Spring has arrived!

The white stars of Magnolia Stellata

There's something wrong with the weather! I don't think I can recall such lovely warm weather on St Patrick's day. What comes to mind is watching the Dublin parade in sleet, with the long bare legs of a Florida girls' marching band turning blue with cold.

Winter is behind us now, spring is accelerating, and summer will come in its own good time. I count myself so very blessed to live in the country in a land with seasons, where every spring day brings something miraculously new. Already the first green shoots are showing on elder and whitethorn in the hedgerows and golden celandines glisten in shady places, a foretaste of summer abundance. Birdsong surrounds me on my morning walk, and nesting has begun - today I saw a chaffinch fly off with a feather for her nest. And as I write I am watching my neighbour’s mare with her foal cantering around her.

Prunus incisa 'Kojo-no-mai'

Another sign of spring is that I suddenly want to be out working in the garden again. I find it very difficult to work up enthusiasm to do so in winter, when so many jobs should have been done. Already the grass has had its first trim and manners have been put on the rambling roses. But now there is soil to be dug, overgrown beds to be cleared and hedges to be trimmed. Signs of spring’s advance are everywhere. The snowdrops and crocuses have been succeeded by daffodils, the snakes-head fritillaries are not far behind, and the tulips are poking their snouts up. The early cherries and forsythia are in full bloom, the first white stars have opened on Magnolia stellata, and the buds are bursting on the espalier pears.

Prunus subhirtella v Rosea

But we mustn't get ahead of ourselves: we still have two months to wait and prepare for summer – we might get a late frost as late as mid May to burn the shoots and ruin the fruit.

Darning Socks

Did you see the TV adaptations of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallender novels, with Kenneth Branagh as the Swedish detective? I found the gritty realism set against the beautiful flat landscape around Ystad quite compelling - so like the Cambridgeshire fen landscape of my childhood and my dreams. I'm looking forward to more of them, and Susanna has found a new literary enthusiasm in Wallender. A couple of days ago she read me this little extract from The Fifth Woman. Wallender is talking to his grown-up daughter Linda.

Linda poured herself some tea and suddenly asked him why it was so difficult to live in Sweden.
“Sometimes I think it’s because we’ve stopped darning our socks,” Wallander said. She gave him a perplexed look. “I mean it,” he continued. “When I was growing up, Sweden was still a country where people darned their socks. I even learned how to do it in school myself. Then suddenly one day it was over. Socks with holes in them were thrown out. No-one bothered to repair them. The whole society changed. ‘Wear it out and toss it’ was the only rule that applied. As long as it was just a matter of our socks, the change didn’t make much difference. But then it started to spread, until finally it became a kind of invisible moral code. I think it changed our view of right and wrong, of what you were allowed to do to other people and what you weren’t.”

My mother, God bless her, kept up the old ways - she was a champion knitter right up to her death, and for every family birthday, Christmas and Easter she produced new pairs of lovely woolly socks. I still have one pair left which I wear in my hiking boots, still intact because I don't use them very often. As a teenager and young adult it was an everyday task to darn socks, or sew a button on a shirt, but as Mankell observes like everyone else I have long since stopped doing so.

It's increasingly clear that our throw-away culture and the attitudes that go with it are unsustainable. We throw away things, and we throw away people too, where once we mended broken things, and cared for broken people. Is Wallander right to detect a link between all that and ceasing to darn?

Visitors

We had a mystery visitor yesterday: Susanna tells me that while I still slept she saw a bird drinking at the famine pot in the Labyrinth garden which she did not recognise. "Black on the head, back and wings like a cape, with white at the side of the throat, and a dove-grey underside, definitely not a magpie, and big, almost like a turkey or a goose", so she described it. "A Hooded Crow?" say I - but no, "Definitely not that", she said, when we looked at the picture in Collins' Birds of Britain & Europe, and she has since poured through every picture in the book without finding what she saw.

I suppose I was mulling over black and white birds at the back of my mind, because later that afternoon I heard a rapid, low drumming, and immediately thought it might be a very distant Woodpecker. Now that would be really exciting. Until recently we have had no native woodpeckers in Ireland. But Birdwatch Ireland say that a good many Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Dendrocopus major) have been seen here in recent years. They speculate that this species, common in Britain and mainland Europe, is about to colonise Ireland.

This morning I went out in my dressingown to see if the first asparagus is ready for picking - it is, just two spears, to be poached in a little butter to garnish poached eggs for breakfast tomorrow! Then, I heard the drumming again, in the direction of the house, and discovered I was mistaken. It was not a Woodpecker, but a frog calling from the little overgrown pond on the patio! I hadn't realised our common frog (Rana temporaria) had a mating call, and it wasn't very loud, but that was what I was hearing. I am delighted to have heard it. There were at least three frogs in the pond, and a large mass of frog spawn had been laid overnight - no doubt there will be even more tomorrow!

Common frogs (Rana temporaria) in a pond

We have had other visitors too recently. For about three days we had a pair of Common Redpolls (Carduelis flammea) feeding on the peanuts, a species I've not identified before. Their diagnostic black beards distinguish them from Linnets. They have gone now, so perhaps they were only passing through on their spring migration. And we have also had a few Siskins recently (Carduelis spinus), the first of the winter.

Redpoll, Carduelis flammea, Male

A View from the Pew - Reconfiguring Our Hospitals

View from the Pew is a regular column I write for Newslink, the Diocesan magazine for the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe. This one appeared in the March 2009 issue.

Concerned citizens listen in the rain at Nenagh Hospital Rally (photo Bridget Delaney)

What in the name of heaven is the HSE up to?
It has been an open secret that the HSE planned to ‘reconfigure’ acute public hospital services in the Mid-West. But they did not tell us - the people they are meant to serve – what this would mean until mid January. That was when they finally published a report by management consultants Teamwork and Howarth dated April 2008. And only then did they publicly announce they would remove services from Nenagh and Ennis General Hospitals and St John’s Limerick to the Mid-West Regional Hospital in Limerick: A&E is to go by April this year, acute surgery in July, and critical care services in 2010. In effect the smaller hospitals, which currently handle about half of acute admissions, will be converted to step-down and day-case/minor injury clinics, and acute admissions to the Regional Hospital will be doubled.

The case for reconfiguration
In so far as I understand the Teamwork/Howarth case for reconfiguration, it is that the present services are unsafe and unsustainable: unsafe, because there are too few consultants to provide adequate consultant supervision in all four hospitals; and unsustainable, because the workloads in the smaller hospitals do not justify employing more consultants or keeping operating theatre and intensive care units open around the clock. Teamwork/Howarth also says that doctors admit many patients who should not be in hospital, and do not discharge them early enough: acute beds can be cut, if doctors can be made to follow best practice clinical guidelines. In other words, they believe that the proposed reconfiguration will save money.

But they also claim that the changes will lead to: ‘much better patient experience and interaction with health care services; patients accessing more care at home and in their community setting; fewer patients spending unnecessary time visiting or being an in-patient in hospital; and safe and sustainable local and regional hospital services for patients, the population of the Mid-West, and for staff.’

Who could possibly object to all that? Better patient care and money saved too!

The case against
But I do not believe in the tooth fairy, and I do not trust the HSE reconfiguration plan. Here are some of the reasons why:

Reconfiguration of hospital services in the North East has been a disaster – Teamwork consultants advised the HSE there too. A&E services in Cavan, Monaghan and Navan hospitals were closed and transferred to Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda. As a result the Drogheda A&E service collapsed this winter, and the hospital was forced to suspend A&E services for a while. Following this crisis morale is very low, and many senior staff resigned in protest. The promised new regional hospital has been put on the long finger - local TD and minister Dermot Ahern said there isn’t a ‘red cent’ available to build it.

Howarth/Teamwork says clearly that reconfiguration in the Mid West will not succeed unless pre-requisites are met. These include more A&E consultants, more resources for primary care around the clock, enhanced ambulance services with advanced paramedics (they even mention air-ambulances!), urgent care/step down centres to take pressure off acute beds, and IT services to support electronic records and telemedicine. An earlier draft report is said to have called for 165 extra beds in Limerick Regional, but this is omitted from the published version. I suspect their HSE paymasters found this recommendation unacceptable.

These pre-requisites will cost money – a lot of it! Do we seriously believe the Department of Finance will provide it in this recession? The HSE claim they will provide sufficient advanced paramedics, though they are not in place yet. But the HSE is already cutting expenditure – as recently as 29th January the Mid-West Hospital Group manager John Hennessy said, “The 2009 budget allocation will require reconfiguration and service efficiencies in excess of €10 million”. The jargon is barbarous, but I think it means that reconfiguration is being rushed in now as a cost saving measure, and the costly pre-requisites will be ignored.

The HSE is forcing this plan through by stealth without consulting the public, hospital staff or GPs. Minister Harney refused to publish the plan earlier, admitting she feared it would engender opposition and prevent implementation. Consultants, doctors and nurses that I respect have publicly said that reconfiguration will harm their patients. And not one of 80 Mid-West GPs who recently attended an HSE briefing voted confidence in reconfiguration.

No wonder people are up in arms!
I attended a public meeting in Nenagh on 31st January, organised by the Nenagh Hospital Action Group at the request of Nenagh Town Council and Mayor Virginia O’Dowd. As least 1000 people turned out on a wet Saturday night, many standing outside in the rain because they could not get into the hall. They listened to doctors, patients, politicians from all parties and other speakers express their concern, even outrage, at how reconfiguration would affect Nenagh hospital.

Rev Marie Rowley-Brooke speaks her mind (photo Bridget Delaney)

Nenagh Rector Revd Marie Rowley-Brooke, as Church of Ireland Chaplain to the hospital, spoke from the floor of the healing benefits for patients being cared for in their own community surrounded by loved ones, something not factored in by HSE accountants. She expressed shock that unelected and unaccountable people were given the authority to impose ill thought out plans against the wishes of the community, threatening trust and the whole basis of our democracy.

Outrageously, although invited, no one from the HSE chose to attend and speak. Local Minister for Older People Maura Hoctor also disgraced herself by her absence.

I feel sure the people of Clare and Limerick are no less concerned than those of North Tipperary.

How should a Christian respond?
My own fury at the HSE attempt to ram this reconfiguration through must be obvious by now! It is not that I think change is unnecessary – after all medical science develops all the time and services must change accordingly, as they always have done. But I do believe these changes are ill-planned and dangerous. The public hospitals belong to us all, and the HSE has no right to proceed in this underhand, undemocratic way. All of us, but particularly the chronic sick, the vulnerable young and old, and those without private medical insurance, will pay the price if they succeed, I think.

The author expresses his opinion (photo Bridget Delaney)

My conscience tells me that I must resist the HSE plans, and that is what I intend to do. I shall go on the protest march planned for Saturday 21st February, where I confidently expect to join several thousand others. That will only be the start of a campaign which will continue until reconfiguration is rescinded. The ultimate decision will be a political one, and if the people are united I am sure we will prevail.

I shall also pray for the success of the campaign against reconfiguration. I may be on dangerous ground here. Some may feel it is wrong to invoke God’s help in what is a political campaign: much better Christians than I will take the opposite side. But I believe they are wrong, and I must obey my own conscience, as they should obey theirs. Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’ I think it is right and proper to pray for what we desire. But, like Jesus we must also pray that God’s will be done.

Spring and winter

One of the reasons I love this garden so much, I think, is because I find within it echoes of the wider world, of God’s world, while safely removed from its tumults.

This is a mild, sunny morning, the first real spring morning of the year, giving promise of the warmth and happiness to come after the recent cold snap and snow. The ordinary single and double snowdrops are bravely blooming, and the bigger Elwesii ones are just showing white. The early Crocus chrysanthus have opened wide in the sun with their bright orange stamens sparking fire from the cream of their petals. The pussy willow is shimmering with silver on bare twigs. We are past the worst of winter in the garden.

Not so in the wider world. The news is more desperate day by day. Each day thousands more job losses are announced, ordinary workers’ wages are being slashed, and their savings and pensions are evaporating. The economic winter is only beginning.

Today I found the clearest account I have yet read of the roots of the crisis, in the most surprising place – in a discussion paper put before the General Synod of the Church of England! In his short paper entitled ‘A brief account of the financial crisis’, Andreas Whittam Smith, former editor of British Independent newspaper and First Church Estates Commissioner, outlines the origins of the global bubble in credit and its recent collapse, de-leveraging in economist’s jargon. He concludes with stark pessimism:

Some 18 months since it began, this de-leveraging process is still under way and, if anything, gains in momentum. It is a doomsday machine. In my view, it explains almost everything: –
a. Why property prices continue to fall
b. Why any gains in stock market prices are quickly swamped by fresh selling
c. Why the banks find there is no end to the losses that they are incurring and that they thus constantly need re-financing
d. Why banks remain terrified and will engage in fresh lending only if the government forces them to do so or if it removes the risk.
The recession will continue until this process is over.

Read the full paper here.

In his fine speech introducing the subsequent debate, the Archbishop of York John Sentamu maps out a spiritual response to the crisis. He starts with an apposite quote to set the scene:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity".

(WB Yeats,'The Second Coming')

He goes on to describe a three fold movement - from orientation to dis-orientation and through to re-orientation – to map our journey through this economic and financial crisis. How we got here, where we are now, and where to aim for next. He finishes with words of hope:

We share a hope, born of the incarnation, which goes far beyond economic recovery. It reaches into the heart of every man, woman and child. Yes we lament our situation, but we do so knowing that our song will finish in hope: the hope in Christ's message to us. "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Do not be afraid". (Revelation 1:17-18).

Read the full speech here.

It would be nice to hear a bit more from our own Synod and House of Bishops!

Fascists in the Garden

Times have been hard in the garden this winter, and I am finding it difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the jobs that need to be done. But I did get out with a borrowed chain saw yesterday to cut up the Monterey cypress at the bottom of the garden - I still call it Cupressus macrocarpa, though systematic botanists now assign it to the genus Callitropsis. A full force 11 storm out of Scariff had caught it, and the main roots simply sheared through. It’s rather sad because we grew it from seed we collected at Monterey ourselves – planted out seven years ago, it was already 20 foot high with a base as thick as my thigh.

The ground is sodden from the heavy rain we have been having, which is my excuse for not having dug the vegetable ground. And the frosts have killed most of the Puya chilensis plants which have survived and flourished outdoors for 3 years. Somewhat like a Yucca with fierce backward-pointing spines, I saw its extraordinary 10 foot spike of acid lemon flowers on Tresco, where I got the seeds – it is said to be fertilised there by blackbirds, rather than the hummingbirds that do the job in Chile. Happily I still have three plants in the polytunnel, so I may yet be able to shock the neighbours with its phallic magnificence!

Female and male Blackcap warblers (Sylvia atricapilla)

Susannah continues to feed the small birds, but I am rather disturbed at the behaviour of the Blackcap warblers (Sylvia atricapilla). I was delighted to see a single male back in December, and more delighted still when he was joined by two females. They look rather demure and Quakerish dressed in pale grey, with the male sporting a black cap and the female a brown one. But they have now become very aggressive, constantly flying from one feeder to another to drive the other birds away, so much so that they eat very little themselves. No doubt they are selfishly determined to save a stock of food for themselves, but if only they would share there would be plenty for all, as Susannah will replenish whenever necessary.

This reminds me that it is also turning into a hard season for people. We are plainly entering an economic depression, which I fear will be as long and deep as the Great Depression of the 1930s. That released deeply selfish and destructive forces in Germany, the Blackshirts and Brownshirts of the Nazi movement, and the idolatry of leadership. Similar fascist movements sprang up in many other countries, including our own. How like our warblers with their black and brown caps! I detect similar forces on the rise today, even in Ireland, with the growing media clamour for leadership.

The forces of the right are trying to drive a wedge between private and public sector workers. Already the Government has effectively moved to cut public sector pay through the so-called pensions levy (many of those effected aren’t eligible for a pension). Private sector employers will follow this up with demands to cut private sector pay, which workers will find difficult to resist as unemployment grows. Reduced wages and unemployment will bring reduced spending and cuts in essential services and benefits, and a vicious circle of rising unemployment, falling spending and ever deeper cuts. This is what happened in the 1930s when social cohesion collapsed. Have we learned nothing?

A View from the pew - Eyeless in Gaza

View from the Pew is a series of articles I am writing for Newslink, the Diocesan magazine for the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe. This one appeared in the February 2009 issue.

Gaza under bombardment

Smoke billows from the Gaza Strip following Israeli air strikes, as seen from the northern Israeli border with the Palestinian territory on December 27, 2008.

As I write, on the 17th day of the Israeli offensive, the brutal bombardment of Gaza continues as Israeli troops push forward into the city of 1.5 million, while in a futile gesture Palestinian fighters continue to fire small numbers of improvised rockets at civilians in southern Israel. According to the latest reports, 908 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and thousands wounded, including many civilians; 13 Israelis are dead, mostly soldiers from ‘friendly’ fire, but also 4 civilians in rocket attacks. The disproportion in the death toll ought to shock us all. Please God both sides will agree to a ceasefire long before you read this article. That will halt the deaths, but the wounded will still need to be cared for and the damage repaired.

Holocaust, Naqba and Terrorism

We are witnessing the latest battle in a war which started in 1948, the year I was born. It is tragic that Jewish people, who suffered so much in the Holocaust, should themselves inflict another historic injustice on Palestinians, around 250,000 of whom are Christian, including about 7,000 Anglicans.

Nazis and other anti-semites murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. It is seared into the Israeli national psyche. This, and the reality of their encirclement by enemies, stiffens Israeli determination to preserve the security of their state, and no wonder. I do not doubt that Israel would use its nuclear weapons in the face of defeat, much as Samson brought down the roof on the the heads of both the Philistines and himself.

But the Palestinians too have suffered a national catastrophe, which they call the Naqba in Arabic. In 1948, some 750,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, to become refugees in Gaza, the West Bank and neighbouring countries. Their land and houses were taken over by around 900,000 Jewish settlers, refugees from Europe and immigrants from elsewhere. And Arab land is still being seized for Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Palestinian refugees and their descendents, now more than 4 million, continue to cry out for redress, and the right to return home. Is it any wonder that they continue to resist Israel?

Unable to challenge the Israeli army supplied with high-tech weapons by the USA, many Palestinians have fought back in successive rebellions or intifadas, targeting Israeli civilians with improvised weapons and suicide bombs. Such terrorist tactics are wicked of course, and we know all too much about such evils on this island.

But let us not forget that the Israeli state is also stained by terror. After WW2 the Irgun fought a bloody terrorist campaign to force British withdrawal and establish a Jewish state. My father, a British army chaplain in Palestine, remembered with horror the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which killed 91 people, mostly civilians. The Israeli army used terror deliberately in 1948 to force Palestinians out. And terrorism is surely the precise word for the continuing communal punishments and targetted assassinations. Israeli terror is just as wicked as Palestinian.

An eye for an eye

Both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, have been locked in an escalating cycle of fear, anger and violence for 40 years. ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’, said Gandhi. In Samson Agonistes, the poet John Milton describes the Israelite super-hero Samson as ‘eyeless in Gaza’. Is this to be the fate of both the Israelis and the Palestinians?

It need not be. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘you have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.’ This is the only way to break the vicious circle. Our own experience in Ireland shows it is possible for deeply divided people to find a way to live together in peace. It may seem that we as individuals in Ireland can do nothing to help, but we can.

Firstly, we can pray for all those who are working for peace in Israel and Palestine. Our prayers will encourage them, and strengthen our own resolve to help.

Secondly, we can support our Irish Government’s diplomatic efforts to bring both sides to see the futility of their actions and seek another way.

And thirdly we can help in practical ways. A good way to do so is to send money to our fellow Anglicans already working on the ground to relieve distress among Palestinians of all faiths. Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem Suheil Dawani has asked both for our prayers and for financial support for Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza, run by the Diocese of Jerusalem.

A recent report from Al Ahli Hospital, Gaza

We continue to receive and care for up to 40 new patients each day who are injured, wounded, or burned from the current conflict, requiring hospital admission and surgery, as well as up to 15 referrals from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. This increased surgical load places strains on anaesthetics, suture material, operating room linens and equipment, bandages, and surgeons themselves. Staff, some of whom stay in the hospital round the clock, are working long hours without rest and struggle against exhaustion.

The hospital is short of fuel to continue operating the electrical generator. Without fuel the hospital would have no electricity, greatly impacting its ability to operate. Glass in the hospital was shattered by nearby rocket and missile strikes. The windows are temporarily covered with plastic rubbish bags until plastic sheeting becomes available for better protection from the cold. Food is desperately needed. Our efforts are focused on providing nutrition for the most vulnerable people, like children and nursing mothers. The Diocese is providing the cash necessary for Al Ahli to carry out its work and is also guaranteeing debts incurred by the hospital.

Here is a picture of Mohan’nad, a 9 year-old boy, who’s badly injured leg the doctors and staff at Al Ahli were able to save, thank God.

You can donate on-line at the Diocese of Jerusalem’s web site: http://www.j-diocese.org.

Please give generously!