Journal of a Soul 38

A Passion for Equality

Frederick Douglass, around 1874

There are few things that move us as much as good oratory, and indeed we would go almost anywhere to hear a good orator speak.  The orators that come immediately to my own mind are, of course, luminaries such as Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, William Jefferson Clinton, Nelson Mandela and, of course, Barak Obama.  I would go anywhere to here them speak.  Indeed, I had the privilege to hear Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama here in Dublin when they visited our great city over the last ten or so years.  Needless to say, I was truly moved.  To add a few females to this list Hillary Rodham Clinton springs immediately to mind as does Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  I have heard these two prominent international figures speak on our media outlets and can truly say they are accomplished public speakers. Our own two former presidents, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese are also superb orators. You, no doubt can add your own favourites to this list.

Orators are never better than when they are speaking on the great issues of supreme human interest, namely human and civil rights, and about issues of the equality of all human beings no matter what their religion, race or colour. Words, coupled with passion and conviction can and do ring true.  However, we are not interested in hearing mere words, no matter how passionate, unless we know they are also coupled with deeds.  Otherwise, they ring exceedingly hollow. When we listen to great passionate speakers and know that they not alone believe what they say, but that they also do what they say we are truly moved, and moved in such a way as to do something positive or to work for a better world in our immediate surroundings.  We are here right at the heart of what it means to "do the truth", "to live the truth" or what is fundamentally meant by PRAXIS. And so hypocrisy is often immediately clear to an astute and sensitive listener.  We are right to turn away from such bogus oratory and mere rhetoric.  

I write about oratory, real oratory in that sense of linking in with the passion for justice which the speaker evokes in our hearts.  Obviously, good speakers can also evoke hatred in the hearts of his listeners as did the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, but they were mere manipulators of base emotions, not evokers of a passion for justice and truth.  Real orators touch us deeply at a centre of truth, at a centre of compassion, not at a centre of base emotions like hatred and greed, power and conquest.  Sophistry, of course, is even worse, as it is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 -1865) said much and did much, but his was never an idle or thoughtless oratory - no, it was oratory in the true sense that I have adumbrated above - his words came from his heart and from how he lived his life on a daily basis, with a conviction always to do his best and to follow the light of his conscience. I like the following words from this great man:

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Or take the words of our own Irish Catholic Liberator, Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847): "Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong."

Abe Lincoln

What put these thoughts on real oratory into my head was reading an article in a recent edition of The Irish Times on the great American orator Frederick Douglass (1818? - 1895), who has links with both Lincoln and O'Connell. The journalist Barry Roche recently wrote an interesting and illuminating article on Douglas in the Irish Times: Douglass was honoured in Waterford some days ago when a plaque was unveiled to mark a speech he gave in the city during a lecture tour of Ireland in 1845.   While here, the great orator met and befriended our great Catholic Liberator, and it appears that O'Connell influenced Douglass greatly especially with respect to the non-violent achievement of freedom for human beings of all colours and creeds.  Barry Roche quotes him in the above linked article, and it is worth re-quoting in full here:

“I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult,” he later wrote in My Bondage and My Freedom

President Obama has said that Douglass' Irish experience "defined him not as a colour but as a man."

Our Workaday World

Daniel O'Connell

All of the above is not worth a curse, unless it influences how I live and work on a daily basis, how I treat others, how welcoming I am of all the differences I meet in them. I am tasked as a Resource Teacher with treating all students, no matter what their ability, with equal dignity and respect.  Today, thankfully and wonderfully, indeed, Ireland is no longer mono-cultural or monochrome. Thankfully and wonderfully, it is multicultural and technicolour. Our country has been enriched by the influx of people of many nations since the growth and decline of the Celtic Tiger years.  This is a powerful cultural legacy which will serve only to enrich and strengthen our traditions.  There is much unity in diversity.  Their is no little discovery of what makes us different as Irish and what makes us all the same no matter what the colour of our skin or the shades of our beliefs are.  We need great orators in the sense that I have described them to inspire us to cherish and protect all life, human, animal and vegetable.  When the great orators of the future speak, and speak they must, their topics will be broader than human rights and human dignity.  Their subject will be, I believe, the very survival of our planet.  But that, alas, is a topic for another post.  Let us, in the meantime, ponder the words of the great orators of today and yesteryear and be inspired to work for justice in the world and the equality of all.

Journal of a Soul 36

As if People Mattered

People who matter: Two of our Spanish students at School

If the reader has been following these musings in this blog, s/he will know that the above title is in fact the subtitle of a book alluded to in my last post, viz., Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973). In Ireland, at present, we are facing into yet another austerity Budget on Tuesday next: our Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said €2.5bn is to be taken out of the economy in the Budget and not the projected €3.1bn. This is, of course, no reason to celebrate because, after five years of austere budgets and growing hardships, the Irish Exchequer is still spending a billion euro more every month than it is collecting in taxes.  Whatever way one looks at it, these figures simply don't add up. It is, indeed, hard to square this huge economic circle.  And yet, it is important to state loudly in answer to the contention of the late great Brian Lenihan, Jnr., our erstwhile Minister for Finance,, that many of us simply did not party while The Celtic Tiger was roaring.  However, it is also unquestionable, indeed, that many others did party.  Some "Paddy Irishmen" took to their new-found wealth through unlimited credit and unsecured loans like a an addict to alcohol or drugs.

Can Economics be Ethical?

People who matter: Myself and two senior students at school

Human beings are more than economic units, much more.  There is more to happiness and success than the amount of one's earnings or the size of one's bank account.  That money does indeed buy privilege of all sorts goes without questioning.  Middle class parents can buy their children grinds for State Examinations and they do so readily.  One young boy I know had five separate teachers coming to his house to get him through his exams.  Now he did, indeed, get the results.  The point I'm making here is that the children I teach who attend a disadvantaged inner city school can often not afford the price of their school books, never mind pay for grinds. The Vincent de Paul often advance some of our pupils the money to go on school trips or tours, and the ones we go on are not terribly exclusive.  However, the real fundamental question behind all these anecdotes I am recounting here is the question in the above sub-heading: Can Economics be ethical.  Our Uachtarán, Micheál D Ó hUiginn believes it can.  Speaking at a public lecture (Wednesday September 11, 2013) in Dublin City University on the topic of "Toward an ethical economy," he stated:

(M)y Presidency.... seeks to develop an ethical discourse that places human flourishing at the heart of public action.... I would like – tonight – to focus in particular on the relations between ethical reasoning and economic thought...

This speech proceeds like a third level lecture, replete with learned quotations and references to contemporary academic sources.  That it was delivered before a university audience is possibly the reason.  Our President, or Uachtarán is a scholar and academic as well as a former (Labour Party) Minister. He has always been renowned for his commitment to social equality issues and for his defense both of civil and human rights.  He is also a very passionate individual who speaks with compassion and conviction as well as with erudition and reason.  He continues in this lecture to adumbrate his concern for the well-being of citizens.  To this end he praises Martha Nussbaum's exposition of the teachings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, especially his ethical teachings as they appear in his Nichomachean Ethics. I have mentioned before in this blog Aristotle's defining "happiness" as "eudaimonia" as the "flourishing" of the human person.  Such flourishing is above and beyond mere economic concerns, while firmly based on such concerns.  Let me add to our President's reflections by suggesting a Maslowian hierarchy here.  Once a human being's economic needs have been met, and this is the firm foundation, other more human concerns are further solidly built upon it.  However, what happened to us Irish during the Celtic Tiger era was to continue greedily to remain at that foundational level only, forgetting all the other human values which both sustain and enhance the human enterprise of "flourishing."  It is, then, that I was somewhat overwhelmed by the President's call for Philosophy to be a subject on our curricula at school.  Perhaps.  However, I'm more convinced that adding a philosophical dimension to each subject might be more beneficial, given the overstretching of today's curricula.  Anyway, let me quote him more fully here:

Our schools’ curricula and pedagogical methods reflect the kind of humanity our society seeks and nurtures. The society we so dearly wish for will not take shape unless we acknowledge the need for an education of character and desires, the need to encourage and support critical reflection and a more holistic approach to knowledge. Specifically, there would surely be considerable merit in introducing the teaching of philosophy in our schools, which could facilitate the fostering of an ethical consciousness in our fellow citizens. (See President )

He then proceeds to quote professor Kathleen Lynch and her colleagues from the School of Social Justice in U.C.D.  These latter put great emphasis on the provision of care for the person in any human community.  That cold Economics allows for this depth of care is a question for disputation.  In any civilized society it certainly should.  Let me quote from the President's speech once more:

As Lynch puts it, “bonds of friendship or kinship are frequently what bring meaning, warmth and joy to life… They are both a vital component of what enables people to lead a successful life and an expression of our fundamental interdependence”...To reflect on the demands of care, love and friendship is to replace the categories of utility, efficiency and self-love with the values of mutuality, long-term commitment, trust and responsibility. It is to conceive of the Other as an end in himself, as a source of non-reciprocal responsibility, in the sense of Emmanuel Lévinas. (See link above)

The President's lecture continues on with multiple references to other learned scholars, but his contention that all human beings have a right not alone to endure on this wonderful blue planet, but also to flourish in the broadest meaning of that concept.  The reification of human concerns by a focus on an Economics, which is heartless and soulless, must be surmounted if we as a community of caring individuals are to do more than merely surviving, if we as a community and as individuals are really to flourish. 

Finding Meaning:

I have stated here many times that we humans are meaning-making creatures and our goal is our self-shaping which we can really only do within the mutuality of a community.  Such meaning can only be found if we work for our mutual flourishing.  This essentially entails that we have a vision for our future; a real hope in the possibilities of tomorrow; a true concern for the well-being of all sentient creatures as well as that of our beautiful Blue Planet, Mother Gaia; a passion for our work to bring this vision about; a conviction and a belief in the worthwhile-ness of the human project, which is always more than mere survival, more than a mere river of genes that flows ever onwards into an unknown future.  No it is more.  It is a mystical, mythic and visionary dream of what we can be, and no less real for all of that: the flourishing of a human community, replete with all those human values that cold economics can not envision, though enhanced with values, can certainly support.

Journal of a Soul 35

As if People Mattered

People who matter: Teachers and Students in my School

In the Comment and Analysis section of today's Sunday Business Post the prophetic economist, commentator and author David McWilliams maintains that "(W)here the nuns and priests led, Irish business should follow." He argues that the trends in the poorest parts of the world are strikingly positive and that "Africa is going to be a major economic growth region in the very near future." (p. n19) These words evoked the following thoughts:

Economy

We definitely lost our way as a nation during the years of the Celtic Tiger.  Greed became the chief deadly sin of which most Irish people became both consciously and unconsciously perpetrators. A friend of mine says that this greed was, in part, an unconscious reaction to the sufferings and many losses we underwent as a people during the Great Famine era.  Poor Paddy was no longer depicted as an ape-like creature who was either inevitably drunk or wielding a shillelagh to knock the brains out of the next person to cross his path, but rather a world-recognized entrepreneur with vision, power and newly gained wealth.  

Many years ago I read, as all idealist young people did at the time, that wonderful little classic Small is Beautiful (1973) by by the British economist E.F. Schumacher.  The title "Small Is Beautiful" became a catch-cry for idealists and romantics rather than for entrepreneurs who always subscribed to words like "maximum", "big", "huge" and "great," especially when coupled with the noun "profit."  The catch-cry "Small is beautiful" is often used to champion small, appropriate technologies that are believed to empower people more, in contrast with phrases such as "bigger is better".  The subtitle appealed further to the humanitarian and Romantic in me:  "A study of Economics as if People mattered."  The "as if" has always stuck in my mind as an idealist who saw that entrepreneurs and those in power invariable did not put people first; that they didn't really believe that people mattered despite their many loud declarations that they did; they merely acted "as if."

As a teacher of secondary pupils who are on the Autistic Spectrum and as a Learning Support Teacher for the less intellectually able student, I see the effects of the recent cutbacks on my students.  Not alone are students not getting adequate supports, but many simply cannot afford to pay for their books.  As we now are monitored so closely by the troika of EU, IMF and ECB and are asked to cut ever more meat more from the "national joint" despite the fact that we are practically down to bare bone." "Economics as if people mattered" indeed.  Why, indeed, are we not convinced that year after year of further austerity will work.  You don't have to be a mathematician to see that the figures will never add up.  So who's fooling whom?  Why play such an obviously disingenuous game? Why even believe all these obvious lies we are told?

Tradition 

Old Black and White pictures from the "Old Days" - Tradition

Tradition is something vibrant and living.  It is never stagnant.  It is not something that we solely inherit from some isolated period in the past.  Rather it is something which advances and grows naturally and organically.  For sure, the nuns and priests who went out to Africa and other far-flung missionary territories were imbued with Christian fervour and a desire to help the less fortunate.  Modern missionaries are more attuned to the cultures among whom they work and realize the importance both of inculturation and of working collaboratively with other Christian and non-Christian religions.  The old concern with converting the multitudes is long since dead and gone.  Now the emphasis is on working collaboratively to create a better world under the Christian vision.  I remember, in a recent televised documentary, one wonderful religious sister in the heart of some African country insisting that even if God did not exist she could not leave the work she was doing as she felt she had a duty to help others.  So religious motivation can also be human motivation.  And in the words of the Angelic Doctor St Thomas Aquinas, "grace builds on nature."  Even though I'm quoting this medieval theologian, I am going to take my own meaning out of his words. Now, I do realize that I am reading a meaning into his words which he could never agree with way back in the thirteenth century.  What I am getting at is that deep down our ordinary human experience can lead onward or deeper into religious experience, that in that sense "grace builds on nature."  And yet, if one loses one's belief in this or that idea of what or who God may be, you might fall back on the common denominator, i.e., that humanity in its essence and in its existential manifestation really matters and that it confers its own dignity upon itself from within, not from without.  In other words, in a world of many and various systems of belief and indeed of none, the human being matters, really matters, and is its own conferral of meaning. 

We in Ireland have a wonderful spiritual tradition based on the twin principles of (i) hospitality and (ii) welcome.  A visitor who came to the door was always to be seen as an "alter Christus" or "another Christ."  The Celtic Christian, therefore, welcomed the stranger into his/her house and shared whatever little they had with them.  Both hospitality and welcome are still cherished widely among the Irish.  No wonder Ireland is also known as "Ireland of the Welcomes." 

David McWilliams article is good and the editor has illustrated it with a wonderfully large coloured picture of planet Earth, of great Gaia herself.  The picture speaks of wonder, hope, beauty, truth, stillness, purity, lack of pollution and defilement, of a fitting home for humans and indeed of animal life of all kinds.  It presents a fitting contrast to the underlying greed of economics hinted at in the main article.

Maybe someday, as children of Mother Gaia, we can muster the courage to promote an economics as if people and animals and the earth really did matter.

Journal of a Soul 19

Connectedness

If spirituality is about anything, it is about connecting in a real and authentic way with self, others, whatever life force you believe in (you may be one of the many millions who call this force God) and indeed with Mother Earth or Gaia,of whom I have talked much in this and other blogs.  I was reminded of this connectedness we have with the Earth by listening to Pat Kenny this morning interviewing the author George Monbiot on his new book Feral, the review of which you will find HERE 

As a young country boy, I loved running free (or wild) through the fields and meadows which were so close to our house in a little rural Irish town.  The smells of those fields, of the grasses, the flowers and the cow pats still linger in my nostrils.  We city dwellers are a long way from the wild-ness of nature.  To walk through the fields and hills of one's locality (after all we can all find access to such places if we really want to with a little effort!) is in a very powerful way to connect with one's Real Self (Carl Ransom Rogers) or with the Soul (Religions, New Age Spirituality and Popular Psychology).

In a very real way, we are embodied souls or ensouled bodies and the link between the two is inextricable.  That is why I love the term BODY-SOUL or SOUL-BODY.  That is also why I find the concept of a Cartesian Dualism, not alone intellectually difficult to get one's head around, but very silly indeed.  As the philosopher Gilbert Ryle famously put it, such dualism, which says that the soul somehow inhabits the husk of the body rather like a liquid in a bottle, could simply be called "a ghost in a machine" and is ridiculous as such.  Whatever the Soul is, it is embodied or enfleshed.  Can it exist apart from the body?  That is a big question indeed.  Perhaps it can!

Moreover, a lot of us have experienced powers that play through us or inspire us, though, of course, this is not the same reality as the soul, although one could presume that the spirit works through the medium of that soul. I was once invited by a cousin to an AA meeting which he was chairing and everyone there attested to a higher power whom they believed pulled them out of their pit of despair rather like being attracted to a magnetic north.  They also attested that they could not become sober without trusting in the goodness of such a higher spiritual force.  I have myself experienced my being filled with a spiritual power several times while meditating on my own and with groups, and while attending various concerts, religious ceremonies, funerals, celebrations, plays and poetry readings and so on.  Whether this spiritual power is psychic - intra-psychic or inter-psychic - or from a different realm I am not too sure.  However, I am very open to there being spiritual powers beyond my finite and limited ken.  Moreover, I certainly believe that the soul is a spiritual principle somehow connected to the body, that is, it is certainly not something unconnected that rattles around within the husk of my body.  Any way, enough of this idle philosophical speculation.  Let me get down to the point of this post.  Like a river, I suppose it is nice to meander now and then, so, forgive me...

Commenting on the CAP (that is, the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU - a policy that had been cornerstone of the original Treaty of Rome which set up the EEC as it then was called), George Monbiot told Pat Kenny of RTE Radio that this policy had contributed to environmental damage by encouraging farmers to increase output through intensive practices such as the application of chemical insecticides and pesticides, and through the removal of hedgerows.  The CAP has furthermore been criticised due to its impact on farmland bird populations.  Wiki reports the following: "Between 1980 and 2009, the farmland bird population has decreased from 600 million to 300 million, implying a loss of 50%. Among the species that have been hit hardest are the starling and the tree sparrow, which have both declines by 53%. The removal of hedgerows and ploughing over meadows are two significant factors that may have contributed to more efficient farming, but that also caused a decrease in farmland birds' habitats."  See HERE 

It would seem that in our efforts to increase our wealth we are helping to destroy our planet.  In a newly produced TV programme on the River Shannon, Ireland's largest river, the presenter/writer Colin Stafford-Johnson alludes to the virtual disappearance of the corncrake (rare bird in these parts) due to farming practices.  This is a wonderfully filmed series and is currently being broadcast by our national broadcaster. See IWT and RTE Player. That this wonderful river is teeming with life in all its bio-diversity and interconnectedness is manifestly obvious.  That such an intricate and wondrous nexus of life is delicately balanced is also a given fact.  Further, that humankind can pollute and destroy such a web of life is also sadly a growing reality.

Spirituality, as I have outlined in my opening paragraph is about connectedness or connection or about the ability to make connections, to interconnect, to reach out beyond the individual and to feel part of a whole network of life or of being.  It is about the flow of energy or power or spirit.  In this sense spirituality is about making whole or healing the planet, the very opposite to polluting and destroying it.  In a very real sense, then, to claim to be spiritual and to engage in non-spiritual practices is a contradiction in terms!  Ponder this point as it is worth so doing!

We humans are unusual creatures in that we are at once the overseers of and part of the world which we observe - being both the observer and the observed at one and the same time.   That we are gradually polluting and killing our planet inevitably means that we are gradually poisoning and killing ourselves.

That we are part of the planet is also very much an integral part of our spirituality.  We are constituents of the wonderful, intricate and wondrous nexus of life that makes up Mother Earth or Gaia.  Most spiritualities today insist that ecology plays a central part in the way we interact or connect with the world around us. However, this is not surprising as nature always played a central role in traditional religions.  One has only to refer briefly to the Old Testament Psalms which saw/see creation as the work of a loving God who had/has set humankind over creation as its stewards.

The Home Tree - Avatar

We take our symbols from nature, and one of the greatest we have is possibly that of the tree.  In the Book of Genesis we have The Tree of Knowlege of Good and Evil.  In a lot of religions, theologies and indeed science fiction films we have references to the famous Tree of Life. This tree symbolises the interconnection of all life on our planet and serves as a metaphor for common descent in the evolutionary sense. The term tree of life may also be used as a synonym for sacred tree.  The Wiki tells us succinctly that  "[t]he tree of knowledge, connecting to heaven and the underworld, and the tree of life, connecting all forms of creation, are both forms of the world tree or cosmic tree, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and are portrayed in various religions and philosophies as the same tree."  Is it any wonder, then, that such a potent symbol of the tree played a very central role in the wonderful sci-fi film Avatar? (It is called the Home Tree or the Tree of Souls in that film, if my memory serves me at all well!)

I began this post by aluding to the recently published book called Feral  by George Monbiot wherein he calls for the "wilding" of our flatlands and farmlands, much of which we have simply cut back with no reason except to gain CAP payments.  And what a marvellous neologism is that word "wilding" which he composes!  In the concrete jungles that we humans have made for ourselves, it is very hard indeed to put down roots.  It's very hard, again, not to be alienated from nature, from the Earth, and also from ourselves, indeed.  Maybe the price we pay for supposed progress is far too high a price to pay!  Maybe. Maybe!  

Given the use of the verbal noun "wilding," let us finish this post with a few lines from one of W.B. Yeats wonderful poems which mention the word "wild" therein:

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand.

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

(from "The Stolen Child" published in 1889. )

Journal of a Soul 11

The Makers of Meaning

A book I am currently reading.

We are makers of meaning.  Without meaning, life is shallow and hollow. Without it, we become heartless and soulless automata.  Eventually, we literally dry up, wilt and die like an uncared for plant.  Immediately here, we have the makings of a good metaphor – living a good life is, in a certain sense, gardening for the soul.  This is a metaphor suggested by Carl Ransom Rogers in his Person-Centred Therapy (PCT).

In a major sense, too, our opening metaphor here, namely gardening for the soul, suggests a firm connection with nature.   And, further, this is one of modern and post-modern humanity’s greatest faults.  Not alone do we lack a real connection or relationship with the earth and its goods, but we destroy them with impunity.  Even worse, the acquisitive and capitalist cultures we are born into allow us to be virtually indifferent to the earth and its bounty.  Sadly, we meet many people who are unaware of the destruction we are doing to the bountiful planet on which we live. 

Maybe at this juncture in the history of humankind, when we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis we have ever witnessed, we are ready for a wake-up call.  Perhaps, greed and rapacity have shown us their worst results – corruption, bankruptcy, selfishness, and a sheer lack of appreciation for things of the spirit or the soul, for values other than those linked to financial profit at all costs.

But, any of us who are idealists, who believe that something else is needed over and above rapacious capitalism for the redemption of humankind, are often left totally disillusioned.  In this side of the developed world – Europe – it would seem to this economically ignorant commentator that the powers that be, namely Germany and France don’t really want to help the rest of Europe in solidarity.  Rather, they prefer to self-righteously preach about unfettered over-spending by smaller countries and lack of regulation, and not a word about their own unfettered over-lending.  There is not much solidarity in squeezing the last penny from some of the poorest nations who in turn are squeezing their own poorest citizens.

This is no political qua political post, dear reader.  It is, perhaps, political qua spiritual, as all spiritual stances have political and financial consequences.  Humankind has lost its way as all spiritual values are being lessened and eroded in the name of the mighty euro or indeed the mighty dollar or whatever the ascendant currency might be. What, then, are these values, the decrease of which, I lament here?  Let me try to list them in no specific order:

1. Connection with the earth.  Call her Mother Earth or Gaia – see James Lovelock’s notion of Earth as one great organism.  Notice the connection of all simple religions and spiritualities with the Earth as Mother or provider.  In this regard reading the spirituality of the American Native Indians is very enriching.  (Note to self: I must read more here.)
2. Fostering creativity in all its incarnations: drawing, painting, writing, sculpting, composing music, singing, dancing, acting and so on and so forth.  What do they tell us about humanity?
3. The moral call – the call to fight for justice on our own doorstep as well as further afield.
4. Asking questions like: Where does this moral call come from?  Why behave in a just way? Where or who is the source of this moral call?  Is there a source of Good, i.e., God?  The present writer believes this is a very important question to discuss, though he is agnostic about the answer.  He certainly has very few answers.  But in the tradition of Socrates all questions, especially the hard ones must be put.
5. What is friendship? What is love?  Or again, in reference to the current financial crisis: What is SOLIDARITY? What is the common goal of humanity?  In how far am I my brother’s keeper?
6. What lessons have we learnt from the current worldwide DEPRESSION?
7. What, essentially, have the traditions of the great world religions to teach us about our values as humans?

If we as humans are the makers of meaning, and the makers of values, then we had best be up and at it, and not leave the way clear for the empty philosophies of bureaucrats and capitalists, who, in the words of the great Irish litterateur Oscar Wilde, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Journal of a Soul 6

Cross on old ruined Church, Badolato Marina

The early Christians spoke of their being “in via,” or on the way to Heaven or the Kingdom of God.  In this last sentence, it is the beautiful and succinct Latin phrase “in via” that I want to highlight.  All cultures and all religions, which by definition are cultural phenomena, speak of the metaphor of travelling, or journeying or making a pilgrimage.  I have always liked those rather reflective and quirky Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, because they captured the lonely soul on his/her way or journey.  However, the Pilgrim in question is more often than not a very misguided soul, and yet the example stands in the sense of our travelling through the wilderness of life. In fact, in some of those Westerns the term “Pilgrim” is used quite frequently. 

In American literature and films, one gets the sense of the early Pioneers striking out into the unknown deserts, mountains and prairies in search of a “Promised Land” so to speak.  I have always felt that the case of the Native American Indian was never given fair treatment in 99% of those Westerns.  Indeed, in actuality, it appears to this rather ignorant writer on the far side of the great Atlantic Ocean that the poor Native American Indians got treated harshly, all too harshly by the so called enlightened early Pilgrims.  However, as I say, that is an uneducated view from afar.

Anyway, my point here is that the Spirituality of these Native Indians is very attractive and grounded in the cycles of the Seasons.  Theirs is a rich and pure spirituality with a wisdom all its own.  Again, over the years I have only got the vaguest glimpses of it in this or that rare film or in this or that rare novel.  Then, those of us in any way au fait with the Ecological or Green Movements in any of their incarnations will be very aware of the great speech of Chief Seattle which is quoted very frequently in such literature.



Lizard at the top of ruined church, Badolato

We are very much creatures of the earth, bound to the cycles of its movements about the great and sustaining Star called simply Sun.  As I type these few reflective words in the South of Italy the Sun is high, very warm and burning of the skin at some 32 degrees Centigrade.  There are no signs of the little lizards which come out along my back patio in some numbers in the calm of the less hot evenings.  As I sit and rejoice in this retreat time in the South far away from the colder Northern climes of Ireland, I am reminded here also of the closeness of humankind to the Seasons.  These are very much a peasant people here in the Mezzogiorno, a people who work slowly and surely to the patterns set down as paradigms by Nature.  These are a people in harmony with the world, just like the American Indian or like the Irish peasant, of whose origins I am proud to be.

It is so hard to have a spiritual sense in a large city.  Or as I remember reading somewhere once: it is hard to put down roots in a concrete jungle.  A lot of our cities, especially in the poorer quarters where human beings are forced to live shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball, one on top of another with very little “elbow room” as the great John Henry Cardinal Newman put it.  He was describing his freedom to research and his freedom to think for himself actually, but his words are lovely and indeed apt for our purposes here, are they not?  What little elbow room all those children have to be themselves in the modern concrete jungles of our cities.  This writer, as you have long since discovered, is a romantic and indeed a peasant – or countryman – at heart.  The words of a local woman, who is the landlady of small agriturismo lodgings, come to mind here.  Proudly she told me in her native language – “Sono Contadina” – “”I am a peasant.”  To her, I replied simply, “Anch’io, sono contadino nella sangue” – “I, too, am a peasant in the blood.”

To bring these few words to a conclusion, I will mention here a wonderful Irish novel that I am reading.  It is called That They May Face The Rising Sun, and it is written by one of the greatest twentieth century Irish novelists, the late great John McGahern.  This is a novel written in the simplest and easiest of styles with a flow that only closeness to nature could have begotten.  McGahern is of all too obvious obvious peasant roots.  He writes like an angel, inspired by the movements of the earth around our great Sun Star.  He writes with a consummate ease that can plumb the depths and scale the heights of the human heart and soul.  As any observer and lover of nature will know: everything in its province has its time and its season.  Just as surely as the sun goes down it will rise again tomorrow.  Just as surely as an old cow dies another calf will delight the on-looking eyes of a farmer’s child.  Just as surely as the storms and rains come the calm of the cloudless skies will return.  Those of us close to nature will realise that we, too, are part of that very same cycle.  We humans come and go.  No sooner has one poor soul ceased breathing on this earth of ours than another soul will be born into the bounty of the earth.

The sad thing is that it takes us a lifetime to learn the simplicities of life, the simplicities which our forefathers acquired ever so easily because they were so close to nature.  We have lost a lot in gaining such advancement in technology.  Not that I am decrying technology here as I use the Internet a lot and find it comforting and useful, and even sometimes distracting and even rewarding.  I am no Luddite.  My point is simple – we moderns have become so alienated from our true nature as part of the cycles of the Seasons.  We moderns have become alienated from our real Selves, what it means to be truly human in this wonderful, if at times painful, world.