I sent out a few advance copies of the book and got this back from David Usher.
If you are looking for something to give your mind and heart to, but can't accept what many churches say you must believe, Heresy Saved Me is the book for you. Nicholas Axam tells the story of his own journey from cynical disbelief to open faithfulness with candour and insight. I recommend it to all who hunger for a spiritual home.
David is a member of Executive Committee of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in the UK and was first President of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists.
He's also a very kind man.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Reasons not to be terrified
I was pretty sceptical when the media reported the Mumbai-style terror attacks on European cities had been foiled after zapping some people who might have something to do with a plot they didn't actually have the details about, and in any case was still at the planning stage. If indeed there was a plan, and these were the people involved. It was like the RAF dropping a few bombs on Berlin in 1940 and announcing the invasion of Britain had been thwarted.
Now it seems the authorities have also had second thoughts and it's alerts all over again.
At some point of course, the terrorists will get through. However, what strikes me is how limited the existential threat to the West really must be. Certainly the terrorist's penchant for committing suicide provides a frightening frisson, but given the general level of hysteria you would think attacks would be a lot more common. And this can't just be thanks to our wonderful security services - look at the IRA.
In London, from the 1970s to 1990s, terrorism was commonplace. From an early teenage trip to the centre with French exchange students when a big bang and distant pire of smoke signalled a bomb that had hit a bandstand, the shocked survivors moving toward us across the grass like zombies, to my twenties when explosions were so commonplace I got to know the minutiae of their tactics ('What was that?' asked the Southern Irish girl across the computer bank in our office off Oxford Street. 'Sounded like a bomb,' I said. 'No,' she said, 'the back of a van.' 'There'll be another in a minute, as they run from the first,' I said. When it happened, she burst in to tears. 'Only a two-pounders,' said a chap from Northern Ireland in a vain attempt to comfort her) terrorism was just a fact of life. Indeed, attacks were considerably more numerous than the wiki entry. For example, the buggers even blew up my local YMCA.
All this, despite the thorough infiltration of the Irish Republican movement by the intelligence services - the IRA could still muster enough manpower to stage comprehensive and long-running campaigns. And remember - these were people who cared about getting caught. Given this, one can only conclude that active support for Islamic terrorism in the West must be infinitesimal. Yes, some terrorists will succeed, but they are never going to be a threat to our way of life, unless we let them.
Of course that's not the case in the "East" - the Islamic "crescent" from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Middle East and Africa. This is where the "real" war is being fought - indeed, from what little the media could gather about the current supposed plot, it was to bring the fighting in Pakistan to the West in response to drone attacks. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Somalia, violence resulting in multiple casualties is a regular occurrence.
The West is embroiled in a conflict essentially internal to the Islamic culture (and has inadvertently, and incalculably, empowered the forces of Islamism by its approach). It is worth remembering that even 9/11 was viewed by its perpetrators as a response to Western influence on Islam and not as a precursor to some kind of Red Dawn-style invasion - from their perspective the West orbited the Islamic sun, not the other way around.
In this context, I suspect terrorism in the West will always be a "sideshow", no matter how much it feels to us like we are centre-stage.
Now it seems the authorities have also had second thoughts and it's alerts all over again.
At some point of course, the terrorists will get through. However, what strikes me is how limited the existential threat to the West really must be. Certainly the terrorist's penchant for committing suicide provides a frightening frisson, but given the general level of hysteria you would think attacks would be a lot more common. And this can't just be thanks to our wonderful security services - look at the IRA.
In London, from the 1970s to 1990s, terrorism was commonplace. From an early teenage trip to the centre with French exchange students when a big bang and distant pire of smoke signalled a bomb that had hit a bandstand, the shocked survivors moving toward us across the grass like zombies, to my twenties when explosions were so commonplace I got to know the minutiae of their tactics ('What was that?' asked the Southern Irish girl across the computer bank in our office off Oxford Street. 'Sounded like a bomb,' I said. 'No,' she said, 'the back of a van.' 'There'll be another in a minute, as they run from the first,' I said. When it happened, she burst in to tears. 'Only a two-pounders,' said a chap from Northern Ireland in a vain attempt to comfort her) terrorism was just a fact of life. Indeed, attacks were considerably more numerous than the wiki entry. For example, the buggers even blew up my local YMCA.
All this, despite the thorough infiltration of the Irish Republican movement by the intelligence services - the IRA could still muster enough manpower to stage comprehensive and long-running campaigns. And remember - these were people who cared about getting caught. Given this, one can only conclude that active support for Islamic terrorism in the West must be infinitesimal. Yes, some terrorists will succeed, but they are never going to be a threat to our way of life, unless we let them.
Of course that's not the case in the "East" - the Islamic "crescent" from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Middle East and Africa. This is where the "real" war is being fought - indeed, from what little the media could gather about the current supposed plot, it was to bring the fighting in Pakistan to the West in response to drone attacks. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Somalia, violence resulting in multiple casualties is a regular occurrence.
The West is embroiled in a conflict essentially internal to the Islamic culture (and has inadvertently, and incalculably, empowered the forces of Islamism by its approach). It is worth remembering that even 9/11 was viewed by its perpetrators as a response to Western influence on Islam and not as a precursor to some kind of Red Dawn-style invasion - from their perspective the West orbited the Islamic sun, not the other way around.
In this context, I suspect terrorism in the West will always be a "sideshow", no matter how much it feels to us like we are centre-stage.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
How does it feel?
Love this, New Order's Blue Monday re-imagined by septuagenarium Jamaican mento group.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Here be no Unitarians?
It's always a pleasure to think that my jottings are not going entirely unnoticed, albeit by only a handful of curious souls every week. Over time these accumulate, leaving their mark on the world map at the foot of the site. But if you scroll down and take a look, you can see a broad swathe of emptyness, which must be Middle America - the Flyover States - I guess. Maybe its almost as lonely being Unitarian there as in Italy!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Why it's not about Silvio (and what this could mean for Ed)
The only bum note of our recent Jordan trip was at a bar one evening when our (Italian) tour group predictably got on to the subject of Silvio Berlusconi and his not inconsiderable sins. Everyone agreed he was the shame of Italy in much the same way I imagine a group of liberal UUs would have wrung their hands over Dubya.
All that is except a woman from Rome who, her cheeks flaring (although maybe it was the beer, maybe the sun) said: Well who else is there? Tell me - who else is there to vote for?
Cue embarrassed silence then everyone talking at once (ie, no change there). But I was left thinking (and I had plenty of opportunity to think, unable as I was to keep up with much of the discussion) she had a point. Not by voting for Silvio, I hasten to add, but that the existence of Silvio was not the fault of the right, it was because of the failings of the left.
Silvio is successful not because Italians are intrinsically right-wing (if anything they err to the left) but because the left has consistently failed to reflect the concerns, or speak in the language, of ordinary people. Silvio does.
I was reminded of this following yesterday's election of Ed Milliband as the new leader of the British Labour Party. Although the majority of party members and its MPs voted for his brother David, the endorsement of the unions swung it for Ed. Needless to say Ed was the more "left-wing" candidate, while David was much more popular in the country as a whole.
Although I have nothing against Ed's politics, this does seem reminiscent of the Italian left, which, with the exception of Nichi Vendola - the Obama of the South - seems determined to ignore the voices of ordinary folk while it converses with itself, at the end of which it fails to understand why no one votes for it.
Labour's (well, the unions) choice of Ed seems a bit of a missed opportunity, particularly when the Tory administration is about to embark on a highly unpopular - and ideologically-driven - series of cuts. Every time Ed opens his mouth, they will simply label him the voice of vested interest. What am I saying? They've done so already.
Or maybe I'm just sore cos I voted for David. And Oona. And John.
All that is except a woman from Rome who, her cheeks flaring (although maybe it was the beer, maybe the sun) said: Well who else is there? Tell me - who else is there to vote for?
Cue embarrassed silence then everyone talking at once (ie, no change there). But I was left thinking (and I had plenty of opportunity to think, unable as I was to keep up with much of the discussion) she had a point. Not by voting for Silvio, I hasten to add, but that the existence of Silvio was not the fault of the right, it was because of the failings of the left.
Silvio is successful not because Italians are intrinsically right-wing (if anything they err to the left) but because the left has consistently failed to reflect the concerns, or speak in the language, of ordinary people. Silvio does.
I was reminded of this following yesterday's election of Ed Milliband as the new leader of the British Labour Party. Although the majority of party members and its MPs voted for his brother David, the endorsement of the unions swung it for Ed. Needless to say Ed was the more "left-wing" candidate, while David was much more popular in the country as a whole.
Although I have nothing against Ed's politics, this does seem reminiscent of the Italian left, which, with the exception of Nichi Vendola - the Obama of the South - seems determined to ignore the voices of ordinary folk while it converses with itself, at the end of which it fails to understand why no one votes for it.
Labour's (well, the unions) choice of Ed seems a bit of a missed opportunity, particularly when the Tory administration is about to embark on a highly unpopular - and ideologically-driven - series of cuts. Every time Ed opens his mouth, they will simply label him the voice of vested interest. What am I saying? They've done so already.
Or maybe I'm just sore cos I voted for David. And Oona. And John.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Eat, pray... pass the sick bag
Eat Pray Love gets amusingly canned in the Guardian. Certainly when I read the author's description of Bologna - a city so beautiful that I could't stop singing the whole time I was there: My Bologna has a first name! It's P-R-E-T-T-Y - it made me want to throw up.
Friday, September 24, 2010
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