Tiptoeing Out

Last few days in the Cauldron. All paperwork cleared. I hope. The last thing I need is some bureaucrat telling me at the airport that I should have queued for hours at the Traffic Department to wait while a gentleman in an office stops watching the golf for a few moments to reach into his drawer for a stamp the size of the Papal Seal and dutifully initials it – reasons and purposes not specified. I confess to a frisson of anxiety, hoping to tiptoe out. At least I don't share the same fate as the unfortunates who have been caught for 'residency violations'...

“The number of residency violators dropped from 104,000 by the end of April 2012 to 95,000,” said a security source who made the statistics available to a local daily. On the other hand, the source questioned the effectiveness of the unscheduled security campaigns that has so far covered areas such as Khaitan, Amghara and Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, in tackling the problem with no parallel efforts being carried out to stop residency traffickers.” 

Italics mine.

One imagines men with batons stampeding through cramped apartment blocks where eight to a room means three hours sleep per person before being trucked out into the middle of nowhere to toil for ten hours in the heat.

It's also fortunate that I have left the teaching profession – perhaps for good. Cheating in exams is – let's say – widespread. There exists a pervasive mentality that it's quite OK to try to buck the system – perhaps ethically similar to getting a good deal in the bazaar - but this story, unvarnished with critical editorial, made its way into the paper the other day.

“Police are on the hunt for a high school student who physically assaulted a teacher that caught him cheating during his final exam. The … student waited outside after being barred from appearing for the exam. The suspect reportedly attacked the teacher and fled the scene.”

Not many people swim in the sea. After Mishref - the smell lingered for months - I am among them and being of the male gender am untroubled by recent legislation, namely  bikinis for ladies are not permitted on public beaches. A spokesman for the Moral Awareness Department – interesting acronym – commented:

“Wearing a bikini is not acceptable in our community on public beaches. This doesn’t mean we will arrest a lady swimming in a bikini without doing an immoral act, unless we receive a complaint from someone.”

Yes. I thought that too.  So that's OK then. Thanks to the Kuwait Times and Al Watan. Going to take my latest read with me "Around the World in a Bad Mood."

Paying Attention

Dear God. Please. As if a polite enquiry by way of preamble might confer favour. I have been giving thought in these last days to prayer and have begun to realise how appallingly superstitious I am about it. Time to tear up the metaphors about a wise and kindly Santa Claus, dispensing largesse. God doesn't do quality control.

Leaving is a transformative process and we’re not very keen on it as a species. The chrysalis resents being metamorphosed into something else since this belongs to a pessimistic and possibly uncomfortable future which is, like the past, a foreign country where things are done differently. Our metaphorical chrysalis thus agonises as to whether his wings will be big enough and as time’s rollercoaster is outside of his control, his mumblings and sweating often find a voice in some abstract, wordless, inarticulate cry to the heavens.
Some thoughts then, some of my own and some not.  In “God Still Matters”, the Dominican scholar Herbert McCabe writes:

”For real absolute waste of time you have to go to prayer. I reckon that more than 80 percent of our reluctance to pray consists precisely in our dim recognition of this and our neurotic fear of wasting time, of spending part of our life in something that in the end gets you nowhere, something that is not merely non-productive, non-money-making, but is even non-creative, it doesn't even have the justification of art and poetry. It is an absolute waste of time, it is a sharing into the waste of time which is the interior life of the Godhead. God is not in himself productive or creative. Sure, he takes time to throw off a creation, to make something, to achieve something, but the real interior life of the Godhead is not in creation, it is in the life of love which is in the Trinity, the procession of Son from Father and of the Spirit from this exchange. God is not first of all our creator or any kind of maker, he is love, and his life is not like the life of the worker or artist but of lovers wasting time with each other uselessly. It is into this worthless activity that we enter in prayer. This, in the end, is what makes sense of it...”

To ask if prayer “works” is to reduce it to a kind of magic. Prayer is not in the least bit necessary; it is more than necessary.

We never begin to pray, we always enter into prayer that has already begun before us and without us, the prayer of the church. We may pray alone, but we are never alone when we pray. “Our Father...”

"Prayer is a dangerous activity. In prayer we do not enter the kitten’s basket but the lion’s den. Prayer is a transformative activity. In prayer we are changed—and change hurts." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Prayer is not a private activity; indeed prayer is the most political activity in which a believer can engage. “To fold your hands in prayer is to begin an uprising against the world” (Karl Barth).

It’s a nonsense to suggest that prayers of thanksgiving trump prayers of petition and there is some kind of cosmic counterweight which asserts that as long as we don’t overburden the Almighty with our needs and wants, instead peppering our petitions with thanksgiving, it increases the probability that we will get a favourable response. We are children of God. What would I think about my own child if he always went about thanking, never asking, demanding or pestering?

Asking whether God answers prayer is fatuous. The Father is the object of prayer, the Spirit is the subject of prayer, the Son is the predicate of prayer. How then can God not answer himself? If God seems silent, it is only because he is 'being God' - listening and thinking. Archbishop William Temple once said, “When I pray, coincidences happen.” 

Prayer begins with the eyes. Prayer begins with simply paying attention.
Wherever did we get the idiotic and disabling idea that prayer must be a richly rewarding experience, I wonder? If I have ‘an arid time’ I’m simply not paying attention for long enough.

Flags and Madness

One hundred and fifteen years ago...

In 1897, a stately procession in a landau was all Victoria got. No wonder she looks a bit glum. This year's model borrowed the transport for the same journey but there were a few more bells, whistles and hip-hurrahs than last time. Every blogger north of Antarctica has had his shout about the whole Jubilee business, which has driven the UK and half the rest of the world into a frenzy of red, white and blue. America hasn't got one – a Queen, that is - except for Hillary Clinton and she don't count. So, Washington is as afroth as Wilmslow, but they're constitutional infants and thus are more interested in the other Middleton girl rather than HM and the Greek. Poor old chap, being in hospital for the Cliff Richard gig; however will he get over it? Brits, it has to be admitted, do the big event very well indeed, vast crowds turn up obediently, wafting flaggery, while HM, Gawd bless 'er, cracks a smile to the brassy thump of military bands which struck terror into Napoleon's chasseurs before Waterloo. A friend posted on FB that she was 'PTBB' which I thought at first might have been a 'code secret' on HM's Facebook page for 'pretty tired and bloody bored' but was told aloofly that it meant 'proud to be British'. If I knew what it meant to be British, I might, I suppose, be proud of it, but I'm really not quite sure what it means any more, not having sat in a traffic jam on the M25 for quite some years. So, it was with more than my usual detachment that I watched the shenanigans and buffoonery last night. Elton John in pink penguin jacket, an avuncular Tom Jones with a white beard, the bass player from the Beatles twirling a vintage Hofner bass, impossibly bedecked in the Union Jack. . . Despite the best efforts of Grace Jones doing her usual impersonation being of a woman temporarily evading the clutches of a group of psychiatric nurses and a thirty year old hologram of  Dame Shirley Bassey, the highlight was Madness, looking portly and almost Establishment, performing 'Our House' and 'It Must Be Love' on the Palace roof. It was genuinely spectacular, a solitary, iconic moment that even the most implacable, bah-humbug opponent of the monarchy might have felt themselves softening at least a little to the event. Even me. To be fair, the old girl has done a marvellous job, doing all that standing up at her age – most pensioners don't have to stand that long to wait for a bus. Being monarch can't be a soft career option despite the fact that she was rudely thrust into the job at quite a tender age, barely out of diplomatic potty-training.

She was there before the Information Age, postmodernism and the Sex Pistols and has had to put up with twelve prime ministers – however did she deal with Gordon Brown, the vicar's son, or the woman from Grantham with a first in Chemistry from Oxford? With remarkable patience, and the knack of being mentally in two places at once, it seems.

In an age of uncertainty, perhaps all of us have a primeval instinct to run home to mamma, the security of a thousand years of tradition holds people's emotional and social tillers steady when unemployed yoof roam the streets armed with spray cans and cynicism, and the world's dangers loom large. Am I going soft, I wonder?

Deliver Us From Evil

A friend posted an image the other day depicting dead Syrian children, massacred by who knows who for their own inscrutable reasons. Here's part of it.  Howls of protest. As gadflies do, by way of comment I posted a YouTube link to 'The Battle belongs to the Lord' - a rather cheesy battle hymn around the theme of Proverbs 21:31 which had the desired effect - one poster, by all accounts an Anglican priest, demanding angrily 'what has this got to do with it?' I've deleted additional exclamation marks. If we imagine for one moment that God is unconcerned in our affairs then the right response is 'nothing at all - the song is just a few overexcitable arm-wavers getting wound up and those of us who've grown up don't buy into such silly nonsense any more.' If, on the other, we suspend disbelief for a moment and just dare to speculate that the Evil One whom all right thinking people believe doesn't exist has raised his ugly rebellious head again and carnage and devastation result, then I can think of fewer places in the world where his Babylonian river of evil has surfaced so manifestly clearly. I'm not sure which outrages me more, the disregard for human life in Syria or the willingness of some in the Church to attribute such to nothing more than mankind's inevitable propensity for screwing it up.

Never Again

Every year I say it to myself - 'never again'. Marking external papers is a challenge to wit, ingenuity and the ability to crawl inside the head of the Chief Examiner - probably not a very wholesome environment if you get off on setting physics questions. In times past, postpersons in Transit vans delivered piles of scripts to the front door. You marked them , filled out large swathes of paper and sent them all back, laden with red ink. Not so nowadays - did I really use that word? How very twentieth century of me. This year, as last, the Internet has caught up with us and we - the physicists and mathematicians at least -  are using an online marking 'tool'. Scripts are scanned then "zoned". RSI notwithstanding, one clicks away and the answers obediently pop up and a single click awards the mark. It's new and feels over-engineered, so it falls over a lot, rather like an overfed woolly mammoth toppling into the undergrowth. When this happens, the last hour's work is flushed away in a welter of random bytes which the system euphemistically describes as 'refreshing data'. There then appears a pleasing cloudiness on the screen and a little rotating bezel, which, well, just carries on rotating until you hurl the machine off the balcony with weeping and gnashing of teeth. In addition, one script in ten is 'seeded'. This means that His Nibs, the Chief, Big Brother to us all has already marked this one and if one's modest efforts are not consonant with his own, the system is supposed to throw up a disapproving little message saying that one has been 'suspended', or confined to Room 101 until the errors are rectified, which so far has not happened. It's all a bit Orwellian - Winston Smith drowned his paltry sorrows with gin which of course is no substitute for the fresh red grapefruit juice which I rather prefer these days. 


Quis custodiet custodies, je me demande...


I think I've worn away enough dental enamel for one night.

Short Thought from Leviticus

"The sage, Rabbi Yisrael Kagan (1838-1933), known as the Chafetz Chaim, was once visited by a wealthy admirer. When the visitor entered the rabbi’s tiny home he got the shock of his life: The living room was furnished with nothing but an old table and rickety bench. The kitchen was tiny and primitive. There were no modern amenities at all. The man turned to the Chafetz Chaim and asked him: “How do you live like this? Where are all your possessions?”

The Chafetz Chaim asked him: “How did you get here?” “By coach” the visitor replied. The Chafetz Chaim went outside to look at the carriage that brought his visitor to him. After examining the carriage, the Chafetz Chaim commented to his guest: “I don’t see a dining room, kitchen, or even a bed inside of this thing!” “But Rabbi, I am just traveling through your town. Travellers don’t bring their beds and kitchens with them!”

The Chafetz Chaim answered: “I too am traveling…Traveling through this world to the World to Come. This lifetime is temporary - why should I amass amenities and possessions?”

This is the lesson of Sh'mitta - the Year of Rest: Every seventh year, no planting or harvesting is done. After seven times seven, there is a Year of Jubilee. Life is temporary, almost fragile. We are just passing through."

As I prepare to leave, it might be worth reminding myself that I have been here for six years. Over that time, I have acquired quite a number of 'things'

H’m.

Shakey, shakey

All England was rather miffed when a gentleman on the football field last February refused to shake another gentleman’s hand because of various crisply expressed opinions off-field. The papers went on about it for weeks and first gent has since been left out of the England squad for the European Championships. Which brings me nicely to the subject of greeting. In France, men and women kiss. A lot. Not the old full-frontal tongue-wrestling, of course, but a three or fourfold collision of cheeks – depending how well you know each other. Once, in Paris (where else) a woman from the French Caribbean licked my face by way of greeting. Apart from the sexual frisson this engendered, I found myself more pleasantly surprised than not. But, back to ‘shakey, shakey’. Egyptians swing their hand like a mallet towards you, which you're expected to catch. In Anglican churches, there is the cringingly time-honoured tradition of ‘passing the peace’ where we move solemnly around and shake hands with everyone in some kind of medieval gesture of solidarity, tempered with British reserve, sometimes barking the imprecation ‘Peace!” at each other.

Now, while I most certainly do not condone the discrimination of anyone based on the politics of the football field or the colour of their socks, but I have to say that I’m all in favour of giving handshakes a miss. They may well be the unspoken greeting of gentry and look marvellous in photographs when accompanied  by big cheques, treaties and politicians, but they are really quite repugnant to my sensitive, hygienically-manicured soul.

Think back to the last handshake you were forced to engage in, I say “forced” because let’s face it, clasping hands with a stranger doesn’t come naturally, does it? Tell me, was it enjoyable? Did you want to carry on shaking that hand for the rest of the day? No, you did not. It was probably something you wanted done with as fast as possible and never speak of again. It was either bone-crushingly painful or suspiciously feeble, like being handed a dead turbot. At worst it was post-bathroom moist so you began to wonder if the shaker had washed after visiting the bathroom. If you’re not worrying about how best to strap up the broken fingers on your own hand without becoming openly tearful in the face of your overbearing assailant, you have to worry about the etiquette and hidden meaning of your own grip. Too firm and you come off as a ball-busting megalomaniac who uses orphans for target practice, too weak and everyone will know you cry yourself to sleep at night because you can’t open a jar of peanut butter that’s been sitting in the cupboard since 1984 and that your mother still sews name tags into your Calvins.

Then there’s the whole issue of going top or bottom. No-one ever wants to be top or bottom but sometimes you’re forced into it. Stop sniggering. There have been whole books written about whether you go top or bottom; top means you’re an aggressively overbearing testosterone-fuelled alpha double plus and bottom means you have the spinal fortitude of a jellyfish. Shaking hands can be a sociological minefield of judgement made worse by the twiddles and fumbles that the Masons append to the gesture.  Which brings me to the delicate matter of hygiene. Those who know me will be aware that I might be said to have a rather overdeveloped  sense of the pernickety, but, c’mon, now – be honest - those appendages at the end of your wrists are basically bottom wiping, bogey picking, armpit scratching, sweat mopping, bellybutton fiddling harbingers of grime. No matter how clean you think you are, the person who borrowed your pen for a moment may have just played solo pocket billiards and they almost certainly didn’t use anti-bacterial  gel afterwards. Epidemics have been started with less.

What I’m trying to say is that when you kindly offer me your hand in a gesture of mutual goodwill, what I actually see coming towards me is a slightly moist, used repository for at least seventeen kinds of contagion and the last thing I want to do is hold it while we get our formalities out the way.

Is there, I wonder, a suitable alternative to shaking hands besides face licking and canine bottom sniffing? What are we really trying to achieve with a handshake? We’re trying to ingratiate ourselves, get physically close to someone and show that we mean them no harm by putting them at their ease and show that we are on an even social and cultural playing field .  Perhaps we should learn to bow instead. Or, shake penises. Some do.