group.
I do not want for them to be as destroyed
as I am about the data,
about the way we've bought in to
the domination and oppression of the America dream
and the havoc it is playing
in Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iran and India.
You cannot talk about such things.
I looked around the other night,
and felt immensely lonely,
because it felt like I have cancer or HIV
(reading Noam Chomsky infected me)
and to tell people that,
to draw them into the sadness and the desperation of that
is cruel and difficult and immensely awkward
and so you just end up dying alone.
I feel Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iran, India dying
dying inside me
like some cancer.
That is something you do not want to share.

A poem from Franz Wright for all my friends who are dying

• from his 2006 book of poems God's Silence.

EAST BOSTON, 1996
ON THE BUS

It's one thing when you're twenty-one,
and I was way past twenty-one.
With unshaven face half concealed in the collar
of some deceased porcine philanthropist's
black cashmere rag of a coat,
I knew that I looked like a suicide
returning an overdue book to the library.
Almost everyone else did as well,
but I found no particular solace in this;
at best, the fact awakened some diverting speculations
on the comparative benefits
of waiting in front of a ditch to be shot
alone or in company
of others, and then whether one would prefer
these last hypothetical others
to be friends, family, enemies, total
or relative strangers. Would you hold hands?
Or would you rather like a good Homo sapiens
monster employ them
to cover your genitals?
What percentage would lose bowel control?
And given time restrictions -
and assuming some still had the ability to move -
would ostracism result? Anyway,
I knew the rules on this bus.
No eye contact: the eyes of the terrified
terrify. Look
like you know where you're going,
possess ample change to get there,
and don't move your lips when you talk
to yourself: the destroyed
and sick, the poor, the hungry
and the disturbed estrange.
The badly dressed estrange, even,
and that is uncalled for. The degree
of one's power to estrange will increase
in direct proportion to the depth
of need for others. Do not cry.
This can only bring about, on the one hand,
an instant condition of banishment
from the sole available companionship, or
on the other, a near
fatal beating (one more disappointment).
Just follow the simple instruction
if you ever come here.
It's easy to remember - any idiot can do it.
Don't cry,
the world has abandoned us.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read about him here.

A poem from Malcolm Boyd to those friends of mine who struggle

• from his 1965 book of personal prayers Are You Running with Me, Jesus.

I'm crying and shouting inside tonight, Jesus,
and I'm feeling completely alone.

All the roots I thought I had are gone.
Everything in my life is an upheaval.
I am amazed that I can maintain any composure
when I'm feeling like this.

The moment is all that matters; the present moment
is of supreme importance.
I know this.
Yet in the present I feel dead.

I want to anchor myself in the past
and shed tears of self-pity.
When I look ahead tonight
I can see only futility, pain, and death.
I am only a rotting body,
a vessel of disease,
potentially a handful of ashes
after I am burned.

But you call me tonight
to love and responsibility.
You have a job for me to do.
You make me look at other persons
whose needs make my self-pity a mockery and a disgrace.

Jesus, I hear you.
I know you.
I feel your presence strongly in this awful moment,
and I thank you.
Help me onto my feet.
Help me to get up.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read about him here.

Some verse

One day I'll be a hip-hop star. Yeah right... :S

I think my family wonder why
I grew up corrupted
so angry and bitter
and feeling under such judgment.
How the f--- could you not
be stopped and feel interupted
when every week on the news
you see another abduction?!

While parents argue about
fissures and ruptures
and the predicted collapses
of the government structures
that isolated the others
and fuelled our endless consumption
and somehow our first-world riches
have a slavery function
because they never stretch far-enough
to meet mortgage injunctions
and they never stretch far-enough
to feed the seductions
of our endless consumption
and they never stretch far-enough
and they never stretch far-enough.

And then for the first time as a young guy
you see someone suffer,
shut out in the third-world
and so deemed as an "other"
yet the shared isolation transcends
and makes him a brother
even though he's a child soldier
and you're a rich kid smothered.
And though it doesn't stretch far enough
the solidarity covers
all the difference, hatred, racism
your culture had bottled

... etc. etc.
yeah right.

How to Speak in this world?

I remember watching Leonard Cohen (b. 1934) describe his songs as:  "the response to what struck me as beauty ... whatever that curious emination from a being or an object or a situation or a landscape, you know. That had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone and ... I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me ... and they were alive."

 If It Be Your Will

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

On the same video there were interviews with other artists.
Bono and The Edge from U2 spoke about Cohen's kind of vision
for these things:

Edge - "He's the man, for me, who like, comes down from the
mountaintop with the tablets of stone, you know, having been up
there ... talking to the angels"

Bono - "I didn't, you know, get a religious feeling from him. It
was more ... tacit, or sensual. The world was just really brightly
coloured."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) produced in his poems this
strange mysticism whereby nature could be used to signify
everything going on internally. Look at his poems In Limine
(On the Threshold) and I Limoni (The Lemons):

In Limine

Godi se il vento ch'entra nel pomario
vi rimena l'ondata della vita:
qui dove affonda un morto
viluppo di memorie,
orto non era, ma reliquiario.

Il frullo che tu senti non e' un volo,
ma il commuoversi dell'eterno grembo;
vedi che si trasforma questo lembo
di terra solitario in un crogiuolo.

Un rovello e' di qua dall'erto muro.
Se procedi t'imbatti
tu forse nel fantasma che ti salva:
si compongono qui le storie, gli atti
scancellati pel giuoco del futuro.

Cerca una maglia rotta nella rete
che ci stringe, tu balza fuori, fuggi!
Va, per te l'ho pregato - ora la sete
mi sara' lieve, meno acre la ruggine ...

On the Threshold (my loose translation)

Enjoy the wind when it enters the orchard

for it may carry back to you life's tidal surge

here in this dead sinking

tangle of memories,

this garden which is actually a  reliquary.

This rhythm you hear is not flight,

it's the movement of the eternal womb;

watch this relegated strip of land

transform into a crucible.

You may see as you move forward

that behind the wall

there she is raging,

the phantom who will save you:

here are made histories

and acts which erase futures.

Look for a hole in the net

that has us bound so tight,

break through and flee from it!

Go, I've prayed this for you -

now my thirst won't be so bad,

my resentment not so bitter.

I Limoni

Vedi, in questi silenzi in cui le cose

s'abbandonano e sembrano vicine

a tradire il lore ultimo segreto,

talora ci si aspetta

di scoprire uno sbaglio di Natura,

il punto morto del mondo, l'anello che non tiene,

il filo da disbrogliare che finalmente ci metta

nel mezzo di una verita.

Lo sguardo fruga d'intorno,

la mente indaga accorda disunisce

nel profumo che dilaga

quando il giorno piu' languisce.

Sono i silenzi in cui si vede

in ogni ombra umana che si allontana

qualche disturbata Divinita.

Ma l'illusione manca e ci riporta il tempo

nelle citta rumorose dove l'azzurro si mostra

soltanto a pezzi, in altro, tra le cimase.

La pioggia stanca la terra, di poi; s'affolta

il tedio dell'inverno sulle case,

la luce si fa avara - amara l'anima.

Quando un giorno da un malchiuso portone

tra gli alberi di una corte

ci si mostrano i gialli dei limoni;

e il gelo del curoe si sfa,

e in petto ci scrosciano

le loro canzoni

le trombe d'oro della solarita.

The Lemons (translated by Jonathan Galassi)

See in these silences where things

give over and seem on the verge of betraying

their final secret,

sometimes we feel we're about

to uncover an error in Nature,

the still point of the world, the link that won't hold,

the thread to untangle that will finally lead

to the heart of a truth.

The eye scans its surroundings,

the mind inquires aligns divides

in the perfume that gets diffused

at the day's most languid.
It's in these silences you see

in every fleeting human

shadow some disturbed Divinity.

But the illusion fails, and time returns us

to noisy cities where the blue

is seen in patches, up between the roofs.

The rain exhausts the earth then;

winter's tedium weighs the houses down,

the light turns miserly - the soul bitter.

'Till one day through a half-shut gate

in a courtyard, there among the trees,

we can see the yellow of the lemons;

and the chill in the heart

melts, and deep in us

the golden horns of sunlight

pelt their songs.

I'm no mystic
but it seems if you watch
and listen
when life is still,
in those moments
which stop you,
you may just find life's secrets.

We don't stop long enough.
We get back to business
and schedules
and memos
and forget what we saw.

Yet we encounter again
in short glimpses
through courtyard fences
a different life going on
in our midst
outside of our categories
which brings our deadened spirits
to life
and it sounds like 10,000 trumpets
are playing
and we're suddenly
before the throne
of the invisible God.

I want to be open to life like this!
I don't worship by looking at creation much.
I don't argue for creationism, nor the existence of God
by the apparent design in nature,
because nature is also full of cruelty
and ambiguity and natural selection
which speaks of godlessness and godforsakenness too.
I think God is met in people,
and the meaning for life found in relationships.
But religious particulars aside
life is brightly coloured
and one must respond.

How to Live in this World?

I keep asking myself,
I keep feeling like the question is,
how can we live in this world?
how can I live in this world?

I keep wondering,
how is it possible,
to live in a world
that is tearing apart at the seams,
that is bursting forth in violence
and anger and ... goodness too,
that is collapsing in apathy and despair ... but still loving sometimes;
and these dichotomies and dialectics and paradoxes
are playing themselves out emotionally, economically, religiously
all through the world:
how do you live in this world?

How do you live in the world,
any part of the world,
even the privileged part,
the closed-off part,

while Palestinians, South Sudanese,
Yemeni, Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians
are fighting for freedom
in the face of incalcitrant regimes,
while Ethiopians, Somalians and Kenyans
are starving in East Africa
while the U.S. military's budget for 2010 was over $600 billion:
how do you live in this world?

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) said it right,
I think he said it prophetically:

"We are living in the greatest revolution in history - a huge spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race: not the revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to avoid.
This revolution is a profound spiritual crisis of the whole world, manifested largely in desperation, cynicism, violence, conflict, self-contradiction, ambivalence, fear and hope, doubt and belief, creation and destructiveness, progress and regression, obsessive attachments to images, idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts out everywhere in a still more acute and terrifying form. We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved! All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalised by the purest and most innocent intentions."

- Conjectures of a Guilty By-Stander (1966).

 How do I live in this world?

I keep asking myself.
I keep asking myself knowing
that
somehow
getting by, making do,
playing house, shutting off,
will not work
and should not work.

I think,
I'm feeling stronger than ever,
that I cannot live
in resignation and pretending,
sheltered,
turning in (incurvatus in se),
consuming until I grow fat enough not to care
or remember
what's going on out there.
I cannot live like this.

So I'll make an exodus,
a fearful exodus,
step-by-step,
not bravely
but hopefully faithfully
out of the world of numbing satiation
and into the world of involvement
where the pain and the joy
the good and the bad
the decay and the extravagance
are felt acutely
all at once
right there with those people
in those places
that I'd forgotten
and shut-out
for far too long.

In reality,
I made this exodus,
have been making exoduses
again and again
for quite some time.
This dissatisfaction,
and anger,
and hunger
has been perculating
and boiling over
for the last few months
or years.

This exodus
is part of my tradition
inherent in my faith
central to my affirmations
about God and life
and meaning.
Exodus
comes with the territory
of faith,
Christian faith,
Biblical faith.


So as I make an exodus,
from one world to another
in hope of finding how to live
in this world that we share,
I will reflect on
and become a part of
that Biblical Christian tradition
the story of God's life in this world,
where exoduses are permitted, required,
ordained, encouraged.

Practically this means a move to Europe,
and I hope also Palestine,
which has been many years in the making.
Spiritually this means navigating through belief
and unbelief
and everything else
as it all plays out.
Personally this will involve lots of reading
and writing
and praying
which can be recorded here.

So on this blog I'll keep asking,
"how do I live in this world?"