18 Mar 07 

http://www.creative-native.com/lyrics/soldier.htm

I was watching a programme called ‘Earth Story’ today.  This showed that the link between living things and the planet has been scientifically proven. The stability of the climate on earth, essential to sustaining life (it has to be just right, not too cold like Mars or too hot like Venus) is itself dependent on the carbon cycle. With water as a lubricant, carbon dioxide is taken underground by plate movements and emitted again in volcanoes, in turn keeping the earth warm enough to ensure that water doesn't freeze over. Earthquakes and volcanoes are therefore both necessary for regulating the earth’s climate. However, the earth will not be overheated because carbon dioxide is also absorbed by rocks such as chalk, which is made up of tiny plankton, proving that living things, plants included of course, play their part. 

This proves the partnership of the earth and all living things and why we should protect it – I heard today that there has now been a pact among some nations to control emissions to ensure that greenhouse gases do not build up, trapping carbon dioxide and therefore heat around the earth, although it's said not to go far enough:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4723305.stm

People who rely directly on the earth for their livelihood have come to respect it and the importance that the land is not violated in a way that balance would not be disturbed. Myths and stories have also arisen from the land, including in Britain, eg from the Celts.

Another factor is the interrelation between the Earth, Sun and Moon. The earth keeps rotating on its axis due to the gravitational pull of the sun and and the moon. The Chinese refer to ‘yin and yang’ words with their roots in ‘moon’ and ‘sun’ but which also reflect a terrestrial and human balance. So now we know that scientific discoveries can even support these ideas. We can see that our own overall health is related to that of the earth.

I noticed in Fenderek’s blog that reference is made to the Prophet’s Song in the sense that it concerns relationships between people; people running away from their feelings, not making real contact with each other:

http://fenderek.queenzone.com/blog_view.aspx?Q=528

But there’s a lot about the earth in the Prophet’s Song too, and near the end the ideas are married together:  

Oh oh children of the land
Love is still the answer, take my hand...

Well, I'm not a scientist but I find all this really interesting, even if it means leaping around a lot of ideas;  it shows that ancient wisdoms which have become inherent in people's thinking have much more foundation than we may previously have realised!

18 Aug 05

Here’s a poem I wrote about the London bombings - I was thinking about them while walking in my local country park on ground blackened by grass fires started by people’s negligence:

Cigarettes thrown

Light the grass

Flames flare up.

Bombs on backs

Destruction, death

And suicide.

Twisted Islam.

Charred earth.

14 July 05

Originally written for my 'Queenzone blog', 9 July 05, in the wake of the London bombings, 7 July 2005.

http://somedayoneday.queenzone.com/blog_view.aspx?Q=444

So over fifty more innocent people lost their lives this week. They’re not the first, they won’t be the last. Unless we stop. Stop the cycle of hatred, violence and revenge. Without delving a great deal into the specifics of the parties involved here, these incidents always start with hatred. Although at school I was taught ‘sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you’, you have to ask the question ‘where does it start, the hatred?’ Yes, it does start with words – words to scare you, indoctrinate you, words which are falsehoods, misunderstandings…

 So I guess I’m right to get mad when I see people being rude to each other and showing a lack of respect for each other, which may seem a trivial thing. But it’s not. Because at the end of the day, rudeness leads to prejudice and prejudice to discrimination. Then there’s no end if discrimination becomes institutionalised. That CAN be reversed, like it was in South Africa, but it takes TOO LONG. Life’s too short so let’s begin now. Look how much physical violence starts because people have been rude or called each other names.

 If innocent people are killed, it does not help the terrorists’ cause. Freedom of information now means that we can also see that treatment of innocent Iraqis has not helped the cause of the ‘Coalition’ either. When Will Smith said at Live 8 ‘It’s not the declaration of Independence, it’s the declaration of Interdependence’, he was saying something more profound and more widely applicable than to world poverty. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, said Jesus. And in the film ‘Schindler’s List’, the Commandant is persuaded that the really brave thing to do is NOT to shoot. We are answerable to our fellow human beings before God.

 I’m a Christian, but as I grew up I had some very positive experiences with Islam. I found it contained a tolerance which allowed me, as ‘a person of the Book’, to be shown around a mosque. I developed a mutual respect with Muslims with whom I worked. So I cannot accept that these killings were committed in the name of Islam.

 When I was a student in China, I learned an important lesson. An American man became engaged to a Chinese woman, very unusual in those early days of collaboration in the early eighties. The local press wanted to tell their side of the story. Some section of the American press wanted to tell theirs. None of this was helpful to the couple, and those of us with access to both sides of the debate, Chinese and Westerners alike, who possessed the capacity to think independently, could see that the truth of the issue lay somewhere in between.

 There is the danger that we become totally paranoid about our ‘way of life’ being attacked. This suggests that we have something more precious, more worth protecting, than others. Compared to those that don’t have a democracy, this is true. I remember that, at the height of the Cold War, while I was a student in East Germany, two fellow British students carried a banner saying ‘All Weapons Kill’ to an anti-NATO demonstration – they were almost physically attacked. As far as the East Germans were concerned, the Western Powers were the only aggressors – they, the Warsaw Pact countries, wanted peace. At least, that’s what their government had led them to believe. There was not the freedom of information available within the country to counteract that view.

 On the other hand, killing attacks the very fabric of humanity – our ‘way of life’ is no more valid than that of any other human being, even if many have been misled. What makes us so afraid of someone who looks different? Or even sounds different? Why was I called a ‘slut’ in my own country for having an African husband? What makes other people such a threat? Why not celebrate differences, accept that they exist – maybe this non-acceptance is where the trouble starts. I personally dislike the phrase ‘I don’t see the colour’, well-intentioned though it is. It suggests maybe that there is something wrong with the colour or that it doesn’t exist.

 Where rudeness becomes personal, hatred develops and destruction results. We then have no right to call ourselves civilised, and we are just as much barbarians as those who attack us.

14 July 05: Thoughts relating to 

Assistant Chief Constable David McCann

It’s a year this month since David’s passing – sudden and from a heart attack, at the age of 41. I knew him socially through my brother’s council work on the Kent Police Authority. I remember his cheeky smile and wonderful Irish humour. His promotion though the ranks of the police force was meteoric, matching his talent. Topical for this week is the fact that, at the time of his passing, his role with Kent Police involved anti-terrorism work. Very much a family man, he reminds me in that respect of a popular former work colleague of mine – a joyful and fun-loving Pakistani named Ijaz, who also left us in his forties, a few years ago now, having suffered a brain tumour. Two men who touched my life, very different backgrounds, but very similar personalities – dedicated and wonderful to be with. I’ll always remember them.

18 Feb 05

Father Sergei Hackel, 1931-2005

I knew Father Sergei, although the last time I saw him was in November 2003. I remember him as a gentle, sympathetic man with a good sense of humour. He was very much an intellectual, but he combined that with a practical perspective on being able to straddle both a western and eastern European culture. A ‘stickler’ on some aspects of church tradition, he was very fussy about the performance of music in church and visibly flinched if the choir messed up! On the other hand, he clearly detested the unchristian behaviour which sometimes arose from ugly church politics and made a point of speaking out against it. He never retired and worked on religious programmes for the Russian service of the BBC almost up to his death. In the days when worship for the Russian people was limited due to communism, he undertook the commentary on the Easter liturgy which the BBC World Service Radio broadcast to the then USSR from the Russian Orthodox Church in Kensington, London. I remember some of the profound and challenging things he said in his sermons. One was about the dispute about the exact time and place of Christ’s birth – he said it didn’t matter about achieving precision – the important thing was that time and space were both sanctified by this event.

Click on the picture for a biography:

 21 Oct 04:

"A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell along the path, and was trodden under foot, and the birds of the air devoured it.
And some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture.
And some fell among thorns; and the thorns grew with it and choked it.
And some fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold." As he said this, he called out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant,

 he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.
 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
 The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, that they may not believe and be saved.
And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.
And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.
 And as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience”.

(Revised Standard Version)

Traditionally, this parable has been interpreted as meaning that four different types of people are being described, and that those in each group don’t change later on – that is, that, on hearing the word, it has one particular effect and that is how things remain.

On Sunday, I was attending the Russian Orthodox liturgy, held in a chapel of the King’s School in Canterbury, and, in his sermon, the priest offered a more subtle interpretation – that, throughout our individual life, there might be all four of these things occurring at different points. This is because God is working on us in a way that we will be ready – for the ‘good soil’ to appear. So we shouldn’t despair over what we see as missed opportunities – things may take a while to come to fruition.

I was so struck by this that I left the chapel at the first convenient moment for a chance for quiet reflection, heading for the cloisters of the nearby cathedral, and this is what occurred to me:

 We have a choice: We can fill our lives with beautiful and enriching things, or we can pass our time judging others because they don’t live up to our expectations, or we can dwell so much on the way someone else has treated us that it starts to destroy us. I’ll go for the first. Then I thought it was amazing I was having these thoughts here, because, if I put them on the site and others log in to read them in future, from anywhere on earth, they would know of this place. People come from all over the world to see it, and it’s less than an hour from me by train! What a blessing that is.

In the meantime, Brian has been viewing some of the domes of my own church in its mother country:

(link no longer available - previously showed a picture Brian had taken in Moscow of the golden domes of an Orthodox church).   

There’s no contradiction, in my view, in talking about these spiritual things and Queen’s music in one breath – for me, the two are intertwined. I view it as a disease of the western mind to compartmentalise things – it’s why the Orthodox church is viewed by some members of some other Christian denominations as something of an untidy mess – and an incidental one at that – when we’re very much a world-wide family; we have our differences, but speak to each other at Christmas! 

If I have been so bold as to venture on this site to explore the spiritual influence of Queen’s music, it’s because events in my life have brought me to do so. A lot of things over the years didn’t happen for me as far as Queen were concerned, but then I may not have built this site if they had.

Whatever’s happening in our lives right now, we’re on the journey,  we travel on, and with our guardian angel at our side.