The news from St Paul’s comes in a brief press release received by Riazat Butt. It reads:
‘The Chapter has previously asked the encampment to leave the cathedral precinct in peace. This has not yet happened and so, following the advice of our lawyers, legal action has regrettably become necessary.
The Chapter only takes this step with the greatest reluctance and remains committed to a peaceful solution. At each step of the legal process the Chapter will continue to entreat the protesters to agree to a peaceful solution and, if an injunction is granted, will then be able to discuss with the protesters how to reach this solution.
Theirs is a message that the Chapter has both heard and shares and looks forward to engaging with the protesters to identify how the message may continue to be debated at St Paul’s and acted upon.’
In short: we’re officially sympathetic to you, but we’ll still call the police in.
During live coverage, The Guardian’s Peter Walker sums up St. Paul’s Cathedral’s stance as it seeks to remove Occupy London protestors from its steps. Only the Brits can cut through the muck with one succinct line.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
London Firefighters Observe a Moment of Silence on 9/11/11
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Firefighters from the Clerkenwell Fire Station’s Green Watch observe a moment of silence for their fellow firefighters who lost their lives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York in London, England.
(photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
The Brooms of Britain
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“I was sick of the senseless smashing up of our own communities. It’s good to see there’s a real sense of community with people from all over Liverpool — a vicar, mums, and students — coming to help.”
~Anna Mason, 16, who, after reading in Facebook about clean-up efforts, joined the community with broom in hand.
After all the coverage of riots and burning and breaking, here’s a heart-warming story coming out of England. Flocks of people are taking to the streets of London, Liverpool, and other areas with their brooms in hand to help restore their streets and sidewalks after the riots. At the heart of community is the enduring spirit of a people who weather the tumult of history and move forward.
It’s worth pointing out that, nearly six months ago, a similar sense of community bonding was taking place in Cairo with wonderful images of volunteers scrubbing down streets and one of the iconic lion statues at the Qasr el-Nil bridge leading to Tahrir Square after the protests. A bit of the connective tissue of humanity binds us together, non?
(photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
About the lead image: People show their brooms to Boris Johnson, mayor of London, as they prepare to clean their streets in Clapham Junction, in south London. (photo: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images)
Lessons from Hindu Sufi Guru Irina Tweedie
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“I hoped to get instruction in Yoga, expected wonderful teachings, but what the teacher did was mainly to force me to face the darkness within myself and it almost killed me…. I was beaten down in every sense until I had to come to terms with that in me which I kept rejecting all my life.”
—Irina Tweedie, from Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master
I hadn’t ever heard of Ms. Tweedie before happening upon this quote from Parabola, but her spiritual memoir looks like a compelling read. And if you’d like to hear more of the late Sufi teacher, here’s a poignant interview from Thinking Allowed. She talks about the mind as “the greatest obstacle” to spiritual clarity and that an inherent tension exists between knowledge and the mystical path in which “the less you understand, the better.”
(via parabola-magazine)
