War On War

Here is my dilemma about war:

Clearly, war is never what God wants for us.

Equally clearly, God does not want us to stand by while innocent people are slaughtered. I can condemn so many wars that have happened in my lifetime, but over them all hangs the spectre of gas chambers, concentration camps. I condemn violence but I cannot endorse genocide.

Lord, have mercy.

Regardless of how we let the world get to the point where the Holocaust could happen, regardless of the undoubted economic incentives for wading in, I think we reached a point where the atrocities would not have stopped with anything short of a war. Regardless of the knowledge that history is written by the victors, I cannot say we should not have fought. I don't know that anything else would have worked. Maybe it would have -- but I don't know.

Christ, have mercy.

We? I wasn't even alive during WWII. I am much-removed from the danger of current wars, even while I am (along with anyone else who uses oil) complicit in creating the conditions where they can happen. And so my disgust with war and violence turns into a sort of self-loathing, a need to seek forgiveness for my part in all this. And that, in turn, isn't what Remembrance Day is "supposed to" be about at all, is it? I can hear the patriots protesting, "It isn't all about you and me, it's about those who gave their lives!"

Lord, have mercy.

What did they give their lives for if we continue to behave in ways that cause war?

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

What am I on about? What do I mean, "if we continue to behave in ways that cause war"?

Here's my understanding of what causes war: War is caused by the fear of death, and our constant striving to hold it off or delay it or make it more comfortable.

Lord, have mercy.

War is caused when we see what someone else has and want it for ourselves even if it means hurting them.

Christ, have mercy.

War is caused when we value our own comfort over the lives of someone else. That's what the Holocaust was about, and that's what Afghanistan is about, and that's what the Gulf wars are about, and every other war I can think of.

Lord, have mercy.

cutting the Kingdom to shreds

I'm feeling sick at heart over the UK budget cuts.

These are going to hit the poorest hardest. The big corporations that have evaded tax won't be touched; neither will the banks that got such a huge bail-out of taxpayer money.

People are angry, and hurt, and confused. More than that, I think, a lot of people are frightened. Money is power in this society, and it just got more powerful. Of course we're frightened; we're terrified that might will prevail. It all seems so incredibly stupid.

What I'm struggling with is trying to get a mental picture of how much of the wealth I enjoy has really been "borrowed" from my future, or from people who have less economic clout than I have. I've been saying for a while that we live too well for it to last, but completely turning away from a broken economic system isn't something I've had the guts to do.

I think I do practise right livelihood, mostly: my actual work as a teacher and musician doesn't exploit others much. If anything I need to charge a little more, be a little less principled, because right now I still don't earn enough to break even and that means I am reliant on my partner for some of my living expenses. His work is perhaps less salutary. But then, so is the work of the parents of many of the students I teach; even without doing work that is damaging, I collude in a damaging system.

I also try to spend reasonably responsibly, and here I am less successful... my best intentions will not do the paperwork to change banks, or get me to the point where I do sew my own clothes rather than buying ready-made ones (Fairly Traded clothing that fits me and is appropriate for some of my work is almost impossible to find). I waste huge amounts of resources every winter because the house where I live doesn't have adequate insulation; as I can't afford to buy a house or flat and my landlord has no incentive to change anything, my options are to put up with what I can rent or to give up having a roof over my head. I don't think the latter would be constructive.

By removing myself from the monetary economy I would essentially remove myself from the information stream. If the number of people turning away from what's broken is small, they won't be missed. I recognise that there is a case for hermits, for prophets, for people who turn drastically away from broken societal structures to show that a different life is possible. They are necessary and I am glad they exist. But if the choice is black and white -- either sticking with the current structures or rejecting them completely -- most people will find the choice too hard, the current structures will continue, those who leave will be considered insane and nothing is achieved.

Rather, I think that it is important for me to continue to engage with the current structures, and contribute, if I can, to creative solutions to problems. I can't live perfectly, but I can take the money I'm paid and spend it on FairTrade rather than non-FT products. I can act with kindness toward people even if there is no obvious gain to me for doing so. I can try to improve my balance, living more independently of the broken system in some places, colluding where I have no other choice, and -- and this is important -- staying in contact, encouraging others to find out for themselves that life can be done differently, that win-win situations do happen. I can work with others to find creative solutions for the problems of injustice and poverty.

The UK government may have just made all that a bit harder, but all that means is that it's even more important that I do what I can.

Oddly, this is pretty much my stance on church participation, too. The C of E General Synod is pasted all over the Anglican blogosphere at the moment, so that even someone like me with hardly any time to read can't help but notice that there's an awful lot of dirty politics flying around. My fear is that the women bishops stuff will eclipse the Anglican Covenant stuff and we'll end up with no women bishops AND a stupid governing document that we don't need. But I don't think I can leave over this... because the reason I've become tangled up in the Church Hesitant of England in the first place is because people have shown me that there is another way. If General Synod doesn't have the outcomes I think would be best, that's just a stronger argument for me to stay, get involved, keep showing people that there is another way -- even if it means that what goes on at parish level and what goes on at institutional level get even further apart.

The thing is, the changes in information tech make both of these things more easily possible. Seriously, the potential for functional "shadow" economies is HUGE with tools like Twitter, and the stronger those get the more irrelevant government provision will seem. Look at things like Kickstarter and FundBreak, which are private start-up funding for projects; look at Kiva which allows private lending, and initiatives like WorldBike (which might seem a bit conventional compared to the other examples, but is actually an example of what is possible with better communication).

Don't get me wrong -- I believe we're an extremely long way from being able to provide a crowdsourced NHS, for example. I know the budget cuts announced yesterday will harm a lot of people before we can get to that point, and I think the danger of reverting to depression is very real. And I know human beings well enough to know that the Church As An Institution is going to be around for a while. These things won't change overnight and we are all going to be wounded.

But this is my hope: to build up what is good rather than tear down what is destructive, to help others where I can, to put my money (what little of it there is) where my mouth is and let every action, every word, every breath point to the values of the Kingdom of God.

Who's coming with me, then?

May Day

A local Labour councillor came around yesterday for a chat. We nattered for a bit and he asked, as they tend to do, whether I had any concerns about local issues.

Now, I've not lived in this area all that long, and I've not gone very far out of my way to find out what the local issues are. The bins get emptied, and I feel relatively safe here, so I don't have much cause to complain to the council; if I did, they'd certainly have heard from me before now.

So I mentioned the people outside the local tube station. I said that I realise it's a systemic, complex problem and not something that can just be changed overnight, but that I do worry about the people begging, and I asked what support the council is providing for them.

He then proceeded to tell me that the vast majority of beggars are economic migrants,
mostly from Eastern Europe, who have come over for temporary labour and got stranded here by being laid off, and that the council tries to "help them get home". I could hardly believe my ears!

I don't think it's an accurate assessment of the situation. I've written here before about my shameful failure to actually talk to people who are asking me for spare change, especially when it's dark and I am tired, but I do listen and I don't hear an overwhelming majority of foreign accents. Most people seem to be from London and environs.

Even if these people were mostly not British, there are a whole bunch of reasons that I think simply sending them home would not always be the right answer.

Instead of chasing him off the doorstep I decided to try and waste as much of his time as I possibly could, though I'm afraid I didn't manage to change his assumptions.

If there had been any danger of my voting Labour to try and keep the Tories out, it has well and truly passed now.

(I've written a very similar post to this elsewhere, with identifying information; the readership there includes more locals, and I think they need to know about this.)

This morning I did a spot of guerilla gardening, as is my custom on May Day. Upper Suburbia is pretty verdant, really, but there is a small patch of land I walk past often that doesn't get much attention. There were some trees planted there earlier this year; one of them was destroyed by folks who apparently had nothing better to do, leaving a bare spot. The edge of the patch, near a garden wall, is also bare of grass but does get a lot of weeds.

I'm pretty sure that the sunflower seeds will be eaten by rodents, but it's quite possible that the fennel, rocket, lamb's lettuce or catmint might sprout and grow. The chives and garlic chives were in small pots already and will blend in nicely with the grass for a while until they get established.

Please vote.

By now if you aren't registered to vote in the UK's forthcoming general election, I'm sorry, it's too late for you to register.

There is a BNP candidate in the constituency where I live. This makes me feel vaguely nauseous. I will be voting, and of course I will not be voting for the BNP.

Otherwise? Life continues apace. This identity and my real name are colliding in some interesting (but I think manageable) ways. My foot is healing, walking is getting easier, the regular therapy for joint issues is going well and soon we will be down to monthly instead of weekly appointments which will be cheaper (I would have had to wait, on the NHS...) and take less of my travel time. I am behind on the gardening, composing, teaching prep, tidying, laundry, study for the Big Project (thank God it has no actual deadlines yet!), chamber music administrative work, general life maintenance paperwork, oh, and that thing all musicians must do, the thing that keeps me what I am, practising. Reading other people's blogs is minimal; commenting is happening even less.

I am having a great time and learning a huge amount but I am not going to catch up.

I haven't heard back from the homeless shelter I sent the volunteering application form to. Psalmody work continues apace, and often of an evening I tell Twitter I'm nearly home before stumbling wearily off the Tube, having been reading, half-asleep and exhausted from teaching, about Reformation politics and vernacular worship or some such thing, and more often than not there is someone begging. And I know I'm not in a position to just invite them into the house where I live, I know I don't have the skills, I don't have the understanding, to be of real help, I'm mentally fragile enough that dealing with someone who has really serious problems might well push me back into mental illness myself; I don't even have the financial resources of my own, given that Sweetie pays my rent! and I don't know whether giving money is the right thing -- it won't treat the mental health problems or drug addiction or whatever else has caused them to slip through the ever-widening cracks in a welfare system that has been comprehensively screwed over by the Tories and then by New Labour -- and I'm horribly, shamefully safe about it, never stopping if I'm alone or there aren't people about or I'm carrying an instrument or I don't have money easily to hand, never pausing for a simple decent conversation with a human being, finding out their side of the story, forming some sort of relationship that isn't based on my relative wealth. I walk that last leg of my journey home wishing I weren't such a coward, and I pray someone else knows what to do and has the courage to do it. And I get home, and tell Twitter I've got home safely, and I fail even to mention those who haven't got a safe home to go to.

Lord, have mercy.

A regular mid-week rehearsal has had to change to another time, and my first thought was "that's going to be really annoying for the group". My second thought, so quickly after the first, was "Now I can get to the mid-week Eucharist at Nearest Church". A said service, no less, not a hymn or a chant in earshot (though in my mind's ear the chanted kadosh, kadosh, kadosh and the blessings for ha-motzi and ha-gafen remain). I didn't expect bread and wine to become such a part of me so quickly -- or rather, I knew the bread and wine would, I didn't know the body and blood would. I am taking great comfort in this sacrament, even though my view of the entire world as sacramental has not changed in any fundamental way.

Processing

I've been thinking through some stuff about childhood and abuse and memories that keep cropping up, partly precipitated by conversations elsewhere. It's... all a bit too personal to go into much detail here, I think.

In more general terms:

People talk about breaking a cycle of abuse as if it's a black-and-white thing, as if someone is either a monster or a saint. That isn't true. When I look at how my stepdad treated us compared to societal norms, some of what he did was pretty bad, and it's hard to see how anyone could do that. When I look at it compared to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his family, and I consider that he didn't have any sort of ongoing support or stability or guidance except from my mother (who was definitely as much a victim of his abuse as I was), I wonder how it wasn't much, much worse.

Abuse is systemic, even if it isn't systematic. For my stepdad to be abusive toward me, my mother had to not stick up for me. Later on that may have been because I didn't tell her, but earlier it was because she was also afraid. Why was she so afraid, too afraid to speak for her own daughter? Her own childhood, her own difficult background, a history of conditional support from others. It's very easy to talk about this and say that she was also responsible for what I went through, to apportion some sort of blame or fault. But that isn't useful, and I'm not trying to blame others for who I am now, just to acknowledge what happened (admittedly not easy when I'm also trying to protect anonymity). But breaking the cycle of abuse, if it can be done, is not only about teaching abusers other ways of relating to people: it's about teaching victims not to be accomplices, not to look the other way.

Given that my stepdad is clergy some who don't know the details would say that I have an obligation to report the abuse, in order to protect others who might be vulnerable. But despite my own experiences, I do not believe my stepdad is generally dangerous. His abusiveness was in the context of family life, not in the context of church work. Oh, he was (and to an extent still is) a bully and that permeates everything, but honestly? There are so many minor bullies about, people can deal with it. The physical abuse was generally poor anger management and would never get that far at work; the sexual abuse was rare and, I believe, accidental (no, I cannot explain this without going into detail. But what he thought was okay, what was an attempt at building intimacy and trust into a fractured relationship, was not okay with me, and I didn't tell him any differently because by then I'd been terrified of him for a decade... and yes, I think that is abuse, even if it was not severe or violent), and again would not happen in a work context where there are stricter guidelines.

However, I'm also aware that I can't think about this without bias... that my own issues make this frightening to me, to the point that I might rationalize away my responsibility. Maybe I am messed up enough that I could think he is not dangerous, even if actually he is; maybe what I went through is the tip of the iceberg rather than the worst of it, and I should be shouting from the rooftops in case anyone else has been hurt.

And yet I do not want to bear false witness.

I guess I need to have a good long talk with someone about this, someone who is going to be confidential about it no matter what and who won't automatically advise one way or another. I've always compartmentalized it... spent three years talking to the brainhacker about the emotional problems and a bit of the physical stuff but didn't have the courage to go further, have alluded to the sexual abuse without really discussing it properly. I don't know if the latter is protecting privacy or another form of false witness.

Meanwhile today I am remembering that the man who terrified me throughout my childhood also stood up for me. I had a paper route, and one of the kids from school lived on it, and he used to throw things -- tennis balls, rocks, whatever -- at me when I went past. One particularly bad day (I think there might have been broken glass involved) I came home crying about this, and my stepdad noticed (unusual) and asked why, and I (reluctantly) explained. And we walked to the house, there and then, me terrified the whole way, and knocked on the door. And he told the kid's father, calmly, what had happened, and the kid's father said he'd talk about it. I hope beyond hope that it was just talk. But that kid didn't throw stuff at me any more.

I'm really looking forward to Mass later.