Faded

I don't know if it is the medium of blogging or my state of mind, but reading back through some of my posts I am unimpressed with the spelling mistakes and poor grammar. Eventually, I shall go back and correct some of the worst, but at the moment, I feel like a faded negative of myself. All the vibrant and fluent parts of me are flattened and hollow. I am there, but I am without colour. Originality, incisiveness, rationality have all been kissed by the poision apple, and they are in hibernation. I am only able to speak or write in short, sharp yelps.

Refreshment

A soft summer rain had been falling all day today. Well, of course, wimbeldon starts next week! There is something special about rain that allows you access to the garden - scents and colours are intensified by the moisture - tiny details, such as the droplets upon petals, attract the eye. The musk from the new flowers on my rambling rector was heady, and the sky was a lambent dove grey.

I take such sweetness as a gift, and of hope that there are tomorrows in which my girls and I will live in fullness.

Fruiting

I have been sick. The year has passed and I thought I would be passed grieving, but it appears that this is not so. For the past week, I have been unable to work, or think, or even feel - exhaustion has pressed into every part of my mind and body. I am heart-sick and weary. Yet, I have taken some harvest from the garden - the strawberries have been as sweet as the summer sun, and the potatoes are flavourful and comforting. Now the courgette flowers (those which have escaped slug damage!) are bursting with outrageous colour. I caught one unfurling in the evening - it had taken on a strange, other-wordly glow as it caught the light of the setting sun within its transparent petals.

I found these lines from Marvell's 'The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn' (1681)

'I have a garden of my own,

But so with roses overgrown,

And lilies, that you would it guess

To be a little wilderness'......

'Had it lived long, it would have been

Lilies without, roses within.'

For the moment, all my harvest seems as blighted and withered as a nuclear winter, but I remain hopeful for the 'roses within'.

African Widows and Human Rights

This is an extremely thorough, 'full immersion' account of the plight of African widows:

http://www.crisisstates.com/download/forum/HIV/901widowsaids.pdf

The Politics of Everyday Living

Anyone who reads my blog might be wondering about how to catergorise it. At first glance, it is concerned with a personal journey through grieving, but I also indicate my research interests in political theory and have one or two posts of a political nature. I make no apology for this - I am of the Aristotelian persuasion that 'man (and woman and child) is a political animal', and I agree with Hannah Arendt on the importance of political action for living a fully human life. For me, politics, in the broadest sense of well-being and human flourishing rather than simply maximisation of self-interests, is about every day living. My children's education, the home we enjoy, our relations with others, even the tragedy of sudden death, touches the political at every turn. Therefore discussions about human rights, whilst also talking about how to run a home or research a project, are essential.

Eleanor Roosevelt said of the UDHR, 'Where after all, do human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world'

Human rights do not belong to governments, international insitutions or even NGOs. They belong to us - ordinary people engaged in the ordinary activities of living and dying. We should reclaim both the duty and the public pleasure of talking about them because by doing so, we extend our capabilities for sympathy with the suffering of others, coming to realise that they suffer because they are human in exactly the same way that we, ourselves, are human.

The Kindness of Strangers

The space that my children and I have for grieving is secured by privilege - we live in a peaceful, wealthy western democracy with welfare support and employment opportunities. The slow pace of life I described in my previous post which is conducive to healing and hopefulness will be unknown to most widows around the world. Women's rights are often widow's rights. Widows in many countries constitute one of the poorest, and most marginalised groups of people; when they lose their husbands, they lose their humanity. Hannah Arendt said that the worst thing that could happen to a person was if they became merely human - bare life without a place in society or respected identity. Many widows belong nowhere - they are simply human life. They are blamed for the death of their husbands, and consequently they can be stripped of their property, ousted from employment, rejected and abused. Needless to say, their human rights count for nothing because they have been deprived of the fully human status which would support their claims.

WRI (widow's rights international) is an NGO which says alot more about this - they provide case studies and money for the documentation of human rights abuses. The respecting of women's rights is closely linked to the implementation of socio-economic rights (of education, welfare and work), and needs to be seen in a context of sensitive economic and social development which includes initiative such as micro-financing (see links below).

http://www.widowsrights.org/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6047364.stm (micro-financing)

http://www.microloanfoundation.org.uk/

Micro-financing is controversial; some commentators refute that it is effective in helping the poorest. An alternative is to think about global redistributive justice (from the wealthy to the poor across the globe, not simply within the nation state). The difficulty here is that we have no sense of cosmopolitan citizenship which would legitimise (and give moral force to) the idea of helping distant strangers.

Sun Blessed

I have found that the intensity of grieving requires a steady, calm way of life, sustained by friends and family. When I take time in the sunshine to pick strawberries, then the physical knots of anxiety and loneliness ease for a little while. I can no longer lead the hectic existence of a multi-tasking mum - everything has become local, small-scale, slow-paced.

Today, I decided to link my blog to some directories and to make some links to sites that I enjoy or are useful. This, of course, makes it a more public endeavour, and I am grateful to those who have already commented or linked me to their neighbourhood (I think that is the term). I understand that it is 'blogging etiquette' to reply to comments, but, being a techno slow-learner, I have not worked out how to do this. So, I thank you and hope you will be patient.