My life as a writer Part 2 (the Crystallization of faith) By Robert Fullarton

My life as a writer Part 2 (the Crystallization of faith)

By Robert Fullarton

One of the great delights I have stumbled upon over these past 7 years has been that of reading much Russian literature. These are the writers who examine the suffering of the human individual as a means to humility, to repentance and to spiritual growth. Russian authors too can be the wackiest, zaniest and most satirical of writers and their work bares a cheerful grin in the face of an autocratic despot, of social unrest, personal sorrows and least of all the unforgiving severity of the Russian winter.

I love the fresh dose of reality, the precise, journalistic, yarn filled, account ridden, metaphysical power that extends through the writings of say Solzhenitsyn’s writings of the gulag system, Dostoyevsky’s psychology of a guilt ridden murder or Tolstoy’s examination of the cancerous death of a wealthy Muscovian judge.

These books are more real to me than much of what the west possesses. Western literature can often be shallow, superficial and pandering to the secular life and its fickle curiosities. In its obsession with censoring free speech in accordance with secular demands, the Christian reader can find the depth and thought provoking critique of man fall short in comparison with the “classics” of Russian literature, much of which was written through times of horrific social chaos (as I already stated) and let it be stated the tenets of the Christian faith, run through much of the Russian canon. The life of Christ is given a pivotal connection to the psychology of the protagonist (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn and Gogol were deeply religious figures, deeply intrigued with the Christian faith) who is on a pilgrimage so to speak to finding God (Rashkolnikov is the classic example for this as he repents and confesses his double murders to a prostitute, who agrees to go into exile with him in Siberia. In this scene she reads the raising of Lazarus to him from the Gospel of John and convinces him that confession and repentance are the start of a new beginning. Into exile he goes, but with a new testament from which his inner psychology of self hatred and confounded anger transforms into a Christ like love).

The Christian life is a crystallization of God’s nature within our imperfect domain, fashioned from within the caves of our deepest pain, where little crystals of change transform, that are foreign to our old selves, but are the harmony of the unknown God, whom we did not know, whom we were strangers to once upon a time. God to us was once an association, thrust upon us when our parents cajoled us to the church once a week. God to us was a tradition and anomaly, a curiosity and yet a deep mystery which had the power to hold our breath. I state that when we were slaves to our pleasures and in the middle of an addictive spiral that threw us downwards, he called us by name, one by one, spoke directly into our hearts, revealed himself in happenings which were the codex of our identity and in such moments we left the world behind and became “Children of God”. Jesus Christ is the measure of God’s mercy to the gentiles, his life is a gift to the nations and his love is a celebration of the God of the Jews, the Gentile nations and the created universe directly to the humble heart. It was written that Moses had to veil his face from God upon Mt. Sinai and likewise the people had to cover their faces from the sheer radiance that was streaming forth from his face. There is a similar incident mentioned in the Gospel of Luke with Jesus Christ, who has been transfigured and bathed with light, because it is almost as if he is made of pure incandescent light that illuminates the figures of the apostles before him. In this moment the mask of God comes off the earthly costume and the hidden nature of God is revealed upon the mountain. The light is in fact the purity of holiness that is too much for the weak irises of the human body to comprehend and contain. It is a moral difference between man and God that needs to be filled, it was and is filled with the suffering sacrifice of the human person that God became. Here we have a man that embodied man and God simultaneously, greatly suffered and yet was risen to great glory. His pain and his life is relevant to mine, but his pain gives consolation, comfort and assessment to the fact that this world, our suffering and its assortment of weaknesses and failures are a finality in the face of a great eternity, the horrid pitch black midnight of man’s descent to anarchy, before the hours of the God filled dawn.

“The world does not know me”, says the Lord and how true he was and is today, the world’s appetite for want and unending power does not have an ounce of truth within it, because it lives in separation from God. The world pursues desires and is trapped in the cycle of human nature that is destructive, yet many want to continue in this shadow of weak and tiny comforts in the face of someone much greater than our own desires.

The Russian fable, the novel, the epoch and the expose of the gulags are in reality little examinations of human nature and its failings in the face of what God wanted of man, then came the exile from God, then came the terror of man’s anarchy, the destruction of all orders and unions and such happens when men are separated from the great union with God. One must repent of one’s misdeeds, but the punch to such power, the force of such feeling we undergo is that when experience a falling in love with God, where doors open, where real power is revealed and hate filled hearts become tenderised by the letting in and coming of Christ’s nature and his spirit within ourselves. To the secular world this is a riddle in perpetual motion which they will dismiss as madness, but which we will flourish in continuity like oak trees that reach to celestial heights into the canopy of God’s warmth.

My Life as a Writer Part 1 by Robert Fullarton Copyright Robert Fullarton 2016

My Life as a Writer Part 1

by Robert Fullarton

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2016

The whole of my writing has been about the quest “to find God” or the “cry to God” in all situations. My early stories were concerned with the modern dystopia, the dysfunctional life of the western civilization when it tries to live apart from God, censors his name and word from print, circulation and public life at large. My writing has been about examining the extreme desperation of the loner, the pariah and the stranger in the midst of the crowd and to look upon the psychology of suffering. You begin to question the system of society for which we were born into and have become a part of, we know to readily that there is something malign, a corruption which is ancient and ongoing throughout the world, and such is within mankind.

I look back upon these early writings and find myself incredulous at the ideas or sheer darkness that surrounds the depths of the narrative on occasion. I was trying to convey the sickness of man, that has to be realised in a person who steps out of the single minded vision of the west, for those who realise every person individually needs personal and spiritual salvation. I had the tendency to over praise existentialism (which I did in ignorance in a sense of naive idealism) but in reality this was just a pointer or a phase of thought for which I would abandon and venture forward towards the Christian faith.
Our life, when we have individually surrendered our life it to Christ, is an elongation of his attributes, character traits, sufferings, joys, blessings, his death and his resurrection.

Can we leave behind the old life for the new life which must gain momentum? We were born into this matrix or illusion of what we believed to be everything and to right, when everything felt wrong. Some of us have unworldly minds and hearts and have discovered that we too have a soul that desires God, whom our society have censored completely and frustrated through mainstream media. We were born into this violent world with the un-restraining of our civilization in full swing (we were taught about human rights, the greatness of the human race, the progress of the human race, the splitting of the atom, the technocratic and industrial revolutions and yet given no answer to the moral failures of human society).

Our scientific worldview with its hyperbole and analysis, runs like a linear scope of probabilities and statistics for which a machine might operate within, but surely not a feeling, loving human being. This cold scientific worldview does not need man, but rather ideally a machine of bare proportions and functions, where the metaphysics of the universe are removed for a hopeless sense of fatalism. Man strangely gives a religious air of importance to the notion of luck and chance, to everything, with a fatalistic impulse poured into the measures of all actions seemingly as if behind everything man semi-consciously knew that it was sheer madness to conclude that all things were created from a non-entity when a non-entity could never create the intricate fabricate and language within creation. What is conscious came forth from a conscious decision to impart these faculties into the creation and the creatures called man.

England Old and New Part 1 by Robert Fullarton Copyright 2016 Robert Fullarton

England Old and New Part 1

by Robert Fullarton

Copyright 2016 Robert Fullarton

I see England as a country that has changed much over the centuries. It is a country that lives still in its industrial shadow, a country whose wide-reaching colonialism had severe repercussions in the long-run. England is a country of deep rooted secular ideals (a pinup for modern ethnic and cultural diversity) in contrast to the nation that prided itself on Church and empire, whose red-coated army led the 7th coalition against Napoleon, who became masters of trade, a nation of great social divide, a bastion for conservatism and yet one of eager socialism. I wanted to see the London of William Blake and William Turner, the sunset impressions that Monet painted by the wharfs of London, but I was very naive to think that much of this old romanticism still lingered on.

I don’t particularly like London that much. I find it to be at times to be an Orwellian open air museum of diverse nations cramped together, with claustrophobic metro stations, with a hustle and bustle of people that intensifies during the rush hour, with massive skylines that stretch for miles around, it is a modern metropolis that seems to include every belief and ideal under the sun. I have found that the English culture itself has been muted and sort of degraded in a post-cultural and post-imperial England. There are of course the beautiful and rather ostentatious quarters of Kensington and Notting Hill, the fine museums (including the National Gallery of Art, which I found to be the most impressive I have ever laid eyes on!) and the quaint well managed gardens (the little oases of the metropolis) of Hyde Park, Green Park and St. James.

England like Germany has been modernised, secularised and diversified and yet there are remains of the old civilization and the old way of life that endured there for centuries. I can also state quite passionately (and I hope to write on this topic in particular) that in an overpopulated and a rather industrial nation there are national parks and wildlife areas that will amaze you. The English are more protective of their wildlife than the Irish are (I have certainly seen the work of the RSPB and they are a credit to the environment) and have managed to preserve more acres of land and diverse habitat than the Irish Government have for the local Ecology services.

My brother John lived in Ealing in London for over four years working in the Irish embassy near Buckingham Palace. I would go over about twice a year to visit him, mostly on my own and on occasion with family. London immediately stood out as an alien place, big, foreboding, modern and very pricey (due in part to the horrific conversion rate against the British Pound). Despite the modern changes and ethos of the city, I enjoyed venturing out into the old English countryside or to the historical landmarks of the City.

I remember going to the Barnes Wildlife Reserve (just a short bus ride outside Hammersmith in West London) and finding an impressive habitat, perfectly preserved and well managed for a diversity of wildlife. You have the heaths, shrubs, fens and the diversity of flora with a great diversity of birdlife, insects and toads living in a wonderfully managed ecosystem.

Me and my brother were walking over various wooden bridges and pontoons facing a system of canals and little swamps on a summer’s day in the middle of June. I gazed upon my first Jay that perched upon a post, tame and proud, it stared back in comfort, intrepid to the approaches we made that day. Terns nested and gathered food for their chicks that lay across one of the large canals that lay before us. The Hobby and the kestrel were hunting and swooping from above on their hapless prey bellow. A great variety of ducks and geese could be counted and spotted along the banks, along with several introduced Demoiselle Cranes (Which were a wonder to have beheld). One man was out with his camera recording the sound of the toads croaking deep beneath the layers of muck. I had not seen such a distribution of wildlife for some time, and on that day, I had seen more species of bird than I had for years on end.

This reserve is a perfect spot to watch for raptors, summer migrants coming from Africa, spoonbills, Egrets and even the impressive booming Bittern. There are many great enclaves of natural life, found scattered here and there throughout London (such as the wonderful Richmond Park) that have an abundance to offer those who want to escape from the madness of the metropolis.

I found this location to be particularly more satisfying than the forest at Epping, which has a horrible road going through it, dissecting the park in two and which requires a taxi or a car to reach. Though if you are going to Epping Forest, be sure to allocate some time to see it properly as it is a huge park that fringes on various different villages and covers several habitats in one. It is a park that is filled with ancient oak, where writers came to be inspired and were you can watch Muntjac deer and listen out for the sound of the Green Woodpecker drumming away.

Switzerland by Train and Foot Part 4 -Copyright by Robert Fullarton

Switzerland by Train and Foot Part 4
-Copyright by Robert Fullarton

I remember when I rode upon an old Victorian era steamer through the vast body of lake Brienz. We caught the steamer from Interlaken to journey on to the docks at Giesbach. I remember the sight of the old engines, the rhythmic motions of the steamer were impressive to look at. Japanese tourists manically ran round the boat to get the "perfect" shot and take innumerable selfies from large cameras with tripods that swung round, of course this was an idiosyncratic experience which we laughed about.

The water is aquamarine, the lake is fringed by the high peaks of the Bernese Oberland, with quaint, attractive towns that dot the shores for miles around. The boat would dock and passengers would depart from town to town and then the boat would manoeuver onwards towards to the the town of Brienz. Most passengers however were bound for the docks of Giesbach which is home to the Grand Hotel of Giesbach. This is a gem, surrounded by the elements of natural beauty. This hotel rises from the mantle of the hills, enclosed within a forest and is beside a truly colossal waterfall that plummets with several cascades over the various levels of the hillsides, above the heads of water sodden tourists, little wooden bridges and the green lung of the landscape (this was the largest and longest waterfall I have ever come across, truly it was a natural wonder and an inspiration to anyone's palate for adventure).

After we docked, we caught the local funicular up the side of the mountain to the entrance of the Grand Hotel. We drank hot chocolate while watching little lizards dart in and out of the cracks of the wall. We sat in the shade of the Victorian Grand Hotel (which to me is the most luxurious hotel I have ever encountered) and wandered through its grand lobby, the halls of marble, the chandeliers and nostalgia that evoked something from the fin de siecle period of the late nineteenth century.
We tread upon wooden bridges crossing the gaping mouth of the waterfall that impressively ran from the distant mountains through the terrain in a torrent of milky white water for miles and miles below into the lake itself. The hotel, a lavish construction upon the commanding view of the lake below is a vestige of the old days of tourism, when it was a luxury reserved for the wealth of Europe, particularly those from Britain and Germany who could afford it.

                             

                                                                    II


If you are coming from Wengen or Lauterbrunnen (take the train to Interlaken Ost) or even from Interlaken for that matter you have to take the train to Interlaken and get off at the village of Wilderswil where you will cross the tracks and catch a small red locomotive for a unique, breathtaking train journey up the side of the peaks, where you will catch a brilliant panoramic view of Lake Thun. There are different stops on the ride up to the top for those who want to stop, look and walk. The train twists and snakes around many cliff edges where you will see jaw dropping scenery, akin to that from a movie. Goethe apparently rode a horse through the snowy heights to reach the summit after hours of tough labourious travelling. The schynige platte is a must for any tourist to this region as it is the cherry on the rather lusciously good Swiss cake that is the treat, called the Bernese Oberland!

The Alpine Garden is situated on the very peak of the Schynige platte, and it is perfect for those who are lovers of botany,and horticulture. You will find a perfect display of what the region has to offer, edelweiss (unfortunately does not come to blossom until July) amongst a carpet of meadow flowers that are all conveniently given their proper name for all amateurs in this field, such as myself. Often there will be locals ready to greet you with the sound of the Alpine Horn, enjoy the sound of the alps!

However from the top of the Alpine Garden, you can (if you are really having a good day!) see Golden eagles, red kites, Buzzards, a ring-ouzel, snow finches etc etc as I did on my visit that day! This is also a perfect place to look out for the black, unique Alpine salamander that dwells in the rocks between the elevations and levels of the land.

Be careful when buying anything off the vendor set up beside the train station, you will pay at least double what you will pay in your local Coop supermarket. It can be cold up on the top, oxygen levels are a little lower. The views are brilliant of the surrounding valleys and the train is a fine piece of nostalgia. Remember it took years for the train lines to reach this point and the photos on display there will show this. Years and years of hard labour, with the ingenuity of engineers and technicians there

I had the regional pass along with the Swiss Card, so this trip did not cost me a penny. But one must have deep pockets to even exist in Switzerland. Switzerland is the drink of the aesthete, much of the landscape looks like a finished canvass from God, enjoy the natural beauty, but be aware that all such privileges and luxuries will cost you money!