Of all the wars of my lifetime I wonder why what is happening in Ukraine is affecting me so much more than did any of the others. Perhaps it’s simply because it’s happening now not then, and my present mind is more aware of concern than my reflective memory. Or perhaps not.

Geographically Ukraine is further from me than Albania and Croatia and yet I cannot remember being so affected by the war in the Balkans. The Six-Day War between Israel and the coalition of Arab States and the Iraq war were both much closer to me geographically than the war in Afghanistan but it was Afghanistan that seemed and still seems more immediate to me. So I don’t think my concern is primarily proximity.

Is my concern media led? The fact that Ukraine is on the news every hour must have some impact. I had become very media weary and wary but the fact the Russian authorities have closed down any independent or external news channels has swung me back towards the great importance of some sort of free, albeit editorially biased, press.

Perhaps I identify racially more easily with the European Ukrainians than with the people of Yemen and yet I don’t actually know any Ukrainians personally and I do have friends from Afghanistan so I don’t think it’s a matter of race.

Through all this I am aware of something different going on now from any of these other recent wars. It is the first time in many years that I have heard the word ‘nuclear’ being used and have really thought of the actual possibility of nuclear war. And yet, having lived through the forty or so years of the Cold War and the Cuban crisis, that was the fear with which we all lived. That was the atmosphere in which Nevil Shute in 1957 wrote ‘On the Beach’ a post apocalyptic novel in which a mixed group of people in Melbourne wait the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war the previous year.

So here we are in what the Russian leadership, not President Putin alone, calls a ‘special military operation’ and we call a war.

Two thoughts from others. It was a friend who came to dinner during the week, a friend who has many Russian friends and who speaks Russian, who reminded me not to use ‘Putin’ when I mean ‘the Kremlin’ and who told me that until the mid nineteenth century the manufacturing of armaments was state controlled and only then handed over to private companies. Once privatised profit became an important factor and therefore war, cold or actual, entered the economic equation for the manufacturers.

The other thought came in Fr Paul Ensor’s sermon this morning when he said, “War should be abolished, because all time is under God’s judgment… and, in the words of that old cliché… there is no time like the present. Such a call seems all the more important to me in an automated world where the use of communication and its manipulation make war not only a greater possibility but more hidden. How familiar we have become with the work of hackers. Is what I am suggesting nothing but fantasy? I think not… as I mentioned earlier, there are encouraging precedents for a larger hope. It was once assumed that slavery was simply part of: ‘the natural order’ and those calling for slavery’s abolition nothing but foolish utopian dreamers. Yes, slavery continues to exist in multiple disguises, but no one thinks aloud that slavery can be justified, or that public profit can be made from it.”

And then through all of this, as another friend pointed out to me, it’s fine to intellectualise about my concern but what am I actually going to do? Of course I am one of the fortunate ones who can pray about it and alongside the praying a notice has come up on my online bank account explaining how I can make a donation to a group of charities involved in helping in Ukraine. Praying and giving – there’s a start.

P.S. My broadcast on Radio New Zealand’ from many years ago, ‘The News, The Sport, and The Weather’, is relevant to the media led aspect to this. It cannot be healthy for the nation to be fed negative news on the hour every hour. And not only is it not healthy it is not balanced. Life is not almost entirely negative with the occasional ‘light’ or ‘positive’ or ‘good’ story thrown in at the end.

Notices I noticed in Kennington Park this morning. On the railings around the newly grassed dog walking area, after an apology for the area not being open and a lengthy explanation as to why, ‘Please refrain from accessing the area.’ Followed by ‘Your support is appreciated and thanks for understanding.’ How about, ‘So do not enter’ and ‘Thank you’.

And also from Lambeth Council, near the entrance to the park, ‘Please use the dog foul bins provided’ and ‘Action will be taken against offenders.’ Which I found more acceptable than the notice from Lambeth Landscapes tied to the railing around the war memorial, ‘Please pick up your dog’s Faeces and help to keep your park Poo free.’ And, ‘Thank you for your understanding.’

What I don’t understand is why faeces and poo each have a capital letter and why the notice is attached, inappropriately I think, to the railings of the war memorial when there are lots of other railings around. That’s my thought for the day.

‘What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft on Ceylon’s isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile;’

So begins the second verse of Bishop Heber’s hymn ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’. These days, if the hymn is printed in a hymnal at all, the second verse is omitted not because Ceylon is now Sri Lanka but because, I suspect, ‘man’ and ‘vile’ are no longer acceptable.

I haven’t come across a single vile person, man or woman while I’ve been here in Sri Lanka. That doesn’t mean there might not be individuals here who are a bit off. It’s just that I haven’t encountered them. And as I was taught you can argue from the general to the particular but never from the particular to the general I must assume that not every Sri Lankan is as those I’ve met.

It’s St Paul and the Western church’s doctrine of Original Sin that gives Heber ‘vile’, but the problem for Heber the hymn writer must have been that ‘Original Sin’ neither fits the line nor makes the rhyme. So ‘vile’ it is.

While I’m not keen on ‘vile’ as a word, I’ve only ever heard it in relation to the taste of a medicine, I am inclined towards the doctrine as I understand it. I think the doctrine of Original Sin fits with self preservation, the human tendency towards self centredness, and that basic biological reality that the human foetus takes for itself whatever it needs before the nurturing mother. I also see Original Sin as a state to be moved or delivered from rather than one to remain contentedly in. It concerns me that a good deal of the individualism of today may owe more to Original Sin than to the good of humanity and creation. But I may be getting out of my depth.

There’s a plaque in memory of Bishop Heber in St Peter’s Church, Fort, in Colombo which celebrated the bicentenary of its consecration last Sunday. I was at the service. Bishop Heber worshipped in St Peters when he visited Ceylon in 1825. Ceylon was in the Diocese of Calcutta of which Heber was Bishop. During last Sunday’s Service the hymn was referred to, not sung, and not the offending line.

Incidentally above that plaque there’s one for Percival Acland Dyke, the brother or cousin of one of my forebears. He lived and worked here for more than forty years. Perhaps that’s why I feel at home at St Peters, or perhaps it’s because there Bishop Heber reminds me that I’m part of ‘vile’ humanity for whom there’s hope.

And while I’m on plaques or monuments I do hope the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t come here and see these. The BBC news tells me the Archbishop is in speedy offending monument removal mode. He would surely want all the monuments and plaques at St Peter’s removed as some people must associate them with colonial oppression. Come to think of it the existence of most of the Anglican Communion could be associated with colonial oppression. What is he or the General Synod of the Church of England to do about that?

I never mind being corrected. If I’m wrong that is! I sometimes object to the manner in which I am corrected but that is not an issue this time. Sri Lanka does not have the most public holidays of any country in the world. It is Cambodia with 28 followed closely by India depending on which state you are in. There are 21 National holidays in India and then different additional holidays for different festivals in different states. Sikkim, now a state of India, has 40 public holidays. England and Wales have only about eight bank holidays a year though that number will increase this year for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. New Zealand has eleven public holidays with each region having an additional holiday.

Yesterday was a National Holiday here in Sri Lanka, Independence Day. I saw the frigate SLNS Gajabahu off shore in the morning, the main mast of a ship dressed with signal flags, ‘25 Gun Salutes for the Nation’, and heard the salute at midday. I missed the ceremony and the lowering of the flag on Galle Face Green by minutes but stayed into the evening and watched the small boys and their fathers and brothers flying kites. I counted up to fifty kites then stopped counting. Many of the kites were in the colours of the Sri Lankan flag, green, orange, yellow and red, and there were two with the design of the Union Jack and tails of red, white and blue.

What’s in a Name

It was Ceylon when I was growing up. It is now Sri Lanka or, officially and informatively, the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. The Romans called it Serendivis, the Persians Serendip (from which serendipity) the Ancient Greek geographers, Taprobana. Marco Polo writes of it in 1250 as Ceilan. The Portuguese who discovered it by accident called it Ceilão, the French Seilan, Ceylan, then the Dutch Zeilan to Seelan and Seyon and the British, Ceylon. The islander name was Lanka from the Sanskrit Lankadeepa – resplendent island. Sri, means honourable as in honourable sir. The tea still tastes the same and the tea is still Ceylon.

My First Visit

I first came to Sri Lanka in 1968 not long after I had been ordained a priest. While here I went with a group of young Sri Lankan Christians by train from Colombo to Bandarawela in the mountains. I’d only just arrived and was very tired so I had a sleep on some newspapers on the floor of the carriage under the seat. I gathered later the locals were surprised at a European, well, a New Zealander, doing this, but they were not displeased. Without realising it I was following local custom. I simply needed to lie down to sleep and it was the obvious place to do it. There was a possibility I would work here but I found the food so spicy with chilli that even the outside of my mouth burned. In those days I thought that I must not work in a country where I couldn’t eat the food of the people, where my hosts would have to prepare something ‘special’, so that never eventuated. I don’t have any difficulty with the food now so I guess my taste buds must have become more educated.

Public Holidays

In 1968 I seem to remember Sri Lanka had an eight day week, a Buddhist week, which was introduced to appeal to the Sinhalese, largely Buddhist, majority. That played havoc with international trade as the rest of the world (except Burma, I think) had a seven day week and so work days and weekends didn’t coincide. When that was dropped a number of Buddhist public holidays were introduced, Poya Days at full moon once a month and Buddhist Wesak Day. There are public holidays for other religions like the Hindu Festival of Lights, Deepavali and Thai Pongal Day celebrated chiefly by Sri Lankan Tamils. There are the Muslim Festivals of Id-Ul-Fitr and Idul Adha, the Christian Holy Days of Good Friday and Christmas Day and there’s Labour Day on May 1st which is almost a religious festival. Add in Independence Day, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and perhaps some I’ve left out and the result is that Sri Lanka has the greatest number of public holidays of any country in the world. Incidentally, on many of them including Poya Days and this coming Friday which is Independence Day alcohol may not be bought or sold.

Biased News

The only news in English on the television in the hotels I’ve stayed in has been on Moscow Today. There’s been Al Jazeera in Arabic and the news in Mandarin I guess from China. Of course there’s local news in Sinhala and, I think, in Tamil. I assumed the Moscow based news would be biased. It was certainly interesting to hear the Moscow report of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the American Military Prison at Guantanamo Bay. But then I realised the anniversary was probably not even mentioned on the BBC or CNN or any of the other news channels with which I am more familiar so where is the bias? The editors decide what is the news. Whichever way you look at it there is a bias, or censorship.

Guest List

The guests at the Galle Face Hotel, over the years, include actors and film stars, Vivien Leigh, Lawrence Olivier, Noel Coward, Alec Guinness and Ursula Andress, Sting and Scarlett Johansson, and writers including George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov and Mark Twain. It couldn’t be a Sri Lankan Hotel unless a cricketer had stayed here – Sir Donald Bradman in 1938. Yuri Gagarin stayed at the GFH. And many politicians and Heads of State from Princess Eugenie, Empress of France, the young Emperor Hirohito of Japan in 1921, Tito of Yugoslavia, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Richard Nixon, Kurt Waldheim, Edward Heath, and, in 1958 Che Guevara.

Prince Philip

I was shown around the museum at the Galle Face Hotel. In glass cases there is some of the cutlery, China and glass that, no doubt, my Grandmother would have used when she stayed here in the early 1900s. And there’s a car in the museum. It’s a 1935 model Standard Nine car which was bought by Prince Philip who was a 19-year-old midshipman serving in Ceylon at the time. It was wartime and it was the first car he ever owned. It is said that the asking price was 12 Pounds Sterling but that after much bargaining he bought it at Rs.450 which was equal to seven weeks’ of his Navy pay in 1940.

Sir Donald Bradman

From my garden in Kennington, South London, I can hear the sound from the home ground of the Surrey County Cricket Club, the Oval, and can tell from it whether someone has hit a six or been bowled out. The Oval was the first ground in England to host international Test cricket in September 1880. Had I been around I would certainly have heard the noise in 1930 for Australia’s 701 and as Don Bradman (244) and Bill Ponsford (266) put on 451 for the second wicket, and in 1948 for Bradman’s farewell duck. Even I, who loathed cricket at school, chiefly, I suspect, because it was compulsory, love the description of the Australian Cricket Team’s visit to Ceylon in 1938 which you can google at thuppahis.com/2020/12/11/don-bradmen-and-his-men-in-ceylon-1948/