Week 19: 'We just wanna have a good time.'

Wonder spawned in: 2011
Wondered into being by: Friends of the Earth Scotland
Wonderspan: 9 min
To experience this wonder at its best: Click on 'full screen' and make sure you can hear the sound

Hello and thank you for following waysofloving.com so far.  I've made a map of all the locations of all the Monday wonders - have a look here: www.tinyurl.com/mondaywonders.  As for the rest of the year, I have lots of wonders eager to be released into the wild but I'm still looking for a few more so please make your own suggestions by sending me an email at justplaindavid@waysofloving.com.

Today's way of loving has pushed its way to the top of the pile just because I absolutely love it and I can't keep it in the dark any longer.  Today we're loving the joy of protest movements.  What is protest?  By itself it's quite a boring word.  But what if its goal was not just to be right or make a point, but rather to inspire a different way of being, or perhaps a new feeling for what life is really about?  In that case, effective protest will try to speak to the whole of us - our passions, dreams, longings, a feeling for belonging - and not only to the bit of us which wants to know what's right and what's wrong, or what works and what doesn't, important though that is.

These two films reflect this kind of passion for being alive.  In doing this they inspire (in me, anyway) a feeling for a more abundant kind of life and society.  The first playfully exposes corporate 'greenwash' at the Royal Bank of Scotland.  RBS flaunts itself as a green company - by sponsoring last year's Climate Week, for example - while investing billions in hugely damaging tar-sands extraction (a method three times as carbon-intensive as that of conventional oil extraction and which ruins vast areas of wilderness).  What I find really compelling is that the women in this film seem so much more joyful and playful than the money-driven world they parody.  As a viewer, I want a bit of their freedom and joy and, for precisely the same reason, I want to listen to what they have to say.

The second film feels like it's from a different era but it's in much the same spirit.  The Nottingham Clarion Choir sing the South African national anthem, Nkosi Sikeleli, having sung it for many years in solidarity throughout the long struggle against apartheid.  I trawled the internet for the gutsiest version of the this anthem and Nottingham, believe it or not, is where I found what might be the most belted-out rendition of all: ‘We sang it … we sang it … and we continue to sing it…' (in five languages... in Nottingham!)  Meanwhile, may God Save Us From Our Own National Anthem.

• RBS protest song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V26AyA8ZKGI  (Thanks to Sarah G for fishing up this Monday's way of loving.)
• Nottingham Clarion Choir: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l32TwRNdyQY  

Extra...

And here's more joyful protest:

Europe's largest arms fair is held in London's East End every other year (next in 2013).  A Quaker peace worker, Izzy Hallet, worked with a school right next door to make this brilliant 10-minute video - 'Where is the love?' (thanks to Jaci S for suggesting this one):

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsB0YZk-VrY

Here's Charles Eisenstein saying that while social change is a political enterprise, it's also about so much more (and thanks to Sunniva T for proposing this one):

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRtc-k6dhgs

If you want to know how South Africans sing their own national anthem, try...

• The Kuziems: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAfwgDOAZs  
• The Soweto Gospel Choir: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5M-nunYYQ

Want more from Nottingham? Of course we do! Don't worry, there's more coming on waysofloving.com soon...