I saw some news footage last week of the ridiculous fisticuffs between rival sects of self-proclaimed Christians in the shrine at Bethlehem. It's hard to think of any better example of rank hypocrisy really. There they are in what they consider to be one of the holiest places on Earth, followers of a preacher of peace, love & fellowship, and they're brawling like schoolchildren, or egotistical soccer stars, or Friday night binge-drinkers. Official monks and priests this is mind, not the great unwashed.
How can they actually claim to follow Christ if they indulge in this sort of behaviour? Where does it say in the gospels, "If someone disagrees with you, thou shalt smite him in the face"?
Perhaps they should read Matthew 15, 8-9 - they wear the costumes and talk the talk but they're certainly not walking the walk. I'm no Christian but it seems abundantly clear that the man these people claim to revere would be horrified by their conduct.
Maybe it's a case for Martin Shaw's new character Father Jacob!
Monday 17 November 2008
Thursday 14 August 2008
Politicians, eh?
I heard our Foreign Secretary on the radio yesterday, speaking about the Russia/Georgia debacle going on at the moment. He said something along the lines of Russia having to accept that the days of solving international disputes by force belonged to yesteryear.
Someone should tell him what our British armed forces have been up to in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last few years. He's obviously completely unaware of what's been going on else he'd not have come out with such rank hypocrisy.
Mind you, if it's the one I'm thinking of, he looks like he hasn't left school long so perhaps he was too busy sitting exams to notice when we trundled in ill-equipped and under-financed.
Thinking further on this Russia/Georgia situation, it's interesting how forgetful our western media can become when it's convenient for them. It strikes me that the two provinces who want to secede from Georgia are doing exactly the same thing that Kosovo wanted to do in removing itself from Serbia a few years ago. Russia hasn't done anything to Georgia that NATO didn't do to Serbia - we bombed the hell out of Serbian infrastructure until they gave in. How come it's okay for NATO to do it but not for Russia to do it? At least they've got some ethnic Russians they can claim to be "liberating". All we were "liberating" in Kosovo were their coal and mineral reserves!
Violence is rarely the answer to anything of course. When the tanks start rolling and bombs start falling it's invariably civilians who suffer the most. I find it hard to believe that war-mongers can still get away with this sort of behaviour in the 21st century but I suppose human nature only changes very slowly, if at all. You'd think without all the communism/capitalism rubbish getting in the way we'd all be able to get on alot better now, but it seems like various interested parties are determined to keep things boiling over occasionally. When politicians cave into them, they cut away any claim they subsequently make to higher moral ground , which is why this western clamour over Russian behaviour sticks in my throat. It's like a diving footballer complaining when a member of the opposing team takes a dive! "You can't go thundering into Georgia like that, ya damn Ruskies! Why, if we weren't busy accidentally killing scores of civilians in Afghanistan with our gung-ho, trigger-happy, kill-em-all punitive policies we'd come right over there an' sort ya out!"
Someone should tell him what our British armed forces have been up to in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last few years. He's obviously completely unaware of what's been going on else he'd not have come out with such rank hypocrisy.
Mind you, if it's the one I'm thinking of, he looks like he hasn't left school long so perhaps he was too busy sitting exams to notice when we trundled in ill-equipped and under-financed.
Thinking further on this Russia/Georgia situation, it's interesting how forgetful our western media can become when it's convenient for them. It strikes me that the two provinces who want to secede from Georgia are doing exactly the same thing that Kosovo wanted to do in removing itself from Serbia a few years ago. Russia hasn't done anything to Georgia that NATO didn't do to Serbia - we bombed the hell out of Serbian infrastructure until they gave in. How come it's okay for NATO to do it but not for Russia to do it? At least they've got some ethnic Russians they can claim to be "liberating". All we were "liberating" in Kosovo were their coal and mineral reserves!
Violence is rarely the answer to anything of course. When the tanks start rolling and bombs start falling it's invariably civilians who suffer the most. I find it hard to believe that war-mongers can still get away with this sort of behaviour in the 21st century but I suppose human nature only changes very slowly, if at all. You'd think without all the communism/capitalism rubbish getting in the way we'd all be able to get on alot better now, but it seems like various interested parties are determined to keep things boiling over occasionally. When politicians cave into them, they cut away any claim they subsequently make to higher moral ground , which is why this western clamour over Russian behaviour sticks in my throat. It's like a diving footballer complaining when a member of the opposing team takes a dive! "You can't go thundering into Georgia like that, ya damn Ruskies! Why, if we weren't busy accidentally killing scores of civilians in Afghanistan with our gung-ho, trigger-happy, kill-em-all punitive policies we'd come right over there an' sort ya out!"
Tuesday 22 April 2008
Gareth Barry
Being an Aston Villa fan, I'm hoping Gareth Barry decides to stay at the club this summer rather than bugger off to the likes of Chelsea or Liverpool. At Villa he's the fulcrum of the side, is guaranteed regular football and thus has every chance of keeping and establishing his place in the England side. At Chelsea (and to a lesser extent at Liverpool) he'd be just another "star" player fighting for his place in an ego-packed midfield, his appearances would be far more limited and his chances of furthering his international career proportionately limited.
It's akin to Wright-Phillips leaving Man City for Chelsea - had he stayed at City, he'd have been a regular all season and would probably have established himself for England too (and I dare say our World Cup Finals campaign would've gone a lot better too with him in form). Instead he was in and out of the Chelsea team and never really got going. He's making progress now but still isn't
exactly setting the Premiership on fire. Sure, he's won some medals but only as a bit part player whereas at City he could've been a legend which may in turn have fed through to international excellence.
It's similar scenario with Barry - he is to Villa what Gerrard is to Liverpool and Lampard has been to Chelsea - top man and recogniseable leader. Just what Ballack and Shevchenko had been before they too disappeared into the Chelsea morass. Yes, there's the lack of Champions' League football at Villa, at least for next season, but Martin O'Neill's doing a great job so you can see Villa
qualifying for it sooner or later. Sooner with Barry on board, and you could say the same for trophies. All they really lack is a 20 goal a season striker (despite scoring more goals than anyone but Man Utd so far this season!) and some rock-solid defenders. Once that's sorted it's all systems go.
Mind you, Barry's been ultra-patient at Villa and has seen more than one false dawn in his time there under the ancien regime of Doug Ellis, so you could understand him taking off. Be a shame though now it finally looks like the real thing taking shape at Villa Park.
It's akin to Wright-Phillips leaving Man City for Chelsea - had he stayed at City, he'd have been a regular all season and would probably have established himself for England too (and I dare say our World Cup Finals campaign would've gone a lot better too with him in form). Instead he was in and out of the Chelsea team and never really got going. He's making progress now but still isn't
exactly setting the Premiership on fire. Sure, he's won some medals but only as a bit part player whereas at City he could've been a legend which may in turn have fed through to international excellence.
It's similar scenario with Barry - he is to Villa what Gerrard is to Liverpool and Lampard has been to Chelsea - top man and recogniseable leader. Just what Ballack and Shevchenko had been before they too disappeared into the Chelsea morass. Yes, there's the lack of Champions' League football at Villa, at least for next season, but Martin O'Neill's doing a great job so you can see Villa
qualifying for it sooner or later. Sooner with Barry on board, and you could say the same for trophies. All they really lack is a 20 goal a season striker (despite scoring more goals than anyone but Man Utd so far this season!) and some rock-solid defenders. Once that's sorted it's all systems go.
Mind you, Barry's been ultra-patient at Villa and has seen more than one false dawn in his time there under the ancien regime of Doug Ellis, so you could understand him taking off. Be a shame though now it finally looks like the real thing taking shape at Villa Park.
Monday 28 January 2008
Why Meditate?
I try to do a spot of meditation every day, and have done so since discovering the benefits of it when I was a teenager. Its effects are subtle and difficult to put into words, but it helps me feel more "together" and better able to concentrate on whatever I have to do during the day.
Being an essentially Eastern practice, it's something of an anathema to the popular Western mindset and most mainstream folk dismiss it as either middle-class pretension or delusory nonsense - what's the point of sitting in silence doing nothing for half an hour or more? Who's got the time, and besides, I can easily do nothing when I'm asleep! It goes directly against the grain of our Northern European work-ethic heritage and our Busy, Busy, Busy lives. If we're not working or getting stressed going to and from work, we feel we ought to spend every spare minute "enjoying" ourselves to make up for all the crap we have to put up with on a daily basis. Why add more constraint to an already overflowing life?
The answer is that meditation gives you more energy and focus, and so helps you deal so much better with every other aspect of life, de-stressing you and making you feel alot less pressed for time all round. You sacrifice 30 minutes (or whatever you can manage) to gain so much more than what watching half an hour's brain-curdling telly could give you.
A good analogy is personal hygiene. Everyone recognises the benefits of cleaning your teeth or showering every day, even people who work in a clean environment like an office. Imagine how your hands would look if you were a gardener who never washed, imagine how you'd smell if you were a binman who never showered, imagine the breath of a chef who never used a toothbrush! The need for maintaining the cleanliness of the human body goes without saying, yet we expose our minds to all sorts of crap and nonsense all the time but we're brought up (in our secular "Age of Enlightenment") to do absolutely nothing about it - it just accumulates and stagnates into a quagmire of churning attitudes and emotions. We absorb horror and scandal from the news, listen to gossip and lewd jokes from our friends, argue with our families, watch violent films and melodramatic soap operas, seethe at the stupidity of people we don't like, rail at politicians and get irritated by the thousand and one things that break down, go wrong or get in our way in the course of a week. Our minds simply aren't built to cope and deal with all this input, so is it any wonder Western Civilisation has so many endemic problems?
Meditation is like cleaning the mind. It calms it down, wipes away all the grime and persistent nagging thoughts and gives our conciousness a bit of time and space in which to rest, replenish and maintain itself. Sleep doesn't do the same job because the chemical balance of our brains is completely different when we're unconcious, and you don't empty a bin by shutting the lid on it! Just as your mouth feels a whole lot fresher after cleaning your teeth, so your mind feels fresher after a good session of meditation. It's maintenance for your brain and sustenance for your sanity and while I wouldn't claim it's an easy thing to get started on, I would claim meditation is something everyone would benefit from if they could be arsed to give it a go and stick with it.
At the very least, it's better than walking around with a stinky mind!
Being an essentially Eastern practice, it's something of an anathema to the popular Western mindset and most mainstream folk dismiss it as either middle-class pretension or delusory nonsense - what's the point of sitting in silence doing nothing for half an hour or more? Who's got the time, and besides, I can easily do nothing when I'm asleep! It goes directly against the grain of our Northern European work-ethic heritage and our Busy, Busy, Busy lives. If we're not working or getting stressed going to and from work, we feel we ought to spend every spare minute "enjoying" ourselves to make up for all the crap we have to put up with on a daily basis. Why add more constraint to an already overflowing life?
The answer is that meditation gives you more energy and focus, and so helps you deal so much better with every other aspect of life, de-stressing you and making you feel alot less pressed for time all round. You sacrifice 30 minutes (or whatever you can manage) to gain so much more than what watching half an hour's brain-curdling telly could give you.
A good analogy is personal hygiene. Everyone recognises the benefits of cleaning your teeth or showering every day, even people who work in a clean environment like an office. Imagine how your hands would look if you were a gardener who never washed, imagine how you'd smell if you were a binman who never showered, imagine the breath of a chef who never used a toothbrush! The need for maintaining the cleanliness of the human body goes without saying, yet we expose our minds to all sorts of crap and nonsense all the time but we're brought up (in our secular "Age of Enlightenment") to do absolutely nothing about it - it just accumulates and stagnates into a quagmire of churning attitudes and emotions. We absorb horror and scandal from the news, listen to gossip and lewd jokes from our friends, argue with our families, watch violent films and melodramatic soap operas, seethe at the stupidity of people we don't like, rail at politicians and get irritated by the thousand and one things that break down, go wrong or get in our way in the course of a week. Our minds simply aren't built to cope and deal with all this input, so is it any wonder Western Civilisation has so many endemic problems?
Meditation is like cleaning the mind. It calms it down, wipes away all the grime and persistent nagging thoughts and gives our conciousness a bit of time and space in which to rest, replenish and maintain itself. Sleep doesn't do the same job because the chemical balance of our brains is completely different when we're unconcious, and you don't empty a bin by shutting the lid on it! Just as your mouth feels a whole lot fresher after cleaning your teeth, so your mind feels fresher after a good session of meditation. It's maintenance for your brain and sustenance for your sanity and while I wouldn't claim it's an easy thing to get started on, I would claim meditation is something everyone would benefit from if they could be arsed to give it a go and stick with it.
At the very least, it's better than walking around with a stinky mind!
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