Jots & tittles

There was a dead man on my brother’s patio when he woke up this morning. That’s not something that happens every day, I’m sure you will agree. Even in the urban jungle of central London, where my brother lives, it is a bit of a shocker.

The first warning he had of this occurrence was when there was a loud banging on the front door early in the morning. It was the police. Quite a few police. They trooped through his basement flat, opened the french windows of his bedroom and stepped onto the patio outside. There the body lay. The dead man was in his 50’s and had jumped from the roof of the tall London  town house where my brother’s flat is situated on the lowest level. A witness had seen it all.

There was  a bit of gore which I won’t describe in detail. My brother’s punch bag , ripped from the wall by the falling man, and his cold body on the pavement.

Death falls upon us without warning. An awful intruder, and one we would avoid but cannot: 1 out of every 1 of us must die. As anyone who has lost a loved one knows; death is a monster. We recoil from it.

God, especially, hates death. Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Raising Lazarus to life was not enough for Jesus. His campaign against death took him to the cross so that, by destroying death’s power there, all of his friends could enjoy endless, deathless life.

I’m not a Christian because I fear death. That’s a slur beloved of anti-theist polemicists. “The cringing, fearful believer” caricature is one of their favourites. But when death comes close-  I am very thankful to know the reality of the dead and buried, risen and alive Jesus Christ. Only he has the remedy for that most ultimate of individual tragedies. Only he can see us safely through to the other side of death. That goes for you and me – as well as that poor bloke who gave my brother such a rude awakening this morning.

Don’t fret if your hands feel listless and slow,
fidgety, or you find your fingers tapping, bored
on table, wheel, glass. All this will pass.
Your hands will grow

bone dry and, like a fading parchment, crinkle,
but then will reveal and feel so sensitively
the aching of others. Like shy children, tearful lovers
exquisitely gentle.

Mobile phone from Finland,
watch: product of Japan.
Shades made in Estonia,
designed by an Italian.

Ma coupine est Algerienne,
come to learn my lingua.
Balti from the restaurant,
on futon (by IKEA).

Bacon marked with DANISH,
Coffee grown in Ecuador.
Shoes- as worn by trendy dudes
in Milano, Paris and New York.

CD’s from Los Angeles,
strawberries: ex-Madrid.
Nothing from Great Britain but
true grit, grit, grit.

There the thatch is all fire and aglow

on the walls of midsummer kilned stone,

in the village that shelters the bare and the poor.

The mill stream cascading

where the children are playing,

by the oak trees that sleep in the dear Derramore.

The lavender walls are alive

with the fruit of the flower and beehive,

and peace is at home behind every front door.

There weavers are talking

and fair Rose is a walking,

by the oak trees that sleep in the dear Derramore.

No fighting or feuding can bring

discord within Gullion’s Ring;

the district of songs stills the clamour of war.

Poets dream in the glen

beneath gloaming Creggan,

of the oak trees that sleep in the dear Derramore.

While the Camlough flows calmly nearby

with its lilting and low lullaby,

and not here do wild revellers roar.

Take your ease by the river,

there is rest here forever,

by the oak trees that sleep, down the long ages deep,

in the keeping of dear Derramore.



And how can I repay you for all my relaxed cruelties?
Arid silences, a constant deafness to your questions?
Laughter, ringing up at your expense, unspoken indifference;
implicit access to people much more interesting.

Take this stammering self-interrogation,
this hard swallowing and cough of confession.
The shivering recognition, in the heart’s bleak cell
that your hold on me is inescapable.

For those who did not, after lunch yesterday,
make a last dash to Tesco for more “Finest” canapés;
who did not sit by the fire slowly sipping sloe gin
to the sound of King’s carols, melodiously swelling;
who were not painstakingly parceling goldy-green trays

of chocolate biscuits, silk scarves  or vintage wine;
who were not looking forward to a jolly good time.
If there was no snow on your ground but a hard, bitter frost,
and you woke up in tears feeling guilty and lost,
with no friends and no cash and no heating up high;

if this morning you ache and have been in the wars
or are fifteen and pregnant and kicked out of doors:
here’s a welcome for you, the rejected and old,
and a gift – joy unknown to the garish mad world.
The shelterless love, come to make his life yours.

The coming of the stars

For Ken Jolley

The night the stars descended, we were hunched as usual,
dozing in tattered bundles; heads down,
oblivious to the aching air.  Only one was watchful.

When he cried out, a wolf scattered my fitful dreams.

I started, came to; beheld my staring mates, stark with wonder,
Arcing up, like young cedars struck by lightning
wedded to the sky by blue white flame, transmitting unearthly energy to the mud.
The sparking multiplied, and a roar like a great song underground
intensifying in eye- watering, naked power. I swore it were the last hour.

You ask how it was that they heard the voices clearer than I?
I’ve often wondered why, but am none the wiser. I was the junior,
always simpler, smaller, quieter than my friends. But even then I had my uses:
sleeping in the gateway, seeking the lost ones, fetching sandwiches.

It wasn’t how they picture it, you know: us all starry eyed,
united, trooping down the bright hillside hand in hand,
like kids following a painted sign to wonderland.
That meeting was fear itself. The others wept, transfixed.
My legs were wet and shaking as I crept between a cleft rock,
jammed my fingers in my ears and prayed and sobbed.

Later, when I reappeared, the stars were gone. My mates
returned and mocked me for hiding, gave me a ribbing, said
I’d missed a treat; “time of their lives” they laughed,  exuberant, fiery eyed.
They were changed men. But were they mad? I didn’t know what to believe.
As my dear mum used to say; “tidings that come in a flash are usually bad”.

But now I understand, feel the same thrill they had. I know why
they went to tell the world what they’d seen, share the tale
with one and all. Me; I stayed within sight of the sheepfold wall.

People still seek me out to hear my piece.
I say what I know; that now I sing my flock a peaceful song,
that fear bids farewell as new love is born, how joy
can be found in the lowliest place of all; how happy
is the shepherd when the least among his sheep comes home.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity”

W.B Yeats

This week, nostalgia arrives for me in two forms. A nonchalant feathering of snow today, which reminds me of at least one genuinely white Xmas from my childhood- and the Top 40 Xmas singles chart battle between two songs.

One is the latest product of karaoke TV show “The X Factor”. It is an aspirational ballad sung by a pleasant looking, albeit run-of the mill, chap called Joe McElderry. Chief Tory David Cameron described him as a “nice lad”. Your grandma will love him. For him, trashing a hotel room would mean not making the bed when he left.

The others in the running are an American band I followed in my teens, called “Rage Against the Machine”. They represent furious, spitting, anti-establishment rock aggro. I recall burning with incandescent, iconoclastic teen fury against everything and everyone as I listened to their first album on my SONY cassette walkman, safely-  and ironically-  ensconced in the back of my dad’s corporate BMW.

At the (now demolished- whooo… I feel old) London Astoria they were impressive; Zack de la Rocha (lead singer) was a head -shaking, dreadlock -whipping, pogo-ing, microphone-biting nutter, inciting the mosh pit into a torrid frenzy.

I hadn’t really come for them, but for the support band TOOL – then just a mewling baby band, now stadium rockers; I foresaw it all, he notes hubristically. After them I watched Rage’s sweat-drenched rabble rousing from up in the cheap seats on the balcony. Lively is not the word. The crowd was ballistic. I was suitably struck and awed by the rhythmic iron fist of RATM in their heyday & kept looking round expecting the arrival of the police (not the band).

Now, in 2009, RATM are looking a fair bit more grizzled than in ‘93. Zack’s swear words sound less psycho/hysterical and more gruff/weathered on Radio 5 live. Their current resuscitation in the UK has been led by a Facebook campaign that aims to usurp the X factor song from the No.1 slot and deprive X Factor brand manager Simon Cowell of a few quid (which he won’t miss). It’s a protest at the “same-old same-old” and an indicator that some people react to being, as they see it,  spoon-fed this modern, safe, branded, syndicated music pabulum instead of getting good old “authentic” tunes by “real” performers, preferably with pronounced smack addictions.

So, whose single will I be buying? Neither, in fact, as I’m a common purse Christian communitarian with nary a penny to my name- and no credit cards. I’ve never used one in fact, least of all to buy a tune online.

Who do I side with, then? Is it clean cut Joe with his uplifting message (albeit manufactured by Simon Cowell Corporate Music Megabucks Inc.) or RATM and their stop-start, machine- gun, expletive packed politico volcanics?

I’m in a quandary. Instinctively I favour the music I was into as a teen. Like Bill Hicks, the “comics’ comic”, I recoil at the garish plasticity of the smiling X Factor muzak product. I listened to half of Joe’s offering and it made me wince. I prefer my rock to be red in tooth and claw; music with a cause. As an Anabaptist- leaning Christian my stance is instinctively anti-commercialism and pro the underdog. Other than singing to God, if I want music it’s got to have some genuine passion and sincerity; it should be music with a mission.

But what mission? Therein lies the rub. Even fans of RATM will struggle to tell you what the “take away” message of the song really is. An attempt might be:  “it expresses refusal to kow tow to bigots in power positions”. I guess we’d all agree to that; that’s good- but it’s not really an action point. I want to change things, but what? I want to live authentically, explore what it is to be free, not be a puppet in the hand of marketeers; but how?

“Killing in the Name” offers me an opportunity to vent at Cowell – and the whole cruel world-  but no ideology to live out other than anti-authoritarianism. That’s ok to a point, but I’m not really anti-society in a full-on, anarchist, do-as-thou-wilt sense. I quite like it when murderers are caught. Justice matters to me. Anyway, RATM are on SONY, so they’re benefiting from doing business with the same label as Joe. It’s all the same system.

And this is why-  in this year’s game of musical chairs- as people take their positions I am left without a seat. The early 90’s were, for me, years of searching for a cause. Raging, but not knowing at what. Wanting to take action, but not knowing where to strike. Finding fault, but not finding any way to fix the fault.

When I found Jesus, I found that the fighting against bigotry and injustice was better done sober, and clean of drugs, and not just sung about at the gig.  It was something I needed to address at the level of my own heart and lifestyle, and then live out my beliefs as authentically as possible. That took me into Christian community; into a Christian business, into work with the homeless and into a fully celibate lifestyle; all a living out -in some sense- of reaction against “the way things are”, but wanting to have some positives to bring to the table. Wanting to have something to say, something to offer, to help move things forward. Shouting at “the man” is not enough.

In the process of trying to live out an alternative kind of life,  I’ve found many of the limiting factors to lie not “out there”, with nameless, faceless KKK conspirator- bigots, a la the RATM song;  but within me.

Do I really want a life of love, self giving, justice and equality? Do I really want to find myself on the side of the poor, fighting for the rights of the oppressed? Intellectually, yes. Spiritually, yes, it’s my vision and what I want to live for. But my worse part rebels against all this & says – as in the Rage song-  “F*** you I won’t do what you tell me”.  It’s quite happy with the status quo. It prefers a quiet life to real and costly action. It doesn’t want to live dangerously, radically free.

Deep down I know – I’d rather hear Joe’s saccharine platitudes on continuous loop than be dictated to by that.

Someone I know recently said “Loz is a liar!” He reckoned that when I claimed that “God helped me give up smoking”-  that couldn’t be true.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe in God; he does; but he also struggles with his own addiction issues and finds it hard to believe that God could help him to be free.

I shared this in our church meeting yesterday and went on to say that – as far as the fags went- it hadn’t been exactly a clean break for me. At University the allure of a golden B&H proved too strong while I was writing all night essays. But for all those (and there were many)  lapses, the days of 60 a day chain smoking at parties were behind me. My flirtations with recreational drug use were abandoned.  I felt emotionally healed and secure at a deep level and one of the signs of this was, amazingly to me (but it doesn’t sound a big deal I’ll admit) that I was able to stop chewing my fingernails into bleeding, unsightly stumps.

In the same meeting yesterday I said that our faith needs to be matched by actions (sticking pretty closely to the script of the letter of James, chapter 2) I said how it was needful to be Christians in all the dimensions of our lives, not self-deluded people, compartmentalizing our existences into “I am a Christian” and “now I am not behaving as a Christian” segments and trying to run both together- like Tiger Woods and his multiple partners. As with Mr Woods, this kind of living ends up crashing messily, sooner or later.

To illustrate my message I gave examples. I said that dissing people in the safety of Facebook was out of order. Would we do it to their faces? I also said it was bad thing to put on a Christian face whilst simultaneously texting your dealer. Technology easily facilitates such “cognitively dissonant” activities, whether it’s cheating on your spouse – or ordering another fix.

Later on, someone I respect said that I’d made it sound like you could not be a believer and struggle with addiction issues; which wasn’t what I’d meant to put across at all.

I could only apologize for my poor communication. I also recognize that, as someone who has lived a fairly sheltered life and was never addicted to “Class A” substances, I am a poor judge of the struggle involved for serious addicts as they attempt to detox. For those from abusive and unstable backgrounds especially, it must be a herculean task to try and get clean, even with the support of church and friends. Such soul wounds run deep- and do not heal overnight.

I am entirely sympathetic with their struggles and in some ways think “well, at least they know their need”- unlike the many who tell me that they are “ok” with their empty, wage slave, TV-centric lifestyles and never an inkling that they might be missing the bigger picture in some way- they are “fine ” without God. (As a counsellor I know once said; FINE stands for “effing incapable of normal emotion”)

But; having said all that;  let me add that nothing I said yesterday is anything like as uncompromising as what Jesus has to say.

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” – Matt. 5:20

You must, therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Matt. 5:48

Not just; “you must be clean from smack, as people from middle class upbringings are clean”. You must be perfect, as God is perfect.

Such uncompromising statements as these make the famous contrarian and atheist Christopher Hitchens deride Jesus’ teaching as evil and wrong. Hitchens comments that we are, according to the Bible, and ludicrously in his view, “created sick – and commanded to be well”.

This is, in one sense, perfectly true. We are certainly sick. Christian or not, we know that we are far from perfect; and Jesus says that we’ve got to be – excuse the expression- as good as God. Impossible? It sounds it; and perhaps a bit ridiculous as well.

I am reminded of TS Eliot’s lines from “Four Quartets”:

Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.

This, I think, sums it up. We would be truly stuck, unable to shed our old ways and reach anything like perfection, were it not for the fact that the power of God is not limited by the human. Were it not that His ocean vast love underwrites our salvation, it would be game over from the get-go.

Far from being an ogreish, demanding tyrant; with the word spoken from God comes (from Him) the power to do the word. It is, if you will, a creative commandment; a living instruction; like a toy that comes with batteries; all ready to go.

For those who receive His word; God’s grace is sufficient for them to start to live in a new kind of way.  Otherwise it makes no sense at all.  Christian faith, if not lived out in the strength and grace of God’s spirit, is rightly rejected as impossibly demanding.

That’s the reason I am going to continue to sound like a liar, or at least unreasonable: because the grace of God refuses to leave us at the level of that which is possible through our own efforts. He changes us to be able to achieve that which we never could on our own. He lifts us to become people we never dreamed we could be, stripping away the old clothing of our addicted- or boring- or highly respectable – lives, and clothing us with His own power and righteousness. Can we become good like God? It seems impossible, but if God can become human sin on a Roman cross – then maybe it’s not.  Christian faith is a supernatural thing- or it’s nothing.

So I’m going to have to continue to sound like I’m mistaken or unbalanced. So be it. I can only hope that a growing sensitivity, humility and awareness of the wrenching struggles that other people face will improve my attempts to communicate in future.

Most people have something to give up when entering Christian community. It could be sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. It could be SKY sport. Most people have a fear they have to face. For some it is sharing a room. For others the lack of a particular
brand of hair conditioner (this I call “Pantene phobia” and is common among females.)

For me, one of those fear was that I’d never have any clothes to wear. When I joined the community in ‘97 I had some decent clobber and thought “well, when it wears out I’ll just have to wear beige sack-cloth or something.”

As it turns out, I have never had any issues in the clothing supply department.
That’s party because God’s generous, because we share stuff,  and partly because of my clothes kleptomania – which means that if I see clothing lying around, I’ll probably be wearing it pretty soon. I am an infamous purloiner of t-shirts and trousers. This has from time to time created a bit of a stir; like the time I came down to breakfast in Fiona’s night shirt.

Enough on me- this incident involves my friend Andy, who is one of the partners in our church’s legal practise. Recently, he decided he needed to get a new suit; his old one was looking a bit moth eaten. It wasn’t exactly projecting the right image to potential new clients, you might say, or to the court, on his many appearances there.

What should he do? For any “normal” lawyer; the answer is obvious: Buy a very good one, or two- or three-  or however many you want to – you are a lawyer, for God’s sake!

Well, precisely. Andy is a lawyer- for God’s sake. So that means he’s devoted to a lifestyle of, amongst other things; relative poverty. It means that he’s not about to lash out top dollar on Paul Smith or Aquascutum; he needs to think thrift and simplicity.

After consulting a few people on the matter, including me, he took money out of our “common purse” and went shopping, but returned dismayed that the most suitable stuff was so very pricey.

I sympathised with his dilemma, because it’s such a common one in a common purse lifestyle like ours. Although he definitely needed the suit, his feelings (rightly or wrongly) were mixed about spending a lots of money on “himself”.

At this point, in steps a friend of ours who lives in our community. “Dave” is a man with many court appearances to his name- but no lawyer, he. “Dave” is an ex- international drug dealer with a criminal record as long as the M1 motorway. Now he’s on the straight and the narrowest way of all, he no longer needs his court costume, and was happy to give it to Andy. It’s a quality item- and a near perfect fit.

So now, as Andy goes in to court to represent his clients, he will be wearing the coat I gave him a few years ago, a cashmere coat that once belonged to my father, a commercial barrister and former international expert in trade marks. Underneath that coat he will be sporting the smart suit of a former international criminal.

I think you will agree that it’s unusual for a chap like Andy to be dressed in this manner, but he certainly looks the part: every inch the commercial solicitor and partner of his legal practise. You’d never guess that underneath his strangely sourced finery was the fiery heart of a radical who loves the equality, simplicity and justice of the upside-down kingdom.