Midsummer Mire-Doers

You have to feel more than a tinge of sorrow for the hundred and fifty thousand or so soggy souls who paid £150 each and ventured down to the watery West Country this weekend, for the world-famous Glastonbury Festival.

Once again, what claims to be the world's largest contemporary arts and music festival was accompanied by torrential rain, which turned the normally green fields of this part of historic Somerset into a muddy mire. What has happened to our summer, which right now we're supposed to be in the middle of, literally?

The irony is all the greater, given that the Glastonbury festival began as an event to celebrate the June Summer Solstice, the time when in the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears to "stop" for several days as it reaches it's farthest point north, at the tropic of Cancer. Sadly, it seems to have disappeared altogether for much of the last 72 hours.

At Britain's latitude, this point in June brings the longest day, which occurred last Thursday and did at least see an impressive sunrise even here in the London suburbs, eighty miles or so from the UNESCO world heritage site of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, where the solstic takes on mystical proportions and thousands of revellers were able to gather to greet the dawn on 21st June.

Henge and homestead however were hardly the hotspots they were this time last year in what was actually a truly flaming June, preceeding one of our warmest summers ever. The chilly start to the day saw me staying cosily in my bedroom, apart from a brief venture outside to the garden, but dawn was none the less awesome for all that I viewed it through two panes of glass.

Sunrise and sunset still awaken some primeval sense of awe and wonder in most of us, be we painters or poets or ordinary Josephs. The Glastonbury focus came about because this legendary spot was supposedly visited by one of the New Testament Josephs, possibly the foster father of Jesus, along with his young son. This tale is the origin of the famous lines in William Blake's seminal song, married so stirringly with Hubert Parry's music to produce the ever-enduring "Jerusalem".

Whether those feet ever did tread on England's green and pleasant land, who can ever really say with certainty, though I suppose it's not beyond the realms of possibility. Nothing can be, when a child is born by miraculous virgin birth, and goes on to defeat even death itself. The Christian view of life and death may appear on the surface in contrast and conflict to that of the pagans who parade around ancient sacred sites in the west at this time of the year, and yet a recognition of the power and purpose of earthy and celestial symbols is common to both.

Maybe Jesus too got muddy feet, rather than smelling summer meadows and picking daisies to make childish chains, as he enjoyed the seasonal delights of his father's creation in England. But the songs that continue to celebrate him, as they have done for centuries, will continue to echo through fields and towns, not just at midsummer but every day. The events of two thousand years ago, at Gethsemane, Golgotha and Garden tomb, launched Jesus Christ, superstar, on to the world stage. What Christianity has done, and continues to offer all men and women free of charge, far surpasses any Acts the Glastonbury pyramid stage can offer.

Please Release Him

On Sunday, I wrote about freedom. Today, this page is dedicated to freedom of expression and of those who report the news. Mercifully only rarely, do reporters unjustly lose their liberty in doing so, but today is a time for remembering one of those horrible occasions.

It was 100 days ago exactly, to the hour, that Alan Johnston, the BBC's correspondent in the Gaza strip, was abducted by anonymous captors as he went about his business, He was not taking sides but merely doing his job, so that his audience might know and better understand what was happening in this troubled parcel of land in the Middle East where for so long there has been anything but good news.

All that any journalist of integrity can do in confict zones is to report events. The solution of complex problems and just solutions are for others to decide. And sometimes all we can do is sit in our comfortable armchairs and weep. Yet we are not powerless.

A few moments ago, journalists from media all over the world paused. At the BBC itself, directors, producers, cameramen, and doubtless many other staff took time out to keep vigil for their missing colleague and to keep his loved ones in their thoughts. Many of them will have held up posters of Mr Johnston while they did so, while his elderly parents in Scotland released one hundred balloons.

This is not the place today to make devotional points. Enough of the trouble in the area Mr Johnston had come to know and understand finds its roots in religious intolerance, and misunderstanding between peoples. Instead, this blog today has followed the BBC news website suggestion to add this picture of Alan Johnston to websites, in solidarity with those of many political persuasions around the world pleading for his safe release by whichever faction is holding him.

Alan Johnston is a man who means no harm and has caused none. He was due to end his posting to Gaza shortly anyway. Whatever the rights and wrongs of your people's situation, please give Alan Johnston back his freedom, now, in the name of peace. And if you are but a viewing bystander too, stand with him please whether in silence or words, for the sake of the free word.

Royalty-free Tree

Feel free to use this tree. Apparently, that's just what twenty-five bellicose barons and the 'baddest' King of England, John, did this very time 792 years ago , as the first Magna Carta, or 'Great Charter', was sealed,purportedly on this very spot beneath this ancient yew which is probably older than England itself.

Could it have been more than mere coincidence that led to me driving just seven miles or so from my home to the pleasant village of Wraysbury, in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, on the 'official' birthday of the present sovereign- which this year was just one day after the anniversary of that monumental event in British history? Maybe, but as I waited for the friends who'd invited me to meet them here to arrive from another Thameside location some twenty miles further west, my mind was filled with thoughts of just what that historic event meant for individual liberty, but also with loftier remembrance of a liberty that no prince or premier, nation or natterer has power to grant.

Magna Carta set out on paper, if not in stone, the nearest thing England has ever had to a 'Bill of Rights'- although it was never intended to be this and in fact failed initially to achieve its purpose of averting a minor civil war. Later revisions and constant reference to it as precedent however, mean it now forever vindicates the freedom of the individual citizen under law. No more could men be accused of wrongdoing and cast into the hands of unaccountable and tyrannical monarchy, nor their liberties and property be taken from them, without the fair trial of their peers and due process of law. The charter's two most famous provisions are as clear as the nose on Bad King John's face:

'No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions ... except by the lawful judgement of his peers.'
'To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.'


No wonder Magna Carta has proved to be a proof text for the world's most significant democracies ever since. Politicians may come and go- as Tony Blair will do, funnily enough, on my birthday later this month. There is ample reminder at present both sides of the 'pond' of how their practices often reek as much as the now stagnant pools of water where once Old Father Thames flowed either side of Magna Carta Island. But the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are rightly seen as much as the crucial accessories of just society, as crown and sceptre are the tangible symbols of constitutional monarchy in the present day United Kingdom. Saturday 16th June 2007 turned out to be a day when I realised I am still very proud to be British, once all the media meddling and false witness about our national life is discounted.

King John had abused his assumed divine right to the extent that his barons would have no more of it, but a June day in 1215 ensured that no future monarch could ever get away with such a display of contempt for what we would today call 'human rights'. And yet, unjust imprisonment is still the fate of all too many in an unending stream of justice-starved regimes in the 21st century world. So many of these poor souls, only standing up for what they believe, have never had a fair trial. Were it not for the tireless efforts of Amnesty International et al, many of them would never have the hope of liberty.

Yet true liberty is surely more than a freedom from physical chains, it is a freedom of mind, body and spirit which no monarch can decree or celebrate with earthly honours, as the latest recipients of "gongs" will have done yesterday in Her Majesty's Birthday Honours List. Among them was (Sir) Salman Rushdie, who receives a knighthood nearly two decades after his seminal work The Satanic Verses put a price on his head from one particularly harsh interpretation of Islamic teaching.

Religion has been the object of so much abuse, torment and misapplication through the eight centuries since King John swore his oath before twenty-five bellicose barons on an English summer afternoon, that it can almost make his calamitous acts seem like kindergarten antics by comparison.

Yet 'true' religion - or as many prefer to describe it, faith- remains the only real solution to man's enduring mis-treatment not just of his fellow human beings, but of the natural world itself. After taking a somewhat roundabout route to get to the object of our search today, my arboriphile friends and I were able to gaze in wonder at the sight of a natural specimen which existed centuries before environmentalists came to this spot to launch a 'green' magna carta, or those who assumed the mantel of the great and the good got together in Germany for an ultimately rather ineffectual G8 summit as they sought to grapple with the world's pressing issues of the moment.

Only one man ever really got to grips with the earth's real problem- and he did it by hanging on a tree in agony and finally giving up his life, because of all the awfulness of our human nature. Yet like the freshness of a summer rainstorm on the long, lingering hours of daylight at this time of year in England's green and pleasant land, Jesus Christ drained our stagnant places by that death. At Easter he rose again, and in the next forty days until he ascended to his rightful throne, he showed, nay proved, to people of faith that there is more to life than meets even the most discerning eye.
The National Trust, of which I'm a member can work wonders with Runnymede, Ankerwycke, Churchill's Chartwell and many hundred other historic places, but only trusting in Jesus, I believe, can change hearts of stone into hearts of love. And indeed, this is all that God, requires of us in a precious prophetic passage given to Micah probably even before that Berkshire yew was a bird-carried seed:

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.


I will try to post to this blog more again soon, at least monthly, but meanwhile you might like to check out some of the links on the right where you can find some of my other writing and the contributions of other websites I find both informative and inspirational.

The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and give you peace.