National Ponderings

I was listening to an old radio programme on an old tape recorder and got pondering about something that was said.  The people of Iran see themselves as one of Asia's two great nations, themselves and China.  Everything else is regarded as the leavings of imperialism.  Quite what the Indians think about this I am not sure.  The fact is both China and Iran go back a long way, much further than Scotland, much further than most nations.  Iran dates itself right back to Cyrus the Great, the man who toppled Babylon two and a half thousand years ago.  He did this, creating one huge empire, while the Greeks were still fighting among themselves, the Egyptians had had it, and the great Europeans civilisations were still living in mud huts.  Iranians are proud of this long heritage, making ours look insignificant in return.

It is this pride in the history that stuck in my mind.  What is it about land? These folk were proud of the land they came from and it brought to mind Stone Age man and his need to place standing stones, not always in circles, as if attempting to find someplace he could 'belong' to. The standing stones commemorated the dead some say, giving him roots to his life, and we all need a root to come from. We have a need to belong to an area, a district a town, someplace we call home, the centre of our life and meaning.  Stone Age man found this in his circles and their ceremonials, possibly in the barrows he built throughout northern Europe, and Iranians look back to Cyrus and claim they have a heritage to be proud off, something politicians have not understood in recent years.  

Now as a Scot I have a history, a heritage to be proud off, not that I have ever mentioned this before or indicated Scots superiority over the rest of you as like all Scots I am too humble to do that.  I am proud of this humility!  This need to belong to a bit of land is strange as it leads to pride, the pride that considers itself better than others and demands all it can get form others. Such attitudes lead only to disaster.  In the end we all come from the same place, we are all 'Jock Tamson's Bairns,' in the end.  I am often amazed at how boastfully proud some Americans can be of their nation, especially when Soviet citizens were just as proud of theirs.  Pakistanis are proud of their nation, or at least happy to defend it if anyone, especially India, attacks it.  'Pride,' or 'belonging,' a group to be part off, a place to say 'this is mine?'   

I attempt to stand on Jesus, he told me to get off his foot the other day, and this lifts me above the nationality problem to a great degree, and it gives me a place to stand and face the world. This was not my intention but he turned up one day and changed everything.  Am I right in thinking people need a place to belong to, a street, a town, a nation a group within those based on age, sex, colour or employment?   Do we really need each other, and if so why is it so easy to dislike others who disagree? 

It's a funny old world saint, as some puppet once remarked.

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