A Passionate Woman

It's rather ironic that, having written about stress last time, we should hear of the dreadful, nightmarish aeroplane crash in France, allegedly the act of a suicidal pilot. Somehow, I think there is more to this and I am not convinced that it is quite as we have been led to believe. Normally, suicidal tendencies relate to self-harm or self-destruction not calculated homicide. If the man was depressed, and it was deliberate, this could be a most extreme example of how alienated people can become in today's world, and mental illness is misunderstood or ignored. Surely, somebody must have noticed there was something disturbing about his behaviour or his demeanour?

Last weekend, Lesley and I went up to our new parish in Cockermouth, this time just to explore. We were fascinated by the history and geography of this 'Gem Town', and are really looking forward to going to live there. It feels very strange still serving here in Liverpool while planning ahead for a new life in Cumbria. Someone we know in south Cumbria wanted to know if I'd been a 'naughty boy' - being sent up to 'Red Indian' country in the north! We're past the point of no return now, with the removal firm booked, phone and internet connections sorted, and the first service rotas planned! I've even got my first wedding with two more in the pipeline.

On Monday night, I watched the Richard Dimbleby Memorial lecture by Martha Lane-Fox. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2015/martha-lane-fox-dot-everyone. She is a passionate woman - passionate, that is, for the internet and its seemingly infinite benefits (at least, according to her.) Fox is a highly successful, wealthy entrepreneur who has made her fortune from the dot.com business. She is also a remarkable human being, having survived a near-fatal car accident which damaged her pelvis so badly that some 28 operations were required before she could walk again. Her mobility is still impaired. Her thesis was that we have scarcely begun to appreciate the scope and value of the internet. She described it as a new 'institution', to which everyone could belong regardless of age, education or background: Dot Everyone. She pleaded for business leaders and politicians especially to wake up to its potential. She has even started an online 'Dot Everyone' petition to influence the new Prime Minister!  The greater part of her lecture was devoted to a passionate description of the possible benefits to our society, as one might expect from one who has made her fortune from it. She believes that UK could become a world leader in its development, and prosper greatly as a result. She devoted some time also to the question of ethics and proper controls, realising the many ways in which the internet has been abused for example in pornography, fraud, and trolling in social media. However, I was left somewhat uneasy: to belong to an institution is to be part of something bigger than we are and - most importantly - with an identifiable membership and a clear constitution, instruments of government etc. The whole point about the internet is that it is so vast, so expansive and expanding that it is quite impossible to define in the way an institution normally would be. What would be its values? How could it be organised? It all began to feel a bit Orwellian. Is it not rather a tool, to be taken out and used as and when required, not used as a substitute for human contact and relationship?

That said, I have no doubt that she is right about one thing: we don't use the internet to its full potential. I have been saying that in our churches for some time, and find it frustrating that good, up to date, fully functional websites are not seen as a priority. To misquote General Booth of the Salvation Army, 'why should the Devil have all the best media?'

Back to my own 'passionate woman' (aka Lesley!) On Friday, we watched the film 'Twelve Years a Slave'. I hadn't realised this was based on an autobiography, which made it all the more compelling and shocking. I particularly noticed the use of silence in the film, allowing the pictures to speak for themselves, to capture an expression or a scene for full effect.

It took me back to our holiday last year in Antigua. You just would not think that human beings could be so unbelievably cruel to another. In the slave trade you see the roots of today's racism, as our conversation with a local man revealed to us there. What is particularly hard to grasp is that many of those concerned in those days were God-fearing men. Just a couple of days ago, I came across some material about Liverpool slave merchants, who saw no contradiction in commending to Almighty God their ships' voyages, when setting out to purchase more black people for the slave markets in the West Indies. Now if the internet could be used to help change attitudes like these for the better, that could only be good.