The Ultimate Unequal Relationship

At some levels prayer is quite easy to describe,
the preparations, the rituals, and the outer form
-where there is much of anthopological interest
with which the agnostic may be engaged.

I prefer mine to be of a practical nature,
according to the sense of urgency at hand.

But stripped of all externals,
prayer remains the impermanent
addressing the omniscient,
whilst denying it wants to hide
when the omnipresent answers back.

Unlikely Ideas

Thinking that in countries of plenty
refugees with good will for their hosts
would be more welcome than the arms fairs
which promoted the sales of the guns
which helped make them stateless.

If we were so inclined there would be fewer refugees
to help and our media would have to look harder
for other causes in which to use their lack of judgement.

Is It To Reinforce Competition

That television 'entertains' us with quizzes?
It can't be out of wanting viewers
to be more enlightened-that woud mean
television being slow and reaching out
beyond itself into real worlds and history,
and providing booklets with references.

What I will never 'get' is why people think
distant competition is such a good.thing.
It must be to remind people too old
to remember what their exams were actually like
-and make them seem exciting with hindsight.   
 

The Impossibility Of Success?

Self actualisation seems like the Salvation of old
-something for that is actually for the few,
but which the many are called to aspire to.
Abraham Maslow said that historically
only 2 % of people were self actualising.
His list included, modestly, himself, Beethoven
who's suffering for not being able to hear
the music he wrote must have been acute,
Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and Eleanor Roosevelt
who redefined the life of a wife of a U.S. president.

Perhaps self actualisation is real, and is a process
where from the least resources in some individuals
they touch the greatest number of other people
and catylise the greatest of changes in those peoples lives.
That really is more than just busy-ness, or being rich,
but some greater serendipity of nature.

Any suggestion who the living 2 % self actualised might be?

Today, 76 Years Ago....

the Nazis started their invasion of Poland.
We don't have to visit the death camps
to learn what it was like for those populations.
With their eeire silences and neatly kept grass
the death camps can only yield so much to us.

The way I learnt about it was to read what it was like
in the first person, from a diary written by a Polish Rabbi.
From the 1st of September 1939, when that dreary man,
Chamberlain, declared war on Germany in funerial tones
to August 1942 Rabbi Chaim Aaron Kaplan wrote daily
and hid his writings away. He is believed to have persished
in a death camp in spring 1943, after burying his diaries.

The book is an astonishing work, written in the present tense
and covering as many days as possible, it is more accurate
and more expansive about the everyday privations
of the rights of the citizens of Poland being salami-sliced
out existence, along with the citizens themselves,
through progressively abusive new laws and customs
than you will ever want to read about. Find it here.

I read it on holiday, and I read every word.
I knew before I took it away with me that I was odd,
I had yet to realise how strange I could be.
An accurate first person account of those times
should be a tough read, and will make many shrink
from understanding because of the refusal to gloss over
how dismal life could be. But still we should mark,
read, and inwardly digest this material, to understand
how we are blessed, and keep the right side of fear.

I told my local Jehovah's Witnesses about the book
when they joined me, walking alone last Sunday.
They agreed with me-dilute second hand digests
of other people's suffering are insufficient reminders
if we want to map their inner journeys properly.

Mild Modern Dystopias;

With every redesign of car
computers become more integral.
The new tech become more normal
with every journey. Until the in-car computers
dictate how and where we go
-and like the fallen angels of old
when they say 'No' we don't go.

Nosocomephobia

Not so long ago and not so far away good health
was something best found through inherited wealth. 
Poverty was just as inherited, and far more widespread,
and well despised but hidden-in-plain-sight
because it made life short and miserable.
Doctors were often very far from helpful.
So the rural poor had wise women for births
and self medicated on herbs and tonics,
whilst many a townie turned to alcohol,
for seeing doctors as policemen
policing hospitals like Bedlam.
Hospitals were places designed
to make men ill through denying them liberty.

This made nosocomephobia,
the fear of doctors, seem quite logical.