Monuments and the Queen

Emma Soames ""We've come to this place where history is viewed only entirely through the prism of the present," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. " Much of me has done my best to avoid talking about the rascist controversies. I am certain George Floyd died unjustly. But I am very uncomfortable about much that has happened in the middle of a pandemic lately. Yet to argue about this, easily takes one into a corner one does not want to be in. Do not think I have not thought and prayed about it much. So hear my best offering. At the root of all this lies man's readiness to bully other people. We just love it. I hated school for this reason, dammed near suicidally. I hated workplace bullies, I found my Lady and we have tried to build our little bit of heaven on earth. On all this I hate bullies, I am clearly with George Floyd but what if rioting and civil protest, taking over precincts in Seattle itself looks like bullying? How do we get out of this? I am offering this answer. We recognise that the ultimate bully, the one who started it all is God the creator (because I will not accept the Genesis account and that because man did not consciously fault but faulted into consciousness (I am with Auden, that profound bisexual poet of the 20th c (courting controvery at several levels there))). Auden learnt that, and says so bluntly, in our Pennine backyard. So grant to me any God who created this world must bear some responsibility for the bullying. What should we do in this moment? Surely logic says in the mood of our moment, anything that speaks of God must be torn down. We must not remember we believed. Justice can only be served by removal. Destroy the churches and temples! What does that remind you of? It reminds me of what happened in England after the reformation and in the Commonwealth. Is that the world you wish to be in because we could be quite near creating it in all this monument bashing? Alternatively you might want to read the Gospel stories again and see if some saving paradox is present? So give me a protest in Whitehall today or the Queen's ceremonies at Windsor and I will be with her. A most remarkable woman of faith. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53033550