From Poets to War

 I was trying to remember just where my interest in WW1 came from. Like a lot of interests, thinking back, it grew organically. A lot of my reading has always been of biographies and autobiographies, of people in the concrete, of how they dealt with this rather strange thing called "life". More often than not the particular people I was attracted to were literary figures like John Keats, Shelley and William Blake. Hearing of the WW1 poet Wilfred Owen, I dipped into his life story, which obviously included episodes of life in the trenches. This led to me reading "Goodbye To All That" by Robert Graves, an autobiography of his early life and his service as an Officer in the War. 

Over the top

Wilfred Owen

Browsing one day in the local library I picked up a copy of a WW1 diary written by one of the rank and file Tommies, not a literary figure, just one of the many who lived through the war. I found it engrossing. The rest is history!

Since then my interest in the experience of war has broadened. Vietnam, WW2, even the Korean War (I would really recommend "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason, a pilot of a Huey helicopter, who flew over 1000 missions in his one year stint in Vietnam - just how he survived is a mystery!) The special relationship and bonding of soldiers facing danger and possible death on a daily basis can be inspiring and gives insights into the whole human experience of faith and trust.

The Roses Of No Man's Land

I have just finished reading "The Roses Of No Man's Land" by Lyn MacDonald. This is just one of a series of books by Lyn who recognised in the 70's and 80's that the generation who had lived through the First World War were gradually "fading away". She began to gather their memories by interviewing hundreds of people, men and women who all had their story to tell.

This particular book tells the stories of members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (the VAD's), ladies who left behind, more often than not, a very sedate life in order to tend to the wounded Tommies (and also, at times, the soldiers of other nationalities, including German) 

The stories are often horrendous. We are not speaking here of wiping a handsome Tommies brow and placing a plaster on a bleeding finger. The stories - though sometimes containing humour and more light-hearted moments - are of amputations, body parts blown away, faces disfigured, of lungs corrupted by gas. 

Long after the war, in 1938, the British Government were still paying over half a million disability pensions........90,000 to those with withered/useless limbs, 11,000 to those deafened, 2,000 to the totally blind. More statistics are available but just to add another, 3,200 ex soldiers were still confined in mental asylums.

Such is the price of war, the price of "freedom", of fighting in the "war to end all wars". 

I do recommend the book.

To finish this particular post, a poem from Wilfred Owen:-

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 

Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle 

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; 

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all? 

Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes 

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. 

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; 

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Zen Gardens (2)

Zen gardens come in all shapes and sizes. Here we have a miniature version which can be kept in the office or in the lounge....

        

 In fact the lady who is the scheme manager of our retirement complex has one in her office. She hails from the Philippines. My 3 year old granddaughter, while in her office saying hello, gave the intricate swirls a helping hand according to her own fancy. Ying and yang became a little confused and so far have not recovered.

I have always had a love of Japanese Woodprints and here two loves are combined - a zen garden woodprint.
 

In the past I have thought that the intricate patterns found in many zen gardens is inconsistent with what is often associated with zen, i.e spontaneity. After the reading of zen master Dogen, no. There is the "right word" for each and every moment - but just for that moment.

 (In terms of Christianity, I would just say that the whole idea of the universal being found in the particular has much to say in terms of the Incarnation, of a Person of one particular time and place "coming for all")

I went to the garden of Love,

And saw what  never had seen;

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to Play on the green

And the gates of this Chapel were shut

And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tombstones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Nice to end with that little poem by William Blake. 

And a final zen garden.........

The path winds forward yet the "journey itself is home". Smell the flowers as you go.

"Love has no why" (Meister Eckhart, the 13th century Christian mystic)

Zen Gardens (1)

   

I thought I would begin this blog with a few pictures and ramblings about zen gardens - so many to choose from. I often love the totally non-utilitarian structure of many of the gardens. It makes me think of the little zen koan "a clearly enlightened person falls into the well - how is this so?" but why that should be so I have no idea.

The Japanese seem to love their cherry blossoms.

"Seen with the eye of faith
the cherry blossoms
are always about to fall"

(Echu)

          

 Another zen garden below.......... 

A feature of many zen gardens is a meandering path, one that in fact leads nowhere.  Which is much like my own Pure Land path, a way that is no way at all, a way of no calculation, a way more of trust and grace. The Catholic monk Thomas Merton once received a picture of a house from the young daughter of an older correspondent. Merton wrote back saying that though he thought the house was lovely he was sorry to see that there was no path to the door. In the next letter there was another picture of the house but this time with a path leading up to the door. Merton then wrote of "the road to joy that is mysteriously revealed to us without our exactly realising it."

St John of the Cross once wrote that if we wished to be sure of the road we tread on "we should close our eyes and walk in the dark ".     
         

 

Another familiar feature of zen gardens are stepping stones. Below is an example and here I a reminded of the episode in a James Bond movie when James, in a sticky situation, leaps across from a tiny island upon the heads of a group of crocodiles, thus escaping from becoming their meal.

Moving on, a respectable zen garden will also feature circles........

The gravestone of the poet and artist David Jones was a circle, which is significant. David Jones once said that everything constituted a sort of circle in some way. "I need to think that everything is complete somewhere".

(The Japanese zen master Dogen spoke of "continuous practice"........."On the great road of Buddha ancestors, there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moments gap; continuous practice is the circle of the way")

There is the suggestion that though we live ("common sensically") in a linear time frame, Reality itself is not simply linear.

Just to finish for now, with a laid back meditating Gnome who would perhaps feel at home in any self-respecting zen garden, and also another little guy who reminds me that though a garden can bring reflection and relaxation, it can also demand not a little sweat and elbow grease.....