Backseat Pope

Aaaah, a day off.

All week up to your stressful Friday deadline you wear yourself out carrying everyone's troubles on your shoulders.

Saturday comes - dead to the world at last.

Tomorrow - new hope to start again, all those troubles put in their place.

Intercepted translated Alien communication ...

"Earth Takeover Options, a 12 Step Program:

A: We have considered launching a spacecraft led invasion, but feel that this would raise immediate alarm to our presence and cause human retaliation giving us casualties. Despite our inevitable victory, we want to avoid taking casualties.

This also seems to be a scenario for which humans are prepared, judging by their extensive video archives usually starring Will Smith.

B: We have also considered an invisible invasion, but although our invisibility technology is good, our detection technology is still early in development making this difficult, and increasing the risk of friendly fire.

So here is the final plan:

C: i) We wait until humanity is dangerously divided and suspicious, each nation thinking they are independent, and greater than all the other nations.

ii) We wait until a moment when humanity has uniquely low quality weakened leadership of below average intelligence.

iii) We will use the vanity of such leaders to reduce honesty, co-operation and rational responses.

iv) We will wait until the earth environment is badly degraded, with sources of power nearing exhaustion.

v) We will send in a batch of microbes as an advanced party.

This will surprise them, as one of their great textbooks on interplanetary conflicts advises using such microbes from Earth to destroy invaders in the end. To use that strategy against them first is a scenario they do not seem to have anticipated.

vi) These will be new to planet Earth, with no terrestrial antidote or treatment.

vii) They will be landed in a remote part of a large secretive country.

viii) We will programme the microbes to be spread by social contact, relying on humanity's addiction to air flight, large sporting events and subservience to leadership despite the superior numerical advantage of the lower hierarchical tiers of humanity.

ix) We will send previous waves of related microbes with other symptoms, leading to a frenzy of purchasing of posterior cleaning tissue. This will serve no purpose but will amuse us greatly.

x) We will make use of a sloppy human attitude to hygiene, and the habit of face touching, scratching, nail biting and nasal orifice clearance, using fingers and fingernails to spread the microbes across the planet.

xi) Finally we will wait until humanity keeps up to date with information, including news of the spread of the infection, by using infected fingers on uncleaned touch screens on personal communication technology, owned by the vast majority of earth's inhabitants. Even if they clean their hands regularly, this will be rendered futile because they will never clean the device screens that their fingers touch.

"Normal stuff"

A prose poetry meditation on human made climate change, creation and the source of all life.

1: You came to be a part of this. 

You had set the wheels in motion. 

Made sure that it was good - very good.

You gave us the controls and then prioritised just being with us.

Somewhere along the way, we put them down and walked away.

2: 'Perhaps we can do it our way, on our own?

OK, You gave us our life, but we've got it now, so thanks for the breath and for the advice, but now we know what to do.

You can head off and have fun decorating some other bit of the Multiverse, we've got this place sorted - and as we've got each other, now we don't really need you.

We'll be fine, I mean with all this natural growth and energising sunlight, what can possibly go wrong?'

3: So we shut out the source of life.

Stopped being together in the details, decisions and even for the company.

Gradually it dawned on us that we didn't know what we were doing. 

Where life had been predominant, now we saw death emerging. 

Where growth had been unstoppable, now there was decay. 

Instead of peace - disagreements, arguments, conflicts, fighting, violence and war. 

Instead of gradually delivered daily life giving food and energy, we devoured an insane addiction to increasing speed and power, with the planet slowly starting to cook and burn under the strain.

4: Gradually it dawned on us.

Did we admit it?

Hell No.

We sped up to try to overtake the decay, and instead saw the destruction accelerate exponentially.

Now we seem to have irreparably damaged something that was very good, but without the knowledge of how to save it, the humility to ask for help, or the slightest clue who to ask.

Where once the life source, dumped from our loving friendship, had called out a heartbroken 'Where are You?', now we - who ought to call the same words back - just plough on regardless, plundering and combusting the reserves until they ignite forever.

5: Somewhere in the middle of all that downward spiral, even before we had totally lost control by playing with forces we didn't understand, things that caused consequences we couldn't foresee - somewhere when we still had time to prevent the descent into unstoppable chaos - You came to be a part of this.

You came into the normal stuff, even in its uninviting state.

You left your mark - just as we left our marks on you.

You demonstrated how to live, and hidden under our path of cumulative degeneration, you set a new path going that reversed the consequences of our chosen path, by which we try to profit from war, famine, pestilence and finally death, our last and previously undefeated enemy.

Can you hear the sound of hooves in the distance, approaching, getting louder?

I think we hailed that carriage, destination out of sight in the smoke.

6: Meanwhile you left us with reminders or clues that another destination was possible.

An outcome where life, friendship, love, unity and peace all spring from earth that is very good, and which still produces growth and grain, leaves and fruit, bread and wine.

Abortion, the Law, the Election, and Faith.

23 abortions per hour in 2018 under the current government.

Apologies for a long opinionated post.

This is intended as an issue based piece, not party political.

I'm not expressing a fully formed opinion on this tragic and sensitive issue because, while I'd definitely see abortion as a huge and largely silent moral and social problem:

a) it's complex legally in every single case;

b) it's not simple ethically in certain cases;

c) careless statements on this can harmfully judge and guilt trip people who have been through this; and

d) I don't think this is a topic for individualistic and simplistic pronouncements, especially by just a man/men ...

... BUT if you have decided not to vote Labour or Liberal Democrat on the basis of the single unexplained word 'decriminalisation' in their manifestos, then check out the historic record stats below for this government after 8-9 years, under whom abortion is illegal in certain circumstances, but under whom rightly or wrongly there are almost no prosecutions.

This law needs fixing. We have already in effect decriminalised abortion, and the legal debate needs to catch up or adapt to this situation.

Above all, society needs to be more caring towards unwanted children, and for people in difficult circumstances that lead to abortions.

But this government, who don't mention this tragic issue at all in their manifesto, are the ones under whom we've reached record numbers, and under whom there is no guarantee that this will be addressed or debated.

From a Christian perspective, the taking of life is obviously ruled out under the 10 Commandments, while in the New Covenant Jesus expects us to look out for the least in society and to love enemies, neighbours, outcasts and the unloveable.

There is also no New Testament mandate to use the Law to enforce our priorities in an unchristian and diverse culture, or to take power over people with other beliefs or values.

Our call is to love them and to demonstrate the alternative in our faith communities.

So churches and Christians should (and do) work in our communities to reduce the factors that lead to abortion and support people driven towards that awful choice.

Obviously, vote Conservative if you agree with their policies on the EU, or on NHS or Police staff numbers, or on the economy, but voting for them in order to stop or reduce abortion makes as much sense as voting for more guns to stop shootings (sorry America!).

Look at their record on this, and if this is the biggest factor for you in voting for them, double check that you've thought beyond that one careless unexplained word in the other party manifestos, connected to an unenforced and badly written law - 'decriminalise'.

With no debate on this law, the rate will probably stay at this level and 'our' voices will be silent.

With a debate, provision may be put in place that reduces it, and 'we' have a right to a voice in the debate.

Put simply, whatever your position on this, and whatever your other priorities that may help you legitimately decide to vote Conservative, voting for then is NOT a straightforward anti-abortion protest.

205,295 abortions in England and Wales in 2018.