On April the 2nd a group of us gathered in Pauntley Churchyard to plant snowdrops. The idea was to add a little colour and cheerfulness to life. Not that churchyards are places lacking in interest or hope. I find great comfort in knowing that I am a part of a continuum of ‘Englishness’ and Christian continuity in these Islands, and am proud of the achievements of our ancestors. Of course they made mistakes and did some things that were not ‘right’, but I accept their good faith. Indeed, the Book of Common Prayer reminds us that we are no different to them and so because of this, I hope that, on balance, the good we do outweighs the bad.
The notion of what is good and bad might seem to change over time. But, because human nature is really a slow turning wheel “What comes around, goes around.” The wheel does not turn a full circle during one person’s lifetime and so we have to be careful not to think the wheel will stay where it is forever. I reckon that it turns about one third during each person’s lifetime
I arrived at this timescale when I looked at what happened to the ‘big’ utopian ideas of the past, a recent example being that of Marx and Engels, who theorised about an ancient notion of an earthly Paradise or Zion. Lenin and Trotsky thought this Paradise could be achieved by an atheistic form of Communism but they were wrong and it took about 90 years before internal contradictions led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
There will always be people who are naturally ‘utopian’ and want to organise the world according to their version of Paradise, and only recently I was reading that when the Berlin Wall fell, many of these utopians suddenly realised that they weren’t going to be able to build the future and so decided instead to change the past. This resulted in the modern phenomena whereby utopians express their disgust of the past, particularly colonialism and its effects on native peoples.
This change in their thinking allows the current academics and theorists to ‘signal their own virtue’ by rewriting history in a way that demeans the achievements of our immediate ancestors. They also ‘Virtue Signal’ by attempting to empty our museums of items from foreign lands and by supporting student campaigns to remove statues and symbols of Britain’s past.
Personally, I am at ease with the past and so will not be signing petitions to send artefacts back to Nigeria or stone friezes back to Greece. Nor will I be claiming compensation from Rome for the slaves taken from Britain by the Romans or the gold and silver taken by the Danes from the monasteries of England. It is all part of history. That is it.
This brings us to the present time and it is nice to see that April has returned to the stage when the weather is changeable. Snow, Sun, Rain, Frost, Sleet, Wind and stillness all in one day. April in my youth was the month when change meant normal and we expected nothing less.
Talking of changeable weather reminds me of the story about a tech savvy handyman and his less so wife. One frosty morning he was working at a home in the village when he received the following text message:
“Windows frozen – Will not open. What can I do.”? He replied,
“Carefully pour warm water over the edges and then give them a sharp tap with a hammer.”
Five minutes later her next text read:
“Laptop completely jiggered now.”
View from the Pew 