The day God saved me from a dreaded exam

By Quentin de la Becloyere
/have long been a believer in the power of petitionary prayer, and I can quote many instances (no doubt unsatisfactory evidence to the scientific mind) of remarkable favours. I suspect that my valuation goes back to my schooldays.
In those days we were subject to a tennly oral examination conducted by a Jesuit who made the fear of God appear no more than a distant rumble of thunder. I mention no names: there are those who will know whom I mean. I was faced by just such an examination on a speech of Demosthenes. I toyed with the idea of learning the English translation by heart and hoping I could match it, when under fire. with the correct Greek passage. But I decided that prayer was the best answer.
And so it came to be. On the morning of the oral our form master announced that Father X's mother had died the previous day, and the oral was cancelled. Back on my knees in thanksgiving.
Then some days later, as the term drew towards a welcome close, it was announced that Father X had returned, and the oral would be conducted without delay. So I was in the chapel during morning break unusual for me. But, mirabile dictu, Father X's brother died. and the oral was cancelled never to be reinstated.
I know it seems harsh that two deaths were required in order to save me from the examination. But I have to say they seemed wholly proportionate to me at the time. And it has left me with a belief in petitionary prayer for life.
/s poetry the highest form of art? This is a good debating question, but I think a strong case can be made that it enables us the communicate the truths of life from the trivial to the profound in a way that cannot be matched in other forms.
Poetry has a relative freedom from rules, but it has particular characteristics. Chief of these is that it allows us to stretch and manipulate language in the search for meaning. It uses the sounds of language (poetry should always be read aloud); it can employ rhythm in simple or exn-emely complex ways; it can rhyme or half rhyme, or not rhyme at all. It can even use the shape of verse on the page to make a message. It should always be ready to live at the far borders of the use of language. Central to poetry is metaphor that uniquely human way in which we can jump the discrete categories of the senses so that we can penetrate truths that transcend the literal. Just take four familiar lines from Wilfred Owen: What passing bells for those who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles ' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
I could write a dozen Charterhouses on those four lines alone. But don't worry, I won't. If Owen doesn't reach into your heart with his plain words then an encyclopaedia of explanation won't help. Or, even shorter, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" will not exhaust its impact this side of eternity.
I hope I am not alone in my sense of guilt that I do not read enough poetry. I have just been to my bookshelf and counted 101 volumes, anthologies and individuals poets, and I am far from doing them justice.
But I would advocate the writing of poetry. One should never think of publi cation, but only of being so true to oneself that publication might be unwarranted disclosure. (I have to say that I have occasionally succumbed to temptation months or years later on when the lesion has healed. Indeed the poem can help the healing.) So it doesn't matter whether your poetry is bad or good except by your own judgment: does it ring true to you "the best words in the best order-, as Coleridge described it? Going by his manuscript, Owen made perhaps a dozen alterations in getting those lines right. And made them immortal.
he splendid Anne Atkins tackled the subject of abortion on Radio 4's Thought for the Day last month. She described how every channel refused to show the Pro-Life Alliance party political broadcast, confined to facts, figures and photographs. The images might cause offence.
They most certainly would. And the reason, I suggest, is to be found in some recently published scientific work on the moral operations of the brain. Apparently we have two systems. One is a system of logical judgment which forms a basis for sound decisions. The other is an emotional, reactive response in the prefrontal cortex. Ideally the two coincide, but this does not always happen. So, for instance, the logical system might conclude that Saddam Hussein should be hanged. but the emotional system would want neither to watch nor to take any part in the process; indeed, we might even be disgusted at the thought.
Does this apply to abortion? While the unborn baby is unseen and unknown the emotional system is less likely to come into play. A pregnant woman can arrive at a rationalised conclusion and act with no further thought. But once she has seen actual pictures of this little life, recognisable as a baby and reacting in human ways, then her emotional moral system comes into play, and the idea of abortion may become unthinkable. And this could come as a severe shock of guilt to a woman with a history of abortion.
Perhaps it should be mandatory for abortion counsellors to show this film to a client beforehand. Then the decision would take into account her full moral equipment, and not just one part of it.
quentin@ blueyonder.co.uk