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“Limiting cross-contamination of medication people can take is a slightly grey area because it’s regarding antidepressants and mental health,” the trainer said. “You can’t stop people taking medication and also people don’t have to declare to you that they are taking medication. You can ask, which we now do, but they don’t have to explain that if they don’t want to, which I fully appreciate.”
Being fans of the books and various dramatizations of “Wurzel Gummidge” – we were thrilled to lean of a local (Northants) “Scarecrow Course” sponsored by the Labour government as a job creation scheme. As this is a wealthy area – the local landowners are always on the look-out for suitable candidates for this partly government funded training course. Initially, we had to watch all the Jeepers Creepers films and learn to run smoothly through the corn fields.
This may be due to the Celtic traditions developing within heavily forested areas prior to the arrival of the Romans – who cleared trees to build their straight roads. Romans also cleared forested areas to create farming fields – so open fields were “foreign” to the British Celts. The Druids are reported as detesting the Roman habit of destroying the sacred woods (the Druids and their Celtic Army were finally beaten by the Romans at the Battle of Anglesey circa 60 CE – the last time “magic” was known to have been used on a British battlefield). During these times, crops were planted within the safety of the forested-canopy – where the Gods of Fertility operated more or less unaffected by the wild birds. Wide, open fields were not yet accepted as “British”. It might have even been the case that Celtic farmers came to some arrangement with the wild birds – setting aside some food for them so that everyone got on without conflict. There was 800-years between the Romans (5th century CE) leaving and the plague creating the conditions that led to the development of the modern British Scarecrow (14th century CE).
Furthermore, it is alarming to read of the primitive blood feuds described as forming the general historical context surrounding this important and epoch-changing discovery – being every bit as brutal and primitive as the murders routinely carried-out by ISIS and Al Qaeda today – behaviour very different from that of moderate, economically developed and well-educated Muslims. These are people who inhabit a pre-modern mode of behaviour and corresponding mind-set – and although I am not a theist – it is interesting to consider why the Christian God would choose to deliver his texts into the hands of such people. But perhaps that is the point. The Christian God speaks of unqualified love and forgiveness (as does the Holy Qur’an of Allah) – whilst the Jewish God is vengeful, vindicative and quite often demanding of blood. Perhaps the essence of Gnosticism has survived right in the middle of Christian theology – and it has done so without being seen – waiting for the moment when the ceramic jar holding its teachings is found!
German soldiers could not believe what they were seeing as these columns of British soldiers – with rifles shouldered – marched calmly toward the German trenches, stepping through the poppy flowers as they went! Initially, many German machine-gunners refused to open-fire on such an obvious target – but were forced to do so by their Officers! The result was an absolute massacre! However, the British High Command accused these working-class regiments of cowardice – and pushed more and more men into the area for the next three-months! In some places the bodies lay stacked in 12-foot piles – and it was these natural barriers that the newly arrived British soldiers had to climb. Many advanced over the shattered bodies of their fathers, uncles, sons and brothers.
Although this object originates from the Roman graffiti scratched into the plaster of a wall found in a room of a building (the ‘domus Gelotiana’ or ‘House of Gelotian’) – situated in the Palatine Hill area of Rome (modern Italy – the object subsequently being relocated to the Palatine Museum) – it could be that the ‘artist’ was inspired by the (197 CE) writing of Tertulliani or that Tertulliani was motivated in 197 CE by the already existing graffiti. A third scenario is that Tertulliani and the graffiti are unrelated – but that both represent an underlying and common reality – the essence of which both are referencing. Depending upon the exact date – the ‘Alexamenos Graffiti’ may well be the ‘earliest’ depiction relating to Christianity – albeit in a derogatory form. The crude Greek text scratched under the cross reads ‘ΑΛΕ ΞΑΜΕΝΟϹ ϹΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ’ – which seems to say ‘Alexamenos Ingests [his preferred] God’.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 