Manifest Destiny/The Mystery Of Faith

I have wrtitten before about the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that drove the white American conquest of its continent. It is one of my principal obsessions and I have come to realise that a misguided modern conception of the doctrine drives much of the putrid immorality of MAGA. 

A more measured contemplation of Manifest Destiny can be found in the cumbersome 1962 Cinerama movie, How the West Was Won. Fealty to the original Cinemascope  format means that the modern televisual print is shown in a distracting letterbox but that is better than a truncated cut. I would like to see this in proper cinematic projection but I don't run to my own theatre.

I say that this is a cumbersome film and so it is. Three strands held together by the constant presence of Debbie Reynolds, each with its own director and a fleeting appearance in each chapter by a giant of the western genre, James Stewart, John Wayne, and Henry Fonda. It even has three directors. Ponderous it may be at times but it should not be dismissed. Its examination of Manifest Destiny is modestly nuanced. 68/100. I depart from my usual layout and reproduce the poster in an imitation of Cinerama.

A recent film to have been given a boost of relevance is Conclave. It records the imagined machinations and political manoeuvres of a papal election. Quite early in the piece the central character makes a cogent case for the important differences between stubborn certainty and its more flexed cousin, faith. I'm not at all sure that this film is quite as good as it wants to be but it rattles along nicely and is buoyed by a proficient cast. 70/100.

Advent 24

Volume 24 (Index and Atlas)

This is where it all started when I had the idea for this year's calendar. And this is where it all ends. Page 63 of the atlas bears the disarming legend, 'Palestine showing the 1949 armistice boundaries between the Arab States and Israel'. A lot of water and too much blood has passed under the bridge since that time. 

My uneasy notion was to take Bethlehem as my key and there it is, slap bang in the middle of page 63.

There has been a far from cogent thread of spirituality in these calendar entries. That is good as it gets with me I am afraid. It is not for the want of trying that my ideas are still unformed, or perhaps I should more accuarately say are re-formed on a daily basis. I am of an age when the impermanence of existence weighs heavy. 

What can be said is that Bethlehem is where the greatest story ever told has its near beginnings. And as evidence of my agnostic eclecticism I will, despite my voluntary attachement to the Catholic church, quote, not from an accepted catholic scripture but from the King James Bible (a 'Proddy' bible if ever there was one) since that is a beautiful deployment of the English language. One might say that I am guilty of having my communion wafer and eating it. All of this, in its grandeur and its silliness, proclaims for me the mystery of faith.

And Joseph also went up from Galileee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (Luke 2:4)

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. / For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11)

 And this encapsulates my meagre faith:

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. / No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:17-18)

That's all folks. Thank you for reading. I will leave you with words of those two sages, John Lydon and Dave Allen: may the road rise with you; may your god go with you.

 

 

 

 

Advent 22

Volume 22 (Textile to Vasc): Theology.

Another day, another giant topic for the Overgraduate to sink his inadequate teeth into. My overtaxed grey matter does wonder at the wisdom of the task I have set myself. Has anyone ever gone on Mastermind with the specialist subject of pages 63 of the volumes of the 1959 Britannica?

Theology is that branch of philosophy that is concerned with the explanation of the world in the terms of a supreme mind or spirit. The study of theology is not therefore, as I comprehend it, the same thing as religious experience but the study of religious experience is a legitimate (in fact, one might argue, essential) constituent of theological study.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia), the former being the mystery of God's innermost life, the latter the works by which God reveals himself. I understand this as the contrast between the spiritual and the temporal and it is in the space between those elements that my own unequal and impertinent negotiation with God takes place. Heavy man!. Page 63 has much to answer for.

The Trap Of Certainty

I know, I know, You've long since got the message that I can't stand Donad Trump. I think he's vile and, in all but unimportant matters, pig ignorant. But his advent on the political scene (and to a lesser extent the scar on British politics that is the dissembling Boris Johnson) has taught me an important lesson - life is not merely about policy. It is also about decency. You should not want to be governed by someone you wouldn't want to share a dinnner table with. Sorry Donald, sorry Boris, you're not getting invited. 

And what has got me trundling down this philosophical by-way? It was a combination of watching the Tory leadership contenders making their respective pitches to the party conference and something I read. Of the contenders I will only say this - I don't like the cut of Robert Jenrick's jib. As for that thing that I read, it is from Pope Leo XIII in 1878. In my less moderate days I might have seized on this as a clinching argument. Now I merely offer it up as a stimulating contributor to life's puzzles. The subject His Holiness considers is that of socialism/communism:

Misled by greed for the goods of this world which is the source of all evil, and the desire for which has caused many to err in the faith, they [socialists] attack the right to property sanctioned by the natural law, and while they pretend to have at heart the needs of all men and claim to satisfy all their desires, they make a criminal attempt to seize all individual possessions whether acquired by legitimate inheritance, intellectual or manual work, or by economy, and to make them common property.

Makes you think, well does me anyway.

 

The Mystery Of Faith

I woke early here on the island and came upon King of Kings showing on the BBC at a strange early hour. It is not a great film but the underlying biblical story is a fabulous one. I'm a sucker for the gospels.

Anyway it put me in the mood to attend mass at Our Lady of Lourdes RC church here in Benllech. And jolly good it was too. A congregation combining locals and manifest holidaymakers was treated to a measured and wry performance by a Scottish priest. All of which got me thinking about my own conflicted catholic agnosticism. It is the proclamation of faith that always gets me and the attendant ceremony over the offerings. I came away feeling still in a state of negotiation over my own faith but pleasantly uplifted. And yes I did take communion - a cynic might call that having my bread and eating it. I can live with it.  

Happy Places And The Shadow Of Asymmetric Warfare

Our world is a dreadful place. Our world is wonderful. This contradiction has, you may have noticed, been weighing upon me for some time - pretty much for ever.

Of all places I thought about this as I occupied a new happy place (actually a sub-set of a wider place) - the practice ground at Clwb Golff Ynys Mon where I am now a member. I practised my short game (very necessary) in a mood of self-righteousness burnished by having cleaned the windows at Plas Piggy this morning. As I flailed at golf balls, jets roared overhead as they came in to land at RAF Valley. I find their presence comforting. We can go into that at some later date. No, what I was thinking about was the asymmetric war currently being waged in Gaza. Israel have a formidable defenec force and are deploying it ruthlessly in Gaza - the ratio of terrorist deaths to civilian deaths is numbing. Netanyahu does not care an iota. He sees an enemy constitutionally committed to the eradication of the state of Israel and will pursue them no matter how many bodies he must trample over. This horrifies most of the watching world. However the vital point that evades those spectators is that Hamas' approach to the conflict is knowingly as asymmetrical as Israel's. Hamas care not a jot how many civilians they have to put in Israel's path. Their god is on their side. And before we get all gooey-eyed about the horror of it all, we might pause to consider the asymmetry of the bombing of Dresden, of Hiroshima, of Nagasaki. It makes one weep. Not, I suspect, that you care but the OG's preference would be for Israel to take what is left of the moral high ground and desist. This seemingly will not happen so long as Netanyahu is in power. Whilst liberal hand-wringers (in whose number I count myself) pontificate on this catastrophic mess, we might care to turn our attention to influential wings of two monotheistic religions, in their very different manners, acting as grisly death cults. If I wasn't so happy, I would cry.

But you see, that's the problem. I am happy. It is only when I face the world outside my euphoric bubble that I do just wonder if this whole human experiment has turned to shit. Will I feel better if I buy an electric car? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

 

Kultcha Vultcha Encore Une Fois

Sing Choirs of Angels, an installation by Illuminos at Lichfield Cathedral. Now I have to confess that I hadn't been to the cathedral for decades, notwithstanding that it is practically on our doorstep. It is magnificent at any time but when lit up to relate the gospel it is captivating. A great evening adventure in the company of the Groupie and DN1. We even found free parking. Result.

The Washing Of Dirty Linen

I seem to recall raising this point before, I think in the context of the Robert Redford movie, The Candidate. A good film but one most memorable to me because I have a teenage memory of having watched it with my Dad. My father (an exceptional and wise man) commented that he admired the American ability to wash its national dirty linen in public. Well, the two films under consideration today are about two lots of dirty societal linen, one primarily Irish (though it has wider implications), the other American.

Philomena is, on one level, an unlikely buddy movie - Judi Dench's warm-hearted and genuine Irishwoman and Steve Coogan's cynical and world-weary journalist turned disgraced spin doctor. But at its best, it is so much more than a mixture of sound leading performances and a skilfully tear-jerking script. It is an airing of the catholic church's scandalously dirty linen. I won't spoil the plot for you because I want you to see this film. Suffice to say that for anyone who cannot help getting misty-eyed about Irish catholicism (and I, a convert to that faith, stand guilty on that count) this is essential viewing. 79/100.  

My go-to source of cinematic critical wisdom is the Ebert website which continues the work of the great and now deceased Roger Ebert. In a bizarre twist it can be reassuring on the rare occasions when I find myself disagreeing with the Ebert view. This provides a small measure of validation - I am something more than a purveyor of second-hand postures. Which brings me to a movie that the good people at Ebert find 'dull'. The Report may be dry and highly verbose but it is vital stuff, conveying measured outrage at the shaming use by the CIA of torture. It is held together by a compelling leading performance from Adam Driver, As the posters said, 'Truth Matters'. Though not quite of the same supreme quality as All the President's Men, nevertheless The Report desreves to be mentioned in the same context. 82/100.

The Brummie Paris-Roubaix

My admiration is boundless for the riders who thunder over the setts of the Paris-Roubaix. This morning Big Fat Pig did his own down-scaled version of the classic. This involves steering the Precious Bike over the pock-marked roads of Shenstone and Four Oaks for an hour and forty-one minutes. I can tell you, you feel every one of the bumps. The roads are in a shocking state. And the run from Shenstone back to Mere Green is an unexpected killer - a succcession of false flats lulling our overweight hero into a misplaced sense of comfort. I did that stretch twice today and by the end of the second I was out on my legs. Mind you the Pig would have to admit to feeling a tad self-righteous after his ordeal. He also ran for an hour (yes without stoppping) on Thursday. Wonder Pig.

Pig and the Groupie enjoyed (without being bowled over) Tolkien last night. It is a biopic of the young author's formative years at King Edward's School in Birmingham and during the Great War. It carries no imprimatur from the Tolkien estate so perhaps needs to be accomapanied by a liberal dose of salt but I thought it considered and mildy affecting. 69/100.

The Groupie has tolerated my watching of all four parts of Jesus of Nazareth downloaded over Easter. I'm a sucker for the scriptures and there are good performances from Robert Powell and Ian McShane in particular. Spoiler alert - he dies in the end you know.

The good thing about getting quite a lot of exercise is that you can fool yourself (the Pig does) that over-eating is not merely permissible but compulsory. This is of course self-deluding bollocks. Tonight it will be chicken and chorizo jambalaya. The Groupie is far too good to the Pig.

Advent 21

Today a building of limited architectural merit in the heart of unpretty Hockley. However, to the small extent that I have a spiritual heart, St. Francis Roman Catholic Church is where I located it. Here I was married in 1984 and after a lingering conversion it was here that two plus decades later I took my first communion. All of this was done under the eccentric but affecting spiritual guidance of Monsignor Fallon. I'm afraid I am inconstant in my faith but it matters to me in ways I find it difficult to articulate - and anyway I'm not of the shout it from the rooftops school of religiosity - terribly bad form old chap.

Porto 4

We fly home today and will be sad to leave. In my case sad but considerably fatter. The food here has been right up my street - unpretentious but appetising. We had a superb lunch here in Porto yesterday at Postigo do Carvao in the old town, once again at a fetchingly low price. It was cod with potatoes and cream (a sort of sublime fish pie if you like) for the Big Fat Pig and hake for the Groupie. Washed down with a Douro red. Once again change from €50 even with a deserved and healthy tip. Our waiter had faultless English, he had been born in London but his family returned to Portugal when he was six. A Liverpool fan, he proudly showed me his tattooed forearm bearing the club crest.

a long way down

I think this is the hilliest city I have ever visited and almost any piece of sight-seeing involves a climb - which only serves to sharpen the appetite and to convince you that you deserve the culminating food and wine. So yesterday's late lunch had been earned by an ascent to the imposing Cathedral followed by traversing the vertiginous Ponte de Dom Luis I. At almost every turn there is an impressive church, complete with an altar surmounted with intricate carving. The Cathedral tops the lot, literally sitting at the top of the old town.

cathedral carving

I'm sorry dear reader that I have lost my cynical voice during this trip. Porto is bosting. No doubt the flight home will transport me back to my accustomed world-weary self.  

One For Us Lawyers To Bear In Mind

Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Luke 11:46

So that's me told then.

Two Good Things I Read Today

On the ghastliness of recent politics:

So with the Referendum. Combining bare-faced lies with lurid, mendacious threats, neither side seems to care less what it says. But that is the nature of political populism: its unabashed shamelessness and manifest contempt for the electorate. The irony is that electorate, however Twitter-crazed, would rather not be treated like cretins, so they fully reciprocate that contempt. (Peter Jones, Spectator 18 June)

Indirectly, on the greatness of Queen Elizabeth II:

It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness. (Proverbs 16:12)

Another Shaft Of Light

I have linked to very little on the EU debate because there is so much cant on both sides, but here is a piece that is at least coherent and clear in its motives - Let's Vote In - Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor . I'm not convinced as yet but at least, unlike the proto-canonised Obama, the Cardinal speaks of what he knows.

The Pope And The Archbishop Walked Into A Bar ...

Don't worry I'm not going to tell you a terrible dirty joke, much less a clean one, knowing as I do absolutely no clean jokes. All jocularity is the Devil's work.

Habemus Papam

Our newish Pope (Francis - who succeeded that nice little German one we went and waved to on the Hagley Road) has worried me a bit at times. Not that I suspect he's much bothered by the part-informed ramblings of this particular fallen angel. No, I was just a bit concerned that he was, by papal standards, a bit of a hippie. That better known (than the OG) convert Papist, Charles Moore, hinted at this type of concern when the Pope went all Green last year - The Pope is Wrong . You see when it comes to Popes this particular parvenu (me not Charles Moore) likes to have his cake and eat it; he wants religiosity and a forbidding mien but also humanity flecked with approachability. Above all he wants a quite certain impression that the pontiff actually believes in God. This combination of characteristics is necessary because he has to carry the weight of his congregation's doubts - and believe me that's a ton of baggage just from this correspondent's direction. Thus when the current incumbent got into an unworthy Twitter spat with the malodorous Trump I was a bit concerned that his mind wasn't fully on the job at hand. But it seems I was wrong because his two hundred and sixty-four page Amoris Laetitia (every page of which you can download here: Papal Exhortation ) has done its job and satisfied loonies at neither extreme of his higgledy-piggledy church. Nice one - even the Guardian seems grudgingly impressed - Papal Score Draw .

Boy played a blinder

I'm a big fan of the Church of England if for no other reason than that the King James Bible knocks spots off all other translations (says he like he's read them all). I also think it is key to our constitutional monarchy - Prince Charles (yes I know you follow the OG) please note. However it can get itself into a squirmingly equivocal mess on the matter of faith. By which I mean I have encountered a disturbing number of its clergy who didn't seem to have any - faith that is. I may just have been unlucky because I exclude from this criticism the Archbishops of Canterbury of my lifetime: the one with the shock of white hair, whose name escapes me (just looked it up - Ramsey) who thanked me when I held the door open for him when he was walking down a King's College corridor; Coggan, who looked very scholarly; Runcie, who won the MC as a tank commander for God's sake; Carey, who perhaps wasn't the sharpest tool in the box but who is a King's alumnus and we need to stick together; Rowan Williams, now I really like him because he is far closer to my idea of Gandalf than Ian McKellen and I don't like the way the media persecutes bearded clergy; most recently, Justin Welby. Two things got Welby off to a bad start: firstly he's another sodding Old Etonian; secondly and more rationally, Archbishops just aren't called Justin, are they? Come to think of it neither are Old Etonians. Anyway, putting such reasoned prejudice aside, I am pleased to say he strikes me as a top sort of bloke and he talks sense with a strong inflection of faith. What has really brought this home is the astute way that he and his officials have handled the bizarre case of his paternity - Archbishop's Paternity . Now, of course, this stuff shouldn't be news at all but the C of E has played a blinder on this one - perhaps Welby should give lessons to the boys at Conservative Central Office who have served their Old Etonian boss so dimly these past few days.

Mind you, I still don't think Justin is a good name for a religious leader notwithstanding that St Justin was around as long ago as 100 AD. The trouble may be that I am a Moody Blues fan and cannot dissociate the name from the sainted Justin Hayward. You see the emotional and intellectual baggage I have to carry? It's a wonder I can even lift a pen. (Has lifting a pen become a metaphorical activity? I ponder this because this afternoon and for the first time I composed some poetry on screen without first scribbling notes. It was still crap. So it goes.)

Happy Christmas

I had a rather lovely Christmas Day. This of course was largely due to the Groupie's organisational and culinary skills and to the presence of almost the full Roberts clan. My job was to look ornamental and get mildly drunk. I managed the latter of these tasks.

Local holy man

The day had started with mass at Holy Trinity Sutton Coldfield conducted by the very amusing and pleasingly holy Father Michael Ho. He fled Vietnam in 1982 and he tells good jokes. He exudes a resolute happiness and has charisma.

I have been a critic of Barak Obama's pieties but I must confess you could not be other than impressed by the President's television walk on the wild side with the bonkers Bear Grylls. Grylls was gushingly in awe of Obama and it is undeniable that the President has mega charisma. Much as I  might be underwhelmed by his politics he is an ornament to the American Dream - a thought which drags me back to reality and the wretched Donald Trump. May his downfall be the political story of 2016. Any other outcome is too miserable to contemplate.

The girls are taking me to see the new Star Wars later today as part of my Christmas present. Report to follow.

The State Of The World: Thoughts From The Sofa Of Life

Contrary to this Hegelian prognosis of 'standing at the end of history', which has been recently revived by Francis Fukuyama - this late student of Hegel as read through the eyes of Alexandre Kojeve - the present harbors [sic] many ironies, contradictions and perplexities. Ernst Bloch's phrase of 'non-contemporaneous contemporaneities', ... is more appropriate to capture the fractured spirit of our times. (Seyla Benhabib)

These perplexities are brought unhappily into focus by the religious and political background to the refugee crisis. As so often (a by-product of my reading him so much, rather, I suspect, than any unique brilliance on his part) Walter Bagehot got me trucking down this path.

I have just read (in a charge of Archdeacon Manning's) rather a good sentence on ecclesiastical history. 'The world persecuted the church in the beginning; espoused her in the middle ages; is disowning her now.' It must have been an immense gain in the middle ages that all their systematised thought was Christian and spiritual. (Walter Bagehot, 1847)

If Manning's analysis of ecclesiastical history is useful, it has to be remembered that it speaks only to the Judeo-Christian experience, and even then the timing of the phases has been different as between Judaism and Christianity. An application of the three stage test to Islam is intriguing. Which stage (stages?) is Islam in? Might I suggest that the extremists believe themselves at war with the infidel and the apostate and that this is the sole proper response to their persecution by a western 'end of history'. Secular Islam in the West struggles to deal with the simple appeal of this fundamentalism at one extreme and  gaudy faithless societies at another. As for the poor old godless western majority, having disowned faith ourselves we are speared by post-colonial guilt and inbred liberal tolerance. In the eye of the emotional storm pragmatism gets turfed out of the window.  There is no ready evidence of any politician having both the willingness and the intellectual heft to understand the situation, much less respond to it.

 

 

53 Days And Now It's Not Raining

I set foot outside to run and as if by divine ordinance the rain stopped. This of course was a blasphemous thought and so a subsequent ordinance made it rain again as I was running. The final ordinance now means that it is sunny and my air is suffused with the odour of damp kit hanging to dry. If I venture to hang the kit outside it will inevitably rain. Still I plodded four and a half miles around the mean streets of Benllech. The BFP Show is still just about on the road.

A news story hit me this morning as being particularly poignant and emblematic of the evil that is abroad - see Palmyra Slaying. It is hardly novel but it bears repetition - these people need to be stopped. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I think I'd better stop before I go on to sound any more Blairite. I've got a business plan to write. Watch out world OG is on the move. 

Je Suis Charlie

No matter how scurrilous (and I would not be at all surprised unfunny) Charlie Hebdo may be, there is only one thing that this blog can properly trumpet tonight - JE SUIS CHARLIE. See - Je suis charlie

Advent 14

The last of the entries from this year's calendar to have had the misfortune to meet the Boy Roberts.

Monsignor Tom Fallon conducted my marriage (which as anyone will tell you was my finest life move) and twenty-one years later he heard my first confession and administered my first communion. He could appear disorganised even a little dotty but he exuded spirituality. A great advertisement for his faith, he conducted his ministry by humane stealth. He worked on me for more than twenty year without me ever realising he was doing it.