The Riots.... Why did this happen?

"A riot is the language of the unheard." Martin Luther King Jr.

After watching young voters question time this evening I just felt compelled to share my thoughts on the rioting that has taken place over many cities across the UK....

There are many avenues for blame, Parents, Schools, the Government... are but a few that have been mentioned on the news and in the papers.

Essentially above and beyond maybe any of these, may be the widening division between the social, economic and cultural facets of our communities.

Community is fragmenting.

Young people are being given no sense of belonging. No sense of future security.

Without a role in society, one that is valued, there can be no strong sense of allegiance or responsibility to that society. There is no stake. Nothing to lose. Without solid foundations of future security the transitory moment takes precedence. Long term goals are traded for short term gains.

There is certainly a growing sense of dis-empowerment and disenfranchisement in poorer communities over recent years.
The biggest voice many vulnerable young people have is as targets of amusement and bemusement on reality television shows.

Equally relevant is the clear discrepancy between how corporations, banks and politicians are treated for their crimes in comparison to the way young people from deprived backgrounds are treated. This disproportional "justice" only adds to the general feeling of disillusionment young people already have with institutions from banks to churches, to schools, to governments.

Spending on youth services, family services and children's services has been slashed since the conservative government came into power. These cuts obviously effect the poorest members of our society the most. Once again the most vulnerable are made accountable for the crimes of the powerful and elite. In lowering benefits, shortening council house tenancies, raising tuition fees... Poorer families have to extend themselves so much further just to tick the basics off the list.
We live in a rented council house and receive tax credits and although we are no way among the poorest of families I can't imagine that any of my girls will go to a traditional university. It saddens me to say this but the fees are just too high and not something we can afford. To start their lives off with huge amounts of debt is not a prospect I relish for them either, in fact it is one I hope, wholeheartedly they avoid.

But what I find most contention with is the blaming of parents.

We live in a pressure cooker of a society.... When is someone going to actually admit this!

When a young mother has to have 3 jobs to simply survive there is something going deeply wrong somewhere.
When people are mired in a lifetime of debt, simply to have the luxury of a roof over their head something is going deeply wrong somewhere.
When a family cannot raise itself without both parents working all hours so they don't even have enough time to connect with one another something is going deeply wrong somewhere.

Parents from a deprived background can't afford all the activities, resources and experiences that the wealthy can. These days with the economic pressures the struggle to find our children a place, a role, a sense of value and a reasonably comfortable seat in the assembly is running at a premium. The increasing "ghettoising" of schools and the catchment area lotteries are just one example of the pushing and shoving involved in raising children these days.

The children from deprived areas are simply born at a disadvantage. Why can no one admit this!

Families, particularly poorer families are struggling to keep up. There is little to no network of support, extended family, elders in the community... let alone anyone willing and able to take a little of the load without a fee to match the weight of it.

Everyone is simply too run off their feet to invest themselves emotionally, financially or physically in their communities. It's often hard enough to find the time for our own families at the end of a 10 hour day.

Blaming parents is easy. The problem is structural.

Our focus is off centre. Family needs to be the focus. Supporting parents, families and children should be the priority of any country.

More often than not family and childhood... in the traditional sense of what the word childhood means... are having to be sidelined in favour of simply trying to make it up the ladder. Things "Stuff" has replaced, connections, experiences and relationships.

Yes, hard work pays off and we need to give young people a sense of responsibility and accountability for their own lives but we keep them bottled up for so long and then at aged 21 expect them to suddenly "get it". Get what it takes to stand alone, without initiation, the wisdom of elders and often little to no "real life" experiences ...

When young people are pushed and shoved through every hoop and test and exam we can throw at them only to watch their hopes and dreams are dash against the ***ever rising and impossible to live up to competition*** before they have even begun... something is going deeply wrong somewhere.
When we glamorise violence in movies and video games and sanction public acts of humiliation in reality TV shows, yet expect our youth not to take their cues, something is going deeply wrong somewhere.
We say that Gordon Ramsay is allowed to vent dismaying amounts of anger, arrogance and cruelty to some unfortunate 21 year old sous chef on his first job simply because he can... Simon Cowell can extinguish a kid's love of singing his heart out in one stone cold dry sentence... Celebrities in "The Apprentice" back stab and undercut one another without a single shred of conscience.... And we can all snicker at the poor chat show "mutton dressed as lamb" ex show girl on Jerry Springer.... Yes it is all very entertaining and we are always glad it is not us at the receiving end, maybe we actually believe we are above it all.... But what is this teaching our children?
It teaches them that those that grab and grasp and claw their way to the top are life's winners. Those that back stab and fight and step on others make their dreams come true.
Those that take what they can when they can, put other's down, put the job before ethics and the rules before what is right, true, noble and good, ultimately succeed in this broken world of ours.

No the riots were not right. They were tragic, frightening and disturbing.
No there is no excuse for the violence the crowd unleashed upon the police.
Yet sadly, maybe this is illustrative of why it is so important that we get our priorities right where young people are concerned. There is a sense of meaningless for a lot of young people these days.

Ultimately they need a strength of vision. One they can really believe in. One that gives "real" not counterfeit meaning and hope to their life in this world.
Then they need the simple food of familial and community support, love and wisdom to pass it along to the generations to come.

Our children and their childhoods have got to start coming first.

Some interesting points raised by the Archbishop of Caterbury regarding the riots...

{Among Children}... a month of poetry...

In honour of Philip Levine being named next American poet Laureate... I thought I'd post one of his most well known poems... "Among Children"

I walk among the rows of bowed heads–
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the widows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job until the windows
pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
with light, her foolish words transformed
into song, I would like to arm each one
with a quiver of arrows so that they might
rush like wind there where no battle rages
shouting among the trumpets, Hal Ha!
How dear the gift of laughter in the face
of the 8 hour day, the cold winter mornings
without coffee and oranges, the long lines
of mothers in old coats waiting silently
where the gates have closed. Ten years ago
I went among these same children, just born,
in the bright ward of the Sacred Heart and leaned
down to hear their breaths delivered that day,
burning with joy. There was such wonder
in their sleep, such purpose in their eyes
dosed against autumn, in their damp heads
blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one
turned against me or the light, not one
said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home,
not one complained or drifted alone,
unloved, on the hardest day of their lives.
Eleven years from now they will become
the men and women of Flint or Paradise,
the majors of a minor town, and I
will be gone into smoke or memory,
so I bow to them here and whisper
all I know, all I will never know.

Philip Levine

{Maybe}... A Month of Poetry

Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is
when something
different crosses
the threshold -- the uncles
mutter together,
the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
like the wind over the water --
sometimes, for days,
you don't think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it --

tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was --
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer storm.

Mary Oliver

{At first she came to me pure} ... a month of poetry

At first she came to me pure,
dressed only in her innocence;
and I loved her as we love a child.

Then she began putting on
clothes she picked up somewhere;
and I hated her, without knowing it.

She gradually became a queen,
the jewelry was blinding...
What bitterness and rage!

...She started going back towards nakedness.
And I smiled.

Soon she was back to the single shift
of her old innocence.
I believed in her a second time.

Then she took off the cloth
and was entirely naked...

Naked poetry, always mine,
that I have loved my whole life.

Juan Ramon Jimenez



...And so maybe it is with a soul's journey too.

{Ode to the Smell of Wood}... A month of poems

Late, with the stars
open in the cold
I open the door.
The sea
galloped
in the night.

Like a hand
from the dark house
came the intense
aroma
of firewood in the pile.

The aroma was visible
as
if the tree
were alive.
As if it still breathed.

Visible
like a garment.

Visible
like a broken branch.

I walked
into
the house
surrounded
by that balsam-flavored
darkenss.
Outside
the points
in the sky sparkled
like magnetic stones
and the smell of the wood

touched
my heart
like some fingers,
like jasmine,
like certain memories.

It wasn't the sharp smell
of the pines,
no,
it wasn't
the break in the skin
of the eucalyptus,
neither was it
the green perfumes
of the grapevine stalk,
but
something more secret,
because that fragrance
only one
only one
time existed,
and there, of all I have seen in the world
in my own house at night, next to the winter sea,
was waiting for me
the smell
of the deepest rose,
the heart cut from the earth,
something that invaded me like a wave
breaking loose
from time
and it lost itself in me
when I opened the door
of the night.

Pablo Neruda translated by Jodey Bateman

Love is Reckless... a month of poetry...

Taking it quietly this month :)... I'm planning on posting some favourite poems instead of full length articles for the rest of August...
Sending love and hugs till the end of the Summer...
xxooxx

Love is Reckless

Love is reckless; not reason.

Reason seeks a profit.

Love comes on strong,

consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,

Love proceeds like a millstone,

hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,

she risks everything and asks for nothing.

Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;

without cause, give it back again.

Rumi

Leather work for kids.

Some kind friends gave us the leather from an old sofa they were throwing out.

The girls and I spent a day getting inventive with ideas for using it.

Emmy and Bujana made Sioux medicine pouches, using these online instructions...



First they drew and cut out the pieces. Then they punched holes along the bottom edges using a hole punch.



They sewed the sides and bottom of the pouches right sides together using a denim sewing needle and a long basting stitch ( about 6 on a regular machine) and reinforced this with an over stitch through the holes.



After measuring equal spaces along the top of the pouch they punched holes for threading leather cord through to make a draw string.



The drawstring was held in place with some wooden beads...



Perfect for those long Summer hikes!



Seraphina, Matilda and I cut stripes of leather into cords and made some bracelets...



 I helped the little ones make some leather bookmarks.



I traced around a tin pencil case to get the rectangular shape and helped them cut around the line.

They frayed the ends and punched holes along the edges using a hole puncher.

Lastly we wove some thin leather stripes that we had cut out earlier through the holes and secured them in place using some funky stitching patterns on our sewing machine!