The Cry Of 'Timber!!'

 

Dear Reader,

On this Saturday morning, I listen, painfully, to the unending sound of sawing as yet more trees are brought down to make way for some extension or construction of some kind as people seek to expand their homes into palaces.

Since we came here seven years ago, we have joyfully watched the birds making their homes in those trees, and we have seen their newborn and praised God that here is our own mini Garden of Eden.

But the house owners relentlessly think that palace building is superior to the interests of wildlife, which we depend on for our ecosystem to flourish.

The above is a picture of most of the trees and bushes that still surround our garden, but which I happen to know will largely be no more this time next year when a homeowner has finished his demolition work.

To my wife and I this is so sad. We feel for the trees and for the wildlife that has made those trees their home. And - it has to be said - shields us from the sight of other housing.

But this situation, though local to us, seems to be a kind of symbol of something that pervades the world, does it not - this idea of demolition, of separation from what is life itself. Everywhere, even though Climate Change and COVID rage on with no sign of depletion, people are demanding their right to independence, or trying to push their views on others, and the certainty that their view is right.

The Afghanistan situation is one clear demonstration of the sheer folly that those with more power, with more guns and resources than anyone else, can change the status quo of another nation: and then come out of it with not only significant losses of their own but also the loss of many, many other lives - and wild habitat - in the nation that they invaded.

I dare not now describe the situation there as it is now. It is dire for those who were taken in by the Western dogma. I am not in any way saying that the Taliban are right - but the one thing they do point out very clearly is their abhorrence for the kind of liberal society we seem to favour in the West. We seem to allow all and everything at the expense of wisdom.

Surely, people should have learnt many years ago that Afghanistan is not for dominating: the British tried for nigh on 100 years, as well as what we now know as Iraq. Further, the USA only just managed to get a settlement (of a kind) in Korea, and then created chaos in Vietnam. Thank goodness that a government headed by Harold Wilson kept us out of that one. Sadly, a heady Tony Blair brought the UK well and truly into the Afghan and Iraq zone of war as the USA's poodle.

Now look at our sad state as the poodle's owner has let go of the leash. And the families of lost soldiers are asking just what was it all about.

We should simply have not gone in there in the first place. And I said it then, not in hindsight. It was all done via a smoke and mirrors tactic.

As we look on and now face the war against Climate Change and COVID, what is it that is required of humanity?

Certainly, it is not demanding for independence and disunity and non-cooperation that should be considered but just what it is that will hold humanity - and the ecosystem - together.

We have to become students of philosophy of the spiritual kind, for if we don't then there is much more coming that we won't like.

We are all - essentially - the same. We all breathe the same air and we all have the same feelings. We have to get back to basics and work out just what is required for a sustainable world. But we have to do it without using worn-out tools and notions of 'Me, me'. Rudyard Kipling so rightly wrote (in his poem If...):

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Thank you for reading this.