81. On Compassion.

Dearly Beloved,

All my married life, my wife has had beside her bed a photograph of a statue of the Virgin Mary. It is an extraordinary statue which defies its stolid identity by portraying a playful love between a young mother and her child. This photograph was inherited from my spouse's grandmother. We had for sometime been attempting to identify it and had searched diligently through photographs of mediaeval European statuary but although we had found items of a similar disposition we had never managed to identify the original. Finally my wife took a photograph of the photograph on her mobile phone and asked Google to identify it using the Google Lens app which we have frequently used for identifying wild flowers. Having eliminated the frame, Google came up with the original which turns out to be The White Virgin of Toledo to be found in the cathedral there. Some restoration seems to have taken place since the original photograph was taken. We have no idea why the picture was particularly significant to Josephine's grandmother but the best guess is that it is a memento of a honeymoon taken in about 1908 because this statue, is especially associated with fidelity and the support of married couples during separation.

When I was younger and I had not yet read Rev Dr Andrew Macintosh's Dearly Beloved letter on the Angelus, I took a rather critical Protestant view of the Virgin and used the term “Mariolatry”, but as I have aged I have changed my view because it seems that the great contribution that Christianity makes to human consciousness is an awareness of the importance, indeed the necessity of compassion in our human lives – fellow feeling and awareness of humanity and of the difficulties inherent in the human condition. This is the special teaching and life of Jesus, and Mary in her turn showed compassion for the her son that great teacher of compassion.

To see the importance of compassion in our daily lives we only have to look at the devastating results when it is absent from human affairs. Recently Japan has become more militant in its self defence. The last Defence of Japan document in 2020 showed flowers and outlines of Mount Fuji. The 2021 version showed a fully armed Samurai warrior charging on horse back. Japan has in recent days stated that the security of Taiwan is critical for its own security. That in turn has caused China, which claims the territory, to issue blood curdling threats against Japan. There is a notable video which goes back in history to refer to all the suffering that Japan has caused by its attacks on China, notably in the first Sino Japenese war 1894-5 when China lost Korea and its regional dominance for the first time in history, and the second Sino Japenese war 1937 to 1945 during which between 10 and 25 million Chinese civilians died. The view expressed in this video is that although China had said it would never be responsible for first use of nuclear weapons, it then outlines “the great exception” which would be Japan if it made any military move against China however small. Japan suffered in its turn devastating nuclear attacks in 1945. Japan has no nuclear weapons but has a defence agreement with the USA.

A lack of compassion threads through Sino-Japenese history and it may do so again. We humans often find it difficult to apply compassion to those whom we see as “the other”.

Peace,

Paul.

Completed 3rd August 2021.


Virgin of Toledo by an Unknown Photographer, .
Photographic copy by Paul Munton




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