Fifty years on

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my departure on a holiday that would significantly shape my identity, as well as the future course of my life. I wrote about it ten years ago, link here.

My three holidays to Poland organised by the Polish priests in Ealing for their young parishioners took place in the summers of 1976, 1977 and 1979, and proved extremely formative for me. Certainly these visits were a key factor in my moving to Poland.

The 1976 trip occurred just after I had finished grammar school. While on that holiday, I was awaiting a telegram from my parents informing me how my A-level exams had gone – and which university (if any) would accept me. I got that telegram in Poland (Gdańsk, I seem to recall) – the news was good. My grades were sufficient to get me into Warwick, my first choice.

As our coaches crossed the border from East Germany, we were driving into a country that a month earlier had seen significant workers' protests at rising living costs in Radom, Ursus and Płock. No official news, of course, only word-of-mouth rumours. From the windows of the coach, I saw a high-tension pylon lying on its side in a field outside Radom. Had it been brought down by protesters? Or was it waiting to be erected? Who knew? These protests would ultimately lead to the birth of Solidarity four years later.

I wrote ten years ago about the religious nature of the holiday. As well as the daily masses and rosary, there was also plenty of time for philosophical discussions, about religion, ethics, life, the universe and everything. Not to any great degree of sophistication, but enough to engender a lifelong interest in 'small-p' philosophy.

This was also the last summer before the punk-rock revolution – but more about that in a post on this blog this autumn, on the 50th anniversary of me catching a gig by two bands entirely unknown to me at the time – the Sex Pistols, supported by the Clash. That, plus a year of living away from home as a student, completely changed my attitude to church-going and authority in general, so when setting off on Montserrat 1977, it was with a radically different world-view. Yet Poland was still Poland. eternal, drawing me back.

Who'd have thought, fifty years ago, that I'd be sat here on my own little acre, surrounded by 12 cats, living in a free, peaceful and prosperous Poland? 

This time last year:
Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (VI)

This time five years ago:
Memory, collective memory and proof of memory

This time eight years ago:
And did Her feet...?

This time 11 years ago:
Last night's storm

This time 12 years ago:
Drifting south with the sun – bicycle hobo
[On this trip I would first encounter Jakubowizna...]

This time 14 years ago
The Royal Parks in the rain

This time 17 years ago:
Conservatism – Polish or British style?

This time 18 years ago:
Wheat and development

This time 19 years ago:
Waiting for the summer rain

Pilgrimage at day's end

Prompted by Michał Karski's recent comments, quoting Annabel Streets' book 52 Ways to Walk: "So what makes a pilgrimage different from a walk? Firstly, a pilgrimage requires a destination with meaning. In the past this was typically a holy place, but today it might be an ancient tree, the house of an admired painter or architect, somewhere that holds special memories for us, or the site of a rare orchid. Secondly, a pilgrimage requires an intention. This can be as simple as plotting out our day's work, or emptying our mind before bed."

My destination today was to catch a magical scene, one that briefly flashed past my eyes from the Kraków-Warka train exactly a week ago. The sun setting over the Pilica river, a low mist settling over the water meadows to its south. Then, I was unable to catch the shot; the train was going too fast. My intention today? Get the photo I missed, and seek metaphysical experience. 

Today's weather was perfect for said pilgrimage (train from Chynów to Warka Miasto, the connection ideally timed to catch the sun going down).

Below: photo taken from the footway alongside the new rail bridge. I was lucky to catch a lone canoe making its way downstream.

Below: across the Pilica, on the south side, from the railway embankment a view of the river meadow in about a metre of mist, under a painted sky.

Below: from the same spot, change of lens (to super-wide 10-20mm), the rail bridge to the right.

Below: the sun is down, the magic hasn't yet passed... looking towards Hotel Sielanka nad Pilicą, which specialises in equestrian and other outdoor activities.

Below: moonrise with rail bridge(s) over the Pilica, completed in 2021.

Below: change of lens again to telephoto... from the north side of the Pilica, the misty meadows look like this...

By the time I reached Warka Miasto, it was too dark to snap. With half an hour in hand before my train back to Chynów, I decided to walk from Warka Miasto to Warka station, just over 20 minutes on foot between the two stations. Total of 12,000 paces for this rail-assisted walk. Train tickets there and back cost 11.44 złotys (just over two quid). For all this gorgeousness. Gratitude!

This time last year:
First steps in cider-making

[Sadly no apples this year!]

This time two years ago
The glories of a sunny day in early autumn

This time seven years ago:

On conservatism

This time nine years ago:
Between equinox and equilux

This time 11 years ago:
Heritage or high-rise?

This time 12 years ago:
Shopping notes

This time 13 years ago:
My grandfather

This time 15 years ago:
Surreal twilight, ul.Karczunkowska

This time 16 years ago:
From Warsaw to Seville, via Munich and Madrid

Travel, tourism and materialism

Have you seen those tourism bucket-list things doing the rounds on social media? The ones where you are supposed to say how many of these 30 destinations you've visited, so that your virtual friends can be impressed?

Well, I have absolutely no desire to visit Thailand, Venezuela, the Philippines, Nigeria, Dubai, Beijing, Vietnam or New York before I die. I don't fancy Egypt or Israel, nor do I wish to mingle with tourist crowds in summer in Venice, Rome or Paris. I don't like crowds. I don't like crowded beaches or crowded mountain trails.

Kraków I know well; often I will get to my business destination on foot from the station, passing through the old town. Electric carts full of tourists glide through the narrow streets, their heads looking left, then right, as their tour guide points out the 15th century basilica and the 16th century convent. No one is really interested. Most are only there because everyone says "you must do Kraków".  Leaflets advertising restaurants, bars or tours are thrust into your face. 'Auschwitz - Schindler's Factory - Salt Mines CHEAP!' It's all too much. 

Why are you going there?

Spirit of place is what draws me. There has to be a spiritual calling to visit - a subliminal desire to commune with a location, on my own, or else in the presence of someone else who gets it. Tourism for the sake of variety, for the sake of ticking off a box on a bucket list, is morally wrong on so many levels. There's tourism for the ego, and tourism for the soul. The latter is the only sort of interest to me.

[If you do harbour an intense, spiritual, longing to visit Kraków, do so in mid-January, the low-low season, before Polish ferie winter holidays begin. You should have the place pretty much to yourself and to the locals.]

I've often written that the travel destination of the future will be the past. Spiritual longings for places as they were are rarely rewarded with a repeat of the hoped-for experience. I remember my first trip to the US in 1978 (45 years ago right now!); already by then, America had changed from what I was seeking. Today, the America of the 1930s, '40s and '50s has vanished, replaced by identical strip-malls, SUVs and billboards advertising prescription medicines, peopled by the overweight. I have no ambition to return to the US, like, ever. 

Google Maps Street View (where available) gives a beautiful visual insight into spirit of place, of course without other sensory inputs, you're only getting a fifth of the experience. But it - plus access to myriad photos and films online offers glimpses of places that the pre-internet world couldn't match. My basic curiosity about places can easily be assuaged by diving online.

So where would I go? Rural - deeply rural - Europe. Villages in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France - right off the tourist trail, scarcely known of, still abiding in traditional rural ways. How would I get there? Train, bus, bicycle. I'd want to stay for several days, get an understanding of the place. Scandinavia? Maybe. And there's still vast swathes of Poland and its immediate neighbours to visit.

Left: a consciousness moving across the face of the Earth. I am entirely happy wandering around on foot for lengthy strolls in my immediate neighbourhood; I require little more than a sunny day (any time of year!) to be moved into sublime spheres. 

I have foresworn air travel (Jet Zero). We haven't got 'until 2050' - what's needed is immediate action, bottom up, by the two billion richest individuals on this planet; we must change our behaviour and dramatically curtail our CO₂ emissions.

 I'm doing my bit - I hope you're doing yours. 

"Do not go unless your heart tells you so."

UPDATE: In the comments, Michał Karski rightly mentions pilgrimage. Yes! A crucial idea (entering the word pilgrimage into my blog's search box yields many posts). We all need our own pilgrimage destinations, even it's just down the road and round the corner to catch the sun setting over Wola Pieczyska or Sułkowice. Some thoughts about places spiritual here.

This time last year:
To Rzeszów and back by rail, part II

This time six years ago:

Of pipes and pylons

This time eight years ago:
What's the biggest threat - Putin or ISIS?

This time nine years ago:
Scenarios for change in Russia

This time ten years ago:
A new bus for Jeziorki - the 809 to Bobrowiec

This time 12 years ago:
Bunker in Powiśle

This time 13 years ago:
Sunshine brings out the best in everything

This time 15 years ago:
There must be a better way (3)

Building your own religion – how AI would do it. Lent 2023: Day 29

Three years ago, my series of Lenten blog posts were about how I'd go about designing my own religion. Today, inspired by a passing thought I had while falling asleep last night, I put decided to put that  same question to ChatGPT, and here are the answers...

Me: "Imagine you are the founder of a new religion. How would you go about creating a new religion from scratch?" 

ChatGPT: "As an AI language model, I don't have personal beliefs, so I don't advocate for any particular religion or encourage starting one. However, I can provide a general framework on how to build a new religion from scratch based on historical and cultural perspectives.

Here are some aspects to consider when building a new religion: 

• Purpose: What is the purpose of your religion? What problems does it aim to solve, and what values does it promote?
• Theology: Develop a system of beliefs and values that explain the purpose of the religion and provide guidelines for behavior. This could include a creation story, moral code, and belief in a higher power.
• Doctrine: Develop a set of teachings that explain how to live a virtuous life and achieve salvation or enlightenment. These teachings could be in the form of scriptures or oral traditions.
• Practice: Develop rituals and practices that help followers connect with the divine and live a virtuous life. These could include prayer, meditation, fasting, pilgrimage, or acts of service.
• Symbols: Choose symbols that represent the beliefs and values of the religion. These symbols could include icons, images, or objects that hold special meaning.
• Music: Develop music that supports the rituals and practices of the religion. Music can be an important way to evoke emotions and connect with the divine.
• Holy places: Designate specific places as holy, such as temples, shrines, or natural landscapes. These places can be used for worship, meditation, or pilgrimage.
• Holy architecture: Design buildings and spaces that reflect the beliefs and values of the religion. Architecture can be used to create a sacred atmosphere and support the rituals and practices of the religion.
• Community: Create a community of followers who share the beliefs and values of the religion. This community can provide support, fellowship, and accountability.

When building a new religion, it's important to be respectful of other religions and cultures. It's also important to be transparent about the purpose and beliefs of the religion and to allow followers to question and explore their faith."

Why, thank you, Chat GPT! Now, you'll have noticed the links above – these are to individual posts on my blog, written three years ago; I am amazed at how the AI has covered the same points as me. 

However, my conclusion is this: having built my own religion, I found that it is one that needs no followers, nor buildings, nor a hierarchy, nor funding. My religion requires rather intelligent interlocutors prepared to question, to offer suggestions based on intuitions that have sprung from our consciousness – rather than constructing dogma. A walk in the fields to talk about the essence of existence, the purpose of consciousness, the relevance of matter, the future of the Universe, the interface between faith and science.

I am building a religion for no one but myself. I don't seek anyone to follow, nor do I want anyone to follow me. Rather, I want a small, ever-changing handful of people to walk beside me, talking with me, questioning my assumptions, taking understanding to an ever-higher level, building an ever-more accurate worldview together. I'd be a charlatan if I claimed I knew all the answers. I am seeking. That's literally the only honest stance to take regarding the spiritual.

Lent 2022: Day 29
Meditations on travel

Lent 2021: Day 29
The ups and downs of life

Lent 2020: Day 29
Prophetic

Hills... I gotta have hills.

Central Mazovia is pancake-flat. The horizon is at the same level whichever way you turn. In this, it's like Iowa, where to quote Bill Bryson "if you stand on two telephone directories, you have A View". Which generally, I don't mind from a flashback-familiarity point of view, those big skies remind me of the prairies... But the flatness means that hills are at a premium - even temporary, man-made hills...

Seeking a higher vantage point is instinctive in animals. Felusia's favourite place in the kitchen for example, is perched on top of the coffee machine - the highest point in the room - an ideal spot from which to observe human activity. Scrambling to the top of a man-made hill around these flat terrains to have a look around, a rest and a beer, has been a pleasant local activity in recent years, made possible by the civil engineering works going on in the neighbourhood.

Gone now is the ballast mountain (across the tracks opposite from the Jeziorki end of ulica Kórnicka). It stood here between 2016 and 2020 when PKP PLK was modernising the Warsaw-Radom railway line, and afforded good views to the north and south-east. Below: looking across at Jeziorki, the 'up' line awaiting new rails.

Gone too are the highest soil mountains that once stood astride the S7 extension works. Below, the one next to Węzeł Zamienie, between Jeziorki and Dawidy Bankowe. Photo taken on 3 May 2021 - amazing progress since then. Sadly, without this view-yielding mountain.

Below: view from the top of the soil mountain at the northern end of the S7 extension, where it meets the S79. 

Alas - these high places, and the views from them - have gone. These were favoured places of mine to scramble to the top of and enjoy a beer around sunset - the golden time of day.

It seems that hills are at a premium - even modest ones. Between Zgorzała and Zamienie, all the hills associated with the S7 extension works have been levelled with the ground - with two exceptions. Both are on private land (situated on either side of the expressway); both are now fenced in. Presumably the owners simply asked the builders not to remove them - and the builders happily obliged. Win-win.Builder saves costs of removal, landowner has a Feature. Below: the hill on the east side of the S7. Plant a few trees, make a path, bench at the top, make good - nice. [There are also two such man-made hills, leftovers from civil-engineering works, by the ponds in Jeziorki. The local 'ziggurats'.]

But there's still one range of soil hills remaining, west of the railway tracks a little way north of W-wa Jeziorki station. 

Sadly, although extensive in area, they are not very high (about four-and-half metres at the highest), but they are easy and safe to climb.

Below: the view is OK, nothing spectacular (certainly not when compared to the 12-metre-high hill that stood next to where Węzeł Zamienie now is, second photo from the top), but at least it's here and above ground level. But for how long? Until a new viaduct extends ul. Dawidowska across the railway? If so, it will be a while.

Below: my brother has rendered my photo taken from the Ballast Mountain looking north (seen originally here) in the style of German artist Anselm Kiefer, catching the atmosphere of the late afternoon in winter with a light frost and a dusting of snow.

The end-of-day pilgrimage requires a destination; the destination requires a vantage point, a spot for contemplation while watching the setting sun. 

The motorbiking season is soon to start, and with it the opportunity to explore further afield, beyond the reach of public transport.

This time last year:
Flashback to a Dream - subconsciousness and memory

This time 11 years ago:
'Old school' = pre-war

This time 12 years ago:
Britain chooses a coalition government

This time 13 years ago:
Landing over Ursynów

This time 14 years ago:
On being assertive in Poland

One life is not enough: Lent 2021, Day 36

We are on a pilgrimage; moving out of ignorance, out of the darkness and cold, feeling our way, stumbling along towards enlightenment. We come into this world knowing nothing - learning each day, gaining insights and experience, solving some problems, encountering new ones - yet knowing that we still ultimately know little. 

Driven by curiosity, we are a part of the great unfolding of the Universe. We see this process happening around us, we observe its ever-changing nature. Our understanding - personal understanding as well as the collective understanding of us as a species - inches forward. But is it growing fast enough?

Humanity progresses in fits and starts. Centuries of stasis, then bursts of rapid development. We're developing faster than ever before in our history, and that acceleration is set to grow. Many have predicted that we'll come out of the pandemic to witness a period of transformation as great as the Renaissance (which followed the Black Death) and the Enlightenment (which followed the Great Plague). I am convinced that Homo sapiens will make two steps forward - before making the inevitable step back a century or two later, only to make another two steps forward again.

The road before us is eternally long. Looking back, things are better than they were 100 years, 200 years ago for most people on this planet, compared to how their lives would have looked living in the same place back then. But what's that on a scale of 13.8 billion years from Big Bang or 4.5 billion years of Planet Earth? Catastrophes cosmic, man-made or natural notwithstanding, the odds are that that the next 100 years will be even better for us as a species. But we'll not be around...

Our biological selves won't. Our egos won't. But for the curious, the observant - the sensitive to the tides of time - the old souls who want to see - might just possibly will themselves back for another crack at this marvel called life. Flashes, glimpses of this live might pervade their consciousness in the next; familiar yet anomalous memories, atavistic visions and 'desires to return'... OK, many of us don't experience this, but I predict that coming generations will have more such 'old souls' among their numbers. 

My generation, brought up in the West on a blend of Christianity and Newtonian materialism, is far less likely to buy into any notion of reincarnation than anyone growing up into Hinduism or Buddhism. And future generations whose science lessons will include that which we don't know (reconciling quantum mechanics with the Theory of Relativity, the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the nature of consciousness - is it an emergent phenomenon or an intrinsic property of matter?) will also be more open to the metaphysical and supernatural.

The vectors for consciousness are therefore of supreme interest to me. Are our consciousnesses - our souls - locked into one short-lived body, or can they return to forever (to quote the name of the band of recently-deceased jazz musician Chick Corea) to experience life again? I think so - on the basis of my lifelong and frequent exomnesian experiences.

If science begins to open up avenues of research that go to show that consciousness indeed pervades the Universe as a basic property, then it is entirely possible that it can exist in more than one biological form. But how do time and entropy fit into all this?

One life is not enough. If you seek, it is possible that your consciousness - stripped of ego - shall indeed taste it again.

This time last year:
The Secret and the Hidden

This time three years ago:
Afterlife - a myriad possibilities, after the Magic has returned

This time four years ago:
Warsaw photo catch-up (Rotunda going down)

This time five years ago:
Conscious of being conscious

This time six years ago:
New road and retail

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw's Northern Bridge - its name and local democracy

This time ten years ago:
What's Polish for 'commuter'?

This time 11 years ago:
Four weeks into Lent

A Short Pilgrimage to Bid Farewell to the Day

An overcast day, but the weather forecasts are suggesting that the clouds will part before sunset. So a later departure for my daily stroll, an a strong motivation to catch the setting sun, watching the horizon roll back away from the glowing orb. Below: I'm on my way along ul. Trombity; the sun appears, the angle's low, the clouds are parting.

Below: beyond the platform's end at W-wa Dawidy station. Aviation at Okęcie airport is back to normal, rather boring vanilla passenger planes flying in from Poland's regional airports. The komary are around; ticks in the long grass mean long trousers, long socks and ankle-covering footwear. Insects - the downside of summer. Bees and dragonflies excluded.

My favourite spot of late for sunset watching, the huge hill of sand piled up between the tracks and the new S7 extension that's currently being built, is no longer accessible, as its lower slopes have already been dug away leaving just its summit. Below: a LOT Embrarer ERJ 195 comes in to land over it.

Below: the sky takes on a rosy hue, the sun's rays catch the skyscrapers under construction in the Wola district. In the foreground, the intersection of what will be the S7 and the existing S79, with the S2 running beneath it.

To the north west, the sun has dropped out of the clouds on a short journey to meet the horizon. Looking towards Paluch and Raszyn. Sunset is now at 20:41, 20 minutes earlier than at Summer Solstice. Below: I have found that which I was seeking - communion with the sunset, the purpose of my short pilgrimage.

Changes lenses - from 300mm to 10mm, from telephoto to ultrawide angle, showing the sunset in the context of land. To the right of the setting sun, the runways of Okęcie. In the foreground, giant puddles still left over from last week's rains.

This time four years ago:

Thoughts, trains set in motion

This time six years ago:
Rondo ONZ 1 at sunset - the City Sublime

This time seven years ago:
Up that old, familiar mountain

This time eight years ago
More from Penrhos

Build your own religion - find your Holy Places

Lent 2020 - Day 12

The founders of early Christianity would often appropriate the trappings of earlier religions - for example the festival of Sol Invictus on 25 December became Christmas Day. And places of veneration from neolithic times, especially on hilltop locations, were often chosen as sites for early Christian churches as the religion spread across Europe.

Spirit of place - genus locii - platzgeist - that specific character, atmosphere, ambience or klimat - is particularly important to me. It has a huge influence on one's state of mind. Some places make me feel happy, some anxious, some get me down.

I feel the comfort and familiarity of the Old. From soaring medieval cathedrals and half-timbered village pubs to Brictorian Britain and heritage railway centres, anywhere that carries me back to times before my birth will attract me more than a landscape of distribution centres, service stations, flat-roofed pubs and 1930s terraced houses. The sprawl out west from Ealing before Greater London finally meets the countryside.

Spirit of place is very important to me. Setting down spiritual roots, a beacon, a milestone. Call me unambitious, but I have no great desire to travel further than around Poland and Great Britain; these two countries are where my soul is from, I want to know them even better, depth rather than breadth.

Where are you actually from?

Time to think about Spirit of Place and what it means to the human consciousness. Unbidden memories of places I've visited are fascinating. They are of specific places/moments, which for no reason, pop into my head. I can be doing something around the house, working at my computer, sitting in a canteen or office meeting, and *PAFF!* - there it is - the perfect simulacrum of how I felt at a precise place, at a precise moment in time, that qualia memory moment.

William Wordsworth described this phenomenon accurately in his poem The Daffodils:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude

Thinking back about the many of these I have had, I can see a pattern. The places, the moments - they repeat themselves frequently. New ones are added to the canon. But they too repeat. They resurface, combine and recombine in dreams. Often my dreams are in a hybrid Warsaw-London, England-Poland setting.

Some places have a strong fascination for me. Watching Sir John Betjeman's Metro-Land on the BBC TV the night it aired, 26 February 1973, had a strong impact on me. I was 15 at the time, and after seeing it, I was drawn to visit, time and time again, many of the places shown in the programme. In particular the far reaches of Metro-land, beyond Aylesbury - out to Quainton Road, Verney Junction and Brill. Another such area is around the Catesby Tunnel in Northamptonshire. I have been many times, it inspires me.

Poland has vast appeal to me - the chance to travel out into the Polish countryside in high summer by motorcycle. I cannot wait. Poland has an entirely different feel to Britain - different topography, the lie of the land, the roads, the villages. More like America of the late 1940s and early 1950s, I feel a strong affinity with that klimat. Moving to Poland had a profound impact on my spirit-of-place sensibilities.

"It don't matter which way I'm comin' from, it's which way I'm goin' to."

The Road goes on Forever

 I feel with each journey, I am laying down markers, preferences, familiarities; they return to me - not just 10,000 daffodils, tossing their heads in sprightly dance - many scenes; rural, urban, sunny, snowy, foggy *PAFF! A foggy morning, Elthorne Park, Hanwell, autumn 1969, on my way to school, Boston Manor Station on the Piccadilly Line, posters for the musical film, Paint Your Wagon on the platform... that exact feeling I had that day.

Pilgrimage features in many religions, it is a surprisingly common feature. The journey to a place of cult or veneration, is a ritual, an obligation. But why that particular place? What was it about the spirit of that place, its klimat, that determined that it should become a shrine, a place of pilgrimage? To what extent is the journey as important as the destination - a metaphor for spiritual quest?

Why does our brain store and then reform memories of place and time? What evolutionary advantage does this phenomenon bestow upon us? Like beacons, drawing us back, memories that will return and strengthen association of mind and place. Familiar, anomalous memories in future lives...

Once you have your place, you can set off on Pilgrimage...

This time last year:
An introduction to quantum physics

This time two years ago:
Right and wrong in science and philosophy

This time four years ago:

Free thinking at the Second Vatican Council

This time six years ago:
Getting ul. Karczunkowska ready for Biedronka opening

This time seven years ago: 

God's own risk

This time eight years ago:
A third of the way through Lent

This time eight years ago:
Balancing surfeit and shortage

This time ten years ago:
Congruent consciousness

Build Your Own Religion: The trappings of faith

Lent 2020 - Day Seven

So - you're starting a religion from scratch - blank slate. Design it from the bottom up. I've discussed briefly the tenets - the guiding principles of what one believes (and will be returning to this crucial topic). Now I'd like to start to talk about the trappings of faith - the symbols, the rituals, the holy places, the appearance of believers, the music and art. All these elements are intrinsic to any religion. I'll be going into greater detail about these in future posts between now and Easter. But here's an introduction.

Symbols are extremely important to religions; they allow believers to identify each other and to distinguish themselves from followers of other faiths. Some have hidden meaning, to which only initiates may have access. Sacred texts, said to hold divinely inspired basis for a religion's tenets,can be rich in symbolism and metaphor.

Rituals have a commonality across many religions, they bind communities of believers together in shared sacred acts with a meaning that all participants can agree upon. Rites of passage marking stages in life, birth, puberty, nuptials and death are almost universal. Archaeology shows burial as being the first rite that many early societies engaged in. The passing of the year itself is marked by ritual - solstice, fasting, equinox, harvest.

Such rituals usually take place in specific sacred places; in earliest times, these would be hilltops, forest clearings, sacred groves, places imbued with supernatural significance. Later, temples of increasing size and sophistication would be erected for the purpose of conducting ritual. And there would be special places of worship - of pilgrimage.

St Mary's Church, Harrow-on-the-Hill. It stands on top of the hill. The toponym 'Harrow' comes from the Old English word hearg, meaning 'heathen temple'.

Some religions emphasis the external appearance of believers - clothing, hair and facial hair - marking them apart from non-believers or followers of different faiths, a visual aspect of a collective identity. And the vestments of holy men and holy women reflect the religion's hierarchy.

Linked to rite and symbolism is music and art. Created to inspire awe, to lift the conscious mind from the day-to-day towards the numinous, the infinite and the eternal, to create a mood, a reverent atmosphere for contemplation and worship.

St Peter's Church, Ealing, late Victorian era.
"The last great age of church building" - Sir Roy Strong
"Perhaps one of our noblest churches" - Sir John Betjeman

Planning your own religion, how would you create your symbols and ritual, your holy places; how would you dress and how would your art and music reflect the principles, the tenets of your faith?

This time three years ago:
Health: duty of care

This time four years ago:
Cognitive bias in the search for God

This time five years ago:
A spiritual frame of mind

This time six years ago:
Sunday in the City

This time seven years ago:
God's teachings

This time 11 years ago:
A week into Lent

Loss, faith and consolation

As many of readers of this blog may know by now, Ziggy Chodzko-Zajko died two weeks ago on 6 August while walking on was to be his 34th pilgrimage from Warsaw to the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa. He was 60. I heard the shocking news the day after his death from his widow Ela, who broke the news as we flew back from London to Warsaw. I was surprised by her composure given the unexpected nature of Ziggy's death; he'd been supping back a few ales with us Warsaw London boys just three weeks earlier.

I was also surprised by the massive turnout for Ziggy's funeral in Góra Kalwaria - it was a most beautiful mass; maybe three hundred mourners, a good number of whom had flown or driven over from London. Ziggy and Ela were a deeply religious couple, and I had a sudden insight today into just how powerful shared belief in God and being part of a spiritual community can be at a time of grief. This was a well-liked man, whose passing became an occasion for coming together to celebrate his life.

At the wake there was an excellent audiovisual summary of Ziggy's 60 years among us - I was particularly impressed by the recollections of his time spent with Ela as lay missionaries in the Philippines. Here they helped build a community centre on the island of Mindanao, at a time when massacres of civilians and kidnapping for ransom were commonplace. Ziggy's willingness to help others was legendary; this came out time and again in the eulogies spoken at the funeral mass and wake.

Ziggy was a member of Błękitna Trójka, the 3rd London Polish scout troop back in the 1970s which is where I first met him, he later went on the Montserrat holidays to Poland which resulted in more than a few of us deciding to move to our fatherland after the fall of communism. Eleven Błękitna Trójka old boys turned up at the funeral (three of whom appear in this photo from 50 year ago). Some familiar faces I'd not seen for over 40 years!

Incidentally, the 243km between Warsaw and Częstochowa takes 10 days (around 30,000 paces a day, sleeping in tents every night). Physically challenging.

Reading Prof Richard Swinburne's excellent Are We Bodies or Souls the other week has given me a fresh perspective on how Christian belief in the Afterlife can square with science and be explained by logic. Although my own convictions on the Afterlife are more eastern (and quantum-physics based) in nature than Christian, one way or another I too am certain that Ziggy's spirit lives on, eternally.

Ziggy played guitar [May 2007]

This time two years ago:
Summer's wasting away

This time three years ago:
Warsaw remembers the PASTa building capture

This time four years ago:
Drought. It was a dry summer.

This time six years ago:
Warsaw's ski slope at Szczęśliwice

This time seven years ago:
On the road from Dobra, again

This time eight years ago:
August storm, ul. Targowa

This time nine years ago:
Warsaw Central's secret underground kebab factory

This time ten years ago:
Cheap holidays in other people's misery

This time 11 years ago:
Steam welcomes us to Dobra

This time 12 years ago:
New houses appear in the fields by Zgorzała

Preparations for Lent

It starts tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, and lasts 46 days until Easter Saturday (31 March). Today I shall empty the last of the Merlot, eat a hamburger with French fries - and as from tomorrow there will be no meat or alcohol, not to mention fast food, salt snacks, confectionery (cakes and biscuits I tend not to eat anyway). Exercising will be stepped up. Yes - and a focused cut in my salt intake (stuff like anchovies and oyster sauce, piri-piri or sambak oel).

That's the 'body' bit of Lent. But of increased importance to me over the years has been the spiritual side; here I will make the most of the coming 46 days to explore further my beliefs and how they are evolving over the course of my lifetime. Since 2013, my Lents have become more than just a record of how many sit-ups I can do, but have become a more structured time of spiritual exploration. [If you are here mainly for my photos, there won't be many between now and Easter.]

My guide in this process this year will be Stuart A. Kauffman's Humanity in a Creative Universe (Oxford University Press, 2016). I received the book from my brother the previous Christmas, but could not get past the introduction on account of the complexity of the physics (a bit like my abortive assault on Fr Michał Heller's Filozofia przypadku). I understand the dead cat. But you can't really understand the physics without understanding the maths. Filozofia przypadku had a lot of maths in it - something I could only deal with up to O-level - quadratic equations were beyond my non-scientific mind.

Yet science and religion should be brought closer together. Reductionist scientists like Richard Dawkins, who posit that we are just meat robots that somehow just happened in an accidental universe are, to me, just as wrong as fundamentalist Christians who persist in believing that God made the world in seven days.

Over the next 46 days, with the aid of Humanity in a Creative Universe, I shall attempt to move further in my understanding of the universe, where it's heading and why we exist.

As Kauffman points out, the word 'religion' comes from the Latin 're' and 'ligo' - literally, I tie together. Tying together the physical world and the spiritual world into one.

How much spirituality do we need in our lives? Certainly more than most of us currently experience. Not just random moments of awe, but a structured search for meaning. This requires as much effort as daily exercise or staying off foodstuffs that harm. A bit of self-discipline, but something more than just going through the motions of Sunday Mass. Why do we need it? Meaning, purpose, direction, order.

The unfolding (or 'becoming' or 'entailing' - two words used by Kauffman) of the Universe is something we are all a part of; we can either be a conscious part of that process, or we can choose to say it's all been an accident, a meaningless coincidence, of no consequence. Shutting our minds to the beautiful creation that is our Universe, billions of galaxies composed of billions stars, is dangerous. Our destiny is to evolve spiritually, away from the beastly, towards the angelic. Seeing the Universe as meaningless is a first step to a return to barbarism, allowing the beast to roam unfettered.

This year's journey, a few short steps on the infinitely long road from Zero to One, this years Pilgrimage of the Lenten Mind, starts tomorrow - join me for it.

This time two years ago:
Religion and Spiritual Growth

This time four years ago:
When trams break down

This time six years ago: 
Who are the thickies of Europe?

This time seven years ago:
Oldschool Photochallenge: Response No. 2

This time eight years ago:
Oligocene water from Jeziorki 

40 years ago, I set off on a holiday that would shape my life

On the morning of Wednesday 21 July, along with 89 other young people of Polish origin, I set off from London's Victoria Station bound for Poland. It was a holiday that was to shape my destiny and the course of my life.

Since the early 1970s, the Polish parish in Ealing in which I lived organised summer holidays for its youth. At first these would go to places of pilgrimage in France, Spain and Morocco, such as Loretto and Montserrat.

But in 1975, a controversial decision was taken to make Poland the destination of these visits. The controversy within the Polish emigre community was whether it was right to travel to the People's Republic of Poland, dominated by the Soviet Union, and to accept the numerous compromises this would entail.

Some emigré elders – army veterans, and the scouting leaders in particular – were against. Less doctrinaire voices thought it would be good for the generation of young Poles born in Britain to see their fatherland, under the watchful eye of the parish clergy.

The coincidences needed for this to happen were impressive. Ksiądz Okoński, the priest tasked with looking after the spiritual well-being of the parish's younger souls, happened to be the brother of the personal assistant to Cardinal Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland. And Ksiądz Honkisz, the parish priest, happened to have been in the same Home Army unit during the Warsaw Uprising as Kazimierz Kąkol, at the time the Minister of Religious Affairs.

Strings were pulled and the show got off the ground. Ninety young people from the capitalist West would spend five weeks in summer being driven in two coaches all over Poland, staying mainly in seminaries, and getting to know their ojczyzna. The holidays were called Montserrat, after the Spanish monastery that the Ealing parish's youth had visited in earlier years.

There had to be a quid pro quo. Along with the visits to Gothic cathedrals, places of pilgrimage, seminaries and monasteries, there were visits to factories, such as the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk and the aluminium plant in Konin. And it was clear that the coach drivers that drove us communist Poland worked for someone other than PKS. This was the era of propaganda sukcesu, as First Secretary Edward Gierek spent money borrowed from the West on infrastructure, industry and consumer goods, and the party wanted to spread the message around the world that Poland was booming. Economically, however it was a flash in the pan; by the end of the decade reality came back to bite. Price rises, strikes, Solidarity, martial law... the rest is history.

But for us, blissfully unaware of those geopolitical and economic realities of the time, it was huge fun. Yes, there was Mass every day, and the Rosary would be recited in the coaches from destination to destination, but with 45 girls and 45 boys aged between 15 and 20, and with 200 zlotys to the pound on the black market, the attractions were clear.

Below: a typical day; about one-third of the group is visible in this photograph, taken by Andrzej Poloczek. Who I strongly suspect was standing on a bench to get this shot.

We saw a vast amount of Poland over those five weeks. The trip was hugely educational. And for me, this was the first of three such trips I'd take. I returned with the group in 1977 and 1979, building up a far broader picture of Poland than many people of my parent's generation ever had.

The train from Victoria took us to Dover; we boarded a ferry that would take us to Oostende. Two Polish coaches met us there, to take us to Poland, calling at Bruges, Brussels and Cologne en route.

Looking at the itinerary for the 1976 visit – Szlakiem Wisły, it was called, we visited Gdańsk, Toruń, Płock, Warsaw, Lublin, Sandomierz, Kraków, Żywiec and Poznań and many points in between.

Crossing the Polish border from East Germany – a country with a specific atmosphere of its own – was a memorable experience for me; my first contact with Poland in ten years. I was moved by the landscape, the quiet, traffic-free rural roads, the white-on-green road-signs, village names in Polish – an emotional feeling that my English friends back home in London could not share.

First stop was Paradyż, a seminary school. We spent five nights here; for many of us this was the first taste of Poland. For me – I'd last been in Poland when I was eight. Here's a photograph from that summer 40 years ago, taken by Andrzej Poloczek, below.

Below: the road between Jordanowo and Gościkowo [2014 imagery courtesy of Google Maps], with the Paradyż seminary to the left. The trees have grown tall, obscuring the church towers, the seminary has been renovated with dormer windows in the roof, which itself has been re-tiled.

The next port of call was Gdańsk – Oliwa to be precise. I returned here in 2012 for the wedding of Rysiek and Blanka Szydło. Again, we stayed here for five nights, using the Gdańsk seminary as a base, visiting the sights of Gdańsk and the surrounding region, including the Lenin Shipyard, Malbork and Hel.

In the 19 years I've lived in Poland, I have revisited many of the places that we called in at on those summer holidays in the 1970s. There are a few that I haven't; one being Pelplin. But Malbork, Toruń, Płock that we visited on our way from Gdańsk to Warsaw I have seen. And many more, as you'll read below...

In Warsaw, we had the rare honour to visit Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in the Primate's Palace in Warsaw, below. A figure of huge historical and religious significance in post-war Poland – we teenagers were unable to grasp the historical significance of the man we met that day. Photo by Andrzej Poloczek.

While in Warsaw, we were given three days to visit family across Poland. For me, this was the first opportunity to fly. I bought a return ticket for an internal LOT flight from Warsaw to Wrocław (in an Antonov An-24). Buying the ticket for złotys bought for pounds on the black market, the flights cost me less than a bus trip across London. From Wrocław I took a steam train (departure about 4am, I recall) to Kłodzko, and from there to Lądek Zdrój to meet Ciocia Dziunia and her family. I returned to Warsaw the next day, and feasted at the Forum Hotel (today the Novotel Centrum), outside of which I changed a one-pound note with a black-market cinkciarz and received 200 złotys for it. I proceeded to spend this on roast pheasant, armagnac sorbet, brandy and a large cigar in the hotel's restaurant. Afterwards, finding I still had time and money on my hand, I changed another one-pound note, went back into the hotel restaurant and ordered the same again. Cheap holidays in other people's misery.

From Warsaw we travelled on to Lublin, calling at Kazimierz Dolny on the way. Photo below by Andrzej Poloczek from 1976. Most of the people you can see wandering around are from our group. And this is the height of the summer holidays, 10 August 1976.

Below: contemporary Kazimierz, photo taken by me over eight years ago, on the occasion of Tessa and Adam's wedding. Tłumy, panie!


We also took in Sandomierz (I'll be back again there next month), Kraków, Nowa Huta and Wieliczka, took a boat trip down the Dunajec river and made it into the mountains - Żywiec and Wisła. Visiting Auschwitz and before that Majdanek made a profound impression on me; the mass extermination of human beings as an industrial activity. I was physically sick.

Heading back, we visited the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa, holiest of Polish shrines. The return journey was via Piotrków Trybunalski (which I visited earlier this summer), Łódź, Łęczyca (which I passed through twice last August) and Poznań, where we spent our last night in Poland before boarding the international coaches that would take us back to Oostende and Dover.

The holiday had a profound and lasting effect on me. It shaped my love of Poland; despite the attractions of university which I was to discover weeks after my return from this holiday, I wanted to return for another such holiday, which I did, twice. Three such holidays, each one around five weeks long, each one visiting many different towns and cities and other significant places across Poland. They gave me an excellent taste of what Poland actually was – the political situation notwithstanding.

The legacy of those kilometres in the coach, when we weren't reciting the Rosary, we'd be listening to music. Four LPs were played over and over on the coaches' tape decks – Desire, by Bob Dylan, including the songs Hurricane and Mozambique, Eric Clapton's 461 Ocean Boulevard, from which the song Let it Grow was the most salient number, and two albums that have truly stood the test of time – David Bowie's Station to Station and Trick of the Tail by Genesis. While the former I associate mainly with my trip to Wrocław, the latter – in particular the track Entangled – will forever be the soundtrack of that holiday. Looking out of the coach window at the people harvesting wheat with horse and scythe under a Polish sun.

I wrote the other day about memory and qualia and how our personalities are shaped by those memories that return, triggered or unbidden. That particular summer holiday, 40 years ago, was instrumental in creating in me the desire to spend my summers in the vast, eternal, sunlit Poland, either revisiting places I'd visited on those holidays, or just discovering new ones.

Below: me, then. Not a single molecule, not a single atom, that was part of me then, is part of me now. They have all changed, four times, since 1976. But those strong memories linger, waiting to be triggered. Photo by Andrzej Poloczek.

If you took part in one of the Montserrat holidays to Poland in the 1970s, there is a series of DVDs based on the home movies shot by Ks. Okoński and others, put together by Marcin Hauke in Ealing back in 2009. Worth getting hold of. Drop me an email and I'll put you in touch.

Researching this piece online, I came across this doctoral thesis about the history of the Polish parish in Ealing, 1950-2000, written by Katarzyna Fuksa. It appears in different guises online, so google her name and 'parafia NMP Ealing'. Download the .pdf file then Ctrl+F and type in 'Montserrat'.

Thanks to Andrzej Poloczek, thanks to Rysiek Szydło for curating the photos on his website.

This time last year:
Last night's storm

This time two years ago:
Drifting south with the sun: bicycle hobo

This time four years ago:
Royal Parks in the rain

This time five years ago:
Storm clouds over Warsaw, Dolinka under water

This time six years ago:
Round-up of pics from Dobra

This time seven years ago:
Conservatism - UK or Polish style?

This time eight years ago:
Wheat and development

This time nine years ago:
A previous visit to London