Elusive Peace

Waiting, waiting, waiting, to hear from a dear friend on the other side of the world, who may be dead as I write this. Not for the first time this week I'll be keeping her in my prayers tonight, and I ask our readers to say a small prayer of their own on behalf of a kind soul who seems to be giving up, in despair of ever rising above her tragic circumstances. While you're at it, maybe add a small prayer for me, if it's not too late, to find the words that may yet stay her hand from the final choice I fear she is poised to take for herself.

Still no answer today to my last letter. Of course, there's a million possible reasons why, you tell yourself; maybe that friend she mentioned is helping her. Maybe she's been successfully cheered up, and wants some time to steady herself before writing back. Maybe she'll even send one of her excrutiatingly bad jokes, like in the old days.

Or maybe she's finally given up on her dreams, buried by one burden too many... one too many obstacles to climb.

We're as much cursed as we are blessed with the potential to imagine a tantalizing crossroads between restlessness, pride, patience and forgiveness, that, like walking towards a rainbow, we seem able to approach, yet never reach; we feel the shadow of a promised peace, yet rarely the peace itself.

I guess that's why we so desperately need certain stories, pushing us onward, a whisper carried on the wind, to remember, friend, remember...

Remember to live in hope for a less elusive peace.

After the ball

At our last Thursday meeting, Charles was remarking how if you look at the legions of young people who flock to Obama, what is remarkable are the faces that look as if this man is the last best hope for mankind (not his exact words, I hope i get the gist of the observation right, Charles): in our age when nihilism and relativism is preached in the classrooms, it's almost as if young people have gotten to the point where nothing good in the world can be believed, but Obama.

This led to a discussion of the likelihood of suicide rates going up in the Obama era as young people see their faith in The One come to terms with a human reality in which the Messiah has not yet returned to earth and we remain stuck with all the usual folly, and maybe worse.

McCain may still win, for all I know, and we can look forward, among other things, to Bush Derangement Syndrome taken to the nth degree.

The optimistic necessity about an Obama presidency is that given the current economic climate, and the nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, it is very likely to be a time of crisis and crisis spells opportunity for those who really know something of the need for new directions.

One new direction, it seemed to me at our discussion, is for someone who can effectively preach to young people, after Obama, the nature of real hope and change. Maybe Thomas Sowell is our man, for he sees right through the vanities of the young person:

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.

The signs of Barack Obama's self-centered immaturity are painfully obvious, though ignored by true believers who have poured their hopes into him, and by the media who just want the symbolism and the ideology that Obama represents.

The triumphal tour of world capitals and photo-op meetings with world leaders by someone who, after all, was still merely a candidate, is just one sign of this self-centered immaturity.

One of my insights into the eternal student was when he visited Iraq. Visiting with the Prime Minister of that country, the two men entered a hall of reporters for a photo op. As is the norm, there were two chairs for the men to sit in and put on a show of discussion. It was the mere visiting Senator from Illinois who made the ritual gesture of inviting the leader of Iraq to have a seat. A cocksure sign, but not exactly a sign of confidence in the guy who will be left holding the bag if Obama rushes too quickly to pull the troops out.

UK's Suicide Sculpture "Celebrates Life", Says Sculptor

More news from a culture besotted with the poison of nihilism: next year commuters in London will get to see "art" depicting a guy being run over by a train:

Rail passengers at London’s St Pancras International station are to be greeted by a work of art depicting a commuter falling into the path of a train driven by a Grim Reaper figure.
The macabre image will appear on a bronze relief frieze at the base of The Meeting Place, the 30ft statue of an embracing couple.
Paul Day, the sculptor, said he was trying to be “truthful” about the human condition and described his images as “a celebration of life”. London & Continental Railways, the station’s owner, said it wanted the work to be “a talking point”.
The frieze has been condemned by families of rail suicide victims and transport unions. Last year almost 200 people took their own lives on Britain’s railways. Paul Smith, whose daughter Rosie, 18, threw herself in front of a Tube train last August, said: “It’s insensitive.”

Insensitive is the most polite term to use for such blatant attempts to inject yet more misery into this suffering world. Sculptor Paul Day's defense of his proposed sculpture is the kind of nihilistic sophistry an artist is reduced to when they recuse themselves from morality. Of all places to exhibit visual images of people committing suicide by jumping in front of a train, the most aggrieving place to display them would be in an actual railway station!

Day, however, claimed the frieze was a deliberate contrast to the “ideal” of the towering lovers embracing above. “It is about daily life – about the hopes and fears, the loves, the joys, the loss and tragedy that are bubbling along together in human life,” he said.
The bronze relief will feature a variety of scenes depicting life on the railways, including images of soldiers going to war and emergency workers dealing with the 7/7 bombings.
“If certain images cause a small amount of offence, I’m sure that will be heavily compensated for by a sense of joy . . . that the other images will give,” said Day. “It’s balance, it’s contrast. The overall effect, I think, will be very positive.”
...

Of all people, an artist should be perceptive enough to be able to see into the human heart and observe that the degree of "offence" caused by such reminders will be anything but "small".

Last night Kate Redway of the Samaritans said: “It’s really important that any images don’t portray suicide methods. Research has shown that it can lead to an increase in copycat deaths, particularly among young, vulnerable people.”
Rail union bosses called for the frieze to be scrapped. “Every train driver in this country will be sickened by this image,” said Keith Norman, general secretary of Aslef. “A body lying under their wheels is the dark cloud that troubles drivers’ every working day. To see these respectable, professional men and women portrayed as agents of death is insulting, facile and malicious.”

What is art, if it is not a celebration of life? The very art of living life itself should be one of celebration, but the "party" should be seen as the middle stage: we have been given the precious gift of life, therefore we show our appreciation for that gift, so that by how we use that gift we grant meaning to the life we've been given. When you take out the first and third parts of this formula, you're left with art that celebrates nothing more than the vanity of the artist himself... and his self-obsessed sponsors:

LCR said: “... [The frieze] will be a talking point and that is testament to the character of St Pancras International and to this bold commission.”

The Short Path

It took only a few seconds to walk the short distance from my seat to the podium that faced the multitude gathered for the funeral. A few steps that, days before, I could never imagine I would have to walk. Once I got to the podium, it was to be my turn to deliver my eulogy for the individual whose body was lying in repose a few short steps away from me; my turn to say a few words to a room packed with total strangers, about the young man I knew who took his own young life a few short days before.

They weren’t all total strangers, to be honest; I had met the young man’s mother the previous week, when they arrived to perform the grim task of collecting my dead co-worker’s possessions from his locker. I was his immediate supervisor, so I was the one that had taken the initial phone call from the mother, I was the first one at work to hear than her son, her oldest child, a brother with many younger sisters, had killed himself. Like too many young people today, he had chosen a short walk to a final destination, from where there was no turning back. His mother had made arrangements with me to come and collect his personal effects from work… one of the many unexpected details she now found herself dealing with that terrible week.

The shock of the news of his suicide kept me in a complete daze as I solemnly packed up his things for his mom to take home. I found myself constantly pausing in mid-stride, as though lost in a fog. Why did he do it? Why do they ever do it? Could I have known, should I have seen, that he was thinking about this kind of choice? Was there something I could have said, something I should have done, to persuade him to follow a different path? No answers were coming, probably none would ever come; ultimately he walked alone, across a solitary journey guided by thoughts he chose to share with no other, not even his own mother. Somehow I kept busy, because I had a job to do, for her.

Like in an old movie musical, there were words in the air as I worked, unheard by passersby but loud as church bells to me: "You Can’t Take It With You", went the ghoulish refrain, repeated over and over again. As I gathered the assorted things I found there, I remembered all the books, films, albums, clothes and other material possessions I myself had ever desired in my own life, the many things I had doggedly collected over the years, dragging them around from one side of the country to the other in my travels. By the time I had finished assembling his stuff, helpfully sorting it into themed piles for his family’s later convenience, I doubted I would ever "desire" any material thing, for myself, ever again. Closing the last box, turning to stare at the empty space behind me was a stark reinforcement of the lesson we waste too much of our lives coming to understand.

I re-learned it yet again as I walked up to the podium to deliver my eulogy, for in doing so I needed to walk past the body of the person whose locker now lies empty.

You can’t take it with you…

When his mother had visited us to collect her late son’s things, I volunteered to carry the heavier of the boxes out the building for her, trying to find a way to ease her physical burden so that she’d be better able to shoulder her spiritual one. She assured me she was fine, the car was just around the corner, so it was only a short walk. "If I could carry four kids", she said softly, more to herself than to me, "then I can carry this".

Time was pressing for her, but she did linger long enough for me to stumble through a few improvised, heartfelt condolences. I guess I made a good first impression, because based on only that short talk she perked up to ask me if I could please repeat those same sentiments at the funeral taking place the following week. For her, I certainly would.

My co-worker had never mentioned his mother, in fact his passing made me realize that for all the time I had spent with him he might as well have been a total stranger to me. When I would work with him I always thought I was seeing a younger version of myself, and in a way I suppose I did, the bad as well as the good; I saw the older version of me that outlived his faith, the version of me who once only believed in a short path, with a clear, empty conclusion, not the winding, twisting, unknowable trail that I lived to believe life really offers us, with its final destination wreathed in impenetrable fog, if we could grow the patient perception to see it as it truly is.

I stopped being that kind of person years ago, and standing at that podium for my turn to eulogize my former co-worker, facing a silent audience filled with faces deprived of any light of hope, I heard a five minute speech that would have sounded strange indeed to the young man I myself used to be. Strange experience; I felt as if I wasn’t the one doing the talking at all, I felt as if I was with the audience, watching what I was going to do, listening for what I was going to say, just as they were. In a way, I was; I never did get a firm idea of what one earth I could possibly say once I got up there. I didn’t really know until I looked into the crowd, and from them I saw what needing saying, saw what was missing, in myself as well as them, at this unfathomable moment in time: how to live in hope.

"How did it go?", I was asked by the rest of the team when I returned to work that afternoon. How in the world do you answer such a question, from an event like that? Well, once the service itself came to a close, we ceremoniously filed past the grieving family, one at a time. The sister thanked me so movingly that it was all I could do not to cry right there in front of her. "I hope that my talk helped", I sincerely asked his mother, next in line. "That was so wonderful, that will help so-o-o much", his mother answered back through a combination of smiles and tears that I’ll never forget, granting me the greatest compliment I'd ever received.

My "turn" completed, I started to move along, yet I kept my eyes locked with hers, wanting to soak up more of that strength. Suddenly some spark lit up within her, and she reached out one more time for my hand, and I took one short step back for a final, silent embrace that spoke more eloquently about the paths we choose for ourselves than any speech I could have made or any blog post I ever could have written.

How did it go? It was like how life goes: you try and do your best with what you've got.

This whole sad nightmare makes me think about how far even our short lives can take us. All it takes is that first step, that first act of faith, the attempt to live with the doubt that we can never truly know whether there might yet exist a better tomorrow than the yesterday we leave behind us. If we choose to imagine a long enough path, who’s to say that the painful memories that weigh upon us on our travels might not eventually become as wrapped in fog as any of the ambiguous shapes lying in wait for us, in impenetrable fogs of their own, along the winding road ahead.

More analysis of Normal Schizophrenic Canadian Vacationing in Denver Found Dead with Pound of Cyanide, Not a Jihadi

Dag wrote about the "Normal Schizophrenic Canadian" tourist here.

Pastorius at IBA has posted the latest analysis from Ilana Freedman:

Denver Police have closed their investigation into the mysterious death of an indigent man in a suite of a luxury Denver hotel. They announced that his death was suicide, and that there was no link to terrorism. An FBI spokesman has also stated that the incident has no apparent terrorism connection.

The man was Saleman Abdirahman Dirie and, the coroner's verdict notwithstanding, his death raises far more questions than have been answered by the Denver police, who seemed quite happy to wash their hands of the whole affair. But the story surrounding Dirie's death is bizarre, and needs to be unraveled.

The facts, as far as they have been released, are these: Saleman Abdirahman Dirie was a 29-year-old Canadian citizen, a Muslim, and a former refugee from Somalia with no visible means of support and no money. He came to Denver from Ottawa by bus and checked into an upscale hotel (where the least expensive rooms rent for nearly $250 a night) for which he paid cash. There are reports that several thousand dollars in cash were also found in his room. He was not seen again until his body was found six days later next to a one pound jar of sodium cyanide crystals.

Read the whole thing...

Sudden Suicides Continue In Bridgend

"We just don't understand what is going on in Bridgen", says a relative of a young lady who was found hanging in her bathroom.

20-year old Kelly Stephenson was one of three more young people that have killed themselves in the small Welsh town of Bridgend, a nightmare story continuing from our earlier post in January of this year.

Two cousins hung themselves last week. A 16-year old girl hung herself Tuesday.

The London Times talks to "A senior social worker who knows the area well", but no answers seem forthcoming:

"These deaths come out of the blue, without any explanation. It could be a sort of copycat thing, and the net is a likely target. From the cases I’ve been involved with it seems that young people are killing themselves as an extreme reaction to everyday things. They’re not being bullied, they’re not in high-achieving families where they feel they’ve failed. It’s as though they do it without expecting any consequences, and that’s hard to understand."

The UK paper The Mirror talked to many residents of the area who personally knew the kids who hung themselves:

A friend of Kelly's named Rosie said: "It's going crazy in Bridgend and it's not going to stop. No one can understand what is going on."I know seven of the people who killed themselves. People are saying it's got something to do with the internet but I don't believe that. But then I can't explain it either.
"Everyone is talking about Kelly's death. It's awful. I saw her a month ago and she was fine, smiling and laughing."

Yahoo news has some details on this week’s horrible hanging:

Police identified Jenna Parry, 16, as the latest victim. Her body was found hanging from a tree in the woods by a passer-by walking his dog in the village of Cefn Cribwr, five miles from Bridgend.

The papers have quotes from many friends and relatives, many acquaintances and co-workers of the youth that committed suicide. The kids who hung themselves were often even
friends with each other. So it seems safe to presume they did not kill themselves from loneliness.

I read the unnamed social worker's insights with great, overwhelming sadness. Is a generation being raised to view the precious gift of life as such a trivial blessing that they could toss it away with such impunity..? Do they find no treasure in having a family that loves them? Don't they realize how few people can boast of having wealth of that value? What do they understand of "friendship" that having so many friends fuels no sense of obligation, no sense of service, and so little sense of gratitude, towards those friends? Don't they know how many teens are scraping by without any friends at all, and how delighted they would probably be to have half as many as these kids reaching for their hangman's noose?

If someone grows up without family, without friends, they can still live a meaningful life, so long as they live with faith, the belief that life itself is worth living. From that affirming, positive belief you can attract and find friends, you can create and enlarge a family, you can build everything that is truly of lasting value. When cynicism and nihilism exhale their poisons, belching worse pollution than anything that ever came out of a Welsh mining town, you get the bitter fruit from that tree of "knowledge": the conviction that the nullity of death should be the "life" most worth "living".

Godspeed to those left behind, may this be the last of these terrible stories to come out of Bridgend.

Why Are So Many Welsh Teens Killing Themselves?

"She was a lovely girl from a lovely family," said Michael Tapner, a 57-year-old family friend and retired coal miner. "I blame the environment. There is nothing for the kids to do, no place to go, nothing."
This was one citizen's reaction to the recent death of yet another teenager in a small Welsh town. She was found hanging in her bedroom.

Her death last Thursday was the latest in at least seven apparent copycat suicides in Bridgend, South Wales, that have alarmed parents, health authorities and police, who believe that they may be prompted by messages on social networking websites such as Bebo.
...
In the 12 months before Tasha’s death, six young men from Bridgend and the surrounding area had killed themselves. Most were known to each other. This month Tasha attended the funeral of 20-year-old Liam Clarke, who was found hanged in a local park the day after Boxing Day.
...
Copycat suicides are a well-known phenomenon but in Bridgend the tributes left on websites such as Bebo appear to have had a significant impact. Friends have set up memorial pages where wellwishers have posted messages or bought virtual “tablets” in a remembrance wall. The 19 tablets on Tasha’s memorial page include the messages “RIP chick”, “Sleep Tight Princess” and “Sweet dreams, Angel”.
...
One officer [of the South Wales Police] said: “They may think it’s cool to have a memorial website. It may even be a way of achieving prestige among their peer group.”

South Wales already had one of the worst suicide rates for young people. Tasha, who called herself “Wildchild”, was not the only one to spend hours each day on the internet in a world about which their parents knew little.
...
Melanie Davies’s son, Thomas, was the third young person from the area to kill himself last year. Mrs Davies, 38, said: “One of his friends told me that they feel these kids seem to be copying each other . . . so many of them are hanging themselves.”

I don't think that the kids in this story are killing themselves because they belong to some kind of internet suicide club. I think it is just that self-destruction is the natural result of self-obsession. The paradox of modern times is that we possess the means to interact with others to an unprecedented degree, we posses the means to continually nourish a curiosity about the world we live in, and yet we avail ourselves as little as possible of these resources… We are turned in towards ourselves. The initiative that would connect us to our world, launching us into pursuing conversations, careers, families, is increasingly missing in people’s lives. The young, usually so curious about their world, are today the most jaded; the young, usually the most optimistic about the future, are today the most cynical. Is there something that they are learning, or is there something that they are not being taught, that is causing this change?

Why are they disconnecting themselves from each other, and from us?

The teenage years are always so filled with disillusionment, as old visions fall to make room for new revelations. If a life is too turned in towards itself, how does it survive the continual humiliations that the trials of life place upon it? The lifelines of a parent’s love, a sibling’s support, and a shared belief system focused on the long-term rather than the short-term… these used to be commonly available resources, yet now seem as scarce as the depleted natural resources in mining towns like Bridgend.

Seneca once said, “To Wish To Be Cured Is Part Of The Cure”… reading the comments section accompanying this story in the UK press, I get the sense that the United Kingdom my family came from has been replaced by one depleted of its most treasured resource: a belief system that allows them to connect and interact with others. North Americans are posting comments like these:

Praying for their families. This is so sad and tragic.

Pam, Sheridan, Wyoming

My heart is broken for the families and friends of these sad and misguided young people. That they can't see they have been born into the best of times compared to their ancestors is so sad. They have all the chances that millions want and they end it for who knows what reasons. Yes, the world looks bleak, yes it is hard but we could go back and find it a thousand times harder in the past. God Bless the families in their anguish.

Patricia Anne, Cannington, Canada

…And this is the typical response these sentiments are met with:

I believe you 'Jesus' loving 'North Americans' would be better off spreading the word in places like Clark County, or Las Vegas, than in South Wales.

Fr Tim, Blackpool, Lancashire

Thank you, American Jesus devotees, for making me laugh. ...

Howard, Manchester

I fail to see how faith in the man on the cross can help anyone. sending people to worship a fake god is more likely to send them over the edge if you ask me!

Karen , Northampton, Northamptonshire

The modern-day UK... a Kingdom United by... what, exactly?

[For another, even more harrowing teen suicide story, read about this case in France last year.]

French teens in suicidal leap of faith

"What its children become, that will the community become."
___Suzanne Lafollette

From France, a story as sad as it is horrible, courtesy of the Guardian: French police are investigating the suicide of two teenage girls who tied themselves together and leapt from the 17th storey of a tower block while their horrified boyfriends watched.

... The girls, named only as Marion and Virginie, had apparently carefully prepared their deaths and had intended their boyfriends, Ben and Julien, to witness the event. The two friends had gone to a relative's flat and told the two boys to wait in the living room while they prepared a "surprise".

One of them called out from the bedroom: "OK, come in." Ben opened the door. Marion and Virginie were standing on the window sill, their hands tied together. They smiled. And jumped.

...
"They dressed the same, always black, lots of make-up, and they liked the same music, Marilyn Manson, goth rock, metal ..."
...
The handwritten note found in her pocket said: "Life is not worth living."

This story has level upon level of horror. For a young teenager to choose to kill herself is terrible enough, for two friendly youngsters to plot to kill each other is worse still, and for them to strain their youthful ingenuity to abandon life through a ritualized finale calculated to cause as much pain and despair as possible for their family and friends, such is a nightmare sufficient to shatter the mind of those who once loved them. What future now for the two boys who witnessed the girls' leap off that window ledge... what kind of lives will they choose to lead, in the shadow of this memory?
What does it teach the soul of those left behind, to remember their loved one choosing to die, not with an apology on their lips, but with a smile?

One suspects that all of us have, in one form or another, stood at crossroads as real or figurative as the ledge which these teenage girls found themselves poised to leap from, on that fateful September day. Every such crossroads suggests two paths, one leading to an immediate end, the other a deferment to an uncertain end at an uncertain time. To choose the path to an immediate end requires a strong and committed faith that such a choice is the lesser of evils, indeed a better choice than the unknown one hidden behind an unclear horizon.

For those who climbed down from such immediate ends, swallowing their pride and admitting that their initial choice may have been the wrong one, there may come the blessing of humility, born of memory, nurtured through gratitude, and culminating in long-term, big-picture thinking, seeing one’s life as a single thread woven inside a wider tapestry. To climb down and embrace life is to painfully admit you don’t know everything; to leap out the window is to presume that you do.

In our narrow conceit we like to pretend that none have ever suffered as we might be suffering, we deny that anyone living before us could have ever endured hardship as we have been made to endure it. Our blinding arrogance and willful ignorance push us step by step onto the ledge, lending us the necessary strength of will to walk that last mile, and the endurance to persevere to that last step, the smallest in physical space yet the largest leap of faith. For it's as much an act of faith to jump off as it is to step back, each choice ultimately derived from belief without proof, just conviction.

There does come a time in our lives, seemingly in our teenage years, when we grow to recognize that life ends in death. Like a smug theater patron seeing a film for the second time amidst an audience of "newbies", there comes a temptation for teens to rub this grim foreknowledge in the faces of those older fellows who, seemingly, live unaware of the reality discovered by the younger teenager. Like mourners in any culture, the teenagers ritually clad themselves in black to mourn the loss of the innocence they leave behind in their youth, and face the decision we all must make, as we learn of death waiting for us at the end of the trail. If all paths only serve to lead to the same destination, then why make the sacrificial effort to live a good life at all? If all physical things die soon anyway, what difference does the extra time make? When earnestly followed, such thoughts naturally lead to a blind faith in nihilism, the cynical brand of wisdom, which, if honestly adhered to, can only lead to suicide.

What, then, would make someone turn from the ledge, taking an equally small step in material space, to climb down and find a reason to live? This other “leap” of faith, straining to find positive meaning in life, is the much harder choice of the two options... no wonder the cynical nihilists mock it with such ferocity; who likes to admit they're a coward? It is not natural to be optimistic, knowing as we do full well that everybody we share our lives with will someday die, that every thing we make will someday rot into dust, our physical shells often the first to go. Where in nature would the imagination to have faith in a meaningful, and even joyful, existence come from? The faith to see one’s life as a precious gift, not as a curse?
Such faith is second nature... learned behavior. Learned most effectively through experiencing the humbling covenant of Family.

An expression I heard all too often when I was young was to "act your age!", which to my young mind always seemed an admonition to act older than I actually was, to demand of us a little more than you felt prepared to give... making us reach above and out of ourselves, teaching the mind to discipline the body as it struggles to negotiate with needs besides its own.

We used to teach that the covenant of Family was the grappling hook that you could toss into a distant cloud and it might, it should, carry you along into the future. Your individual present was rooted in memory of the family's past, through the presence in your life of parents and grandparents, a lineage leaving you more able to penetrate a clouded horizon to imagine your own self eventually growing as a parent and grandparent in your own turn, learning from their example.

Near its conclusion the path to that distant horizon may be cloudy, but not nearly as much as the one step closer at hand. A step away, one can create a new target to aim for, and progress towards. As we progress the fog ahead shifts, new objectives emerge, forcing our plans to adapt once more, as we renew our search for reasons to choose to survive. One never “knows” whether the march will pay off, one can only believe that it will, and act on that belief.

The knowledge awaiting the teenager is that the path never concludes, for at the end of our line we, hopefully, leave behind lives that help others come down off their ledge, take up where we leave off, and set out from the point at which our faith brought us… God willing, a point far enough along to save their lights from extinguishing themselves through the blind faith of nihilism.