An Open Letter on Tommy’s 30th Birthday

Aftermath of the Blitz, London
Autumn Fundraiser 2012, Day Two

This is the second day of our Autumn Quarterly Fundraiser. It is also Tommy Robinson’s thirtieth birthday — the age I’ve always considered as the real beginning of one’s majority. This is where life gets serious. It’s a time for looking back and peering forward.

Tip jarWhen Tommy looks back, he sees the Aftermath, the wasteland created in his own life by those in power. The authorities broke his business, took away his computers, harassed his parents in their home, damaged his car, froze his bank account and persecuted him relentlessly. All this for daring to call attention to the things that are deeply wrong in England. All this for demanding that England not to be sold off to its immigrants, that instead Englishmen be permitted to continue to live their proud heritage.

The USSR has moved from Russia to take up residence in England and the rest of the United Kingdom. God help the Brits, and particularly, God help Tommy.

You’re thirty years old today. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Could time have really moved so quickly, carrying you over the white-water rapids of your twenties to this moment? Are you beginning to feel mortal? Many of us are feeling quite mortal for you, even if you’re not.

It’s ironic that your third decade should begin in solitary confinement in Her Majesty’s prison. Given your naturally gregarious nature, this unjust incarceration probably wasn’t in your plans regarding the ways you’d considered to observe the passing of your twenties. Certainly you didn’t think you’d be so utterly alone? In the present moment I doubt it helps much to know that many people all over the world are observing it with you. After all, you can’t see them, nor can they wish you well in person.

Your imprisonment is unjust. We know that quite well, but none of us has any power to help change what is happening to your country or to you. We are hard put to stave off the damage to our own sovereign states. The system under which you live has become increasingly sovietized and impersonal, and you have become an impediment in the rapidly increasing process to make all of you the same.

You’re too much of an individual, Tommy. You’re ornery; you stick your neck out too far. If they cannot crush you and shove you back into line, you will jeopardize the project of leveling everyone into a predictable, passive and manageable sameness.

Tommy Robinson and the Metropolitan Police

The one I think of today is your mother. This must be a desperately sad time particularly for her, this first birthday without you. No matter how old our children get their birthdays remain important. That’s a day you and she share in particular, and her memories of your arrival into the world — your first breath, the first time she held the surprising weight of you — are imprinted on her heart. That is why being forced to miss the beginning of your third decade must indeed be a sad occasion, though not nearly so sad as the uncertainty she experiences at not knowing how many more she will be forced to miss.

As many others do, I have the urge to give you something meaningful to mark the occasion, something that would cheer and comfort you, something you could cherish, and above all, something that no one could take away.

As it happens, I do have one small token to offer. Until the Baron told me it was your birthday I hadn’t thought of it as a gift, but now I see it fits perfectly for the occasion. Indeed, it is synchronous, because I received this same gift when I was just your age. It has proved to be of immense value in my own life and I hope it can be such a gift in yours.

One thing is certain: should you find this as useful as I have, then no amount of sorrow or loss can take it from you. You’ll find it an excellent companion no matter where you are or who is oppressing you.

I stumbled upon the efficacy of this prayer by accident. Subsequently, it was to grow on me and within me as the circumstances of my life changed. There have been many paths, some of which I could only see in retrospect. But no matter which road I chose, or which one seemed to choose me, the psalm stayed with me, always there in one form or another.

Let me present the psalm to you first, and then I’ll attempt to explain how it has functioned in my life. No doubt you know this one already, but here I’m asking that you learn to “know” it in a different way, a way that suits your coming of real age as you turn thirty. This version here is my own, though not on purpose. It just became itself under the many years’ use it was put to. Nor do I any longer remember what rendering I adapted for myself. Now, after decades of almost daily use, what you see is its current form. If you in turn pick it up as yours, the words will change again as you make it your own. However that turns out, the structure will remain. And it is through this structure I would have you learn by heart what the Psalmist was praying all those thousands of years ago:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.

He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for You are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they guide and comfort me.

You have set a table before me in the midst of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil,
My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

As I said, this is my version, including the punctuation. It doesn’t stray far from whatever “orthodox” form is used in any prayer book.

If you look at it closely, Tommy, you’ll see that this is a distillation; it describes in the most elemental terms the course of a life lived within a spiritual framework. Sometimes I wonder how many generations it took to construct its final form.

Look at the first four lines:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.

Is that not the self-satisfaction, even relief, of a child who knows he is safe? This is a kid who knows nothing bad can happen to him.

Then comes the stand-alone,

He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.

It took me a few years to comprehend the meaning here. Probably because we’ve coarsened the word “righteousness”, adding “self” as a prefix rather than permit the meaning to come through. For me, this is the adolescent or young man, learning how to move out of that safe pasture and into the real world while still maintaining the things he was taught. In other words, he’s learning to “walk the walk” now.

Then comes the much more difficult part of growing up: walking in an aftermath, a wilderness of what used to be our culture, only we know it’s not ours anymore. Instead, where we used to live has become little more than “the valley of the shadow of death”; those who were supposed to be our leaders abandoned the job to chase money and power.

But notice something here: the Psalmist has moved boldly to the first person, talking directly to God, naming him — You are my rod and my staff and describing how God blesses him even in the midst of his enemies. He is claiming what is his at the same time that he is expressing his gratitude for the largesse of God’s gifts.

Finally, in the last stanza the Psalmist moves back a bit and takes up once more his narrative account of what life will be like lived under God’s tutelage and protection. The final outcome will be to live in his Father’s house. Forever — whatever that means.

This is my gift for you, Tommy. You are in first place when I sit down to consider the fallout of the last few months. There has been so much damage done to so many people, but your being locked into solitary confinement down in the prison basement without any opportunity to have warm clothing is surely one of the worst in a presumably ‘civilized’ country.

Their treatment of you — while aboveground life continues on as if nothing much has happened — makes daily life in England seem sinister now. It is designed to break you and get you back in line. Meanwhile, people go about their daily lives, Parliament bloviates, the Sphinx Queen continues her reign, and the daily papers are all atwitter with endless news of what piece of clothing “Kate” is wearing to what event. It’s all so civilized. It’s all so rotten to the core.

I hope you can make use of the 23rd Psalm. It’s a continuous prayer best begun around the age of thirty. Meanwhile, we will send this letter via the post office and then check to see if you’re permitted to receive books mailed directly from booksellers. Prisoners here may have them. If that’s the case, then I’ll send you Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters. His letters from prison, at that.

On the first day of our quarterly bleg, donations came in from the following locales:

Stateside: California, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, and the UK

The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup on our sidebar, or the donate button. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.

17 thoughts on “An Open Letter on Tommy’s 30th Birthday

  1. Thank you, Dymphna, for these heartbreaking words. You outdid yourself once again.

    While crying my way through this letter to Tommy, I would also like to remind everyone that Sabatina James, an apostate from Islam living under the constant threat of death from her own family, just a week ago celebrated her 30th birthday. Her mother, the woman who held her in her arms, temderly looking at her face, kicked her out of her home with the words “You are no longer my daughter, you whore.”
    My motherly heart aches for Sabatina and Tommy. They are the true heros. God bless them and give them strength.

  2. People like Tommy Robinson does not wants anyones pity or even compassion . They chose to be what they are to show the rest of us the way , and as such they are our only real leaders . This is a very hard thing to admit to ourselves , much easyer to see Tommy as a ”victim” , and pitty him a lot . It is Tommy and the other emerging leadership who has given US a gift of their personal lives , and no excessive thank-you-thank-you is going to relieve us from the personal OBLIGATION that comes with accepting an extrodinarily expensive gift of this kind . Time has come for the bloggosphere-army of armchair-warriors to folow the personal examples of the brave men and woman in our emerging leadership .

    Ole Burde

  3. There is a tremendous difference between pity and compasssion. And when the state buries you alive having a tool to keep yourself sane – which the repetition of prayer can be – is often a aid to sanity.

    An orphanage at age five can be like that -the sense of being buried alive. It was books and learning to read that kept me sane. Thus the two gifts that allowed me to keep it together, books and prayer, are my offering to Tommy.

    How dare you belittle them? Why is your armchair smackdown of my gift any better?

  4. A basque poem for Tommy Robinson

    MY FATHER´S HOUSE
    They´ll take my weapons and
    with bare hands
    I shall defend my father´s house.
    They´ll cut off my hands and
    with my arms
    I shall defend my father´s house
    They´ll leave me
    without arms,
    without shoulders,
    without chest and
    with my soul
    I shall defend my father´s house.
    I will die,
    my soul will be lost,
    my offsprings will be lost,
    but my father´s house
    will remain
    standing.

  5. The Soviet Union has not moved to Britain, Britain is not a communist country it is, like the rest of the EU, a culturally Marxist one.

    You have to hand it to them these Marxists are pretty smart in a sneaky kind of way, whilst we were all focussed on defeating communism in the east, they infiltrated all our political parties and institutions in Western Europe and slowly turned them all Marxist, including today’s conservative party in Britain under David Cameron.

    They did it such a subtle – to many – way, using the excuse of progressivism that only now have people woken up and realised that Europe is a Marxist multicultural totalitarian police state. Some probably still don’t realise it and continue to vote for the Marxist Labour Party in Britain whilst looking forward to the next episode of the X Factor or Strictly come Dancing. They have been bought off with bread and circuses whilst not realising they are living in a prison.

  6. Dymphna, your words to Tommy are full of hope, love and sympathy. I hope he gets to read them and take them to heart. They will surely comfort him all his life.

    We should all pray for Tommy. May he keep his sanity and faith and belief in the great cause for which he is fighting: the freedom of us all.

    Happy birthday Tommy. May you live to be a very, very, very old man.

  7. Let us not forget Emma West, who has now spent about a year in prison for having said things that offended a YouTube viewer or two. Her trial for this outrageous offence has been postponed twice and a fourth date has still not been set. It is quite obvious that the authorities are terrified that resistance to the regime may grow and stiffen if public expressions are allowed to go unpunished. We can help Tommy and Emma best by refusing to be cowed into silence and saying what we will, where we will, when we will. Our forefathers fought and died for our freedom to do just that.

  8. Happy Birthday POW Tommy Robinson. The 23.Psalm is my hope, comfort and joy.That my Saviour the Lord Jesus himself will set a table for me in the presence of my enemies, and annoints my head, and pours my cup to overflowing, and let me stay in his house forever. O Yeah, he’ll walk with me through the shadow of death and doesn’t let me fear evil,even lends me His very own staff. I scares can take it all in. First He gives me beautiful rest in the green medow and refreshes me at the quiet time besides the still water. O how my soul is tatally in His will when I walk with Him thru the gate with roses wound roundabout and the frangrance of the roses along the way walking with Him, for He is my righteousness. Tommy you are a real Tommy as in wartime they used to call the English the Tommys. I love to sing the song; I walked in the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and the joy I share as we tarry there with Him on the awsome and beautiful path of Righteousness. Tommy your are our hero and are in all our prayers. Happy Birthday. Ps. My grand-daughters birthday is on the 28th.Nov. and will be going into the Canadian Airforce in Legistics. What a girl,much like you Tommy. They call it guts, eh.Greetings from Canada. God bless

  9. ChristianInfidel says:

    Thank you, Dymphna, for this wonderful letter. If words like yours did not matter tremendously in the fight for freedom, the First Amendment would not be so important and it would not be attacked with such determination. God bless.

  10. Horrified to hear that Emma West has spent a year in prison before coming to trial. Can this be right?; and is her child still in care? Will she ever be allowed to have it back after what happened to the UKIP foster carers? Yet as has been stated, Abu Qatada is walking the streets at our expense here in England free us a bird and costing us £5m per annum.

    Doubtless Tommy will spend a similar length of time in prison before anything happens. This is so kafkaesque for a country where freedoms were taken for granted.
    However, anybody with any common sense and foresight could have seen it coming when the whole New World Order kicked of in the 1960s.

    Emma West only said what most English people carry in their heads all day long when confronted with the reality of the multicultural heaven. The thing is, just like in the old communist days, they keep it in their heads, for fear of ending up in court.

    I happened to come across our prime minister on walk-about several weeks ago and muttered something under my breath that was not too complimentary. A policeman friend told me that if I had said it to his face then I would have been arrested. Perhaps I would be languishing in a cell somewhere still at this very moment.

    From this it is becoming obvious that the only way that borderless multiculturalism can be made to work, as we all knew, is by removing free speech and any other freedoms. People here are aware of what is happening though and an old lady said to me that when somebody used to ask if they could do something the reply was usually,”It’s a free country, mate”. Funny, I haven’t heard that expression in years, I wonder why?

  11. The only way to stop this is for people who stand for freedom, to start filing lawsuits against the left wingers and Muslims. To use their own hate crime laws against them.

    So next time you see Muslims yelling about sharia and death to infidels in your city, file a lawsuit. The same with left wingers who use violent language against people who speak freely.

    Tired of their name calling? File lawsuits, expose their hate, and then file even more lawsuits. It’s the only way to repeal their tyrannical laws.

    God save freedom!

    Puss in Boots

  12. Gatestone Institute: Muslim Persecution of Christians: August, 2012 “We do not want infidels in this area”
    Egypt: The nation’s jihad organizations dropped leaflets calling on Muslims to kill Christians wherever they found them…
    Ivory Coast: Muslim rebels “massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands” of predominantly Christian supporters of Laurent Gbagbo…

    Syria: Some 12,000 people were blockaded in the predominantly Christian town of Rableh by anti-government forces; they killed several people trying to leave and refused the entry of food and medical supplies… by Raymond Ibrahim October 4, 2012
    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3382/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2012

    Muslims burn down our places of worship and continually mass slaughter Christians and other non-Muslims.

    Western ruling elites response to Muslim hate, destruction, violence, murder and mayhem is to keep importing as many millions of Muslims as possible into our countries to facilitate merciless Muslim jihad and the massive Muslim gang rape of many THOUSANDS of British non-Muslim children. Human rights activist, Tommy Robinson is imprisoned for protesting.

    STOP the Muslim rape jihad of Britain’s children and FREE TOMMY ROBINSON!
    We are all Tommy Robinson!

    Not only are huge numbers of Muslims imported, non-Muslims are forced via their taxes to financially support Muslim males and their harems of multiple wives and very large numbers of children.

    OUR TREASONOUS LEADERS ARE RAISING UP ENTIRE MUSLIM ARMIES IN OUR WESTERN COUNTRIES TO WAGE JIHAD AGAINST US.

  13. Yes, England has become like the Soviet Union. You wonder how it got here? Traditional Christian morality was attacked and mocked, like everywhere else in the free world. The people were distracted by shallow entertainment and tabloids. They didn’t pay attention to social trends and to the propaganda that was being taught in schools. So while the British population was watching The Benny Hill Show on television in the 1970s and ‘80s, the left wing social engineers were working behind the scenes.

    “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord!” it says in the Psalms, in the Bible. The British rejected the Lord, and had other gods instead. Darwin, H G Wells, Bernard Shaw, Russell, Nietzche, became their gods. Some of those were Marxists and bitter atheists. For the last 100 years, the Brits allowed their society to be restructured according to the degenerate views and ideas of those men. And now they are reaping what they have sown. It’s that simple. Their ultra-secularized society with crazy social liberalism and economic socialism, and political correctness, made them weak and incapable to stop islamization. The healthy principles of Jesus Christ from the Bible, were almost completely thrown out. Whatever influence these principles may still have in English society, is very little. That’s why America is still standing. Because these principles and their influence are stronger than in Great Britain. Their influence is not as strong as it used to be, hence the Constitution is also under attack by the leftist orcs and useful idiots, but it’s still stronger than elsewhere.

    The root of this problem is spiritual, not political. We can be angry and outraged about this all we want, but if you fail to understand the real causes of this disaster, you’ll never know how to remedy the situation.

  14. Tommy is a brave guy. May God set him free and make justice prevail. May God save our civilization.

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