In God's Own Country

You may believe in one God or in many. You may believe in none at all. Whatever. The idea of a Garden of Eden is embedded in many cultures by one name or another. A place apart, of fruitfulness and comfort and beauty, from which humans were barred and to which they might return. A promised land, a place of milk and honey and fresh food, free from junk mail, messy drunks and self-righteous anti-alcohol campaigners. A place where you could have whatever you fancied and not feel bad next day. Heaven, in other words.

For many millennia, displacement and migration have been the central experience of humans across the earth, and the image of this paradise, this place of perfect comfort, peace and fecundity has been seductive.
But where is it?
Everyone has a view. The Zionists thought for a long time that it was in what we now know as Zimbabwe. The Shakers thought it was in New Hampshire. Most people think it’s in California somewhere. And, apparently, some people from other parts of the world think it’s here.

Personally, for a long time I have thought it was in the Douro valley in Portugal, or in Northern Spain (perhaps in Rioja, rather than Cataloña) or in France, most likely in Languedoc.
However, friends have disagreed. One, who is an inveterate clubber swore by Ibiza (true!) for years. The Greek islands have very many adherents. Essouaria on Morocco’s Atlantic coast is pretty cool. Farther afield, there’s Sri Lanka, Bali, Tahiti, Thailand. The list is endless. Ya pays yer money and ya takes your choice. And nowadays we can, and we do.
But I’m beginning to doubt. Each of these places has been hammered in recent times, by bombs, in the case of Bali, or by weather, in the case of most of the others.
Truth to tell, Mediterranean Europe has been pretty hellish these past weeks. Fifty people or more have died from heat stroke or heart attacks brought on by the heat. Then, there’s the forest fires…

In fact, this may be the hottest year ever, period.
This is not good news. For example, the Alps have started to melt, literally. There were huge avalanches on the Matterhorn in mid-July. After one of these, 70 climbers had to be rescued.
The problem is that the Alps are held together by permafrost, and it’s melting. The upper reaches of the highest mountains are made of loose scree, clay and ice. Take away the ice and…
Well, you’ll have avalanches. Ski runs are at risk. Even the stanchions they use for ski lifts are unreliable now. They’re driven into the permafrost. Which is fine as long as that stays frozen. But if it melts…
Also, of course, glaciers are starting to shrink. They have watered millions of hectares of crops for millennia. When they go, we got trouble.
Elsewhere, it may not be the heat (which is there anyway), it may be human pomps and circumstances. Like in Africa. Anywhere…pick one. Is there a stable democracy anywhere in Africa? Yes, South Africa seems to have the basis to become a beacon of light, but so too, once, did Zimbabwe.

And, as Bob Geldof and others keep reminding us, famine and pestilence are never far away either, in Ethiopia and Somalia, in particular.
We Irish have a curious relationship with Africa. Never imperialists in our own right, many of us were part of Britain’s imperial campaigns. Others were ardent warriors in God’s armies, striving to win the souls of the black babies to the one holy and apostolic church.
The missions represent a different kind of imperialism, but imperialism nonetheless. I do not doubt that good work was done. But much good was also undone. What the armies and functionaries of Europe did to their politics, the legions of Christ did to their spiritual lives.
And we still haven’t changed that much. The keepers of capitalism’s coffers want to keep Africa enslaved. The imperialists want to keep Africa’s states as clients. And, though formal religion has declined greatly, many moral crusaders still want to be taking care of Africans (and others) as though Africans haven’t worked out how to do it themselves.

But I digress. Today, I had a job done by Telecom Eireann, and none of the crew was Irish. One was from the UK, a second was North African and the third was African. It’s all change. And Ireland, for all the corruption and Western arrogance, is actually a pretty robust democracy, it’s relatively rich and it pays well. Furthermore, as we have seen in recent weeks, even when Europe bakes, it’s still about right here.

You can see why people might think of it as God’s own country. Why we can’t see it like that ourselves is a matter of interest. We have low expectations of our country, our environment and our politicians. And they often oblige. Maybe if we saw what we have through the eyes of those who don’t have what we have, we might prompt it towards becoming what we know it can be…a land of milk and honey and, crucially, whatever you’re having yourself.
The Hog