@KaJuror The war on the poor is global, millennia old, its methods remarkably unchanged: the powerful seize the earth from those who live by it, state machinery lends its might. Yet into this ancient order the astonishing messianic reversal breaks in: the poor, at last, inherit the earth.
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"And the First Reason is this, that we may lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the land may be fed by the Earth his Mother, according to the Reason that rules in Creation." Gerrard Winstanley Odd, isn't it, how oblivious moderns are to the fact that ancient English liberation theology found actual ground, brief though it was, as a massive eco-social project coalescing around dynamics essentially distinguishing the radical indigeneity of messianic political reality. Facebook post, May 11, 2014. Geran, you were right. The Diggers Song was composed in 1649 by Gerrard Winstanley, the English religious reformer, political philosopher and activist during his efforts taking on the 'enclosures' movement - the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property for the sole of use of individual owners (and their tenants) and, by so doing, depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Winstanley's critique, fundamentally Christian, was rooted in ancient English radical thought going back at least to the days of the Peasants' revolt in 1381 in which the English priest, John Ball, played a prominent role. Ball was executed: Winstanley lived. The English band Chumawamba recorded a version of this song on their album English Rebel Songs 1381-1914. Simply astounding to me, at just how modern the themes and concerns expressed in the Diggers Song remain. [mainlynorfolk.info/leon.rosselson/songs/thediggerssong.html] You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now, You noble Diggers all, stand up now, The waste land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name Your digging do disdain and your persons all defame Stand up now, Diggers all. Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now, Your houses they pull down, stand up now. Your houses they pull down to fright poor men in town, But the gentry must come down and the poor shall wear the crown. Stand up now, Diggers all. With spades and hoes and ploughs, stand up now, stand up now, With spades and hoes and ploughs, stand up now. Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold To kill you if they could and rights from you withhold. Stand up now, Diggers all. Their self-will is their law, stand up now, stand up now, Their self-will is their law, stand up now. Since tyranny came in they count it now no sin To make a gaol a gin and to serve poor men therein. Stand up now, Diggers all. The gentry are all round, stand up now, stand up now, The gentry are all round, stand up now. The gentry are all round, on each side they are found, Their wisdom’s so profound to cheat us of the ground. Stand up now, Diggers all. The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, stand up now, The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise, But the devil in them lies, and hath blinded both their eyes. Stand up now, Diggers all. The clergy they come in, stand up now, stand up now, The clergy they come in, stand up now. The clergy they come in and say it is a sin That we should now begin our freedom for to win. Stand up now, Diggers all. ’Gainst lawyers and ’gainst priests, stand up now, stand up now, ’Gainst lawyers and ’gainst Priests, stand up now. For tyrants are they both even flat against their oath, To grant us they are loath free meat and drink and cloth. Stand up now, Diggers all. The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now, The club is all their law, stand up now. The club is all their law to keep poor folk in awe, That they no vision saw to maintain such a law. Glory now, Diggers all.
Open original document@Plough 3/ “Blessed are the poor” is thus more than consolation or moral praise. It announces a reversal of what the world takes to be secure and real. Where wealth, control and self-sufficiency lose their authority, another order of life comes into view: the Kingdom already breaking in.
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4/ This is not virtue-by-deprivation. Poverty is imposed by violent systems. Suffering can deform as easily as transfigure. But in that cruciform space, the human is stripped of the delusion of self-authored scripts, solipsistic autonomy, the fantasy of control as security. 5/ It’s the strange physics of grace: not romantic but empirical—when the insulating structures of autonomy collapse, relation becomes primary. It gives what wealth can’t: encounter with the Real beyond transaction, where identity isn't performance and love carries no terms. The true malaise isn't moneytheism but the ontology beneath it—beingness reduced to conditionality; a deep-seated distortion of relation to the Real; posture, inner and outer, sealing life against love. A metaphysical lie so deep it shapes the soul. Materialism is but its shrine.