I’ve always seen myself as non-political, so it has come as a bit of a shock to see just how political I am. I have, in the past, sat back, with a “don’t care, can’t change anything” attitude. And then I thought back to the Six Day War in Israel and came to the conclusion that the reason for being in the Middle East in 1967 was, as I thought, out of loyalty. However, eventually, I realized that not to be the truth. It was a political decision. I disagreed with another man’s point of view and took that disagreement as far as I could under the circumstances. I was never a person that stood outside the American or the Russian Embassy, protesting about the outbreak of a Nuclear war, or some other protest; being, as I saw it, nothing more than a sheer waste of time. That so called big picture is still within me, and tells me that no matter what is protested about, the outcome will always remain the outcome.

But, just of late, I have realized that there must also be a small picture, and that is where I have found this political James. He is not interested in saving the world for whatever reason. However, he does somehow like to have a stage from which he can express the disagreements that emote him. And as far as he can tell, he has found no better way than joining the thousands of voices from around the world, and from all walks of life, that simply say to certain people: “We don’t agree with you.”

And, if that simple act can change something for the better, then I’ve no alternative than to except that I am – for better or worse……………. Political.

Munich is a beautiful city, wide streets, many trees and green spaces and elegant buildings. And, the talk went very well indeed – it was fun! My kind and energetic hostess who invited me, and in whose flat I stayed, emailed me afterwards writing:

“I spoke to 2 of my friends, both were very impressed and inspired by you: What an alive woman !!!!!!!!!!!! One climbed up a mountain in the alps the next day, something she thought she would never do again – but this time she followed the invitation. She has muscle pain all over but feels very good.”

That felt like a huge affirmation, and encapsulated for me what can happen when we understand fully about taking responsibility (as far as possible) for our own aliveness. And, it doesn’t matter too much which country and conditioning you come from. Our feelings, and responses are very similar. Any response can be as simple as following, rather than refusing an invitation! Or remaining open, rather than closed to a fresh suggestion.

Of course this made me very happy, as did the smiling faces that grew in number as the talk progressed. The story about meeting my partner even brought a round of applause! I knew in that moment that my visit to Munich had been worth the gamble – even ‘though the two other events booked, had not filled.

The next day I was whisked down here into, and enveloped by, such beauty. Magnificent scenery outside and the loveliest country apartment that you could wish to see. A gentle, stately boat ride round a lake, delicious food and best of all – the company of my much loved friend and his wife, are making this a brief but so welcome break in my, sometimes, too busy life – pause for thought!

Last night I was woken by the wail of a warning siren, a sound I had not heard for about forty-seven years. My immediate reaction was fear. After all these years, it still had the power to alert the eleven year old child, still inside this seventy-eight year old woman! It only lasted for a few seconds, but was definitely there. Of course, in this very efficient country, all small communities have such a warning system as a very necessary part of living away from the large towns, and particularly in a mountainous area. Within five minutes there was a fire engine, police vehicle and sundry cars all on their way to what must have been a quite serious road accident. And, the heart of this ‘eleven year old girl’ had stopped racing!

Now I am back in Munich, and will fly home tomorrow – a very happy and contented woman. Of course it would be nice to be invited back again – but that is almost irrelevant in the discovery that whether in my own country or not . . .I do have something to say and represent, that many older people are now ready to acknowledge. The unexpectedly high number of people who turned up – proved that. Life can be fulfilling, interesting and alive – yes alive, after the age of 60 – and onwards.

A FEW days ago, before the bombing here and the shootings on Utoya Island, a friend and I were talking about how the joy of being alive always seems to go hand in hand with the sorrow that things change. Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before — to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.

There is no road back to the scent of the Julys when I was young and leapt from a boulder into the ice-cold meltwater of a Norwegian fjord. No road back to when I stood, 17 years old with 10 francs in my pocket, by the harbor in Cannes, France, and watched two grown men in idiotic white uniforms row a woman and her poodle ashore from a yacht. I realized then for the first time that the egalitarian society I came from was the exception and not the rule. No road back to the first time I looked, wide-eyed, at the guards with automatic weapons surrounding another country’s parliament building — a sight that made me shake my head with a mixture of resignation and self-satisfaction, thinking, we don’t need that sort of thing where I come from.

For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d’état, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle. It was a country where everyone’s material needs were provided for. Political consensus was overwhelming, the debates focused primarily on how to achieve the goals that everyone had already agreed on. Ideological disagreements arose only when the reality of the rest of the world began to encroach, when a nation that until the 1970s had consisted largely of people of the same ethnic and cultural background had to decide whether its new citizens should be allowed to wear the hijab and build mosques.

Still, until Friday, we thought of our country as a virgin — unsullied by the ills of society. An exaggeration, of course. And yet.

In June I was bicycling with the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, and a mutual friend through Oslo, setting out for a hike on a forested mountain slope in this big yet little city. Two bodyguards followed us, also on bicycles. As we stopped at an intersection for a red light, a car drove up beside the prime minister. The driver called out through the open window: “Jens! There’s a little boy here who thinks it would be cool to say hello to you.”

The prime minister smiled and shook hands with the little boy in the passenger seat. “Hi, I’m Jens.”

The prime minister wearing his bike helmet; the boy wearing his seat belt; both of them stopped for a red light. The bodyguards had stopped a discreet distance behind. Smiling. It’s an image of safety and mutual trust. Of the ordinary, idyllic society that we all took for granted. How could anything go wrong? We had bike helmets and seat belts, and we were obeying the traffic rules.

Of course something could go wrong. Something can always go wrong.

On Monday night, more than 100,000 citizens gathered in the streets to mourn the victims of the attack. The image was striking. In Norway, “keeping a cool head” is a national virtue, but “keeping a warm heart” is not. Even for those of us who have an automatic aversion to national self-glorification, flags, grandiose words and large and expressive crowds, it makes an indelible impression when people demonstrate that they do mean something, these ideas and values of the society we have inherited and more or less take for granted. The gathering said that Norwegians refuse to let anyone take away our sense of security and trust. That we refuse to lose this battle against fear.

And yet there is no road back to the way it was before.

Yesterday, on the train, I heard a man shouting in fury. Before Friday, my automatic response would have been to turn around, maybe even move a little closer. After all, this could be an interesting disagreement that might entice me to take one side or the other. But now my automatic reaction was to look at my 11-year-old daughter to see whether she was safe, to look for an escape route in case the man was dangerous. I would like to believe that this new response will become tempered over time. But I already know that it will never disappear entirely.

After the bomb went off — an explosion I felt in my home over a mile away — and reports of the shootings out on the island of Utoya began to come in, I asked my daughter whether she was scared. She replied by quoting something I had once said to her: “Yes, but if you’re not scared, you can’t be brave.”

So if there is no road back to how things used to be, to the naïve fearlessness of what was untouched, there is a road forward. To be brave. To keep on as before. To turn the other cheek as we ask: “Is that all you’ve got?” To refuse to let fear change the way we build our society.

Jo Nesbo is the author of the novel “The Snowman.” This article was translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 27, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: The Past Is a Foreign Country.

As is so often the case in disputes, the main conflict at Dale Farm is not between right and wrong, but between two different ‘rights’ – in both senses of that word. Some would say that the fault is all on the side of the Travellers who have built small homes and/or situated caravans on the site without planning permission. “They’re breaking the law; it’s as simple as that,” one person remarked to me. The Jewish principle would be dinad’malchutadina (‘the law of the land is the law’). We are obliged to follow the laws of the country in which we live. But what if there is another law that conflicts, as is so often the case in legal disputes in the Talmud? How do we decide which law to follow?

One of the things we should do is to consider the principles behind the conflicting laws. First of all, what is the law that the Travellers have broken? It is planning law, designed to protect the Green Belt. As an environmental activist, I support the goals of this law. And there is no doubt whatsoever that the Travellers have not ‘played by the rules.’ However, there are other facts that are conveniently being ignored by those pursuing this eviction.

 First of all, the Travellers are being evicted off THEIR OWN LAND, purchased many years ago on government advice. Government officials knew that the situation of the Gypsy and Traveller communities was only going to get worse. All over the country, sites that were once used for the moveable caravans were being closed down, developed and made off-limits. As those who have been desperately seeking alternatives to Dale Farm will tell you – there simply aren’t other places for them to go and to live as they wish.

Maryann, a woman in her 70’s, spoke warmly of the days when her people were able to travel to different places and to live in their preferred way of spending a few months in one place, then moving to another. “Our traditional way of life is almost gone,” she said. “Our young people have accepted that, though it still makes me sad. What we are trying to do here is to save something of it, keeping families and the community together.”

 Another woman I spoke to was almost hysterical: “I’ve seen where the Council want me to go. It’s on a housing estate where there is a lot of anti-Traveller feeling. They think we are all criminals. And the place has lots of glass; even the doors are glass and it doesn’t feel safe. Apart from being separated from many of my neighbours, I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink in such a place.” Her assessment of the potential danger seemed more than reasonable to me.

The Travellers are vilified just as Jews were in this country in the early part of the twentieth century. And the language used clearly echoes the rhetoric of anti-Semitism. If you don’t believe this, have a look at the website www.jewify.org for examples of newspaper articles which substitute the word ‘Jew’ for ‘Gypsy’ or ‘Traveller’. The results are quite chilling.

 People may not be aware that the Travellers, along with the Gypsies and a limited number of other groups with similar lifestyle patterns, are officially recognised as ethnic minorities, just like our own Jewish community. As such, they deserve protection under European human rights law. Though undeniably different from the mainstream, their way of life is no less valid than our own – albeit that current planning law was not designed to accommodate it. The Travellers’ way is to live very closely together, in caravans or small semi-permanent dwellings. Their dwellings might seem too close for conventional English tastes, but who is to say that this is NOT a good way to live, if appropriate services can be arranged?

Maryann pointed out that all of her children and grandchildren live on Dale Farm, where they can all help and support each other. How many of us can say that our families are that close? I believe that the obligation to protect this ethnic minority’s way of life is a human rights issue that, in this particular and unusual case, may need to ‘trump’ the planning law designed to protect the ‘Green Belt’. 

Moreover, I would point out that applying the term ‘Green Belt’ to Dale Farm is flawed. This site was hardly virgin countryside. One of the locals, I would guess in her late 60’s, described to me how they used to burn tyres in this place when she was small. Land just to the east of the site was used from 1978 until 2001, with Council knowledge and approval, as a scrap metal yard. If the ‘Green Belt’ can give way for that, why not in this case for homes for families with nowhere else to go? I worry especially for the elderly in the Travelling community and for their school-age kids, who have had access to services such as health care and education because they have been allowed to stay at Dale Farm. What will happen to them when they are evicted?

In making decisions between two ‘rights’, we need to ascertain as best we can all the facts, then consider the human implications.

We expect this of the wider society concerning issues that affect our Jewish community. For example, we support shechitah as a method of slaughter, even though the majority of the wider British society supports stunning animals on humanitarian grounds. We argue that to abolish kosher slaughter would be a threat to traditionally observant Jewish life and thus to us as an ethnic group. Shechitah thus continues to be allowed because of the principles of tolerance and of protecting a minority group.



I would suggest that the same reasoning should be applied to the desire of the residents at Dale Farm to live in their time honoured way. As we used to say back in the 70’s – “Support the fringe – the edge is closer than you think.”

1.

Is it in the anthracite face of a coal miner,
crystallized in the veins and lungs of a steel
worker, pulverized in the grimy hands of a railroad engineer?
Is it in a child naming a star, coconuts washing
ashore, dormant in a volcano along the Rio Grande?

You can travel the four thousand miles of the Nile
to its source and never find it.
You can climb the five highest peaks of the Himalayas
and never recognize it.
You can gaze though the largest telescope
and never see it.

But it’s in the capillaries of your lungs.
It’s in the space as you slice open a lemon.
It’s in a corpse burning on the Ganges,
in rain splashing on banana leaves.

Perhaps you have to know you are about to die
to hunger for it. Perhaps you have to go
alone in the jungle armed with a spear
to truly see it. Perhaps you have to
have pneumonia to sense its crush.

But it’s also in the scissor hands of a clock.
It’s in the precessing motion of a top
when a torque makes the axis of rotation describe a cone:
and the cone spinning on a point gathers
past, present, future.

2.

In a crude theory of perception, the apple you
see is supposed to be a copy of the actual apple,
but who can step out of his body to compare the two?
Who can step out of his life and feel
the Milky Way flow out of his hands?

An unpicked apple dies on a branch:
that is all we know of it.
It turns black and hard, a corpse on the Ganges.
Then go ahead and map out three thousand mile of the Yantze;
walk each inch, feel its surge and
flow as you feel the surge and flow in your own body.

And the spinning cone of a precessing top
is a form of existence that gathers and spins death and life into one.
It is in the duration of words, but beyond words -
river river river, river river.
The coal miner may not know he has it.
The steel worker may not know he has it.
The railroad engineer may not know he has it.
But it is there. It is in the smell
of an avocado blossom, and in the true passion of a kiss.

~ Arthur Sze ~

(The Redshifting Web)

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I didn’t see the programme with Terry Patchet, but I do have a possible contribution to a discussion. It’s a poem that arose as I was in the process of preparing a funeral for a man who had, with great dignity, thought and caring, or so it seemed to me, ended his own life. I will attach it.

A man has died –
and in the telling of his story;
in the listening, reading,
being with his somehow presence,
I am led to wonder
what’s the vow that underpins his life?

His writing is so deep in truth and love;
his children show me who he was
in things as simple yet profound
as how they stand;
his pictures show a warmth and joy,
his face so light-filled
that it lifts above the paper –
I could almost touch his cheek
and feel a blessing.
He knows the freedom of his choices –
neither bound by others nor a doctrine;
and in the end
he makes a brave and quiet choice,
a gentle, peaceful way to leave behind
his failing body
now his earth-bound work is finished.

And I know his vow is Love.

First, let me quote from David’s article:
“. . . . the deep struggle of our time is for healing. It’s a struggle for the capacity to form relationships that heal, relationships that create wholeness, relationships that connect in spite of all the barriers that hatred, greed and fear may erect. And not just with our fellow human beings but with all life upon this earth. Healing, not just fixing is what our world needs. Our ability to forge the relationships that heal may well be the key to creating a future we would want to live in.” David’s words, “Healing, not just fixing is what our world needs.” still stay with me as I write today.

On reading the comments, I had an instant and rather predictable reaction: You cannot begin to think about healing relationships with any ‘other’ – be it human, animal, vegetable or mineral – until you have healed your relationship with yourself. To me this is so obvious it is almost boring. Most of you who read this newsletter know this already. For many of you a statement like mine could seem ‘old hat’ . . . and, of course, it is! I’m an old woman now, content with my life, myself – and my relationships. In fact, I’m not sure that I’m the right person to even try and answer these questions! However, part of my contentment is that I see things as they are – whether judged as bad or good, makes no difference.

Whether it is ‘unfinished business’ with one or both of your parents, old or new friends, the environment, your pets, lover or politics . . . sorry! – it all comes back to you. If you can stand back and look truthfully at a person or a situation, and at the same time let go of what you think should be happening in any given circumstance – then there is space for compassion to grow and the possibility of making a conscious decision to get involved – or not.

Now, having got that off my chest let’s examine what these questioners’ honest and sincere requests are. Jan writes, “I’m interested in what you may have to say about how we can all improve, hold and treasure our focus on healing relationships.” And Jackie, “I agree that the ability to forge new healing relationships is vital to survival but maybe maintaining them is the key to a happy, healthy life. What are your thoughts? “

I have to admit I smiled when seeing them written as above. It seems to me that one answers the other – at a certain level. There is talk of ‘holding, improving and treasuring’ – then comes the word ‘maintaining’. These are fine, intelligent and sincere words. However, they all require you to do something. They require action. I am not sure that any specific action is required at all. Clear awareness and understanding is.

In my own life-story, letting go of attempting to ‘heal’ one particular relationship has been the most healing experience of all – for me. Selfish this may sound to some, but through that care of self I have learned hugely about not taking on the responsibility for someone else’s attitudes and actions. This one experience has enabled me to see situations and other people as they are. Each of us can feel what only we can feel. Allowing others to feel what only they can feel, takes away the pressure of expectation, and leaves space for genuine closeness to happen – or not.

There are no ‘how tos’ or formulae in this world of relating, despite the hundreds of books written on the subject. However, each of us possess eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to feel. Using our eyes, ears and hearts in a genuine attempt to step into someone else’s shoes, just for a moment, is not a bad way to start the healing process.

We’ve already just survived another such millenarian scare with the passing of May 21, 2011, when many were prophesying the coming of the Last Days. This was a specific prophecy I hadn’t heard of until just a couple of days before the apocalypse was supposed to occur. Talk about being out of the loop! But then I don’t pay much heed to apocalyptic prophecies. My inner mentor John used to say that prophecies focused your attention on a particular date or a specific event, leaving you oblivious to other potentially more important or challenging events that then blindside you.

This year is already a case in point. A great deal of attention in the form of books, videos, movies, articles, websites and the like has gone into focusing on 2012 as a year of catastrophes, but as far as natural disasters go, already we’ve had an earthquake and tsunami in Japan of historic proportions which brought on a nuclear emergency; and in the United States, an historic outbreak of tornadoes in the American Southeast, historic levels of snow and rain, and massive flooding of the Mississippi. Plus in the political and social arena, there’s been the historic (note how I need to keep using this word to describe the unprecedented nature of the events occurring around us) rise of the “Arab Spring” and the accompanying unrest and regime changes going on in the Middle East.

In all the buildup towards 2012, I don’t remember any psychic or prophet saying anything about 2011. This year got overlooked, and yet look around! It’s hardly an ordinary year, and it’s not even half over.

Back in the sixties when I lived in California, there was a new prophecy every year that the San Andreas fault would split with a great earthquake, and the western half of the State would slide into the Pacific. These prophecies were usually very specific, giving a day and a time when this would occur. When the time came nothing happened. Within a few weeks, a new psychic would emerge with yet another prophecy giving a new date and time for the following year, and the fever of expectation and speculation would begin all over again.

Such prophecies invariably come with lurid images of disaster and destruction; there’s a long history of this in Western culture. Usually, the scenario is that a special group will be saved (which almost always includes the one making the prophecy) while everyone else will either die or go through a period of tribulation and suffering. For evangelicals, the true believers will be raptured into heaven while the sinners go through hell on earth and then just hell. For many in the New Age and metaphysical movements of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, those who had the “right vibrations” would be taken up by friendly flying saucers while the rest of the earth was “cleansed” (i.e. those without the “right vibrations” being killed off by disasters and earth changes). Same scenario though with different modes of being saved and different winners, but in either case, most of humanity loses.

I call this “apocalypse porn.” It can be addictive, and it reduces people to victims in a planetary disaster movie. It is disempowering because it suggests that change cannot come through human effort and transformation or through joy and creativity but only through disaster and suffering.

There is a lighter version (“soft-core apocalypse porn”) in which the earth or civilization are not wholly destroyed but there are still enough disasters and catastrophes to bring about a change of consciousness in people that in turn will lead to building a bright, new world. But if you think about it, this is a highly inefficient and uncertain mode of transformation. How often do abuse and violence (and that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about apocalypse as a mode of human evolution and growth) lead to inner transformation and an expanded, more holistic consciousness? They are more likely to instill post traumatic stress syndrome and a constriction of consciousness as fear and the memory of pain settle in to the body.

When I asked John once about apocalypse, he said, “Humanity is not going to get out of doing the hard work of changing itself and creating the world you want. If you’ve created a mess in the world, you’re going to have to learn to clean it up yourselves.”

Once I met a famous psychic on the day after the day when she had predicted apocalypse would come. She wasn’t embarrassed by being wrong, she was livid, directing her anger at God, the universe, and everyone. “I hate this world,” she said. “I hate it! It has to be destroyed. I want it destroyed! Why wasn’t it destroyed? God has betrayed me!”

There are many things wrong with apocalypse porn as an attitude towards life, the world, humanity and the future. It gives the hope of escape, of change without the hard work of mindfully changing. It can delight in the drama of disaster. It is divisive and exclusive. It expresses the desire of one group of people that another group be destroyed. It glorifies death as a solution. In this it is no different in spirit from a person saying “I’m having problems with my neighbor, so I think I’ll go kill him.” Pulling a trigger is so much easier and simpler than sitting down with that neighbor and negotiating to work out the problems between you.

Apocalypse porn excites the imagination in one way but in another it deadens it. Thus, it creates closure. Apocalyptic prophecies talk about the end of the world, not the beginning, even though the word apocalypse itself comes from a root word meaning “revelation.”

In the Old Testament, Jonah prophesizes doom and destruction to the people of Nineveh unless they change their ways; then, sure that they won’t, he goes out a safe distance into the surrounding desert to watch God blast the city into nothingness. At that point, he is fully into apocalypse porn. But nothing happens. No fireworks, no earthquakes, no floods, no fires, no plagues, no meteor plunging in from outer space. The people have in fact repented and changed, which was the objective. Jonah had been thinking closure, but God, as always, was thinking opening.

We could say that the problem with Nineveh is that the people’s wanton, wasteful actions were creating closure, and God wanted them to stop and through love open themselves again to wider, richer, healthier, more creative possibilities.The prophecy really was if you keep on this way, you are going to close yourself into oblivion. What God wanted, though, wasn’t destruction but birth.This is true for the Mayan calendar and the 2012 prophecies. The individuals with whom I have discussed this who are scholars of Mayan culture and history tell me that for the Mayans themselves, December 21st of next year isn’t an ending but a beginning, the start of a new Long Count. And beginnings, like our celebration of New Year’s Day, always bring new possibilities. Again, not closure but openings.

I make a distinction between a prophecy and a prediction. Though both attempt to foretell the future, the former is a sentence while the latter is a recitation of observable facts. There is a world of difference between saying “If you keep smoking, you will damage your lungs,” which is a proven medical fact, and saying, “If you keep smoking, you are doomed!”

Predictions can be based on logical assumptions. They can be as simple as “if I build along earthquake fault lines, there is a high probability that eventually my buildings will fall down; if I build in a flood plain, there is a reasonable probability that my house will be washed away.” We are engaging in behaviors in our society that are far from balanced, healthy, loving, compassionate, and wise. Consequences will arise and are arising from this. But it doesn’t mean that we’re doomed and have no future. A statement about human stupidity implies difficult and unpleasant consequences ahead but it is not a statement of closure. We can re-imagine ourselves. We can change. We can do things differently. We can learn. We can grow. These are the options that apocalypse porn obscures or even denies.

There is another side to this coin, though. In September of 1962, when I was seventeen, I started college at Arizona State University. For at least a couple of years before this, but increasingly so in the first months of that year, there had been a growing number of psychically-received prophecies that a nuclear war was about to break out between the United States and the Soviet Union. A month later, it was revealed that Soviet missiles had been discovered in Cuba, and the Cuban Missile Crisis began. As was later shown when top secret documents from that time were revealed, we apparently did come within minutes of a nuclear holocaust. Civilization didn’t end that October in nuclear fires; the prophecies were incorrect. But psychics were definitely tuning into a possibility.

Delmore Schwartz, an American poet, said “Even paranoids have real enemies.” Prophecies, though they may be wrong in their specifics, may still be evidence that something important is going on and that we need to pay attention. May 21, 2011, definitely was not the end of the world, and December 21, 2012, will not be either. But they join a growing collection of impressions, prophecies, dreams, visions, and intuitions from literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world that humanity is on the brink of world-transforming change. The importance of this does not lie in the details of each individual impression or prophecy; almost certainly most if not all of them will be mistaken or wrong in their specifics. But taken together, they represent a powerful collective intuition that we as a species have reached a turning point (or tipping point) of some nature. It’s more than time that we paid attention.

True prophecy always holds out hope. This is because the function of prophecy really isn’t to foretell the future; it’s to inspire awareness and change in the present. It is, as I said, about opening, not about closure.

Apocalypse porn is not true prophecy. It inspires fear, and fear is notorious for creating boundaries, constrictions, and a narrowing of imagination, creativity and possibilities. We are at a time, I believe, when we cannot afford to be narrowed. If all the prophecies are right in essence, if not in specifics—and I believe that they are—then we need to reach out to each other across our boundaries to enhance communication and co-creativity. We need each other, not simply to survive but to think together, to feel together, to intuit together, to co-create together. We need to be expansive and collaborative with each other and with the world itself. For if the prophecies are correct in essence, and again I believe they are, then we are in the presence of immense possibilities and opportunities which can best be realized if we act together with love, compassion, and mutual respect.

At their best, prophecies—and prophets—reflect who we are in the moment and help us be in touch, as Lincoln put it, with the angels of our better nature so that we can engage the world and the future with wisdom, courage and vision. Apocalypse porn does none of that. It is simply a loss of faith in the human enterprise, a coward’s vision of a world grown too frightening to engage and a wish for the death that will provide escape.

My whole life has been one of constant change and movement. In the very early days it was held in the arms of loving parents but soon tumbled into WW2, separation and moving from house to house. Boarding school, musical career, marriage, children and divorce followed. Then, in my forties I discovered the (then new) personal and spiritual development movement. This eventually led to eleven years of committed and active discipleship with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh – now known as Osho. Those were powerful, meaningful and wonderful years. They caused both chaos and peace within and around me. Towards the end of our time in the large Oregon commune, Bhagwan told us to go back into the world, earn a living and live what we had learned with him. At least, that was the gist of it, remembered with my now very unreliable memory!

Living the life of a disciple had been, for me, a simple and totally nourishing experience. It had involved letting go of all preconceived notions of what was ‘necessary’ in a life. There was also a willingness on my part to take a huge jump into a lot of very hard work, on a practical, physical level as well as a spiritual, internal one. There was no separation between the two.

Arriving back ‘in the world’ was also simple and nourishing – but for different reasons that I cannot fully explain. Looking back, it appears that this new life lived itself . . .opening up and flowing all on its own. It flowed through the kindness and generosity of dear friends and family. It also flowed through unexpected, sometimes daunting, invitations – to which I said “yes”. One of these involved going to Australia to be with a man I hardly knew. I did not come back to the UK for over fourteen years!

I have been living here for the last ten, and can see that “extending one’s self into the life of this world” is unwittingly, what I have done. However I have also lived, until recently, the life of a part-time recluse. During these years, the quiet and peace of my small cottage in a small village by the sea, has provided the comfort and seclusion that my whole being longed for. My work has taken me out into the world, and my home has given me the escape and quiet I craved. I have come to understand the reason for these past ten years of reclusiveness. They have helped me to relax into myself, to stop looking outside for fulfillment.

Now, another invitation has come my way, in the form of a large, loving and ebullient scientist! This has opened further doors for me. As with all the jumps I have taken, there is an element of fear/excitement here also. However, the commitment we have made to each other is stronger than the fear. Through him I am opening more and more, not just to my immediate and now familiar life – but to new worlds of academia, science fiction, the Jewish community and many many new friends. I am also opening up to opinions and attitudes that are new to me, whilst my love gently and patiently holds my hand.

I also understand that my life has appropriately brought me here. Brought me to this place of acceptance of things as they are. No more separation, judging the spiritual life as more desirable than the temporal. Neither this nor that, as Bhagwan often said. The years spent as a disciple, and the leaps already taken have prepared me very well. My current life is not always comfortable, not always peaceful, but it feels ‘right’. Though sometimes a touch painful, it is just another period of change.

A few minutes ago, whilst writing, my email ‘ping’ sounded and there was a poem . . . it was written by Jane Hirshfield and called ‘To Hear the Falling World’. Here are the last three lines – which feel perfect for me to quote right now:

But they guard me, these small pains,
from growing sure
of myself and perhaps forgetting.

I do not want to forget.

It was this phrase, “walking on this Earth” that caught my attention. I was suddenly struck with the power and privilege involved in “walking on this Earth” and the richness that human beings bring to the world as they do so. The President’s statement, as it reverberated through my own mind, triggered thoughts that went far beyond the idea of death and focused instead on the potentialities of life. . .

. . . I’d been thinking about this throughout the week since. When President Obama said what he did about “walking the Earth,” my mind went to a whole other context than that of Osama bin Laden and his death. The question popped into my thoughts, “But who will we see walking on this Earth?” And the answer was, we see each of us. We are all continuing to walk this Earth.

This may seem too obvious to be worth a passing thought. But in addition, I had this image of someone walking the earth, and each time this person’s feet hit the ground sparks were generated. In my mind, “walking the Earth” was not simply a metaphor for being alive but became an image of power, a power generated by movement and engagement. In the curious ways that thoughts have of forming and associating with each other, I felt in that moment that it wasn’t enough just to “stand” on the earth, that is, simply to be here. One has to “walk” on the earth, extending one’s self into the life of this world.

Osama bin Laden extended himself into the life of the world in violent ways. In this he was unfortunately not alone, and I’m not just thinking of his fellow terrorists. We all have, on occasion, walked the earth with feet of anger and intolerance, fear and hate. Such footsteps raise clouds of distrust and violence around us. At the same time, all of us on occasion have also walked with feet of love and kindness, setting off sparks of goodwill and blessing.