The Day and The Hour by David Betteridge One: What distinguishes the worst of architects from the bestof bees is this: that the architects raise their structuresin imagination before they build them in reality...- Karl Marx Where there is no vision,the psalmist sang,the people perish. Has our vision retrospective scope, we ask,with eyes in the back of its memory's mind?No? Then it falls short, vulnerable from behind. Has our vision close scrutiny of thingsthat may not seem at first significant -things that are routine, or in the dark,maybe at the head of leadership,or in our ranks, or in the cornersof our unexamined hearts: things that can turn to danger, quick as a wink? Experience instructs us:before we act, think! Has our vision a future tense, keento look across to tomorrow's further shore,to envisage what might be different from today,and how, in our journey there, we might followthe best-considered way? As a sculptor sees the contours of a statuealready shaping in an uncut block of stone,or as an athlete first conceives a lift, or jump, or throw,or run, and holds it within the grasp of mind,cherishing it even before the act begins,so, as a wise saw says, each last one of us must thinkand feel, even in the welter of our present woes,as if we were already citizens of a better land,in its early days. Two: What if that other voice we all know so well responds by saying,"We say no, and we are the state"? Well we say yes – and we are the people.- Canon Kenyon Wright Purblind, some of us let a clown run ringsaround us, unaware his circus act had alliesmassed in his defence, brigade upon brigadeof adepts in the wars of both positionand manoeuvre, weaponised. Not seeing straight, or thinking straight,we set our sights on wrong goals,and, forsaking loyaltiesand purposes and roots, got bewildernessedin ruinous wrong ways. As the clown banged his tin drum,even if we did not see the peril in its signs,how did we not hear the horrorin its beat, its dead-march that betokenedthe breaking of laws and lives,as again and again has happenedin carnivals of evil down the years?How did we not smell the reekthat our enemies' cruel arrogance exudes?Why did we not sense earlier the creeping-upand worsening of our fears? Never as now have our enemiesso carelessly self-revealedtheir empty souls and ravening greed,their two-facedness,their lethal recklessness in word and deed. These hellish handcart drivers,untroubled by any fear or shame,these crass demolishers of culture,these sociopaths in smart suits,these devotees of global smash and grab,ignorant or contemptuous of history and its gains,these strangers to sanity and to truth,these bringers of death,see how they stand now: exposed as guilty,red-handed, few options left, run out of breath. Now's the day, and now's the hour,Burns wrote, and sang.Given our enemies are in disarray,disuniting into faction fights, imperilling the safetyof the state, then we have one clear choice,in fact it is imperative:as one to make a stand, contesting the continuanceof their misrule, asserting our claim of rightto governance, at last, of this beleaguered land. Three: The most beautiful of all doubts is when the downtroddenand despondent raise their headsand stop believing in the strength of their oppressors...- Bertolt Brecht In a flash, in a flood, from memory's store,from a remembered Bible story book,a picture comes to mind:Pharaoh's troops in turmoil, tossedwith their weapons and their useless chariotsby the Red Sea's power. Like matchstick men they meet their endas walls of water - that had parted long enoughto let Moses and his people through - now thunder on their hostile heads. Now's the day, and now's the hour,for both the victorious livingand the disarmed dead. Was this a scene that Brecht envisagedwhen he wrote his poem praising doubt,noting how "invincible armies" can be put to flight,"headlong", while "impregnable strongholds" fall,and ancient errors, valorised as truth,are in the end put right. In praising the doubt that tests decisions"like a bad penny", Brecht dispraised the doubtthat is despair, that even under dangerasks too many questions, fearful to act,opting out. Divers exploring the Red Sea's bed foundshell-encrusted chariot wheels down there,relics of an era's end and a bold new chapter's start,when a page was turned, from foul to fair. What relics from today's divisionsand impending shift of power will future history retrieve,to put in picture books or heritage museums:keys to safe deposits, maybe, and yachts,and limousines, and other trappingsof a wasteful Few, juxtaposed with the sad remainsof a Many cast aside, like shards, in early gravesor battlefields, to be rendered back to view,emblems of a time when a peoplealmost perished? Best evidence of all will be,growing from its early days to a mature peace,a new-made land, negating what we now see,living proof that where there's vision,we, the people, flourish.