Cleaning up my hard drive I found a few texts I’d written and thought I may as well post them. For sure I’ll find more. Link on the main page top menu.
Jesus and the rent boy.
Mark 14: 51- 52
51. A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52. he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
The young man in Mark’s arrest scene feels, to me, like more than a passing extra: he is anonymous, half-clothed, seized, I assume he was raped, and left exposed, which makes him read like someone already living under shame and dispossession. I believe he was a rent boy, which would make this detail land with even greater force, because it becomes a moment of recognition — a life of being used, stripped of humanity, and then suddenly confronted by the possibility that he is not an object at all, but a sacred person. In that light, his flight into the night is not just panic, but more the collapse of a false identity, and Christ’s own refusal to flee becomes the deeper counterpoint: selflessness, suffering, and resurrection opening a space where the forgotten can be seen and restored.
I link this story to Miyamoto Musashi’s statement that we must sometimes descend into confusion to discover the way to enlightenment. The shock of realisation sent the young man fleeing into the night. The outcome might have been enlightenment, I think it had to be, and the young man became the anonymous patron saint of all those reduced to being a piece of meat for hire.
A need for unity.
Antonio Guterres, at a previous COP talkfest, said that in tackling climate change, humanity must unite, and if not, we perish. David Attenborough said the battlefield in the push for meaningful action is in communications.
Both are correct: without unity, we will not be able to address the climate problem, and with communications near-exclusively controlled by capital and government, we are going into battle with our feet tied together.
Looking around the world today, most of what we see points to increasing division, creating ever more distractions from the primary threat confronting life on planet Earth. News is dominated by stories and debates that will not matter one iota in today’s children’s adult lives. Opposing genocide is a must because unity cannot exist in a world where international humanitarian law has ceased to exist. If genocide is committed unopposed, then beyond the immediate injustice and suffering inflicted on the innocent, it will become an acceptable solution to the highly possible waves of climate refugees escaping regions that, without action on climate, will become functionally uninhabitable.
Earlier today, I listened to someone debunking the Noah’s Ark story, and Oscar Wilde saying that there are no bad books, but only bad readers, came to mind. It is a teaching story, and a very simple one that warns us that a civilisation can drown in its own evil. The Ark is a belief system that holds all life sacred. Climate change, nuclear weapons stacked to the rafters, and the unforgiving waters are rising.
An archive of atrocities committed by the Israeli military.
Visit and share this as widely as you can. Link below. Thousands of videos documenting Israeli crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The video below is an example of how thankfully the world is increasingly reacting to genocide. Worth watching.
Peacefully protesting against this genocide can result in arrest and grievous bodily harm.
Here’s another example of brave IDF ‘soldiers’ in action.
Never will we forget the Palestinians.
What we are witnessing in the Middle East and elsewhere in this lunatic asylum, combined with the criminal obstruction to action on climate change, makes me want to check out, and just go sailing whilst it is still possible. And I will do that, long-distance sailing, but unlike our glorious leaders I simply can’t look away from these horrors. It must be a precondition for political leadership that human decency be left outside the doors of parliament.
The world we live in… Western government enabled genocide.
Just one example out of possible thousands. With few exceptions western governments have gone out of their way to enabIe Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people. A genocide that will never be forgotten.