A study of old age and so much more

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West (1931)

I had not read any Vita Sackville-West until I acquired an ancient Penguin edition of "All Passion Spent" when clearing out my mother-in-law's bookshelves.  What a treasure I had missed. This is English prose at its best, though describing a long dead world with its outdated mores and values, it still has a message for today. 
The heroine is the elderly Lady Slane who courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. After the death of her husband she, as an 88-year-old woman, is emancipated and, for the first time since she was eighteen, "does her own thing!"  Her husband was a politician, prime minister and Viceroy of India and she travelled the world with him as he followed his career. She enjoys annoying her pompous and overbearing children. She begins by infuriating them by ignoring their plans for looking after her in her widowhood and makes her own arrangements to live in a cottage in Hampstead. A few months later she has an opportunity to annoy them even more by giving away an enormous inheritance to charity to spite their avaricious and parsimonious tendencies.
This charming and gentle novel addresses people's, especially women's, control of their own lives, a subject about which Sackville-West was greatly concerned. Like Sackville-West, Lady Slane explicitly states that she is not a feminist and considers such issues to be questions of human rights, while acknowledging the difficult position of women.
The wise old lady seeks a life that allows plenty of time for reflection and she chooses companions that will not upset the rhythm of her new life. She reflects for the first time on the dreams that she had for her life before she became engaged at the age of 18 and how her plans became completely taken over by her husbands plans. It is a story about relationships, family, place in society, the constrictions that convention puts upon people and the lack of control that people have on their lives. It also reflects tangentially on the nature of love and relationships which considering Sackville-West's affairs with other women as a member of the Bloomsbury set and her long lasting "open" marriage are poignant.
I am glad I made the time to read this grubby old orange Penguin novel. It was a worthwhile read.

Image courtesy of vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Apocalyptic environmentalism

A review of "The Rapture" by Liz Jensen.
When I first started reading this novel I wondered what genre of fiction I had. It is called the rapture and has many references to apocalyptic Christians in the near future interpreting climate change and other events as signs of the end. ( Incidentally "The rapture" is not biblical but an imaginative 19th century heresy thought up by an Anglican clergyman who subsequently left the Church of England, joined the Plymouth Brethren and then went to the USA. Thus pre-tribulation rapture theology was developed in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren,and popularised in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.) The novel set in a the future after the faith wave - a religious revival that has greatly expanded all forms of fundamentalism throughout the religions of the world. It is a novel about eco-warriors battling an evil corporation that does not realise the consequences of its actions - sort of. But it is also about mental health and disability as well as being a love story and examining the effectiveness of psychotherapy for seriously criminally disturbed young people. No wonder I had trouble pigeon-holing the book neatly into one simple fiction genre.
Ther are some far fetched co-incidences in the book which verge on fantasy specifically about the ability of people to predict the future through pseudo psychic powers enhanced by electro-convulsive therapy (or ECT). Ignoring these fantastic elements the book is a good thriller which follows the familiar plot of a small group of people trying to warn the world of what they know and battling with widespread unbelief and the powers of the law.
The heroine is wheelchair bound with serious issues about her disability that is the effect of a car accident. The plot makes clear that people with issues can be sympathetic and insightful psychotherapists but they can also be seriously handicapped. It is a well structured thriller dealing with topical issue of sudden climate change, tsunami and apocalypse. In dealing with religion, mental health, disability, as well as environmental issues it leaves you with plenty of things to think about after you have enjoyed the denoument.
Irvine Walsh in his Guardian review says "Would-be thriller writers should certainly pick up The Rapture; it's a master class on how to write an engaging thriller about a relevant contemporary issue while still respecting the reader's brain cells."
You can buy this book by clicking here

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Unhealthy religion

Daniel B. Clendenin writes a blog every week reflecting creatively on the lectionary. This week his reflection on an apocalyptic text in Mark's gospel contained the following analysis of how to spot religion that is unhealthy or even evil. 

You can find his blog here - http://www.journeywithjesus.net/

...some of the signs that religion has become evil and that evil has become religious. Here are ten warning bells.

• Fanatical claims of absolute truth. I don't mean the belief in absolute truth(s), which I think is both tenable and admirable, but rather the doubt-free and uncritical confidence that one has understood absolute truth absolutely.
• Identifying the gospel with nationalistic ideologies, partisan politics, state power, and ethnic identity.
• Blind obedience to totalitarian, charismatic, and authoritarian leaders, personality cults, or views that undermine moral integrity, personal freedom, individual responsibility, and intellectual enquiry.
• Ushering in the “end times” in the name of your religion.
• Justifying religious ends by dubious means.
• Any and all forms of dehumanisation, from openly declaring war on your enemy, demonising those who differ from you, construing your neighbour as an Other, to claiming that God is on your side alone. Do you believe that God loves Iran as much as Israel? There shouldn't be the slightest hesitation or qualification in the answer — of course he does.
• Pressure tactics of coercion, deception, and false advertisement.
• Alienation, isolation and withdrawal from family, friends and society, whether psychologically or literally (eg, David Koresh's Branch Davidians or Jim Jones' "People's Temple" in northern Guyana).
• Exploitation and all forms of unreasonable demands upon one's time, money, resources, family, friendships, sexuality, etc.
• Oddball, sectarian interpretations of Scripture that have little or no support from the broad, classical Christian tradition, or that disregard the best of historical-critical scholarship.

Often these danger signs combine and overlap.

  Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Carbon compromises

I was at a group meeting this week discussing our carbon footprints. We looked at a an on line website where you enter information about your lifestyle and the site calculates your carbon footprint. We looked at several alternative websites and they were of varying degrees of complexity and in the end decided to use a simple one that concentrated on travel and fuel use - the two major parts of life that generate carbon dioxide emissions. There were other calculators on line that allowed for many other factors to be included but we felt that this became much too complex!
We were a mixed group of people - some in employment some retired, some in large homes and some in smaller accommodation, some with family spread out across the world and others with few relatives close at hand. We all had different lifestyles and expectations and almost everyone flew at least once every year. One member of the group commented that we live in a cold damp part of the world and a holiday somewhere warm and dry is important to preserve our sanity!
When you think about living in a carbon neutral way you tend to think of living in thick ethnic sweaters in cold homes and walking and cycling in the cold rain. These negative images are unlikely to encourage many to embrace living in an eco-friendly way. 
But as we discussed the way to live in an environmentally friendly way we we were not depressed because we all recognised that we all make compromises every day. Perfection is difficult to achieve in any part of life so we often have to make do with what is achievable within the time and resources we have available. There are some purists around who never make compromises. They may well achieve a high level of self satisfaction but they can be a real pain to be with!
Life is about travelling in a certain direction with a certain steer. Being aware of the actions that create problems for the environment makes us aware and attentive to options at every turn and we can adopt the least worst course of action. Real life involves many competing pressures on our lives and many different priorities all demanding our attention. Real life is doing our best as we accept the inevitable compromises but recognising that we are on a journey. All the small things that we can achieve are better than nothing at all. 

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net