Always keep beauty near you when checking for spam

1.Never get  your English grammar  correct.
2.Make sure your comment is not relevant to the post you put it on
3.Never ask me to pass it on to the Relevant person
4 Do get a few spelling errors in when you offer writing advice
5.Be sure that  money advice is very suitable for a poem about death
6 Always use American English if the blogger is in the UK and vice versa
7.Always over-compliment the writer.
8 Never use a dictionary unless for killing beetles or impressing others
9 Tell poets they should write for  an Angling Magazine.
10 Never read a post before you comment
11 Try commenting on an infinite number of posts daily.
12 Study maths instead of spamming

The homeless  are mocked as failures as they starve
The churchyard has no benches anymore
We harden up our hearts  so we can strive

Is it then a curse to be alive?
People sleep on  pavements by shop doors
The homeless  are called failures as they starve

Yet, monarchs and  new presidents survive
When it’s clear they’re pigs ,or rather, boors
We’ve hardened up our hearts as on we strive

I feel most would be happy to revive
A culture which has got a cushioned floor
The homeless  are called failures as they starve

A shell may well protect us till it breaks
We see we are no safer than a whore
We’ve hardened up our hearts and risked our lives

What are our true values at the core?
Who would choose a baby to adore?
The homeless  are labelled failures as they starve
We harden up our hearts but do not thrive

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/27/holiday-stanley-middleton-review-nicholas-lezard-paperback

Extract:

“The novel also gains resonance from echoes of other works, in particular Eliot’s The Waste Land. Fisher may be 100 miles north of Margate Sands, but, like Eliot, he is busy connecting nothing with nothing; his name is a reminder of Eliot’s Fisher King, that emblem of sterility; and the conversations he has with other holidaymakers are strongly reminiscent of the snatches of chatter in Eliot’s poem. (In another novel, the darkly titled Married Past Redemption (1993), a character unknowingly quotes Eliot, so he’s certainly in his mind, and Holiday has its sprinkling of other literary references; Fisher is, after all, cultured man. Middleton would also, as a musician, have been aware that Edwin Fischer was the name of a particularly good pianist, best known for his interpretations of Bach.)

Such resonances can be taken or left;  the novel’s power, which builds slowly but unmistakably, is its own. And Middleton is the most forensically acute of observers: if you want to know exactly what Britain was like in the early 1970s, then you won’t do better than to read this.”

What is it lowers our spirits,makes us blue
When it’s dark and wet and damp as moss
Even when we’re mobile,wealthy too

On the News they mention epic flu
People dying, what is it we’ve lost?
What is it lowers our spirits,makes us blue

The News now clings to us like superglue
There are no beds for  patients but the frost
Even when we’re mobile,wealthy too

Is it meaning that we don’t pursue
Boring work makes   hearts feel  lonely,lost
What is it lowers our spirits,makes us blue

Is there no compassion and no clue?
One day to the scrap heap we’ll be tossed
Even when we’re mobile,wealthy too

Fragile in the company of ghosts
We can’t cook the usual Sunday roast
What is it lowers our spirits,makes us blue
Even when we’re housed and wealthy too?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/02/how-to-be-happy-when-the-news-is-bad-brexit-trump-oliver-burkeman/

Extract

” Stop telling yourself that you need to feel upbeat, and it begins to seem less pointless to make some tiny effort to address one or two of those problems: to take on a small weekly volunteering role here; to make a modest donation to charity there. The solution to feeling so despairing about the news, in short, is to let yourself feel despairing – and take action, too. “One of the great things about everything being so fucked up,” Jensen likes to say when speaking to audiences, “is that no matter where you look, there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Don’t kid yourself that you will single-handedly eradicate nationwide or global problems; instead, define and pursue small-scale goals, like joining a campaign with some connection to the issues that trouble you the most. Focus on activities you enjoy: these will be much easier to sustain. And there is certainly some relief in attending to your own wellbeing. Exercise, sleep, time spent in nature, meditation and socialising are all proven paths to increased happiness; they’re cliches, but only because they really work – and it isn’t self-indulgent to make time for them.

Paradoxically, it’s through taking action, despite not feeling happy about the situation, that a deeper kind of happiness can arise. (That’s certainly the implication of research on the emotional benefits of volunteering, charitable giving, community involvement and political protest.) Jensen has written that people sometimes ask him why he doesn’t just kill himself, if things are as bad as he says. “The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. ”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=48086

• Differences of Opinion

  BY WENDY COPE

2006)

Browse all issues back to 1912

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/still-poetry-will-rise/507266/

I do what comes naturally  now
Love my husband and neighbour  somehow
They may complain
With them I’ve not lain
It’s all in my head, that is true

For my mind has taken charge of my soul
My body  must obey to be whole
I  lay in their arms
But it’s all in my dreams
So they ‘re as  unhappy as a pack of known trolls

What a pity they don’t do gender fluid
As they do not have to be nude
Then they could bed each other
While I dreamed with no bother
Without being told I am rude

To me, love’s an ethical  demand
The Good must give me its commands
I will be receptive
But perhaps not deceptive
Or I may be put on remand.

I don’t know that  lovers need  kiss
To obtain eternally bliss
Just smiling  brightly
Is not so unsightly
But touching is  something I’d miss

T

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

“Although Plato did not have an explicit theory of natural law (he rarely used the phrase ‘natural law’ except in Gorgias 484 and Timaeus 83e), his concept of nature, according to John Wild, contains some of the elements found in many natural law theories.^[8] According to Plato, we live in an orderly universe.^[9] The basis of this orderly universe or nature are the forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as “the brightest region of Being”.^[10] The Form of the Good is the cause of all things, and when it is seen it leads a person to act wisely.^[11] In the Symposium, the Good is closely identified with the Beautiful.^[12] In the Symposium, Plato describes how the experience of the Beautiful by Socrates enabled him to resist the temptations of wealth and sex.^[13] In the Republic, the ideal community is, “…a city which would be established in accordance with nature.”^[14]

Aristotle[edit]

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.

Greek philosophy emphasized the distinction between “nature” (physis, φúσις) on the one hand and “law”, “custom”, or “convention” (nomos, νóμος) on the other. What the law commanded would be expected to vary from place to place, but what was “by nature” should be the same everywhere. A “law of nature” would therefore have the flavor more of a paradox than something that obviously existed.^[1] Against the conventionalism that the distinction between nature and custom could engender, Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, δικαιον φυσικον, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law.^[3]

Aristotle’s association with natural law may be due to the interpretation given to his works by Thomas Aquinas.^[15] But whether Aquinas correctly read Aristotle is in dispute. According to some, Aquinas conflates natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics (Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics). According to this interpretation, Aquinas’s influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages in an unfortunate manner, though more recent translations render those more literally.^[16]Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, specifically the scheme of distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community; were this to take the form of law, this could be called a natural law, though Aristotle does not discuss this and suggests in the Politics that the best regime may not rule by law at all.^[17]

The best evidence of Aristotle’s having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the “particular” laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a “common” law that is according to nature.^[18] Specifically, he quotes Sophocles and Empedocles:

Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as every one to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other. It is this that Sophocles’ Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just by nature:

“Not of to-day or yesterday it is,

But lives eternal: none can date its birth.”

And so Empedocles, when he bids us kill no living creature, he is saying that to do this is not just for some people, while unjust for others:

“Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky

Unbroken it stretcheth, and over the earth’s immensity.”^[19]”

The land we once called Holy dies like Christ
The iron walls, the guns, the sacrifice.
Evil comes,religions onward fight

Angels and archangels put to flight
Bedouin tents are darker than black ice
The land we once called Holy bleeds like Christ

In the deserts of the soulless nights
Mothers clutch their  babies, tanks roll by.
Evil comes,religion God denies

After Holy death, will man survive?
The tortured ones  will torture others thrice
The land we once called Holy dies like Christ

Dazed by resurrection in dark night,
Where and when the beast that slouches twice?
Evil comes,religion God denied

Where can we lose our hatred and embrace
Those that killed our spirit and our eyes
The land we once called Holy dies like Christ
Evil comes, the grave is gaping wide,

For Sale:

Multicooker £74

This is a steal for under £70. It makes excellent curries, bread to rival any bread-making machine and soups that mean you don’t need a separate blender.

This is from Janet’s post.It is  the moat  of Leeds Castle in Kent

A  beautiful post by Janet and suitable for the start of a New Year

https://jcrhumming.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/the-wheel-of-the-year-with-not-beginning-and-no-end/

Things Ma said:

I’ve been parking up  the wrong tree again.
A watched cat never boils.I didn’t know cats could boil at all
Ma used to say, the King won’t get off his arse to look at you.I was stunned by her vulgarity
Least said,soonest ended.It has a certain something to say about Silent Love.If only she had kept quiet herself!
I’m in the Doll Drums, she moaned.I looked everywhere but she’s not here.
Was it War Drums?
Don’t  put all your heads into one casket.[ in the funeral parlour]
There’s many a  cruel world but this is the worst
Original sin was never very original.Eating apples!
God only knows.Does that mean: only God knows?

I think I’ve got Old Rhymer’s Disease
You have no old Timer to please.
He’s got Retentia: constipation in the brain
Why can’t I grow old fallaciously?
I might grow old impatiently
Men grow older audaciously
Love her/him if it contents ya.
He’s up his own  arse with Pretentia.
Life is a farce which Tormentia.
I flew over a tree and felt Momentia
Before you die, try to  leave something behind which has helped ya
What a  pity there’s no term like Cadenzia.Well there is now
The vicar  has got Godblamer’s  Unease.
Godtamer, who will blame you?

Trees are patient as we too  become
After loss and death we stand and freeze
Love  and grief a kingdom still to come
We will acquiesce on bended knees/

Captivated by a furious grace
Her glaring eyes, her lips so red undrawn
She  brought us donuts, jam and  sugar spiced

In our life there is a Bohring race
Those who win,  all  need  our wanton charm
Captivating by their trapped cat’s grace

If you’re caught, enjoy  watching their face
Will hugging other folk cause deadly harm?
We like alluring men to Hilbert space

I cooked a chicken  yet forgot the mace
The cats all danced like neutrons unalarmed
Captivating by their quantum grace

Nutmeg is a spice and  is  light faced
After eating,   let waves have their qualms
We like admitting  them to Banach space

If ,in some deadly place, you feel withdrawn
Take heed and slide down tangents when it’s morn
Calculate,   then intimate this thrice
The world   thinks  I am now   both good and wise

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/engage

We won’t know if we’re saved until the end
So don’t bite nurses who’re  in  A and E
This thought  will send us sinners round the bend

Anxiously, with saints we try to blend
Never criticise  the NHS nor tea
We won’t know if we’re saved until the end

Be polite and kind to all your friends
Do not hesitate to give  love free.
This thought  will send us sinners round the bend

What we’ve broken someone else may mend
If you argue. do some days agree
We won’t know if we’re saved until the end

From  the heavens thunderclouds descend
If it’s God, tell him I’ve made a plea
This   will send most sinners round the bend

I hear  my name   called on the BBC
Is it  someone other  who’s not me?
We won’t know if we’re saved until the end
Trust in God and  he will understand

My microphone disturbed the one I loved
So I had never used it till he left
And now he is in heaven, so high above
My voice will not annoy nor be a pest

I once became interested in virtue and perception.It began when I read  a little Aristotle about virtue being a habit.Before that for many years I believed virtuous acts would follow from being able to perceive well.
But when we are fraught our minds and eyes tighten up and so we perceive only what may be a danger to us.
To perceive others well we need to be in a position to trust others and we need to feel secure.How is this possible? From my studies I read that our ability to trust begins with a trusted caregiver in infancy,
[See” atttachment and loss “by John Bowlby reference to come]
We may be able to become more secure later by good fortune,friendship and love.If not,I seem to get the idea that if we are insecure and nervous we cannot truly perceive others and they may be in the same position.If we are very afraid then virtuous acts may be hard to accomplish. The reason is obvious… when. we are concerned with  mere survival as a person , in that state what we do to others  may be impossible for us to consider.We cannot truly see them and so we cannot act well towards them except by good luck.Or if we are able to tolerate great anxiety, we may see better…. if not we are incapable….
Those whom we cannot see properly we cannot truly consider with feeling  and act on this feeling.We see them partly or mainly in terms of the fearful fantasies in our minds and cannot see them as  other and interesting.
When we make a friend online we may feel safer but in fact we may be more likely to misperceive them.
When we are from a sad a or difficult background it may help greatly if we have some friends who might point out our errors if we trust enough to tell them.Or we may pretend to be hard and tough.Neither leads to virtue.
If we trust God it may help but I believe we see God through the lens of our parents.. which is not good…depending on the parents.
When we live in fear,we cannot see what is there before us.We cannot let go.We cannot accept grace and love nor give it.We will try to live by will power
.Ironically people who are fearful inside can develop a shell of toughness and pride and so are not seen as vulnerable  and/or lovable .They may seem frightening to others.
This account may help to explain why politics is the way it is and also  we see that arguing is not persuasive when the other is not able to open up and see things more broadly.Arguing makes us tighten up and see less well.And it can be frightening too though some  people and cultures find it more acceptable than others.

Here are  some articles

This author had a lot to say about perception… http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-marion-milner-1163951.html   http://susannanelson.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/happy-go-lucky/

I am alive and I know it is good
Especially down here in the mud
My husband has saved me
By calling the Navy
He woulda rung 999 if he could

His humour was there  and his smile
But he was hopeless at gluing on tiles
He  could bake and do  roasts
Or kippers on toast
So with food he did often beguile.

He took me up cliffs and down dales
Covered in mud,wood and shale
My boots were  worn out
But please never doubt
That a woman like me loved  her male

The wind  and the cliffs were a sight
After the snow there was light
He said, this is heaven
But we were in Devon
Still, it was heaven to  his appetites!

I sang songs as we drove down the road
With our cat  on my lap wrapped in clothes
The cat mioawed as well
He said, is this Hell?
I said, you tell me,honey,oh Lord!