“A prophet frees us
from ourselves, a teacher makes our hearts believe things we already knew"
For Richard Rohr,
Stephen Polokis, Laurence Brassill,
Paul Sacco and Bono
for bringing me my Irish Heart.
Jeremiah 1:5
… in the name of love.”
Don Guissani said that we can only learn through experience. Originally called Diary of a Novice Spiritual Searcher this
blog is a distilation of all that I have learned articulated through
eclectic streams such as Alcoholics Anonymous and the Catholic
Charasmatic Renewal.
During a recent seperation from my wife of I was overwhelmed by the sense that I was starting again, from the very beginning, Paul of Tharsis talks of stumbling blocks that bring us on in the spiritual life.
Like Descartes we have to start from what we know. However in this post modern era, often living in localities that Feurstien called exploded we must be realistic. We must start from the basis of genuine human need as generally born out by the family, looking for mechanisms that genuinly help us to transcend ourselves.
To this end I did the twelve steps, returning to my family in the knowledge that my life was no longer about me.
As my wife will testify I am still self centred but there has been immesurable improvement. I undertook Bill Wilson's simple program and, waking up one morning at my best friend's family home realised in the pit of my stomach that my life was no longer about me. It never had been. With all I had been doing so far I had been missing the point. My centre was no longer in me, but in the higher power I had searched for my whole life: identical with the needs of my fellow human beings. I understood that this is where most occidental religous movements were going wrong: they are looking to satisfy self in the form of their own group.I realised that the them and us mentality is the most dangerous form of delienation on Earth and despite causing all the wars that have evr afflicted man it has never been comprehensively rejected.
I had had what Bill Wilson describes as a spiritual experience and now longed for ways in which to further it and help others. And so I write..
In the seventies it was already clear to Jean Francois Lyotard that Post Modernism was the, “Absence of Metanarrative.” The Quebecan was writing in the late Seventies. By then it was apparent that the moralist, juridical smokescreen that had passed for Christianity for so long had vapourised when we actually realised we had bodies in the previous decade. What is it about somatic sin that Christianity finds so hard to deal with? In any case Lyotard was correct - without the overarching themes that Abrahamic religion provided we soon began to look for victims and scapegoats for the pervasive, sickening nausea that Sartre identified. The prison chaplain and prophetic writer Richard Rohr speaks to the victim complex. In modern existential currency by virtue of the fact that he or she is the victim the victim has undisputed power and control. For example -
During a recent seperation from my wife of I was overwhelmed by the sense that I was starting again, from the very beginning, Paul of Tharsis talks of stumbling blocks that bring us on in the spiritual life.
Like Descartes we have to start from what we know. However in this post modern era, often living in localities that Feurstien called exploded we must be realistic. We must start from the basis of genuine human need as generally born out by the family, looking for mechanisms that genuinly help us to transcend ourselves.
To this end I did the twelve steps, returning to my family in the knowledge that my life was no longer about me.
As my wife will testify I am still self centred but there has been immesurable improvement. I undertook Bill Wilson's simple program and, waking up one morning at my best friend's family home realised in the pit of my stomach that my life was no longer about me. It never had been. With all I had been doing so far I had been missing the point. My centre was no longer in me, but in the higher power I had searched for my whole life: identical with the needs of my fellow human beings. I understood that this is where most occidental religous movements were going wrong: they are looking to satisfy self in the form of their own group.I realised that the them and us mentality is the most dangerous form of delienation on Earth and despite causing all the wars that have evr afflicted man it has never been comprehensively rejected.
I had had what Bill Wilson describes as a spiritual experience and now longed for ways in which to further it and help others. And so I write..
In the seventies it was already clear to Jean Francois Lyotard that Post Modernism was the, “Absence of Metanarrative.” The Quebecan was writing in the late Seventies. By then it was apparent that the moralist, juridical smokescreen that had passed for Christianity for so long had vapourised when we actually realised we had bodies in the previous decade. What is it about somatic sin that Christianity finds so hard to deal with? In any case Lyotard was correct - without the overarching themes that Abrahamic religion provided we soon began to look for victims and scapegoats for the pervasive, sickening nausea that Sartre identified. The prison chaplain and prophetic writer Richard Rohr speaks to the victim complex. In modern existential currency by virtue of the fact that he or she is the victim the victim has undisputed power and control. For example -
“You are a man, I am a woman, I therefore have power over
you.”
“I am an African America, you are a white American, I therefore have power over you.”
“I am Palestinian, you are Israeli, I therefore have power over you.”
“I am Jewish, you are German, I therefore have power over you.”
Helpless in such a meaningless, listless age we are condemned to what the believing German Sociologist Weber called, “A polar age of icy darkness” in which beaurocracy dictates the terms by which we live and the authorities determine the lives of the poor according to feeble narratives that are ever more radically divorced from the obvious Trinitairian blueprint for reality which is the nuclear family - something novel which has come out of modern Christian thought and is actually borne out in practice.
Quite refreshing. Yet the Vatican sometimes lets itself down. The release of the Vatican document against homosexual marriage on the feast of Charles Lwanga and companions brings a whole new meaning tothe popular phrasing "tarring with the same brush."
Although the heart of His Gospel was actuallythe BeatitudesJesus of Nazareth was correct - "The poor you will always have with you." Although obviously meant in the sense that we will always have the privilage of serving the poor these words have generally been used by the rich as an excuse to ignore others.
Like the birth of the Jewish state in order to make amends after the excesses of WWII militant egalitairianisn was given free reign to strip us of the genuine human need to provide for and protect. This has done unrepairable damage to the occidental zietgiest. Classical justice generally meant giving to each what was needed. However so called socialist justice involves giving all the same; irrespective of need, an absurdity this side of eternity, giving a beaurocratic seal to indifference and crippling those who have not been given the education to know any better.
Western social democracies are seeing for the first time generations raised up on state hand outs.
Held up against the prism of the nuclear family it becomes clear that we have come to believe a blatant lie, that in any case was debunked by the miraculous sound of exuberant pick axes making pebbles out of one of histories most ugly concrete scars in 1989.
Arguably the imminent demise of the top heavy French state provides further evidence of this. Nicolas Sarkosy’s Hungarian father is reported to have said to his son,
“With a name like yours and the way you do in school you will never succeed in France.”
I have never lived in France but have had the pleasure of visiting a number of times, most notably on my spiritual search to the life affirming shrine at Taize, the home of the Freedom Fighter Joan of Arc's and the Chartres pilgrimage. It has yet to be seen whether David Cameron’s barbed remarks about a business exodus from France are to ring true, and watching the UK leader laying wreaths in Algeria was interesting. In bi cameral western social democracies where victim complex creeds have become firmly established at least one term is required for an elected head of state to achieve anything of note.
I have learnt that in the spiritual life stultification leads to death. In other words any direction is better than none. The rejection of the right of centre, determined President Sarkosy after only one term in favour of an out dated outmoded socialist candidate showed desperation and lack of imagination on the part of the French electorate. Lack of a robust political fulcrum and concurrent healthy progression through selection of beneficial ideas from both the centre right and centre left has left France in a situation similar to her Latin sister Spain before Spain tore herself apart.
The presence of minorities frustrated by a spirit of patronisation by both left and right exacerbates an already tinderbox like situation.
On my search I have learnt that progress for people and nations is only achieved through balance. With a Lords composed of people who have life experience and a Commons totally elected the UK has pioneered eclectic innovations such as the National Health Service and what came to be known in the US as Reagonomics - instigated by the Eighties British innovator Margeret Thatcher.
Explaining ‘Baby Boomers’ to my pre-high school daughter was interesting. As UK citizens my wife and I are children of the eighties. In allowing unbridled capitalism to stalk the earth Reagan and Thatcher cut the fetters of a Lockean beast that was the logical concequence of the temporay breakdown of community that was inevitable if we were to be freed from moralism; only made possible with the victim complex bulwarking that the Cold War provided. The Iron Lady and the Actor and produced an anthropology similar to something the toymaker would have made in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner.
As the Slovakian neo-conservative Michael Novak would remind us capitalism is incredibly creative, as evidenced in the UK not least by the 80's music scene. However in terms of the victim complex the Falklands may be a further price Thatcher may have re-examine in Eternity. Her reforms might have been economically inevitable but in the same way that the sexual revolution gave us abortion on demand without a concurrent realistic anthropology the 80's appealed to the baser side of human nature.
'Selfish Society' is an oxymoron, but from the perspective of the family I find it facinating that the Iron Lady is generally misquoted. She said,
"There is no such thing as society, only individuals and famillies."
In true machiavelian style the left generally omits the last part of the sentence.
It
has been commented that countries get the leaders
they deserve and Britain's recent ally America has done incredible good in the
world, not least at Omaha. Even so if the modern US was a person she would have
been sectioned a
long time ago. Tony Blair’s oratorical genuis in convincing the UK
parliament to ratify Iraqi Freedom was all that saved the her from
becoming a unilateral
international pariah of her own making. Bush had a chance to unite the
world but lead America to lash out like a petulant child in reaction
to a phenomena that virtually every Western European country has been a
party to for generations.
It is obvious that the only achievement of note of the war on Terror has been indirect - Sinn Feign no longer had a leg to stand on. Al Quida has simply been strengthened and pushed deeper into North Africa.
Bi polar politics helps no one. Except where self-interest is concerned American Republicanism has generally persued a policy of international isolationism. It is concurrently ignorant of the fact that Bush’s Global Democratic Revolution is an arrogant direct concequence of ideas already tried in Europe and found wanting in the 80's. It has simply brought us two unwinnable wars and streched our respective militaries to breaking point in a time of economic austerity.
It is obvious that the only achievement of note of the war on Terror has been indirect - Sinn Feign no longer had a leg to stand on. Al Quida has simply been strengthened and pushed deeper into North Africa.
Bi polar politics helps no one. Except where self-interest is concerned American Republicanism has generally persued a policy of international isolationism. It is concurrently ignorant of the fact that Bush’s Global Democratic Revolution is an arrogant direct concequence of ideas already tried in Europe and found wanting in the 80's. It has simply brought us two unwinnable wars and streched our respective militaries to breaking point in a time of economic austerity.
Having already been founded on the dualistic anthropologies of the European reformation the Great Experiment was arguably doomed from the start.
Both the USA and France are saddled with crippling ideological baggage. It strikes me that Belgium is to France what Canada is to the USA. Canadians have the frank, honest innocence of their cousins south of the longest border in the world without the messianistic pretentions of the USA. Canada knows that she is not the City on the Hill, the Francophone element giving her an additional sophistocation that is not naive. Similarly Belgium has that beautiful francophone pour quoi pas philosophy without having a Revolution of questionable ideological consequences to constantly strive to live up to. The Belgian people also have obviously unanswered, making them anything but arrogant.
There is nothing better than watching the gloriously
unpredictable French international rugby team anywhere in the world and hearing
La Marsiesse belted out at breakneck pace but if Truth be
told in Orwellian style some are most definitely more
equal than others in the country of the Revolution.
During the Banleau riots of 2005 I sat on one of Belgium’s white sanded beaches with two Latvian friends. Francophone unrest inevitably surfaced. Christina worked in Strasbourg and had pulled herself from the bottom up,
During the Banleau riots of 2005 I sat on one of Belgium’s white sanded beaches with two Latvian friends. Francophone unrest inevitably surfaced. Christina worked in Strasbourg and had pulled herself from the bottom up,
“I can’t believe these people, burning cars and such like. They have satellite dishes paid for by benefits. If I had such privilages I would not be rioting, I would be helping myself.”
I had a different perspective. Jean was a Cameronian- French lawyer training to be an advocate with us in Brussels. Similarly hard working Jean he had done some training in London.
“At least there were no glass ceilings there Pete. I saw people of colour in different positions, in board rooms and such. In France it’s different. After interviews we are taken aside and told, ‘You did well son, but you must understand, we don’t even have jobs for our own children. ‘”
As such my reply was as follows,
“I don’t agree with you Christina. Material possesions are not everything. If people do not have equality of opportunity then it is no wonder they get frustrated. The state is probably throwing money at them in order for them to shut up.”
My experiences with the homeless both have also borne this out. People need two things
1
1 Firstly: People in authority to follow through
1 Firstly: People in authority to follow through
2
Secondly: Help in finding their God Given purpose through mentors and real education
Secondly: Help in finding their God Given purpose through mentors and real education
We can use Durkhiem and other sociological explanations to explain phenomena like voluntary homelessness, addictions and crime until we are blue in the face but if people are not being offered help with existential questions then these problems will persist and opportunistic Fuhers will surf the victim complex to power.
The purpose of healthy religion is to help, rather than hinder us with these elementary human needs. Religions are systemic views of reality. As such an autheniticreligion should automatically offer an adequate understanding of the human person. Boddisatvas, prophets and Saints are people who have understood the relationship between their religion and human need, articulating them adequately. In the context of their time they personify this bridge, building as they achieve their spiritual purpose.This was the simple genius of Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama: they understood universal human need and articulated it in both word and action, through charism.. A simple Italian Roman Catholic priest Don Bosco’s charism was education. The British foreign secretary asked Bosco what his secret was.”I just love them.” He responded in an elementary manner,
In Africa there is a
great emphasis on becoming the need. Mandela became the answer to his people’s
need on Robbin Island.
Through WWII and the Iron Curtain John Paul II became two of the most evil atheistic ideologies ever known to man. He then went on to be a lynchpin of liberatation for Eastern Europe. Thomas Aquinas was broadly accurate – evil is a depravation; a nothingness where there should be something. However it can be useful.
In understanding human need through ‘becoming’ a system we internalise it. The ‘nothingness’ John of the Cross describes in Dark Night then comes into play. At the centre of our soul there is something that is nothing and as we internalise evil our creative capacity for good is expanded.‘Evil’ people therefore are simply those who have internalised darkness with no inherited healthy, systematic view of reality to bulwark and make sense of it. We put such people in prison, where they become even more damaged, and learn other victim complexes. The language of rights without obligations then exacerbates the process.
Through WWII and the Iron Curtain John Paul II became two of the most evil atheistic ideologies ever known to man. He then went on to be a lynchpin of liberatation for Eastern Europe. Thomas Aquinas was broadly accurate – evil is a depravation; a nothingness where there should be something. However it can be useful.
In understanding human need through ‘becoming’ a system we internalise it. The ‘nothingness’ John of the Cross describes in Dark Night then comes into play. At the centre of our soul there is something that is nothing and as we internalise evil our creative capacity for good is expanded.‘Evil’ people therefore are simply those who have internalised darkness with no inherited healthy, systematic view of reality to bulwark and make sense of it. We put such people in prison, where they become even more damaged, and learn other victim complexes. The language of rights without obligations then exacerbates the process.
In
this way leaders are forged to
bring us beyond catastrophe. Depraved regimes and wars are the stumbling
blocks of nations. Forged in the amniotic fluid of pain and suffering
the
true selves of
great men and women emerge, identical with the struggle, knowing nothing
but the struggle. A true leader forged
in love cannot be stopped. To deny them their lives simply furthers the
cause of the people they personify.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdkdQtlF-RU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdkdQtlF-RU
In
Eastern Europe Vaclav Havel shed tears over his country’s partition but
acknowledged the need for what came to be known as the Velvet Revolution. Driven by a sense of
national identity the man Havel knew that Vaclav didn’t matter, taking
foriegn luminaries to Prague jazz bars and almost killing
himself with forty years of chain smoking.
In order to avoid the mess that their apparently senior E.U. partners find themselves in the people of Eastern Europe (whom the French President patronisingly called “children”) are beginning to look to hard right solutions.
The museum in Riga that commemorates the last half century is called, “The museum of the Occupation of Latvia, !938 – 1988”. Nazism and Communism are regarded as having been equally oppressive. With no recourse to the eternal the religions that were Nazism and Communism were radically incomplete. As such, like a recoiling spring the countries of Eastern Europe have a refreshing Pourqua Pas attitude that is a joy and an honour to have experienced. I remarked to a Latvian near Riga once that a monstrous bridge over the old town of Bratislava seems to have been the best that invasive Bolshevik ideology could do to destroy national collective memory. My friend promptly responded without hesitation that fifty years of Communism had left, “more scars” in Latvia than 1000 years of Teutonic invasion.
In order to avoid the mess that their apparently senior E.U. partners find themselves in the people of Eastern Europe (whom the French President patronisingly called “children”) are beginning to look to hard right solutions.
The museum in Riga that commemorates the last half century is called, “The museum of the Occupation of Latvia, !938 – 1988”. Nazism and Communism are regarded as having been equally oppressive. With no recourse to the eternal the religions that were Nazism and Communism were radically incomplete. As such, like a recoiling spring the countries of Eastern Europe have a refreshing Pourqua Pas attitude that is a joy and an honour to have experienced. I remarked to a Latvian near Riga once that a monstrous bridge over the old town of Bratislava seems to have been the best that invasive Bolshevik ideology could do to destroy national collective memory. My friend promptly responded without hesitation that fifty years of Communism had left, “more scars” in Latvia than 1000 years of Teutonic invasion.
The people of the Banlaus seem to have less equality of opportunity than the people of the so-called Second world. Portugal has opened her borders and the UK seems to have struck some sort of balance but the attitude of France toward the people of her former empires seems to be hypocritical at best, a discrace to the Revolution.
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