Field of Argent

Today is our twenty fifth wedding anniversary which gives cause for thought. I remember when I thought that 25 years was an impossibly long time and that only old people could possibly get there. The first time I was chastened by that was when my parents had theirs. They didn't seem that old. I suppose my mother was slightly older than I am now and my father slightly younger.
Indeed one of the things I note (is this a feature of growing old?) is that anything less than forty years is almost passé and Golden wedding anniversaries are quite common, so that I could happily write in the card I got for S that I hope we would have another 25 better years.
I am not so pedestrian as to suggest that the last two and a half decades have been so fantastic that we would want the next twenty five years to be just like it. God forbid! I just hope I am better at it than I have been.
Highlights? Well of course our three children have been the chief fruit of this period. We have managed to cope with three lots of school, and two lots of university so far. We haven't quite managed to liberate them from the nest. I look forward to that day!
But not only do we have children and nephews and nieces its been a great thing to marry some of them off, and bso there are also great nephews and nieces and. I am ready to be a grandfather. These are words I had never envisaged saying.
Our parents taught us how important family holidays were and we have been able to have good family holidays at least once every year. Not always far away, though we have enjoyed some pretty quality times in the last few years.
Lowlights? Can you imagine living with me for 25 years? Even my parents didn't have to cope with that! So it has not been without its trials. We had a period of separation about ten years ago, which was awful but necessary. My best man deserted us in our hour of need, apparently we used up all our quota of neediness and he had nothing more to give.
We have lived in 6 different places in that period. Both my parents died. The world has changed and John Howard has been PM for more than a third of that time! It would be remiss of me not to say that being a minister of the church has taken its toll on all of us.
Here's to the next 25!

With bated breath

We are all waiting with anxious anticipation to see what information Immigration Supremo, Kevin Andrews, is going to reveal about Mohammad Haniff that justifies the continuing revocation of his work visa.
Haniff appeared on 60 Minutes last night some what at pains to protest his innocence ( a little too 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' for my liking but perhaps I am as tinged with xenophobia as my fellow compatriots (here)).
One thing we can be sure of, if there is nothing forthcoming from Andrews, who can hide behind the excuse of confidential information.....then we can be pretty sure there will be no apology.
In fact this feels like the same sort of 'no-apology' land that we have visited before.
The protestations that no apology is necessary because he has acted within the law only stands up if evidence is presented that shows that there was indeed niggling doubt about Haniff's soundness. We wait in vain.
It begs the question about what the right way to act is. Ethics 101 tells you in tutorial one that there is huge difference between what is legal and what is right. Holy Writ tells us recourse to the legal system is the last resort and things should be settled before that stage....Andrews should know this since he is one of the klatsch of Christian politicians (instrumental you may remember in overturning the Territory's euthanasia legislation) who seek to have their faith-voice heard. I find his recent action strangely lacking in Christian character.
So I wait with baited breath for the information....and will not hold the same breath for the apology that Haniff deserves if he is, as he claims, a coincidental player.

Scary Stuff-the terrorists have won

I have tried not to blog endlessly about the stuff-up and injustice that is was the arrest of Mohammed Haniff. But we cannot keep silent now.
There is much that could be said, but one thing that has gone untouched is our national blindspot, xenophobia (please explain!) It's not racism per se, but fear of foreigners. It is the position to which we have always retreated when we feel threatened.
It is that which changed Hahndorf to Ambleside, and interned people of German descent in World War 1. It is that which has fuelled our mistrust of the Japanese. It is that which countless immigrants have had to weather for two centuries. It is that which was crudely employed to scare the populace when Vietnamese and Cambodian boat people started arriving in the 70s. It was xenophobia which enabled Pauline Hanson to reach the apogee of her political life, and it was the blunt instrument which is partly responsible for the election of the present government.
It is a sign of an immature society.
A society which attributes to the foreigner all sorts of hideous crimes and actions, usually without proper evidence and without due process. Not because there are facts, but because the accused is a foreigner.
It is an instrument of fear and manipulation.
We might say that when we act out of fear, when we do not pay attention to the truth, or when we allow due process to go by the board then we have jettisoned our freedom.
Is this where the terrorists wants us to be? Of course.
As long as we are irrational, unfair and unkind they will have no difficulty manipulating their adherents into believing that we are irrational, unfair and unkind!
I don't want or need to point the finger at who is to blame.
We will all have different versions of that.
But I do think it is about time we took seriously the need and the responsibility to grow up. As people and as a nation.
In this ever-shrinking world we can no longer afford the indulgence of being xenophobic.
If we don't then the terrorists have won.

No rhyme nor reason

The current stoush over public housing raises a whole barrow-load of questions about the sort of society we are trying to create.
The Federal Government is promoting now the idea that public housing should go into private hands. (here)This seems to me like ideological madness.
I am not against outsourcing per se, and I am not particularly in favour of governments running businesses that might be more effectively run privately.
There is, in my mind, no need for governments to run or own factories, farms or retail outlets.
But public infrastructure is a rather different issue. With this sort of body we are not just talking about some finite business, we are also talking about social policy. So health, education, communications and housing, it seems to me, need to be played close to the governmental chest.
Not, perhaps, for the majority of people who can manage things quite well, but for the ever-increasing number of people finding that these things are traps which they cannot negotiate.
The economic rationalist dogma (for such it is) that the private sector can run these things more efficiently must be called into question.
They may be able to achieve certain efficiencies by harsh cutbacks, by limiting services; but we also need to recognise that this does not serve the most vulnerable. The very people that public education, public health, and now public housing are supposed to protect and serve.
The trouble with the housing rental industry is that it is rapacious. Poor people are very vulnerable if the roof over their head is threatened (or their school or their hospital). Most people in our society can create choice for themselves, but the poorest and the weakest cannot.
This is not a question, then, of economic dogma. It is an issue about social policy. That is not the province of the private sector. It is the responsibility of government. It cannot and should not be outsourced or privatised.

Off the mark

After having been told yesterday that the local Hills and Valley Messenger had done an expose on a new Brethren compound in our area, and it went on for page after page; I suppoose I should have been more careful when a reporter rang up.

Her guise was to question about the census "Why did I think that Anglican figures had gone down?" and "Yes, the census said that Buddhist and Hindu figures had gone up"

Well these things are more complex than they seem. I suggested.

Buddhists and Hindus are coming off a low base.

We (Anglicans) are trying but we are getting older and the census doesn't tell us anything that we don't already know!

I even said "I'm a bit cautious about sayiung too much because it's not straight forward"
"That's OK," she proffered, "I'm a Catholic"
Didn't actually make me feel any better.
Having been burnt by the media a couple of years ago (it was TV admittedly) I hung the phone up thinking that I had probably said too much and should have said nothing.
We shall wait and see what comes of it.

Further to your letter....

The ABC's hose down department sent this fairly bland reply to my complaint about the incessant patting of Helen Caldicott in last week's Difference of Opinion (here)

Dear Mr Clark

Thank you for your email regarding the episode of Difference of Opinion broadcast on 19 July.

I am sorry you considered that the conduct of Dr Ziggy Switkowski and Michael Angwin during this episode was sexist, in terms of occasions when they physically touched their fellow panel member Dr Helen Caldicott, seated between them. I can assure you, it was not the intention of the program makers or the ABC to endorse sexist behaviour in broadcasting the conduct to which you refer.

Please be assured, your comments have been noted and conveyed to the producers of Difference of Opinion so they are aware of your concerns regarding the conduct of Dr Switkowski and Mr Angwin. Thank you for bringing this matter to the ABC's attention. I have attached a link to the ABC's Code of Practice for your information: http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/documents/codeprac07.pdf

Yours sincerely etc.etc................

What we pay you for?

I suppose politicians have a tricky and responsible job. Which is why we pay them a lot of money. So I am always a little disappointed when they fail to deliver. There is, sadly, not much to pick between both sides. Maybe that is because in the search for truth, justice and....well let's not get carried away....but maybe there are only a few limited answers.
We could at least expect that opposing parties might actually offer us some choice of policy, but they don't seem to.
So I am disappointed when:

• Both sides seem to be remarkably silent about the injustices in Immigration law
• Both sides capitulate to logging interests because there are critical votes at stake
• Neither side seems concerned about the obvious injustices done to Mohammad Haniff as they were about David Hicks
  
• Both sides accept the heresy of the 'free market' which dictates everything about economy

When will one side or other actually offer something that looks not just like pragmatism, but like hope and vision. If we can't have vision couldn't we have a little imagination instead of this wretched cynicism that you seem inten to dish up.
Isn't THAT what we actually are paying you for?

The hand of ...friendship?

I once worked with a woman who was quite difficult to get on with. During the course of a particularly arduous conversation I put out my hand, almost subconsciously, to touch her on the elbow in a reassuring way and she snapped "Don't pat me down as if I am a dog!"
It taught me a valuable lesson about the way men often patronise women in discussion by this sort of gesture. I am pretty careful now about doing this sort of thing. Not the least because I recognised that I had no idea how deep my colleague's anger with me was until that moment. It did tell me that I am not always good at assessing other people's real feelings. It taught me that as a man I should not presume that I necessarily understand the emotional dynamics of a female. (With four sisters, a mother, a wife and three daughters...you would think I should know this!!)
I was interested last night to watch anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott seated between the advocate of the Australian Uranium Industry and Ziggy Switkowski, also a pro-nuclear advocate. They several times touched her in a way that would have been quite inappropriate if she had been a man.
It was almost invisible, and it was the same sort of reassuring pat that perhaps said "There, there dear when you live in the real world (of men) then maybe you will understand better."
To Caldicott's credit she didn't swerve away from the meat of her discussion to address the patronising tactics that were being used to belittle her, but it shouldn't have happened.
We should be alert to the fact that there are tactics in such discussions as well as content and that we need to read them as much as the words.
And the ABC should do better.

The problem of abuse

As the struggle of dealing with child sexual abuse in remote aboriginal communities continues, we should not be surprised that this stretches resources (here). The problem is deeper than we think, or want to admit.

An example of the extent of that this week is that we have seen the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles make an enormous financial settlement with victims of abuse in that Diocese over 50 years (here). Our own local Anglican Diocese has been struggling with this issue  for some years. And it does indeed stretch our resources.

It is important to recognise that while the provision of adequate law enforcement, compensating victims , and the need to start again are critcal issues and need to be dealt with well.

But they  beg the question of whether they are attempts at local containment of a problem that is actually much wider. 

This certainly has been a major critique of the aboriginal community focus. The indigenous people are an easy target, but what of non-indigenous communities.

None of my blog readers would imagine that I am  suggesting that we should not be throwing resources to support aboriginal communites. May they not be used to posture and paint power-brokers in a good political light!

Churches, too, are an easy target. Highly visible and outspoken, and good targets for the charge of hypocrisy. But do we imagine that abuse is limited to the church alone.

Certainly not!

My contention would be that there is a fundamental issue about MEN. Yes, men! 

Although there are a few isolated cases (readily sensationalised by a male dominated media) of women abusers the real problem is men.

We live in a society, both black and white, religious and non-religious which allows men, not all men, to believe that you have a good chance of getting away with abuse.

Now maybe we are tightening up on this.

But I don't want to have narrow 'easy-target' focuses when there is clearly a much wider problem throughout society.

Where are the resources for schools to address the teaching of programs to help boys become the sort of men we want them to be?

Where is the wholesale examination of why our legal system by and large fails to convict rapists and abusers (anything up to 85-95% perpetrators of vilent sexual attack are never convicted or brought to justice)

You see, it is easier to hit the soft targets, but the problem is much more extensive than that.

We do not presume

The presumption of innocence is a wonderful thing, if not a little risky. It really undergirds the whole of our legal system.
It is indeed a risky thing, because our presumption may sometimes be mistaken. It is the price we pay for not having a system which presumes guilt, which is also a risky thing, because the consequences of presuming an innocent person is guilty can be devastating (if not fatal) for ...well...an innocent person. In our civilised way we think this is worse thing to risk than occasionally letting a guilty person go free.
Now, I don't know whether Mohammad Haniff (here)is innocent or guilty. I am therefore disturbed by the immigration processes used to detain him yesterday, after the presumption of innocence had been effected by a legitimate court.
This indeed is one of the fatal weaknesses of the whole framing of immigration law (not just this case) we presume guilt. Now no doubt a Minister, in this case Kevin Andrew, may claim knowledge of special circumstances (and may indeed have such); but we have courts to test the veracity of this sort of 'special knowledge'. We are on a slippery slope indeed when authorities, however august, outside the legal system presume to effect the processes of the law.
I hold no hope that any of this will be heard by those in power (on either side) or that forthcoming elections will change their stance. Ever fearful of the electorates' anxiety they will not risk being thought 'weak'.
But it seems to me that the true 'weakness' here is not being prepared to stand up for the fundamental principles of our way of life. Presumption of innocence is one such.

Prayers in the Parliament

This all rather makes the debate about prayers in Australian chambers of governmnet seem rather maudlin

One sided

I am interested to see that a story about the Moebius strip actually makes the news headlines today today (here). It cheers the heart of a would-be nerd when ever a Maths story hits the headlines.
For those of you who aren't so sure about it, you take a piece of heavy paper cut it into a strip about 2 or 3 cms wide. In fact make two.
With the first one simply fold the ends together and glue them or use sticky tape.
With the second one you do the same only this time you put one twist in it
You can then do a couple of things to test the qualities of the strip.
First get a pen and draw a line along the middle of the strip and keep going until you get back to where you started.
With the ordinary (untwisted) strip you will of course find that this draws a continuous line around one side.
With the Moebius (twisted) strip though, you draw a line twice as long and you find that when you get back to where you started there is actually no "other side". The strip appears to have only one side.
The second thing you can do is to then cut along the line you have drawn. The first strip will cut into two separate strips the same diameter as the original but half the width.
But the Moebius strip will end up as only one circle, twice the size of the original and half the width, it will still have a twist.

If you're really nerdy (and you can see that I have done this before) you can even experiment with two or more twists and see what happens.
Of course the mathematical explanation is bizarrely complicated. I don't pretend to understand it, but at least it's not a story about someone being blown up, and there may be some application for this curious property. But that may just be hype to justify such research into obscurity.

How nerdy am I?

I Love these things

Change and growth

Another increase to the family this week. Lillian Ellen, the daughter of my niece.

She is the second child to be called Lily, after my mother. And in a way it’s a bit disturbing. What does it mean as we deliberately do things which pass on the generations?

To be fair to M, the mother of the child, she was probably closer to my mother than most of her other grandchildren; and was deeply saddened by her death. Which is why I think she should perhaps have been a little more cautious about having this reminder ever present in her own daughter.

I, for example, was not named after my grandfather whose death in unfortunate circumstances had deeply rocked the family. By the time my younger brother was born they had obviously got over it and he was named Richard after the man in question. Well he has to live with that and I don’t, but I have always thought it a bit odd that if you are going to pass a name down that you should either give it to everyone, or to the eldest…but we never did things logically in our family. Any way, I am glad also that I don’t have the unfortunate reminder…I make heavy weather of it any way

Life on the edge

My Doctorly neighbour and I had a discussion about the new ethos that is permeating our local diocese. There apparently is a declared policy (though I have not heard of it) that we should all live together in harmony and tolerate difference.
One can't criticise such a stand, indeed that is part of its insidious nature.
I am only happy with this sort of policy if such a view is not a statement that we want everyone to be in the insipid middle. Which I fear is indeed what it does mean!
In a way it is easy for policy makers and those who believe they have the right to direct everyone to have everyone in some amorphous middle.
But in the end I suspect it doesn't work, because it is lacklustre and lacks character.
I tend to be an extremist. Not a wildly anarchic extremist, (indeed my main manifestation of extremism is probably that I am an extreme conservative!), but I don't like sitting in the middle.
So I am by choice a Catholic Anglican. That is the sort of worship and spirituality that speaks to me. In fact one thing I am sure about is that I do not want to belong to the middle of our church. It is strangely where I have spent most of my ministry.
I actually want worship that is splendid, mysterious, full of smoke, colour symbol and music. I do not want half-baked thoughts and worship so restrained that it almost fades away.
I don't consider myself a "protestant", and don't like much of the sort of thought and worship that flies under that banner, though I have had and participated in my fair share of it.
It is often said that the Anglican Church is a "bridge church" between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant. That may be true to some extent, but another colleague once remarked...you can't live on a bridge. I would concur with that.
So it is for this toleration model that is being perpetuated. I actually suspect it is a model of control, and mediocrity. It is a bridge....but not a home

Why I will never be PM or I just don't get it

The worst thing about Peter Costello is that smirk. You know the one that says "Well I have said just about the smartest thing that could ever be said, and everyone else is stupid."
This is only tempered by the fact that usually when he does it he has just shot himself in the foot and not realised.
Bang! Such an incident occurred on the 7.30 report last night. You can watch the podcast on their website under the title "Government ridicules Labor's Grocery Plan".
Totally missing the point that Rudd was (rightly or wrongly) tapping into community Angst about skyrocketing grocery costs, their fluctuation, and their ever-upward moving direction.
Bang!"Rudd is wrong the Bureau of Statistics has been giving this information for a decade".
The interviewer, Ali Moore, gives him a way out "But those statistics don't tell you which shop or chain is more expensive."
Bang! "What Mr Rudd wants is to know the price of Bread, biscuits and baked beans.Well I've been on to the Bureau of Stats today and the average price of bread is $3.21 in Sydney and $3.20" he also reeled off the obviously staffer-researched figures for biscuits (dry and sweet) and baked beans.
She gave him a way out again..."But that's not the point Treasurer, people want to know which chains are more expensive."
But so fixated was he on making a point ...."But that is the point....no no let me finiish."
Bang! He had already done it . His audience was saying but that IS the point you smirking fool.
Bang! We had already watched him declare that he didn't understand that people with limited money will actually try to not pay $3.21 for bread. Even at the relatively expensive BD bakery with the lovely fresh bread, ordinary bread is only $2.90
In the supermarket next door you can get it for $1.90
Bang! Now this doesn't matter if you earn over $200,000...and that is rather the point, he has, at the very least, given the impression that he does not understand what low and middle average income people deal with every day.

This is why he will never be PM. While Howard may be as unaware, he is not so naive. While Rudd may be in actually the same financial circumstances, he is not so smug.
The Liberal party would at any stage be foolish to commit their leadership to such a one. But starnger things have happened.

Does worship matter?

News that Pope Benedict is encouraging bishops of the Roman Church to allow the old Tridentine Mass is of minor interest to Anglicans.
It is more than a return to the Prayer of 1662 would be for Anglicans.
But it is also a return to a view of liturgy and worship that is completely at odds with what has been promoted for the last forty years.
Although much worship is pedestrian, boring and irrelevant...which is largely and often due to lack of preparation, poor resources and yes..I must say it...priests who are just total buffoons. The ethos of the earlier liturgies is quite different.
Modern liturgy is principally and primarily a gathering of community with a priest presiding at gathering of equals.
The Tridentine liturgy is essentially the formula that has to be completed in order for worship to be carried out properly. The priest, often with back to the people, offers a sacrifice to God on behalf of the people.
Should anyone want to retreat to this view of worship, one would have to think they were retreating to something that has long gone?
Now I am not saying that observed worship cannot be a superb thing. But worship is not a concert, it is essentially participation. Yesterday as I listened to the Kyrie from Mozart's Great Mass I almost swooned, the words are transporting. BUT they are performance.
Perhaps, and we are always being told this, we need to strike a balance.
My tip:The Latin Mass will be popular in certain circles, but it is essentially a retreat to a time that has gone, and the church would be better advised to be thinking more carefully about the way it can continue to sanctify the world, rather than drag it back to a world view which, at its best, is wishful thinking; and at its worst is superstition.

The widening gap

One story today about the widening gap between the brighest and the dimmest students, and/or the richest and the poorest schools (here), should come as a surprise to no one.
There would seem to be little doubt that the general gist of this is true.There is a certain sadness about the fact that a country that has had, in the recent past, a well-functioning public-sector school system is allowing it to go to rack and ruin.
The article cited here states that state governments whilst needing to be committed to the state systems nevertheless sometimes prefer the private system.There are many and complex reasons for this.
I well remember (for example) M, the founder of a relatively new SA school (now schools), saying of the need for Governments to continue funding private schools..They could not afford to stop funding them. This would seem to be true. And as more and more parents have fled the state system, the need to continue funding private schools has become even greater.
I have no particular problem with this. Other than the rather serious one that, no matter what, some parents will never be able to afford to pay for their children's education , no matter how cheap.
And as long as there continues to be a skimming off of high quality teachers to the private system, either by higher pay or just be better conditions; the state system will continue to be run down and down.
By way of a side issue (but relating to the skimming) , long term teaching colleague-D- who recently retired from over 30 years in the state system to a smaller job in a Lutheran School.
He sighed as we were talking, because his commitment to the State system is profound, you know it is just nice to have a level of enthusiasm and respect from the students, with politeness.
There was a sense in which he felt he shouldn't be saying that. But we both knew it was true.
Bit sad really

A different inclination

I am not entirely inclined to believe that everything about governmental response to problems in remote communities is just cynical politicking.
Though I was bemused to watch Minister Brough touring the Territory this week. I imagine that he would regard it as a (media) success.
At one point where he was trying to make the point about the denuding of the landscape that had gone on because of people congregating at the boundaries just outside where the dry zones are. Here the people sit, drinking booze, they chop down the trees and make fires.
Brough observed that this had denuded the landscape. It made marvellous TV.
The Minister in the bush totally exasperated, throwing his hands up in total despair.
Yes but....his aboriginal supporter was trying to say...
Helluva price to pay, the Minister declaimed.
Yes but ....the young guy tried to get his word in
But the Minister was having none of it. It was his moment.
As they all left the scene of this desolation. You could hear the young man still trying
Yes, but this didn't happen overnight. It's happened over thirty years.
But the Minister wasn't paying any heed at all.

It is not easy stuff. But let's not play the self-righteous game and assume that we have suddenly seen how awful this is.
Someone (us) needs to ask the question...If this has gone on for decades why has nothing been done about it before now.
I am not entirely cynical, just a little bit.

Playing it straight

On the face of it, Rudd's declamations this week that Pacific aid should be constructively targeted to improve the lot of our neighbours, is reasonable. (here) His point being that it is better to foster strong community than to mop up the mess afterwards.
The PMs point that there is a great weakness in this system needs also to be taken into account. He, supported by such luminaries as the ANU's Hugh White, makes the point that governance structures in the South Pacific are weak and just throwing more money at the system won't work unless there is corresponding improvement in these structures.
But how you do this beats me/Perhaps we need to listen more carefully to what the South Pacific wants from Australia and not simply use our aid budget to further our own influence. It is this latter attitude that our neighbours find so patronising.
I am not suggesting that we should just become a sort of political Santa Claus and address the self-interest of the powerful with gay abandon, but we should also recognise (and this I think is Rudd's point) that it is to our advantage to have strong, independent neighbours. Every parent has to learn this about their children. We need to learn it about the South Pacific

More Footprints

As I continue to think about the faith footprint, it would be easy to self-indulgently critical of my personal footprint. But fundamentally Christians understand that faith is lived out in community, and so (in a way) individual footprints are beside the point....of course it is often the footprint of the individual that impresses or repels us as being the main point at which we make the identification Christian  one way or the other.

Our family footprint is something like this.

We are five, one man and four women. 

It makes for interesting life, and every now and then there is an insane outburst of dancing and singing! There is much talk about clothes and image, we all struggle with our weight.

We are all very assertive. I sometimes reflect that my three daughters are exactly what I hoped they would be. Articulate, sensitive, capable of holding our own in conversation.

I just down like it when the power I have been able to wield because of my own forcefulness is challenged by those who I have sought to make strong!!

We are in contact with each other every day, even when we are not physically located in the same place, even (as we have recently been) when we are overseas, or as one of us is today - interstate. (just rang and she is OK!)

We try to eat together at least once a day, and we pray before we eat. We have managed to do this for the 25 years we have been married but this is rather breaking down.

Only one of us really goes to church with any regularity.

There is much more that could be said.

Mind your feet

As I reflect on the idea of faith footprint (it proves a little harder than I thought), I am thinking a bit about the footprints I, and we, made last week. Some of it seems Ok, some of it seems indifferent, and some of it seems well just wrong.
I felt OK, but sad by my visit with my declining friend. I tried to cheer him up by helping him to connect with the outside world...sometimes he would try, but other times he wouldn't
I enjoyed talking with someone who is thinking about what it means to be a priest, and another who is having some real difficulty on the ministry front. I had a fruitful time talking to someone who will be ordained quite soon about some of the contemporary issues of ministry.
I tried to pray and meditate with some quality each day.
I prepared a couple of sermons, and various entries for my weblog, and my preaching site.
I said the Eucharist three times
I had a couple of snappy exchanges
S & I went to the pictures to see Knocked Up
I drove up and down to school umpteen times
I read a whole lot of material on Jung
I visited my sister
I went to a 2 year olds birthday party
I baptised two children
I had more than a few moments when I felt depressed

What all this means and what sort of picture it begins to paint. I continue to reflect on

Do you want to know a secret?

It will come as no surprise to anyone that early opinion polls about workplace agreements will not be released for general public consumption. Indeed they will be kept secret (here).
Apparently the PM thinks that the electorate will be confused by the figures.
The oft touted line by both sides of politics that the Australian electorate is sufficiently intelligent to be able to assess such information only appears to be true when 'information' supports your particular side.
I think, any way, that forbidding the reading (as always) makes us surer about the content, and I suppose we will all be much more eager to get our hands on red hot copy, which will turn out to be as dry as dust!
I don't mean to be particularly pedantic, but I have blogged about this twice in the last fortnight (here and here). We are being treated like idiots and need to not take this sort of manipulation. It will only get worse.

On a lighter note, I have suggested in a letter to the press that the curious idea that William Windsor (a British Rock Concert Promoter) would like to become GG of Australia should nto be dismissed out of hand. But as in the case of those who want to become elected politicians who, like William, happen to be British citizens he should first be required to renounce his British citizenship!
Flinty, that urbane professor of the monarchic cause, thinks it a spiffing idea of course (here), and it would attract attention to Australia. Strangely, I thought that our recent experience would suggest to us that attention is the last thing we want our GGs to generate.

Faith footprint

I was quite impressed to read the national Director of the Anglican Church's mission agency (ABM-A) Linda Kurti's article in the latest Partners magazine. (Unfortunately their website doesn't yet seem to be up to date with an online edition of the same.) She introduces the idea of a "Faith Footprint".
This is a modernist terminology that is everywhere. We are perhaps used to the "footprint" language in relation to environmental issues. But it is a useful idea in a whole range of areas.
I guess the image (and one should be careful of explaining images, as that rather defeats the purpose) is what is the observable imprint left after all of the hoo-hah, the words, the shouting and the fighting , the lobbying and the intrigue are over and done with.
What sort of stamp does this actually leave?
Used, as we are, to the carbon footprint...what is left after we indulge our appetite for every possible power hungry gadget, after we spin around the globe on plane after plane, after we drive to work instead of walk or catch the train....and so on and so on? How does the footprint of the West impact on the rest of the world?
The faith question is what does the footprint of the community of faith to which I belong refelect back about priorities and activities.
Kurti rightly points out that the footprint of Westernized churches is very different from the partner churches we seek to support financially.
Footprints reflect back where we put our emphasis, how we spend our time. One not only suspects, but knows, that Western churches are in the area of material resources, a lot of time and effort is spent on buildings and money.
We are quite social, I often think after Parish Planning meetings that our main energies actually go in lunches and dinners, morning tea and Carol Services. These things are not unimportant. But you look at the footprint of our partner churches and see what are (to me at least) impressive programs of social empowerment like enabling poor communities to set up cottage industries which give an social and economic freeddom to the poor, women and the marginalised. A far cry from the next parish dinner!
I shall try and think over the next few days of what my individual footprint might look like. Reminiscent of a question of the seventies that used to intrigue me...If I were on trial for being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict me?