Last of the summer reading

Just back from a quiet(ish) week away in Norfolk with some easy day-visits to historic sites, local beer and plenty of time to catch up with reading. I thought I’d share the highlights of my late summer reading with you.

At the suggestion of my good friend, Chris Winfield, I read What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel. I am glad I did, although it made for several audible sighs of incredulity.

A professor at Harvard University, Sandel analyses the impact of the free market on our lives. He builds up an impressive series of examples to suggest that unregulated markets inevitably tend to turn as much as possible into commodities. This leads to a kind of corruption which destroys some of the key values that makes us most human.  Here are described so many choices that money can buy, potentially rendering the democratic process, health, life and death and the most intimate of human activities subject to who pays the most. For the most extreme of free-marketeers, this is not only an acceptable situation but a desirable one.

This book appeals because of its anecdotal approach. The reader stands amazed at the kind of things which it is possible to buy and left with questions about how much of innate human value is being corrupted, seemingly without challenge. A worrying, persuasive and necessary read. 

The second of my top of this summer’s reading list is The Establishment: And how they get away with it by Owen Jones.  

The premise is this: our democracy is a façade behind which there is a powerful but unaccountable network of people who control and steer society to meet their ends. They hold the power and receive most of the rewards.  We journey with Jones through global boardrooms, Westminster, public schools, the news moguls and the City.  The author contends that there are well developed links between all these interests – The Establishment – that represent a clear and present danger to our democracy.  Indeed they use democracy as a shield to conceal their activities.

This is another highly accessible book, despite its length (it would have been just as persuasive at half the number of pages).  One of my early questions was to ask myself if this was going to end up as an entertaining set of conspiracy theories. But those who like to see conspiracies everywhere always overstate their case. Jones is a skillful writer who sets out his stall and then leaves the reader to join the dots: an approach which, in this case, successfully engages the reader.

This is another sobering read.  For myself, I found that there were simply too many instances highlighted by the author to dismiss as coincidence. I am not a fully-paid up convert to his convictions about the Establishment as he portrays it.  There are some rather old and threadbare arguments from the bogeyman collection of the Left brought out yet again.  But it seems to me that there is enough of a case to require some answers.

I also read Owen Jones’ Chavs: the demonization of the working class.  Once again, it makes some telling and worthy points but it could have done this much more succinctly. 

The living is easy?

In the last couple of weeks, we have had the usual mix of weather that goes to make up an English summer. Some days have seen blazing hot sunshine. On others, a whole lot of rain has fallen in a single day.
 
Wimbledon is now past for another year and the Ashes won back from some kind of scratch team from the southern hemisphere.

Days are full of the familiar summer scents of newly-mown grass and barbecue smoke. The jingle of the ice-cream van is heard on every street corner and which of us cannot remember the excitement we felt as school children in those long, lazy days of summer? In summertime, the living really does seem easy.

Yet, day by day, I meet people who – despite the glorious summer sunshine – face real pressures in their lives. Illness, bereavement, relationship issues, rises in the cost of living, sanctions and the bedroom tax. For those in jobs, there are long hours and ever-increasing demands by their employers.

If we carry a picture in our minds that the life that God invites us to lead is only made up of sunshine and roses, the chances are that our faith will be dented by hard times. Yet Jesus warned his followers that they should expect troubles; they should not think that they are protected from all the hardships of life. The bible asks (and then answers!) an interesting question:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship….No! In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  

The writer goes on to say that in all creation there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God found in Jesus. Because of him, we can know that God loves us. Knowing this, we can face – with renewed hope - all that life may throw at us.

So, whether right now the sun is shining for you or the days seem dark, live today in the knowledge that God loves you. That before anyone had first thought of you or spoken your name, you were loved and always will be. 

And, if you get the chance, reach out and show that kind of love and acceptance to someone who is facing darker days.

Anyone for S&M?

The letter arrived on Thursday morning last week.  It was from Scottish Widows plc.

As I am neither Scottish, female or bereaved, you may wonder why. 

Well my pension savings are held by Scottish Widows plc.  They had written to inform me that Scottish Widows plc, along with Scottish Widows Unit Funds Limited and Scottish Widows Annuities Limited would be simplifying their business by transferring all their assets to Clerical Medical Investment Group Limited.

When this is done, they propose to change the name of Clerical Medical investment Group Limited to (wait for it…..) Scottish Widows Limited.

Twenty years ago, I worked on a large capital library building and refurbishment programme.  One of the options we had for fitting out new libraries with shelving was to buy them from a specialist firm called Terrapin Reska Ltd.  Well the years have flown by.  Imagine my surprise when investigating shelving again recently I found that Terrapin Reska Ltd had become (wait for it…) Reska Terrapin Ltd.  But it didn’t stop there.  No sir. A mere transposition of names wasn’t enough.  Now the firm seems to operate as Reska Products Ltd. Do we dare ask what became of the terrapin?

Here's another one. Monty Python’s production company is named Python (Monty) Pictures Ltd.

So here’s a thought for a Monday lunchtime in the silly season. What if Marks & Spencer became Spencer & Marks?  Shortening that to S&M might do wonders for sales among their target market of the beige-clad, free-range elderly.  

The owls are restless

When I renewed this blog in 2012, I began with a quotation from Welsh poet and priest R S Thomas. Having had a silent period on the blog front since Easter while I helped my family with their new venture, I find myself quoting him again now as I return to blogging.

"The owls are restless

People have died here

Good men for bad reasons

Better forgotten"

I have seen collections of Thomas’ poetry on the shelves of many colleagues and I wonder what it is about the bleakness of the poetry of this country priest, cut off by his calling and his learning among people that he served faithfully but distantly, that so resonates with other ministers.

 I read the quotation again today when I picked up Alan Garner’s The Owl Service for the first time in years. I had gone to find it to lend to a friend about to leave on holiday; she was seeking something good to read.  The book begins with that quotation: “The owls are restless…”

It is sad that few people younger than me know of Garner, who was a towering figure in the literature of thinking teens in the 60s and 70s. A writer who lived to write, Garner’s style was to revisit and rework older stories. He takes the view (and I agree) that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling.

In a secluded Welsh valley ringed by wild mountains, the characters and quarrels of three young people unfold. Two men love the same girl and tragedy follows, leaving successive generations to play out the terror of that ancient triangle. It suggests that people faced with the same challenges as former generations are compelled to repeat their mistakes unless they choose to break the pattern. The Owl Service reworks a powerful story from the Mabinogion, the earliest prose literature of Britain. The stories were compiled in the 12th–13th century by Welsh authors from much earlier oral traditions. It won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award when first published.

Some readers cannot revisit novels once read; I find myself drawn back to enjoy and explore my favourite books again though there can be quite a gap between readings. Having gone looking for it, I found the slim novel on a low-level, rarely-visited bookshelf. Reader, I have to confess that I opened it over breakfast and was drawn-in again by the foot of page 1. So I won’t be parting with it this week.  

I recommend The Owl Service as an imaginative novel.  When I have finished re-reading it, I will also need to track down my copy of Elidor by the same author; as I recall, another powerful and imaginative story.

Don't look - it's not nice to stare

I was brought-up to look away.

Not to stare at people who are different.

I don’t slow down and gawp at road traffic accidents or watch paramedics tending to people on the pavement.

To do that isn’t kind or necessary or right. 

My response to people in pain shouts aloud (in a discreet whisper, of course) the values by which I was brought-up.  It’s not that I don’t care or that I don’t have the stomach to see people suffering, it’s simply that I am English and middle-aged. We believe that people deserve their dignity, most especially when they are vulnerable or in distress.

Yet, in the past couple of years, on the Facebook pages of friends, I have seen severed heads. I have seen the smouldering bodies of those who have been burned alive. Girls who have been raped, murdered and left hanging from trees. Blast victims from bombings. Fatal exit wounds from gunshots.

Those appalling images can be cleared from my view at the click of a mouse. And I can be angry for the moment that ‘friends’ have published such graphic images on their pages where I (and others, including children) will see them. For surely the victims of such barbaric acts deserve the dignity in their deaths that was denied them in life?

And surely I, living in Pleasantville and trying hard to live a good life, deserve not to be confronted with their terror and indignity?
 

I hate what those images do to me.
 

But I think I now begin to understand why good people might post such pictures online.  Maybe the real indignity is not that the torn bodies of what were once human beings like me and you should be displayed for all to see. The real indignity is that their blood cries aloud for justice and that I can silence them again by looking away or by checking my email.

Perhaps the way to show these lumps of flesh the dignity of once being human beings - fellow sons and daughters of our common Parent - is to look, briefly, and be appalled at what has been done to them.