Andrew Feinstein is a former South African MP who served in the Government of the late President Nelson Mandela. He is an Author and Peace Campaigner. We dialogue on matters relating to the spiritual dimension of anti-racism. The spirituality and humanity of President Mandela. The inhumanity of war. The inner journey as a Humanist and the quest for Peace and Justice.
Musa Askari
Andy McDonald is a Labour Party Member of the UK Parliament for the Constituency of Middlesbrough. He is a Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights and formerly Shadow Secretary of State for Transport.
During the Dialogue we cover topics such as the importance of Dialogue, Right to Protest as one of the cornerstones of Democracy, Toxicity of Social Media & Spirituality. He ends the Dialogue with a powerful quote from Maya Angelou.
Musa Askari
Thank you to Councillor Matt Storey to accept my invitation for a Dialogue Works Conversation. We cover topics from the changing work of being a Local Councillor through the Pandemic, how Dialogue is crucial to Community Engagement, Black Lives Matter and the awakening that has sparked in Public Consciousness. The Spiritual nature of Public Service. Matthew ends the Dialogue with a very powerful quote from Bobby Kennedy. On the coattails of what ifs and what could have been.
Musa Askari
My DialogueWorks conversation with Mick Thompson of Middlesbrough. We cover his political roots, standing for Mayor, populism, spirituality, community cohesion and the crucial importance of Dialogue ending with Mick’s rendition of “What’s so Funny About Peace Love and Understanding”.
Musa Askari
Oh dearest BEAUTY how beautiful you are.
From where do you derive that mantel of beauty? How much more Beautiful that Beauty must surely be. What love is it that Loves you so? Formless, placeless. Transcendent.
Musa Askari
“Solidarity with the NHS. A personal story from Musa Askari which demonstrates how important our NHS is, not just for our health, but our dignity.” Paul Daly, Socialist Think Tank
“My thanks to Socialist Think Tank for asking me to contribute to the 12 Days of Solidarity Series. I reflect on the Solidarity shown to my Family by the NHS at the passing of my late Father.” Musa Askari
Dearly departed how so many miss you. How so many yearn and grieve for you. The places you used to sit in a room seem dimmer now bereft as they are of the light of your smile. The signature sound upon the stairs as you descended each morning is no more. You have ascended never to return and the memories keep flooding back. They embrace with love but also constrict with pain and longing all at once. It is not grief that pains, we are to be life long companions grief and I who will travel far together with the rise and fall, ebb and flow, but rather the burning feeling in my heart of memories that pains. It is not that I remember you. I do not need to invoke remembrance instead remembrance invokes me. Unbidden it surrounds and wheresoever one looks it is there. I live in a state of remembrance. I did not ask for this life of remembrance. It was not something I was searching for and yet it has found and held me in its grip from the moment your hand slipped out of mine. I do not have the power to resist. You are simply “there”. Invisible, intangible, immaterial but unmistakably just “here” with me. I feel you everywhere at all moments of wakefulness. In my dreams of which you know better than I. How to speak now when the centre of the circle of one’s life is no more visible? I wander about the circumference at the outskirts of my life. Where shall we meet and face one another again? I will wait for you at the park bench where we used to take rest. I will enact our conversations silently as an act of remembrance and prayer looking for you in the eyes of the people who pass by. If you recognise me please say hello. Dearly departed how so many miss you. None more dearly than I.
Musa Askari
(A reflection in memory of all the departed Souls in 2020 and in honour of those who remember them. A year of heartache.)
It was great to Dialogue with Paul Daly of Socialist Think Tank on Socialism and Spirituality and to talk about my late Father’s work (Professor Syed Hasan Askari, Inter Faith Dialogue Pioneer) informing my Socialist sensibilities.
If you want to know how a variation of collective hypnosis works we need look no further than asking when did the term “KEY ESSENTIAL WORKER” become so affectionate in the Public Consciousness?
There have always been Workers. There were always low paid workers. Did we not see them before? Was a Nurse, Care Worker, Refuse Collector, Postal Worker, Bus Driver, Supermarket Worker, Teaching Assistant and so many more; were they not key or essential only a matter of weeks ago? Or months ago? Or centuries ago?
These workers by the industry of their labour, sweat, tears and injury mighty empires rose up. Where are they now who once thought what they believe to be true and everlasting over the centuries?
We too were sold a dream to become “self” made, a spiritual term diverted. Yet no one asked what is the Self? Who are we? What are we? A collection of identities prone to dangerous levels of exclusivism one sidedness or oppression? Or something more, much more beautiful.
Why such a massive outpouring of love now and rightly respect and gratitude but not so universal before for key essential workers? Why? We can hide from our collective hypocrisy, but sooner or later it will find us. It will trace us down and I hope it will be kind to us and come masked as our “Conscience”.
One’s self hypocrisy is a terrible force unmasked. Unbearable. Even our own hypocrisy will be kind to us I pray. I hope it remembers its root is not to humiliate us in our minds. To belittle us in front of the audience of our own self consciousness. No. This Conscience I hope comes to Awaken us and surely Awakening is the antidote to hypnosis.
Let us awaken to many things in the new normal to come. One of them being gratitude to Key Essential Workers not just as a kind word but a just settlement, treatment and conditions.
There have always been essential workers. I simply refer to them as the WORKING CLASS who take the pulse of collective life. Are they not the closest to every day life? Yours and my neighbour.
A knock at the door. Who is it? Conscience. Who’s Conscience? Your Self comes the reply saying come outside:
“IT IS THURSDAY. AWAKENING DAY.”
Musa Askari
Do I not have the companionship of my eyes to bring the distant near? As like the shroud of a starlit night to draw down and embrace me.
Do I not have the fellowship of my ears to bring soft soothing melodies closer? As like the journey of a hidden stream in the hills whose meandering mirrors the lines upon my palms in which the water falls and sustains me
Do I not have the comradeship of my hands to offer peaceful greetings to the World and every Being thereupon? Do not forget about one’s Self remembrance. Memory above memory.
Do I not have my next of kin that is my speech coupled with my awakened free will, to give Form to intuition and imagination? As like the sunrise over the ocean horizon gives form to a sense of awe within me.
Do I not have the soothing touch of my tears to comfort, console and plead on my behalf? To wash away the pains suffered in the struggle and of love lost but never forgotten.
And if should there be none of these faculties and friendships or their powers diminished there will always be the inner Self.
Contemplative. Meditative. Prayerful. Soul.
What to speak of Soul when All is Soul before, now and after. The same pendulum swing of the principle of LIFE!
How to be lonely when there is LIFE all about and all within. Aloneness and solitude are other greater deeper matters but lonely, never.
And so from here, from these friendships above, can the font of consolation also begin for the malady that is isolation.
Pray for relief for those isolated from themselves and from the World. Waiting as they do at the foot of their stairs hoping for some hopeful message to fall through the letterbox.
A message placed in to the bottle of their lives that says the World has not abandoned them.
The distress call was heard. Help is on the way. You are not alone.
Musa Askari
Spiritual Human 