Lost for Words

I’m lost for words!
Well . . . nearly lost for words!
The trouble is that I'm going to need words if ever I'm to explain this sense of incoherence.

If you hadn't suggested . . . if Shelagh hadn't thought . . . if I hadn't got a bit carried away . . .

What on earth am I babbling about? Well, yesterday evening I had a phone call from Shelagh - remember my friend in Cumbria, the friend with the wonderful medieval castles web-site? Ten days ago she used her expertise to arrange for the 'Letters' to be analysed on a daily basis. Google generously provides this free service, and now Shelagh has kindly made it available to me. Who it was that had been visiting the site prior to that we'll never know. But, from now on, each visitor will be analysed so closely as to be virtually named.

Yesterday evening, under Shelagh's guidance, I explored this fascinating facility. I was left totally bemused. I'm still feeling bemused this morning.

Not only are you told who has been visiting the site, you also know which precise 'Letter' they've been reading. Who on earth in the Philippines, I ask myself, would want to read about London orbs . . . ?! Who are these people in San Francisco . . . and Berkeley, Michigan . . .? Which Media Company, on Rhode Island has a member of staff with a sudden, inexplicable urge to read about my encounter with Rowan Williams?

Such scraps of information are highly intoxicating. The imagination gets over-excited and races off like a dog with a bone. Perhaps life in that Rhode Island company was very quiet on account of the recession . . . ? Perhaps a bored advertising executive, with time on his hands, was playing on his computer, instead of writing copy . . . ? Perhaps he chanced to come across my 'Letters' . . . ? Who knows. It's absolutely fascinating and quite mind-boggling!

What is also fascinating is the fact that, despite having been careful to tell no-one in this area about the site, the greatest number of hits have come from London. Who in London, I wonder . . . ? How did they hear about it . . . ? And who are these people in Nottingham who are reading my ramblings? I don't know anyone in Nottingham . . . ? Or, come to that, who are the visitors from Windsor . . . or Nuneaton . . .?

As I said at the beginning . . . If, all those months ago, you hadn't suggested putting these letters online . . . if kind Shelagh hadn't been so helpful . . . how much puzzlement and confusion could have been averted in the Philippines!

See what you started!

Time to wake up?

What can I do to persuade you to read the book I've just finished?

Now that you're in the middle of writing your own book (something I strongly support) it's odd, if not perverse, to urge you to stop writing and start reading. But, believe me, this book is different. Not only is it different, it is vitally important.
How can I convince you?

The other week we were talking about climate change. At other times we've talked about personal development . . . spiritual development . . . the unity of all life. We've talked about the pressures of daily living, and the disconcerting way in which the world seems to be spinning out of control. Whilst embracing all those topics, this book is, by extension, bigger than any of them. It's the whole picture in relation to life on earth - and earth before life as we know it.

Written by the scientist, Peter Russell, it's called 'Waking Up in Time'.
Let me whet your appetite with one of his opening contentions.

He asks us to envisage the evolution of the Earth as a year-long cinema epic. Seen in that time-scale, it isn’t until May that we glimpse the first emergence of the plant kingdom. Fish would appear in November, dinosaurs in December, and it would be just before Christmas that the dinosaurs would die out. Our early, ape-like ancestors would make their debut on New Year’s Eve, whilst human beings would delay their appearance until a quarter to midnight. That’s how long we’ve been here!

Now that man has arrived, just watch his progress in those final fifteen minutes! Human language doesn’t occur until the final five minutes, in the last minute farming begins, the first civilisations come thirty seconds later. Buddha achieves enlightenment seventeen seconds before the end, and Christ is born three seconds after that. The Renaissance, two World Wars and the Industrial Revolution rush past in four seconds. The world of the Internet is no more than a flash.

Now do you get this sense of how everything is moving faster and faster? How, with ever speedier, more innovative technology, the twenty-first century is rushing headlong towards . . . what?

Peter Russell charts this speeding up process which, as he sees it, is caused by the ever-increasing development of man’s mind, his acquisitive nature, and his manual dexterity. He charts the growth in population worldwide, the fact that today each one of us consumes, believe it or not, up to a thousand times as much of the world’s resources as a person living before the Industrial Revolution. Citing the rapid scientific developments in the past twenty years, he says (and who could disagree?) that no-one can possibly anticipate where this rapid acceleration will end, nor what the next ten years will produce.

But, take heart! Despite climate change, an exploding population, and our seemingly lemming-like charge to the cliff’s edge, this isn’t a scare story. It offers guidance and hope, has faith in the future, and is based on age-old spiritual truths. More than anything, as the title indicates, it's a wake-up call - a call for another evolution in the development of man, a major shift in consciousness if we are to survive.

Near the end of the book, Peter Russell quotes Teilhard de Chardin. I'd like to share the quotation with you.
“The day will come," he writes, "when, after harnessing the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

I was left feeling strangely invigorated. I also felt humbled. Humbled by the responsibility of being a 'human doing' here on earth who must, as soon as I possibly can, learn what it is to be a 'human being'.

Now . . . I've only given you a flavour of this outstanding book.
May I offer you a copy . . . ?