Life

The first synthetic life created by man. Dr Craig Venter and his team became famous in 2001 when they first sequenced the human genome.  Now they have synthesized DNA and created the first synthetic life form.

We need to wait for a while to see if it shows the usual signs of life: metabolism, growth and reproduction.  Then we shall have the first deliberately man-made new species created out of nothing.

I knew it would be done one day, but I never thought I would be alive to see man create life out of a test tube.

Ba'al

Professor Richard Dawkins says it better than anyone I know. For the safety of the nation and the well-being of the children it is not sufficient for us to be merely atheists. It is necessary for us to be militant atheists. After all, we are all of us atheists to some extent. When you think of it, all good Christians have nothing but contempt and disdain for any belief in Ba'al, Thor and the Golden Calf. Some of us just choose to go one god further.

      
        I have given the matter a lot of thought. There are said to be three known reasons why intelligent West Indian men went into the ministry. They are the usual ones: sex, money and power. All the good looking women, who were at the same time gullible, were to be found in church dressed in their Sunday best. They knelt down before you, emoting to your every word and gesture. Seducing them was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Additionally, with little or no learning, but an ability to talk good, one could make a fortune through a church. Just look at the fat, greasy tel-evangelists we see on the TV every day. And the power came from being in a position to influence people's lives. Jim Jones was one of the most successful at all of these church-centered activities. He was one of the few who came to a sticky end.

         It is different today. Our young men of the 21^st century can go into politics, business and the professions without any restriction at all. Fifty years and more ago, the options for a bright young black man were more limited. Race prejudice excluded them from most of the more reputable outlets for self improvement. There were few other opportunities to better yourself than the church.

         That is one reason why elderly West Indian church leaders still among us seem to have been all scholarship material. We look at them perform and listen to them preach and wonder why they had to waste their brains on such a mindless occupation as preaching superstitious nonsense to their followers.

         It is different with the younger generation of preachers and ministers today, I have to shake my head at how unsophisticated and uneducated many of them are. And, so mindlessly and perversely cruel.

         I have never heard an evolutionist condemn a church-goer to everlasting hell. No palaeontologist to my knowledge has ever cut off anybody's head for not accepting that the dinosaurs were made extinct by an asteroid colliding with the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.

         Do you not agree?

White man

God, I love this angry white man. I never heard of him before. Someone sent me the link to this video. It was so beautiful to listen to. I had to share it with you:

Is that not the most refreshing piece of honesty you have heard for a long time?  I thought so.

I don't know whether his rant applies more to our Muslim cousins than it does to our Christian brothers and sisters. What is certain is that it applies to both of them. Probably equally!

For my determinedly Christian readers, who would rather listen to his blast directed to our Muslim cousins I recommend this video as being more politically correct. For Christians, that is:

All those Anguillians who would love to live in faith-based Saudi Arabia right now, put up your hands!

Haiti

Haiti.  On 13 January 2010, Rev Pat Robertson famously explained that the previous day’s earthquake that had devastated the capital city of Haiti, and caused some 200,000 deaths, had been the result of a 1791 ‘pact with the devil’.  You can hear it here for yourself:

According to US fundamentalist Christian history, this satanic pact allegedly took place at Bois Caiman near Cap Haitien on 14 August 1791 during a meeting organised by several slave leaders, under the leadership of Dutty Boukman, before launching what would become Haiti’s Independence War.

On 17 January 2010, Sir Hilary Beckles, Pro-vice-chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, reminded us of what really happened.  This is what he wrote:

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES is in the process of conceiving how best to deliver a major conference on the theme Rethinking and Rebuilding Haiti.

I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption.

Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti's independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.

The evidence is striking, especially in the context of France.

The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, as did the Americans fifty years earlier. The Americans declared their independence and crafted an extraordinary constitution that set out a clear message about the value of humanity and the right to freedom, justice, and liberty.

In the midst of this brilliant discourse, they chose to retain slavery as the basis of the new nation state. The founding fathers therefore could not see beyond race, as the free state was built on a slavery foundation.

The water was poisoned in the well; the Americans went back to the battlefield a century later to resolve the fact that slavery and freedom could not comfortably co-exist in the same place.

The French, also, declared freedom, fraternity and equality as the new philosophies of their national transformation and gave the modern world a tremendous progressive boost by so doing.

They abolished slavery, but Napoleon Bonaparte could not imagine the republic without slavery and targeted the Haitians for a new, more intense regime of slavery. The British agreed, as did the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese.

All were linked in communion over the 500 000 Blacks in Haiti, the most populous and prosperous Caribbean colony.

As the jewel of the Caribbean, they all wanted to get their hands on it. With a massive slave base, the English, French and Dutch salivated over owning it - and the people.

The people won a ten-year war, the bloodiest in modern history, and declared their independence. Every other country in the Americas was based on slavery.

Haiti was freedom, and proceeded to place in its 1805 Independence Constitution that any person of African descent who arrived on its shores would be declared free, and a citizen of the republic.

For the first time since slavery had commenced, Blacks were the subjects of mass freedom and citizenship in a nation.

The French refused to recognise Haiti's independence and declared it an illegal pariah state. The Americans, whom the Haitians looked to in solidarity as their mentor in independence, refused to recognise them, and offered solidarity instead to the French. The British, who were negotiating with the French to obtain the ownership title to Haiti, also moved in solidarity, as did every other nation-state the Western world.

Haiti was isolated at birth - ostracised and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of national strangulation recorded in modern history.

The Cubans, at least, have had Russia, China, and Vietnam. The Haitians were alone from inception. The crumbling began.

Then came 1825; the moment of full truth. The republic is celebrating its 21st anniversary. There is national euphoria in the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The economy is bankrupt; the political leadership isolated. The cabinet took the decision that the state of affairs could not continue.

The country had to find a way to be inserted back into the world economy. The French government was invited to a summit.

Officials arrived and told the Haitian government that they were willing to recognise the country as a sovereign nation but it would have to pay compensation and reparation in exchange. The Haitians, with backs to the wall, agreed to pay the French.

The French government sent a team of accountants and actuaries into Haiti in order to place a value on all lands, all physical assets, the 500 000 citizens were who formerly enslaved, animals, and all other commercial properties and services.

The sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti was told to pay this reparation to France in return for national recognition.

The Haitian government agreed; payments began immediately. Members of the Cabinet were also valued because they had been enslaved people before independence.

Thus began the systematic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. The French government bled the nation and rendered it a failed state. It was a merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian economy and society.

Haiti was forced to pay this sum until 1922 when the last instalment was made. During the long 19th century, the payment to France amounted to up to 70 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.

Jamaica today pays up to 70 per cent in order to service its international and domestic debt. Haiti was crushed by this debt payment. It descended into financial and social chaos.

The republic did not stand a chance. France was enriched and it took pleasure from the fact that having been defeated by Haitians on the battlefield, it had won on the field of finance. In the years when the coffee crops failed, or the sugar yield was down, the Haitian government borrowed on the French money market at double the going interest rate in order to repay the French government.

When the Americans invaded the country in the early 20th century, one of the reasons offered was to assist the French in collecting its reparations.

The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice.

Haiti did not fail. It was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current condition.

The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has been less destructive than the hate.

Human life was snuffed out by the quake, while the hate has been a long and inhumane suffocation - a crime against humanity.

During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa, strong representation was made to the French government to repay the 150 million francs.

The value of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US$21 billion. This sum of capital could rebuild Haiti and place it in a position to re-engage the modern world. It was illegally extracted from the Haitian people and should be repaid.

It is stolen wealth. In so doing, France could discharge its moral obligation to the Haitian people.

For a nation that prides itself in the celebration of modern diplomacy, France, in order to exist with the moral authority of this diplomacy in this post-modern world, should do the just and legal thing.

Such an act at the outset of this century would open the door for a sophisticated interface of past and present, and set the Haitian nation free at last.  

I would like to think that Pat Robertson’s homicidal god is not one that many Christians would recognise.  I would that these murderous TV extortionists would leave West Indian history severely alone.

Biology

In conversation with a group of students at the local Anguillian High School recently, the subject of evolution came up.  One student asked me if I believed in the “theory of evolution”.  I answered that the evolution of new species is no longer classed as a theory: it is a recognised fact.  Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the engine that drives evolution may be described as a theory, but not the fact of evolution itself.  This response was met by a sea of disbelieving faces.  Disconcerted, I asked the youngsters how many of them believed that evolution was a false theory.  Every one of them nodded his or her head in agreement with the assertion.  Not a single student declared confidence in the science of evolution.  These were senior students, mind you, about to graduate from High School.  They were not small and untutored children from a junior school.  To say that I was shocked would not be sufficient.  I was stunned.  Could it be, I asked myself, that our education system in Anguilla is teaching the discredited theory of creationism as if it were science?

I was educated in a religious school in Trinidad in the 1950s and 1960s.  My biology teacher was a priest and minister of religion.  He taught us then that the evolution of species was an accepted fact.  We learned that the story of the creation, the Old Testament story of the Garden of Eden and God’s creation of all the known animals at the time of the beginning of the world, was meant to be taken as metaphor, not fact.  We were taught as good Catholics that God had made man in his image.  God had done this by breathing an immortal soul into him at some stage in the distant past when our physical bodies had evolved into homo sapiens.  I have long ago rejected as fantasy the whole structure of the Judeo-Christian myths.  I had not realized that anyone today still believed in the discredited Jewish creation story as science.

After the encounter, I enquired around.  I checked the CXC website for the biology syllabus.  I could not find it available on-line.  It would appear you have to buy it.  I checked two recent schools’ reports on the CXC exam results.  Neither mentioned either of the words ‘evolution’ or ‘creationism’.  I could not find out what the title of the recommended CXC biology text book was.  I would love to check it to see what version of science it teaches.  Maybe I can find out who the biology teacher is, and have a look at the recommended text-book.

I asked one educated mother who is a friend of mine whether she knew that the school was filling her daughter’s mind with superstitious nonsense instead of science.  She smiled.  She said, “No point fighting it, Don.  It is the duty of every parent to give their children a proper grounding.  All kinds of nonsense are taught in schools all around the world.  We have to learn as we grow up what to reject and what to keep.”  She probably gave me very sensible advice.  But, I was not satisfied.  What about the children of uneducated and unsophisticated parents?  Are they not hoping that their children are being properly taught in school so that they can compete in the outside world of ideas?  They know they cannot do it themselves.  I came away with the realization that in Anguilla it must be generally accepted that the creation version of the origin of species may be taught in our school system as science.

I know what I would do if I had a child who was being taught in school that the earth is flat, that the earth is the centre of the universe, that the sun goes around the world each day, and that God created the earth on 23 October 4004 BC.  These were all religious beliefs that were taught as science at one time by Christians in school.  I would be very angry indeed.

Columbus

Columbus was warned by the religious leaders of his day that if he sailed westwards to the horizon, he would fall off the edge of the world.  The Church taught that the Bible said that the earth was flat.  Columbus ignored them and in 1492 sailed west to increase our knowledge. 

Copernicus

Copernicus demonstrated in 1540 that the sun did not orbit the earth as taught by the church.  He died before they could burn him at the stake, as he deserved for going against the Bible.

Galileo

Galileo was condemned and imprisoned for life in 1616 for showing that the earth was not the centre of the universe, as taught at the time by the Christian Church. 

In the religiously conservative State of Tennessee in 1925, biology teacher John Scopes began teaching evolution to his students.  This was contrary to a law passed by the state legislature.  It was illegal to teach evolution in some States of the US.  William Jennings Bryan, a conservative Christian fundamentalist, led the charge to ban the teaching of evolution in US schools.  He joined the team prosecuting Scopes for the offence of teaching evolution.  Clarence Darrow, a prominent freedom of speech advocate, joined the defence team.  Scopes was found guilty, and fined $100.00.  But the conviction was dismissed by the Supreme Court with the damming comment, “Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case”.  Since that time the creationist theory of the origin of human life has not been taught in public schools anywhere in the civilized world.  Except, it seems, in Anguilla.

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan

The Book of Genesis is a religious tract written for credulous shepherds who lived three thousand years ago.  It preserves the narcotic-induced ravings of the followers of a sociopathic god.  The whole schema was discredited two thousand years ago by Jesus of Nazareth, who brought the New Testament to replace the earlier barbaric teachings of the Old Testament.  Human knowledge has gone a long way since both these works were put together.  Their teachings may be broadcast in church to terrify little children into submission, but they have no place in a science class in any school today.

What is the point of all this?  It is this: Anguilla has over the past hundred years produced hundreds of scholars of the highest distinction, including in the sciences.  We have produced neurosurgeons, engineers and technicians of every type.  They must have been taught real science, not myth, to have got where they did.  At some point between my sitting of O-level exams in 1964 and the CXC syllabus of today, the students of Anguilla appear to have begun to be indoctrinated in pseudo-religious beliefs that I thought had long ago been discredited.  It is with regret that I conclude that, due to the ignorance taught by our science teachers, Anguillian students are now blocked from advancement in careers founded on science. 

My fear is that we will no longer be able to produce a competent chemist, geologist, archaeologist, geneticist, or other hard scientist.  This sad state of affairs will persist so long as we continue to teach our students ‘creation science’ and ‘intelligent design’, two warped and inaccurate versions of biology, the science of life.

Educated religious teachers no longer instruct children in idiotic pre-science beliefs.  These have been so thoroughly discredited that I had mistakenly thought that only a nincompoop would teach them today. 

Culling

My modest proposal.  The earth heads inexorably towards its seven billionth human inhabitant.  The forecast date for arriving at this figure is just one year away, 2011.  The world faces universal overpopulation.  A full 97% of global growth is happening in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.  So says the Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet.  Eight in ten of today’s 1.5 billion youth live in developing countries.  Over 1 billion people lack access to clean water.  Over 2.5 billion lack a toilet facility of any kind.  Nearly one in four people live on less than US$1 per day.  Nearly 3 billion struggle to survive on US$2 per day.  The WHO estimates that one-third of the world is under-fed, and another one-third is starving.  Over 4 million will die from hunger this year alone. 

One has to wonder, into what sort of world are today’s Anguillian babies being born?  What fate awaits them as the land comes one day soon to resemble nothing more than the body of a dying dog, with the people nothing more than ticks and flees escaping from the cooling body?

Since 1958, we have known what happens to rats in a cage even with an unlimited supply of food and water.  As population increases, social behaviour degenerates.  The well-fed but crowded out rats kill each other in a frenzy of destruction.  We won't have the luxury of unlimited food and water.

We have searched high and low for the answer.  We tried bird flu.  That turned out to be a wimp.  We tried swine flu.  It only made the pharmaceutical companies richer.  The plague epidemic worked in the Middle Ages.  All attempts to revive it have crashed in failure.  Even HIV has not been the panacea we all looked forward to. 

All hope is not lost.  When the seal population explodes in Canada, they compete with the fishermen for fish.  Canadians know how to deal with the problem.  They cull them.  Namibia has hit on the same solution to the problem.  In Canada alone, a quarter of a million a year is the minimum.  I question why we have not more effectively implemented this obvious solution to the human population problem.

Ruanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, and they have proved that a cull can give relief, if only temporarily.  In 1994 up to 1 million of the then 7.5 million inhabitants were killed by their neighbours.  Its current population of 8.5 million is set to double to 16 million by 2020 at its current growth rate.  Some 70% live below the poverty line.  Soon, another cull will be necessary.

Ethnic cleansing is one possible solution.  In Europe the Christian Serbs showed how easily it can be accomplished:

Not to be outdone, the Muslim militia of Kosovo did their bit to help their Serbian neighbours enjoy a little more breathing room:

Religion is definitely our best hope.  With the Christians killing Jews and Moslems, and Moslems killing Jews and Christians, all that is left for success to be achieved is for Jews to add Christians to their present list.  We should all start going to church and become as fervent as we possibly can.  I am encouraging it.

And then I woke up with a start.  Was it only a bad dream, or a prescient sense of foreboding? 

Intolerance

Intolerance can be a virtue.  Reading Move Any Mountain, I was reminded again that intolerance can be a worthwhile virtue.  The Christian mountebanks, who take time off from their child and spousal abuse to lead their gullible congregations in celebrating Christmas, are well aware that the only significant events of the month of December 2009 were the Winter Solstice and the Blue Moon.  May the Christian fundamentalists rot in hell for all eternity!  The Muslim clerics, busy encouraging the young men of the ummah to blow themselves up in defence of their religious wasteland, should be helped to check out the 70 virgins for themselves.  Allah has reserved the hottest part of hell for them.  The Zionist zealots, stealing the ancestral villages of the Palestinians, deserve the death and destruction that they so eagerly await.  Jehovah will surely condemn them to everlasting Gehenna.  The greasy politicians, engorging themselves at the expense of their gullible supporters, will inevitably stand condemned to life at hard labour in the salt mines.

And a Happy New Year to you too!

Vatican

Feed the world. It is time for us to move on from all that heavy stuff about youth violence and penal reform. One of the more intractable problems facing us is world hunger. As my contribution to the solution-finding effort, I offer you one of the better proposals I have heard all year.



Let somebody else write about politics. Now that elections are just around the corner, even The Anguillian Newspaper is into writing about local politics and the need for change. That leaves me free to find other, equally worthy causes.

There must be some similar, sensible video that is addressed to Muslims that I could offer up in an equal-opportunity for all religious maniacs gesture. I have not located it yet. Soon come.

Grace

Grace before meals. I know it is self-indulgent. I ask your forgiveness. It is nothing to do with either integrity or with Anguilla. Someone has asked me what was the story on the radio about my having been asked to say grace before meals at my High School Reunion Dinner in Trinidad last month. I might as well share the answer I gave him. It won’t be long before the blessed amnesia that falls over all painful memories, and makes past events glow as through rose-tinted spectacles, takes over.

I am sitting down at table, looking forward to the Reunion Dinner. The place is the JFK Auditorium at UWI. I am chatting to old schoolmates. I recall they included Gerald Kenny and Stuart Henderson. There are judges of the Court of Appeal and Ministers of Government scattered at other tables around the auditorium. The good and the great sit around. My back is to the microphone and loud speakers. I am talking during meals, always a punishable offence when we were at boarding school. My old school friend of 45 years ago, Peter Tang, is doing the master of ceremonies thing. I hear him announce over the loudspeakers, “Now, can we ask Don Mitchell to come up to the microphone and say grace for us?”

Justice Anthony Lucky, his wife Cintra, the Lord Abbot, Monks and dignitaries

I do not know what to do with myself. He has not alerted me before-hand. I am stumped. The last time I said ‘grace before meals’ I was a callow seventeen year-old. I have not had the time to make one up for the occasion. It is too short a notice to do so now.

Peter Tang, Master of Ceremonies

I stand up. I have a couple of choices. I can decline as gracefully as I can, indicating I am microphone-shy. The problem is that no one will believe that excuse.

I can brazen it out and pretend to be a regular grace-sayer, and risk sounding like a tongue-tied idiot. I am not going to do that.

I decide to just so what comes naturally. Say something, no matter how irrelevant or beside the point. That, I knew from experience, comes easiest to me.

Don at the podium, not sure what he is going to say for 'grace'

I stride to the podium and take the microphone from Peter. I do not have any idea what I am going to say. The steel band is softly playing classical music in the background. I take a deep breath and begin, “Let me thank Peter Tang for inviting me to say grace. It has been a long time since I have said grace before meals. We Chinese Episcopalian Buddhists have our own way of giving thanks for a meal we are about to receive. We don’t do it in the standard way. We are accustomed to go out into our garden before meals and look at our flowers. We smile at the beauty of the hibiscus, and meditate on the wonders of the bougainvillea. But, I do not know the garden at this Auditorium. So, I cannot invite you to accompany me outside to say grace. Let me just say that for many years now my prayer has been that I might be able one last time to sit down for one night and to share a meal with my fellow “old boys” of the Abbey School, Mount St Benedict. I am so happy that my prayers have been answered tonight. I hope that yours will be too.”

And, with that, I put down the microphone and resume my seat. I sit there, waves of failure-anxiety sweeping over me.

After a few silent moments, an unctuous voice comes over the loudspeaker behind my back, “And, now let us pause for the invocation . . .” I do not recall what he said after that. The usual, I suppose. Then, Peter pipes up over the loudspeaker, “There, Don, that is how it is done.”

A young lady comes up to me afterwards. She tells me proudly that her radio station has broadcast the whole thing live for all Trinidad to hear. She tells me that she has recorded my ‘grace’ on her cellphone. She shows me a clip of it in proof.

Since then, I have tried to contact her by email to get a copy. I thought vaguely that I might add it to my videos on the “facebook” account my niece set up for me. Perhaps, alongside the clip from Bill Mahr, “The Roman Catholic Church: The Bear Sterns of Paedophilia”. She won’t respond to my requests. More failure-anxiety.

Trinidad

The Abbey School, Mount St Benedict, Trinidad. That is where I went to primary and secondary school from the years 1955 to 1964. The monks tried very hard to make me a Christian. They succeeded while I was a boy. And then, as St Paul admonishes us, I became a man and I put aside childish things.

Don as an Abbey School student

Last weekend, we had our second school reunion since I left Trinidad in 1964 to continue my studies.

If you have ever driven from Piarco to Port-of-Spain, you may have seen my old School on the hillside in the Northern Range above Tunapuna village. The white painted structures stand out as clearly as a beacon against the green hills. Even Fidel Castro noticed them as he drove past when he came to Trinidad in 1958, and could not resist a visit. I remember him, bearded and wearing his military fatigues, and all of us little boys standing waving on the road side in awe of the great man.

The Abbey School as it looked when I was there

It was good to see the old buildings again after the passage of nearly fifty years. We were permitted to visit the school on Saturday morning. Guided by management, we explored every room and passageway. The institution is now turned over to serving as a drugs rehabilitation centre. It has finally found a socially redeeming purpose, you might say.

School building from the basket ball court

Front of the school

The front corridor of the school

Roof over the Small Boys' Dorm

The view over the Caroni Plain was as breathtaking as I remembered it.

View south from first floor corridor

The Abbey viewed from the Clinic

The forest around the school was my playground. Six strokes on my backside with a cane every Monday morning at 9:00 am for five years was my punishment for refusing to have anything to do with cricket and the cricket field. Instead, I spent the free time running wild in the bush.

White Stones on the left, with Mt Tabor on the right in the distance

Forest to the north-east of the school

The oldest of the climbers among us was seventy-three years old. I knew I was a spring chicken by comparison. The plan was to climb up to White Stones, the mountain that towers above the school.

The Abbey seen through the trees on the way to White Stones

Sitting on a white stone at White Stones

Conquerors of White Stones

Finally, we found the ruins of the original Monastery at Mt Tabor, high up above White Stones.

Don leaning on the foundations of the abandoned Monastery at Mt Tabor

Kitchen oven at Mt Tabor ruins

On the Sunday, the Khans entertained us all to a picnic lunch at Mayaro Beach. I was particularly charmed by the sight of a column of demure Indian girls wading out to sea in their saris, casting fruit and flowers about them as they went. A fertility ritual, I imagined. Personally, at my age, I am only capable of considering Lashmi in her aspect of Kali, the old crone, the goddess of destruction!

Offerings from a Hindu fertility ritual at Mayaro Beach

More offerings

“Sic transit gloria mundi”, as Thomas a Kempis warned in his memorable Imitatio Christi. I must have been about twelve when I read the translation.

And, “Never be entirely idle: but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavouring something for the public good”.