Sometimes I feel like I am pissing in the wind

Well, maybe I am. The last two posts have one factor in common and that is that militant Christianity still, all these centuries after Constantine, has command of the forces of aggression and coercion. In the name of the Christian god of love, gays in Moscow are beaten up and children, women and men in Iraq are killed in their hundreds of thousands. All praise the Lord! Allelujah! He has done a mighty work.

This god of the desert, in his three incarnations, is very strange. I listened to the end of a BBC World service radio programme today in which there was a basic assumption that written, divinely-inspired, scriptures were a good thing, Through them, the presenter was saying, we can engage with the divine - in whatever form he takes. And the word "he" is important here. In the Abrahamic traditions, the "lord" intervenes in history and makes his desire known in sacred books - which must, perforce, since language is always changing, be interpreted by experts. To take one example, a woman koranic scholar maintained that in the injunction that enjoined men to beat their wives the ancient Arabic word used also has the meaning "walk away from". A male scholar denied this. Even a native speaker of modern Arabic needs help with the 7th century language. How many English speakers can, for example, read Chaucer with ease? Most have trouble with Shakespeare who language is only 400 years old.

The programme said, however, that the true meaning emerges from the debates and conflicts between interpretations. Leaving aside the fact that this sounds very much like history b eing written by the victors, it also glosses over the fact that these disputes arfe settled in the blood of those who are perceived to be heretical. And also that the atrocities committed are in a very real sense justified by the books. And the exact opposite is true - the validity of the books is attested to by the bodies of the victims - those who could not accept the meanings that served those who held power.

There is real danger in the written word. For, to paraphrase Omar Khayam, once written and read it cannot be unwritten. I remember many years ago reading a book by Mick Farren called "The Texts of Festival". In this, the central conceit was of a post-apocalyptic world in which the central sacrament was the Rock Festival, at which the few surviving tapes would be played and treated as Holy Writ. Many of the songs were,of course, Bob Dylan and the meaning, say, "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" would be explained by the- rather wasted - elite. It is a long time ago, and I have not given the book any thought for at least three decades, but Farren had a valid point to make. There is a real human tendency to seek some written formula with which to direct our lives.

If that was where it stopped, there would be no real problem. People have the right to be as wrong - or right - headed as they wish. The problem comes when the book acquires an army and a police force. Then there is a real and present danger for all those who do not accept the stories written therein, or even the particular interpretations put on those stories by those who command the armies and the police forces.

And their armies are big. Those who believe, or pretend to believe, in the values they think the books teach, control most of the media and the legislatures and the universities etc etc.

So, here I am. Pissing into the tempest of intolerance and hatred whipped up by the believers in the books. Everyday, things seem to get worse. I sometimes feel I am wasting my time and would be better to tend my own garden. This is not, however, true. My voice may be small, but I much speak my truth. I must speak to what I believe to be right. I must speak the message I hear from Inanna. That is the least I can do. For there are others also writing - other voices -speaking from their own souls - their own hearts. And the voice of the heart is the only answer to the voices of hatred and division that seem set to drown out the world.