If Only Truth Had a Name

Name your Anger.

I am angry on behalf of all those magnificent souls who were gifted skills that could have contributed to humanity and its grand, epic story.

I am sad that somewhere down the line, we lost the concept of the tribe, the village, and the structures it had in place to guide individuals, with the ownership of its stories and the lives that were born into that landscape.

I am deeply angry for my mother and how the loss of her husband meant that she had to deny her gifts to care for me. My grandfather was the kindest and most powerful human I have ever met, and he called my mother and me to him, so he and my Nan could help her raise me. However, fate seems to enjoy our struggles, and he soon was sick with stomach cancer. Not long after, my Nan developed dementia, and my mother was forced to care for a young boy and her own mother alone.

This alone was akin to climbing an emotional mountain. I witnessed my mother utilise her gifts in a meagre setting. Yet, my mum was magnificent, and I wonder what she might have accomplished with the village at her back to support her as she endured the grief of losing three of her family so fast.

I think she could have healed many.

She was, without a doubt, enriched by the divine and understood life was to be cherished. I’ll never forget her screaming at a bus driver to turn his engine off back in the late eighties. Way before Extinction Rebellion existed, when climate change was a concept rather than a lived reality.

I am one of those rare fools who believes that every man, woman, and child is a star, born to fulfill a singular purpose. What happens when capitalism and entitlement devour the light of the multitude? A black sky. No light in the darkness of the night.

The typical riposte to this belief is a comment along the lines of, "well, who would do the dirty work, who would collect the rubbish, or work in the fish and chip shop?" If everyone is busy finding and living their true will. And you know immediately that this is the system, speaking in tongues through the fear encoded in our bodies and minds. A Burroughsian nightmare, of a scarcity wound, speaking in defence of the violence that created it.

It wouldn’t work, would it? No, it wouldn't because what we currently exist within isn’t capable of imagining that which would replace it. We are possessed. A dark something far more strange and subtle would be imagined in its place, perhaps a world where we individually take responsibility for the waste we create, or work within our communities to solve the issue. Hitting the hard wall that how we deal with the fact nothing is currently sustainable. Perhaps we need to stand at the edge of the landfill and witness the atrocity with our own eyes, to understand that this cannot continue. Out of sight, out of mind, but not outside of ancestral karmic debt to the bloodline that owes its due to the world that holds it aloft.

As I’ve said before, there is nothing common about common sense, but it does require the rawness of emotion held in gravity to the immovable fact of how our actions have a psychic cost.

Lost Art

At a certain point, the radical artist has to deal with the fact that there’s weight to the fact that every local art group is filled with a majority of men and a lack of female work and community, because nine times out of ten the system has created families that are coded with women doing the majority of childcare, due to the fact not everyone is lucky enough to have two individuals open to the common sense fact, that it needs to be a shared cost. And not just between father and mother, no, I’m speaking in Will and common sense now. I mean the cost needs to be shared across all examples of what a family is or can be, and certainly, the cost should also fall upon the shoulders of the elders. The grandparents should be expected to play a role in rearing the youngest. It just makes sense. All that lived experience and wisdom needs to flow directly into the orbit of the young stars that have just touched down in flesh and confusion. And in return, it is understood that the elders will be cared for right until the end and beyond, and respected, both as carriers of the tribe's stories, but also as ancestors in waiting.

I imagine the art and wonder that humanity has lost due to the fact women are so often denied the time or space to explore the truth of what they were called here to do.

Perhaps that's what true will really is. The will to do things right for yourself and for the tribe, in a contract that understands that this is all that stands between us and the fates that the gods have planned for us.

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What would a world look like that was filled with people in true connection to what they were born to exist and follow?

We don’t have to stretch our imaginations far to envision this. It likely existed during the era of hunter-gatherer tribes, where it made sense to utilise the inherent gifts held within each individual heart of the tribe. This notion resonates with many indigenous cultures' rituals around the naming of tribe members.

Consider the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) tribes in North America, where a person's name is an essential, powerful aspect of their identity. Traditional names, often in the Ojibwe language, are given by an elder or spiritual leader in a naming ceremony. Names can be derived from diverse sources, including dreams, nature, or characteristics of the individual.

Or the Navajo tribes, where children are traditionally named in a ceremony a few days after birth by the first person to hold them. These names frequently bear sacred or symbolic significance.

The Maori in New Zealand, where traditional names often have rich meanings based on ancestry, events, aspirations, or characteristics. Sometimes, children are named after their elders or ancestors.

In Indigenous Australian tribes, it's common for a child to receive several names throughout their lifetime. The first is often given at birth, with others added later to denote significant life events or achievements.

In Africa, tribes like the Akan of Ghana often name children based on the day of the week they were born, the order of birth, or the circumstances surrounding their birth. Some names may be given later in life based on achievements or personal characteristics.

Even in the heart of the Amazon, tribes like the Yanomami name children after a deceased relative or significant event, believing that the ancestor's spirit lives on in the child.

In many Indigenous cultures, names are deeply personal and spiritual and can change over time. A person may be given a new name after a significant life event, achievement, or change in character.

Imagine a world where we recognised the inherent gifts in each individual from their earliest moments, where the spirit of ancestors lived on in the young, where names changed and evolved as individuals grew and their paths shifted. Imagine a world where we nurtured the light within every man, woman, and child. Would this not be a world that truly honours the will of the individual and the tribe, a world that stands strong against the fates that the gods have planned for us?

Names and language are key to control, and when you strip society of true naming rituals, you take away the sacred moment of arrival and homogenise it into meagre ceremonies, where gender is the priority and we are cast as fixed creatures who are denied the ability to shape-shift.

For the longest time, I hated it when my mother would call out my name loudly during a day coach trip to Alton Towers. I was ashamed of the fact that it was just the two of us and that my mother was much older than the parents of other children. She was often thought to be my grandmother.

I see now, through my ancestral work, that this was the greatest of blessings: to arrive through a fully formed portal of wonder and feminine strength. A mother who strove over and over to have a child.

Isn't it funny how the heaviest burdens we carry as children evolve and become the engine of our origin story?

In honour of the light of your true will, and the truth that my mother was so often denied in life, I would like to share the eulogy I gave at my mother’s funeral.

My mum was the strongest and most selfless person I have ever met. A most loving daughter, sister, wife and nan. She lived through being evacuated in the war, raised me alone from the age of four after my father died, she looked after her own mother as her health declined in the last years of her life and she doted and looked after her eldest grandsons, Finn and Gage, when she was still able.

Growing up, my mum taught me how to be strong by example. The strength she has given me has never been more appreciated than right now, because losing her has been the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. These last weeks, since my mum passed away, have helped me to better understand who my mother was. How she came to be defined by loss, galvanised by the task of being a mother, a sister and a friend to all of us here. I now understand how hard it must have been to bury her husband so young.

I look at my children, my four sons, especially Jared, my youngest, and I see the legacy my mother has left us as a family. I know my mum lives on inside each of my sons, her grandchildren. 

Many of you have shared memories of my mum since she passed away. The stories all share a common thread. You have told me that Joyce Rose Harrigan was the most loving and kind person that they have ever met. This is true and I know many here in this church were blessed by her love, compassion and kindness. My mum was always there. ALWAYS. And now she’s not.

I’m not here to tell you all the ways in which my mum was a saint.

My mum was human, like all of us, fallible. The strength she had inside could also be felt in other ways. Joyce Rose Harrigan loved a good argument. We all know just how outspoken she could be. My mum was painfully honest. She could love you so hard that you felt you would suffocate. You could never ever leave her house without having a chocolate or biscuit. Never.

There are so many good memories, but the last years were difficult. My mum suffered with Alzheimer’s and she lived with Lucy and I for the last years of her life. She doted on all four of her grandsons, and loved nothing more than having a game with them and hearing them laugh, watching TV (she had a small obsession with X-Factor), and prompting us when we were running out of milk and nappies, along with less favourable past times like flooding our bathroom and defrosting the freezer (she was forever turning off plugs to help us save money.) There were many good times, when we could see glimpses of my mum as she once was, as she played hide and seek with Ethan-James, causing him to double over in laughter and pure joy. Her happiness and excitement to visit her brother Charlie and her sisters Flori and Violet. Waiting at the window for Gage and Finn to arrive. Her excitement during the home birth of our youngest, Jared. Believe me, she was fully involved. I think I can speak for both of us when I say that when we look back, we savour each and every one of these memories, even the challenging ones.

One of the greatest gifts my mum gave to me was a love of film and music. She loved going to the pictures when she was younger with her sisters and brother. Her first date with my father, Jim, was to see 'Lawrence of Arabia'. She supported and encouraged me to have the strength to follow my own path, although she would often ask me why I couldn’t write something funny.

So here we go mum, perhaps you can help me to do just that.

My mum had a deep mistrust of taxi drivers. I’m not sure exactly why, I think she thought they were far too expensive. In Christmas 2013, I insisted that my mum get a taxi to visit us. She came over to be with Lucy, Finn, Gage and Ethan James. When she arrived, she sat down, had a cup of tea and her grandsons were sitting with her when she pulled out a fork from her bag. Finn asked her “Nan, why have you got a fork in your bag?” My mum answered “Well, you never know with these taxi drivers, if they try anything, I’ll stick them with my fork.”

In the last weeks of her life, when I visited her in hospital, my mum would say “I love you” and I would say “I love you too, mum”. We would tell each other over and over. It became a mantra. That held the pain at bay. I know Audrey experienced this too. Even then, in pain, as she was preparing to leave this world, mum would grab your hand so tightly and tell you how much she loved you. This is who Joyce Rose Harrigan was. A woman of spirit and faith, and it was this faith that connected us in the last moments of her life, it was a gift we shared. The faith that something waits for us all beyond this world. Something beautiful, filled with wonder and love.

The love Joyce Rose Harrigan embodied is how I will always remember my mum.

Thank you all for the love and support you’ve shown to my family during this most difficult of times. My mum loved you all. Please never forget that. This is how my mum will live on in our memories and the stories we share, through the many ways she shared her love with each of us.

Mum, I’m so proud to have been your son.

Perhaps only your true name protects you from fate.

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"This is the aim of sacred magic; it is nothing other than to give the freedom to see, to hear, to walk, to live, to follow an ideal and to be truely oneself" - Valentin Tomberg

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1. Gog and Magog, in certain interpretations, can represent societies or nations that are in opposition to divine will or order.