Be a Friend to the Friendless
UK Riots August 2024
Dear friend,
Zara is sprawled out by the kitchen table, resting her chin on one paw. She’s due a haircut, her fur doing a close impression of a sheep’s wool. Ears up, listening to the August rain, our mutual breathing and the sound of my fingers on the laptop keys.
A distant jet engine fills the air with its whining as it rips through the sky beyond the clouds. I’m enjoying an espresso, watching leaves washed clean by the rain, dance in the wind.
Entering the moment, you leave the storms roiling our collective human mind to play themselves out.
Zara groans in agreement and shifts to lying on her side, she looks like she’s flying. Eyes open. She takes everything in. Being an ex-street dog she’s alert, but relaxed now that she’s accepted us as trusted humans.
It feels like an enormous compliment to be on the trusted list.
A great pleasure to bask in our shared presence.
One reason why we’ve not yet brought home a dog of our own, at least the reason I tell myself, is that when I’m home with a beloved animal like this I have no wants left.
I don’t want to do anything.
Go anywhere.
Other than some place with the dog.
That’s not entirely accurate, but it’s enough of a factor to be significant.
Certainly I don’t relish the “Where are you going without me?” face.
Everyone who’s ever been owned by a dog knows the heart wrench as you slip out to some segregated venue that only admits humans. Shops, bars, cinemas, restaurants, pubs, your best mate’s newly carpeted apartment, the way they stand in the hall and look.
It’s also scary to love so deeply someone who you know you’ll have to say goodbye to. But that’s how it is here. Was it Mary Oliver who spoke about the task of loving what will not last?
For now, we have our guest, and she’s obligingly pumping out a warm loving energy that fills the whole house, while she chases mice and rats in her sleep.
I rang Luke and had a long chat. He’s done his back in. We got on to the subject of the attacks in the UK on minority groups that are breaking out all over the island. There was a story from Bristol about the local community coming out to protect a mosque. Another where people were attempting to set fire to a building where families were being held while they sought asylum.
I said, I see a moral vacuum.
If at the very deepest centre you don’t realise how hard life can be, how difficult it can get for everyone, no matter what language you speak or how you cover your nakedness, the earth will get rough with you at some point, and you better hope you have a friend when it’s your turn.
Be a friend to the friendless.
To your very core.
Help your fellow humanity to live in peace.
All of this violence only brings suffering down on your own head, not now maybe while you thrill at the power running through your veins. As your voice breaks through shattering like glass.
But when you have been abandoned by cowards.
When you come to your senses.
What then?
How will you live in peace?
And politicians who condemn the penned in. The directionless. Who you leave nothing but broken earth. Hope stolen from their children.
Why do you blink as if you do not understand?
Is this not your work as much as theirs?
Zara’s curled up with her head on the wooden steps to the garden patio windows. Even though she appears to be asleep I know she’s got me under surveillance. As soon as I move from the table she’ll be ready for a walk.
What can you do but be kind and seek to understand?
It’s hard not to write off rioters as less than human, but that’s the very lie that leads one human to attack another.
You can do a lot by refusing to judge and seeking to understand. By connecting to the peaceful within we become tributaries for peace to flood the earth.
These are frightening times, but peace will prevail.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey
🕊️