Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Books, Christianity, Natural History, Philosophy, Religion

The beehive tells us much about the soul

THE COMPLETE BEEKEEPER

Intro: The beekeeper at Douai Abbey has applied the wisdom of bee care to living well

During the vigil on the eve of Easter Sunday, the dark church is lit only by the Paschal candle (representing Christ, “Light from Light”, as the Creed says) and by the candles lit from it and held by those present. Then an ancient chant is sung by the deacon towards the candle, and in praise of it.

This chant, the Exsultet (“Rejoice”), written between 1400 and 1600 years ago, is of an astonishing poetical character. Its text refers to Adam’s sin as felix culpa, “happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer”.

It speaks of “this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants’ hands”. But there should be another mention of bees – of the candle flame being “fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious”. The natural history may be awry in calling the female workers “mother bees”, but it is good to see them given due praise. Alas, some choose an abbreviated form of the Exsultent and the mother bees perished. To make up for that shortfall, a delightful new book is being published by Gracewing: The Complete Beekeeper by Dom Gabriel Wilson, OSB (Order of Saint Benedict).  

He has been Prior of the Benedictine Abbey of Douai in Berkshire since 2022, but its beekeeper since 2015. His tenure was a turning point in beekeeping history. He was in charge during the devastating Isle of Wight disease (now known to be caused by the Acarine mite) in the early 20th century, which wiped out the native British Black Bee. His writings capture a pivotal moment when beekeeping shifted from old-world methods to more scientific, selective breeding.

The book’s title mirrors The Compleat Angler, first published by Isaac Walton in 1653, which made the angler symbolise the ideal human being living a balanced life. Similarly, Dom Gabriel feels that “within the hive lives and moves an allegory for the sacred mysteries not only of nature, but of the human soul”.

The beehive speaks to the human heart, he suggests, not by logical syllogisms but by symbol. As Pascal wrote: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”

Dom Gabriel notes that the social virtues of bees were recognised in the pre-Christian world. Virgil devoted a quarter of his poem the Georgics to bees as a model of a structured, co-operative, and selfless society. Today we still wonder: “Who taught the bee to make its wax hexagons, those most perfect forms? Who instructed her to gather nectar and guard her queen, to sacrifice herself to relentless work without any thought of reward?”

Nonetheless, The Complete Beekeeper is more than natural history or self-help; it is a contemplation of spirituality. “To keep bees is … a form of devotion, akin to an intimate spiritual practice that mirrors the tending of one’s inner life.”

The author’s experience at the beehive informs this meta-science: which, governs the care of the faculty for living well – the soul. “Each hive is its own living universe. Within its wooden walls, thousands of bees work in miraculous harmony: foraging, building, cleaning, dancing, feeding the queen, and protecting the whole. So too is the soul made up of countless thoughts, memories, desires, and instincts.”

The Complete Beekeeper taps inherited wisdom. It quotes poets such as Coleridge and Hopkins, and masters of the spiritual life such as St John of the Cross, and, naturally, St Benedict. It critically considers philosophers such as Plato, Seneca, and Sartre – and of course cites beekeepers, in peace and war.

The work of making one’s soul is deadly serious, but it should not be anxious. “Bees are not tame creatures; nor is the moral life a safe one. But it is, in the end, very beautiful and full of joy.” Underneath is a confidence in the ultimate goodness of the world, which, like the garden where the beekeeper tends his hives, knows how to bud and mend, grow and yield again.

Throughout the text, Wilson weaves in the Benedictine philosophy of stewardship. He advocates for a “gentle hand,” suggesting that the best beekeeper is one who works with the bees’ instincts rather than fighting against them. This philosophy – known as the “Buckfast” philosophy – of breeding for docility and productivity became the hallmark of the Buckfast Bee.

Many associate Buckfast Abbey primarily with Brother Adam (the creator of the Buckfast Bee), but it was actually Dom Gabriel who served as the Abbey’s head beekeeper before him. The bigger picture of the book implies that if Brother Adam was the “architect” of the Buckfast Bee, then Dom Gabriel was the “master builder” who cleared the ground. The analogy should not be overlooked.

   

Standard
Arts, Australia, Books, Literature

Book Review: A Far-flung Life

LITERARY REVIEW

– The story is a sweeping epic that follows the MacBride family on a million-acre sheep station in Western Australia, exploring themes of secrets, tragedy, and resilience across several generations

In ML Stedman’s immensely popular 2012 debut, The Light Between Oceans, moral ambiguity was the eddying undercurrent, in a story about a couple who discover a baby on the shores of their remote island home off the coast of Western Australia. That novel spurred an international bidding war and sparked a lacklustre film adaptation. In her second publication, A Far-flung Life, Stedman remains just as preoccupied by what governs our understanding of right and wrong, as well as how we define our sense of family and identity.

Also set in Western Australia, A Far-flung Life begins in 1958 and follows several generations of the MacBride family on their million-acre sheep ranch, Meredith Downs. Here, small decisions have vast consequences: when the patriarch, Phil, swerves to avoid a kangaroo while driving home from the market, he and his eldest son, Warren, are killed. Matt, the youngest son, only just survives. Lorna, suddenly a widow, takes over the reins of the ranch, now the sole parent not only of Matt, whose amnesia from his head injury forces him to redefine who he is and the life he had once hoped for, but also of her “fiery, mercurial” daughter, Rosie.

As the years pass, other figures drift in and out of the MacBride orbit: there’s the taciturn Pete Peachey, a former prisoner of war in Japan who culls the kangaroos on the family homestead; and Miles Beaumont, a dapper Englishman of noble blood who’s learning the ropes on the station. Everyone has their secrets, the albatross they carry. Rosie’s causes her to flee to the outback, though she returns not long after, with a newborn in tow. She, too, will make a decision that reverberates for the MacBrides over the decades – particularly for Matt, who must learn what it means to live a life indelibly marked by unfathomable events.

A recurring theme through this attentive novel is a “forgetment”, a Stedman coinage and idea not for a memory but for a “thing you forget”. The struggle of writing our own narrative when it is violently altered and the way we are shaped as much by conscious knowing as by unknowing (what we hope time will dissolve) – these richly human notions are handled with skilled care. Just as the unflinching land can “rearrange itself without warning or permission”, so can our lives, our sense of self. As Pete Peachey reflects, “’Us’ is an ever-changing thing.” Throughout A Far-flung Life, the at-times herculean labour of weathering that change is shown as not an interruption of life but a part of it.

Time and its fickle passing are insightfully examined. The nature of loss and its temporal warping – where “one minute didn’t have the same length as another” – stands in counterpoint to the indifferent, relentless passage of time on the land. Hours, days, weeks: these human-made creations, the contours of which seem to blur, are only one way we mark our passage. There’s also “the gradual curl of a ram’s horns”, “the stretching and the shrinking of the light”. Stedman elicits, too, how when dazed by grief, one can experience time as stasis: for Matt, forever tied to a cataclysmic single moment, “maybe the roo was always going to bound in front of the truck; was still bounding in some eternal present”.

As the MacBrides learn how to endure the challenges besetting them, it’s a testament to Stedman’s deftness and skill that A Far-flung Life, racked with calamity, only occasionally approaches the mawkish. Every loss feels earned, and what may have otherwise been a syrupy saga is instead a palpable examination of loss, memory, and identity. Her breadth of research is also fully alive in the novel’s expansive detail: the landscape is rendered with intimate familiarity, as is the quotidian minutiae of life on the station. Stedman’s masterful control of perspective, shifting between multiple characters as well as expanses of time and place, culminates in a remarkable, poignant tale.

The moral ambiguity animating the novel lies in things which are best left buried; which parts of a life are allowed to become “forgetments”. This isn’t a question of feigned ignorance but rather of what role forgetting plays in forgiveness – not only of others but of oneself. The author holds the inquiry up like a glimmering piece of quartz, illuminating its shadowed recesses and fractures. The answers, she suggests, aren’t important as the life lived in pursuit of them.

– A Far-flung Life by ML Stedman is published by Penguin, 448pp

Standard
Artificial Intelligence, Arts, Intellectual Property, Publishing, Technology

Authors should be protected over big tech

COPYRIGHT LAWS AND AI

Intro: Creative artists and writers are voicing their anger at AI theft of their work with ‘Human Authored’ logos and an empty book. The government must listen

DURING last week’s London Book Fair, The Society of Authors stamped its books with “Human Authored” logos, in scenes that might have come from a dystopian novel. They described its labelling scheme as “an important sticking plaster to protect and promote human creativity in lieu of AI labelled content in the marketplace”.

Entrants to the fair were also given copies of Don’t Steal This Book, an anthology of some 10,000 writers including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Malorie Blackman, Jeanette Winterson, and Richard Osman. The pages of the book are completely blank, but the back cover states: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies.” The message is clear and simple: writers have had enough.

The book fair arrived before the government is due to deliver its progress report on AI and copyright, after proposals for a relaxation of existing laws caused outrage last year. Philippa Gregory, the novelist, described the plans for an “opt-out” policy, which puts the onus on writers to refuse permission for their work to be trawled, as akin to putting a sign on your front door asking burglars to pass by.

– 10,000 authors publish an empty book to protest against the theft of books by tech companies to train AI models

According to a University of Cambridge study last autumn, almost 60% of published authors believe their work has been used to train large language models without consent or reimbursement. And nearly 40% said their income had already fallen as a result of generative AI or machine-made novels, a digital incarnation of Orwell’s Versificator in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Factual books are clearly most susceptible to ChatGPT and other AI generative tools. While sales in fiction are rising, sales of nonfiction were down 6% last year compared with 2024. But three nonfiction books, all by female authors, bucked the trend: Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir of abuse; A Hymn to Life, Gisèle Pel icot’s testimony and account of her ordeal at the hands of her ex-husband; and Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s exposé of working at Facebook. The success of these first-person narrations show the powerful reach of nonfiction beyond the world of publishing. These are painfully human stories; readers must be able to trust in the authenticity of their voices.

Last year, novelist Sarah Hall requested that her publisher Faber, print a “Human Written” stamp on her latest book, Helm. “AI might mimic the words more rapidly, but . . . it hasn’t bled on the page,” she said. “And it doesn’t have a family to support.”

Writers’ livelihoods must not be sacrificed to the promise of economic growth. The UK’s creative industries contributed £124bn to the UK economy in 2023, of which £11bn came from publishing. The Society of Authors is requesting consent and fair payment for use of work, and transparency as to how a book was “written”. These are hardly radical propositions. But in an era of fake news and AI slop, they are sadly necessary. Writers and creative artists need more than sticking plasters. They need robust legislation.

A House of Lords report recently published lays out two possible futures: one in which the UK “becomes a world-leading home for responsible, legalised artificial intelligence (AI) development” and another in which it continues “to drift towards tacit acceptance of large-scale, unlicensed use of creative content”. One scenario protects UK artists, the other benefits global tech companies. To avoid a world of empty content, the choice is clear.

Standard