Patti Whaley 101335.3561@compuserve.com Sorry, David. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air” — Editor POSTSCRIPTS Postscripts by Seafarer St Tony I pen (or, more accurately, I wordprocess) this post-script only eight days after That Landslide, and I just can’t get rid of the delighted grin that first started stretching my face when David Dimbleby announced the result of the BBC’s exit polls at 10pm on May Day, and grew more and more horizontal as the glorious night wore on. It was reaching towards my ears when Peter Snow’s graphic came up, with his little red zapper blowing all those blue bits to smithereens. I suspect it passed all proper safety levels when Michael Portillo lost his seat, became irreversible when David Mellor went down too, and rivalled the Rift Valley when Martin Bell proved that even Tatton could choose an Honourable Member.
I don’t say the kingdom has come, nor even the people’s republic, but I do say there’s a little more faith, hope and charity than there’s been at any time since the sixties. Please God, may it last a little longer this time. As we used to sing before I became a post-Marxist, “England Arise! The long dark night is over!” And for Scotland and Wales, there isn’t even a dark corner left.
Whatever your politics, it has to be a cause for rejoicing that our Parliament now has a record number of women, and of ethnic minorities.
We have our first Muslim MP (for how long?) and our first wheelchairuser. Our Govern-ment has its first blind Cabinet Minister and its first black secretary of state. Hallelujah!
We are told that Tony Blair’s gurus were an Australian clergyman with liberation-theology credentials and a Scottish Quaker philosopher, John Macmurray — sometimes confused with John Middleton Murry, which irritates the new PM no end as JMM wrote two very non-New-Labourish books, The Necessity of Communism in 1932 and The Necessity of Pacifism in 1937. The real JM stressed community and service as the highest human values. Blair no doubt had him in mind when, reversing Hartley Shawcross’s triumphalism of 1945 (“We are the masters now!”), he reminded the first meeting of the new, expanded Parliamentary Labour Party: “We are the servants now”.
How about that as a mission statement for church leaders?
More May Day And while on the subject of May Day, that happens to be the title of a new collection of poems by Dinah Livingstone. I’m not a reliable critic of modern poetry, so it won’t mean much when I say that here are some very good poems indeed, focusing on “May Day” as both celebration and distress signal. (One has appeared before in this magazine). But the quote she plucks from William Morris on her title page could remind Tony Blair of his roots, particularly if he means what he says when he claims that the values of Old Labour have not been discarded but revitalised, reshaped and rescued from irrelevance: “Certainly May Day is above all days of the year fitting for the protest of the disinherited against the system of robbery that shuts the door betwixt them and a decent life; the day when the promise of the year reproaches the waste inseperable from the society of inequality...Look how the whole capital world is stretching out its long arms...and grabbing and clutching in eager competition... for the opening of fresh markets to take in all the fresh profit-producing wealth which is growing greater and greater every day; in other words, to make fresh opportunities for waste; the waste of our labour and lives. And I say this is an _ irresistible instinct on the part of capitalists, an impulse like hunger, and I believe that it can only be met by another hunger, the hunger for freedom and fair play for all, both people and peoples.” Dinah Livingtone’s May Day is available at £6.95 from Katabasis, 10 St Martins Close, London NW1 OHR.
What’s new in New Age?
I’m in trouble with some of you for being so beastly to New Age nonsense, and particularly for my scepticism about aromatherapy and reflexology. I never knew there were so many non-realist practitioners pouring oil on troubled bottoms or diagnosing stresses from toe movements.
But honestly, I really do recognise that alternative therapies can do good, as can Anglican priests...
But the indefatigable Margaret Chisman writes to tell me she has compiled a list of New Age concepts, activities and organisations, drawn from every New Age magazine she could lay her hands on. She has smoked out nearly 200, ranging from Acupuncture and Avebury Power Stones to Zen Christian Meditation.
They include Channelling, Circle Dancing (ouch, more cross letters), Dolphin Swimming, Flotation Tank Meditation, Gaia, Holistic Camping, Mongolian Overtone Chanting, Psychognostic Realisation, Sacred Geometry, Seaweed Body Wrap, Transactional Analysis, Volcanic Rock Dust, and (how dare she!) Women’s Spirituality.
In an appendix she adds “some not yet dreamed up” (but they will be, Margaret, they will be!). These include Antediluvian’ Water Therapy (“ritualising the washing of your partner with only a cupful of water”), Asymptotic Curve Slimming (“developing attractive curves whilst chanting mathematical formulae”), Fractal Frolic Fantasy Fun (“feel free to succumb to the madness of fractals”), and Regenerative Genetic Interludes — not fully describable in a strait-laced theological journal, except to say that you don’t necessarily have to use the missionary position...
Revised versions There’s a lot of rewriting of the biblical stories going on. Two journalists have received a £300,000 advance from reputable publishers (well, they were reputable) for a book proving that Jesus is buried in a French village. Another chap has rescued poor old Judas Iscariot from the bad press he got in the gospels, proving that in fact he was only arranging a meeting between Jesus and the high priests to discuss ecumenical matters.
Commenting on this, the Sunday Times sought to re-blacken the name of the man who, after all, invented the kiss of death. He “not only betrayed Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, but is now said to be photo: Raymond Depardon, Universal Studios, Hollywood, USA responsible for the horrible taste on the back of stamps, inventing the noise that a finger-nail makes on a blackboard, pioneering the use of direct mail, inventing cellulite, and removing large amounts of money from the Duchess of York’s bank account without her knowledge”.
But this doesn’t fool everyone. The Gospel According to St Paul Foot produces a new campaign to free the Gethsemane One. “There is no evidence to suggest that Judas was anywhere near the crime. Furthermore, a forensic examination of the witness statements proves that scrolls referring to the incident were inserted into the gospels at a later stage by officers of the West Bethlehem Regional Crime Squad.” You just don’t know what to believe these days.
Which humanism?
Don Cupitt writes elsewhere in this issue that someone needs to write a history of humanism. His wish, it seems, is Nicolas Walter's command.
The former Spy for Peace turned Humanist propagandist (and a very good one too, even if he dismisses us as only half-way humanists) has brought out a 96-page paperback called Humanism: What’s in the Word, and the blurb, which is all I’ve seen so far, as my long-requested review copy has failed to arrive, says that it “traces the various meanings of the words ‘humanist and ‘humanism’ from the time that they were first coined five and two centuries ago respectively to the time that they were adopted by what is now known as the Humanist movement during the present century”.
Writing in the April issue of Ethical Record, the journal of South Place Ethical Society, Nicolas complains that the OED, usually considered the best guide to the way word meanings have changed, has consistently got these two words wrong. “Either the OED should make use of the work I have done for its next edition,” suggests the diffident author, “or else it should never be consulted again for these words”.
I hope our review copy arrives in time for our next issue. Meanwhile, the book is available from the Rationalist Press Association at £6, or £5 post free for “readers of Humanist papers”. It will be interesting to see if the RPA can swallow its animosity towards anything with a hint of religion and include Sea of Faith magazine among the privileged humanist scriptures =