https://www.aqr.org.uk/a/20210315-safetynet
In winter
Against winter, nobody should preach
The icy cold,the wind and then the sleet
The seed must die before the growth can start
The simple garden has so much to teach.
In this way, we too repair our hearts.
The inner meetings of the soul and flesh.
Oh, winter
At the start the psyche is made flesh
The soul descends according to god’s wish
The mother’s arms create an inner nest
And thus the entire psyche is possessed
After penance comes the little fast.
Thus we have the love eternal blessed
Oh,summer
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Teaching Children Philosophy – The Sneetches – Prindle Institute
Against sadness
J
Against sadness:no-one here can weep
Nor lounge about in melancholy deep.
Was Van Gogh senseless to adore his muse.
For his masterpieces ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair but not his views
Nor his mind where technique made such leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.
Happiness or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News feefs on our minds
Yet some are cold towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone in old face lined
Then Muslims went to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.
What rages in the mind make men kill thus?
In Syrian wars the innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We hold our hands out wanting to be nursed
Against sadness
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The War’s not over when the fighting stops
We sense the sacred in these peaceful walls
Yet men have died in places that appal
Women too and children then unborn
Fell into cold dark earth in lands forlorn
As our weapons grow, our hearts are hard
The people live in Gaza behind bars
The water all polluted as taps drip
Is this war or is it vengeance fit?
In Britain, it’s the poor who lose the war
As it was when Jesus Mary bore
Yet here are clerics blessing marching bands
A military show for all the land
The genocide in Europe of the Jews
The self destructive actions of the proud
The fields of France filled sick with blood and bone
Who are we to cast judgemental stones?
The War’s not over when the fighting stops
The soldiers and the tortured suffer shock
The widows and the parents all bereaved.
The unborn children hover in unease
We let the prisoners out from camps of death
But who would take them in or take their path?
The injuries will travel down the years
As still we fight and still we live in fear
It’s Europe’s grasp and greed which was the cause
Of death in Gaza, Syria, in long wars
Yet we judge we are more civilised
When we self defend with bitter lies
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The world cannot ever be the same
A world in which genocide has occurred can never be he same world.And it is not only the victims who suffer.It remains in our shared minds.
As with a nuclear bomb being used, the world is irretrievably changed
Now our mouths gape with horror and all that we have seen or known
But I didn’t like to mention it
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Evolution and death
Of crypto-theological progress Of humans rising from the humble worm Where is Evolution’s grand success? Those who are imperfect cause distress Soon we want to murder the deformed Oh! crypto-theological progress Evolution’s natural life works best Eugenics led to genocide in turn Who is Evolution’s grand success? Soon arose the measurements and tests As if no human being could discern. Oh! crypto-theological progress Is your IQ less than all the rest? Does testing impede children’s wish to learn? Where is Europe’s great evolved success?
See the Nazis and the books they burned Did any living people feel concern? Re crypto-theological progress Has Europe evolved yet into success?
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A jagged silence taunts us overhead
Like a broken shell, our world has cracked
Whose the foot that heavily did tread?
Now we wander in this City sacked
Once worlds break how can we bring them back?
Must we mourn until our hearts are fed?
Like a pretty shell, our world has cracked
Where once stood towers the buildings lie down flat
A jagged silence taunts from overhead
As we wander in this City sacked
What New Messiah can find and love the gap?
Who will give the wine and whose the bread?
Like a cockleshell, our world has cracked
The death of God in Auschwitz on the Rack
The torture of the Arabs, children bleed
We cry out , the slouching beast is back
Did we ever think of those in need?
The children of the genocide still plead
Like a broken shell, the world has cracked
Now we stumble,blind to what we lack
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Like children’s golden tears in a black sun
Like children’s gleaming tears in a bright sun
That can be dried respectful of the source
The points of light on holly leaves each shone
The pink horse chesnuts’ flowering has begun
May flows on to June as rivers course
As children’s gleaming tears drop in the sun
Nothing human should be broken,shunned
Yet evil screams till its sharp voice is hoarse
The points of light on holly leaves still shine
When we learn of genocide , it stuns
I was unborn, did not know of such force
As children’s greying tears dropped under sun
Each child is God, yet such vile acts are done
Anne Frank ‘s haunting memories now cursed
The points of light on holly leaves will wane
Where did our evil start,what makes it worse?
Unheld and hungry baby needing breast?
Like children’s golden tears in a black sun
The points of shame, the prickling leaves may win
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The children of the genocides still plead
Like a broken shell, our world has cracked
Whose the foot that heavily did tread?
Now we wander in this City sacked
Once worlds break how can we bring them back?
Must we mourn until our hearts are fed?
Like a pretty shell, our world has cracked
Where once stood towers the buildings lie down flat
A jagged silence taunts from overhead
As we wander in this City sacked
What New Messiah can find and love the gap?
Who will give the wine and whose the bread?
Like a cockleshell, our world has cracked
The death of God in Auschwitz on the Rack
The torture of the Arabs, children bleed
We cry out , the slouching beast is back
Did we ever think of those in need?
The children of the genocide still plead
Like a broken shell, the world has cracked
Now we stumble,blind to what we lack
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Where do tears come from?
Where do tears come from,wet our eyes?
Where do griefs come from,where our sighs?
Will we have mourned enough one new day?
Where does love come from, what does love say?
Does even God weep, where are his eyes?
Does even God weep as more children die?
Where is the saviour, where is the Cross?
Knock down the churches, they are no loss.
Weep with the grieving weep with the lost
Weep tears of blood for we all know the cost.
See vultures circling, eating the dead.
Can you love Western culture when you see where it’s led?
See the poor children hungry in school.
The scientists have proved they themselves are the fools.
Economics and warfare developed our brains
We are the victims by new mathematics chained.
Bring me the music bring me the song
The rhythm of the future beats like a gong
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davidberreby.com – All about Us and Them
The Ways of the Will, by Leslie H. Farber – Commentary Magazine
Dr. Farber is anything but surgical. His central concern is with the evil consequences of treating people as if they were passive objects—and with the virtual impossibility, in our society with its scientific and linguistic conventions, of treating them in any other way, even on the psychoanalytic couch. But perhaps good surgeons, too, are assisted by their awareness of their patients’ humanity even while refusing to become sentimental about their disorders.
The integrity of this book is attested to by the fact that it hangs together like a well-constructed mobile even though it is a collection of ten essays published over the past decade, all but one of them in technical journals. Taken together, they demonstrate their author’s consistent concern with the same moral issues. But there is no repetition at all. A psychiatrist whose fundamental interest is in the relationships of ethics to personal style and authenticity could surely ask no richer or more diverse opportunity for participant-observation than that afforded by an established practice in Washington, D.C. Dr. Farber’s genius loci is also responsible, I suspect, for his selection of the phenomenon of despair—of which Washington has become the unrivaled world source—as the topic for three of the most original of his essays.
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Joan Didion From the Couch – Commentary Magazine
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our Most Destructive Emotion – The Marginalian
You can’t cancel poetry – UnHerd
Sacred flower
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Invitation to Spring
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How to Write Poetry: 11 Rules for Poetry Writing Beginners – 2024 – MasterClass
Home | pmp-art.com
Photographs that you can paint from
If you need painting ideas, why not head over to paintmyphoto, which is a site I started a few years ago where photographers share their photos for artists to paint from, it is free. At the time of writing there are over 50,000 members
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Mary spills the cream
Mary was reading a very interesting blog called London postcode by postcode They had reached London N9 and she had got rather bogged down there even though she had not fallen into the Marshes around the River Lea where once the Danes had sailed as Invaders. They would find it very hard to invade us now as the River Lea seems to have shrunk
So lyrical, there are parks and green space,s dirt and mud. Wright’s flour Mill in Ponders End and possibly a lot of illegal immigrants eating Canada geese according to folk myth and racist’ ideas.Canada geese do tend to breed rather excessively and anyway, why are they here in Britain without visas
Mary discovered that her favourite poets John Keats had been apprenticed to a doctor in Edmonton and here is the house where he stayed.There is also a house where Charles and Mary Lamb lived for many years; they are buried in the church graveyard nearby.The church is 15th century and is rather beautiful. there was a hero from World War II who lives in one of these quiet streets in a white painted suburban house.
His name was Charles Coward and he managed to rescue 400 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz ;his name is on a memorial in Israel. there’s even a film about him with Dirk Bogarde it is called “The password is courage”
in this quiet little Street he lived for many years until he died at the age of 71
We never know who might have been living in our street or the next street. people who had done a very courageous things but had never boasted about them
Mary was so busy trying to read this blog and put away the groceries from Morrisons not to mention other household tasks that the day seemed to go by very quickly
How alluring Mary was looking in her pale turquoise and grey wool skirt topped by a turquoise roll neck top from Lands End and with that a rather shrunken jumper in cream with brown dots on it whether it was an accident or deliberate we will never know.On her elegant slim legs she wore some warm black tights and cream shoes
Mary was dressed up like this at home yet went out on Saturday evening wearing an old motheaten jumpe to meet some of the wealthy and members of our parish ;what’s the total mystery is this:did Mary want to look poor and downtrodden or was she was trying to signal her unavailability to be the wife of any men at the meeting only Mary knows. As a matter of fact even Mary doesn’t know. this is why life is so hard because we don’t know how our own motivations
Mary has spent several hours looking for a SIM card for a mobile phone which she never used and did not need and yet could not stop looking for it; however during this process she found that her gnt spray for Atypical Angina was 6 months out of date. so she had to ring the surgery and speak to the doctor Who quickly emailed the note to the pharmacist telling them that this was an emergency that Mary must have the spray as soon as possible or she might have a heart attack .Why Mary might even die like Jesus Christ, not for the same reasons as Jesus Christ and he was probably too young to have got this migraine of the heart as the most poetic language might name it
Mary herself had never known that she had it until one morning she had a terrible pain in her chest and was unable to speak.then she was whizzed off to the hospital to have all sorts of tests and her heart was totally alright except for this symptom which stops the blood from flowing into the heart
Mary went into the kitchen and took some things out of the washing machine wondering where God meant us to dry our washing in winter
When human beings were first created they did not need to wear clothes because they lived in the Garden of Eden surrounded by fruit trees and flowers. it was only after they fell into sin by eating a tomato that they became aware that they were naked and decided to knit themselves jumpers and trousers
Did you know it can be a long time before we learn to knit or, as needles had not yet been invented [come to that neither had wool]. Of course they did not have polyester or nylon or plastic. they did not have gas central heating. yes they were very happy bearing their beautiful family and eventually killing each other when they were not busy procreating .So the world has continued right up till now .We still knit jumpers and sometimes we kill other people because they do not worship the same God that we worship nor do they have as much money as we do. and whatever they have so others will try to take it away.Just like our own Empire of the Done
Mary concluded there has never been any peaceful time in human history and those who try to be too humble or too good or too kind will be the first ones to be slaughtered. Virtue may not always be its own reward .
if only we were descended from the apes, not the chimpanzees everything could be totally different but what is the point of that kind of thinking?
Mary brooded philosophically while washing the kitchen floor where she has spilt single cream. Mary very rarely eats cream and already she has wasted half of the Carton.
Emile came in: Mother why did you not let me lick the cream from the floor?
You might get food poisoning she cried happily you can have some of the cream from the carton on a saucer for your tea. is that good ?
Well said Emile I suppose there’s nothing else now since you have washed the floor but you know that we prefer to eat things from the floor .Cats don’t have China and cutlery
Neither did Adam and Eve Mary screamed softly
Mother ,control yourself anybody would think that you were a chimpanzee, Emile winked at her!
And they’d be right Mary thought to herself I am a chimpanzee
and so are all of us humans beings
I apologise for the errors in this document I am using speech to typing on Google Documents I have tried to edit it but I may have missed some mistakes.It reads as if I need lessons for people whose first language is no tEnglish
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Struggling on life’s craggy slopes
Living life in all its fierceness, Birth and death and joy and pain We struggle on our unknown journey, Sometimes lost and found again. We are indeed like lambs to slaughter Death will be our final goal. But while we live,let us live bravely. Let us not destroy our souls. Climbing in the hills and moorlands In the heather, children play. The sun half blinds me with its light Yet still I see the given way. I received a call to climb. These hills are my essential home. My vocation is to dwell here While in the silence,mind may roam. Noise in cities is destructive. Though nature's fierce,it's also true. Struggling on life's craggy slopes I offer up my words to you.
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The love will never stop
His absence left an empty open cut
Where was my blood that should have made a crust?
The weeping wound must heal from bottom up
The healing force is life and others’ love
Those who touch us gently without lust
His absence still an empty open cut
Slowly cells harmonious in this rut
Do their work and live as all things must
The weeping wound can heal from bottom up
Meanwhile my immunity has guts
Keeping off bacteria and dust
In his absence. now a hollow slit
Tears fly horizontal,eyes are shut
Time goes slow and heavy weights oppress
The weeping wound shall heal if I have grit
Bring me wild flowers from the Clevelands plucked
Give me nectar where the wild bees suck
His presence was a comfort,laughter-lit
The wound heals, oh, the love will never stop
I wrote this after I had an operation on my arm.After the stitches were removed I went to bed.When I awoke there was a big open slit in my arm.It did heal after several weeks
Y
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The world we see
The world we see is like a film of play
I saw them turn the handle by the screen
This may cause us laughter or dismay
Before important thinkings I shall pray
That what I see is real and not my dream
The world that we inhabit is a play
For erroneous sightings we will pay
For egocentric thoughts create crazed scenes
This may cause us laughter or dismay
I was hurled from bicycle to sky
Time went very slowly with no screams
I felt no fear, it was a role to play
Then I hit the pavement, hard and grey
I saw the stars of gold, the moon, her themes
I was back on earth with quiet dismay
I was young and flexible and green
The bicycle was rusty, what’s your scheme?
The world I saw was like a film or play
This knowledge may cause folly or dismay
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Populism and the internet – a toxic mix shaping the age of conspiracy theories
Britons who supported Brexit were considerably more likely to give credence to conspiracy theories than those who opposed it. Most worrying of all, though, is that 31% of Leave voters believed that Muslim immigration is part of a wider plot to make Muslims the majority in Britain, a conspiracy theory that originated in French far-right circles and is known as the “great replacement”. The comparable figure for Remain voters was 6%.
How has the internet affected all this? Our research showed that conspiracy theorists were early adopters, in that they perceived the unique usefulness of the early (pre-social media) web for people who believed propositions that would never get past the editorial gatekeepers of mainstream media. So part of the blogosphere was occupied by conspiracy theorists and what one might call conspiracist
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Where do tears come from?
Where do tears come from,wet our eyes?
Where do griefs come from,where our sighs?
Will we have mourned enough one new day?
Where does love come from, what does love say?
Does even God weep, where are his eyes?
Does even God weep as more children die?
Where is the saviour, where is the Cross?
Knock down the churches, they are no loss.
Weep with the grieving weep with the lost
Weep tears of blood for we all know the cost.
See vultures circling, eating the dead.
Can you love Western culture when you see where it’s led?
See the poor children hungry in school.
The scientists have proved they themselves are the fools.
Economics and warfare developed our brains
We are the victims by new mathematics chained.
Bring me the music bring me the song
The rhythm of the future beats like a gong
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Lead us not into devastation
Our Unknown,dwelling in Heaven,
Helloed and helloed be Thy Name.
In Kingdom come, may Your Will be done
As it was not at 9/11
Give us this day,no more Dread.
Forgive us our Christmases,
As we forgive those who Christmas with us.
And lead us not into Devastation
But deliver us great acceptance and kindness
For Thine is the Wisdom,the Love and the Spirit,
As ever was, and shall be.Amen
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Luminosity
Virtuosity,,….being very charitable.
Precocity,,,going mad before most of us do
Animosity,,,. ,…kindness to animals
Ferocity,,.,,having iron teeth and using them.
Democracy,,…. demons running a country.
Humorisity,,,….getting a degree in Yankee jokes
Criminology,,,, understanding criminals
Religiosity,,,.misinterpreting love.
Tasmania,,…going mad in the sunshine.
Curiosity,,,.a desire to heal the sick
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Coping with loneliness
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/well/pandemic-loneliness-isolation-coronavirus.html
It’s a subjective feeling, but researchers have begun to find signals in the brain that put the need for social interaction on par with the need to eat. In a study published in November, scientists deprived participants of contact with other people and then scanned their brains. After just 10 hours of isolation in a lab — where they could read or draw but had no access to their phones or computers — people reported feeling lonely and craving social contact.
More ……
Research suggests you don’t even need to know the people you’re helping. Just donating money to a good cause might help, Dr. Uchino said. In a series of experiments, researchers found that people who gave money to others were happier than if they spent it on themselves.
But if you’re overwhelmed by giving, it can become detrimental. Instead, try hobbies like cooking, gardening, writing in a journal or even listening to music. Creative arts can reduce loneliness, too, and while singing in person in a choir might not be possible right now, singing from balconies or through virtual groups can be powerful.
This might also be a good time to help out your neighbors. Using the neighborhood social app NextDoor to randomly assign people to perform small acts of kindness — like delivering groceries, chatting over a fence or participating in a neighborhood cleanup event — Dr. Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues found that loneliness rates dropped from 10 percent of people to 5 percent in people who did the kind acts.
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Trust begets perception
I have become interested in virtue and perception.It began when I read a littleAristotle about virtue being a habit.That was quite recent.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 are more likely to misperceive them. When we are from a sad a or difficut 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.Tbey 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 cultures find it more acceptable than others.
Here are some relevant blogs and 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/
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If you’ll teach me more Serbo-Croat
When we humans are united
In the warm embrace of flesh.
We see the world all glowing gold
As our two souls enmesh,
In the warm embrace of flesh.
We see the world all glowing gold
As our two souls enmesh,
Soul and body are a whole,
That sing to us their song.
Please bring your dear body back,
To where it still belong.
That sing to us their song.
Please bring your dear body back,
To where it still belong.
We’ll sit beside the oval lake
Where coots and moorhens float.
I’ll hold your hand and gaze at you,
Where coots and moorhens float.
I’ll hold your hand and gaze at you,
If you read what I wrote!
If you’ll teach me Serbo-Croat
Whilst you tell me anecdotes.
While we play with the tv remote
While I look down your little red throat.
What is the gist of my thought?
If you tell me how many words I have wrote.
What terrible trouble you’ve brought.
Do you think my new suit is too smart
Because I like your new overcoat.
Because you are whom I have sought.
Where’s all that hash you bought?
If you’ll buy me a lovely new coat.
If you only knew what I thought.
If all other things come to naught.
If you’ll give me that salmon you caught.
As I’m feeling so overly wrought.
If you write me a tender love note.
I’m admiring the moth on your coat.
If you promise to carry my tote.
I saw a bumble bee in your coat.
A bee wants a sniff at your throat.
God knows why I wrote what I wrote.
I blame the frog in my throat.
Shall we hire a small rowing boat?
Did you manage to sow a wild oat?
My plans seem to have all come to naught.
I am that lady you’ve caught.
What ethics and rules were you taught.
We could make love in this old rowing boat.
Would you like a small slice of cheese tart?
Wherever I look, there you aren’t!
I’m willing to try a la carte
Your gaze pierces me through like a dart.
Do you think we will do what we ought?
I feel like more artifice when I’m alight
I’m going off to fly my own kite.
We can make love but please do not bite.
I love to sit in this brilliant sunlight.
You have such a loving good heart
You have such great loving art.
You love all pesty modern art.
Do you know who I aren’t?
Let’s all grow up and take part.
I’d love my own horse and cart
In my Play I’ll give you the best part.
I think this is heavenly art.
Oh,I just woke up with a start……………
I’d love to bake you a tart.
You can’t make a pint into a quart.
I’ll let you have the best part.
An owl wants to borrow your coat,
Did you pay for the work on your moat.
Can you teach me to read what I wrote?
Who wrote me the loveliest note?
Woz you just a horny old goat.
I like cuisine if it’s haute.
I think your pants are too tight.
I love this silvmoonlightght.
Sitting with the Lords by the moat.
Sculptures and prints of my goat.
You tell me the story of nought.
I’m admiring your brazen bold heart.
Brass comes in useful for art.
I regret when we do have to part.
My lips are beginning to smart.
Is this or isn’t it art?
