August 2015 seems to have experienced some kind of identity crisis.
August 2015 seems to have experienced some kind of identity crisis. Not only did the weather pass from night frosts to baking hot days via torrential rain and flash floods, but the ‘silly season’ appears not to have happened at all.
The phrase dates from the mid 19th century when it was coined by journalists to describe the summer days during which parliament was not sitting and the page space left by lack of hard news was filled up with trivia and absurdity.
But this year, there have been no Encounters of the Third Kind in Norfolk, the Virgin Mary has not appeared in a grapefruit nor have firefighters been reported as rescuing a pigeon from a rooftop. It has instead been a month full of grim and deeply disturbing news.
In the past few days, 200 refugees died when the boat carrying them sank off Libya. A further 55 were found to have suffocated in the hold of an unsafe, overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean, and the bodies of 71 people, including young children, were found in an abandoned lorry in Austria.
Despite these horrors, the UK government has shown no sign of understanding the need to play an active part in making possible a collective and humane response to the vast tragedy unfolding on Europe’s borders. Germany has shamed us by its generosity while our Home Secretary offers nothing more than a disingenuous attempt to muddy the waters by twining about EU migrants and their freedom of movement.
The political establishment’s reaction to the rise and rise of Jeremy Corbyn has clogged airtime, column inches and social media with spite and piteous incomprehension. The DWP has – after a FOI request and a firm ruling from the Information Commissioner – been forced into disclosure of the fact that 2830 sick and disabled people died between December 2011 and February 2014 within two weeks of their claims for employment and support allowance ending because a work capability assessment found they were fit for work. That this ruling was passed in April and the figures were not released until just before the August Bank Holiday weekend is an appalling indictment of cynical and defensive governance.
So far, so horrible. But forgive a short excursion into etymology. ‘Silly’ as we understand the word today, is a relative newcomer to our lexicon. In old English, Norse and Saxon, it meant happy or fortuitous. The old High German meaning carried an additional quality of being blessed or holy. We may be most familiar with the word’s connotations of holiness and innocence in Robert Southwell’s poem on the Nativity: Behold a Silly Tender Babe.
Over the next few weeks, those qualities will be of increasing importance. It is likely that more challenges to our ‘holiness’, and thus to our humanity and integrity, will be posed. It is likely that more of our brothers and sisters, fleeing wars and conflicts in which we have played a part, will die on Europe’s doorstep. The outcome of the Labour leadership election will be announced and if – as seems probable – the winner is Jeremy Corbyn, our democratic processes and perceptions will have an increasing amount of vitriol poured upon them by the corporate media and the rearguards of a moribund political culture. That same culture shows no sign at all of understanding the realities of sickness and disability, nor of the demands they make upon compassion, mutuality and solidarity.
Innocence is neither naivety nor ignorance. Holiness is warp and weft of our dignity. Can we rise to the challenges which these times present: to own the true worth of ‘silliness’?
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© Jill Segger is an Associate Director of Ekklesia with particular involvement in editorial issues. She is a freelance writer who contributes to the Church Times, Catholic Herald, Tribune, Reform and The Friend, among other publications. Jill is an active Quaker. See: http://www.journalistdirectory.com/journalist/TQig/Jill-Segger You can follow Jill on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/quakerpen