Thursday 18 June 2015

Hope gives you wings

 
 

"They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."
(
Tom Bodett)
 
 
What is Hope?
As a word, we scatter it like seed throughout our everyday conversations; we hope it won't rain, we hope to get there by two, we hope England will beat Slovenia, we hope you feel better, hope to hear from you soon. Yet this benign four letter word, so handy and familiar, has such huge connotations.
Hope is a word of wonderment, desire and longing, chance and miracles. A little word of really epic, Biblical proportions. It fuels our dreams, it holds Love's hand; life partners with Trust, they sit like a gentle mantle around the broad shoulders of Faith itself.
Heady stuff, this Hope. I've always loved Emily Dickinson's poem " Hope Is The Thing With Feathers": my association of Hope with angels, flight and rescue I suppose. Like many, I feel comforted when a white feather flutters towards me; a message of goodwill and encouragement from the heavens. Although in this part of Brighton, perhaps I should be more wary of flying feathers and the well-being of my feathered friends, Jonathan Seagull and his somewhat hooligan companions.
In a week when one of my neighbours has tried to do something unspeakable to Jonathan, the bird's hope and faith in general and in me in particular feels humbling. He was back in the comparative safety of my garden within an hour of the shameful incident,  around my feet and within spitting distance of the cat. I hope my neighbour realises that Jonathan is indeed a fine specimen of a species protected by the law; I hope Jonathan doesn't rely on that intelligence.
Hope is indeed the birds chirping in my garden each dawn and dusk, possibly recognising that the strange dweller of a place bedecked with lanterns, chimes and Buddhas is probably good for a digestive biscuit or two. Hope is my own persistent watering of what a friend described as a marooned twiglet until it became a fuchsia once more. Most essentially, Hope is that fuchsia.
Mankind is all hopefulness. We have built our society on Hope. Victor Hugo noted that our future is made up of today's hopes. And indeed we live our lives in the hope of becoming someone's memory.
Hope really does "spring eternal". Like Faith, it is naturally occurring; as essential to the spirit as nourishment is to the human body. Yet it's evolution can't be tamed or mapped by our sciences; we cant reproduce it in a test-tube. The unsung, extra-sensory gift; it's the Desert Island Discs luxury that we all have as standard/
A few years ago, I toyed with the idea of a bright tattoo. I wondered about a Celtic cross on my upper arm, but my sister's reminder that I've inherited sturdy Celtic limbs chastened me that I might resemble a merchant seaman. The only other design I was taken by was a pair of angel-wings between my shoulder blades. To me, they signified optimism and nurturing, being both protected and protective. Finally, friends convinced me I could hold on to my dreams without looking like a reject from The Only Way Is The A27.
Far away from the angels, I often hear folk hoping for darker things than a football score or a lottery win. They "hope" that others will get what they deserve, or come undone; terminal illness is often a preferred option. Can something as unsullied and beautiful as Hope really become hitched to a curse?
Hope is universal. Like Freedom, it is not divisible; you cannot have it at someone else's expense. I'm certain that Slovenians were praying just as fervently for an extra goal against England a few days ago; Hope cheers on both sides of what is, truthfully, only ever a Beautiful Game, favouring only skill and recognising fortune.
I'm equally sure that my seagull-hating neighbours hope I will pack up and move and take my feathered friends, chimes and lanterns with me. By return, I hope they'll leave me and Jonathan in peace. Hope is not partisan. And war, where Hope flourishes as battlefield flowers and kindles homefires - how can Hope ever be available to our enemies? The neutrality of Hope should be comforting: Hope didn't want conflict in the first place.
If I can find some inexpensive, vegetarian-friendly angel-wings in Brighton, I hope to wear them to our Pride festival this summer. Meanwhile, the white quill feather I found on my doorstep at the weekend is now propped in one of my garden pots. I've checked that it isn't one of Jonathan's. He's already given it a beady eye. I hope he doesn't mind.
 
 
 
 
"Hope Is The Thing With Feathers"
(Emily Dickinson) 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
 
 
 
"Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened."
(
Charles H. Spurgeon)
 
"The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveller than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination."
(
Marion Zimmer Bradley)
 
"Hope is a waking dream."
(Aristotle) 
 
 )
"Not About Angels"  Birdy

Sunday 11 January 2015

Resolution and Remembrance


"Auld Lang Syne". Mairie Campbell (version) 
 
 
"Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future."
(Fulton Outsole)

"I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done."
(Lucille Ball)

"At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent."
(Barbara Bush)

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne;
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for the sake of auld lang syne."
(Robert Burns - adapted)
 
My mother said that there were always four things you could never get back in life; the harsh word after it was spoken, the stone after it was thrown, the occasion after it was missed, the time after it was lost. We set our lives to the ticking of clocks and the buzzing of alarms, dashing from one scrawled page entry to another. We tie ourselves into appointments and routines to make the most of the time we may have, then mourn the lack of time we've left ourselves simply To Be.
At New Year, we celebrate the opportunity to do all the things we've been meaning to do but  never found the time for. We immediately make lists, physically or mentally, and commit a whole new calendar to appointments and events. Yet we also encourage ourselves to look to times past; to reminisce and mourn. Memories, remembrance; this is how we mortals hold on to people, animals, places and events. It's how we hold on to ourselves in the passage of time.
I wasn't unduly surprised when a friend told me that the blog and I had missed New Year, even before the twelve days of Christmas 2014 were over. We pin our hopes and dreams on the big clock striking midnight; we link arms with inebriated strangers to call to mind sadly missed loved ones and opportunities. Then the first day of January stumbles into the second day, slips into the third and beyond... The truth is that this will be a "new" year until we embark on the next one, God willing. It's a fair assumption, based on personal experience, that the majority of resolutions earnestly embarked on ten days ago will be abandoned within weeks. Is it any less commendable if we restart the diet, finish the painting, join the gym or begin the Mandarin conversation course in May?
Mankind has not equipped itself well so far this new year: the news stories attest to revenge and aggression rather than remembrance and resolution. In the blink of an eye, the squeeze of a trigger, those who were so recently clearing away over-priced wrapping paper and cheap tinsel and vowing to give up smoking after that last packet are gone. Whoever they are, whatever they have done, their names may indeed be brought to mind for those who remain to link arms at midnight at the end of this year. And so it continues; until, one day, it stops.
All our days are numbered; the longest life may still be too short if it's heavy on regrets. I have learned at least one lesson in recent years; that time can scar as well as heal when it's mishandled. This year, I've resisted the urge to comfort myself with a list of resolutions that may become a testament of regrets. Instead, I've decided that, whatever I achieve or fail to do, getting through this year must be sweeter if I try to move forward with Grace, Grit and Gratitude in equal measure.
Instead of New Year's resolutions, I've included here some little guidelines to living well, applicable regardless of how old the year is, or indeed how old we are. I've also included a favourite version of "Auld Lang Syne", even though New Year's Eve really is old-long-since; possibly not that surprising, considering my Robbie Burns crush. Burns didn't intend to restrict his iconic anthem to one day of the year. Across the globe, it's sung on birthdays and anniversaries, at funerals and reunions. I often find myself humming it in my local Poundland (they're used to me). Which is just grand, because resolution and remembrance, like friendship and kindness, are for life, not just New Year x
 
 

;
 
 
 ("One Day Like This"  Elbow, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and choir Chantage)
 
"Drinking in the morning sun,
Blinking in the morning sun;
Shaking off a heavy one,
 Heavy like a loaded gun.
What made me behave that way,
Using words I never say?
I can only think it must be love:
Oh anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day.
 So throw those curtains wide;
One day like this a year will see me right."
(Garvey, Jupp, Potter, Potter and Turner)

 

Sunday 4 January 2015

It's a Cracker: in search of Comfort and Joy


"Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring, happy bells, across the snow.
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true."
(Alfred Tennyson)
 
 I had already prepared this and another fairly light-hearted post for the New Year before events beyond Gigionsea shocked and saddened the world. Planes drop from the heavens and people continue to take up arms against each other; disease and discontent find seemingly endless ways to hide and thrive and re-invent in the dark recesses of fear and deprivation. The news through the yuletide period into the New Year has been bleak. I held onto my posts like leftover crackers, not wanting to be trite or uncaring.
Yet the truth of it is that terrible things really do happen everyday to good, ordinary people. There really are ''natural disasters''; the progression of technology is ultimately powerless against the might of the elements or the repeated lessons of human failing. If we have evolved as a species with our Googling of the best ''friendly bacteria'', we must accept that the tiniest, most insignificant-seeming microbe might grow and mutate and find alien ways to attack us.
Through it all, life remains essentially an unbidden gift and . Although I have my own boundaries, incidents and situations I would never make light of or joke about, I also respect the resilience of the smile. As I unashamedly believe in God, I believe that we can find the laughter of God everywhere; as often as we can invoke His tears.
We will all die: this is a certainty but no less distressing and even painful for that. Some of us will die young, some old. Some of us will die in planes, on the road, at the hands of another, in an anodyne hospital bed. The truest tragedy is not to have lived up to that moment; not to have said that ''hello'' as much as any goodbye. Not to have made that call, seen that sunset, painted that picture, held that person. Each time we witness the inevitability of our mortality or the indiscriminate lottery of fortune, surely we must find life all the more precious? Death is indeed inevitable but the giving and living of life are unconditionally wondrous, whatever church you will or won't subscribe along the way.
Many of the traditional excesses that found their way onto our Christmas dinner tables or hung around our bedraggled front rooms on New Year's Eve are rooted in the debauched and often cruel carnival that the Romans celebrated at Saturnalia. Depending on your viewpoint, Saturn was the resident god of seeds and harvest, liberation and wealth, waging war and death, Saturn's festival would run in the Julian calendar from around 17th December for more than a week. Animal and even human life was sacrificed, fires were lit, huge feasts consumed, lavish gifts and displays of affection and lust were exchanged. Within the continual partying, drunkenness, extravagant costumes, ribald humour and wild sex were to be expected. It was probably not unlike Brighton's West Street at dusk in the run-up to Christmas Eve.
At it's most innocuous, Saturnalia was also a festival of lights leading up to the winter solstice, with an abundance of candles lighting the quest for knowledge and truth. The advent of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman empire with the feast of the "Sol Invictus"; the Unconquerable Sun...
Our baubled Christmas trees and bumbled kisses under the mistletoe are steeped in Roman pagan beliefs. My own tree, Noel, now in his ninth year, is currently flickering outside my back door. His outdoor lights may be from B & Q, but his triangular shape and evergreen presence are rooted (sorry) in the conversion of pagan festivity to Christian celebration, with symbolism evolving to illustrate the holy trinity and eternal life.
I wondered where Christmas crackers originated from and was surprised to learn they only surfaced in 1840s Europe. One Tom Smith, a noted purveyor of confectionery, created larger "bon-bons", wrapped with a twist at the end. He inserted little love messages and tokens into the bon-bons; then small gifts, mottos and jokes. He latter added the banger mechanism to emulate the crackle and pop of  yuletide fires and fireworks. The revised name "cracker" is onomatopoeic. The inclusion of paper crowns takes us right back to Romans; even the servants would play at being kings for a few days.
Finding absurdity and joy in the nitty-gritty minutiae and harshest realities of life truly is as ancient as looking to the stars for miracles.
 
"Semper Saturnalia agunt. (They're always celebrating Saturnalia.)"
(Petronius)
 
"Non semper Saturnalia erunt. (It won't always be Saturnalia-time.)"
(Seneca)



"In Dulce Jubilo"  Mike Oldfield
 
 
(Photo: Gigi, album)
Noel the Christmas Tree; Comfort and Joy, from my home to yours x