Faith and fortune

"I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."
(Hermann Hesse)

I was playing Phil Ochs' haunting "There But For Fortune" this morning when today's date dawned on me. Folk singer, activist and unequivocal humanist Ochs wrote the song in 1963, fifty years ago. Thirteen years later, his disillusionment with humankind and his personal demons drove him to take his own life. I've always found it bleakly sad that a young man who defended universal human rights so passionately would perceive his own life so without value or salvation at the age of thirty six.
And today is the twelfth anniversary, for the want of a more fitting word, of "9/11". Ochs' words resound eerily across half a century:
"Show me the country, where the bombs had to fall;
show me the ruins of the buildings, once so tall,
and I'll show you a young land
with so many reasons why;
there but for fortune may go you and I."
More than a decade ago, the tallest of the tall crumbled and the most powerful nation on earth was brought to it's knees, in grief, despair, fear and faith. Yet this 11th September, as the new and gleaming World Trade Centre building points skywards once again, the United States and others debate the most reasonable response to the reports of gassed and burnt children in Syria.

My Mum used to say "There but for fortune", or sometimes "There but for the grace of God". She essentially meant that the misfortunes of others could so easily happen to us all: be thankful for the gift of life and it's blessings. I used to wonder whether the grace of God could be seen as fortune or favour; can faith and fortune ever overlap? 

I have an atheist friend who, year after year now, has demanded what God was doing as the planes hit the Twin Towers. He will no doubt be questioning the existence of a higher power today, as the terrible aftermath of chemical warfare seeps from the tea-time news. My response to him has at least always been constant. I believe that God created mankind and gave us the gifts of life, knowledge and willpower. Man has repeatedly chosen the ways of war, segregation and destruction. Man commits atrocities, not God. Man's use of knowledge and reason can not only limit the devastation of what we sweepingly deem "acts of God", but could limit the impact of future disasters. I mean no disrespect to anyone in saying again that if we all truly believed in a loving God, we could not take up arms against each other His name, regardless of whatever that name might be.

Faith is an acceptance of fortune, but not complacency. I honestly believe that faith opens doors that mankind can't even get a handle on. Today the incisive shard of light that is the One World Trade Centre rises from Ground Zero as the tallest building in the western hemisphere. It's a defiant beacon in the face of terrorism and natural disasters; many fortunes may be made and lost there. As I type this, New Yorkers are gathering in it's long shadow to commemorate the moment the first plane hit the Twin Towers. We rebuild beautifully and respectfully, as we debate, apparently endlessly, whether we should bomb and break elsewhere.
Whether you sympathise with politicians of any flavour or none, whether you are a fan of Barack Obama or not, their anxiety over Syria as fellow human beings is palpable on this day. We can prevaricate and protest and preach and we can pray. There but for fortune go you and I.

"We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts."
(Dean Koontz)

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat."

(William Shakespeare)

 

 

"There But For Fortune"  Phil Ochs

A sleepless dream

 "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true,

or is it something worse?"

(Bruce Springsteen)

"A Change Is Gonna Come"  Sam Cooke (1963)

 

 "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

(Dr Martin Luther King)

On this day, Wednesday 28th August, exactly fifty years ago, a soft cheeked and slightly portly black American thirties-something stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to address more than a quarter of a million people. A fervent and eloquent Baptist minister, he eventually veered off his prepared speech, encouraged or even heckled by his friend, renowned Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, to "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" As he improvised around his own vision of a united and just world, the fiery preacher in him came to the fore. With a single phrase, the minister from Atlanta, Georgia, joined the ranks of Jefferson and Lincoln and those whose words have helped to define modern America: "I have a dream today."

The rally was the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political or human rights rallies in the history of the United States. The march was organised by civil rights activists, labour groups and religious bodies, with the theme of jobs and freedom. Supportive of the innovations of the Kennedy administration, the march is widely credited with helping to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act the year after.

The Baptist minister was of course the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior. He had helped organise the rally, but his address to the masses at Washington and the watching world established him as one of the greatest natural orators in American history. Unfortunately, it also established his reputation as a radical, who would become the object of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's attentions for the remaining five years of his life.

The "Dream" speech is a masterpiece of rhetoric and poetry. King invoked the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation and the United States' Constitution. He alluded to both Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and William Shakespeare. The pastor in King referred poignantly to Psalm 30 and also quoted from the Book of Isaiah. King's speech has now been ranked the most important American speech of the 20th century by scholars of public address. It is as accessible, emotive and relevant today as in the long hot summer of 1963. Clearly, the power of the dream is still alive ; but does that mean little has changed?

Fifty years ago, King's words so moved my father that he copied out the full text, nearly twenty minutes long. I found the notebook in his study, long after Dad had passed away. When I myself was a fifteen year old Rebel Without a Clue, Dad encouraged me to properly read Dr King's speeches, particularly the Washington address. At the time, I was outraged that fascist groups marching through south London were being given police escort. My Dad explained that freedom has to be indivisible: you cannot have your own human rights at another's expense: my first real lesson in the intricate but simplistic truth of equality.

Today, a handsome and charismatic black man sits in the oval shaped office in the white mansion on the hill in Washington D.C. Now in his historic second term of office, President Barack Hussein Obama is married to the strong and beautiful great-granddaughter of African American slaves. In line with Dr King's own vision, Obama's daughters will study and socialise with girls and boys of all cultures and creeds. When I was fifteen, I dreamt this might happen but it still seemed improbable.

Yet the president struggles with his own Senate to establish healthcare and social protection for the disadvantaged of all colours. Inspite of Obama's extraordinary rise, the Senate's glass ceiling for African Americans still seems largely unbreakable. In 1963, there were no sitting African American senators in Congress; this year, briefly, there were two, for the first time in history. Incredibly, in Obama's united nation only three states have ever elected black senators.

In recent weeks, when an innocent black American youth was gunned down after being mistaken for a potential offender because of his colour, age and dress, Obama ruefully noted that the boy might have been him thirty years ago, or indeed one of his own offspring today.

I've reproduced some of the "Dream" speech here, lifting away direct references to places and events in America. The message remains undiluted in universality. The bloody reality of racial and cultural prejudice and genocide stalks through Egypt and Syria and across the globe today. Even in comparatively safe and liberal areas in the UK, such as my own Brighton, division between the haves and the have-nots is palpable and increasingly uncomfortable.

We have still have far to go to realise Dr King's dream. He told us that: "Faith is taking he first step, even when you can't see the whole staircase."  The reverence of his Washington speech today continues to lift people onto that first step. You've got to have a dream; if not, how you gonna make a dream come true?

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this cheque, a cheque that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children.You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character.
I have a dream today.I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual: "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

 

 

"How many years can a mountain exist
before it's washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist
before they're allowed to be free?
Yes and how many times can a man turn his head,
pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind."

(Robert Zimmerman)

 

"Blowin' in the Wind"  Peter, Paul and Mary (version)

 

 

Keep the earth below my feet

 

"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."
(G.K. Chesterton)

Due to my technical difficulties in recent weeks, I've had thoughts for a particular post flapping around in my full little head since the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost. I started thinking about our notions of heaven and earth and what store we might set by any separation or unity of the two.
The ascension of Jesus to heaven has always provided atheists and sceptics with massive heartburn. Bible critics point to the mythical cosmology of the New Testament in particular, citing the structural convenience of heaven above, earth as the middle ground and the depths of the underworld below; furthest removed from the celestial realm. Sceptics have also suggested that accounts of Jesus' ascension tidily discredited any possible ongoing claims of Jesus appearing within the growing Christian community. Yet the tradition of Jesus' ascension, professed in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, is certainly accepted and respected across the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches. The bodily ascension is seen as an obvious and unequivocal sign of Jesus' humanity and divinity, of his participation in our story and God's power and love.

Jesus refers to heaven and the Father there throughout his ministry, accepting his inevitable return and promising us the same rise. Sounds a bit too pie in the sky to be feasible? We wordy humans refer to heaven constantly as we respond to both the minutiae and more unusual stresses or pleasant surprises in our daily lives. It's very, very hot in Brighton at the moment, but far from drawing comparisons with any fiery pit down below (and I don't mean the Antipodes), Brightonians and tourists alike exclaim that this is "heavenly weather", "heaven on earth". My neighbour described her leafy back garden as "paradise" earlier.
 It seems most of us grow up with the notion that there is a heaven "up there": somewhere over the rainbow; even higher than the sky, beyond the sun, in another dimension; infinity and beyond. We can calculate and probe the centre of our earth; we can salvage from the ocean floor. We know how to make fire and usually how to put out flames. Yet no rocket can ever really touch the sky. "To infinity and beyond" may conjure up ethereal realms but nitty gritties such as maths and physics are always in the elusive mix. We can hazard a guess at what the Neanderthals preferred for midweek dinner, but we can't quite calculate the edges of the universe; where our world might end and another could begin.

I like the Pentecostal symbolism of Spirit enfolding air, water and fire: the rushing wind that heralds Spirit, the water of baptism and the tongues of flame that anoint and inspire the Apostles. I understand now that the fourth element, earth, is found in the Apostles themselves. Man is grounded and of earth itself. And it's essentially a wonderful place, unimagined and still misunderstood by us, for all our scientific and philosophical digging. Whether you subscribe to the Big Bang Theory, the Bigger Big Bang Theory, or believe in creation by a higher power, we did not make this earth which supports our vast ambitions alongside the most microscopic, ancient ecosystems. Of course there are inherent extremes of temperature and terrain across this planet, but so many of the world's crisis and problems are due to man's mismanagement and lack of safe-guarding.
People starve, not because of some vaguely discriminating natural law or the survival of the fittest. A huge proportion of the finest arable land is used to grow grain to feed an increased animal population to satisfy meat consumerism. In the United States alone, 175 million tons of cereals and vegetable protein, suitable for human consumption, is fed to livestock bound for just 28 million tons of animal protein, often in the form of "fast food".

I assure you this is not a vegetarian rant. In what we constantly refer to as developing countries, the use of land to create and maintain an artificial food chain has resulted in misery and famine for millions of our neighbours. One acre of land used for local cereal or vegetable production will respectively produce five and ten times more protein than one acre used for meat production for market elsewhere. In the case of crops such as soya, the probable increased protein yield is thirty times more.

The terrible human consequences of the shift of focus from food to feed were dramatically evident during the Ethiopian famine in 1984. Ethiopians starved in front of our TV cameras, but Ethiopia was harvesting a wealth of linseed and rapeseed for European livestock. We wept as the redoubtable Michael Buerk reported on famine and desolation on an epic, biblical scale. The region held by many to be the location of the Garden of Eden was described as "hell on earth".

Ordinary people responded with what was seen to be extraordinary kindness. A dishevelled potty-mouthed Oirish punk called Bob shouted, swore and sweated and celebrities suddenly found their own feet of clay could actually help kick political butts. The BBC and CBC footage from 1984 still makes me cry: as it did for so many other people, "Live Aid" changed me and the way I saw the world, man and God. I remember the concerts as though they were last week, not thirty years ago. Unfortunately, the famine in that region and others has proved endless. Charity surged and continues to flow but common sense and economic justice still don't amount to much for governments and the corporate world.
It's both a tragedy and a travesty that 80 percent of the earth's hungry children live in lands with food surpluses which are fed to animals bred for consumption by the affluent. It's a terrible irony that tens of thousands in the so-called First World die every year from diseases exacerbated by affluence: heart disease, strokes, diabetes and some cancers. Many years ago, a lovely old man in a loincloth and blanket pointed out that the earth has enough to sustain man's needs but not his greed; we nodded at Gandhi's wisdom and smiled at his naiveté.

On this glowing, fine day, I truly don't wish to put anyone off their barbecued beef or even their bean burger. Yet under the same unremitting blue sky, military experts warn today that Britain must "be prepared to go to war" in Syria to effectively end the conflict there and keep chemical weapons out of terrorist hands. The United Nations has already called the conflict in Syria the worst humanitarian conflict of the past twenty years, estimating 100,000 fatalities so far. Millions of Syrians have already fled or been displaced and hunger and disease breed in their tracks.

Man should never be prepared to go to war: it's a chillingly pointless statement when you strip away ideologies and strategies, flags and uniforms. We tend our gardens and man our borders for personal preservation. The ancient indigenous populations knew that we belong to the earth rather than vice versa; we are indeed borrowing it for and from our children. Herbaceous borders are lovely but boundaries and division confine as well as protect. It riles me particularly when people say:"You guys believe in God - why doesn't he stop the war?" God doesn't start war; if all men really believed in God, heaven and hell and themselves, they wouldn't start it either.

It's seen as human nature to seek comfort, provenance and heaven on earth. Walking across the Level here in Brighton, I see folk seeking enlightenment or oneness with the universe through various cultivated substances. The Sanskrit word "nirvana" literally means "blown out", as in a candle, referring to the stillness and peace of mind which remain after desires, dissentions and delusion are extinguished. But you can't drink your way to Spirit, or smoke your way to heaven.
I do believe that we encounter people, places and events that help us on our individual paths to heaven. If we're fortunate, we recognise our soul mates along the way. If we're blessed, our soul mates recognise us back. There's much beauty to be found on earth and much more to aspire to beyond. I believe we should embrace and cherish this world rather than reaching to pull the next down to us, like a fruit-laden branch to be plundered and muddied.
 

"On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it."
(Jules Renard)

 

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in."
(C.S. Lewis)

 

www.cafod.org.uk
www.careinternational.org.uk
www.doctorswithoutborders.org
www.oxfam.org.uk
www.savethechildren.org.uk
www.syriarelief.org.uk
www.unicef.org.uk
www.wateraid.org
www.worldvision.org.uk
 
 

"Below My Feet"  Mumford and Sons

"Keep the earth below my feet;
For all my sweat, my blood runs weak.
Let me learn from where I have been;
Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn."
(Dwane, Lovett, Mumford, Marshall)

 

 

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."
(Kahlil Gibran)

 

 

The man and the supermoon

"Everyone is a moon, and has a darker side which he never shows to anybody." 

(Mark Twain)

"Man and the Moon", by Tina Palmer

"Moon River" 

(Johnny Mercer) 

Moon river wider than a mile,

I'm crossing you in style someday. 

You dream-maker, you heart-breaker, 

Wherever you're going I'm going your way. 

Two drifters off to see the world; 

There's such a lot of world to see. 

We're after the same rainbow's end, 

Waiting round the bend: 

My huckleberry friend, 

Moon river and me.

"Moon River" Audrey Hepburn ("Breakfast at Tiffany's")

Having finished work very late at the beginning of the week, I wandered off down the High Street in the wee hours, looking for the moon. It seems there are a lot of folk meandering up and down the Lewes Road at 1.30 in the morning, searching for the moon and other things. The moon, perhaps sensibly, was hiding behind a blanket of mist. From my own little street, this larger and brighter than usual moon was barely evident. I live in a low part of Brighton - probably in more ways than one - with steep banks of housing and buildings on either side. A full perigee moon always appears much lower on the horizon: it took three days until the June "supermoon" was on the wane before I could get a photo of it actually over the rooftops in my road.
Some stunning photos from across the world have been taken of the supermoon. I've posted some of them here; the last two are from Brighton; the final and by far the least impressive one is from my doorstep. I was determined to capture a bit of the supermoon: coinciding with the summer solstice and the full moon of St John's night, it seemed like a hopeful beacon. When I was little, my Dad of course told me there was a man in the moon who would know if I wasn't sleeping. Years later, I learned that The Man in the Moon is actually a traditional phenomenon as well as being a sentimental childhood essential.
I hadn't realised that for centuries across the northern hemisphere, the dark areas of the moon, the seas, in contrast to the lighter highlands have been perceived as human features. Maybe we need the moon to show a friendly face: earth's closest neighbour in space, it's comparatively large for a natural satellite orbiting a planet of this size. The moon is the brightest sight in our heavens after the sun, although in fact it's surface is dark, like coal and with a similar reflectance.
Old European tradition tells of a man being banished to the moon for some misdemeanor: Christian folklore depicts him as the man caught gathering sticks for firewood on the sabbath. Another Christian legend depicts him as Cain, doomed to circle the earth in exile, as depicted in Dante's "Inferno". In Norse mythology, the moon was a man in a horse drawn carriage, passing across the sky to escape a great wolf; in the Germanic and Roman cultures, he was also a thief of various descriptions, stealing away over the earth before daybreak.
In some eastern cultures, and particularly in Chinese tradition, the inhabitant of the moon was sometimes thought to be a stranded goddess, with only "moon rabbits" for company. Even today, Chinese children are shown how the features of the moon may represent the moon rabbit, rather than a man's face.
A prominent feature in our night skies and with a regularity of phases, the moon has gained a comforting familiarity since ancient times. The moon's orbit and gravity draw the ocean tides and the length of our days. Scientists believe the moon was formed shortly after the earth, from the fallout of debris and matter after we collided with something the size of Mars. The moon remains the only other celestial body that man has set foot on. Since the United States' Apollo 17 mission in 1972, only unmanned crafts have visited the moon, some confirming the discovery of lunar water ice - the moon's surface can't support liquid water. The Outer Space Treaty declares the moon to be free to all nations to explore for peaceful purposes; a sentiment that perhaps isn't honoured here on earth.
The moon has had a huge influence on folklore, language and the arts. Initially pushed into learning to play the piano when I was little, the first piece of "proper" piano music I grew to love was Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune". As a fan of Mark Twain, I love the imagery of the song "Moon River" with even a "huckleberry friend". The song features in one of my favourite films, "Breakfast at Tiffany's", with Audrey Hepburn at her most adorable: half Irish and half Belgian and a bit kooky; what's not to like? I love the innocence of Hepburn's film version of the song, although Andy William's velvety voice was a perfect match to the poem and the melody. (I'd recommend looking up the film if you're not familiar with it, or have forgotten how magical it is).
The regular and distinct phases of the moon have made it a convenient and fascinating timepiece throughout history. The waxing and waning of the moon formed the basis of many of the most ancient calendars. The lunar cycle is approximately thirty days long and the English word for "month" and it's cognates in other Germanic languages originate from "the moon"; Germanic cultures relied on lunar calendars before any solar one. The oldest depiction of the moon is thought to be a rock carving at Knowth in Ireland, some five thousand years old.In some ancient cultures, the moon was personified as a deity or supernatural entity. It has a long association with hopefulness and luck but also with emotions, irrationality and even insanity. The word "lunacy" obviously derives from the Latin name for the moon; even Aristotle, who wasn't short on marbles himself, believed the water component of the human brain must be affected by the moon's tidal power. Today, it's understood that the moon's gravity is too slight to affect an individual's brain function. Tales of increased accidents, homicides, suicides and psychiatric admissions at full moon persist but with little or no consistently supportied evidence. Certainly the euphoria and despair ill-met by moonlight on the Lewes Road most nights owe more to the influences and addictions of this world than the orbit of any satellite.
The full moon has always been emotive for me because it is simply beautiful, as distant and mysterious as it is predictable and symmetrical. My mother used to have me make a wish on the full moon, always starting "Dear God"; wishes, prayers all headed in the same direction. She also told me to turn coins over in my pocket at the new moon for prosperity. Walking down the main road in the first hours of the new day, I couldn't see the big moon for clouds and houses, but I did find the baby moon of a ten pence piece twinkling on the damp pavement.
The moon is a benign companion, to children, drunks, dreamers and doers. It's constancy and luminosity assuage childhood nightmares and adult loneliness. The magic of the night is part romance and part uncertainty and moonlight and moon-shadow will paint pictures that the day cannot sustain. As with everything serenely beautiful, it has an inexorable power, enough to pull the oceans from one shore to another. James Joyce spoke of the moon's "inscrutable tranquility". The same moon that appears to keep pace with me on my walks home at night along the Level will be lingering along with lovers by the Seine or guiding a lost backpacker somewhere unpronounceable. Even when we see the moon wane, it's size and shape remain perfectly the same. Every night, the moon is, generally, where we left it, just like our dreams.

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." 

(Buddha)

Starlings across the full moon at Brighton pier...

... and my own less spectacular photo of the this week's supermoon over my street. 

"Clair de Lune" ("Moonlight")  Claude Debussy

"Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.

Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections." 

(Tahereh Mafi)

Boys will be men

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

(Mark Twain)

Yesterday was Father's Day. With every passing year, my Dad becomes ever more the yardstick that any man who should come into my life in the future will be held up to. With every passing year, he has also become the mirror I hold up to myself.

Father's Day was originally inaugurated in the United States early in the twentieth century to compliment the celebration of Mother's Day. Most probably founded in 1910 in Washington by Ms Sonora Smart-Dodd, a member of the Christian Women's Temperance Society. She had told her pastor that fathers should be honoured as well as mothers; her own father, a veteran of the Civil War, was a widower who had raised his six children on his own. 

The first celebration was on 19th June that year; Sonora's father's birthday was a couple of weeks earlier. Initially, public acknowledgement was vague and variable; Americans resisted the innovation for some decades, viewing it as a mainly commercial venture. Finally, after two failed lobbies, President Johnson issued a presidential proclamation in 1966, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. As recently as 1972 , Richard Nixon passed it into law as a public holiday in the States, finally following the annual celebration of motherhood.

On a recent visit to the doctor's surgery, I realised I had interrupted quite a busy antenatal clinic. I'm accustomed to seeing very young mums-to-be in Brighton; often with one or two other small children already attached. In a city with such severe housing problems, seasonal employment and a burgeoning younger population, you often note the pattern of four year gaps between pregnancies. A "career mother" may necessarily escape the often demoralising job-search and fortnightly interrogations at the local benefits office. I asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to do when she left school and this bright and confident child promptly told me she wanted to have her first child at eighteen and a sister or brother at around twenty two. But I readily admit that I know very young and very devoted single mums, who love their kids obviously and unconditionally and who appreciate that parenting is both as tough and as good as it gets. But what of the young fathers?

Sat opposite me at the surgery was a young, skinny boy of seventeen, flanked by his seriously pregnant girlfriend, two years older, and by her mother; seemingly three feet taller and broader than both of them. His trainer laces were undone and his coach's cap was back to front. Both of these affectations appeared to be deliberate, unlike his presence at a prenatal clinic. He looked terrified. 

The granny-to-be glared at me as I made conversation with the couple. I asked him if he was looking forward to being a dad: he shrugged and muttered that he didn't even know his own father yet. This nearly broke my heart but earned him a threatening scowl from uber-gran. She told me being a father was a "piece of p***"; that her own kids had three different dads and she'd managed without hearing from any of them. The lad shuddered, as if he too was wondering if she'd disposed of a stream of baby-fathers. 

I disagree with her utterly: it's true that a boy can easily father a child, but it takes a man to become a dad. We pressurise our boys to man-up even though this often encourages eternal laddishness. We smile indulgently as little Mikey struts around after his big brothers with his water-gun in the park but tut unsympathetically and from a distance when an older but not wiser Mick confuses assertion and aggression at the football pitch. Is it any wonder that many teenage boys prefer to steer clear of the minefield of open emotions, theirs or anyone else's? 

While society may not actively encourage boys to be promiscuous, the sowing of the male oats can still be seen as an unspoken rite of passage. Determinedly chaste at twenty five, I was considered a scared, silly or at worst frigid female. One of my dearest friends around then, a confident and funny gay man who was a virgin in his early twenties, was simply seen as some kind of freak. Pressurised into sex with his first boyfriend, he was diagnosed with AIDS at the age of twenty three.

Traditionally, little girls are not dissuaded from developing nurturing skills from an early age. Generally, I don't believe we wholeheartedly prepare little boys to expect and embrace fatherhood: toys, games and the media are still very gender-centric. 

The lad at the surgery told me he'd not really ever thought about being a father and had known his girlfriend three months before she fell pregnant. He looked as though he was being punished, although the girl and her mother professed themselves to be over-joyed at the news. His possible mum-in-law-to-be nudged him and said at least he was "in working order" and that the hardest part was over for him. I wanted to tell him that actually being a father could be the biggest, bravest, brightest part of him. I wish I had: I wish someone had told him long before he was pulled into an antenatal clinic with his laces undone and feeling that his future was all stitched up against him.

"By the time a man realises that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."

(Charles Wadsworth)

 

"For a New Father"

(John O'Donohue)

As the shimmer of dawn transforms the night

Into a blush of color futured with delight,

The eyes of your new child awaken in you

A brightness that surprises your life.

Since the first stir of its secret becoming,

The echo of your child has lived inside you,

Strengthening through all its night of forming

Into a sure pulse of fostering music.

How quietly and gently that embryo-echo

Can womb in the bone of a man

And foster across the distance to the mother

A shadow-shelter around this fragile voyage.

Now as you behold your infant, you know

That this child has come from you and to you;

You feel the full force of a father' desire

To protect and shelter.

Perhaps for the first time

There awakens in you

A sense of your own mortality.

May your heart rest in the grace of the gift

And you sense how you have been called

Inside the dream of this new destiny.

May you be gentle and loving,

Clear and sure.

May you trust in the unseen providence

That has chosen you all to be a family.

May you stand sure on your ground

And know that every grace you need

Will unfold before you

Like all the mornings of your life

"This is my most important role. If I fail at this, I fail at everything."

(Actor Mark Wahlberg)

"Father and Son" Ronan Keating and Yusuf Islam

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was."
(Anne Sexton)

King's speeches

"Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase."

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

How many things that made you cry when you were just sixteen, with joy, anger or sadness or from sheer movement of the spirit, would make you weep like a child again today? 
Due to snow, sickness and work, I'm quite behind with my posts. I sincerely and particularly wanted to write something for "Martin Luther King Day", traditionally observed as a holiday across the United States on the third Monday in January since 1986. On 15th January this year, Dr Martin Luther King Jr would have been eighty four years old; instead, on 4th April, the world will remember that it is forty five years since his assassination. This year, MLK Day fell on 21st January, coinciding with the inaugural celebration of U.S. President Barack Obama's second term of office.
I dithered about posting this on Monday: I appreciate that some of my friends from the United States are not supportive of Obama's economic policies; and many Catholics are affronted by his views on homosexual partnerships and women's rights to choose abortion. Personally, I found it both pertinent and poignant that the first ever black president of the United States was being sworn in for an historic second term, with bibles belonging to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. I was further moved that Obama deferred to King in his inaugural speech, that all men must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalised, the victims of prejudice:
"Not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes; tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice. We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."
When I was fifteen, a few months before my father died, I was sporting two long plaits, an array of anti-racism and anti-this-and-that badges and a permanent petulant frown. My Mum asked Dad to talk some sense into me. She was worried that I was drawing attention to myself by going on rallies and antagonising local fascist groups (I'm sure the National Front in south London found my ribboned plaits particularly irritating). She wanted me to steer clear of anything political, be a bit more "girly" and throw myself more wholeheartedly into the school dances that the nuns organised for their young ladies with the boys from the local Catholic boys' academy. My Dad was a very wise man: instead of talking to me about anything calling itself "politics", he spoke to me about natural equality, justice and goodness. He told me that the late Senator Bobby Kennedy and Dr King were two men with very different backgrounds and voices who shared the same spirit and vision. This became an essence of equality for me.
Baptist minister King became one of the world's most powerful natural orators. My Dad had the transcripts of two of King's most quoted and iconic speeches; "I Have a Dream", from 1963, and the sadly prophetic "Mountain-top" speech, given the day before his death in 1968. He told me to read them and try to understand that real justice had more to do with gentleness and faith than with aggressive sloganeering and political clout. They made me cry. They didn't stop me attending angst-ridden rallies, shouting at the fascist groups in Lewisham High Street (before running away) or being needlessly uppity with the local police, who were only ever caught in the middle. But they touched me in a far deeper and more lasting way than any teenage-targeted rhetoric or subsequent trendy bandwagon cause.
After hearing Obama's own emotive yet punchy inaugural speech on Monday, I decided to listen to King's speeches again, now with the (sometimes dubious) benefit of You Tube. After all these years, the same words made me cry again. Some might say I haven't grown up much: I would say my finest dreams, like those of my father, haven't aged.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." 

"I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear." 

"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.” 

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." 

"I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"Only in the darkness can you see the stars." 

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." 

"It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart."

"A man who won't die for something is not fit

to live." 

"I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls... 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character... I have a dream today."

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

" I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free / One"  The LighthouseFamily

The Power of Love

"Tell me, what's Love?" said Youth, one day, 

To drooping Age, who crossed his way, 

"It is a sunny hour of play, 

For which repentance dear doth pay, 

Repentance! Repentance! 

And this is Love, as wise men say."

(St Thomas More)

The American critic George Jean Nathan said that: "Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry"; there is of course a fine line between appreciation and criticism. I went for an early morning walk today and decide to get a cup of tea along the bleary-eyed seafront. The very disgruntled and shuffly woman serving was largely on her mobile 'phone, berating her partner to one girlfriend after another. His crime? He'd bought her beauty treatments for Christmas. "Is he having a laugh or what?? I'll give him ******* luxury spas mate!" She was clearly insulted. As one of the many who buys her own Nivea from the supermarket (and, I have to say, makes far better tea), I wanted to tell her that a smile and a look of appreciation or even interest would serve her far better than any day at the spa.
The day after Boxing Day, I came back to Brighton to work and was hurrying along very absent mindedly when I passed a woman pushing her empty buggy. Her very little boy was stomping along beside her. He was wearing a Santa hat and trying to keep it off his eyes. I turned back to smile at him and he promptly told me it had been his birthday on Christmas Day, the same day as Jesus' birthday.
"Oh?"
"But he's a lot older than me. I'm four."
"Mmm, how old do you think He is?"
"Don't know. Older than Dad..."
His mum started giggling as he burbled away.
"And my Dad's very old. But Mum is older..."
I looked at her properly and she might have been all of thirty-five on a bad day.
"Mum's so old that Dad has to buy her special cream for her face..."
His Mum gave me the most beautiful smile and whispered:"Only Avon stuff. But he likes me to have it. Not sure it's working!"
I wanted to tell her that whatever it was, it was clearly "working" for all of them.

I admit that I cry at Christmas commercials; only the really good ones, mind. Over the past couple of years, John Lewis seems to have hacked into my hormonal hard drive. This year's commercial, with the snowman determined to provide his snow-woman with gloves, scarf and a hat, has made me wipe my eyes with mince-pie fingers several times. Of course, the lovely matching woollens could only be for decoration - she's a snow-woman for pity's sake - and might well add to an eventual demise by meltdown. But the production and the sentiment are beautiful. Much as I love Gabrielle Aplin's version of "The Power of Love", I wanted to include the original, glorious song by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, cheesy and kitsch nativity video and all.
The song still sounds magical to me, combining all the secular and spiritual energies of love. Singer and composer Holly Johnson, himself no stranger to controversy, would later say that: "I always felt like "The Power of Love" was the record that would save me in this life," Written at the height of the 1980s' AIDS crisis in the UK, the song became something of a bonding anthem for anyone affected or moved by the epidemic, later lending it's name to a U.S. based charity, working to bring an end to HIV / AIDS in Africa. Of course, the charity is still very much in evidence today; the virus in Africa is still rampant and merciless, as written elsewhere in this blog.
Love really is the greatest gift of all, whether it's in a jar of face-cream, a life saving serum, or just a smile.

www.poweroflove.org

That John Lewis commercial...

....and the wonderful, original "Power of Love", by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

"I'll protect you from the hooded claw,

Keep the vampires from your door; 

I'm so in love with you, 

Purge the soul,

Make love your goal.

Dreams are like angels,

They keep bad at bay:

Love is the light 

Scaring darkness away" 

(Holly Johnson)

"Everything has it's beauty, but not everyone sees it.
They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom."

(Confucius)