Sonnet 2 - education

Sonnet 2

The fatal kiss of targets blows upon
The wind like whispers heard in darkened rooms
The measurements become our only truth
Imagination murdered in the womb
And who would dare to question how and why?
For fear of fateful consequence to come
And judgement is that numbers are the key
For raising the attainment of just some
It’s more to justify the jobs of those
Pathetic parliamentary whores of hell
Who prostitute our children’s future dreams
And have no souls their own that they could sell
There is a secret hanging in the air
It’s only known by those who really care

Swimming with the Tao - the way of water

I am a lapsed atheist. I used to think that religious people were somehow weak, cowardly or naive. I imagined that I had no need of a religious component in my life; that I was above that and that I was far too modern, far too rational for such childish hogwash.
But even in my darkest, most arrogant years of atheism, there was a doubt in my mind. Why did I ponder God for so much of my time? Clearly, I was agnostic.
I knew that my love of astronomy was more than just a scientific interest. Looking up, looking out, I was aware that I was part of something beyond my comprehension. I love the knowledge that I am made of the same stuff as everything else. I see a kind of romance in the idea that all we are is the product of cosmic explosions: a star whose life came to a violent end, but whose death gave rise to our own sun and everything that spins around it.
So, for a while, I wanted to be pagan. But there are negative connotations with that label, brought about by Wicca - a nonsense religion closer to Catholicism than Wiccans or Catholics would like to admit.
My personal theology is certainly pantheist. Interestingly, in his The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins dismisses pantheism as "sexed-up atheism". This is a rather whimsical argument designed to avoid the fact that Einstein, one of the dead scientists that Dawkins calls as witness, was clearly a pantheist.
And then I found Unitarianism. And I still consider myself a non-paying member of the global UU (Unitarian Universalist) community. The nearest Unitarian congregation, however, was still too distant for regular attendance, and my visits waned.

But then I stumbled across Taoism. I forget how. It doesn't really matter. I felt an immediate sense of, I dunno, belonging. Its basic tenets so completely matched my own theology that it seemed uncanny.
The Tao Te Ching is one of the most beautiful, and profound, things I have ever read. Full of oxymoronic poetry, it is a guide to life and leadership. And then I read Pure by Barefoot Doctor. And now I cannot get enough.

What is particularly interesting is that through the lens of Taosim, Christianity makes a kind of sense. "I am the Way" presents an interesting perspective. Now I want to be a part of my local church community, at the heart of this wonderful village in which I have lived for 7 years now. The only problem is, of course, that my local church is Anglican. But that's for another post, another time.

For now it's enough to say that I am a pagnostic Taoist Unitarian Universalist.

12 week scan, 1 week on

It's been one week since I saw my baby dancing. The image is prominent in my forebrain; it floats before me like a Shakespearian imp. I was speechless in the scanning room; but this was partly due to the uvulitis.

My wife had laughed at me when I said hello to her as I woke up. She couldn't understand what I was saying. When she peered into my mouth and exlaimed, "Oh my God!", I knew that something was amiss. There's a joke somewhere in this about having something large in my mouth causing me to gag, but I shall leave that for now.

And my wife jokingly accused me of never letting the attention be on somebody else: this was supposed to be her day, after all. "I know, I'm egocentric", I said. "What?" she replied. And so it went on.

So my wife was lying there, unable to see anything past the arm of the sonographer, her belly covered in a fantastically erotic gel, and I stroked her hand to comfort myself as much as anything else. At first we saw nothing. A dark oval of nothing, surrounded by science fiction. My heart missed a beat.
"There's your bladder," explained the sonographer. The relief was immediate and intense as she moved the scanner over a little and there, magically, was conjured the image of our little Bill. We've been calling it Bill the Bump for a while, nervous that this might anger the gods just like buying baby clothes too early might.
"There's baby's heart." I squinted and saw it. A little flash. And another. Something weird was happening to my stomach, something exciting and frightening, like waiting to jump out of an aeroplane.

I have never jumped out of an aeroplane. But I imagine the feeling is something exciting and frightening.

After a bit of prodding and poking, Bill got fed up and squirmed around, showing us its spine, its limbs. Its movement was quick and energetic. This was the ballet of the Tao. It was human and a dancer.

It's taken me a while to decide which pronoun to use. Although we've given the bump a masculine label, we don't want to assume anything about the gender of the child. So, calling it 'he' seems somehow wrong. Calling it 's/he' makes it sound like someone you'd see a documentary about on late night Channel 5.
I know 'it' seems inpersonal. But is this really such a problem? Is it safe to personalise the experience too much at this stage? It is the thing to call it 'Baby': "There's baby's heart". I like this. It's a neat solution.

So. I'm gonna be a dad. I hope baby will be into Doctor Who and stargazing. I hope baby will like trains. I hope baby will like reading. I hope baby will like poems, and stories.

I hope baby will like me.

An Amateur Astronomer's Fear of the Dark

It's a curious fact of my life that I love to spend time gazing up at the night time heavens, and yet I am scared of the dark.





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