45. The Confessions of A Doom-scroller.

Dearly Beloved,

I have discovered that I have Doom-scroller tendencies. That is, I obsessively watch the news for bad news, scrolling down through the vertical reams of news from the internet. The main obsession is, inevitably, the terrible conflict unfolding in Ukraine. I used to listen to music on YouTube, Irish folk songs and versions of the Magnificat. Then a video of fighting in Ukraine appeared on the list of available videos and I clicked on that, watched it, and immediately half the music offerings disappeared to be replaced by more war footage and when I clicked on one of those all the music offerings disappeared to leave only war. It was an extraordinary moment as I was enveloped by gloom.

That has lead to awful questions such as “I am a human being and so is Vladimir Putin. What do we have in common?” And “if I was in his position and President of Russia would I have launched a terrible attack on innocent and peaceful people living just over the border of my country?” After all Christ emphasises our common humanity and our need to love one another but loving Vladimir is a challenge. He is a conduit of evil which has encompassed hitherto innocent young men in his army.

I have never really been very keen on the notion of heaven and hell because the concept of hell seems rather contrary to the compassionate teachings of Christ. Rowan Williams did an interview on BBC radio on Sunday on the subject of the Russian Orthodox Church, in which he said he thought Putin's soul was in danger.* That does help distance him and the evil he does, from us and changes our perspective on him as a fellow human being. Vladimir's actions have made me realise that we may need an idea of hell so that we can dump into it, mentally at least, evil with which we mortals cannot cope as mere human beings and which otherwise threatens to suffocate our spirit and substitute despair.

On the other hand we can Reverse Doom-scroll. Dante, in his The Divine Comedy, embeds Satan in the ice at the very bottom of hell and celebrates Christ amongst the scintillating, revolving, spheres of the highest heaven. Dante describes his escape through a tunnel from the Stygian gloom, “the dead air” and ice cold of the bottom most circle of hell back into the light to describe the sky, “Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro” the colour of Oriental sapphire. He has escaped back to “the beautiful planet that induces us to love” Lo bel pianeto che d’amar conforta. We live and thrive, day to day, amongst people and places of great grace and beauty and we must never forget that.

Recently I sent a picture of a peacock butterfly on Cherry blossom** to a Japanese friend, who confessed to having a cultural obsession with cherry blossom. He responded by sending me a wonderful photograph of Mt Yoshino in Japan with a valley full of cherry trees in full bloom. Neither of these pictures had people portrayed in them unlike many Japanese prints, such as those by the printmaker Hiroshige, exemplified by an engraving entitled Polling a raft on the River (1834) in which there are blossoming cherry trees beside the river. I had recently taken a photograph of a cherry tree beside the River Cam which was full of people, including someone polling a punt so I sent our Japanese friend that, and mentioned the inspiration of Hiroshige's work. He cleverly guessed the identity of the print which had inspired me and the next morning I received from him an emailed reply including a copy of that very same Hiroshige print!

Peace,

Paul.

Completed: 27 March 2022.

Engraving by Utagawa Hirishigo Poling a Raft on The River "Views of Kyoto - #5. 
Cherry-Blossom at Arashiyama" (1834) 


Photo: Paul Munton
River Cam, Punter and Cherry Blossom in Magdalene College Garden, Spring 2022.

*Rowan Williams commentary on Russian Orthodoxy can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0bz1sjk

**See DB Letter No 50 of this series for the photograph of the peacock butterfly.



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