Margaret Scott

People will be sad to hear of the death of Tasmanian poet, Margaret Scott. Her poetry is not well known though it is of the finest quality and highly evocative:

Wading shallows stiff as a waterbird

I watch where under the sway of the clear wave

Dark velvet stones

Pearl through crisp white beds of crocheted shell..

The water accepts my hand as a white star

My arm is caught in the sunlight's sliding net.

……………..from Shelley Beach.

More popularly known for her appearances on the bizarre “Good News Week”, often poked fun at but quite capable of poking it back. Her academic career, qualifications and pursuits are impressive (see here).

More about intelligent design

We will see more about “Intelligent Design” this week on the ABC’s 7.30 Report .What, you might ask is the problem with it? Surely Christians would want to believe what the Bible says…and isn’t that “intelligent design”?

Yes, I would say, I do want to believe what the Bible says. I do not want to believe what the Bible does not say ? I do not believe the Bible says that science is at odds with the Scriptures. I do not believe that the Bible says that if you accept scientific explanations then you automatically reject the Bible. That, as one commentator put it, is bad science and bad theology.
The account of the creation of the world in particular must be seen from a variety of different perspectives (there are at least two in the Bible), there are a range of scientific theories which address this issue. Now there is a lot of bad science around. Science is based on theory, that is, it is provisional. We adopt a theory and test it against the evidence. If the evidence fits we can keep on promoting it, but as knowledge increases theories can become less satisfactory. So they are modified. It is in this sense wrong to talk about Darwin’s theory of evolution, we are way beyond that. There is much about Darwin’s particular theories that has been rethought and found lacking, and so has been modified. This is as it should be.
The first year theology student would tell you that the Genesis accounts are meant to answer the theological question “why” the world was created, rather than the scientific “how”. Science cannot purport to address the theological questions, which it seems to me are much greater. Theology does not purport, likewise, to address the scientific….even though sometimes it may look as though it does. It is not essentially interested in the mechanics, it is interested in the motive. The two are different.
They are related, but they are not the same.
So we are looking forward to some good discussion this week.

Win-Win

Last night I played a game with three members of our youth group: a number of square cards, each with as different pattern on them are cut into four pieces and dealt out at random to each of the members. I gave the following instructions:

• The object of the game is for everyone to end up with a completed square in front of them
• WE have completed the game when everyone has a square in front of them
• You are not allowed to talk
• You may not take pieces from another person
• You may give pieces to any other person.
  

Some interesting comments:
So you win when you have a completed square in front of you No, we win when everyone has a completed square
How can it be a game if no one wins. Everyone wins. It's called Win-Win. It's better than someone winning and someone losing. The two boys looked unconvinced.
It was almost impossible for them to not talk!
One of the boys simply refused to play...this is stupid. We kept on playing.
Another boy was happy to complete all the squares that were put in front of him and looked pleased at his efforts.
He folded his arms when 3 completed squares were in front of him as he looked as though the task was completed.
I simply repeated: we win when everyone has a completed square
he pushed two completed squares away from him
There was still the problem of having to convince the non-player to accept a square when he had decided it was all too hard.
These aren't squares these are rectangles said Mr Over-Achiever
........................and I just find myself thinking that our education system advocates many of the values that precipitate this non-cooperative behaviour.
May God preserve us from: You only win when someone else loses!!

Looking good

A totally different aspect and the house is looking faboo.

Who governments really care for?

I am always intrigued that politicians who retire seem to do quite well for themselves. One might assume that those of the right may come from from fairly wealthy stock but it seems more across the board than that. Even Hawke, who one might assume came from a modest family background, having been a son of a preacher-man and a Trade Union boss seems to have done well for himself. Keating, too, from a modest background seems to quietly lap up the lavish lifestyle.
One of the factors that came up recently in the ongoing debate about teacher's salaries in SA is that if politicians were being paid now in relationship to what they were being paid in the 1980's with respect to teachers' pay then their salary would be half what it presently is...that is, in the 80s teachers and pollies were paid about the same, now the polly earns twice as much.
. Now am I thick...or what. I just don't get this. At a time of wealth and economic success I don't understand why those who benefit most from such success should benefit even more.
The PM suggested that the go-getters and the successful should be rewarded and this would be good for the economy....I don't get this. We should make the rich even richer, there is no guarantee that that would make them bigger consumers and thus enhance the so called "trickle down effect" it actually seems more likely that they would just grow their wealth.
When we see also the obscenity of single parents being forced out to work and being $100 a week worse off I just don't get it. some articles here and here and then again here....

Surely the whole point about having an across the board value added tax which we call GST is that it reallocates the tax burden. If we were going to alleviate the tax burden why not do it across the board and reduce the rate even 0.1% That way everyone would share.
If that is not acceptable then why not reduce Petrol Excise which would also benefit everyone, and advantage commerce and industry.
But that brings me back to my title question: Who do governments care for?

Intelligent Design

We were reminded on Australia Talks Back this week about the demand that the so-called theory of "Intelligent Design" should be taught in our schools. It is another one of these debates where the liberal intelligentsia are hoisted on their own petards....in wanting genuine scientific and open discussion they are open to be hijacked by those whose agendas are anything but.
That this "Intelligent Design" has some powerful backers we should be aware....it is of course a front for a more acceptable form of creationism. And as was alluded to on ATB it is not only a scientific and theological agenda that is being addressed here it is a political one.
Note this article here in the Seattle Intelligencer which alludes to Bush's role, even though it probably downplays it. There is a certain irony in that the Minister of Education, Brendan Nelson is purported to be an advocate of teaching this theory alongside evolution in our schools.(see here). Now it does seem to me that we should be open in what we teach, and there is nothing wrong with presenting competing theories....is this what will happen in the so-called "Christian" schools....I doubt it.. But surely we should only be teaching genuine alternatives. The Flat Earth theory is a competing theory but no one seriously suggests we should waste time in our schools addressing it. Are we actually witnessing Nelson, along with all other Cabinet Ministers attempting to placate the influential Christian right in its emergent forms like Hillsong in Sydney and Paradise in Adelaide.
When I was a teacher we faced this issue in a class which we were teaching about the fossil record....we simply said (aware that there were two JW's in the class) "Not everyone believes that this theory is correct." And left it at that.

Can I just say, as a convinced creationist, that I can see nothing wrong with the suggestion that the process of Evolution is the way God uses to create the world. There is intelligent design in evolution, the Intelligence...God, if you like, ....uses evolution, natural selection, random patterns...and so on to create as he wants/needs to create.
That we do not understand such things as why things are the way they are, only serves to show us that God's "intelligence" is not fully understood.
Yet! And it may never be "fully understood". What do you think?

No. 38

A quiet day at the house. It is now officially No. 38, it is looking pretty close to finished. The photograph doesn't fo justice to the leadlight around the door, and indeed the warm feeling the house gives out at evening time when the lights are on.

Et tu mate!

The PM is right to call the current fracas over the use of the word mate a “storm in a teacup". Though he has not been averse to bandying the word around, in a rather old-fashioned sort of way which rather hails back to the 1950's to support his need to appeal to that generation.

The construction of the concept of 'mateship' smacks rather of Year 11 Modern History essays than of present day reality. What has happened in the last decade is that almost everyone (except those of us who bristle) drops the word "Mate" on the end of every conversation...and to what avail?
Having had association with a Supreme Leader who used to call everyone "Mate" it seemd to jar quite a lot? I never returned the greeting, and often muttered under my breath "You are not my mate!"
Was it any more than the innocuous "How are you going?"which my former Speech Lecturer Musgrave Horner found deeply offensive. He would never allow the question to be answered matter of factly...he would have screamed at the use of the word "Good"so common these days.....and he would take you by the hand and boom "EXTRAORRRRRDINAIRRILY Well!!!" and you would never do it again.!
He was right in a way to not let perfectly fine words lose their power. And he failed to understand the sociologist's point....that words are not so much about their meaning as about their value. In the end it is value that counts, mate!
I liked Bill Haydn's point that in the NSW Right of the Labor Party you knew when someone was going to stab you in the back because they slapped you on the shoulder and called you Mate!
In Shakespearean terms: Et Tu Mate!

The Construct of Israel, Hillsong and me little mate

The forced removal of Israelis from the occupied territories of the West Bank is just one of a series of dilemmas in the construct of identity that has happened in the Middle East in the last two decades. Indeed one might say since the Israeli occupation after World War 2.
Yes, ' Israeli occupation'. How would we have felt if some world powers had said that homeless Maoris should be resettled on Yorke Peninsula as their rightful homeland and given the right to make it an independent country.
[It is perhaps harder to see the link than it is for Jewry, though the immigration of essentially Eastern Europeans is only slightly less far-fetched]. I am sure the good burgers of Minlaton, Maitland and Kadina would take some exception to being booted off their land.
But it has suited the powerful to have a Jewish State, however artificial.
It is buttressed by the ambiguous witness of the Hebrew scriptures, but is it more buttressed by the romantic view of an Israel which exists in the mind of most Jews and many western Christians.
Reading as part of my "fun reading" at the moment 1Kings, I am conscious of how ambiguous the scriptures are about any Jewish rights to Israel at all!
What has happened, as with Moslem and Aboriginal Australia, is that the prevailing powerful elite has validated the language associated with their particular interests(see this article on AntiWar.com by Emmanuel Goldstein), and in so doing given credibility to the incredible.
Politicians want to deal with whom they want to deal.
We have seen it in the relation with Australian Churches. And as an Anglican I am conscious that for many years this has worked to our advantage. I am not so keen now that we see our pollies gravitating to Hillsong and the likes. They cultivate the language of this group and in so doing validate it.......and what of the Mate Debate...well more later

The Construction of Islam

As an erstwhile student of Sociology I often think that I never really understood it. Either it was very easy, even trivial, or very difficult!
Some sociological writings seem so dense (double entendre intended) that they are almost incomprehensible. Prof J J (George) Smolicz of Adelaide University wrote extensively on Florian Znaniecki’s Sociological Theory and Memoir Methodology. Znaniecki’s texts, admittedly written in Polish, seemed almost incomprehensible to me.
Though one thing remains.
And that is that we construct values with the way we use language and with the choices we make. I am sure I am doing this a disservice by oversimplification.
We are witnessing many examples of this at the present time.
Islam
The Australian Government is being roundly criticised for a forthcoming anti-terrorist summit with some Australian Moslem leaders. The critique centres around who exactly has been invited. Some key Moslem leaders say they do not even know some of the names on the list. Others are bitching about being excluded.
How much of this is Howard’s machinations is open to speculation.
He has an history ……now there’s a case in point, what am I saying to you by saying ‘an history’ rather than ‘a history’……any wayHoward has an history of choosing to define interest groups in the way that he wants them defined, which may not necessarily accurately represent everyone’s viewpoint, or indeed an objective reality.
What we are witnessing, I would suggest, is the PM getting into trouble because the Government want to create the Islam that they want to deal with, and the Islamic community rightly objects to this overt manipulation.
Isn’t this precisely what Australian Governments (of all persuasions) have done with Aboriginal people and why, in the end ATSIC had to be dismantled. The very vehicle that the white government put in place failed to deliver genuine consultation. It failed because it was set up only to deliver outcomes on the Government's terms. In the end even the moderate blacks could tolerate this no longer.
Those powerful images of aboriginal people standing with their backs to Howard spoke volumes to us all of how simply keeping on talking and spouting the same old rhetoric does not mean that people will keel over and accept its shallowness.
It didn’t work with ATSIC why should it work with Islam.There are many more examples and I shall cover some in later posts

Sad day

The news that Brother Roger of Taize, one of the giants of the contemporary Christian world, has been murdered whilst praying will bring sadness across the Churches.
A full, if not horrifying, account is here.
Frere Roger's contribution to keeping the rumour of Christ alive will be told by others more able to do so than myself. Yet the community of Taize continues to remind us of many important principles:

• we are an ecumenical Church
• we are primarily committed to love our God through fine and simple worship
• we see the young drawn to the integrity of a life of challenge and discipline.

There are many other things that could be said. But not now.

How many?

Some of the ancient accounts of Whales on the Southern Fleurieu talk about Encounter Bay as being a breeding ground for hundreds of whales. It is almost impossible to take in. At times the water is so shallow in the Bay that it must almost have been possible to walk along their backs.
Indeed the cruel way that they were brought in was to harpoon the calves and drag them into the Bay. The plaintive cries would draw the mothers and they would find themselves trapped. The whalers would then clamber over the dying carcasses and fininish them off. The shallow waters of the Bay would run with the blood of the dying whales. Cruel stuff.
We get excited when we see 3 or 4, it helps us to understand the magnitude of the exploitation when we see the stark numerical decline from hundreds to those that can be numbered on one hand. It helps us to understand when we engage with the cruelty necessary to effectively cull whales for what ever purpose. The Japanese almost seem noble by contrast!!

Some interesting FAQ's are found here at the SA Whale Centre

And just in case

Just to show you that I wasn't having you on, here's another image of said whales. Of course as soon as we got back in the car they jumped up right out of the water and sang "Rule Britannia"!

Whither the whale

You need to look carefully, but there is indeed a whale in this picture taken today off the beautiful Middleton Beach.
I have waxed elsewhere on the meaning of whales to us. I am often thrilled as people stand and watch them frolic. It is exciting to watch all sorts of people climb the Bluff at Encounter Bay, to try and glimpse a whale.
What overwhelms me is the PEACE of it all. We stand and we gawp, we talk to total strangers, we climb hills and cliffs and just stand and marvel.
In a world filled with terror and hopelessness it is a sign. The sign of Jonah perhaps?( Matthew 12.39-40.)

The continuing construing construction of the press

Like a worried little terrier The Advertiser continues to gnaw at the unfortunate Mr B, see my comments earlier in the week.
There is no doubt that if Mr B has used his power and influence to exploit a vulnerable man, who although he is 25 is declared to have a "mental incapacity", then Mr B deserves the strongest criticism.
Or is it that he is the victim of a political witch-hunt. This came to light when B did what we are always told to do, confront a blackmailer. The alleged blackmailer is now taking the high ground, that of defending his "foster son".
To be fair, The Advertiser, does expose some of the inconsistencies. For example, a 24 year old does not have a foster parent. Nor does it even seem that there was ever a formal "foster relationship"...what ever the relationship between the young man and the alleged fosterer deserves serious scrutiny in my opinion.
The young man is declared as being gay, with a fondness for older partners. This is well-known in Adelaide gay circles. B was certainly an older partner. One wonders if in some sense B is the victim of another's curious sexual prediliections.
What ever else, there is no doubt that this relationship was consensual. There is a question about whether true consent was possible......but if it was possible with other sexual partners then it was surely possible with B.
The inveterate Penguin Blogger has put a stronger political connotation on all this, and in my mind has blamed the wrong party. But you can make your own mind up.
I still think as an amateur literature scholar that there should be some hermeneutical examination of the role that the print media has played in beating up this story.
Too much attention to unsubstantiated allegations, and promotion of derogatory comment. The level of emphasis, and the innuendo there. This is not the role of the print media...it may sell papers...but what of integrity, impartiality and honesty?

Too much to resist

The construction is too much to resist, apart from being a little insulting to the late Benny who gave so many such bizarre pleasure through laughter. Alas Queen Amanda, equally bizarrely, seems to bring so much pain to so many...and is anything but funny.

Unusual phrasing

Now here's a phrase you don't see very often: a life of seclusion, prayer, manual labour and....wait for it... beer-brewing.
Perhaps we should!(and see this story)
The making of wine (in the south) and the brewing of beer (in the north) is actually prescribed by St Benedict for his monks. The rule says that each brother should have one pint of wine or beer provided each day. It was a different time, and a different way of life.
Some of the great by-products have been Benedictine and Chartreuse. Various types of Mead, Wines and of course Beers. In our State, although not of Benedictine origin we must not forget Sevenhill run by the Society of Jesus.
Well done to the good and Holy Brothers of Westvleteren

Caught with pants down

The rather sanctimonious Editorial (see here) that suggests that all and sundry have a right to know the affairs of public figures bears some scrutiny.
One should not forget, for example, that tabloid newspapers such as The Advertiser have a vested interest in promoting this sort of reporting.
The fact that people will read it, does not ipso facto mean that newspapers have a right to publish it. Indeed this editorial is a little cowed about suggesting that it has the right to expose (pun intended) the unfortunate politician caught with his pants down. There has, after all, been almost a convention in Australian politics that bedroom matters will stay in the bedroom.
The editorial mediates this shamefacedness by pointing out that there are other questions to answer

The young man involved in the relationship has a "mental incapacity".

How severe are his health problems?

How serious are the claims that a foster carer has attempted to blackmail Mr B....?

Why have police instructed Mr B.... and others involved in the issue, including Opposition Leader Rob Kerin, not to speak publicly?

I am not entirely convinced. The whole construction of this man's "mental incapacity" is promoted by the media without any teasing out what it means. It justifies this intrusion into the MP's privacy on the thinnest of thin pretenses. And surely we see that it is a pretense of its own making, n'est-ce pas?
I (and almost everyone I know for that matter) have a "mental incapacity"....at times I am very seriously depressed....I decided some years ago that I would name it properly and not allow it to hang like the sword of Damocles over the rest of my life. We would all be a lot better for avoiding broad brush explanations like "mental incapacity" .

The fact that this MP, in my misguided opinion, is one of the good ones...and he will now resign in ignominy....is rather sad to me. He liked to ask difficult questions and wouldn't roll over and play dead. He was imaginative and very constructive...at least so it seems to me.

Martyr for the cause

Few, if any, of us will have sympathy for the sorts of causes that David Hicks might be thought to espouse. But he is indeed in danger of being seen as martyr (see here) not for the causes he champions, but because he is the victim of injustice.
Our (and by extension the US) legal system betrays the nation, the citizens of the free world, and indeed itself, when it fails to deliver impartial justice, fair and transparent process even to those whose causes we despise.

The dedicated teacher-Mon professeur francais

In long ago days I sat in the attic of a bed-sit belonging to a French teacher as he...yes HE ...helped me to attain my Boy Scout French Interpreter's badge!!!
He is a legendary French teacher.
He started teaching as his obituary shows (go here http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/people/viewarticle.aspx?id=199784) in the year I was born.
He taught my eldest sister, my older sister and me.
He was totally given to education.
Can I tell you that I am most moved by Mr Moss's (the Latin and Greek Master's)simple tribute which reminds us that, in old age, he still retained a social conscience as he tried to help refugees.
Eric Bedell, we laughed at you. But we thank you. Au revoir, notre bon, non, notre excellent professeur.

Slowly but surely

The house continues to be developed. You will notice from the photos that its external appearance doesn't seem to change much. Most of the work currently is internal, and very significant in the overall development. Life's like that!!

Music quality

Comment on the ABC's "Spicks and Specks"tonight:
'Why is there no great music in the churches any more?' and the suggested answer was 'Because anyone who can write good music doesn't go to church any more'.
A bit bitter in one way but given that the comment was made by pre-eminent Australian musical conductor cum wit perhaps worth visiting.
Two things that have surprised me about church music in my life:

1. That the Mass Settings and hymns that I sang as a choirboy in the 50s and early 60s which seemed eternal and universal at the time...and indeed lasted until the mid 70s .... now seem dated, and paltry. I will, I hope, never sing Onward Christian Soldiers ever again. (not that it was a particularly good example of eternal but it certainly was universal)
   
2. Equally well the great modern songs that began to replace them have had, by and large, a very short lived life. We sang Lucien Deiss's All the earth proclaim the Lord as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And the Salisbury Mass Setting seemed set to replace Merbecke as the common mass setting of the Anglican Communion. (now no one seems to sing either, who would ever have imagined the death of Merbecke). Where are the songs of the Medical Missionary Sisters or those fabulous songs of Evie Tornquist. The great South Austraian songwriter, Robin Mann, has written many fine modern songs. But you look at the early ones, eg Father welcomes all his children and you realise that most of them have passed into disuetude. He continues to write, and (in my opinion) his later songs show he continues to improve as a songwriter but these songs have short shelf life. They are not, I suspect, Love divine all love's excelling or The God of Abraham praise. The tunes are not Picardy, Hyfrydol or Crimond. but we sing them and they work for a while.

Gill is right in ways, and wrong in others. He perhaps displays the classical musicians arrogance towards popular (successful?) music, but reminds us that the search for quality and excellence is not simply just writing volume and hoping that some small percentage will be excellent.

How stupid do they think we are?

The recent denial by Attorney General Ruddock that the bombing of the embassy in Jakarta was related to the Iraq war is too absurd. Whether or not such plotting was going on before the war is beside the point, the war clearly did nothing to alleviate the likelihood of terrorist violence.
What disturbs me about Mr Ruddock, as true now as when he was Minister of Immigration, is how he construes facts to make very twisted conclusions. Now, not all conclusions need to be straight-forward and/or obvious but we do need to apply common sense. What is more, you don't want Ministers of the Crown, whoever they are, telling the average intelligent citizen that their well-thought-through conclusions are just stupid. Which is, I would contend, what we seem to get when a senior Minister tells us that the obvious conclusion is not true, and that a bizarre conclusion is more likely to be the answer. I don't think so!
We see it, of course, in the polemic of Minister Vanstone too. Who can blatantly stand as she did over the weekend and say...I am the responsible Minister, but I will take no responsibility for the fact that my department subcontracted out the transport of detainees over hundreds of kilometres to an organisation that would not let the passengers stop for medical help, toilet stops, or anything else
Ruddock would have been capable of such statements, too, when he held the same portfolio. And maybe what we witness is the sadness of the learnt behaviour picked up while being a Minister required to defend the indefensible.
Vanstone can say over and over again I am the RESPONSIBLE minister of a department which continues and continues and continues to be dysfunctional....this is not just blame the previous Minister stuff...and it continues under my 'leadership'. I believe ministerial accountability has long gone out of the window. Don't sit around holding your breath waiting for a minister to resign because of a stuff up they should have prevented.
We are witnessing the sadness of a country with a weak opposition, unable or unwilling to hold the government of the day to account. This is not good government!