Still Moving Forwards, Still Remaining Still

I think that a great many people would agree that as years go, 2016 has been somewhat less than ideal. A slew of well-loved actors, singers, writers and other famous personages have shuffled off this mortal coil, while we’ve been faced with unexpected political upheavals. Here in the UK, we suddenly found ourselves preparing to drift away from the European Union, a situation that I do not consider to be good, either in the short or long term, and in the US they’ve just managed to elect a man who, as far as I can tell, is woefully unsuited to the job, and whose campaign has relied largely on divisive and discriminatory rhetoric. I suspect that for many people, especially for minorities in the US, this is a real ‘one set of footprints’ time for them.

Nevertheless, I remain cautiously optimistic. In the case of Mr. Trump, I hope that the realisation of the responsibilities he’s taken on will cause him to rethink his more radical policies, and present a more conciliatory and understanding style than his populist vote-winning suggests. In the UK, there is a chance that we will be able to make something of our new-found independence, and that the rash of racially and religiously motivated attacks and harassments that followed the vote will die back down, and Britain will maintain its reputation for tolerance and openness.

I’m not saying I necessarily think these will happen, merely that I remain quietly, cautiously optimistic. I have been thinking recently about one of the less well-known Christian virtues; that of Stillness. In eastern traditions, it might be called tranquillity. In Catholic thought, it is (or is related to) the heavenly virtue of Patience, which our second holy tome (i.e. Wikipedia) defines as “the forbearance that comes from moderation; enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity; building a sense of peaceful stability and harmony rather than conflict, hostility, and antagonism.”

It is also, obviously related to the theological virtue of Hope (pipped to the top spot by Love, but nonetheless on the podium as one of the Top Three Virtues as voted for by a live television audience). Of course, Hope is itself related to its fellow medalling virtue, Faith. I suppose that in some ways it is much like the classical virtue of stoicism, although that has connotations of emotionlessness, of suppressing the emotions and the outwards display of them, rather than cultivating a stillness within oneself.

Christian scripture, litany and hymnody is full of calls to stillness. “Be still, and know that I am God”. “Be still, for the presence of the lord, the Holy One is here.”  “Be still my soul.”

It’s about remaining calm, remaining tranquil, being patient and hopeful in the face of upsets and setbacks. It is about trust as well, about having faith that, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  Or, if you prefer, not disimilar to that now horrifically over-used,over-adapted and irritating wartime catchphrase "Keep Calm and Carry On".

It is easy to react, especially given the way the world seems to be shifting back towards bigotry and intolerance, with fear and despair, or worse, anger. The protests we’ve seen in America in the nights since the election are not a useful reaction to the election of Mr. Trump. They are an emotional lashing out, and while they’re perfectly understandable, they are not helping. If anything they’re making things worse and confirming Trump’s supporters in their conviction that they represent order and lawfulness.  He was fairly and democratically elected, now we have to figure out what to make of the situation we’ve been given.

I am not suggesting not taking action; stillness isn’t about inactivity. Having faith and hope in a better future doesn’t mean sitting around and waiting for it to happen. Action must be taken, work must be done, that future must be built, and we, unfortunately, are the ones who must build it. We must have faith that we will be guided and supported in that work and remain hopeful that the goal is achievable, despite what appear to be difficult times and significant setbacks.  We must keep moving forwards, and atempt to remain still while we do it.

So, I shall try to remain patient, I shall try to remain hopeful, I shall try to maintain my faith both in God’s guidance and in the future He guides us towards. I shall try to be still, and in the stillness, hear the small, silent voice that says, “All will be well. I am with you. Do not be afraid.”

I’ll finish this post with a verse from the hymn, Be Still My Soul:

Be still my soul, thy God doth undertake,

To guide the future as he has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still my soul, the waves and winds still know,

His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Onwards to Glory!

The year is turning rapidly.  The nights are drawing in, the leaves are turning brown, cereal has been swapped for porridge as the breakfast of choice in the Jones household, it’s getting increasingly tricky to leave a nice warm bed when it’s cold and dark outside, and across the world tens of thousands of writers are gearing up for the start of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

That’s right, once again I will be voluntarily committing myself to write 50,000 words between midnight on the 31^st of October and 11:59 on the 30^th of November.  My Facebook feed will fill up with word count updates (from many of my friends, as well as myself) and I won’t blame anybody at all if they block me for the duration.

This year’s novel has been entered on the NaNo website under the heading of ‘Fantasy’, but only because, purely for the sake of convenience and to avoid having to do a load of research, I am setting it in a fictional world.  There will be no magic, no elves, no orcs and none of the pseudo-mediaeval trappings that so often come with the genre.

The working title for this year’s opus is ‘The General of Dead Cat Alley’, and the setting is more Regency or Napoleonic than anything else.  It will follow the story of Guil Lucas, a veteran soldier and general in the army of Fleuretia, unjustly blamed for a crushing defeat at the hands of their longstanding enemy Eisenheim.  Disgraced and broken, his estate and fortune seized, he ends up penniless and alone in the crime-ridden slums of the capital city Floriet.

Here Lucas sees an opportunity; the criminal gangs that rule the filthy alleyways are disorganised and inefficient, and would benefit from the military discipline and planning that he can provide. If he cannot serve with honour, he will rule in disgrace. Ruthless and effective, he swiftly begins to gain control of the slums. As his criminal empire grows however, he becomes increasingly aware of the corruption and decadence of the government, and the inequality that keeps so many in the grip of abject poverty. Will he be content with ruling the alleyways and gambling dens, or will he set his sights on the National Assembly led by the new First Minister di Merros, and light the fires of revolution?

Dramatic stuff, yes?  I’m planning on writing it in my accustomed first person perspective.  I’m thinking of perhaps 2 different perspectives; the general himself and a high ranking military officer serving the government and becoming involved in investigating the shadowy new crime boss.  Technology will be more or less Napoleonic, although I’ll have street lights made from luminescent crystal, and in place of gunpowder, piezo-thermic powdered stone, mined in dangerous conditions by convicted prisoners.  There won’t be any steam- or clockwork-powered technology or anything over the top though.

There is a school of thought that suggests that perhaps I ought to work on the first volume in the series I started last year (and the second of which is still only a work in progress), but that theory is nonsense.  I enjoyed (and I’m still enjoying) working on the Zenith stories, but to succeed at NaNo, you really need to be hyper-enthused by a story, and at the moment the above is what I want to work on.  Several key scenes have been written inside my head already.

Fear not though, loyal reader, I will keep you updated as to my progress as the month goes on.  Onwards, to glory!

Overwriting History

I posted some time ago about the fact that I was very doubtful of the value of prosecuting an extremely elderly woman who’d once, as a very young woman and for a short space of time, held a clerical position at Auschwitz.  I find myself thinking along similar lines now, but sort of in the opposite direction.  This is probably a bit controversial, so I shall attempt to tread carefully.

The UK Government has announced that it will officially pardon thousands of men who were convicted of homosexuality back in the days when it was against the law in this country.  Approximately 65,000 men were convicted under these laws, of whom 15,000 are still alive.

Since I’m very much in favour of equality on grounds of sexuality, and certainly don’t think that homosexuality should be illegal, I find myself in the slightly awkward mental position of nonetheless thinking that this isn’t a particularly good idea.  It smacks very much of not only wanting to judge the past by modern standards, but of wanting to reach back in time and correct its mistakes, even if only retroactively and in most cases posthumously.

I’m all for looking at the past and learning lessons from it, where possible.  We can examine with horror the idea that gay men were convicted simply of being gay, but I see no value whatsoever in retroactively pardoning thousands of men, most of whom are beyond caring in case.  At the times in which these crimes were committed, they were just that; crimes.  Should they have been crimes?  Nowadays we think not.  From the article: “Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said it was "hugely important that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offences who would be innocent of any crime today".”  I think this is the crux.  If they were living today, they would, very rightly, be innocent of any crime.  However, they were not living today.

I am uncomfortable with what seems to me to be the arrogance (’chronological snobbery’ as Lewis called it) of riding roughshod over the values of other times.  We don’t have to agree with them (in many cases I would find it monstrous to do so), but to impose our values onto the past, I think, diminishes both the past and ourselves.

For hundreds of years, executions were legally conducted in this country.  I would see no value in posthumously finding all of our executioners guilty of murder, because we no longer consider the death penalty to be morally defensible.  I can understand that those people who are still alive and who were convicted of homosexuality have a stronger case, since those convictions could still conceivably affect their lives today, but even then it seems too much like rewriting the past to suit our own values.  Until comparatively recently, corporal punishment was considered perfectly acceptable in schools.  To my knowledge no-one is suggesting that we should round up all the old school teachers and try them for child abuse, and find all the dead ones guilty in absentia.  We now consider homophobia to be wrong, but to my knowledge this proposal does not suggest that we also try the original instigators of the anti-homosexuality laws for homophobic hate crimes.  To do so would be completely pointless.

In effect, what we’re saying with this is not simply ’We no longer think that these acts ought to be a crime’ but that ’These acts have now never been a crime, because we no longer think that they ought to have been in the first place.’

It also seems like apologising for the acts of other people.  I equally see little value in the great-great grandchildren of some colonial oppressor or other apologising to the great-great grandchildren of the people they oppressed for the things the one lot of ancestors did to the other.  You’re apologising to somebody for what somebody else did to somebody else again, and I’m not convinced of the value of it.  Perhaps if my ancestors had been tortured and persecuted I would, but it still seems to me to be a somewhat self-indulgent exercise in salving our consciences for a thing that we didn’t do in the first place.

I think that rewriting history to suit ourselves, to make ourselves feel better because we don’t happen to agree with decisions made decades before most of us were born, is a very slippery and dangerous slope.  Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as the adage goes, and to me this merely serves to lessen the impact of the lessons that we ought to be learning.  To my modern sensibilities, it seems absurd and unjust that people should ever have been prosecuted simply for being homosexual, but the fact that they were helps sharpens my desire to ensure that we achieve true equality in the here and now, and help stamp out this injustice in those places in which it still exists today; a job which is very far from complete.  Changing the past in this way is, if anything, a needless distraction from that job.