Church and Cult: Quis custodiet...?

   Or, who guards the guards then?

Or, at a church in which you want to check out the woolfish sensation you feel underneath someone's sheep costume, yet rather than asked, you're denied a right to speak.

There’s a church near me that’s no longer there.

  It hasn’t devolved, seeded, transmutated; nor was it Taken Up to the divine bosom. It’s just not there. In fact, there’s not even the sighing of wind or the rustle of tumbleweed that would sadly attest its former greatness, let alone an Ozymandian eulogy.

   It honestly was an actual church, a living body, with oh-so-hip praise and worship, a creche, Sunday School, families and all other stuff. Even Jesus was about. Truly, it was a vibrant, growing organism, seemingly deep-rooted and well-watered.

   Thing is, slowly and almost below a discernible level, it fell apart. A few people seemed to move on then suddenly no new ones showed up; the creche closed, the Sunday School was whittled away: when the church moved to a larger building, it was a glaring embarrassment, a barely-animated corpse whose life started to slough away in tatters.

   There had been no Single Bad Thing, just several seemingly disparate events resounding like final hammer-blows on a recalcitrant nail: vague rumours of financial impropriety somewhere in the church’s corporate structure far away; a steadily increasing heaviness to the whole church experience; the Next Big Idea not being prayed about or pursued, until all of a sudden the Next Big Idea After That came up(that of course God had said)...yet that wasn’t built upon either.

   Finally, there was this dark and almost sick sense that something just was...well...rotten, somewhere. And one of the most terrifying dimensions to all of this was that, somehow and somewhere along the way, it became simply difficult...to the point of actively being discouraged when attempting to do so.... to even say anything about one’s concerns.

   So. No one dared say anything: the very few that did were dealt with as if they were a rogue virus, a “disunifying” presence.  Eventually, when the people supposedly entrusted with the worship, one day gave a month’s notice to attend a Christian festival, their pastor merely said “no, you can’t”. Just like that.

  And guess what?

 From that day on, there was no more live worship at that church. Plenty of singing along to CDs and happily rowing along in denial, until the vast congregation finally were down to around 8. Then finally, these bruised yet faithful people were effectively dumped, as the corporately international beast driving this little Stroud church loosed its stranglehold: if there’s one thing that stuffs a megalomaniac, it’s when no people turn up.

     As is so often the case with human institutions that make use of fear,  the law of Catch 22 became the guiding principle. It goes like this:

1.      Someone gets convinced that God is telling them something. Well, no problems there: pointless having a relationship with God, or anyone, unless at some stage they speak and listen, discuss, follow, join forces.

2.      Someone gets convinced that God is telling them something and that they are to do this thing. Again, fine: how would one’s character change unless one becomes obedient to different strokes.

3.      Someone gets convinced that God is telling them to do something that exterts control over  the lives of others. Ah. You see? A “pastor”, an “elder”, anyone: God has told me to do this...thus I’m telling you that your life needs to change in line with what I’m saying.

Right. So, the terrible inevitability of human nature harnessed with self-justification:

The final vile piece of the jigsaw is, then:

     “God has told me I’m right to tell this body of people what to do: it’s thus His Will. If you disagree, you are thus outside; you are the voice of disunity. In fact, even your very concerns are themselves an indication of your troubled nature, your disunifying spirit.... ; you are in rebellion which is as the sin of witchcraft, etc;”

   See? And you’re shafted. Even when you see something that you feel is potentially unwise happening in front of you: a collection of vulnerable, searching people are firstly being told the Favourite: “If you’re not experiencing God’s freedom, it’s your own fault,” followed by, “God has told me not only that you are in some way lukewarm but that I am to light a fire amongst you to this effect.”

                 Now, all the rest is plain sailing if one has a spouse who is also working the same agenda: hubby and wife can then use the “ooh, I thought that as well,”: in fact, in our situation gets rubber-stamped very quickly: hubby says he has a dream of fireworks...thus this is of course “confirmation” that they are “supposed” to be setting us all alight with some spiritual incandescence.

   Now, if one dares raise an objection that anything whatsoever about all this might actually need to be either prayed upon,  or left and considered over the following weeks, one is already bleating darkly in “disunity”.

  Imagine then, if one has been already exposed to “christianity” that has devolved into coercion, if one has already experienced a church in meltdown because of unrestrained and unchallenged mind control: One knows already that peculiar sinking deja vu, that feeing of  extreme caution and wariness, that certain heaviness that just hangs there when you just darn well know that something does not test true to one’s spirit. That awful knowledge that I’ve seen this before and it was ugly then.....which is rendered nightmarishly terrifying by the realisation that no one will listen to you if you open your mouth and advise caution.

Remember the Lord of the Flies?

   As the thin veneer of society and religion fell away from the boys on the island in the novel, the boys’ notion of control was bound to whoever was holding the conch shell: if you held the conch, you had the right of speech.

 It’s the same in “real” life: histories written by the victors; opinions given weight not because of an inherent content of truth, but because he who shouts loudest convinces the others that to him belongs the Ministry of the Microphone.

  Well,  to put it another way, beware those who say that God has given them a ministry to be a hammer...because, sure as eggs is eggs, they then assume that all others apart from them have their ministry of being a nail.

    

   Sadly, at our church, the time when people are wished to be the most emotionally engaged(and thus in a state of being ready to listen, to believe...thus vulnerable and actually in need of something more balanced than entertainment-driven fleshly hysteria)...this time is that special phenomenon, the Family Service.

  Despite kids being saturated by screens, graphics, superfluously applied “I.T” and sensation in their daily lives, churches actually believe that they are doing something worshipful by using the very same with families in church. The “logic”, misplaced as it is, seems to be that by cranking up hysteria, “ineraction” and emotion, this somehow is hip, or Wiv De Kids.

    In other words, the belief is actually that children and young people are not trusted to be able/ready/grown up enough to be able to speak and listen and respond to God. No, “ if we don’t entertain them, we’ll somehow lose them.”

  Well, if this is the case, you’ve already lost them: if you’ve decided that God or the Word is not able to speak with children engagingly without you having to render it as your expectation of what motivates children, then you’ve already belittled them by failing to trust either them or God that He wishes to relate with them.

  There are a couple of further points here:

   You see, in any “secular”(ooh, ungodly) institution like a school or a workplace or a club, there are people in positions that have experience and qualifications to do the work in front of them. There are also failsafes that allow discussion and questioning, at the same time as ensuring that, say,  emotionally-led and domineering types who go off-topic and are given to inappropriate utterances, are restrained, or made accountable.

  And there’s the rub: how on earth, when any form of coercion is pretty close to abuse, control and bullying in the secular world, is it subject to regulation and restraint...yet in churches you are made anathema for daring to question a practice that you have the God-given right to feel is wrong.

 Of course, this is where love is misunderstood...in fact, the very ones who bleat from the front about love and peace, are the very people that deny one the right to pursue them.  

   You see, for these people, “love and peace” are powerful and good until you use them in a way that they are uncomfy about: you will then have these “peace-lovers” getting so defensive as they treat your own God-given caution and discernment(that actually is born of a love for the Truth and a desire for people not to be lied to), that they turn on you as if you’re the one who is being in some way “unloving” and “disunifying”. They assume that feeling good is good enough: in other words, love cannot ever be challenging, love can never seek to protect: also, they assume that making peace is the same as keeping it.   And it bloody well is not: they actually are so convinced that remaining in denial is good because it is comfortable...woe betide you, me or anyone else if you are a lone voice who believes, guesses or discerns that there is a cause for caution or wisdom or discussion. You then have to undergo the very thing that they swear blind they do not do, which is to be shushed and marginalised as a lone voice in the wilderness...as the wilderness is a sodding dry and lonely place.

    And what is the happy ending?

Er, there isn’t one.

Because, let’s imagine that you, after sensing caution, advising restraint, have tried to talk your concerns through with the Great and the Good(or those who think they are). After you’ve been cold-shouldered, treated as foolish or divisive....if you dare even show any chagrin, anger, or anything else approaching frustration, you know damn well that they do to you exactly what the rest of the pharisees did to lone voices in the Bible: mock, insult, anathematise, believe as mad...then finally kill.

 

  My concern is, of course, this: at my church are some other human beings. They are not in the queue for paradise in front of me. It is my belief that on several occasions, and at times in which people are vulnerable or emotional, one particular couple are given to inappropriate utterances.

   These are, as I’m sure you can guess, “words” from God, little “prophecies”, unrestrained and emotionally-led divergences from what was being explored.

   Their input, when it happens, is awash with dramas, graphics and gadgets....the attitude is even that books and an OHP are in some backward sense a “fallback”(they actually used this word); the tone is forceful and strident..akin to the hectoring emotionalism of 90s Godchannel fraudsters; “words” and “prophecies” are spouted without restraint or prayerful caution. Whereas, a week prior to their Family Service, will see them “preparing” by telling the person in charge of worship they they want the songs earlier, then they are in full sight and at full volume for the service.

    And yet, such is their devotion to and interest in, the Body, that you will not see them for 3 weeks, as they squeeze in another holiday or just cannot be bothered to support anyone apart from themselves.

   Now.....what would you do?

  I’d have though that merely voicing a concern with friends and/or other church members, might be a good thing, no...?

I’ve already seen and wept for a church that is now no longer there. The very church I mentioned at first, that is now gone, was once peopled by gifted and unique folks needing looking after, yet led by “leaders” who did not even know how worldly, denial-ridden, prideful, unlistening, arrogant and controlling they had become.

 And in the presence of dodgy practice and absence of dialogue at my present church, it looks set to happen again.

     The absolute crap I hear too: “ooh, we hate religion, we do; you have to stand up against evil...” These are the very same people who in one breath laud me for my honesty...yet if it’s ever tuned against them, they oddly do not like honesty any more. Yeahright.  I’ll be your friend as long as you play the way I do.

   Well, the proof of a church no longer being there is that the people who were in it, are now gone.

And, they’re gone because God’s spirit also left.

  And have you heard the clamours before the whimpers in such churches? God’s spirit goes because they left Him; the humans remaining do just what the Israelites did: cranked up a load of waling, coercing, moaning at God to “do some signs and wonders”.

  Jesus’ opinion? Signs and wonders are for the unfaithful[who need gadgets, “proof” and flashing lights] Shake your feet clean of dust at them...and watch the swine when you are looking after your pearl of great price, as they will turn on you and trample you to pieces.

  

Not Seen and Not Heard; and 2 no-poems.

   Sometimes I wish or imagine that several or many people would read the collection that is my blog. Sometimes I do not wish anyone to read it but am still conscious of writing as if to an audience. Right now I feel as I'm writing at a table alone in a universe in which the last person here turned off all the lights before they left.
   I wish I had the courage to say what's really, really going on.
   I would very much like one chance to be so violently and horrifically honest, so unafraid of consequence or judgement, that just the sheer emotional blast of what I really do feel would rip people's eyes around and force them to face what utter denial-addicted and lying bastards they really are, and then that the fire of it would burn and cleanse and change me into not caring a toss. I would like to be a real man, for once, and have the courage, just once, to scream into God's face exactly what it's like to have expected for so long that life would be otherwise than that  to which it defaults. I'd like to have the fearlessness to admit the incandescent rage  I really have instead of the love that I'm supposed to have, along with the shame I carry about the inability to kick my way out of the shroud of failure that has flapped and tripped and obscured since I was old enough to have memory. I would desperately like to really shout till I was hoarse about what it's like: to be dumped, lied to and abandoned; to be denied the woman, marriage and life I've begged repeatedly for; to have trusted so often yet still had my inner sanctum trampled over; to be perpetually unfit for real work; to be lashed with storms of depression; to experience life in my 50s as even more fixed in the daily horror of a solitarily-confining loneliness than it ever used to be.
   And to find that the difference is this: when I was a "fresh Christian", I worked so damn hard to force myself to believe that being "better", healed, whole, would actually come about...that there would be, though I couldn't see or imagine it, a future that would "prosper and not harm" me....and yet, though I now have a perfectly painful and acute sense of what features populate that future, not only do I not have that future, it seems to have receded so far off that it is year by year ever further away and impossible as I get now too old to grasp it.
    And I think this: that if what I sow I reap..then I must have been so, so crap, twisted and offbeam for so long, as to have made my life an out-throwing of such bad seed that I now am treading my bed down to sleep in the bed that I myself have made.
  As now my parents' health quickly and painfully worsens, I too feel I have only the same to look forward to.

   I would like to say all the above, and be a man for once.

    Time was, a couple of short years ago more or less, that I was in the joy of me being married-to-be and in a nuclear and wider church family, and in that joy of having my parents see me finally married and happy. Not blissed, not floating, not not having to work at it or me...just doing it.
  And now, they become more ill and old; the family I would have had surrounding me are growing without me, totally unaware that I could have provided anything for them, the wife-to-be who spoke of her Til Death Do Us Partness grows without me, and the church "family" that cants of love commands me to be silent if I dare tell them what's really going on, tells me I stop them worshipping and accuses me of disunity if I complain. And never once has it seemingly turned its "discernment" upon itself. It of course loves my honesty. Unless I point it at them.
    So, I hope no-one read this, that there is no-one in tha vast and silent auditorium. Mind you, it doesn't matter, as I'm glad I don't have the courage to say what's really, really going on.
   And because I can't, I'll do the snidy, dishonest thing that creative people do, like do a poem or a photo to in some way allude to the truth without having the balls to actually say what it is.

   So, for nobody, here's 2 poems.
 I wrote them ages ago, hoping to God I'd never be in the position to identify with them, hoping with horror that the vague and momentary fears of so many years ago would never actually coalesce into reflecting what it really might be like some day.
  So it really is a good job I cannot say now what it's like.
 With almost laughable synchronicity, can you believe there's an Ingmar Bergman film just come on the TV as I write?

Forces Of Habit


From the moment we declared love
My armies awoke from deep and Arthurian sleep,
Swore allegiance to do or die
And would rescue you now from the land you have gained.
They man my battlements still,
Skirmish in the no-mans land, and watch for attack;
They do drills, lay traps, set fuses and I often hear them in the long and
Moaning night
Digging in their ditches and scratching in their mines.

But for long years now I've manned a watch,
Beacons ablaze behind my high walls
And my guards are so well-drilled now, that not even I am allowed to pass.





View From The Edge

The estuary at night; slow, huge, fathomless and inescapable blackness; a somewhere that if thought about
would stir and shift in some thick and blind purpose
to sink deeper
into an awful and bruised nothing, far below hulking dead ships, whales, planets or forgiveness.

Yet in some slack and loose time of night
slow  swirls eddy upwards from these deeps as black as oil
to twist, pop and gape at the stars.
They rise from below the most terrible deep, through the dark layers of
old bikes, bedsteads and suicides;
things formless since separation unnameable
whose only hunger is the taking of shape so as to loll and suck with wet and shapeless mouths,
being born and seeking names;
urging, slow  swirls gathering form from joyless collision with the rusting frames and the silent O and seaweed hair of drowned lovers.

And above
up they come
tired and torpid things urging at last to become
a dark manshape
that looks over the edge
to search without goal and
to moan without voice

So, are you good, mate?? Language and the Abomination of Arrogance.

    Yes, yes, yes. I know you've heard it all before. Something like this:
   ...I'll start with a moan about how language is devolving and falling apart like the society that creates it, how it then mirrors the fallenness of society because its syntax is as wrecked as mouldy cheese...Then you'll get all smug and point out that wasn't it ever thus, haven't people always been ranting throughout the centuries ever since the first mouth slackened and swallowed off a glottal stop instead of rising above laziness? You'll then glibly say that akchully, language is not degenerating into slang, it's doing something wonderful like eveolving day by day into new and wondrous forms....and thus we'll just have the same poncy and circular argument flapping away like a frisbee in a washing machine.
    And yes indeed, at any given point in history, you can often find someone bewailing the fact that langauge changes, seemingly for the worse, whether it be medieval Parisians viewing Norman French as rather vulgar and too full of rough northernisms, or the glut of vile  English lower-classisms taking the place of good refined speech after the plagues of the 14th century as everyone left alive started to have ideas(and the language  to express them) well above their station.
   I myself pride myself on being able to use "from which" or "to whom" correctly in a sentence, knowing full well that I'm incandescent with prejudice because I was educated in the Rousian latinate grammar school mode of the 20the century, long after its sun had set much  earlier in the 1950s.

   So, I won't waste your time and my precious breath by whining about how many apostrophes  do or don't appear when you expect the writer to know better. I mean, we can all(if we know the difference) smirk at the signs that advertise a certain sprout, wherein the writer has thrown in a few apostrophes in the hope that at least one will hit the mark. I won't go on about the spelling of mackerel, how recognise is right and recognize is wrong. The real point of me refusing to do this is because it will not make a blind bit of difference to anything.

   However, I must...I really must...let you into what really pisses me off. And it pisses me off even more than, say, having to watch 10 seconds of Bruce Springsteen stretching and gurning his dumb red neck ,wailing some teeth-itchingly awful song about unemployed Detroit mechanics over which he's decided that a "cajun" shuffle and steel guitar would in some way ennoble the content. And then there's the 20 key changes, as he cranks it out wann moa tahme, ratcheting it up a semitone at a time until you think the audience's polyester trousers will self-immolate in a steam of chemically-replaced oestrogen.
  Yes, there is something that I loathe even more than that.
And it is this:
       It is the vile phenomenon of, upon asking how someone is, being told that they are not well...that they are in fact good.
   "How are you?"
  "Yeah, I'm good!."
    Er, hold on a minute.
Since when, upon someone asking you about your health, did you decide to reply with a statement of your self-assumed spiritual or moral rectitude? In fact, what gives you the right to firstly pointedly ignore my question, to brush aside my inquiry about your health...then, as if this sleight is not rude enough, you then have to arrogate yourself to a position of moral ascendancy?
   Sheeee-itt! You think you are good, do you? Did you get for Christmas some kind of boddhisatvan Stanna stairlift that ascended you to some superior plane of being? Do you completely believe that all your thoughts and actions today are entirely without self-questioning, completely and successfully philanthropic: that you have wafted about all day with that smug, cheery and self-congratulative smirk on your fat face, entirely believing the crap you have just said? "Yes, I'm good, thanks!"
   And is your statement of your goodness reflective of your complete satisfaction with yourself...or are you still working on T-Cutting your patina of glib, self-successfulness to new tolerances of superficiality? Or even, do you actually believe that IF you go about turning people's questions of your health aside with a repeated mantra of your goodness, you might actually "fake it to make it" in terms of your being in complete denial about yourself?
   And what are you really saying, when you reply that you are "good"? That all your actions are either right or righteous? That suddenly you are transformed into the perfect  Christian you pretend your self to be, by being cheery? Or have you really grasped, totally unlike the rest of us poor saps, that yes indeed, you are indeed good in the sense that you are justified..and are in a state of knowledge of that justification?
    Because, quite honestly, you have cultivated that projection of  success, of being a happy member of the team, of being so corporately successful and on top of the latest Company Newspeak, for so long, that you are quite ready to believe that, yes, you are good, and that the reason for your breezy grin is because my hapless question about your health has triggered for you the surge of dopomine that accompanies the masturbatory hand of lotus-eating denial. In fact, you say thanks, because you are made more good every time someone asks you; you relish the chance to remind yourself exactly how good you in fact are.
    I'm good. Thanks. I know I am under Grace and mercy; I am fully so knowledgeable of God-with-me, it is like having God on a swing in a playground next to me, as my gross body waddles off and does the shopping, knowing that I am covered by His blood, justified, alive in the heavenlies because I'm already dead and crucified; I am justified because I was chosen; and because I am justified will be glorified.....
...and that is really why I say, with all good cheer, yes, I'm good, thank you....

...And if that is the case, if that is what is really going on for them when they say they are good... then my own problem with this hip use of language is because I am convicted, reminded of how little I abide, how much I lurch from crisis to crisis because I am rebelliously addicted to false beliefs, the chief of these being that in fact, though I am a Christian.... I am not good....

   Have you also noticed the increased and incorrect use of the word "so"?
  You see, this word indicates in normal use, a consequence, a following on, a logical progression; it is a conjunction.
   For example, in normal usage: " I was hungry, so I went to get something to eat."
   Here, "so" is used correctly: it indicates an action, having just informed us of hwat happened or was considered before that action.
   And that is the point: it is used because we are already in a conversation, already in a transaction, already listening. Niceties and courtesies have been exchanged, confidences invited and a mutually open and inviting setting has been agreed bewteen two parties. Thus, after this proper erection of and understanding of polite boundaries, and only after, are we then at the familiar stage of being able to converse in terms of developing linked and consequential ideas.
   Thus, it is loathsome and annoying when I read forums or emails that quite without these forms being adhered to, actually start with "So"!
   For instance, I was reading a post in a guitar forum the other day. Quite without any introduction, a boundary-less neanderthal wrote the post from a cold start thus:
   "So, I just bought a new stratocaster..."

  Er...I beg your pardon? What do you mean, "so"? Why have you assumed that already have a conversation, thus allowing you to join the first causal bit to the second consequential bit?
   I mean, I don't know you. You've not been invited into a conversation by me,...and yet you assume I wish one. You also assume I in some way am interested in listening to you; you assume my boundaries are relaxed enough around you to address me as if we're good frneds, as if there has been already set a precedent that allows you to interject with a "so".
   Thinking on this some more, can you see what an arrogant and abusive liberty has been taken here...it's as offensive as any other liberty taken that is not invited.
 Listen, chum: do not use the word "so" at the beginning of a sentence; it makes the assumption that you have already informed me of what by inference came before it! You know full well that you have not discussed this with me, and thus you believe you have the social advantage of me, as if I am the one that is remiss for not knowing what the feck you are talking about.
  So...do not ever presume to use the word "so" with me as a conversation opener; it is a conjunction. For you to use it this way is the conversational equivent of bullying or burglary. In fact, I do know why you do this: you assume(correctly) that no-one is going to be bothered to listen to your acquisition-based self-glorification...I do not give a monkeys who you are, what guitar you've just bought on a whim, or what camera you've bought just to have bragging rights. You are a social irrelevance. Indeed, it is your fear that you are thus, that enabled you to throw away any consideration for the wishes of others, and make captives of us by immediately using the word "so".
  So...don't use "so". Ever again.
    It is exactly the same mentality of arrogance that assumes I wish to buy a copy of The Big Issue from someone who has never lived on the streets or suffered addciction in their life. It is exactly the same lack of respect that assumes  I have limitless amounts of secondhand clothing in numerous warehouses within the confines of my home, thus giving you the right to infest my home via my letetrbox with plastic bags that purport to be from the Sally Army, Somalian Whale Children, Afghani Goat-Comparers or somesuch.
 
    And while we're on the subject, it's exactly the same degree of manipulation that assumes I wish to spend exactly £19 to adopt firstly a puma, then a bloody panda, then a sodding white tiger.
   Why on earth do I want part-share in all manner of extinction-events..and to pay £19??
 Heck, it'll only be a short time before we see a "adopt 3 endangered species for the price of 2" surely....I can hear the ad now:
    " For only £38 you can adopt a white tiger and a panda cub...heck, we'll even throw the abused and beaten kid in for nothing..."
  ...or...
    "...please, donate £19 right now, and we'll change the cold-blue black-and-white harrowing pictures of abused children to something more nice and glowing instead; you know, like all those grinning bignosed happy warm kids on the Lloyds bank adverts on telly."
   
   Invasive, manipulative, assuming a level of confidence and personal relationship that does not exist: adverts reflecting society; society producing its language code that reflects the boundary-disrespecting arrogance and selfishness of its members.
  
   I ask about your health...you ignore my question and tell me your summation of your moral or spiritual rectitude; you assume it's your right to trample across my boundaries without asking or wiping your feet, and using the word"so" in the assumption that I'll listen; you assume my letterbox is a receptacle for your scams to sell my old clothes and make money from me; you assume that because you sell Big Issue in a eastern european accent, it's my duty to buy from you, despite you not being a homeless addict. Perhaps you think I'm softened up already by thinking you sound like the meerkats in the insurance ads...?...or maybe you're relying on me being confused about Kossovo and refugees and stuff...?
     You assume too much. And another thing: even my friends do not call me "mate". They call me by my name. I am not your mate; I wish no friendship with you. I am of even less disposition to be your friend now you have arrogantly assumed your right to "mateness" with me. 
    It is all the language of self, of arrogance, reflecting the belief that the only real and good thing is you, that others are no more than an extension of you, or ways to meet your wants about yourself....
....For you are indeed good in your own eyes....and thus in real fact, most certainly and sadly not well, were I to ask the same question in the hope of receiving a truthful reply.
  This is all well and good, of course. Just hope no-one asks you how you are and means it....

                              Shaun Reeder, January 2011
 
   
   

 
   

The Holy Half-Nelson: Flesh and Spirit in Sunday Worship

   By "half-Nelson", of course, I don't mean someone only managing a mediocre impression of a historical English admiral. It refers to a wrestling-grip, the type I used to see on a black and white telly when I was a kid. It would be some huge heart-attack candidate with a gimp mask and leather undies, or the Goody, Jackie Pallow.
   Mr Nasty would grease out a flow of boos and hisses from the tame audience, appearing to a young boy of 6 to be quite factually treading on the head and breaking the back of his assailant, until the latter would spring up like that other Immortal, Roadrunner, to totally trounce the opposition in yet another cathartically Shakespearean battle of Good versus Evil.
    These chaps had lots of moves and combinations. The forearm smash, for instance. Or 2 types of Nelson.

    These are quite simple to understand. Both Nelsons involve the arm being painfully pushed into a locked position behind the back. The Full Nelson is a complete lock; the half-Nelson is painful, coercive, pushes your arm where you don't want it to be, yet allows a certain bit of restricted movement to take place.
     The protagonist who is applying the Half-Nelson, however, allows you to think you are in charge of your freedom of movement, yet it is he who dictates the how, when and to what extent you exercise these movements.

   Because of both the coercion involved in these moves and the dictating of any choice one wishes as long as the options are chosen by the applyer, the language has translated effectively across from wrestling to sales. Yes, the world of selling.
   To explain. Let us imagine you are attempting to cold-sell something people don't want, like double-glazing or boiler protection by British Gas, for example:
   You, the scamming and lying would-be vendor, have manipulated yourself into having the initiative; the conversation is still unravelling, solely because you have defeated and steamrollered the hapless person on the doorstep. So far so good. You perceive a sale may be possible(that is, a "close") if you secure a second meeting with the client-to-be. You ask, "so when will it be convenient for me to call, please? I'm in this area  Tuesday and again on Friday...so would you like me to call Tuesday at 10 or Friday at 3?"
   See? The hapless creature on the doorstep feels that she has the choice, the initiative: she is the one who has total freedom of choice after all. But of course they are not her options: they are yours....!
    And so, you have successfully deployed the classic Half-Nelson close : she thinks it's her choice...but she only has the choices you have given her. Seemples!
    A Full-Nelson close would be less manipulative, more aggressive: "I'm only in the area ever again on  Friday, then the area manager is back out here and he will add VAT and likes a commission: I myself won't make a commission here, I just love the job....so: Friday at 3 or the offer has gone." Ker-ching! AyHankYew: the Full Nelson close, ah laydeez and gentlemen-ah....

   Churches can often be prime breeding-grounds for salesmen. In fact, they are. Any one wanting to flog their "spiritual" book, a bit of self-help, a prayer-handkerchief, has as their audience, their doorstep, a flock of people all needing something at the same time. These needy folks will be at church on a Sunday, so much wanting God to give them something or for Him to take something from them...unless they've gone to actually give worth to God for Who He is and what He has done.
   Additionally, the very same great and good who turn up at church because they want something, will also have decided what they mean by "worship"...and this is generally not what God defines it as or what He requires.
  For example, these people, who have either a shopping-list for God to pack into their carts, as though He is running a Sunday supermarket, generally have an equal idea of worship: it is something that they want to get something from. It is how nice the music is, what tunes and words the hymns and songs are: and if the songs are nice..and if they are played nicely: not too loud please.
  And as one spots a tree by its fruit, so one knows who one is dealing with: "I really enjoyed worship today", or even, " I got a lot out of worship today: thank you!". To which I have been known to reply, "Oh right: I had no idea I was supposed to be worshipping you."

  So, by the time the teaching/sermon comes along, these folks are as putty in the hand: malleable, warmed by the "worship" experience they've just had, and as soft as a turd. And they want, they believe it is all about them being given something they want or feeling good that something can be taken away that they don't want.
  In a word, they are so, so wanting to take something away with them, they are like gannets or magpies, and will stuff their pockets with anything...because it's free.
  All thoughts and admonitions about "testing", keeping one's sanctuary intact, being wise, placing the words heard in the sermon against what the Bible actually says...well, all forgotten: the guard goes down, the ears open: they feel good because  the songs have enabled them to feel "spiritual"...and quite honestly are ready to be interested.....entertained...
     
   And just before we get to the sermon, there is of course the highly-skilled spiritual Happy Shopper...who appears at first glance different to the immediately-obvious type above. In fact, they sound the real deal: they will be first to say how All About Jesus they are; in fact, they'll greet people nicely, smilingly and you can sense every hello is as firm as a professional handshake. They drink Fairtrade Everything, dress nicely. Above all, they are Positive People. They have washed their hair on Saturday night and do not even stoop to mention Sunday dinner, as they already have the joint in the oven perfectly timed to coincide with their happy arrival back home later.
     They will be so positive, inspired...and so, so devoid of the snares of fear in their lives.. that they will be People With Vision.
   In fact, so full of this vision they are, that within 5 minutes of being new at your church, they are so obviously of heaven, that they move ahead into one's church as if God has provided rooms in it for them in advance.
 The thing is, they will cleverly tell you in public what it is they believe in...and lo and behold!... the following week they will already be doing the very thing in which they believe! Lo, verily...truly a miracle!
  In fact, within minutes of their arrival at your church, they will soar like eagles above the mundane snares of such things as lsitening, learning, following...because they will be telling you how successfully God led them at their Previous Church into positions of leadership! Miracles!
  Again: one week they will have cleverly been able to summarise all neatly the Gifts of the Spirit with all the skill of an A* achiever...and by a sheer Miracle, the very next week will be  bringing either a Word...or a Prophecy...or if we're very blessed..a Word of Prophecy!
   Well, Glory Be.
   These Happy Spiritual Shoppers are indeed cognisant of the gift of Discernment: within a short space they will have learnt to greet those who are  the power-nodes of the institution(the rota-creators, the sermon-bringers, the elders, the Joyous Ones, etc;) with a good deal more animation and warmth than they greet anyone else. Indeed, they will treat these people as their equals...but they will treat everyone else as their equals on the understanding that the latter will treat them as superior.
   .....For, you see, it is now obvious that these new people believe they have a Vision, a Mission from God.

   Now, absolutely nothing wrong and everything right with this,despite my cynical tone. To have a knowledge, even an inkling that glimmers in and then out, of God's specific plan and purpose for you, whether for always or for a season...is of course a noble and good thing.
   However, what really is alarming is this: behind the perfect mask of the Happy Shopper, is the fact that they believe their vision involves a degree of control over the shared direction of the whole body; their vision is dependent on them having a say-so over the outworking of your vision.
    And here's the rub: because they are professional, because they are so obviously at ease with themselves as leaders; because they have steady jobs and a normal family, and because they have limitless supplies of social lubricant in their hearts and in their palms....then of course it appears that it is right for them to do so.
    And so, themsleves or their family members, cause not a murmer apart from one of fervour and rapture, when they come out with their Weekly Prophecy.
   And this "Word" is a perfect example of a Full Nelson...yet a Nelson so full and exquisitely-executed as to have your arm pinned immobile behind your back without you even realising it's there. And because it's at church, because you want something, because you render yourself vulnerable, then you do that thing that allows "the very elect itself to be fooled"...you turn off your discernment, disengage God's Circuitry of Testing and allow your flesh-feeling to masquerade to you as spirit.....and you'll gleefully, postively, happy-and-joyously belive anything you're told.

   You see, when their weekly "Prophecy" tinkles like drops of Sweet water from their mouth, notice both the tone and the length of utterance. You will be quite ready to believe that it's their emotional response to what they believe God is saying through them...and indeed they will believe this themselves.
 But hang on...didn't they also do another one the previous week? And notice that their apparent breathlessness is in actual fact a clipping short of vocal punctuation: it would be plain rude(and impossible) to append something of your own(or of God's) in the listening-space, as there isn't any. And they've pitched their voice both higher and quicker than their normal voice, injecting a tense emotionalism and speeded-up nature...and, see: their volume increases as they go.
   Yep, you see the next step, do you not? Like laughter, or yawning, there are several human vocalisings that work on a group level and exert a degree of coercive suggestion on the listener: all it needs is someone without any sense of their own boundaries, for this desire to sympathetically resonate to be unhooked.
    Now of course, we are in several arenae of corporate life, desirous of both wisdom, a sense of self and with a healthy sense of our "fences" or social boundaries: it would be wrong and unwise to render oneself vulnerable to the ways of the world and social norms, as we're supposed to obey God and be in effect "in the world and not of it....
....So...WHY ON EARTH do we render ourselves vulnerable to others at a time when we are seeking to draw nar to God and to recognise His worth in our lives and in Who He is? 
  As the Weekly Word of prophecy/knowledge or whatever gets cranked out of the self-styled "Word-bringer", then other sympathetically-aroused murmurs come from those around them; others join in because they themselves feel their need to be the Group Leader/Elder and they have to feel as if they've said a Last Word on the subject..so in a short space of time you have the ripples and lapping waves of a group response: in the flesh, a socialogical phenomenon and, if it carries on unmoderated, this can turn into group hysteria.
 

   The icing is truly on the cake with the cherry of top of this banquet of crap, when this turns into "speaking in tongues"...you get the babbling, you get the clanging of empty cymbals, shortly followed by the waves of internal shame and low esteem felt by those who find it difficult to feel successful in social situations; you have the lowering confidence yet extreme anger, as you sicken with the knowledge of what is truly being practised here: You know darn well what St Paul says about the appropriate where and when of speaking in tongues; you discern truly enough that this flock is made of sheep who are sheep not because they are willing followers of Jesus but because they have traded for nothing the following:. Man is the very image of God, the perfectly designed authority over the world..and here he is, having willingly shucked off his noble and discerning humanity for a mindless, group-animal, disempowered and thus rebellious chaotic and irresponsible outpouring.
  And, rebellion being the sin for which a third of the angles were expelled from heaven, coupled with the coercion and manipulative control of the Happy Shoppers: control of others and rebellion is witchcraft.
  
  From worship to witchcraft within one church service..and we've not got to the sermon yet.

    And you can bet you'll see the sickest, slickest Full-Nelson yet, should you have the timerity and gall to then do what is needed to enthrone sanity.....
.....because if you dare do or sday anything to rectify the situation, you will then be the non-conformist, the scape-goat, and all the sins will be piled upon you; you will thus be wrong, pitied and scorned, as those who should know better will not suffer the ignominy of having a plank fall from their eye in front of everyone else or even themselves:
 For example, if you dare to contradict anything that is practised or said, the stock reply from them is that you are "sowing discord" or "complaining"...in fact, as you're the only one to speak contrarily to them, you will be judged as rebellious! But then, what really gets me to want to rip their smug heads from their shoulders, is that superior, simpering-gloat as they say something about the "issues" or the "difficulty" you are presently having; or they'll "discern" that you are troubled because your "spirit is at war".

     Real-life examples are more saddening and maddening than even that.
 I used to be part of a church called "Life Church". This beast was spawned in Folkestone, Kent, setting up little "franchise"-type churches in many other places: Ely, Stroud, Isle of Man and no doubt many other incarnations. At one time in a season of obedience and blessing, this church in its Stroud setting in Gloucestershire was gifted with many children, families, creches, healthy attendance, powerful ministry and muscial worship and occasionally meaningful teaching. However, it was very conscious of both image and money. I cannot comment on whether this was instrumental in its passing, though its accent on prosperity and the accumulation of wealth became for me personally obscene. In Stroud, of this once large and vibrant church, there is now not the barest sign it ever existed; it's as if it dried and blew away in the wind.
   Its Stroud pastor  was seemingly of the opinion that fleshly happiness was to be sought..it smacked of the pyramid-selling, Amway-type, self-serving institutions of the 80s, and now seen in "ministries" such as those of Benny Hinn and Todd Bentley. Babbling-in-tongues became used as a religious mantra.
  One classic Nelson from the pulpit was when people were refusing to show animation or give the flesh-response the pastor required: he launched into a tirade in which he claimed that, rather than him being in any way at fault, there was a "sprit of slumber" that was manifesting its(presumably slothful) self among us.
      Manipulation gave way to coercion and classic but quite nasty and dark Full-Nelsons: I was told that as a musician, my "commitment" was expected: when I and another music group member gave a week's notice in saying that we wished to go to a Christian festival the following week, imagine our shock and disgust when the pastor actually said to us, "No; you're not going." Simple as that.
  Mercifully, that "church" is no more. In Stroud anyway.

    The Full-Nelsons extend to sermons in the same way as I described earlier: sadly this has taken place recently even at my present church, King's, Malmesbury. Last Sunday the pattern is exquisite: the guy comes out with something on "laughing". Fine, fair enough. He throws in a few bible references: fine. However, the points made are superficial and misleading, with "research" being thin, shallow and based on reported speech from the internet.
 Finally, because one of the elders had initially said how nice it would be to smile when we said Happy New Year, the 2 events were conflated so that it became "the Word of God" to be visibly  "happy" and to "laugh more".
  Now, nothing intrinsically dark and horrendous here, but within the sermon, as the chap pulled out entertaining worldly "self-help" type bons mots to illustrate his main thrust  that we should, as Christians, laugh more and " be positive", he came out with the nice little double Half-Nelson: again, the one that Christians use when the subtext goes like this:
    You have the God-given free-will to disagree with what my points are...but my argument is right because I have quoted the Bible. Thus I know you would be anti-Biblical and thus anti-God if you were to disagree with me....
......See?! Half-Nelson so far: you have the choices and free will...but only from the options I am giving you...
....BUT...he then covers himself with a neat little sachay: .
 ...besides, I like it when you may think to disagree, as it shows you are challenged and moved by the sermon...
    Hahaha! In other words...I will not consider the notion that I am wrong. Even if you were to point out that my sermon is superficial, that it confuses the nature of joy with that of freedom/release[his knowledge of Greek added to some false belief..often the problem with folks trying to give their work majestas by quoting in an ancient langauge], then the most  I can admit to if you were to personally challenge me as to the veracity of my sermon, would be that "The Spirit" is moving you.
     
  But how "edifying" is this approach really?
  The lock of the Nelson was thus: nicely couched in statements to the effect that IF I or anyone wished to correct or admonish with a view to adding to his knowledge, that of the whole church or to reveal more of God's balance of seasonal "joy" against appropriate tears/sadness/anger(which are of vital importance as sanctified and mature responses, and obdeient to God)...then there is an onus on me and a barrier against me: there is no spirit of engagement of freedom(er, or joy and light) to discuss this further with him.
   
   The sermon or "teaching" had the feel of someone who was very prosperous preaching on the "gospel" of prosperity. I did wonder too, that there are many people who find life a hard battle more often than not: a rallying to laugh more often and seeing this as something" we should do", is admittedly not a big deal...but it's not the most sensitive way to address spiritual or emotional matters, particularly as an exhortation to laughter for someone who has a battle with themselves over the appropriate self-esteem they ideally may have, may leave folks feeling a little "less than" and excluded by the end of the service.
   As did I. And those little rejoinders that pointedly rebuffed in advance any attempt to discuss with the speaker...well, a bit needlessly manipulative.

 However, when the same dynamic is sown into a sermon which covers far weightier and controversial matters....when the congregation is given personal opinion in place of fact, then told that if they then disagree, they are disagreeing with the rest of the Word including the Resurrection.....Well, if one hears half-truths and one-sided opinion from the pulpit, then is hit with this, is this not a cause for alarm on the part of the congregation?
   I mean, using the above non sequitur as a messy Nelson would be perhaps a hint that the speaker was in a degree of desperation about his subject....and one could surely question whether the "sermon" was intended to bless in a light of freedom, to illuminate the Word in truth, or to exercise opinion.
  
And if there is any question about this, let us again think about the "audience".
Let us give our hypothetical assembly the benefit of doubt. We will assume the following, that:
     Most of us are coming to the church building to give worth to God in a collective Body, to sing songs and hymns that are expressions of praise to God, with the additional purpose of edifying or building one another. However, God being of a lovingkindly nature, He may also choose to feed us individually or corporately from His Word, or to jointly "re-member" Jeus and strengthen or affirm our Bodyship with Him and each other. He may wish us to pray for one another as a collective as well.
   I am taking it for granted here that at present we are considering Sunday in the  geographical location of  our corporate meeting.....so it is important to consider the following: that is,
     The place we meet on a Sunday is not a church. Rather, it is the building in which The Body may collectively congregate. 
   I often think of and refer to church as being who we are and what we do between Sundays.

  So, we've "made it to church":  given the above..and given that, yes, we may be wrestling in all manner of  ways with the flesh, the mind, our egos, the cares of the world; yes, we may feel more misanthropic than we usually do around other humans. We may feel more connected or disconnected; we may find issues around self-worth surface like eels from the oily, dark depths of our psyche. On the other hand, we might be used to the following dynamic: we may be working, professional males, who are used to being "solution-focused" for 6 days, seeing a set of things to be done, then used to relying on our powers of persuading self and others in "professional" ways.
   These might arguably be worldy tools as we are light and salt to the world: and remeber that light is only seens light when right up to, and in close proximity with, the dark
   Remember too, that historically speaking, salt was at its most effective as a purifier and preserver, being put on meat and fish to combat corruption.....
...so we may be struggling in church in ways of which we are not aware: trying to sort out its function and our own like social engineers tinkering with a system or a machine...thus being in the actual spiritual place wherein God wants us, involves us actually giving up those modi operandi that were successful from Monday to  Friday, but are controlling and manipulative in the Body of Jesus, working against the abiding that we think we have so perfectly achieved.
   It was T.S. Eliot who said in one of his poems that "humankind cannot bear too much reality." And yet, reality, or truth is the state that we are called to be in ,  as God has created us to worship Him in Spirit and truth.
   Pilate spoke the words, "what is truth? Now, the Greeks often described difficult and abstract concepts in a way that seems to us to be a cop-out, typically as "not the thing which is its opposite"! Thus, the word for truth literally meant "that which is not a lie", suggesting that which would exist after all the chaos and forgettable, transient nothingness were taken away.....true, certainly and logically, yet testifies to a worldview and experience that can analyse, extrapolate and deduce, but that sadly cannot know. It is a bit like  saying that all the important and necessary stuff for us in life, is what may remain after you subtract all you know, see and experience. All of which is very nihilistic and presumably tiring to try and work out.
 
   Jesus invites know the truth and the truth will set you free, stating His own nature as being thel ight, the truth and the way. Thus, knowing Him means knowing the truth, which sets us free; ergo: knowing Him is the key to our freedom. Ergo, knowing Him is both possible and what we need and He wishes us to have. Thus knowing Him, knowing the truth and being free, are not only both necessary ...but possible.
 Given that He also says that all who ask, receive, then logically the following remains:
  Either He is lying...in which case do not believe a word He says.
 Or, He is telling the...truth.
 So: if He is telling the truth, the again logically...if we ask Him to know Him, to know truth and to be free...and given that all who ask, receive....then all we need to do is to ask Him to let us know Him.
    And ...how many times is "Nelson" written in the Bible?
   
  And you(dear reader, as they say) will know at this point that if you need these things in your life there's nothing more I can constructively say, so I will finish here and let Him take over, should you wish Him to.
 You have read thus far. You know me to be sometimes fairly clever with words yet often not fair in speech, glaringly imperfect....but yet again, if you've read this far, it's not really about me at this point, is it?

                                                                                                                     Shaun Reeder
                                                                                                                          12th January 2011

In One of Those Moods

I see the impact of stunned shock over the shootings in Arizona this weekend. Our esteemed bugle in the UK, the Daily Mirror, reports these events as happening in "Tuscon"(sic), which somehow to my mind gives a patina of pathetic poignancy to this terrible happening. It also flashes a bizarre image across my imagination as I respond to this.... that of a plane coming in on a dark future wind and crashing into the towers of San Gimignano or Pisa, as I imagine a Tuscan disaster.
   Some news outlets have reported the length of silence in memoriam as "a moment"; some British media report it as a minute. Held at that time-honoured and now seemingly prophetic hour of 11 a.m.
   A silence of one minute would be exactly half the time that is set aside every  November on Armistice day to hold silence for the fallen...initially those from the First World War, the Great War wherein the lights went out all over Europe, yet extended through the Second War and other conflicts since.
    I do not even know the "raw" figures, let alone the cleaned and cooked figures for the named and unnamed dead of the first or other wars. Was it 11 million Russians in the second? How many eastern europeans and German civilians in the final throes of 1945? Was it 20 thousand dead or dead/wounded before lunchtime on Day One of the Somme?  Indeed, like Eliot's humankind, I cannot bear much reality when figures are in millions, with all the zeros laid out in identical and silent shouts across the page. I am too weak and selfish often to imagine the pain of one other as greater than my own transient fears, rages and losses.
  Hundreds of thousands then? Tens of thousands? Saul has slain his thousands; David his tens of thousands...
   I think of the one person who is dearest to me above all others, knowing full well that this may not be reciprocated, yet imagining the disassociation and grief I would feel if this one person were no longer in the world...and try as I might, I cannot even multiply it by two, as my heart does not have the space. Multiplying it by 5, or 10...a thousand...a million, 6 million, 12 million....and the more dead and fallen I consider, the more unknown this "it" becomes.
   And thus I must use logic here: if the Arizona shootings have been publically remembered by one minute yesterday, and  all the fallen of all the real and grown-up and evolved wars by 2 minutes in November, then am I to believe that the dark and terrible space left by the loved and grieved ones who lie in Arizona, is of the same dimensions and volume as that of 50% of those fallen in purposeful conflict since 1914?

We remember them this much; we are diminished in bodyship yet augmented in loss and disbelief, in so vast and painful a way, we consider it as personally and nationally terrible as if we were suffering the falling of half of those who fought the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries....

   Yet this was not an attack on and a willful killing of fighting men who had chosen to place themselves in an arena of war. A congresswoman, a judge, 4 bystanders who included a lady of 79 years and a girl of 9. Need we demean them by appending them thus: an "old" lady of 79 and a "little" girl of 9? Are we that desensitised that we truly need an adjectival crowbar to prise our hearts open?
  The attacker was that increasingly-seen manifestation of terror and mindlessness: the mentally ill person with a firearm, the trigger of which is wired directly to the snaking looms of chaos that have held this person like a tape-wrapped, shrink-wrapped...and shrink-rapt...hidden explosive device. He is dysfunction, the perpetually-imbalanced equation in a fallen wolrd; he is the Helmand boobytrap, the grey-smoke mastermind plotting from caves of hate in the desert; he is the whisper in the ear of the fanatic; he is the rogue cell of cancer; Abaddon, the Destroyer.
    And suddenly, then, if one were to ask to quantify the unconscionable, to express in some way a response to a terror that is too large for words and for the mind, one  must wrestle with metaphor and image, saying:
"it is too terrible for me to comprehend; thus the only way we both could be able to be united in bodyship, the only way I can see us able to give and receive a shared comfort before the healing, is by the sharing of the images deep within us that are our language when words are impossible. And thus I say to you, my pain, our pain, surely immeasurable, may be equated this moment to this: Imagine, my friend, half the whole world's fallen of over a century, and what I would consider if remembering them....and it is something like that...."

Towers, Poets and Civilisations: an introduction by Shaun Reeder

  Babel, San Gimignano, Manhattan, Dubai, Tokyo, Shanghai...man has always built towers. Sometimes he has done so to laud himself, celebrate capital, either affront or worship God; sometimes he has built out of fear.
   The medieval town of San Gimignano, on the old pilgrim route through Italy and between Florence and Siena, once had to have its addiction to tower-building regulated by limiting the number of such structures to 72. Large towering structures are of course not confined to San Gimignano.
   W.B.Yeats, who bought and lived in a tower in Ireland, noticed a change in his perception of humankind and his relationship to it: he(or, the artist, he would have said) was able to be elevated above life whilst gaining a seemingly prophetic and visionary viewpoint..becoming a kind of quasi-spiritual "watchman" over human tides and trends of art, life, love and politics. I dimly remember he referred to the "blood and mire of human veins", though forgive me if I've misquoted him. As an aside, Joyce referred to this "higher" position of the artist as being in some way akin to Daedalus, soaring on wings fashioned by himself, flying past the "nets" and restraints of religion and politics, so that he becomes "arrested above desire and loathing", even "refined beyond existence."
Yeats seemed later of the opinion that whereas the literal "ivory tower" experience imbued a certain lofty objectivity, it was also a rarified, solitary experience that exacted a price of being hardened, remote and distant.
    As another aside, have you noticed how many great Irish writers grew to loathe Ireland, or at least what Ireland had become: "a priest-ridden nation", as Joyce would have it? Many, like Becket and Joyce, eschewed both the country and the language, so great was their need to distance themselves from it.

   Yeats, along with many writers of his age, sensed and experienced great changes within humanity: wars that outdid any previous wars in ferocity, the dark spectre of communism(though many embraced fascism until its true face was shown), immense leaps in technology, transport and communication.
   Eliot responded with a kind of sympathetic resonance, hearing the groans and reflecting them in his work by writing in a way that he described as "rhythmic grumblings". Yeats believed he saw the signs of universal cycles at work, the intimations of the ends of the age, the outworkings of humankind's destructive tendencies. He tried to speak of this using, say, the symbol of a falcon whirling ever faster away from the falconer, until the line broke: "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold..."
   He also explored the same idea in terms of a civilisation's end being like the fallling of a tower that had over-reached itself.
     Medieval Italian towers cost much money. Only the wealthy and powerful could afford to make such statements of such power and wealth..and as today, who likes to be overlooked? I have found that the people with the biggest and poshest houses are usually the ones who have a more refined and acute sense of threat at the peripheries of their properties.
   Building a tower also allowed one the illusion of escape. Given that medieval Italy was a veritable greenhouse for the Renaissance, it was also a world of internecine, competitive and fearful city states, most of whom became ensnared by the very false gods they feared: Post-plague soldiers of fortune, let loose with the dogs of the Hundred Years' war, were hired as mobile weapons of terror by cities wanting ascendancy over another. These bands of "free-lances", as these mobile sub-units were called, were an invaluable import of English(and wider European) ingenuity. Under savagely effective commanders like Knowles and Hawkwood, these big guns for hire were seen initially as a city state's saving grace...that is, until these armies exacted protection money: you pay us many florins and we promise not to torch your city. For a while.
   Florence was repeatedly harried, Siena disempowered...until Florence finally paid Hawkwood enough to work for the Florentines instead of the Pisans. And with supreme irony, even today one can see a sizeable memorial in Florence cathedral to a certain noble citizen-rescuer of the town, by the Italianised name of Giovanni d'Acuto...a.k.a. our very own and very English John Hawkwood.
 
   Building a tower, then, was not merely an expression of wealth, of power, of humankind being equal to or in the place of God. Not so much a place for a lofty and objectively reflective world-view, as something within which one could hide oneself and one's valuables, guarding one's earthly glory within something that you thought could never be toppled. One could not, of course, extend one's city outwards...that would be to build away from the flimsy protection of the city walls....the only way, quite literally, was up. You were not free...in fact, locked in a tower you were extremely unfree...but you could look out, far above the blood and mire of one's city, or above the and beyond the smoking fields of mercenary-torched stubble: and you could,  for a short while, grant yourself the illusion of freedom and power.

    Here's a poem I wrote waaaay back in 2001 when I first visited Italy and mused on such things.
The "Torre Pendente" is of course the tower of Pisa, which is temporarily arrested in freefall...and of course we imagine it always to be there, though it began to lean towards its destruction within a very short time of its initial build.
   I was very struck by the notion of falling towers as being signs of the ends of the age, or outworkings of human pride(pride coming before destruction, as the Bible says, and not merely a fall, as is often misquoted).
  When the attack on the World Trade Centre took place years later, it was as though this terrible event was the horrific externalisation of the looming awe I felt about seeing the towers of San Gimignano or Pisa.

   I've written the poem in the form of a sonnet...a Petrarchan sonnet, in fact, as Petrarch was a Florentine rejected by his own even as was Dante, yet who had many a good thing to say. Besides, I thought that if I constrained myself to a sonnet form, it would ennoble the content of the poem. It basically deals with towers and civilisations:

Torre Pendente

The best sacred mouths and lips millenial
At Pisa's tower smacked, with no loss of face;
Slid down, sucked slow silt from beneath her base:
By two hundred years they've delayed her fall.
Perfect in design...built on sand; falling
From the first moment bemused mason told,
"On such shifting ground, centre cannot hold,"
To prelate's purple-robed oversoaring
Pride, who replied, "Size of tower equates
With scale of power(and rivals have yet
Skyish battlements wherefrom falcon bates):
Make haste." Thus centuries' massed thunders split,
Stones crash and sprawl, leashes snap and let fly
Falcons against a mad and mangled sky.

  Here are some photographs. All are mine(that is, 3 of San Gimignano, 1 of Pisa) apart from the Manhattan one.

 

Two Poems

   Every so often, life will present poetical moments. This is not usually the case. More often than not, the soul, the heart, the ear, the eye or some other organ will suffer a momentary arrest or displacement as it projects or even experiences a certain resonance. In these times (and I have to use a simile to even describe this) there is some hidden strand of one's being that is under the exact tension so as to sigh like the string of an aeolian harp as the breeze catches it. The poet then has to wrestle with and arrange the words and ideas and sounds that  enable somone else to bring their tuning up to a pitch which is as close as possible.
   See? I just did that, or tried to. And I used at least one metaphor too, as the simile didn't quite convey it.
   However, as I said, I am not referring to these more frequent moments.
 I am talking about the times when the poem is seemingly just given, like being handed a guitar that has not only been tuned before you receive it, but plays itself...allowing others to believe it  was you all along.

   Here are two pieces of writing that are merely real. That is, they mention real and actual people, with the addition of actual reported events. They are factual and prosaic...so how come I'm claiming they are poems?
   Well, in addition to a real person with a real reported epithet is an inclusion of a separate and imagined idea: each of the two poems can be expressed as follows:

       real person + real reported inclusion + my imagined idea = poem

   All I next did, so as to claim my "poem" tag on each of them, was to edit and chip away at individual words for sound and/or rhythm, then arrange into lines that lead the viewer or reader or audience to what I have judged to be a "good" vantage-point, thereby hopefully to catch the same breeze that I inadvertently strung myself across.
   I wrote both poems about 12 years ago.

David

A kid I used to teach could never even do English let alone French
I'd written off his report before I saw him, hearing that
 he'd legged it after a bollocking, then was seen later on in town
eating a burger
And not giving a shit
He'd just thumbed up a grin at his teacher
Turned his back
And walked away

A year later
I heard he'd got lung cancer at barely fifteen
The boy whose life was a shout and a thrown table
And I hoped
That if he'd been caught out by a dark figure with a scythe
outside a burger bar
He just faced it with thumbs up and grinning
Then turned his back and walked away
Not giving a shit.




Charlie


A bloke I knew (well, to talk to) told me he'd got cancer
In a big, personal lump that he'd started to call Charlie.

I imagined leaving his house after a cup of tea,
Me whistling out of the garden gate
Away from the man and his lump,
Afraid that at any moment I might hear them both shouting in
Tethered domestic hell
And that I wouldn't know which was his voice or which was the man's.

At the funeral, as there must have been,
One of them must have won
But if it was the man
I don't know his name.