Y'dig?

Memorial Day, USA

Sunday May 24th, 2009
Memorial Day, Raymond, Maine

Yesterday, to my ignorant surprise, I discovered that Poland water doesn’t come from Poland (I used to wonder why they brought it all the way from there when it tastes the same or worse as New York tap water?) Now I know, it comes from a wee place near Raymond and yesterday I went there to a fair in the grounds of the place where it comes out of the ground.

The day began with half a dozen old codgers, including one woman, marching in with the Stars and Stripes and a few other flags I didn’t recognize, not being big on flags, but I was struck by the bearing and pride of those who walked behind the flags. And I understood too for the first time, that this is how men walked into battle, in line, in step, and with martial music blasting in their ears. They’d walk on in this absurdly unnatural gait, more like machines than human beings, in the certain  knowledge that some of them were about to die, or worse, to suffer long and terrible agony.

This is the real America, which one doesn’t see too much of in New York City, a country of simple, decent folk, with their gas guzzling SUVs, planned obesity bodies, and on their faces, writ large, “what happened to the American dream?” The motto of the adjacent  state New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die” seems cruelly appropriate as we remember, as well as those who fought in just wars, the Revolutionary War with Britain, the second World War etc, those who gave their lives in places like Vietnam, Korea and now Iraq, and those too who are living shortened lives consuing food that will kill them before their time. I spole to one family, who all came to learn meditation, a really lovely family, Dad was a nurse, and he, his wife and two lovely daughters were morbidly obese. They knew something was horribly wrong, but if the knew the cause, they certainly didn’t know what to do about it. My heart went out to them.

I was in the company of really impressive people. A young man from Bombay, who never did that well in primary school, but who now works in a nuclear plant in Vermont, who has several university degrees and is now studying, as well as working full time, for three more simultaneously, one in mechanical engineering, one in nuclear energy and a PhD in something else. For people like him, America is still a land of golden opportunity, but it seems if you are born here, something went wrong and now you are largely excluded by how you see your own priorities as opposed to how this young guy sees his. Another young Indian man on our stand at the fair, is a Green Architect, intelligent, compassionate and visionary.

But impressive as these people are, I was even more impressed by the native born Americans, who live their lives by a different code of values to their fellow men and women, and are ostracized as a result. These are real heroes and people who will be recognized by future generations in pointing out the only way that really makes sense. I take my hat off to Jane Gagnier, Ann Regan, and Kristine Kirby, virtuous women of vision and sacrifice, of whom their country, and indeed all humanity can be proud.

Later, I taught one of the group who first marched in behind the flags,  a grey-bearded military old guy, to meditate and afterwards, with pride, he told me he was Irish, that he was a rebel. I said that we were rebels not for the sake of it, but that we rebelled against injustice. As we talked on, I offered the view that Irishmen were spiritual without being religious – and he was visibly struck by the truth of that – although we can all think of exceptions of course.

Eddie Stack in his great post, http://is.gd/CZ48, hopes that American Irish might come to the rescue of the current sad state of Irielan, but I’ve seen little in America to make me think that the exiles here can save us.

I call for the reunification of Ireland as soon as possible, a united, secular state. (Show me a country anywhere, where having a religion enshrined in the constitution, it isn’t either a hellhole to live in, i.e. all the Muslim countries, or, where it was totally unacceptable to one of the groups within it – it’s just a thoroughly bad idea.) I think that with the whole of Europe in the EU, the unification of Ireland as a secular state would work.

The harder task, and one in which we could lead the world, would be to create an economy that wasn’t based on greed, acquisition and the joys of owning, but rather on values that the rest would wish to emulate, for the fact is, that even if Obama rescues the American economy back to what is was, and the rest of us then follow suit, we’re still on a short road to ruining the planet unless we change the economic system away from consuming crap that nobody wants, needs, or feels any joy in owning or in the manufacture of it.

I’ve no idea how we can get to there, but the desire for it is a good starting point, and maybe better minds than this will kick in and take it on.

As Milosz the Polish Nobel Laureate said, “To undertake a project, as the derivation of the word indicates, means to cast an idea out, ahead of itself, so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled, not only by the effects of its originator, but indeed, independently of him as well.”