Thinking about Rhiannon flying to Holland this morning, and Rachel travelling to Penslyvania from Arizona to visit an internet friend. She'll be in a time zone two hours nearer us during her week of holiday, which means having to figure out different possible phone calling times. The environment in Pensylvania will be more like Wales, which will suit her better than the climate in Phoenix.
I had a bereavement visit to make in Rhiwbina this morning, to complete preparations mostly made by email for a funeral tomorrow. Fr Mark has asked me to do another funeral next week, this time of someone who committed suicide under the influence of alcohol, not due to mental health issues. This isn't going to be easy. I'm racking my brains to remember if I've done the funeral of a young suicide before. In my twenties, I worked regularly with Samaritans on suicide prevention watch, but never had to deal with families of those we were unable to help.
It's hard to understand how survival instinct fails to override that fatal impulse, even though alcohol can reduce self control and inhibition. London and other big UK cities have seen a worrying increase in knife and gun crime in relation to street gangs in recent years, also deadly domestic violence, murderous revenge attacks with child victims. It's as if a sense of the value of human life as well as self control is withering away in some parts of society.
The injustice of growing social inequality with the detachment of wealthy elites from the need and suffering of the poor creates a moral climate that starves them of self esteem and hope for change in the future. Without a spiritual basis in life, despair is hard to resist, and vulnerability to destructive impulses increases. It happens when people think they can dispense with institutional religion and relegate ethics and spirituality to the privacy of each individual. This is the dark side of modernity and secularity with which we now have live. Finding the way to a new place is going to be painfully tough.
It's hard to understand how survival instinct fails to override that fatal impulse, even though alcohol can reduce self control and inhibition. London and other big UK cities have seen a worrying increase in knife and gun crime in relation to street gangs in recent years, also deadly domestic violence, murderous revenge attacks with child victims. It's as if a sense of the value of human life as well as self control is withering away in some parts of society.
The injustice of growing social inequality with the detachment of wealthy elites from the need and suffering of the poor creates a moral climate that starves them of self esteem and hope for change in the future. Without a spiritual basis in life, despair is hard to resist, and vulnerability to destructive impulses increases. It happens when people think they can dispense with institutional religion and relegate ethics and spirituality to the privacy of each individual. This is the dark side of modernity and secularity with which we now have live. Finding the way to a new place is going to be painfully tough.
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