Diana’s Dream (Rant 106)

‘I will die in a car crash, made to look like an accident’, Princess Diana foresaw. Thanks to the man who used to wash the Princess’ knickers, the relative accuracy of that lethal prediction is now vindicated. Whatever else you may opine about poor, dear Diana, one thing is certain: she was right – dead right – about the manner of her death.



Relax. This is not going to be about that corniest of all subjects, conspiracies – everything is known about those. What interests me is something else.



How did Diana know?



Grant me, it’s a fair question. The most maladroit of conspirators plotting my death is unlikely to inform me in detail how he is going to do it. Not even Peter Sellers’ hilarious inspector Clouzot would do that. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, should the villain hint at poisoning, say, I’d immediately hire a food taster – well, something like that. Were a tube accident be intimated, I’d start travelling by bus. And so on.



So, again, how could the Princess have known?



In spite of what you think, this is going to be easy. I know the answer. She had had a dream about it.



And how do you happen to know that, Father Frank?



My lips are sealed. You’ll just have to trust me. Of course, Diana was ‘spiritual’. Dabbled in astrology, faith-healing and the like. She also thought herself a bit of a psychic. Perhaps, just perhaps, she was, like many of us, you and I, also a little bit paranoid. Of her imminent death, though, she had had confirmation from a dream.



Dream, eh? Pretty flimsy stuff, surely…



I disagree. The Bible takes them seriously, for one thing. From Jacob’s dream of the heavenly ladder at Bethel in Genesis, to St Joseph – Mary’s husband – in St Matthew’s Gospel, the message is clear – God sometimes uses dreams to speak to mortals, either directly or through angels. But don’t get me wrong. Some dreams are demonic or deceptive. Homer (or is it Virgil?) puts it poetically: false dreams issue from a gate of ivory, whilst true ones proceed out of a gate of horn. By the way, the Greeks - fountainheads of knowledge and wisdom - regarded dreams as children of night and brothers of sleep and death – fittingly, the deity who had authority over dreams was Hermes, the guide of departed souls in the underworld. Moreover, I ought to mention that degraded Scarlet Pimpernel of the shadows, Osama Bin Laden. A remarkable videotape found in Afghanistan shows him discussing his followers’ dreams prior to 9/11. Apparently, one guy had dreamt of a soccer game played against Americans – with the Al-Qaida team dressed as pilots. Another dream had been by man in Kandahar. He saw himself carrying a fallen plane over his shoulders through the desert. Bin Laden naturally gloated over all this but, prophetic confirmation of dreams notwithstanding, worried about security. What if everybody started blabbing about his aeronautical dreams? Osama ordered his chaps to keep their mouth shut.



Wow, Fr Frank, this is really amazing. Still, one doesn’t like to be gullible. Religious people’s evidence is tricky. The supernatural - some would call it superstition… Disreputable stuff. It goes against the grain…I mean, honestly, a rational person would laugh it off. Hard to swallow, isn’t it?



Let me take the bull by the horns. (The horn’s gate, presumably.) Either God can do that – speak to men in and through dreams – or He cannot. I believe He can. I could leave it at that. But, even if unbelieving (horribile dictu!), you might glance at J.W. Dunne’s Experiment with Time. Out of his own dream experience, he argued we, all the time, have precognition of future events. (The future already exists, he assured us.) It’s simply that either we don’t notice it, or forget it, or dismiss it as mere coincidences. Suppose I dreamt tonight of Saddam Hussein’s capture by US special forces in a certain yellow house in Iraq’s Falluja. Suppose also in a few days’ time the Yanks located the dethroned tyrant in the very place. Coincidence? Come off it! It wouldn’t wash. But, of course, the real challenge is about the mechanism, or the how of this precognition business. Scientists, respectable ones, want to know about how something happens. How to repeat it in controlled lab experiments – and all that. Otherwise, whatever it is, it ain’t science. Dunne knew that and so he proffered an explanation. Alas, it involves a bizarre metaphysical theory of infinite regress, serial time, mathematical symbolism and so unhelpfully on. I’d be a bloody liar if I told you I fully understand it. With J.L. Borges, however, I am inclined to say that the fact of self-consciousness does not imply, pace Dunne, the existence of innumerable observers (one who knows that he knows another who knows that he knows…and so on) fitting into no less numerous dimension of time.



Aargh, Fr Frank, unfair! How can you believe this stodge would convince anyone?



Look, the instances of premonitory dreaming he cites are most interesting. I only regret he seems not to have read Artemidorus of Daldi’s Oneirocritica. Had he done so, he might incidentally have realised a dream’s premonitory meaning hangs a great deal on the dreamer’s personality. And on contextual culture. So, dreaming of one’s own death need not be bad news. In Tarot symbolism, for example, death can be a symbol of transformation, rebirth, new life. Still, Dunne’s theory would at least account for the puzzling phenomena of déjà vu. And personal immortality is another perk. Nonetheless, Dunne’s greatest influence has been not scientific but literary. On writers such as J.B. Priestley. Plays like An Inspector calls and Time and the Conways utilise Dunnian ideas. Stimulating artistic imagination is perhaps his best legacy.



Ahem, Fr Frank, what about Princess Diana?



OK. Hold tight. Hear the priest’s confession. Thanks to the time-hallowed method of incubation, the Princess visited me in a dream the other night.



Wow! What was she like?



As ravishingly beautiful as ever. Eternity obviously becomes her. She wore tight-fitting, smart grey trousers and a pale-blue, heavy silk shirt open at the neck. I noticed the long sleeves, gathered at the wrists – her fine white hands brushed mine. And I remember her row of big pearls. But her China-blue eyes were full of sadness.



Did she say anything?



‘Pray for my children, Fr Julian (my second name). And for my mother. And brother. And Charles and Camilla.’



Is that all? Nothing else? Did she say who it was who…?



Here I must heed what a Rant reader advised some time ago: ‘It is not wise to recount one’s dreams on the Internet.’

Angels of Baghdad (Rant 105)

Angels with dirty faces. Not the title of an old Hollywood movie – there is one – but an image vividly conjured up thanks to the Baghdad cherub, Justin Alexander. The young Englishman currently running a great blog (a sort of cyberdiary) from the wrecked Iraqi capital. Indefatigable campaigner for Jubilee Iraq, a global network arguing for the cancellation of Iraq’s crippling foreign debt, Justin writes movingly of the many ragged street urchins begging from foreigners around hotels and public buildings.



Surely little pests, Fr Frank, aren’t they? You’ve lived in the Middle East. You must know the darned nuisance of these street hasslers…



Hold it right there! You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, mate. The kids in question are orphans. They used to live in institutions, now either destroyed by bombing or looted or collapsed in the appalling chaos caused by Western ‘liberation’. In an Arab society, where the family is the basic unit of care, support and protection, being bereaved of parents and relatives is the greatest misfortune. Orphans have no option but to starve or beg. Or steal. Or prostitute themselves. And that is what those Baghdad children are doing - at increasing risk to their own lives. Children are usually much safer in Muslim countries than they are in the West but, in violent, anarchic post-Saddam Baghdad, everybody is too busy with self-survival to care about dirty, dangerous street beggars.



‘I lack the time, skill and resources to do something about these kids’, confesses Justin. He suggests there might be a job for someone here – maybe you?



Reader, are you listening?



Indeed, Fr Frank, message received. But what about yourself?



A good point. I wish I was another Father Borrelli.



Eh? Who he?



A Neapolitan priest. A real person described in Morris West’s wonderful book, Children of the Sun. About another set of abandoned street urchins, Napoli’s post-WWII scugnizzi. A dirty, lawless lot roaming the streets, sleeping rough, stealing from shopkeepers, tourists and fighting rival gangs. Detested and shunned by respectable people and uncared for by society, the scugnizzi seemed beyond redemption until… Fr Borrelli turned up. (Rather, God sent him.)



Hmm, typical do-gooder, I suppose.



At first, more of a do-badder. Young enough to pass for a scugnizzo, Fr Borrelli did something both daring and dangerous. Donning civilian clothes, he disguised himself as a homeless vagabond and joined the boys’ gangs. Went as far to go with them on minor criminal expeditions. In so doing, he gained their confidence. The greatest risk he took when it came to revealing his real identity. Would the kids have felt betrayed? Thought him a police spy? Stabbed him to death? Real possibilities. But the gamble paid off. The boys recognised the priest’s good motives. Eventually, Fr Borrelli was able to offer them a chance to get off the streets. A home. Acceptance. Job-training. Values. Faith. A new, better life.



What a fine, heart-warming story, Fr Frank!



More than that. A parable. You see, the priest’s decision to become one with the urchins in order to save them mirrors the supernatural Christian narrative. Don’t Christians believe God, to save us, out of tremendous love, had to become one of us? At the greatest cost to himself – the Cross?



Gosh, hadn’t thought of that. But how well would that go down in Muslim Baghdad?



Islam rejects the Incarnation, of course. Indeed, it could be called a religion of protest against it. But the Qur’an commends justice and enjoins care for the poor and the orphans - the Prophet Muhammad himself was an orphan. Selfless sacrifice, no doubt, is appreciated in downtown Baghdad as much as in Naples or New York or Banjul. High theology apart, everybody understands love. And love – practical, concrete, helpful love - is what the Baghdad’s angels with dirty faces need right now.



So, Fr Frank, what are you waiting? Perhaps God calls you to be another Fr Borrelli…



Well, not exactly like him, alas. I doubt I’d be able to look like one of those kids. Their grandfather, more likely. And my Arabic is pitiful. This is a job for someone with real skills and experience of what is involved, not for romantic, idealistic dreamers (like me). Which is not to say that I am closed to the call of the Holy Spirit – however reckless that may appear to be. Writes the beloved disciple: “The Spirit blows where it wills. You hear the sound of it but you do not know whence it comes and where it goes. So it is with everyone moved by the Spirit.”(St John 3:8) Or, in Frankie Lane’s demotic paraphrase, “I must go where the wild goose goes”.



Cool. Well, it’s good Fr Borrelli’s story has a happy ending, anyway.



Again, not quite. Despite his apparent success, he found the Bishop and the Church less than helpful – I know the feeling. Slowly, he was ostracised. Had he gone too far? Was he too much of a Christian? (Always a tricky thing for a priest…) In the end, Fr Borrelli left the priesthood. I seem to remember he married an Australian lass called Jill. But he is not the real point of all this. The kids are. I wish I knew how many of them really succeeded in pulling out of a life of petty crime for good or were dragged back into it.



Too stark, Fr Frank. At least the priest gave them a chance. Surely they liked him.



True. As I said, it might have gone very differently. Love does not always beget love. Often, quite the opposite – see the Cross. Baghdad’s gory Muslim martyrology illustrates this. The Sufi saint Al-Hallaj was flogged, savagely mutilated, impaled and then left to die on a cross-like gibbet in the scorching Baghdad sun by right-thinking fellow believers – and all this because he loved God too much.



Gulp… ranging disturbingly far and wide as usual, Fr Frank. Where do we go from here?



Back to the goodly cherub of Baghdad, my friend Justin Alexander. Check out his weblog. Let us see whether we can support the ordinary people of Iraq to recover from the triple ordeal of tyranny, war and occupation. Let us pool out intellectual and practical resources. I believe in collaborative philanthropy. Can we come up with some good ideas how to help the children of Baghdad? We must. And, Insh’allah, we will.

Peacemaking (Rant 104)

A Ministry for Peace. A jolly good idea, is it not? Now being put forward by a British MP. Hard to imagine anyone, either individual or nation, who’d oppose it. To paraphrase England’s greatest living playwright, Harold Pinter: I have never heard of a peace-hating people.



Er…Fr Frank, sorry to contradict, but it would appear you have not read Tacitus’ Germania. That worthy Roman historian records how naturally warlike the German tribes were. Peace they just abhorred. So, there!



Tacitus was right – as far as the ancient Germans are concerned. You know, the old imperialist actually admired the Krauts. (Felix, Fidelius, Achim, Alex I & II, this isn’t personal!) His Germania was meant as a reproach to his own race – he set up Germans as role-models, as it were. Not that the Romans were quite like Quakers. ‘We have made a desert and then we called it peace’, he averred, describing the savage Roman ‘pacification’ of Britain. But present-day Germans are a far-cry from the ancient Teutons, as the Yanks – themselves originally a Germanic lot – realised when seeking to enlist them over Iraq. The fierce race of Arminius, Frederick the Great and the Man with the Moustache is now a bunch of snivelling, cry-baby pacifists. Old Tacitus would be dismayed.



Forcefully put. But do you approve of this new Ministry for Peace?



I don’t know. A ministry intended to promote peace “ in homes, schools, streets, communities, organisations and internationally’ seems as bright an idea as sliced bread. How would it do that, though? Through ‘peace officers’? In homes, streets, schools etcetera? Call me carping – I can’t get out of my mind the image of Saudi Arabia’s snooping ‘religious police’. A Peace Police sounds almost as ghastly. Right out of Orwell’s bleak 1984, if you ask me…



Rather sneery, Fr Frank. We’d expect a priest to back peace initiatives, of whatever kind.



If you pardon me, I am gonna be even sneerier. A Ministry for War. Yes – you heard me. That’s what the Ministry of Defence used to be called, right up to WWII. An honest, right-on-the-chin description. It is now time to revert to it. The Ministry for War – let’s name it that. Haven’t two distant foreign countries being invaded by US/UK armies in the last two years? Aren’t further threats now being aimed at other sovereign states? Spokesmen for the New World Order blare it out loud. Mars, not Christ, is the god they worship. Even self-defence is now old-fashioned. Aggressive war is OK – no, more than that. Exalted, sanctified, hallowed in order to impose shining, ‘white’ Western values on recalcitrant dark or brown-skinned peoples. Looks as if the Man with the Moustache is having a posthumous come-back after all.



What a twist! The dreadful Fuhrer was not out to spread justice and democracy, was he?



No - although the Nazi Party’s full name was ‘National-Socialist’. But you’ll learn from ‘Hitler’s Table-Talks’, taken down by Martin Bormann, how he too, world conquest accomplished, looked forward to a pleasant peace. ‘I yearn to retire and take up painting again’, the Fuhrer wistfully sighed. Like today’s liberal-democratic war-mongers, Hitler was teleological about war – he saw it as a means to an end. ‘War for its own sake would be stupid’, taught Thomas Aquinas. Everybody, democrat or dictator, sees that. But they have this in common: wanting to maim and kill foreigners for their ever so superior values’ sake.



Hmm…what exactly are you leading up to, Fr Frank? Glorifying war?



Don’t be silly. My name is neither Maggie nor Tony. I can’t even stand war on TV. The endless showing of war movies, programs and documentaries sickens me. That stuff is as morally vile as hard porn. How a civilised people like the Brits keep revelling in that is beyond me. I fear the glorifying is done rather by those who drag us into needless military adventures.



Surely you must agree war is sometimes necessary. The Just War doctrine and all that. And didn’t a wise man say ‘if you wish for peace, prepare for war’?



A Roman slogan. It figures. Their history is one of perennial fighting. How else you can build a worldwide empire? At least they were upfront about it. Cant of human rights and democracy they didn’t care for. As for the Just War concept… well, it is really beginning to bug me. Not because I disagree with the principles underlying it – I don’t. Trouble is, this hoary piece of ethical machinery is wheeled out every time a bloody war is in the offing, to buttress wholly opposite views. Has it ever helped to prevent or stop even the most piffling skirmish? Like a tussle between frogs and mice? I bet it hasn’t. Instead, spurious justifications for fighting – it has provided aplenty. It says a lot, doesn’t it?



Obviously in a nihilistic mood today, Fr Frank. But Christ said ‘Blessed be the peacemakers’. Are we not to try and be makers of peace then?



Nihilism? More like the creed of those who advocate acts of international lawlessness, like raining death and destruction on another country. And, in so doing, they are also guilty of encouraging lawlessness at home. John Sentamu, the Bishop of Birmingham, had a point when he compared the invasion of Iraq to breaking and entering – plus murder, of course. But peacemakers we Christians have got to be. From the martyr to the faith-based diplomat (the latter being methods advocated by my friend Douglas Johnston in a fine book he has just edited, Trumping Realpolitik), from anti-war campaigners to brave idealists like another friend of mine, young Justin Alexander, currently working for Jubilee charity in Iraq, from indomitable Pope John Paul II to Rowan Williams, many, many Christians do their best.



The question is: will that best be enough? Is something more required? Something radical. Dramatic. Apocalyptically so. Is it?



I don’t know.



Perhaps…

The Sign of Jonah (Rant 103)

Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. Most sacred to Jews. It’s today, folks. On this day, I am told, in synagogues all over the world one of the readings is the Book of Jonah.



‘Arise, go to Niniveh, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you’, the Lord tells Jonah. The prophet obeys. In the middle of the wicked Assyrian city, he cries out: ‘Yet forty days and Niniveh shall be overthrown!’



Against all the odds, this unpleasant lot – a sadistic race that enjoyed playing football with their enemies’ severed heads and skinning POWs alive – turn from their evil ways. The Ninivites proclaim a fast, put on sackcloth and beg the God of the Hebrews’ forgiveness. Admirably, the Lord changes his mind: Niniveh is spared.



All’s well that ends well? Not quite. God’s mercy, the Bible usefully informs us, ‘displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.’



Don’t be harsh. You’ve got to understand the poor guy. A nasty dilemma his God had plunged him into. Either the Lord was going to destroy Niniveh or He was not. In fact, He didn’t. But the original prophecy had been that in 40 days Niniveh would have been overthrown. In consequence, Jonah, who had reluctantly obeyed the divine command, was proved wrong – a false prophet, no less. (Had the dilemma’s other horn been actuated, the prophet’s God would have turned out unmerciful – equally bad.)



In Jonah’s shoes, I guess I’d have felt a trifle cheesed off too.



Old Jonah, you have my sympathy. Never mind how mythological a figure you may be, Scripture shows you in a realistic light. A prophet, yes, but also a very human bloke, unwilling to suffer disappointment and shame - an excellent, human-godly combination. Holy man, you are Everyman, a fellow of us all. And a man after my own heart.



Jonah It’s all very well for you, Fr Frank. Sitting snugly at your keyboard, tapping away edifying Spielen, while quaffing cups of decaf. Were you ever tossed overboard during a storm? Or cooped up three days in a whale’s dark, slimy belly? Or jeered at by malignant Assyrians? Or…



Me OK, OK! I concede it. Compared with yours, my ministry is a cinch. Let me make amends by giving you a voice. What would you say to a comeback?



Jonah No need for that. I’ve never left. The Bible. I am in there. People can find me in the two pages of the book named after me, anytime.



Me I am the first to rejoice in that. I meant something a little more literal and dramatic, though. What about travelling again to a modern city? Say, London, New York, or even to your fellow Hebrews’ holy city, Jerusalem?



Jonah How much today’s Israelis have in common with us Hebrews of old… it’s a moot point. Regardless, the way they are going, they sorely need prophecy. Urgently.



Me You mean, the occupied lands? Palestinians and all that?



Jonah All that. And more. Today on Yom Kippur the pious hear my story, amongst others. And yet they show no sign to have learned the lesson. God is God of all nations. He intended Israel to be a veritable light to the nations, as far-seeing Avram Burg reminded Israelis recently. (He sent his prophet to the pagan Assyrians, didn’t he?) Instead, they have erected a claustrophobic Fortress Israel, bristling with nuclear weapons and caging Arab natives behind high walls. Gone is the brave socialism of the early pioneers. Even the communitarian spirit of the original Kibbutzim is finished. Mammon is pretty much all they worship now. The Zionist dream is shattered. Time has come to heed God’s prophets. Repent. Make a just peace. Or…else.



Me Er…I never figured you cared for socialism.



Jonah Think again. All my brothers, the prophets, announced the sovereignty of God goes hand in hand with the brotherhood of man. Amos, Hosea, Muhammad, you name them.



Me Muhammad? Well, well. Interesting.



Jonah Fr Frank, surely you have read it in the old Muslim historian, Al-Tabari, haven’t you? How Muhammad, regaining his strength after the Taif ordeal, was offered grapes from the Christian slave, Abbas. ‘Where are you from?’ Muhammad inquired. ‘From Niniveh.’ ‘The city of my brother Jonah, son of Amittai. All prophets are brothers’, my Arabian brother replied. A wonderful story, don’t you think?



Me Absolutely. But, say, you wouldn’t fancy journeying to New York or London, would you?



Jonah Washington D.C., more likely. To warn President Bush about the crowd he is hanging out with. Tell him about the sign of Jonah. Judgment. He needs to hear about that. The neo-cons are con-men. (Not to mention the theo-cons!) They have conned him, and many others. Oh, yes, they have!



Me Dear me! A bit partisan… Yet Bush is a strong Christian – they say. How tricky. Perhaps a trip to London…



Jonah You kidding? Me in London? English religion is either bromide or hibernating or pathetically pandering to the spirit of the age. An apocalyptic guy like me… I’d have no audience. Where would I cry out my message? At Speaker’s Corner? They’d take me for another crackpot preacher of doom. Visitors would laugh. Hecklers scoff. Tourists gape. Only a few fundamentalists would take any notice.



Me Alas, pretty likely. The Bishop of London would feel threatened. You are a smidgin too religious for his taste. A prophet disarmed, as Machiavelli would say. You’d be arrested. Barred from St Paul’s Cathedral, I am sure. Unless you were in drag, danced Eastern dances or something like that.



Jonah Drag? What’s that?



Me Let’s skip over it, shall we? You could at least preach unto Tony Blair. He is another devout Christian, allegedly.



Jonah He says he is. But he has forsaken socialism. His policies uphold and promote capitalism and globalism. And the laws his government legislates, the society he presides over – they are like ancient Niniveh’s. Pagan, godless, decadent, unchristian. Unless they repent, they shall be thrown down, I tell you.



Me Tougher and tougher. Just like a prophet. I’d expect nothing less. What are our world’s chances, do you think?



Jonah Poor. Almost nil.



Me Will we be given a sign from Heaven? A palpable wonder might help unbelievers to believe.



Jonah You already have. Jesus, the Son of Man, gave it long ago: ‘This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it, except the sign of Jonah’ (St Luke, 11:29).



Me Ha! The Resurrection? >From out of the whale’s belly?



Jonah That. And a confrontation…a fearful one. And the mission that will follow