Of the burning of books there is no end

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It is not a new phenomena

Did you see it? Yet again a modern man extracts words from an ancient poet and is vilified: better be careful then when we quote Shakespeare, who did not mince his words but it must be said was careful in his allusions, or even our more recent Gilbert of G&S fame, who was certainly more colourful in his language than we would be permitted to be. We must not of course forget the villainous John Green who in the middle of civil conflict was unable to quench his patriotic fervour when he wrote his Babylonian work.

But such things are not new. The first burning of books, of which Coco is aware, please let me know of any earlier, took place around the time of the events related in Green’s opera. Nabucco had invaded Judah, as foretold by Isaiah, and left Jehoiakim as a vassal king in Jerusalem, and probably at this time had taken away Daniel when returning to Babylon as emperor. Jeremiah had spoken many true words to the king, but the king hated him, but there were still some in the city who afforded protection to Jeremiah. Jeremiah had his secretary Baruch to write down his words on a scroll. Some months later in 604 BC the opportunity arose to read the words in the temple to the people and some of the leaders, who decided that these words must be heard by the king. They were afraid of what Nebuchadnezzar would do, he having returned to receive tribute from his vassals. King Jehoiakim not being impressed, ordered in vain that Jeremiah and his scribe be abducted, but they were already well hidden. He did however allow the scroll to be read to him, and as it was read he displayed his contempt of it by cutting off the scroll each section after it had been read to throw it into his fire pot.

We are aware of the trade routes across Asia, which existed at this time. The words which Jeremiah had spoken were taken by Nebuchadnezzar’s captives to Babylon. His empire stretched afar to the east and his successors were influenced by the Jews who lived in the empire, some attaining exceedingly high rank in its government. It is not unreasonable to consider that something of these things would be taken outside the empire. However perhaps the book burning that we find in China by the king Qin Shi Huang is altogether uninfluenced by the history of another king in Jerusalem some four hundred years earlier.

We must not forget however that the burning of books has taken place in our own land and much more recently. Just as Jehoiakim showed contempt for the word of God spoken by Jeremiah, the bishop of London did also in 1526 AD. There was a fear of the word of God. Reading it would expose the cracks in the religion of the day, actually I would like to suggest that it would expose the shroud over the true religion which had been hidden under precept upon precept of man in a rather similar way that the true faith of Abraham and the prophets had been hidden by the rabbis and teachers of the law in Jesus’s day. William Tyndale had completed his translation of the New Testament into contemporary English and it had been published on the continent. When the books became available in England the Bishop bought up the books to burn. They were dangerous books. If the people read them they would see the errors that were being taught in the church, and understand what true religion is all about. This would upset the status quo and the authority of the leaders. Coco reckons it was the similar for Qin Shi Huang though for somewhat different reasons. Coco would like to suggest that this book burning continues today, but some would say that Coco is then being uncharitable to do so, perhaps as we do not see the literal burning of the Book, but the ignoring of its teaching is the first step towards the book burning pit.

The burning of the books did however have a number of good effects. It brought attention to the availability of the translation and secondly the price paid could finance a new edition to remove the errors of the first. The burning of the scroll by Jehoiakim also had similar benefits. Jeremiah and his scribe wrote the content out again on a new scroll with many similar words added to it. So we are able to read today the words that Jehoiakim burned.

Returning to the poem written by Zhang Jie briefly,
焚書坑
竹帛煙銷帝業虛，關河空鎖祖龍居。
坑灰未冷山東亂，劉項原來不讀書。
Coco was unimpressed by the translation offered, though it seemed literal enough, and Google did no better, which was somewhat shocking as Coco would have thought that such a famous text would have translation already stored: ah, well. So here is another, based purely upon a single commentary on the words:

 It was books in the burning  That destroyed the Qin. 
 In vain flood and pass were guarding  As the Dragon fell in. 
 Before the ash cold had turned  Shandong’s riot burned. 
 To illiterate peasants now  The people all must bow. 

Coco is sure fault may be found with it, and you can do better, but it serves its purpose. There are many today who would suppress free thought, as there were in the past. Rome sought to suppress the truth. A simple ‘Caesar is lord’ would save many a life, but many died. The Lord taught us that his kingdom is like yeast in bread, it will as it is mixed in fill every part, and just so his kingdom will fill every part of this world. Rome fell in. Other empires will fall in under the sway of the King of kings.

Jehoiakim tried to destroy the word of God; The bishop of London tried to do so; Men still do so today; The grass withers, the flowers fades away but the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8)

The Book Burning Pit
By Zhang Jie, a poet in the late Tang Dynasty (618–907AD)

Dowlais – steel works

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When steel matters

The events that are shortly to be related took place in a different age and a different culture, in an altogether foreign location in the broadest sense which was unknown to the people of that time, but is now known to us as a consequence of the work of Einstein in the early part of the twentieth century. It was the time of railroads, steam trains, iron mills, steelworks, coal-mines and dirty work, when undertaker meant more than the entrepreneur and entrepreneur was an unknown word. The prosperity of a municipality could be measured, at least in part by the number of railway stations that it boasted, but better by the quality of the steel produced there and it was from one of these small towns towards the upper end of one of the rolling Welsh valleys that a principle undertaker in the steel industry received a telegram from a bridge and engineering fabricator in North Africa who wished to discuss the procurement of a quantity of steel for the provision of the building of a new bridge across the Niger.

Enys Jones was an atypical undertaker, who upon receipt of the telegram passed it to her chief supply officer Emyr Carwyn Lloyd for his examination. Following certain enquiries he reported back to his superior, who authorised him to visit the prospective customer to ascertain the needs of the project, the suitability of an agreement to supply and the terms of any such agreement. A telegram was returned to the enquirer, who responded with an offer to meet the costs of the journey subject to an upper limit, which was found to be most agreeable to Emyr Lloyd. It was never openly said, but both thought that Emyr was not an inappropriate name for the visitor and may well lend a certain status to the supply officer which he would otherwise not have had.

Emyr Carwen Lloyd set about his travel plans with the meticulous precision that he afforded to his daily work and which, he had no doubt, had earned the company for which he worked its enviable reputation, prompting the enquiry which he was then about to pursue. He would travel by train and sail for which he believed a combined first class return ticket would be available.

Sadly, his carefully crafted plans began to fall apart as he arrived at Dowlais Central to buy the ticket for his journey.

‘Timbuctoo, sir, where, if I may enquire, is that? It’s not on my list. I can offer you Cardiff, but that’s as far as we go.’ He bought a ticket to Cardiff.

Cardiff Central is a few minutes’ walk from his first destination. As he walked, he mused on the way that at least here it would be possible to buy his ticket, but the response was not dissimilar:

‘Timbuctoo, sir, where is that? It’s not on my list. I can give you Timahoe, Timoleague, Touraneena, Tuar Mhic Éadaigh,.. ‘ He would have gone on, but Emyr interrupted him: ‘Timbuctoo is not in Ireland, it is in North Africa’. He bought a ticket for London. The ticket officer advised him that he had a ticket to the Victoria station. As his train would be going into the Waterloo, it would be to his advantage if he alighted at the Vauxhall station to change to a local train into the Victoria, otherwise he would require a hansome cab to take him from the Waterloo to the Victoria. If he alerted the guard on the train he would be given whatever assistance may be required to make the transfer. On the journey he learned from a fellow passenger that although the train managers preferred the transfers to take place at Vauxhall, most passengers found it more convenient, though slightly longer to alight at the Clapham junction station and continue the journey into the Victoria station from there.

Upon his arrival in Victoria he decided to wait until the morning to continue the journey and found lodgings in a hotel nearby to the station.

In the morning his hopes were high; here he was in the middle of the capital city of the Empire, surely here it would be possible to buy a ticket for the remainder of his journey. His hopes were dashed as he asked for his ticket.

‘Timbuctoo, sir? Do you mean Timbuctoo in French North Africa?’

‘Yes, is there another?’ he replied rather glad that the ticket officer at the least knew of Timbuctoo

‘I only wanted to be sure, sir, that that was your intended destination. I would not want to sell you an invalid ticket for your journey. Some people do ask for the strangest of tickets. Only last week someone wanted a ticket to Riyadh. It turned out in the end he wanted to go to Rhaeadr, but couldn’t get his tongue round it. All seemed to be going well, until he was presented with his ticket.’

‘Is that all?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, sir. We have a train leaving for Paris in three hours. It will arrive tomorrow afternoon. You must continue your journey from there. ‘

There was nothing for it. He took the train to Paris, where he thought it would become possible to obtain a pass for the rest of his journey, after all Timbuctoo was in French North Africa.

The station at Paris Nord was a cacophony of the most unpleasant sounds, and aromas. His French was poor, but he understood enough to receive the message: ‘A ticket to where? It is possible that we sell you tickets to Dunquerque, Calais, Aix-la-Chappelle, Essen, Hamburg, Copenhagan, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Prague even Moscow, but Timbuctoo, it is impossible. You must go to the correct ticket office to buy such a ticket. ‘

‘And where is the correct ticket office?’, he asked, but no one was able to tell him. They neither knew nor did they care. It was not their business.

He retired to a rather shabby, though for Paris Nord it was probably considered to be rather smart, hotel, to consider his next move. Whilst speaking with one of the other guests he learned that he would never be able to buy a ticket to Timbuctoo in Paris, the primary reason being that whilst he was not English, he would still be treated as if he were Rosbif. The guest however also happened to know that the train for Rome would leave at noon the following day. From Rome he would be able to travel to Naples and Palermo, and sail to Tunis, thereafter travel to Timbuctoo would be quite straightforward though not as comfortable as he would find the journey to and through Italy. Emyr was greatly encouraged, and even more so when he learned that the hotel had a railway ticket office which specialised in tickets to Italy where he was able to buy the three tickets he required to travel to Palermo there and then.

The journey through Italy, though it took five days, was as comfortable and pleasant as he had been led to understand, if not more so. It also considerably lightened his luggage as he was able to return several books by post as he passed through Naples. On his arrival in Palermo he met again the guest from the hotel in Paris, whom he chided for not telling that they would be on the same train. The gentleman excused himself that as he could not afford the first class travel they would not have been permitted to associate with each other on the journey. It was better for Emyr to travel alone than to suffer the rigours of the third class, they could however share in the journey to Tunis as the sailing vessel made no such class distinction. They travelled together to the port and embarked later that day across the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Herr Professor Doktor Ärhard Feinbaum proved to be the excellent company on the crossing. He was an archaeologist who was working in Carthage. He was also knowledgeable of Timbuctoo and provided Emyr with much insight and understanding of what to expect when he arrived, and also how to show interest in the exotic features of the locality.

Ärhard assisted Emyr in the acquisition of transport to Timbuctoo. It would be an arduous journey of three months. Emyr regretted posting some books back from Naples. He could have read them again. Ärhard however knew the drivers well, and persuaded them, by only referring to his guest as Emyr, that he should be well cared for and provided with his own private apartment on the journey. Ärhard would also ensure that a telegram was sent back to Wales to advise on Emyr’s progress as soon as it became possible to make a visit to the French government offices of the city.

Emyr acquired a journal before they left Tunis. If he could not read he would write he thought to himself. The heat, the sand and winds of the desert seemed to be perpetual. They would leave at dawn, travel for four or five hours then rest until late afternoon, when they travelled again until it was no longer possible to see. Emyr never saw any tents being dismantled or restored, but whenever they arrived at camp the tents were there ready for them, and his writing desk carefully set out. On a few days no travel was possible consequent upon the desert storms which afflicted the region from time to time. At length the caravan arrived at the outskirts of Timbuctoo, where the Berber who had led the train arranged accommodation for the now highly honoured Emyr. His writing had been worthwhile.

It was from this accommodation that Emyr sent a telegram back to his office and arranged his first visit to the enquirer.

Upon his arrival at the offices of the bridge and steel fabricant Emyr was quite taken aback to be greeted in Welsh, albeit it was Welsh with a strong Italian accent:

‚Diwrnod da, Emyr Carwen. Sut mae’n mynd gyda chi? Sut mae’ch taith wedi mynd â chi?’

‘Good day, Emyr Carwen. How goes it with you? How has your journey taken you?’ The translation from Banbara to Welsh was quite literal but Emyr understood them to ask: How are you? How was your journey?

At first he thought that they had simply learned these questions by rote to be polite, but when he proceeded to be polite himself and answered in Welsh his astonishment increased greatly in magnitude. Not only did they fully comprehend his reply, they asked for clarification in his use of hiraeth and whether it would be appropriate to use it in the context of sailor on the high seas who would in due course return home. They explained that, having no fleet themselves, they had no experience nor had any of their people of such things and so had difficulty understanding the use of the concept, as their mother tongue lacked the vocabulary for such ventures. They also asked for his assistance in enhancing their enunciation of his family name Lloyd, as, although other local languages had similar voiceless alveolar lateral fricative sounds they had not quite been able to master the Welsh sound. It was at this part of the discussion that Emyr Carwen Lloyd started to hear words that he did not even know existed in the Welsh language.

His relief was palpable when he discovered that the commercial discussions would be held in English, but the contract would be drawn up in Welsh. It appeared to him that they had already decided they would buy the steel from him, and that it was really only the quantity and quality, which would be determined by the purpose to which it was to be put, that remained to be determined. The price it appeared was not open for negotiation. The engineers had already done their work, and knew what they would be expected to pay for the various qualities that would be required. The only concern appeared to be the shipping costs, insurance of the cargo and timing. The steel, they thought, could be sent by boat from Cardiff down the west coast of Africa and then up the Niger. At some point it would have to be offloaded onto barges for the final stages of the journey, but it would eventually arrive at the port some six miles south of the city, close to the final destination where it was to be used. Timing was important as the Niger was only navigable in the vicinity of Timbuctoo for two months of the year. It would not be possible to move the eight to ten thousand tonnes of steel and iron required in the dry season, though it would be in the dry season that construction work would be undertaken.

Emyr and the engineers poured over the designs and calculations for several days, each checking the other’s figures and calculations in meticulous details. Emyr was not simply interested in the sale of the steel, but that the project itself would work. He would not sell steel for a project that would fail for other reasons, as the failure itself may be used to impugn the quality of the steel provided and reflect badly upon the Enys Jones Steel Works (Dowlais). So every detail was assessed and eventually the calculations and quantities agreed down to the number of nuts and bolts that would be provided. It was also agreed that no part of the project would be provisioned by steel from any other supplier upon pain of forfeiture of a bond that would be held by the German consulate in Tunis, there being no British presence and the French could not be trusted by either party.

The contract being concluded, it was time for Emyr to depart. Ärhard not being present he would have to arrange the journey back himself. So he went to the local travel office as suggested by his host. Anticipating that he would have to travel in stages he asked about travel back to Tunis. That would not be a problem he was told, there was a train leaving in a few days. Accommodation in it could be arranged, in the meantime arrangements could be made for him to spend time to view the city. The presence of ‘the Welsh Emyr’ had become well-known in the city and he was by then something of a celebrity. Then there was a question:

‘What is the end of your journey?’

They were not unfamiliar words to Emyr who had often sung them in the chapel at home.

‘Why I am going back home to Dowlais’ he said with a note of surprise in his voice.

‘So you would require a ticket to Dowlais then, sir.’ came the reply, ‘Would that be Dowlais Central, Dowlais Top or Dowlais Caeharris?’

Courtesy of PLC, this version PC 2021

Too much colour

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It was the reference to a woman of colour that prompted Coco to speak yet again on this matter, Coco was going to remain silent, having spoken before but the reference shows nothing has changed . Coco noticed the article is still fairly close to the top even today; it had not gone away.

In the days of regulated discrimination, upon which we frown, we had whites and coloureds, but it is now acceptable to speak of people of colour. What is the difference? As great as the difference between a rook and a castle I should think. But it set Coco thinking, that these are terms that are defined by one particular stereotype. We have many such ways of speaking of the whole world whilst at the same time making a distinction between two parts, and not necessarily the same parts. There are the Greeks and the Barbarians, the Jews and the Gentiles to name but two, oh, of course, how could Coco forget?, England and the Rest of the World, but he is not sure that in the third case the ‘Rest of the World’ actually includes the whole of the rest of the world, nor perhaps that England only includes England. Perhaps a sports fan is able to explain the matter. But what does the other group think of the first? It is ok for the Jew to speak of the Gentile, but among the Gentiles are the Greeks, who include the Jew among the Barbarians. It is no honour to a person of colour from Africa if a person of colour from India is honoured by presumably a person of no colour. The person of colour from India may well consider that the world is also divided into two parts, those who are Hindu and those who are not, but not all Indians are Hindu, or, dare Coco suggest, persons of colour?

Have you heard the one about (in alphabetical order of course so as not to offend those whose judgements have been seared by political correctness) the Scotsman, the Welshman and the Englishman? Where would the punch line be without racial stereotypes? As a stereotypical green Wellingtonioned, tweed jacketed, urban farmer (not really) Coco had long ago appreciated the Cloth, cloth Capp, bumbling bespectacled Genius, bowler hatted [word removed lest it cause offence], genteel Gentry, not to mention men of Kent, Essex and the other side of the Pennines stereotypes that are often portrayed in putatively comic literature, only later to discover that even better caricatures could be produced of nations: one which never laughs but is terrifyingly efficient; another has never worked since it lost its empire before anyone had ever even thought about Yorkshire; another only drinks coffee and eats gelato, of the best kind of course, where no-one remembers how to speak their own language properly; another cannot bear to be without their own bread, cheese and wine, and would dearly love the Rosbif to be taken off the menu; another is so laid back the [removed] could dry up and they would only notice he next time a bath was required a year later; another so committed to community they would on the underground tie the thing that was out of place, the other unknown person’s undone shoe lace without even thinking about what they are doing – you, dear Reader, know far more than Coco does – but USAsians what folly! So busy every day in the office and factory making sure that every box in every regulation has been ticked, they don’t have time to make sure that everything is actually safe, secure, that no one will be hurt, let alone find the time do any real work, and whose consciences are troubled: ‘When I WFH, am I allowed to waste as much time in idle chatter as when I am in the office or do I have to do real work?’ Cloth Capp has little hope when faced with the flint stone of regulation proceeding from a son of Simp.

So we get very hot under the collar about stereotypes when we find them in a cartoon, but when they are portrayed as ‘real’ life in a soap, who cares? The stereotypes are still there, and in a far more dangerous and offensive way: ‘real’ people get hurt. In the cartoon, the same people are there every week, they may treat each other badly, but they always come back in exactly the same way and they continue to treat each other in the way they have always done, and none of them change for the better or the worse. And we continue to laugh at them; they are not real people.

The cartoon shows us the stereotypes, and the judgements that we all would make if we thought the stereotypes are a true reflection of everyone or anyone. We learn from this. It is amusing because it is necessarily grotesque. And we know that it is not the way to behave or to copy. The soap presents us with stereotypes that appear to be real life, and being real life we learn from them too, but dangerously so, for in real life we copy the behaviours of others, and what sort of behaviours are the easiest to copy: good ones or bad ones? If they can behave like that so can we. Perhaps the soaps should portray behaviours worth the copying; but that is not for today’s post.

Paul quoted an ancient poet who said: All [of my own people] are liars, evil beasts and lazy gluttons. Stereotypes have been around for a very long time. We shall not be able to suppress the ability of men to define other men by certain characteristics (think of emotional, analytic, driver and amiable: is that nothing but stereotyping? But it is not politically incorrect to do so, yet), but we can as Epimenides and Paul did learn to use those stereotypes.

Paul showed that the answer to the stereotype proposed was to teach the people the sound doctrine of Jesus Christ, that they, and we, might turn aside from these things that defile us and the ways of behaviour that corrupt us, and instead turn to serve the living God in love, joy and peace through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only in that way will there be peace between us, and xenophobia (Greek and Barbarian, etc it is as old Babel) shall be replaced by xenophilia as we rejoice in the things that make us different.

The Simpsons: Hank Azaria apologises for voicing Indian character Apu

The actor says part of him feels he needs to apologise to ‘every single Indian person’.

Coco considers he should listen to the other part.

Fasting in the new normal

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The new normal: a new perspective

Thinking about the new normal again (oh dear, did you say, we would prefer that you did not think too much): we have had a year of, in alphabetical order, Zoom, Webex, Teams and other rooms’ meetings. I suppose we are getting used to that by now. We can meet anyone, anywhere at almost any time. Some have become so accustomed to this kind of meeting that they even say, ‘Let’s meet for coffee’. The virtual room is set up and wonderful face to face chat takes place over the coffee at the your own kitchen table. Then of course are the long and tedious lunch time office meetings with bacon and avocado, ham and pickle, cheese and tomato sandwiches laid on. At least in the virtual room it is easier to pretend that you are paying attention. And the committee meetings, all day or evening, which you can now do in the comfort of your own armchair. But no matter how heavily your own table is laden with caviar, smoked salmon, trout, olives, cucumbers, garlics, brie, mozzarella, cheddar, brioches, croissants, fruited breads and oysters you cannot but yearn for the dried up ham sandwiches and soggy cheese and tomato just to be able to be with your colleagues, peers and committee members, to be able to hear their real voices instead of replicas emanating from the inside of a loudspeaker. As one of my colleagues said as the others were glued to the admittedly much better pictures on their computer screens, whereas we had simple rigged up a pinhole camera to display the event on a sheet of paper, at the transit of Venus: Come and watch the real thing. You can see the missing photons. We were watching the real shadow cast by the Sun of Venus as it happened.

But I thought, there are some good things about this virtual world, and this thought was inspired by a lady who always liked to make sure she would be on night duty at this time of the year. We have become, as we said accustomed to it. It no longer feels as unnatural as it did before. We can join in with people anywhere in the world, or even out of this world if you count the ISS among your contacts. It is good to join in with things. The physical limitations of our being have meant that we could not choose to do so wherever we liked, but the virtual world overcomes that. On a UK visit, one contact was not put off but continued to meet in the virtual gaming world with his companions until they banned him, as he had managed to secure a better connection from the UK to the controller than they could. But for a time he was effectively in two places as one. In this virtual world not only can you meet with people anywhere, you can yourself be anywhere. You can travel around the globe in a matter of minutes, though I would not recommend it as that would be rather like playing knick-knock on the doorbells down your street, better perhaps to spend a while with the ones whom you visit on the way. If you plan it well you can have morning coffee every hour for twenty four hours, and if by then your hands are not shaking your arms out of their shoulder joints, you could start again. I can think of a few people who would be overwhelmed by the prospect of such a thing especially if it involved chocolate with the coffee. So I thought I would modify my degustational habits, and as I have met a few people there, and for this purpose and this purpose only, I shall be in Alice Springs. I shall breakfast just after sunset.

But what is fasting?

Fasting is a difficult thing to do, as you will know if ever you have tried it. When you fast, anoint your face, the Lord said, so that people do not know that you fast. So you go about your business as if nothing has changed, and suddenly you notice it. It seems that almost everyone has a fixation on eating, and more to the point getting you to eat. You go to the office, and on the way the free gifts are being handed out at the station: a new energy bar. As you arrive, they are handing out the croissant: a bit of an embarrassment really, the caterers delivered the clients’ breakfast to the office and not the convention centre, and so not to let them go to waste… The catering failure at the convention centre brings some back to the office early, and they want you to join them for lunch. In the middle of the afternoon, the dreadnoughts come round: but it is Tuesday. Thursday is dreadnought day. It’s a busy day, and you notice how wherever you go, people offer sweets: boiled sweets, chewy sweets, toffee to glue your teeth together sweets, chocolate – you can’t say no to that surely. And all the while you hold your tongue and do not say ‘I can’t, I’m fasting’ but you are also fast running out of other excuses, then a ‘phone call arrives from Jim who is in town just for the day…

There are the days of course when nothing happens, until one person comes by and you are caught unawares. Deeply engrossed in whatever work you had to do, there he is someone with whom you had never spoken before. He wants to talk, he has some questions but does not quite know how to begin, so to break the ice offers you a sweet; without thinking you accept and in it goes. You can do nothing. Although it is not too late to remove it from the buccal cavity to do so would not provide a propitious opening to the conversation which was about to begin. You remind yourself that fasting is not a matter of law; your attention is given over to the business that the one time stranger has brought to you.

Fasting has benefits. There are physiological benefits, but of that I shall not speak. The time that we retrieve by not eating, preparing to eat, and dealing with its effects, can be spent in prayer and meditation.

Moses fasted for 40 full days when he received the law from God and neither ate nor drank. How did he survive that? We sometimes hear what hunger strikes do to men. The Lord reminded us that that the law itself says that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If the Lord was able to provide manna in the wilderness for a people numbering millions for forty years, then he was also able to sustain Moses through his exhausting fast. Remember however that the miracle of the manna ceased when the people entered the promised land. The sustention of Moses does not provide us with an excuse to test the Lord by our fasting.

The Lord himself after his baptism by John in the Jordan went out into the wilderness to fast, also for forty full days. It was at the end of this time that he was tempted by the devil to satisfy himself, test God and take his kingdom in way other than that which had been planned from the foundation of the world. He rejected these things. The temptations prepared him for the work he had come to do: ‘I have not come to do my will but the will of him who sent me. I have not come to be served, but to be a servant, to carry my cross and give my life for my sheep.’

We noted that fasting provides an opportunity for prayer and meditation, but take care: Fasting does not provide cleansing, or the forgiveness of sins. These are only available because Jesus has made the only acceptable sacrifice for sin in his own death. That you fast, pray and meditate may show that you have received cleansing but it will not give it to you. James in his letter reminds us that just as we know that a tree is living when it produces fruit, we know that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation is living (real) when it produces fruit (good works, etc). The good works do not provide salvation any more than the fruit can cause the tree to live.

So, we learn that fasting, just a physical training, has some value, but it can do nothing to cleanse the soul. The Lord told us that if our hand leads us into sin to cut it off for it is better to enter the kingdom of God maimed than be cast into hell whole. The point of this is not that it is our hands that cause us to sin; he tells us elsewhere that sin proceeds from the heart. If we would be clean in heart, we shall be clean in hand and foot as well, and if we would be clean we must look to the Lord Jesus Christ and set our hope on the living God who is the Saviour of all.

So, fast if you will, but if you do not hold fast to the Lord Jesus, there is no salvation.

It is far, far better that he hold you fast, than that you hold a fast.

Existential statements

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Coco thought he would keep it simple in this post and just make a big existential statement, but what in reality Coco was thinking was to discover just how many characters had to be written before the ‘see more’ message appears, and to provide a short introduction to his new art work, which has not yet been refused by the Tate and goes by the same name. This is not enough, as you can see, or rather cannot see, yet. The words ‘see more’ have not yet appeared.

So let us try again:

Coco thought that this evening he would just make a big existential statement:

ie

Plans

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Plans do not change, but minds do…

Two friends were out chatting as they do. Martina, who had finished her coffee was Italian, and Stella, still wondering whether she should put sugar in her tea, came from Essex. Martina and Stella had met on a finger painting course in the school of art studies at the university of Fortecolpe which is in the vicinity of Telavivodetto. Strangely the course had been conducted in German and had focussed on Email, which seemed, especially to Stella, quite extraordinary, but nevertheless, with Martina who understood most of it, she completed the course. They maintained their friendship, and now found themselves working in the same area in Finchley.

Stella: Ronald just doesn’t get it. We’d planned to go out for lunch. I was really busy and couldn’t take the time off, but when I said let’s just have a quick cup of tea he was really angry with me and said I was changing the plan.

Martina: Amica, he must be taught. You know always to visit have I wanted Brighton and his Pavilion. Fernando from the gym has agreed after my enormous efforts to go with me to Southend on Saturday morning to choose a present for my dear Nonno..

Stella: but you don’t have a car?

Martina: Don’t interrupt, amica mea, we know. He has a car, but he is going with me. I am taking him. Capisci? On the way I shall say to him, Are you going to go all around the M25 then? And he will say, No, we shall just cross over it on the way to Southend. But it doesn’t really matter what he says: I shall reply, but we are going to Brighton, I changed my mind. He will be furious, but then, e allora? che importa? he’s Spanish.

Stella: ???

Martina: You don’t change the plan..

Stella, finally allowing the sugar lump to fall into the tea, which rather caused an upset in the saucer: Your change of mind was part of the plan!

Otto von Bismark was putatively reputed to have said: If ever I shall be faced with a female general, remind me to negotiate a settlement before the engagement.

The choice of origin for the persons referred to in this conversation is accidental and was not planned to cause offence, irritation, dismay or distress to any of the actual or potential readers nor to anyone who has not read the words used but to whom they have merely, either in full or by gist, been reported. OvB is not related to the German chancellor of a similar name.

The new normal

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Let us eat….

It has been overshadowed in the last few days by the passing of a great man. The Duke is rightly to be remembered and his life celebrated for all the good he has done and in the idiosyncrasies that he displayed. His death reminds us that life does not remain the same; time moves on; until now in recent days, and I suppose that it shall return, there had been much talk in these parts about what the new normal will look like. I don’t know what you hear elsewhere, but what we hear doesn’t sound to me very much unlike the old.

Holidays in the sun is good for vitamin D deficient sun lovers unless they also have a melanin deficiency in which case extra strong skin cream is required. Racing to return to the gym, which provides bodily exercise for those who do not have to labour hard in the acre of land that the government allows them on which to grow maize and other crops. Eating out and visits to the cinema, theatre, opera, shows, concerts, dance halls, gigs (is that orthographically correct, or should it be gigues?) and the like are, well, without the need for justification of any sort, a necessary part of the new normal. Let us eat drink and be merry¹, seems to be the message.

Are we any different? There has been much celebrated over the past year of dedication, selfless giving, service, but little (but not nothing) has been said about the cleaner who was no longer needed because her employer now WFH had recovered two hours a day not being required to travel, or the employer who simply told his staff not to bother to return the next day, they would not be paid. The poor still had mouths to feed and bills to pay.

Do not think I am about to suggest that wealth is bad, Abraham² did not berate the rich man for enjoying the things that he enjoyed in this life but for failing to believe in the Son of Man. He was not asked to give half his wealth to Lazarus who sat at his gate, but rather to remember justice, righteousness and compassion. It was this that he forgot.

In the new normal, will we simply revert to type, and behave as we always have done? Noah³ left a world that was filled with violence to sail into a new world. What sort of violence? Physical, economic, emotional, therapeutic? Did Noah hope for better in the new world into which through the flood he had sailed? But his own behaviour and that of his sons soon showed that the world that they had left behind had come with them. The new world was no better. We today seek to deal with violence, but the very need to do so simply exposes our shame that it continues to exist.

The last year is no cure for our condition; it has shown many good things about the image of God in which we are made, but it has also exposed that our condition is unchanged.

There is but one cure, the man, who himself suffered violence at the hands of his own people, is our cure. Jesus now sits at the right hand of God⁴ and will come again to take his people to a world which really shall be new and different than this one, where there shall be no violence, no hurt, no harm. That will be the new normal; it will be an extraordinary, previously unimagined normal⁵, but it is the only new normal for which it is worth waiting.

Mene, mene, tekel upharsin⁶.

¹ Ecclesiastes 8:15, Isaiah 22:13, Luke12:19, 1 Corinthians 15:32
³ Luke 16:19-31
³ Genesis 9
⁴ Mark 16:19, Luke 22:69, Acts 2:33, 5:31, Colossians 3:1, Hebrews 10:12, 12:2, 1 Peter 3:22
⁵ 1 Corinthians 2:9,
⁶ Daniel 5:25

Unseated

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At great risk of being misunderstood, it is very clear that the age of chivalry is over. The most senior of the other two should have given up his seat for the lady. Perhaps the difficulty they had was that the first one to have stood would have been claiming precedence over the other 😉

Ahem! No seat for von der Leyen
The European Commission president had to sit on a nearby sofa as the EU visited Turkey.

Demographics

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It was heard said..

It was mentioned one day that a geography teacher had come across some quite interesting statistics. Well, if you are a geography teacher I suppose you would find this sort of statistic to be quite interesting. The question had been asked: How far away from where you are now living were you born? He had noticed that of people living in the UK 60% had been born within 30 miles of where they now live. In France that rose to 70% (presumably the French figure was in kilometres so the extra 1.7km would skew the answer slightly, in fact by about 6%, so even making this allowance and adjusting the 60% by 6% still shows that the French are 6% more indolent (not used pejoratively in case you are wondering) than the British).

Now the question may of course have been asked the other way around: How far away from where you were born are you now living? This produces some quite interesting and different results. The graph below shows the results in percentage terms of birth population movements for a number of different countries and other groupings. Not all nations and grouping are shown. In order to make it easier to read we have only three of the countries of the UK, France, Germany and the world as a whole (the grey line). You may be able to see some faint lines representing other nations, but I shall not comment on them here.

Looking first at the grey world line, we see that roughly 70% of people live within 50 miles of their birth place or as the French would say: accueil familial.

We notice first of all significant disparity within the United Kingdom. Whilst England (the orange line) shows slightly more mobility than the world as a whole (only 63% live within 50 miles of their place of origin) Scotland (the blue line) for example shows great movement, only 15% live within 50 miles. It seems however that most Welsh born are still within the principality (93% within 50 miles). The reasons for these we shall speculate upon shortly.

I have not included its line as the graph quickly becomes quite hard to read, but China is worth a mention. The figures are perhaps difficult to compare with other nations because of its great size, so greater movement might be expected, but there are a number of conflicting things going on. There are the local restrictions which prevent you from moving far, but on the other hand there are not insignificant large scale centralised movements of population, and nothing very much in between. Interestingly the world total pretty much tracks the results for China and India when taken together; perhaps as they are such vast regions who together comprise 36% of the world’s population it is though interesting unremarkable.

We have already commented on France (the green line) above, but the results for France on this alternate basis bear out the earlier suggestion. 80% of French born are within 80 kilometers of the place of birth. This is not a continental matter, for the results for Germany show only 45% at this point. It is to be understood however, as a desire to remain where you are. The local degustation is familiar to you, as are the cheeses and wines of your own département, why would you move to another one? Quite a contrast with England where the cheese of one area has become quite ubiquitous, so it hardly matters where you live at all. The results in Germany (the dark blue line) clearly show us the effect of unification, with large scale movements crossing what was the border. Only 45% live within 50Km, increasing to 84% within 1000.

When we look at England (the orange line); the figures are, as already noted, below the mean until you get up to over 1000 miles. The conclusion drawn is that the English just want the sun and most of those who went for it now regret that they went to live in France and Spain and so were unable to vote in the referendum which led to their alienation from their homeland of choice rather than of birth.

Turning to Wales (the yellow line) and Scotland (the bright blue) we see that they are even further removed from the world mean, and extremely so. Wales is north of the mean, and Scotland far to the south. The reasons for this if you look at the graph in incremental rather than cumulative form as here (if you are really interested I can let you have the incremental graph, but I decided not to post it here as it is rather lumpy, used in the technical sense beloved of statisticians, which only makes a complex issue even more complex). The most interesting of the two cases however is perhaps Wales, which seems to indicate not an indolent but a contented population. In Wales there seems to be little movement, 93% are within 50 miles, as people want to stay where they are. It cannot be the cheeses and wines, but something else. They are a happy and contented people, and when they do move they have to make sure they are within a couple of hours of Cardiff Arms Park which sets limits on their mobility. Those who do move far make sure that they go far enough away that they do not rue the fact they cannot get back to Cardiff for the Game.

In Scotland however we have quite a different picture. Even at 65 miles we have only 15%, but then a rapid increase; 50% at 300; 84% at 500. Where have they gone? Well such distances can only be achieved by crossing the southern border. It is suggested that it is a fear of secession from the UK hence a desire to move quickly across the border which prompts this demographic change, otherwise there is little movement because there is nowhere to go.

As interesting as such analysis might be, perhaps the conclusion that we can really draw from this is that, even though we can say 60% of people in the UK live within 30 miles of where they were born, 70% live within 100 miles, 90% live within 1000 and 100% live within about 12000 miles of where they were born, that it is astonishing, when we look at the world as a whole, in which live more than 7.1 milliards of living souls, that none of them have moved further than 20 million meters from their place of birth.

Figures courtesy of the UN, ONS and AF

With apologies in advance for errors of syntax, orthography and grammar which may be found embedded in this document whether arising from oversight, incorrect application of language packs or any other misadventure; and in general for any offence given, received or taken inadvertently, inappropriately or deliberately and, if you have managed to read this far, for any errors or omissions whether wilful, unintended, innocent or deliberate in the content of this article.

Triptych

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The uncovering of an ancient gold mask in China has caused a few ripples on Weibo, so Coco thought he would join in the activity. However as he does not have a Weibo account, and probably would no longer have one after this post anyway so it makes little difference, the post had to be made elsewhere, and out of respect for anyone who may read this and wishes to retain their own Weibo account, placed his images else where.

For the triptych ‘Behind every smiling face’ please visit Acklam Hall and follow the link to the Chinese mask. You may also follow the other links (not all appear as such), but beware lest you see what you should not see.

Weibo/Sanxingdui Museum