Licht-Leben-Liebe

Last night at a retreat I was introduced to this image of the Madonna and Child, sometimes called the Stalingrad Madonna.
It was penned by an army chaplain, Christmas 1942 when the siege of Stalingrad was underway. The artist, Kurt Reuber, drew the image on a map and penned around it the traditional German Christmas Greeting: Licht-Leben-Liebe or Light-Life- Love.
It stands now in a chapel of reconciliation in the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church) in Berlin (you can read more about it here in German if you wish ).
Amidst everything else that is going on about Christmas in our culture I pondered a little just what Christmas must be like in the midst of this sort of great tragedy, and all you can do is draw. And the most appropriate things to draw is this mother with her baby
My standing at the supermarket and seeing $2.95 Santa gnomes and thinking ...I could buy 4 or 5 and put them round the garden seems remarkably trivial.
Don't get me wrong I am not one of those who thinks we should get rid of the Santa out of Christmas, Santa is a real expression of the world Jesus was born into...(my contribution to incarnational-atonement theology is that Jesus died for Fr Christmas. This is not a trivial statement, but you need to think about it.)
Any way, Licht-Leben-Liebe might get me through another day

Final Solution

My less-left wing brother in law (well actually he's less left wing than Alexander Downer if that places him on the political spectrum for you) quite rightly remarks that nuclear energy presents the Green movement with something of a dilemma.
While it is being offered as a "green solution", an alternative to the CO2 emitting processes which seem likely to destroy (have destroyed) all sorts of things about our planet that we have taken for granted. There is clearly a problem with the side-effects of nuclear energy and the disposal of waste. I am generally persuaded that Australia being geologically and politically stable can be a good 'dumping ground'. But no one really wants a dumping ground in their backyard if they don't have to have it.
The real dilemma is the thousands of years it requires for this stuff to be stored before it can be reprocessed ( by my reading it doesn't ever become safe again) and the exponentially increasing quantities of waste that will develop if we give ourselves to this form of power production.
Much as I hate to agree with my less left-wing b-i-l,he is right. There is a dilemma.
It was not helped by hearing a current affairs host today in discussing this issue say "We are a long way from the final solution on this issue". Final solution indeed, she is usually a lot more careful with her language.

Googling

A post on one of the link blogs prompts me to write

We really should discipline ourselves to not search Google for our names don’t you think.
Though apparently I am a serious academic at Oxford, and a Professor of Linguistics in Liverpool. I have written several books, and I am also a major photographer in NY.
The other day in a hotel in Victor when I was having lunch with my aunt the waiter said “You look like a movie star”…I jokingly said “Yes, it’s Brad Pitt!”
He just said “No!” but we all killed ourselves laughing.
(Angelina and the kids are doing just fine!)

Needy

I guess the difference between dogs and cats is that ultimately dogs are very needy.
Our pet pooch is a quiet and affectionate animal and likes attention. Of course in this warmer weather you need to make sure that there is plenty of water as inevitably the older dog tends to get stressed pretty quickly.
This morning she had run out of water so I filled both her bowls as soon as I got up. She was glad of the relief.
Then a dilemma for her, because while she was drinking I stroked her back.
What should she do? She was very thirsty but here was I giving her affection.
Despite the fact that we are told that it is thirst which most strongly demands our attention, she gave into the need for affection.
So the need for affection would seem to be the strongest motivator. A lot like humans really!!

Cricket, poinsettias, Christmas

I had never seen a poinsettia before I came to Australia. And where we lived they seemed to bloom in the winter. So there were poinsettias for Pentecost (June) which was good because the Pentecost colour is red.
However in Mexico, poinsettias are a Christmas flower. Christmas of course being in Winter in Guadlajara!
Aunty (referred to below) gave us one as a gift of thanks for our recent little time together.
In this age where times and seasons no longer matter we often see the poinsettia (though there may be two different types). After some thought I decided to risk planting it in a "filtered sunlight" position in the garden.
Other signs of Christmas are the cricket. Soon the Adelaide Test will begin from our beautiful Adelaide Oval.
The Jacaranda have done their bit to let us know the exam season is ending. And best of all it's in the high 30s for the rest of the week.

Christmas must be a month away tomorrow!!!

Thanks a lot

Spot the turkey

Trust

My morning reflection and prayers today ask me the question "What things have I been entrusted with?"
It 's not a rocket science question in many ways and I can arrive quickly at the conclusion that I have been entrusted with a great human treasure. Wife, children, family, parish, friends.
I have a lot of material resources at my finger tips, and, in whole world terms although as a priest I am not in any way wealthy, I do not really want for anything.
The meditation goes on as the scripture says...being faithful in small things you will be entrusted with big things. Have I been faithful with the small things entrusted to me?
There is a a sort of 'mixed economy' I have been quite diligent about some things and slack about others.
It is, any way, a thought to keep me going during the day. What sort of a go have I made of what has been given to me?

On keeping one's mouth shut

I am having the pleasure of entertaining overseas' visitors at the moment. My aunt and her neighbour, who travel a lot together and my cousing who I haven't seen for forty years. It is interesting and good to catch up.

There is a trust about family which is almost automatically there, though at times we are careless with the way we talk to each other; assuming that we know each other better than we do. We don't discover that we have said too much, until we have said too much. So far I think I have only done it twice.

And of course they don't like it when you beat them at Monopoly! Now that is family!!

Liminality

Contemporary American religious commentator Richard Rohr makes the observation that the church fails to lead people to a threshold (liminal) experience of God. Far from transforming people, he suggests, the liturgy so often panders to popular ideas of making God comfortable....(see here for for example).
He notes that in order to to build community there needs to be a shared experience of this liminality.
Seems like a reasonable point to me. So much of what is offered by churches today is humdrum and non-challenging. Is it any wonder that people have ceased to belong.
With no shared threhold experience, no genuine enmcounter with God there is no puprpose in belonging.
I often suggest to people... why do you bother coming to Church if you are not prepared to be transformed by the encounter with God? I simply don't understand why people would tolerate all the crap unless there was some point in it all.

Global cooling

Wednesday     Shower or two.                         Min 11    Max 17
Thursday      Fine. Morning cloud.                   Min 13    Max 20
Friday        Fine. Mostly sunny.                    Min 10    Max 24
Saturday      Fine. Mostly sunny.                    Min 14    Max 30
Sunday        Fine. Mostly sunny.                    Min 15    Max 33
Monday        Hot. Late change.                      Min 17    Max 36

One of the things that I was taught to do at University (but I'm not very good at) was to look at statistical information properly, and to draw appropriate conclusions not (just) the ones that I wanted to.
Now, I'm generally a believer with regard to climate change. But during these bitterly cold days of late I have not heard one person suggest that this cold snap is heralding a new age of 'global cooling'....but you can bet that on Saturday we will hear once again from misreaders of statistics (like the weather forecast for the next few day above) about global warming!
So (far be it from me to suggest too often) little Johnny is right when he says that global warming is not going to happen tomorrow, and we need to be measured in our approach and response (here). But I cannot buy the argument that therefore we should do nothing until the "big players" (the US and China) get their acts together. Nor am I convinced thjat Howard really believes that, if he did then Australia would never do anything abotu anything.
I say we should do what we can, as soon as we can. Anything less is stupid.
Any way rug up and enjoy the day!!!

An appropriate check -but to what avail?

The news that Donald Rumsfeld has fallen on his sword (or been pushed) in the wake of the much vaunted anti-bellum vote represented by resounding Democrat victories in the mid term Congressional election (here) comes as no surprise.
It is, I suppose, an appropriate reminder to all in power that they are all vulnerable. But does it really achieve anything. The Americans (and we as the 52nd state!) are still 'twixt the rock and the hard place. The damage has been done, and evacuating now will, one suspects, not actually make the country a safer place in the short term. But the war ( one suggests) was never about making Iraq safe, it was about the politics of oil. And what that was all about, who knows.
The other war mongers, Cheney, in particular remain firmly ensconced. Bush will limp with ever increasing ignominy to the end of a lame-duck Presidency. And hundreds of people have died.
The Howards and the Downers will continue to justify this awful war. And I am left with the reminder of how in the pre-war days week after week thousands of us marched against the war and were ignored by our government.
What has been achieved?
Well for our sins the evil Saddam will ultimately be executed and no one has raised their voice to say the death penalty is objectively wrong.
What a mess!

Brave new world

We will no doubt tire of hearing the expression "brave new world" today.
The expression is a quotation from "The Tempest"---Oh brave new world that has such people in it! says the heroine Miranda as she is both fulfilled through the mystery of magical encounters, and freed from its bonds.
The title was picked up by Aldous Huxley in his prophetic novel which has many interesting reflections on what future life might be like...drugs to ease the pain of mental torment, designer babies conceived in test tubes, and a state which has uncertainty and excitment about its future which is both live giving and fear creating.
So it has been interesting to see some of Huxley's thinking coming into reality.
Is the "brave new world" of stem cell research really as foreboding as some commentators would have us believe? As you listen to some of the arguments in the Senate last night some of it is terrifying...harvesting ova from corpses etc...the slippery slope and so it goes on.
It is often easier to retreat to absolute certainty. To make authoritatrian statements like "fertilised ova are human beings" that slams the book closed on debate. And I have been inclined to do that in the past.
But I rather think we have to do better than that.
If we take the example of the other end of life---death--- we realise that what were once certainties say 50, 100, 200 years ago are not "certainties" any more.
Once death could be the heart stopping.
Now we can stop hearts in order to undertake surgery.
Once we never considered "brain death" and so some people lingered on with no consciousness even though their hearts continued to pump.
We are in a different place today.
We need to think a little harder about all this, and keep the debate going. Not simply assume that dogmatic assertion is the answer

The day of days

What a day we will have of it today? Apart from the race that stops the nation.

We are also having the water summit to end all water summits, (which will need to be over in time to allow Premier Bracks to attend the race). I wonder what will get the most attention?
Consideration is also going on about the inevitable rise in interest rates, which is necessary to control our out of the box need to consume which is funded largely (and unrealistically) by expensive credit being freely available...a major cause of inflation. Those of us who complain about interest rate rises should realise that the ball lies firmly in our own court. If we were to control our credit spending then interest rates would not need to rise.
In the meantime the senate is discussing stem cell research, an important debate which appears to be progressing well. But does the general populace pay myuch attention .....certainly not between 2-3 they won't

Absolute rubbish

I heartily applaud the notion of recycling in this world where we waste so much stuff. So it is that we find ourselves in the midst of "hard rubbish collection" atBlackwood.
This requires householders to dump their hard rubbish (stuff that can't be collected through the bin system) on the footpath and some time during the week some well meaning chaps come and pick it up.
This may cause amusement to overseas visitors who find it extraordinary that Australians just seem to dump overused couches, dead fridges, and now-defunct pieces of wood, metal and plastic in ever increasing piles along the side of the road. But it works well enough, and is an unsightly mess for only a few days.
A couple of interesting things to note. The stuff is well picked over by scavengers, good luck to them I say. They are the true recyclers, those who cull the rubbish and try to make a buck out of it.
Because the council operation is not really recycling at all. However we might like to appease our consciences this morning I noted that the collectors simply put everything in a compactor. A quite good wooden bedhead, a washign machine which could have been salvaged for parts. Umpteen dozen old fashioned computer monitors and the cheap little printers which have served us so well.
All crushed in together, into a thousand pieces. Presumably they will become amorphous land fill. The least effective mode of recycling.
I passed a compost bin being thrown out this morning, I must go back and see if it is still there. I can probably use it!!!!

Religion and politics

Geraldine Doogue interviewed Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott on ABC radio about what it means to be a Christian in politics. I am always interested to note that Christians seem to have a lot in common with each other even though they are politically disparate.
One interesting distinction which Rudd is clearly trying to make is the notion that he consider that Christianity is not essentially a private pursuit. He tries somewhat to caricature Abbott as suggesting that it is, but I don't know thta Abbott can be so easily pigeon holed. he has, after all, taken a great deal of flak for his position on a number of issues (abortion, stem cell research and so on) for which he has been accused of being a Catholic. Would that more of us were so accused!
In many senses Rudd's critique would seem to be too many religious people only allow their faith to inform them on narrow issues (like abortion and euthanasia) and he is making a stand which suggests that it needs to be wider than this, and to to flow out into matters like living and working conditions.
In our local council elections, one mayoral candidate has clearly identified himself as a Christian to local ministers. I find him affable enough but wonder quite what he wants us to do about it. I am happy for him to come to church (as he did) but my lips remain sealed with regard to any sense of endorsement. We shall see how he fares this week!

Climate change

The shrinking (North) Polar ice cap-1979 -2003

Interesting reflections emerge about the climate change debate. Although its become the "in topic", several more serious commentators are noting that in the last 5-10 years the actual science has become more sharply honed. Such a one was Alan Dupont on Margaret Throsby this a.m.
His keen observation is worth listening to.
Observing the political scene one could be forgiven for thinking that the sort of opportunistic vote-seeking politics that both our major parties go in for will not be a good mindset for actually dealing with the problem.
If I hear the idiocy of our PM saying we are not signing Kyoto because other people (chiefly the Yanks we should note) are not signing; and it makes no sense unless everyone signs it, then I swear I shall scream! Little J is such an opportuntist and ballot-box responsive that he will never do more than cobble together a policy which will win him what votes he can (see here).
This simply is not good enough, we will need leadership which will lead not just that which will push from behind, or follow the most popular line.
Where is Adolf when you need him?

Rain, rain go away!

Driving back across the roundabout at 8.10 a.m. this morning the automatic sprinklers had turned on. I don't know what was worse.....sprinkler watering is supposed to stop at 8 a.m. or the fact that it had been raining!
Even more mind blowing is trying to work out whether the roundabout is odd or even numbered (since it is slap bang in the middle of the road)....and we are on an odd & evens water restriction regimen.
Any way, a very red-faced council worker was heading towards the perilous centre with wrench in hand. I haven't been back to check if he was successful.