Poem - topical - political by anon

It's Voting Day!

I want a floating duck house
I want to clear my moat
I need to mend my tennis court
That's why I need your vote.

I have to build a portico
My swimming pool needs mending
My lovely plants need horse manure
And the Aga needs much tending

A chandelier is vital
Mock Tudor boards are great
My hanging baskets won awards
And I've earned a tax rebate.

I need a glitter toilet seat.
My piano so needs tuning
Maltesers help me stay awake
And my orchard must need pruning

I could have said the rules were wrong
And often thought I should,
But somehow it was easier
To profit all I could

The public really have to see
That the rules are there to test
And by defrauding taxpayers
We only did our best

The Speaker of the House has gone,
Our sacrificial beast,
But the public are still braying
For our corpses at the feast

What do the public want from us,
Those vote-wielding ingrates?
They really should be grateful
To be financing our estates.

The message is so very clear,
(you're merely learning late)
That the MP's way of living well
Is to screw the ruddy state.

Tempus fugit

Last night I was at a parents information evening for those with youngsters applying for university admission next year. Can time really have flown so fast that our youngest is now ready to follow his sister away from "the nest" and make his own way in the world. Is he really 17.... where did those 17 years go?
Parenting has been a continuing gradual process of letting go. When he was a wee baby we did everything for him. Gradually he became more and more independent and self reliant and now he is by some definitions a man. Yet as those links of dependency have lessened they have been replaced by other links which are potentially much stronger and will ultimately we hope be longer lasting.
Many parents find it hard not to be needed in the same way. And from my distant memories of teenage years, I recall it is hard to be as independent and strong as you think others think you should be. But then no relationships are easy. The word means that we have to relate and in doing so we have to be prepared to change and any change can involve pain.
Albert F Bayly's words come to mind:

Grant those entrusted with the care
Of precious life from thee,
thy grace, that worthy of the gift
and faithful they may be.

Teach them to meet the growing needs
of infant, child, and youth;
to build the body, train the mind
to know and love the truth.

(Hymns and Psalms no 372)

Facebook - good or bad

I have been a member of facebook for just a few days but I am having doubts already.
Is it a valuable use of time to learn how to be a part of this online community when I could be spending the time participating in real people communities instead?
To me the word friend seems to be devalued when it is used so freely and without any depth. (My definition of friendship is summed up in the anonymous quote which I paraphrase "An acquaintance is someone I may spend a lot of time with, laughing and enjoying stories but a friend is someone I choose to cry with.")
So I am undecided about my involvement in facebook.
(If you are an uncritical fan read Janet Street Porter's article "Why I hate facebook". I would probably not go as far as her in her dislike of all social networking sites. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138445/Janet-Street-Porter-Why-I-hate-Facebook.html )
On the plus side I can see the value of sharing photos and social invitations with people that you share these things with anyway. It is a good way to make contact with people that you have lost touch with. (Memory can be very selective - do I really share anything with the people who are the same age and once sat in the same school classroom except that memory?!) It is also a great way for discoveries (such as new quotations) or moments of serendipity to be shared.
Perhaps its greatest benefit is for people who live alone and don't have any other channel for interacting with people on the trivia of everyday life?
On the negative side it can function as a community in itself divorced from reality where so called friends may be not who the profile says they are. And let us be realistic about the trivia that is written on walls and the rarity of real wisdom.
I think I will stay with facebook as a tool for keeping in touch with folks I know and want to share with regularly. BUT I must be on my guard never to regard it as anything more than a tool or utility. It is useful but not indispensable. And God help me if "screen based reality" ever seems to be taking over from life as it is to be lived and enjoyed in the company of others....

Menagerie - a moral dilemma

I am beginning to suspect I live in a menagerie. At 05.00 this morning there was a rustling in the wall near my bed - do I want to know what it was? We have had birds come down the chimneys and get between the plaster and the stone in the ancient walls!
Then when I opened the shutters and stared out to our garden there were three rabbits on the lawn and four magpies on the patio! There was also a large fat pigeon in the tree and a grey squirrel on the wall! Lovely I hear you say imagining my ideal rural existence.
Now as many of you know we have two dogs. However they are quite useless at deterring the rabbits. The little one is a deaf and rheumatic temperamental old westie and the big one, a young Labrador, bounces around wagging his tail and is every animals friend!
The rabbits are the ones that are destructive. Last year everything I planted in my vegetable plot was eaten very quickly and not by me. This year I have invested in a fence of chicken wire to keep them out and the beans and courgettes have survived so far. But my main worry is the habit rabbits have of multiplying - like rabbits... so a month from now how many might there be.
My vegetarianism isn't based on absolute principles of never harming animal life but on the clear health benefits and the damage to the earth caused by too much consumption of meat. However, I may soon be faced with a moral dilemma if I ask my neighbour to borrow his air rifle!
I would not hesitate to take the necessary steps to get rid of mice from the house, or a wasps nest or slugs but rabbits are furry and cuddly but they do eat anything that is green. If I could think of a way to get them to eat grass only then I could save on lawn mowing!
Perhaps I should get a great big tom cat that likes rabbit for his tea!
If you start asking moral questions then it can make life very complicated. But if we never ask moral questions and instead go along with what is allowed then we can become like the many members of parliament who have made disgracefully excessive claims on their expense accounts!

Cutting it fine.....

When I returned home from Norway I did a quick mental calculation as to how much I had spent on the trip and counted up how many crowns I had left over. It was tight. I brought back 46 crowns - about £4 and I thought I had taken loads of money. If I hadn't met that nice lady on the bus who agreed to share a taxi with me from the bus stop to the airport then I would have had to use the plastic to get me out of a hole. (3km taxi ride cost 160Kr - I'm really glad I only had to pay half!)
I know from acountants that this is called headroom - the amount of money you need minus the amount of money that you have.
We all feel comfortable with good headroom but for many people in the world this luxury is not available to them. The underlying issue is about security and living with risk. Jesus said odd things like "you don't need two coats for your back" but I have met very few Christians who take these sayings literally. If we have enough (and in terms of Norwegian crowns I did - just) then why should we be anxious - but human nature is that we are. Jesus challenges me yet again.....

What goes around comes around!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I was "saved" by a good samaritan who gave me a ride on the back of his pickup when I had a puncture in my bicycle tyre.
Yesterday I got a chance to be a good samaritan.....
The usual story - middle aged couple turn up at our house after leaving their car in the monument car park and have not realised that they have descended the wrong side of the hill.
I was just at that moment going up to the University so was able to give them a lift for the couple of miles to the carpark to save them a long and unpleasant walk alongside a busy road.
If only I and other folk could always be like that!

Prices - what value

I will not complain about things being expensive again.
I bought a cup of coffee in an ordinary cafe this morning and it cost £4.80..
Some of the folks I was with ordered a small bowl of soup for their lunch. It cost £15.00.
There was fish and chips on the menu and it was over £20.
This was not some swanky restaurant but a street cafe in Kristiansand Norway - this must be the most expensive country in Europe.
We next went to a sandwich shop and cheese and ham rolls were about £6 each.
What do we value. Is price the only measure of value that we recognise. How else can we value and prioritise?
But this is a beautiful place - I went on a boat trip through the archipelago of islands here today.
Now this trip was included in the conference fee but I wonder what it would have cost - and what would I have been prepared to pay? Makes you think....

A Scottish poem for Norway

I have to put on my kilt and share something Scottish on the last night in Norway ....This will do

The Moosie's Prayer by Anon

A puir wee kirk moose aa forlorn

Its furry coat fair sairly worn

Sank doon upon its bony knees

and prayed - for just a wee bit cheese.

The tears ran doon its wee thin cheeks

But nane could hear the saddest squeaks

That drifted oan the cauld nicht air

Till whiles it couldnae pray nae mair.

Syne daylight cam, the kirk bells rang

The doors swung open wi a bang

Communion day had come oan by

Wi wine and plates o breid held high.

The wee moose lay as still as daith

And watched it aa wi bated braith

Then thocht - if I keep awfu quate

A bit micht jist fa aff a plate.

And so it gazed as roond they went

Then jist as tho twas heaven sent

Whit landed richt upon its heid

Bit twa lumps o communion breid.

The staff o life lay oan the flair -

Then, bounteous answer to his prayer

Jist as he thocht, 'It looks fell dry'.

Ae body couped some wine forbye.

Wee moosie stoated up the aisle

Wearin sic a boozy smile

The folk stopped singin, fair aghast

Tae see a drunken moose walk past.

The organist fell aff his chair,

The meenister could only stare

Tae see this drunken, sinfu moose

Cavertin in his sacred hoose.

At last it staggered up the nave

Then turned and gied a happy wave

'I ken noo when its time to pray

I'll do it oan communion day'.

Submit ExpressSearch Engine Marketing Services

Norwegian sexologists

I attended a very interesting lecture today from a married couple - he is a "transvestite" medical doctor and she is a psychologist and they are both sexologists. Their presentation was about gender identity and why the old polarity of male and female no longer will do. The lecture included the science of how gender develops in the womb and how the sex organs can develop of fail to develop over a period of time and the complexity of the genetic makeup of people who are not female or male in terms of their chromosomes - instead of XX or XY there are people who are XXY.

Androgyny was celebrated in the time of the renaissance - we looked at a slide of Donatellos David and a Michaleangelo statue of a woman which was the physique of a man with breasts attached! And we all know about the image in the Da Vinci painting that has made Dan Browns fortune.

The following poem by anon was quoted -

"Put no question mark to joys that others earn
however weird they seem to be
there always is a lot to learn
and even more to see."

We examined the complexity of the "trans - spectrum" - how people define themselves as "transvestive", "bi-gendered", "trans-sexual" and "unspecified trans".

There is now the possibility that peoples gender can be changed or reinforced by surgery but the plea for our speakers was let surgery follow the soul rather than what the surgeons deem is best and most appropriate for purely surgical reasons.

It is an incredibly complex area and I was pleased to have this opportunity to explore it more deeply in this seminar presentation by international experts.

Inspirations

Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible. - William Butler Yeats
With the above quotation Gregory Collins ended his lecture this morning on the monastic contribution to contemporary spirituality and Christianity.
Then this afternoon there was a lecture by Netto R Thelle which started with a quote from R S Thomas
Pilgrimages

There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat the way
the saints went.


...Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.

... was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that in times
like these and for one like me
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather and
inexplicable, as though he were in
here?

He ended the lecture with this poem by Gunnar Ekelof "The ferry song"

Every person is a world, inhabited
by blind beings in obscure revolt
against the "I", the king who rules over them.
In every soul a thousand souls are captive,
in every world lie thousands of worlds hidden.


Words that are really worth meditating on.....

Off again - this time to Norway

I am off again. I set my alarm clocks for 10 to 4 this morning and I was glad I set two as one of them was still on GMT so if I had only set that I would have been an hour late.
Some diary notes of my travels - reflections later....
I got to Prestwick airport at 5.30am just as a coach load of Norwegians were unloading so had
quite a queue.
The flight was on time and the bus stop 3km from the airport but a taxi got me there five minutes before the bus left. It was a very comfortable double decker with free tea and coffee on board and a loo too.
Got to the meeting point in Kristiansand at 1.30 Norwegian time ( 12.30 UK time) and spent the afternoon looking round the town. Its great here. the bus ride was three hours across pine and
birch forests with few towns and the coast intervening on the landscape in particularly picturesque ways. This town with an 80,000 population has a sandy beach next to a marina and promenade and picturesque old town. It also has a commercial harbour wit a ferry to Denmark.
There is a spectacular old tall ship moored in the harbour and I walked up and had a close look at her.
Then at 15.00 we had a snack arranged for us( fish soup ) and at 17.00 there was a reception in the local town hall at which the mayor, the rector of the local university, the local bishop and others made speeches and a famous Norwegian folk fiddle player played music.
Then at 19.00 there was a folk mass ( sung) in the cathedral here - which was really stunning and moving. Then bus to the conference centre and we checked into our rooms and then had supper (sweet and sour with rice ) followed by returning to my room to make up my bed and go to sleep as I feel very tired(getting up so early....zzzzz). The bar was open but at 25KR for a beer of glass of wine I will be abstemious ( 9 kr to the pound)