I can hear Ray Hunt, my English teacher in the fifth form, saying, ‘Check your spelling, boy! Check your spelling!’ If I was very clever I’m sure I could find a reason for giving the title Dissolution to something about Disillusion but I can’t. It was a mistake. Though, come to think of it, in this day of always being able to find something or someone to blame, it could have been the fault of ‘spellcheck’ or one of those things my computer does all on its own with no reference to me at all,

DISILLUSION

Disillusioned is such an odd word. Are we ever illusioned? It rather suggests that we could have seen that it was an illusion in the first place. Disillusion with the government, the church, friends – were my expectations unrealistic in the first place or is the illusion what drives us forward?

There’s a good deal of disillusionment around at the moment, both with leaders of the Church and in politics let alone business, the media and the police. Some of it I share. And, of course, what I’ve had to face up to is that part of this is because of my unrealistic ‘illusion’ in the first place. The amount of ‘good’ and ‘strong’ and ‘true’ – add as many positive adjectives as you like – leadership, that I can expect, must always be tempered by reasonable expectation based on facts and a realistic recognition of human fallibility. Nobody is perfect and we human beings are not in control of everything. The pandemic surely teaches us that.

When leaders don’t tell the truth or don’t fulfil promises of course I feel let down and am very disappointed and disillusioned. And that doesn’t only apply to leaders it also applies to roofers as I consider quotes for repairing my roof, and to builders who as part of their brief agree to clear up after they’ve finished the job. 

However I am bothered at the degree of unrealistic expectation, that I think we have, of what is achievable by those who lead us.  Could we really do that much better? I suspect it’s the old business of idolatry. There are few now, I suspect, who make idols of gold and silver and wood and stone in order to worship them. And if they do those idols are quickly pulled down.

The sermons I heard when I was young, the sermons about idolatry that is, directed my attention to idolising material things. Smart cars seemed to feature a lot. I think that was because in the New Zealand of that time many men spent Saturday mornings lovingly mending, washing and caring for their cars. Their cars were their idols. Or perhaps it was just that the preacher was envious because he didn’t have a very smart car.

But the really dangerous idolatry is surely that of making idols of other people. They invariably disappoint in the end because they are just that – other people. It can happen within marriage or with close friends. If we put someone on a pedestal we must take some responsibility for when they fall. People don’t belong on pedestals they belong alongside. 

More and more we seem to expect our political and religious leaders to be without fault. Or rather there are some faults, and they change with the fashion and the times, that they should be without. And we become disillusioned and let down when we discover that they have similar weaknesses to our own. 

Through all this I admire anyone who is prepared to go into public life at any level in order to serve their local community or their country. Sometimes we seem to take more delight in being ‘disillusioned’ than in taking responsibility for our part in the illusion.

It is sad when a friend dies, even more so a very dear one. But this sadness is not without hope.  Now I’m not talking about an ‘I’ll see you again’, sort of hope, which has always seemed to me very earthbound, as in, ‘See you later’, or ‘See you in Sloane Square’, or Kennington Park or wherever. That would have raised a smile from Bill Scott and I certainly find it amusing – that word again – to say the least.  

The sort of hope that Bill and I share is in a life that includes the Divine,  the Other, or as another good friend put it, ‘that is shot through with Eternity’. This hope is founded on our belief in a life that is more than a material or mechanical or earthbound existence. 

Of course my belief is impossible to prove in exactly the same way that a belief in life totally bound by conception and death is also impossible to prove. However I find myself set free in an extraordinary way by the awareness that to every thought, every discovery, every encounter, there is the possibility of more and that nothing is the final answer. Faith is the foundation of my hope and one aspect of this hope is that it involves patience and does not demand or expect either immediate answers or immediate solutions.

This is not an excuse for avoiding responsibility for the sustainability of the planet or the struggle for justice, but rather the opposite. It is a call to responsibility in the context of hope and not of despair and in the context of love and not of fear. It is dynamic and not static and, I guess, evolutionary not revolutionary.

If all this sounds too much like a sermon – tough. Bill Scott was someone who could say all these sorts of things without it sounding like a sermon not least because his priesthood was totally and completely him and it didn’t come on and off with his clerical collar. And that is at least part of why I will miss him.

PS More on Words

Some words change in meaning for no apparent reason. Such changes explain the fact that Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was pleased and not offended when it was called, “amusing, awful, and artificial.” In those days amusing meant amazing, awful meant awe-inspiring, and artificial meant artistic. Surely we must therefore do some careful research before we presume to know, and take offence at, the meaning of words expressed in an historical context. The meaning may have changed from something that was fine then to something quite different and unacceptable in our time.

In my last ‘Thought’, not a particularly deep thought, but I did enjoy thinking it, I had written ‘It made Shanghai less exotic’. I sent the first draft to a young friend who helps me clarify my thoughts and he pointed out that the word ‘exotic’, these days, has a negative history with colonial overtones. So I changed ‘exotic’ to ‘exciting’ because I didn’t want to give offence to anyone. Generally I don’t want to give offence and certainly not unintentionally. 

Later I went back to my Cambridge English Dictionary and I discovered the definition of exotic; ‘unusual and exciting because of coming (or seeming to come) from far away, especially a tropical country,’ which is exactly what I meant even though I would not have seen Shanghai or China as particularly ‘tropical’. It seems that words change their meanings so quickly that even a dictionary on the internet is out of date.

But it has made me think more about words that have, in my lifetime, changed their meaning and which can now give offence. Or even words that have simply changed their meaning.  A gay party sixty years ago when I began going to parties was a different party to a gay party today. And I remember Cousin Mary, fifty years older than me, describing as ‘amusing’ a situation which was not in the least bit funny but rather interesting and puzzling. Then of course ‘funny’ is an odd word as sometimes it does not mean amusing so that we used to say, ‘Funny ha ha or Funny peculiar?’

And as I now wonder about ‘exotic’ I realise I must be careful about ‘native’. I grew up with trees being either native or exotic and I simply don’t know if these words are all right if applied to trees and plants but not in other contexts. Am I a native New Zealander? I always thought I was. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the changes.

There’s a whole list of words used in a particular context that mean the opposite to their regular use or something completely different, bad – good, wicked – fun, cool – smart, I’m not sure what the new meaning of ‘sad’ is but I know there’s a meaning other than the meaning I am familiar with. When I was choosing between some frames for my spectacles the optician told me that one pair were ‘sharp’ and the others weren’t. From the tone of voice I gathered sharp was in some sense good or smart or fashionable or at least something positive. I chose the sharp pair.

But it’s the words that give offence that are the problem for me.  I’m told if I read more I would know which words I shouldn’t use. But there’s still a chance I will get it wrong simply because of my age. There are words that I may not say or write now, usually words descriptive of race, religion or gender, that were commonly used sixty years ago and by and large I’ve tried to learn not to use them. Then there are other words never used then that  are commonplace now and some of them offend me, but I must learn to live with it and I do. 

I am irritated when attending a service from the Book of Common Prayer and the person leading the service ‘corrects’ Cranmer’s English to make it acceptable. For example changing ‘men’ to ‘people’. I know some may be offended by the use of the word men to describe people but I would have thought the historical context and the beauty of the language could be taken into account. It seems to me that those who correct have a lot in common with our Victorian forebears who covered the genitalia of statues with fig leaves. There are a lot of figurative fig leaves around these days and they seem to cover  everything other than genitalia!

So that is one problem for me. There’s another, related I think, and much more serious. St Augustine described words as ‘those precious cups of meaning’. It is when I am deprived of the words that I have at my disposal to say what I mean. Then I am forced into a self isolation of expression that is every bit as bad if not worse than that imposed by Covid 19. Of course I’m not claiming some right to free speech that allows me to shout ‘Fire’ in a crowded cinema when there is no fire. I am saying that if my use of words is so judged that what I am trying to say, the meaning of what I am trying to say, is never heard, then I am pushed into a dangerous isolation.

I am fortunate to have a fairly wide vocabulary. What happens to those whose vocabulary is limited and much of it deemed ‘unacceptable’. They are condemned to silence and I suspect it’s a silence that leads to frustration and, in the end, to a dangerous explosion. Or, as I do, they find smaller and smaller groups of people with whom they can say the things they want to say and express the ideas they want to explore and so they end up being with people just like them, with ideas just like theirs, which is not what any of us need at all. 

Thank goodness that since the awful George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, a city and people distant in custom and culture from anything many of us know, the arguments and the discussions about racism have not been restricted to small groups of like minded people but have exploded into major discussion and debate around the world. There has been a mind opening for many, including me, as a result. And the learning has been allowed to happen.  

I need my ideas, the meaning my words contain, to be challenged so that I can learn and grow. And I need to be allowed to get past my first sentence without being challenged for using an ‘unacceptable’ word. Isn’t having the discussion more important than using the right words? I do still want my ‘unacceptable’ words to be explained to me so that I don’t repeat them, but after, rather than during. And I need to learn, even at my age, not to interrupt, and to let the other person get to the end of their sentence before I leap in with a comment or a correction!

There are some things I would like to see standardised such as electric plugs. Even my international multi plug adaptor seems to miss out sometimes. And then I remember the sense of disappointment when I first visited Shanghai more than ten years ago and I realised the rubbish bins were identical to those in Kennington. A standard shape and size and the same colours. It somehow made Shanghai less exciting. I’m not sure why.  Southwark Council bins are probably made in China.

I am very glad that street designations are not standardised. Today I did my brisk walk, saying my prayers, along Kennington Park Road, skirting Elephant and Castle passed the Metropolitan Tabernacle into St George’s Road with a pause at St George’s Cathedral. After the Cathedral, Lambeth Road left into Kennington Road and completing the triangle back into Kennington Park Road and home. Road after road after road, a little boring perhaps? And according to an app on my telephone – 4,797 steps, 3.3km.

Only it wasn’t boring at all. I became aware that even in this small area I passed a Close and a Way. Because I chose neither I missed out on a Crescent but Kennington Park Road becomes Newington Butts. Butts probably because there may have been archery butts there in mediaeval times. There can’t be all that many streets that are Butts.

After the Cathedral I decided not to turn right to a Cut or a Marsh but turned left into Kennington Road and so passed a Drive, a Square and, on the other side of the road, a Walk. Then I had a Terrace on my left and, because I was doing the main roads, I missed a Court and a Passage. I crossed a Lane and further on passed a Row, a Green and, on the home stretch, Kennington Park Gardens.

Going this way I also missed a Mews, a Place, Arches and an Alley. They are on the Walworth Road side. Though we have at least three Ways I haven’t yet found a Broadway. There are no Avenues that I’ve come across yet, nor a Parade. There are lots of Streets. There’s no Triangle but there are many Squares and, very importantly, The Oval. 

It must be confusing for visitors and it all could be standardised and made more simple. It’s years since I was last in New York. In theory it should be the easiest city in the world in which to find your way round. The grid pattern of numbers, streets and avenues should make it so simple that you can’t get lost. It is so simple yet I still get lost.

So much variety in an hour of walking. I’ve lived here for more than twenty years and now, because of Lockdown, I know my local area far better than before and am still making discoveries. It quite lifts the spirit. I hope we never standardise either the names or the designations of our highways and byways. 

Some of the family came to visit. Because they are my designated ‘other household’ the government now allows us to hug. That’s a huge joy and relief. My grandson Freddie has won the poetry reading competition for his year group. From Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes he chose ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. He recited it for me.

It includes this.

Then Dad cries, “Golly-gosh! Gee-whiz! Oh Cripes! How hot this porridge is!

Let’s  take a walk along the street until it’s cool enough to eat.

”He adds, “An early morning stroll is good for people on the whole 

it makes your appetite improve it also helps your bowels to move.”

Years ago now, when I was working in Chelsea, I was in the queue at the checkout at Waitrose in the King’s Road having done the weekly shop. In front of me in the queue was an elderly woman who was slow, but I wasn’t in a hurry, and she chatted to the woman at the checkout. She was from the Philippines, the woman at the checkout that is,  I learned from their conversation. At one point the elderly customer reached out and took the hand of the checkout lady and held on to it, then, rather embarrassed, she turned to me and said, ‘I’m so sorry to hold you up but it’s wonderful just to be able to touch someone.’