stephen clark

The internet's a funny place

2012-01-30T16:09:00.001+10:30

Accidently typed the wrong website suffix when looking for Anglicans Online and instead got a random selection of "Anglican Links"...they are of course machine generated...so some of the juxtapositions are curious if not hilarious
"Looking for a Church...come along and be surprised!"
"Low prices on Anglican Religion!"
"Save on Anglo Catholic!"
Incidentally if you really are looking for a spare Anglo-Catholic I could probably find you one or two that are no longer used!

Young and free...maybe a little indebted

2012-01-25T18:51:00.000+10:30

Most people seem to be getting that to sing (as you do) our national anthem and rejoice that we are 'young and free'

is yet another example of simply ignoring any idea that we have an indigenous culture.

A culture which, depending on your reckoning, is 40 probably 60 and maybe even 100 thousand years old.
I am not entirely happy with the description that it is the longest continuing culture in the world, (though the case can be made and I am open to being convinced). That, I think, begs the question about whether Australian aboriginal culture has the consistency for such a period that would mean there is anything more than the tenuous link that we live on an island and so it must be 'continuing' in that sense.
But that there has been art, music, story, familial structure, aetiological mythology,is abundantly clear.

Mabo and Wik articulated from a legal point of view that as far as this country is concerned it was not an uninhabited wasteland just wasting for the young and free to some and rape it.

On this Australia Day remember we are both young and free, and also old and deep

Holidays

2012-01-25T17:26:00.004+10:30

Australia is mad! We just think we can do nothing in the three weeks after Christmas.
It's funny because, by and large those weeks are pretty clement, and those of us who are more sensible should holiday in late January when it's "Scorchio!" and just fantastica typico-Australiano weather. Sun bleached, blue skies, really beach weather.
The sort of nights when you go down to Henley Square and eat...fish and chips, Chinese, drink white wine, swim and just enjoy each other's company. Think that tomorrow you might go to Cleland, or horseriding or simply sit on the beach...let's face it that's what most Aussies want to do on Australia Day....go to the beach.
Our Australian of the Year (Herr Doktor Rush) tells us something profound....we are the plucky country!!!!!
There are equivalents in every state, but as a South Aussie, there is no doubt that sitting on the Gulf St Vincent listening to the gentle lap of the waves...you could even sit at Stansbury on the other side or Port Broughton....and you would just think this is what heaven is like
He wants to support young actors...I have two in my family.
And I just totally and utterly laud a country that believes that we have theatre, music,and comedy that is world standard. Wooh hooh!!!

Critical questions

2012-01-19T21:43:00.001+10:30

Canadian priest Gary Nicolisi makes some good points about the sorts of questions that Churches couls useful ask themselves in the 21 st century (see full article here)

"The Canadian Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan began his seminal work Insight with this statement:

“When a dog has nothing to do, it goes to sleep. When a man has nothing to do, he may ask a question.”

A good question unleashes imagination, provokes curiosity and expands our vision.

Some questions are so full of complexity that no adequate answer is possible, but that does not prevent us

from considering multiple perspectives,

surface more possibilities and

ask the “what ifs” that result in different scenarios, responses and outcomes. In the end, inquiry beats certainty every time.

With that in mind, I want to suggest seven questions every church should ask itself.

This seems to me a very perceptive introduction to the whole process of questioning. Nicolisi goes on

1: What would be lost, and how would the world be worse off, if our church ceased to exist?

2: How does our church add value to people’s lives that they cannot live without–whether they know it or not?

3: What challenges in the fulfillment of mission does our church face and what can we do to bring about that new thing God wants our church to be?

4: What are the barriers to seeing reality that our church needs to move beyond?

5: What issues does our church need to face within the next year so that five years from now, we won’t have to say, “We wish we had…”

6: If money were not an issue, where would you like your church to be five years from now?

7: In what ways can we affirm “Jesus is Lord” without appearing to be bigots?

There you have it – seven questions that every church needs to ask itself. No one has all the answers to these questions. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that there are no “one size fits all” answers, but that each church will need to develop its own style of ministry in connecting with its own unique environment. This is a “bottom up” rather than a “top down” process that needs to be discerned at the local level rather than imposed by any hierarchy. Churches that can rethink their assumptions of ministry, reformulate their mission strategy and re-examine their way of doing church are more likely to revive and renew than the ones that do not. These “missional” churches will lead us into the future–confident and resilient, open and affirming, life-giving and liberating, with a compelling gospel message that centers on Jesus combined with flexible methods of ministry.

(The Rev. Dr. Gary Nicolosi is the rector at St. James Westminster Anglican Church in London, Ont.)

It must be my age

2012-01-11T12:35:00.000+10:30

Today is the first day I have not been offered 'old men' drugs! Much to the hilarity of myself and, of course, my children!

Dealing with change, conflict, difference

2012-01-08T21:44:00.037+10:30

I have often said about our Anglican Church that we live with a great deal of difference on a range of issues. This has often been focussed on doctrinal issues, and anyone who knows the Anglican Church ( or by its other names Church of England, Episcopal Church....and even in in Japan The Holy Catholic Church (Nippon Sei Ko Kai))
We range from being almost Puritan in doctrine and worship to looking like old fashioned Roman Catholics. The casual observer could go into two different churches and not realise they were part of the same Anglican Communion. I suspect most seasoned Anglicans would be able to sense the deep-seated Anglicanism but that comes from a foundation.

Although we may not necessarily like one style or the other, by and large we have learned to tolerate and largely to accept this level of difference. Some of us would even say that this is a key characteristic of Angicanism. That is, that we are pluralistic and diverse.

In latter years (as I have blogged about ) other issues have highlighted our different opinions.
I have had a couple of interesting conversations recently about the issue of homosexuality. Some of these are tedious, some are sad and some are constructive. It is that sort of issue in our society. It is that sort of issue in our church.

What, though, do you do, when you come to the point where your personal tolerance is exhausted. At least one of these conversations this week arrived at that point.
And the party concerned had to signify a parting of the ways for him and me.
I was saddened. I do not think we hold each other in disregard. I think rather we both recognise the integrity of the other...and we must now take leave of each other. I hope this is not permanent...but it may be and if that is so then that is so

This Anglican characteristic of struggling with diversity, must always mean that there is the possibility that sometimes we must part.
We must not do this lightly (some do it almost whimsically, and we have seen some of that throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion in the last two decades...but that is another issue) but the great theologian Thomas Aquinas ...not always right, and very much a creature of his time, but usually very thorough and perceptive...says we must always act in accordance with our informed and rational conscience....and concluded "The one who acts against their conscience always sins".
If that is to have any serious meaning then the possibility of the difficult decision must always be weighed.

Busy day

2012-01-07T09:42:00.000+10:30

On what was quite a busy day yesterday ( my 'day off'!) I had an interesting but quite demanding visit to hospital to see an old friend who I haven't seen much of in the last few years.
Her brain seems to have scattered, and the past, the distant past and the present all seem to come and go almost at random. Not at all clear what might have triggered this off, so it's a little alarming. But she looked physically well. Indeed, one would have to say, very well.
It was quite good to be a sort of 'fixed peg' from her past of thirty years ago (when we first met) and allow her to anchor some fo the memories.
One curious thing that got said was about her son, who I happen to have married probably a quarter of a century ago to a girl who had been in the same youth group as us; alack alas that marriage lasted only briefly.
But yesterday my friend when talking about him just threw into the conversation "Of course he's gay now!" (he would be in his late forties)
I was struck not so much by the information as by the acceptance of this by a very loving mother, now quite aged. It had no controversy about it, rather it seemed to be a simple statement about where life was at.
There seems to me to be an important insight here. But I leave you to draw your own conclusion

They get you every time

2012-01-04T14:38:00.000+10:30

I suspect the first, second and (hopefully not) the third law of passport interviews have just been invoked.

Ahh yess! The Guarantor's signature (our neighbour) was outside the box!!!

Ms Streep

2012-01-03T02:36:00.000+10:30

I loved The Iron Lady, but can't help but think that it is a curious representation of Maggie Thatcher.
While we might feel compassion for her in old age, in the end she was a very nasty piece of work who failed to understand from her lower-middle-class threshold what the Friedmanite economics was doing to the genuine working class of whom (it seems to me) she had no genuine understanding.
She was a "grocer's daughter" but had no understanding what it was to be a "miner's son" when the pits were closed down and the North was ravaged to save the south of England.
Bp David Jenkins of Durham, was lampooned by the southern paparazzi for being a modernist, but he was actually advocating for his pastoral crowd.....the impoverished poor of Tyneside.
Thatcher was petrified.
The Lord Bishop of Durham could see through her shallow economics, so they mocked his theology. Not extreme by theological standards ...well maybe...but he was not preaching Christless Christology, or Godless theology. He was, it seems to me advocating for the poor.
Well, Maggie didn't like that.

Jenkins became identified with opposition to the policies of the Thatcher and Major governments and subsequently was a critic of new Labour. He argued that what these governments shared was a dogmatic faith on the market which had many pseudo-religious elements too it. This led him to write at length about what he saw as the intellectual deficiencies of economic theory and market theorising and its pseudo theological character. His Market whys and human wherefores : thinking again about markets, politics and people London : Cassell, c2000 was an extended layman’s critique of economic theory and its application to policy. Jenkins described himself as an ‘anxious idiot’ using the latter term in its original meaning of an ordinary person with no professional expertise. His book nevertheless diagnosed many of the problems with economic theory and its application to a deregulated economy that would later become seen to be seen as prescient in the light of the global economic crisis of 2007 onwards. He also challenged the idea that markets created freedom (source Wikipedia)

Can't help but think he was a 'good thing'!!!!

Further to Ms Streep

2012-01-02T18:55:00.000+10:30

As disturbing as I found The Iron Lady
and Meryl Streep's portrayal of Maggie Thatcher,
I went back to watch Sophie's Choice
(can it be 30 years since that film came out?)
now that is a deeply disturbing film!
It shows:
that Meryl is just a beautiful, beautiful woman;
was then and is now thirty years later;
and indeed a great actor.
We are blessed to have lived in these times
the hey day of the movie
and to have seen such great performances by so many actors and actresses
I think of:
Lisa Minelli & Joel Grey in Cabaret
Helen Mirren in The Queen
The truly provocative and great movies of Pedro Almodovar
And I just remember the first movie I was ever allowed to go and see by myself: Ben Hur at the Gaiety Cinema Whitehaven...well I went with Allan...I suppose we were 11 and we were allowed to go to night cinema .

Then there was The Greatest Story ever Told. As I was on the way to see it my Bible Class teacher, Laurie Crosby,(who was a Borough Treasurer for the West Cumberland water board Now called something entirely different! ) was coming in the opposite direction. He said to me "I bet I know where you're going!" he was right.
But he then said......something like.....I wonder if you'll hear what I heard
Now this is naughty stuff. He should have known that the Spirit speaks to us differently!
But he told me "If they do this when the wood is green what will they do when the wood is dry" Which is Luke 23:31. It sort of ruined the film for me ...because I was trying to work out the 'right' answer....and it has often come back to me....so maybe this was the Spirit

I have drifted from the filmography of the last decade!!! Will come back to it

Review 6- Stop the homosexual prejudice

2012-01-02T01:59:00.003+10:30

I am really sick of homophobic bullying...the pretence of charity in the Church...the failure to be catholic (ie. universal) in our acceptance of all people
I am tired of a society which preaches tolerance and yet thinks it's within the bound of tolerance to permit people to think homosexual prejudice is OK.
This is such crap. The Church, my lovely Church, has tied itself up in such knots about this that it just looks STUPID.

This simple You Tube says so much about what should just simply be the accepted norm.

Review 5

2012-01-01T23:39:00.001+10:30

loved marrying my friends E & A in April

The hand clasp

The handclasp

It takes a little while
to realise
that when I am taking
someone else's hand
I am not taking hold of them
but letting them take hold
of me.
It takes a little while
to realise this
and sometimes,
amidst the grasping,
it may never happen.
but today
as man holds wife
and woman holds husband
there is a profound hope;
that you will let yourself
be held

for E & A as they got married

Review 4----as I look to a a new year

2012-01-01T11:36:00.004+10:30

I frighten myself

Je m'effraye

I frighten myself!
This week's fear
is that
I have not resolved
my youth.
The guilt I should have
left behind
on the beds of private concupiscence
seems ever with me as if I was sixteen.
The shame I have
is that I have not made
proper decisions
about my life.
that professing faith
I have been
faithless
that claiming love
I have been so often
loveless

it should be better
(could be worse)
I frighten myself!

Review 3

2011-12-31T23:22:00.000+10:30

Just looking back through the year past...it is New Year's Eve after all....
I praised Andrew Wilkie for being a thorn in the side, I am still inclined to think that this makes for good government. While we do want Governments to govern ...get over mandate politics.....(something an obstructionist Opposition might well take heed of) it is also good for them to be held to account, and to not just run rough shod through the Parliamentary system.
The bizarre rhetoric of the Opposition, that the Greens are the defacto government is not genuine political comment, it is a scare tactic.
I have voted for the Greens, knowing full well that some of their social policy is not what I would like...too loose on drugs and abortion...but their policy is not likely to become law, it is aspirational, philosophical and eidetic, perhaps (some would say) idiotic!
I bemoaned in March that excellent Speaker, Harry Jenkins, was being tested too much. Alack, alas, he went. And we await with baited breath the unfortunate consequences!

Night's middle

2011-12-31T13:21:00.000+10:30

( I repeat this observation from time to time...particularly during these gorgeous warm days and nights. I think this is one of the best poems I have ever written)

a poem I wrote some years ago

NIGHT'S MIDDLE

If I could live at night's middle
instead of running rather ragged
and drilling at the day
then my vision would be brighter
and the voice of God heard clear.
This morning, even,
the moon's fullest beam
shone bright as day.
total stillness
haunted dead trousers on the line
until the softness
of the Spirit's coolest breath
walked them gently
and I shuddered, not with fear
but with delight
as my too warm breast was cooled
by the lightest of touches.
Who can faint while such a zephyr
reminds me of my own aliveness.

I did not rise.
almost disciplined
to stay in bed
to the point of pain
lest, in embracing
the middle of the night,
I devoured the day
which still demands my full attention.
And so, I crept
as early as I could
to put pen to paper.
visions fleeing,
God's voice whispering
"Wiedersehen!"
and by a few lines,
the rising of the sun,
the plaintive magpie
and the start of the traffic
night's middle
had gone.

Reviewing -2

2011-12-28T08:27:00.001+10:30

This year has been one in which I have realised that there are (at least) two opposing movements in my faith life.
One is that I look back and realise that some of my basic conceptions about God are just vain imaginings and wishful thinking...and most of us are like this.
We imagine we know what God is like, what God is doing and what God wants to do in my life and the life of others.
One consequence is about the way we pray....how we basically tell God that "John should stop being naughty and start being good!" . We seldomly put it that crudely....but it sounds like ( and I heard an American priest say something like this during the year) "That Obama should change his economic policy" or we critque people's addictions without any understanding that there is more to addiction than just stopping doing the wrong thing.
Or we stand up and make public prayers about the environment, jobs, even the treatment of animals ....all of these I have heard during the year...without any understanding that it doesn't in any way address the complexity, and sounds remarkably like the pray-ers one particular biases.
I, of course, am guilty of this too.

So I am trying not to tell God what to do.
I also think I have had, and been encouraged to have, a very passive view of my relationship with God....Moral Therapeutic deism....is what one person I heard speaking called it ...Do it right and repent of doing it wrong, then you might be healed and God will love you...
It would be laughable if it wasn't true

Amidst all this the second movement is that although my old faith is more and more called into question. I feel my faith in God to get ever stronger. This may seem contradictory, but I choose rather to see it as a sign of maturity. Choosing to believe i what is true rather than what I want to be true.

Reviewing the situation-1

2011-12-27T08:25:00.000+10:30

I note that in January 2011 I alluded to the continual politcial round of leaks and "information"; but in retrospect Media Mike was telling us what a fantastic Premier and in 2014 we would all be thanking him.
I note that as of October he is Premier no longer.
It has been a year of natural disasters (here and here....and more (too many more) to begin to note them.
I suppose it is ever so. One of the things that always gets to me is that in this media mad world we get a disproportionate sense of these awful events. That is, if someone happens to have snapped footage on their iPhone then it makes it on to the news, in the meantime ferries capsize in obscure parts of the world....and scant attention is paid to it.

What a girl

2011-12-17T18:26:00.000+10:30

If you read my biog at the side you will know I have three daughters. So this video has particular moment for me

Getting things into perspective

2011-12-11T15:08:00.000+10:30

We sometimes think life is about influencing the rich and powerful. Perhaps Christmas/Advent invites us to confront this. For many years Affirming Catholicism SA held a (Pre) Advent Retreat to help good Christian folk get ready for the rush.
Yesterday the lovely Corowood Choir (with which I sing) had a Christmas concert at Disability SA ( where one of our number works)
We were not "great" and they struggle, on a Saturday afternoon. with all sorts of things. Boredom. Lack of program. No visitors. No family.
The last time we sang there I found myself thinking...I hate Saturday afternoons!!

At the end we were thanked by a young woman...who had prepared her notes ( as I write this I cry..) who said "Christmas is a time that makes us happy, and thank you all for coming and making us happy!"
Our lovely leader Ms J Dickenson said in an email
...It was very moving wasn't it to be thanked for making someone happy. I had a tear or two but tried to restrain myself-
and I must agree with her.
Perhaps this reminds us what Christmas is all about

Hallelujah!

2011-12-09T18:01:00.001+10:30

There are always many Hallelujahs in this season, but this is one of the best
(Even despite the so called (thank you Lavinia) 'feral apostrophes'

Big Stuff

2011-11-29T20:33:00.002+10:30

There is a lot of "big stuff" going on in the political sphere at this time.
It is almost tedious to hear the ongoing debate about what is planned and happening in the Murray-Darling Basin. I observed many years ago that, certainly in our continent, but no doubt throughout the world, that it would be the Water War that was going to be important. Much more important that the war about petroleum...which we seem to be in the midst of (some musings..mainly lighter...about water)
There is a indeed, a dilemma. If we do not preserve the river(in the largest environmental sense) then it does not matter that the lower river and upper river economics are....if there is no river...there is no river economy.
But, there are people...in Robinvale, Mildura, Tocumwal, Waikerie, Loxton, and Goolwa,(to mention but six) whose livelihood depends not just on the river reaching the sea, but also on their agriculture (avocados, mangoes, pistachios, grapes, rice...etc) having the water.
And if the farmers don't get paid then their life, and the community's life evaporates. Not just the water. The river may be healthy, but if communities have no possibility of productivity...then there are real. The river flows but the towns dies.
Is it possible for both the river and the communities to exist side by side.
This is the dilemma.
It is a real dilemma. In reality we need to stop playing political games and start trying to ensure the rivers survival and the existence of the river communities.
One cannot exist without the other. There need sto be give and take.
Bit the talk at the moment does not seem to suggest that either side is really hearing the claim of the other.

Conscience vote...the fallacy

2011-11-19T15:02:00.001+10:30

By and large you would have to think that when the parties call for a "conscience vote" that they are too weak and lily livered ( a Shakespearean reference) to expose themselves to genuine public scrutiny.
So it is pleasing to see the good Senator Wong promoting a genuine policy vote.
The good Senator (and she is a really good thing) says:''Equality should not be a matter of conscience; it should be reflected in Labor policy,"
As a Christian, I want to affirm that God loves all people. He does not arbitrarily hate gay people.
As a leftist, I want my parties to genuinely advocate for real human rites!!! And rights!

Drei Töchter

2011-11-16T16:51:00.001+10:30

I was reflecting yesterday on my three daughters. And I saw a book emerging in front of me.
Daughter K: When you were born I realised my life would never be the same!
Daughter S(1): When you were born I realised that 2 children were/was different from one
Daughter S(2): When you were born I realised that children bounce
Yes, a book indeed!

Speaking to the world

2011-11-08T16:48:00.001+10:30

Interesting to hear Bp Gene Robinson making sense about "Occupy Wall street!"
One of the things he says in this interview that he went and listened...a hard thing for a Bishop to do he quips!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45200723#45200723

Refuge

2011-11-08T01:08:00.001+10:30

There is much that could be said about the recent trip to the Middle East. This young man is probably the hero of the piece in many ways.
The coffee shop he runs is in a refugee camp.
Now get this....43 villages were told in 1967 they would need to be in a camp for 15 days ....here we are 60 odd years later and they are still there.
This guy (who runs a modest coffee bar) says "I was born here, I grew up here, I do not want to die here". He is 23. Fantastically good humoured, remarkably handsome, and of good spirit.
"Why," he was asked, "can you not make this place a home?"
Good question! They have lived here for six decades.
His reply?
"It is like living in a bus station!"
The image, it seems to me, is profound. It is not a home; it is a place of transit.
"We live on top of each other"
Though after 5 or more decades the temporary dwellings have been replaced, he says,
"We hear everything, we see everything, we smell everything!"
That's what seems to communicate the plight of the refugee. There is simply no privacy. Even bodily odours are shared.
He was remarkably upbeat. Convinced that the future lies in education, that this cannot and will not go on. He himself had a powerful humour which reminds us that the human spirit is amazingly resilient.
What ever else is going on between Israel and Palestine my earnest desire, prayer, what ever it is ...is that people not lose the spark that enables them to survive.

Throughout much of opportunistic Israel we had shared cups of coffee. We addicts fell by the wayside if we didn't have our fix.
We had paid 10 shekels...about the going rate by Aussie standards...though Fr K our guide and mentor had joked that this was "far, far too much to pay for coffee". We didn't mind it helped the economy and after all we are fat and rich.
Here in the real heartland of poverty, the refugee camp we were only charged 2 shekels!!!
There is something about the honesty of desperation that refuses to exploit even the fat cats of the west.
I was moved by this and wanted/want to give them more than the pathetic cents we gave them. But they wanted our ears more than our dollars!

q & a

2011-11-06T07:32:00.001+10:30

Catching up on iview with ABC's Q&A there was an interesting and impassioned discussion about the place of music in education. One of those awful 'tweets' going against the general tenor of support said"you have to learn to read and right before you do music!"That person rather defeated their own argument then

An amazing journey

2011-11-03T11:41:00.000+10:30

The good thing is that the journey home took place as planned. And we (P & I) arrived home from Jerusalem at 10 a.m. on Thursday November 3rd.
Having travelled from Jerusalem across the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge to Jordan. Then to Amman. (Lovely Lunch in a Tent in Amman!)
Then from Amman to Dubai, Dubai to KL, KL to Melbourne, Melbourne to Adelaide.
The bad thing was that it took 39 hours and and 57 minutes to do it.
But all went according to plan! But I am feeling tired...surprise, surprise!

Towards the east

2011-11-02T06:42:00.000+10:30

In the way of these things I am lying in Dubai airport waiting for a plane connection to Melbourne. And then another tedious wait there of up to 7 hours for our Adelaide connectionIt will have taken us 40 hours to transit I can't believe it in a way it's like the flights of the 60s and 70sBut it has been a great time and well worth the troubleBut next time I'll think it through a bit more carefully

Yad Vashem

2011-10-28T04:11:00.001+10:30

Today we had the joy of visiting the Israel Museum. Our major purpose was to explore the giant model of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a great thing. And having spent ten days exploring the actual city it really helps to focus those explorations.
But, what a fantastic museum/art gallery it is. Apart from the fabulous display of modern Israeli art of phenomenally high quality I was also struck by teh outdoor installations, and the traditional paintings....why do there seem to be soi many Pisarros. One would think it rivals the Orsay; and the Gauguins, two beautiful Monets and Van Goghs, El Greco and Rembrandt. Didn't see a Picasso but there is almost bound to be the same!
But we then moved on to the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, which is dveadtating in many ways and needs more careful reflection than this blog.
The picture alongside is a dome of phots of holocaust victims, amidst a room full of files ....possibly 6.5 million....as you look up....or at least as I looked up, I was quite overwhelmed. The as you look down there isa deeep, deep pit. "Is this hell?" I wondered. And then you see a pool of water so far down and clear that it is more possible to think of it as a place of re-creation. One hopes so.
But, as I say, it needs and will have more detailed reflection on my return. Good and great stuff.

Eastern apology

2011-10-26T18:50:00.000+10:30

I do apologise to all those who have waited (no doubt with baited breath) for postings from Israel.
It has been a fascinating time.
Jordan was amazing, with death defying scenery as you contemplate that section of the Rift Valley.
Hundreds of steps and stairs later we have been up and down the old city of Jerusalem and it is just wondrous.
But there is no sense that any site is 'authentic' only the sense that at some place or other there is something that marks at Christian mystery. The archaeology adds much depth, but just makes a better approximation of what it might be all about.

Just thinking about packing

2011-10-11T17:24:00.002+10:30

We are so fortunate to be able to travel. But packing...well that's another thing.Almost there
It's also a question of what reading you might take and how you might take it. The Church Times notes that there is increasing pressure for religious books to be presented in eformat.
Excuse me! Get up to date.
By and large I haven't opened a paper bible for over a year....and I have read the whole Bible through completely in the last few months....so we are already there.
What I also want is all the good Biblical commentaries to be able to be downloaded as ebooks, I want the holy books to be available to me on my iPhone. (incidentally when I last went on retreat and was directed by my Director to The Cloud...I was able to go back to my room and download it!)
And I have novels and classics, essays and newspapers from all around the world
And I say to myself...what a wonderful world

Any publicity

2011-10-09T13:13:00.001+10:30

Our friend the Very Rev'd Jeremy G has an ability to go one step further.
While everyone is having fun with Pet Sundays around the celebration of St Francis Day (Oct 4), the tremendously innovative Dean Jeremy is always able to grab the community's attention

He has a high social conscience, keen to promote indigenous and refugee issues. As a Dean of Darwin so he should! This grabs the attention. Great stuff Jeremy.
Watch this fine young priest!

Social issues.A lot on the agenda (2) Euthanasia

2011-10-04T11:28:00.019+10:30

The world of 'same-sex marriage' is an hurly burly at the moment. There would seem to be little doubt that we will find ourselves in some months/years with a ready acceptance of the reality that marriage will not be defined by (opposite) gender.
Marriage will be available to all citizens. Any two people who choose to commit themselves to each other for life will be able to do so. I am generally sympathetic with this idea.
But when a group to which I belong was advised to talk to the Pro-Euthanasia lobby I was some what tentative.
What was being suggested was, not that we should agree with the pro-euthanasia lobby, but that we should understand their methodology of lobbying.
I don't fully accept this idea, and I feel so nervous about euthanasia that I can't readily identify with that cause.
Although, when my mother had a stroke some years ago, I felt my views about euthanasia change almost over night....I didn't want to end her life but we were really challenged by the quality of life she may or may not be having.
I came to understand in the time that followed that the few years that she had remaining, although diminished in quality, were nevertheless good years. It would have been a serious error to cut them short.
This is what worries me most about euthanasia. Not that people shouldn't control their lives. But that we can easily get it wrong. We are so obsessed by diminishing pain that we think that getting rid of pain is the only thing that matters...when it is not.
It is also, for example, important to allow time for human beings to reconcile. Sometimes this will require just living with pain a bit longer than we would prefer. Long enough to allow forgiveness to take its important course.
BUT, pain is not an easy thing to live with; and it is difficult for must of us to understand the level of pain that is being talked about. We are not just talking about someone having what might be euphemistically called "a low pain threshold" but people who have constant physical pain which can only be alleviated by intensive medication, if at all, and often with gross side-effects.
What is probably worse is the psychological pain.
One prominent media commentator notes of his suicide attempt many years ago that the reason he attempted suicide was because the emotional pain became unbearable.
Such things are difficult to assess but easy to imagine.
I have not answered the question about whether euthanasia should be legalised. And don't intend to.
I agree with commentators who say the focus should be on individuals and not on protecting doctors ( a not unimportant consideration); but in a world where lines are drawn in all sorts of curious places it is not easy to conclude that there is anything like agreement.

Social issues. A lot on the agenda (1) Prostitution

2011-10-03T19:57:00.006+10:30

I think many of our 'progressive' MPs are rather good. One of these is Stephanie Key. She continues to plug away at the issue of 'proper' laws for prostitution.
It is quite a complex issue
And although on one level the moral issues seem clear, it is of course (as always) more complex.
The chief problem with illegality as my good friend DB has always been key to point out. The 'practitioners' are often the weakest link in the chain.
Weak for all sorts of reasons.
They are often powerless. Women driven to sex works by financial desperation and life's awful necessity. They are most often the ones who are criminalised by its exposure.
Why should prostitutes be arrested and clients let off?
The simple argument goes:
--if we decriminalise prostitution then at least we give to the prostitutes an element of freedom that they may not otherwise have. Freedom from blackmail. Freedom from being unable to address workplace issue because they would have admit to being involved in illegality
--Prostitution is a 'victimless crime'. A consenting sex worker offers a service to a customer who is prepared to remunerate them. The worker agrees; the 'client' agrees; so why does there need to be third party (ie. legal) intervention.
It is an important question.
A lot of resources go into marshalling the policing, and to what avail.
I have some sympathy with the steps that Ms Key and others are taking to remove the gross legal abuses that are involved in this issue.
BUT
there are other questions that are not being addressed.
As a feminist (a male feminist albeit) I am conscious of the fact that the purest tenets of feminism suggest that female prostitution is one of the grossest abuses of the female person that out human society perpetuates.
It is wrong to use people as though they are commodities. It is wrong to see sex as a saleable commodity.
I think that this problem could largely be addressed if the law was framed to convict the 'client' rather than the prostitute.
Once we start convicting the (largely) men who solicit others for sex as though they were simply tradeable commodities we will actually be focussing on the 'bad guys'...rather than the victims.

There is often the spurious argument that prostitution is a 'victimless' crime. But I fail to be convinced by this.
Even when a person is a happy to accept an (exorbitant) amount of money to have sex with another; something has happened which has not been acknowledged. And that is that 'sex' has been allowed to be commodified.
A person has been bought and sold!
There are deep philosophical questions about this.
Although the subject may feel this is OK as long as they are given $1000. In reality there has been a huge diminution of that person's humanity. They have sold their freedom for a pathetic price.
And the other victim is society itself.
When we start saying it is OK to buy and sell our relationships, then it is is not just the individual but also the whole of society that is diminished

Amazing graces

2011-09-30T22:37:00.003+09:30

At dinner tonight with two great friends, one a great parishioner who thinks

she is tougher than she is
who constantly underestimates her personal achievements
wants to encourage others to be great

And the other a lovely, self effacing saint.

We talked of great women (here and here and here)

Great women in our families.

I do not have to have to go far.

My prattling began with Great Grandma Sewell

who ruled her family

from top to bottom.

It was the dynamic of need.

Like so many post-war matriarchs

thrust into the situation to just protect her family

I am not fully au fait with what the demands were ...I was born after sometime after the tragi-dance began.

It seemed to me she was able to love her family

children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

There are now great grandchildren's children..and even grand children

Isms in the supermarket!

2011-09-27T16:00:00.000+09:30

Yesterday, in the greengrocers, I saw this man ferreting through the dried figs. (It's a well known fact from a previous post that God hates figs)
He seemed a little...how shall I put it...odd/driven/bizarre...any way at the checkout I heard him declaiming about a recent visit to China
"I don't know what they see in Asian girls"
I thought this inappropriate in such a public environ....and he was speaking very loudly...
"You know they all look the same to me. Brown eyes and jet black hair!"
We were all feeling a little uncomfortable.
But of course this never stops such folk.
"I suppose you will all think it's sexist!" he pontificated to no one in particular.
I looked at the young, sixteenish, girl who was serving me.
"No," I said, "it's not sexist. It's racist!"
She looked blankly at me. My 16 year olds (God bless 'em) would have understood; but she thought I was just as annoying as Mr Racism
""It's racism!" I hissed.
She was worried, so I excused myself and took my lettuce to the car!
Is one 'ism' worse than another? He was of course being both racist and sexist. Let's hope there were no homosexuals around!!

Spreading rumours...or is it muck spreading?

2011-09-26T18:20:00.000+09:30

It no doubt suits the Opposition to suggest that there are worries regarding the Leadership of the Labor Party in the Federal Parliament.
But can we take it seriously?
You only get so many chances, and ultimately ( as any computer gamer will tell you) you run out of lives. When they replaced K Rudd with J Gillard, they didn't have no lives left!
But the rumours resurface (see here for example).
Can't seriously think that this exists in the mind of anyone other than the former PM. I rather feel sorry for Kevin, but he had his chance.

The real problem for him is not to find another opportunity, but to come to grips with the fact that in reality (as one of my colleagues put it some years ago about an unfortunate Archbishop...he has bounced too many people...or more prosaically he has made enemies.)
I suspect that though J Gillard may be the current form of poison, no one wants to go back to the deathly potion of yester year!

You gotta laugh

2011-09-26T10:24:00.000+09:30

Well! This gave me a laugh this morning.

If you want to check out the passage it refers to go here

Signs of the times

2011-09-23T22:25:00.002+09:30

Our church struggles with difficulty to hold conflicting viewpoints on a wide range of issues. For the twenty years surrounding my ordinations in the early 80's we struggled with the whole question of whether women could be ordained as priests.
For the early part of that time until about 1975 I was quite stridently opposed and then became more and more certain that it was the right thing to do. In 1992 the Anglican Church of Australia finally did, quite some time after other parts of the world, and some time before other parts. We are a bit like that.
We haven't yet completed the process!
The current controversy surrounds same-sex relationships.
It would seem we are determined to finish the destruction of Anglicanism that the inward-looking war about women's ordination didn't manage to complete.
I have blogged recently (here) about how traditional Anglicanism struggles with difference. But I wonder if all that is now over.
At a meeting last night we met to discuss some feelings and implications about the resignation of an openly gay female priest (here)...almost the worst possible combination in some people's minds...a woman priest and gay....
I expressed a sadness that the church was not a safe place.
I came away feeling that we had been told that it was unreasonable to expect an 'institution' to be a safe place.

I reflect:

When this journey began we often used the language of 'family' to describe the community of the church. I felt uncomfortable with this descriptor. What ever else it was trying to be the Church community did not seem to me to express the same unconditional love and acceptance that my parents tried to bring to their children.

So I always preferred the word 'community'...that is, we had a commonality, and a unity which came from our communion with each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus. Children, as the language of the catechism and worship puts it, of the same heavenly Father. I would often proclaim in my teaching "We are the body of Christ"...words that we use as we greet each other in peace at the Eucharist. We are committed to each other

Last night I felt the language was shifting even further away. We are certainly not family, one wonders if we are community. We are 'institution'. And that institution is not 'safe'

I find this very sad.

There is much, much more that could be said

Let us rejoice..in what is really happening

2011-09-21T19:55:00.001+09:30

I am not a refugee but I am an immigrant to Australia. I note that in the more than forty years I have lived here every generation of immigrants has been viewed sceptically and with cynicism. At the time I came to these shores, Italians and Spanish immigrants were regarded as a profound threat to our lifestyle. Well that was wrong then!
They appear to have entered Australian society and been hardworking, their culture, and society has deeply enriched our quality of life
Then there were the Vietnamese and the Cambodians. To some they spelled out the end of Australian society. Next time you go to the doctor ask yourself where we would be if these devastated families had not encouraged their children to succeed and to be good Australians. To get good education and, indeed, to succeed!
I have encountered the Iranian, Sri Lankan and African communities who are in the process of doing likewise.
I don’t want to be naïve and suggest that everyone coming to Australia has been without problem, but it does seem to me that our recent history tells us that no one comes to these shores, girt by sea, wanting to ruin this country.
So I will be voting for those who tell me, not that they are repelling refugees, but to those who are telling me that they believe that those who are fleeing to Australia need to be encouraged to fulfill their potential. And by extension, to continue the history of this nation which is not only young but free and is deeply enriched by those who seek sanctuary and security for themselves and their families here

I am just so fantastic

2011-09-21T19:22:00.000+09:30

Don't quite understand why so many people are overawed by the capacity to make vegan food!

Peach muffins....20 mins woe to go. And very nice!

Back to first principles

2011-09-20T17:53:00.002+09:30

I started writing a letter to the paper saying that: Now that Nauru and Malaysia are just not going to happen that the Labor Party should go back to first principles.
You know, looking out for the underdog...and just boldly going where no poll-driven solution might dare to go....process them (albeit toughly) ....on the MAINLAND
Then, Australians all, we might be able to genuinely rejoice!
Because not only are we young but we are FREE, and we declare freedom to be a core value.
Freedom for those who have been cruelly driven into nowhere land.
this is in your face stuff. we have nothing to fear about it actually happening....in our face, and in our place. The mainland!!

Twice I started to rewrite the letter. And twice I just couldn't send it.
The Advertiser wouldn't print it. The Government has not got the guts to do it!

I deleted and didn't send

More remarkable

2011-09-19T17:28:00.001+09:30

I am glad that the stuff about Xenophon and Hepworth is sort of petering out (see my original blog).
Alexander Downer would no doubt be bemused to find that I agree with him about anything, but writing in the Murdoch Press today he has a fairly measured analysis of the process and principles of the use of Parliamentary privilege to name individuals.
Perhaps one highlight of his article is detailing his drive in southern Cyprus and coming across the church of St Xenophon! It's easy for all of us to make barbed comments.
Reflecting on Sunday last on the need for Christians to reflect the generosity of God I said (perhaps tongue in cheek) to one of my parishioner-friends that I had been unusually generous during this week of confusing controversy about John Hepworth. I noted that in the first conversation I had with anyone about the sad state of affairs I had to say to a bunch of fairly aggro-people that we needed to remember that the first principle of abuse is that we presume the alleged victim is not making this up.
Now, I recognised that this required of me an openness to Hepworth that I may not always have had. He is a very difficult person to like if you are not on the same side. But that is probably not the point.
His appearances in the media have not been pleasant to watch and listen to, Julia Baird did a very skilful interview on on ABC radio's Sunday Profile last night....this can be heard here.

Cooking up a storm

2011-09-17T11:10:00.000+09:30

For a variety of reasons I experienced a Christmas present and a birthday present this week. Even though it was neither my birthday nor, for that matter, Christmas.
By coincidence both presents were similar.
The Christmas present a postponement of a cooking course that the only non-S Clark gave me. An Indian Cooking experience which had transmogrified into "Tasty Asian".
It was great to spend a full and fun evening with daughter number one
The birthday present a Moroccan Cooking course with the great pleasure of my fine son-in-law. Much hilarity and staring at poor unfortunate on the side of the road who was sculling a can...which we assumed was alcoholic beverage, but was actually Fanta!
He was indignant about our attention, and quite rightly so. But it was an hilarious event. Great bonding

Just thought you may be interested to know how cooking courses work, and what benefit they are.
The photo alongside is a great trad recipe from Morocco. Bestella. A pigeon pie...which we had demonstrated as a chicken pie..and which the pic alongside is actually in fully Vegan form! (see here for why that might be so!)
Now the hilarious part of this is that Chef du Maison of Adelaide's Marrakech Restaurant, Mohamad Bartaouch demonstrated four beautiful recipes with wit and charm.
And I have made said Bestella twice since we had the class a couple of days ago.
Mohamad finished his pie with the traditional sweet sugar recipe, criss crossed with cinnamon . I said to the lovely D...you can see his expertise. A perfect criss cross applied by hand.
My version is above. D noted that my criss-cross pattern was in the best tradition of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. Rude b#$%er. But perceptive!
But!!! I think that a good sign of a successful cooking class is that you cook the courses. And I have

I am writing this as I have just returned from Sticky Rice's Tasty Asian cooking course. Stuffed Prawns, Moreton Bay Bugs, Massaman Curry, Lemon Chicken.
All seem eminently possible. Though I don't think vegan!!
Both were complemented with fine SA wines. We are so fortunate.
I will blog more about wine a little later.
Someone said at tonight's course and dinner (the best part of a cooking course...you celebrate your learning by eating the product in the companionship of others)
"So many people at work love eating food! And cooking food, a great way to get together."

A great way indeed

A noisy world

2011-09-16T16:31:00.002+09:30

The world has become

very noisy

of late

The constant droning

incessant whining

of those who, like me,

think their opinions

are worth listening to

(and some are, but most

are not)

In the house

as I sit

the radio plays the tuba

the washing machine beats the clothes

the cars, the never-ending cars

just whizz by

day and night,

night and day.

I struggle to not be noisy

for a few minutes,

none of the droning, whining, playing,

beating, whizzing

stops.

But somewhere, usually,

if I can but stay there,

a moment of silence

fragile thing

might come

and then longing

to remain

I come to know

I must go

and do.

Day by day

Remarkable stuff

2011-09-15T20:51:00.001+09:30

This has been a remarkable week of the confluence of religion and politics. A controversialist senator, Nick Xenophon, named a Catholic priest under 'parliamentary privilege' in regard to an alleged rape more than four decades ago.
The priest accuser, so-called 'Archbishop' John Hepworth ( a number of my blogs about Mr Hepworth are here) Perhaps the most instructive blog is here!
My real issue about Hepworth's Traditional Anglican Communion is that it is neither traditional nor Anglican nor in Communion with the see of Canterbury. A fairly basic criterion for what being an Anglican actually means!!
My advice to genuine Anglicans is that they should advise family and friends that despite Hepworth's sad tale, the Traditional Anglican Communion has nothing to do with the genuine Anglican Church.
Buit the Xenophon saga goes on ( see here)
Despite the Senator's protestations that he has had an awful lot of support, I have not spoken to anyone who thinks that his naming of a person who has strenuously denied an allegation that has not been reported to police or furthered in other ways is appropriate use of 'parliamentary privilege'

Now I actually voted for Senator X at the last election but will not be doing so again.
I think a lot of people will be doing the same.

This is not straightforward. And that fact alone should have worried X. He admitted on radio today that he threatened the Catholic Church on Monday with the 'naming'. When did he actually speak to Hepworth...the same day apparently!
Clearly not a great period of reflection before he acted. ( Rather exposed by D Bevan on SA radio 891)
I just found that X's seizing of the high ground was looking rather shaky.
He should have done better. And ti will have cost him votes.

I felt sorry for Mr Hepworth, his claim needs to be taken seriously. But it is a long way from being proven

Supping with the long spoon

2011-09-08T12:18:00.000+09:30

It's oft times said that if you sup with the devil then you need a long spoon.
While Mr Abbott is clearly not the devil, Ms Gillard would do well to remember that in offering to cooperate with the Government he is serving no one's purposes other than his own.
I am sure they are well aware of this.
Mr Abbott would also do well to remember that in agreeing to cooperate the Government is also not serving his purpose.
Who will win this stand off remains to be seen.
Clearly it will not be the majority of the electorate who apparently don't agree with Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott that refugees should be processed offshore but would prefer that we do the right, perhaps one should say, the Australian thing and process people on the mainland.

Dream a little dream!

2011-09-07T23:52:00.001+09:30

I dreamed a dream last night of one of my parishioner's mothers who died in December. It was decidedly comforting...but what am I to make of it. M was at the former Diocesan Retreat House...and I was relieved to see her there. In life she had always been a great supporter; at times when (inevitably) I felt under siege there was always a certain type of parishioner who would remain loyal. M was one such.
I have had wild dreams during the last couple of weeks some have been bizarre and filled with fear, last night M reassured me with the prayer of Mother Julian...all shall be well and all shallk be well and all manner of things shall be well

Try to remember

2011-09-04T18:31:00.002+09:30

Father's day

2011-09-02T07:57:00.000+09:30

From a recent blog on The Conversation

Sections of the Australian media are tipping the debiate in the wrong direction. Digitalnative
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY – Natalie Latter wonders if there are some subjects that don’t really require balance.

There’s a principle of balance that applies to news reporting.

It’s important for journalists to cover an issue from more than one perspective, but when it comes to reporting climate change, things gets a little more complicated.

Because there is such consensus among scientists on human-induced climate change, “balancing” their views can lead journalists into tricky territory.

It’s interesting to note that this is a problem that has been solved elsewhere. In Britain, for example, the BBC has determined that it no longer has to present “both sides of the story” on climate change. It considers the science is settled, and not up for debate.

But in Australia, the idea persists that “balance” is achieved by giving a large portion of media space to sceptics.

Numerous climate change articles have been published that adhere to the following, flawed, format.

First, report some climate change news.

Second, “balance” that news with anecdotal evidence from a lay-person – a farmer perhaps, who hasn’t noticed any change in the climate. (That’s not surprising given that climate isn’t something that can be readily observed from one location; climate is not the same as weather.)

Or, sometimes the “balance” is provided by the small cohort of climate “sceptics” with superficially-credible positions at universities or seemingly relevant organisations.

The problem is that in this case, the need to “balance” is false. The credibility of scientific information comes from the peer-reviewed process that scientists work within.

Does the media really need to rehash scientific debate in a popular forum that cannot possibly give due attention to the complexity of the issues? Scientific debate takes place in peer-reviewed science between experts for a reason.

Crucially, there is a difference between those who have facts on their side and scientific evidence and those who merely express an opinion. The problem is that the doubt doesn’t have to be persistently covered in reporting for it to impact on public opinion.

The consequences of creating a distorted debate on climate change in the media are serious.

Climate change policies must be based on the best available scientific information. It would be outrageous (but not unusual) for any government to base complex policy on poor information for ideological reasons.

Once the situation is understood as much as possible, we look for policy solutions that fit with our social values and the kind of society we envision. This second stage is where the hard choices are made and the serious debates happen. At least, that is what ought to take place.

In Australia, the push to inject doubt into the climate policy debate has stalled this process. Instead of moving on to the important second stage and evaluating our choices, we are being forced to debate the information itself.

Climate science must be scrutinised, but this is exactly what the scientific process does. It is not the sort of information that can be debated in a newspaper or on the radio.

Why are we still debating the science in the mainstream media?

This is an area that is continually debated and interrogated within the scientific community, by individuals with great expertise.

Instead of accepting the results of a scientific process that is the very foundation of modern society, we are still busy sifting through media misrepresentations of climate change and climate science.

This is a travesty, for us, our future and the future of our society.

Climate change “sceptics” have repeatedly shown their inability to challenge climate science in the peer-reviewed literature because their claims do not have scientific merit.

But the ideological motivation of many who deny the human influence on the climate system has led them to take an alternative path, of challenging the science in the mainstream media.

In many ways this is a clever tactic; the requirement of scientific rigour is avoided and it is much easier to create doubt than to prove an alternative position.

The public needs to be able to trust the information on which we are basing major public policy decisions. Injecting doubt is an effective way to delay such decisions.

Recently, we have seen those who deny the existence of human-induced climate change turn on the journalists that do ask tricky questions. Alan Jones was recently caught on camera inciting a crowd against Sydney Morning Herald Journalist Jacqueline Maley, and subjected Sky News journalist David Lipsom to the same treatment.

The ABC’s Wendy Carlisle was similarly intimidated by prominent climate change sceptic Lord Monckton and his fans during his recent tour of Australia.

All these journalists were merely doing their jobs – reporting the news, and asking important questions.

But we shouldn’t be so surprised. The media has been feeding the trolls; is it any wonder that the trolls are now so offended by basic journalistic scrutiny?

Distorted media coverage is a serious problem that has prevented us from moving on to crucial non-scientific debates about how to deal with climate change. Stalling the debate in this manner raises ethical questions.

First, in terms of public risk, the media has a duty to verify the information it reports. This means establishing the veracity of claims. It does not mean incorporating alternative non-credible viewpoints for the sake of false balance.

Accurate reporting is an ethical responsibility, particularly when the stakes are so high. Climate change is an enormous challenge and we must be able to make decisions based on the best available information.

Second, we have spent so much time now debating the science, there is a false impression that we just need to gather more information and then we will know what to do about climate change.

This is not the case.

The necessary and important debates are still to come. Climate science doesn’t dictate policy.

We still have to work out how to respond to the science, and it’s about time we moved on to doing just this.

A stark realisation

2011-09-01T13:29:00.003+09:30

Yesterday's decision of the High Court to overturn the legality the so-called Malaysian solution comes as no surprise to many of us who have already felt that it was immoral and unjust. Would it be presumptuous to even say "un-Australian".
There is a lot of two-facedness going on. From a Labor party that declares it is on the side of the underdog. To a Liberal party that has a track record of being so harsh now proclaiming a new self-righteousness!
We are not the only country in the world that has to deal with increasingly fluid people movements. Europe is awash with African and Middle Eastern refugees (many more so than we are faced with). The southern border of the US (depending on whom you listen to) has a greater problem with unauthorised immigration than Australia is ever likely to have.
What is happening here?
The world is changing, probably has changed for ever. The ease with which people can now move from region to region is a fundamental change to life on this planet.
What we in the land of Oz have to realise is that we can no longer pretend that we are tucked away in the bottom right hand corner of the world and are some how insulated from the problems of our common humanity.
The very insulation and isolation which we have cultivated is attractive to those who have never known anything like stability.

There she blows!

2011-08-31T16:11:00.001+09:30

The State Opera Company's production of Jake Heggie's Moby Dick was truly amazing. (There are only two more performances if you can then do go and see it)
I always know when we go inside the Festival Theatre how fortunate we are to have such a facility.
But, in this electronic age it is also the effects and the staging that is the 'hero'.
The picture above is of the whaling boats and is essentially an electronically projected image. It allows all sort of things to be done on stage which could otherwise never happen. And someone actually asked me today if I felt seasick. And ion the great climactic scene at the end I swear I did.
The music is not melodic, but is powerful and rich. The ASO were truly excellent.
The (all but one) male chorus were excellent...and drawn essentially from local talent it makes you proud. Their sound was phenomenally coherent and deeply moving .

For once, too, the story made sense which is more than you can say for most of the film versions of the novella. I suppose it seemed to me that it's about heaven and hell here on earth (or at sea in this case), about how we are driven and how we drive others. Rivetting stuff.
I think everyone who has seen it has been affected (two people in front of us left at half time). I found myself wondering about how all this fits in with the great tragedies that the world faces at this time. The famines, the wars, the imminent climate collapse....and of course whales are ever close to us as a sign of man's inability to grapple with creation
Yet some how art interprets life so profoundly that we all know that we need it to stay alive.

Father of the vegan

2011-08-29T20:25:00.000+09:30

The youngest S Clark has been a vegan for some time. And although it has taken some time to get used to it by now it has become almost second-nature
Hence the picture of the vegan pumpkin scones I 'knocked up' this afternoon.
This means there is no butter, no milk and no egg. Unlike the famous Bjelke-Petersen scones.
Most people are horrified by the idea of ideological veganism.
But it has about it a certain consistency and logic, we don't eat anything that doesn't "belong to us".
The deepest shock I had was when S announced that she shouldn't eat honey. At the time it seemed that this was the last straw. Eggs and even milk and butter I could understand, but I had never even thought about honey.
But now I am so used to buying food that does not contain gelatine (made from cows) and checking to see that there are no hidden milk solids, that honey is a minor distraction
In fact, I even toyed with the idea today of starting a blog of all the highly successful recipes we have discovered and invented. Like these easy scones!
It's not really too hard, and although I am not a vegan myself...probably 4 out of 7 days I am...though I eat eggs and I just have to eat bacon! No I am not a vegan.
But I know how to make it work!

Lest we forget

2011-08-28T20:16:00.000+09:30

Digging through 'stuff' I came across a newspaper cutting of the 18 month old medium S Clark sitting under a Christmas Tree in December 1987.
Lovely photo!
But alongside the lovely photo is an article:
Interest Fall Tipped Home loans may hit 13%

"Home loan interest rates could fall (sic) to 13 per cent by March if economic conditions are favorable (sic) a loans expert has forecast."

We forget that the present rates (whilst not insignificant) at between 5%-9% are certainly not at the frightening rates of 25 years ago!.
Of course there is another side of the coin. My last position was funded by the sale of a building which was then invested at up to 18%...as interest rates fell to the 13% lows...and lower; there was not enough revenue to continue the funding.
As we hear the whining about economic decline we should look back to 1987!!

Why didn't they ask the right questions?

2011-08-26T19:24:00.001+09:30

Philip Adams chatted to Jay Rosen on ABC National recently (here) he makes some important points.
The press, he maintains, has become 'fascinated' with the political game. In so doing they have lost their focus. They have forgotten that they are not called to be agents of the political, but rather critics of the same.
This is rather a good point.
Are the 'press' the critics of the process, or participants in the game?
The question that goes round and round in my mind.....

Same, same....but different

2011-08-25T05:04:00.004+09:30

Yesterday the Commonwealth Parliament began its process of reporting back on same sex marriage. This is the result of a motion by maverick Lower House MP Adam Bandt's motion to actually go and find out what the electors actually are thinking.

Is he a maverick...I don't think so...
Just seems to me he is promoting the legitimate liberal (small 'l') social agenda.
By and large I concur
and I make the following points in a little note to the good Mr Bandt

"I am in the middle of blogging about your activities in the Parliament and thought I would contact you to say thanks.

Today is the day the discussion about MPs findings about same-sex marriage in their electorates has begun.

Not surprisingly many seem to be finding what they wanted to find.

I happen to be a Christian and a priest of the Anglican Church; there are many of us who are supportive of same-sex marriage and deeply distraught by our rather conservative institution's inability to be able to discuss this properly (or at all).
What the Church might choose to do is one thing, but I see no reason why our country should feel it has to concur with the Churches (and clearly the community already recognises this); it is also not true that all Christians are opposed to gay marriage. There is no doubt that conservative evangelicals are opposed, but the majority of Christians are not conservative evangelicals.
The Anglican Church is very diverse but has a strong tradition (despite the irony of some who think otherwise) of tolerating difference. I think the Uniting Church, Catholic Church and Lutheran Churches are not too dissimilar.
In the end all I want to say is that same-sex marriage promotes stability and commitment, which is a strong social virtue. The Churches will have to fight their own internal battles...and we will lag behind popular opinion I suggest.
Thank you for encouraging this community debate"

I do not think we need to be frightened of this debate. Why, indeed, should we fear legitimate discussion about anything

Inevitability

2011-08-24T15:11:00.000+09:30

There seems an air of unremitting inevitability about the demise of the present Government.
After another farcical day in Parliament, one near miss procedural motion and a total waste of a question time; I wonder whether the Parties concerned are bothered about principle and policy any more.
What we are witnessing is one party playing taunting games while the other responds in kind.
In the midst of this we ask ourselves: Who's running the country?
Maybe it runs itself.

Tweet, tweet!

2011-08-22T09:06:00.000+09:30

I don't quite understand Twitter and therefore decided that there is no point getting caught up in it. Though I do wonder sometimes if it might be useful or even interesting.

However as a Ranga did come across an interesting tweet by accident which may lighten your day.

"Harry Potter's a bit far fetched I think. I mean the magic's OK, but a Ginger with two friends??"

How can people be so unkind!

But that other anarchic Ginger, Tim Minchin, has a whole song with the truly memorable thought for a Monday.

"Only a Ginger can call another ginger. 'Ginger'"

Have a nice day today

Advertising your wares

2011-08-20T08:17:00.001+09:30

I have read The Age and The Australian this a.m. electronically, and (possibly against my better judgment) also looked at The Advertiser.
As usual there is not much to pick between the two Murdoch rags the Oz and the Ad, I have to say. However the commentary in the Oz makes it fractionally better than the local stuff.
Must say I could not finish the Advertiser

Whether you believe in it or not

2011-08-17T18:43:00.003+09:30

Picked up Clark Strand's book in the library the other day. Though a Buddhist his major work...perhaps I am overstating it here....is How to believe in God...whether you believe in religion or not.
This seems a difficult idea for many Christians to grasp, since most of us are so caught up with 'religion' that we forget that Jesus himself was profoundly criticial of religion and the religious at times. "You whited sepulchres!" was one of his famous throwaay lines against the religious do gooders.
Strand begins his book..."Tell me about the God you don't believe in!"
It's an interesting opening gambit.
Would be easy to trivialise this as "anything supernatural" (see this for example), but Mr Strand is really asking people to challenge views that they have received often with good intention but which is exposed (often by horror) to just not be satisfactory. "the one who tells a twenty four year old man with a wife and three children to blow himself up in a crowded public square"..."the one who puts a beautiful tree within the reach of his children, forbids them on pain of death to eat from it, then promptly disappears and spies on them."
And he asks "Where did these Gods come from?" Where indeed?
So I have been thinking about this.
Part of the issue is that many people don't think much about God at all, and just absorb stuff from...their parents, from society....and then when challenged often just drop the bundle without necessarily realising that they may be jettisoning more than they think.
Take the notion of SIN for example. Most of us have absorbed very curious ideas ...ranging from facile notions of right and wrong, to blaming ourselves for how we feel.
One of the grossest examples of this is of course is the area of sexuality, how many people blame themselves for sexual attraction....when the issue is not the fact that we are sexually attracted but what we make of that, and how we act on it.
Most of us find this so difficult to deal with that we just throw out the whole lot and end up acting on impulse.
What all this process forgets is that there is some sense in which there is a right way and wrong way to act. Treating people as though they are objects, for example, just seems to me to be wrong. That would speak loudly into the questions of pornography and prostitution.

What sort of God do we believe in? It is good to both challenge the propaganda of our childhood, but we should do better than just not think about the issue at all.

Economic Fundamentalism

2011-08-15T19:09:00.001+09:30

It does seem crazy that now the world is in a great deal of economic crisis that the glib promise that we would be 'back in the black' as far as budgets go will still need to be delivered in the same narrow time frame..
The Federal government will have some limited excuse when the time comes if it doesn't manage to deliver. But to adhere to the politcis when the economics doesn't make sense is at the least a sort of political if not, economic, fundamentalism

What I find rather soul destroying is the political opportunism that this sort of promise springs from. It's sad from the viewpoint of this government that, even though to my mind they are preferable to the alternative, they are proving to be remarkably inept on so many levels.
That is to say the least, a little worrying.
Today I had community discussions about a 175 year celebration next year. Part of the program it is hoped would be held in the new school hall. A hall that's now more than 12 months late.
That apparently you can't walk into unless you take off your shoes, because of the nature of the surface of the foor. And already they've had trouble with water leakage.
I found myself wondering whether or not by the time we come to use it later next year it would be ready; I am hopeful but not optimistic.

Is this sort of failure the Government's fault! Not entirely I think, but it is part of their naïveté that they should have had the sense to realize that this sort of mass stimulus always had the pear-shaped potential. And they don't have the political nous to be able to manage it.

On death, dying and the funeral

2011-08-14T01:04:00.003+09:30

This has been a week of funerals. We used to say that they came in threes, but this week there have been five that I have known of and been associated with. This may be a function of my age, but it is more than that.
When I was first ordained over thirty years ago I discovered that ministry at funerals was perhaps the most satisfying thing that I did. That has continued to be so. But while it is certainly difficult, things have also changed.
The main change is that 30 years ago more than three quarters of the funeral I did were of people I didn't know, and by and large, who didn't come to church. Most people in those days wanted a minister of some sort to take their funeral service, and I have always given this a high priority
Nowadays nine out of ten funeralsI do are people who belong to my congregation. It would seem in the wider community that many if not most funerals are now not taken by religious ministers.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, though often parishioners come back and tell me that they found the 'secular funeral' some what shallow. I suspect this is our problem more than theirs, though there are some observations that need to be made.
My most serious observation is that funerals are more than just a celebration of life. I quite often shudder when people tell me they don't want it to be sad they just want it to be a celebration.
Now I want it to be a celebration too! But that is not the only purpose a funeral has to bear.
The Christian funeral has at least two other important elements. One is repentance!
When we get to death there is a certain degree of failure and disappointment, we would say 'sin', that has to be confronted.
This is not negative....it is a fact of life.
It seems to me pretty important to allow room for forgiveness.
Both of the person who has died and of the persons gathered there. In what is often a lone opportunity ....after all you only get one opportunity to attend an individual's funeral...it is important not to squander it.
I also don't think that it is wrong to feel sad when someone dies. Indeed it's rather strange and possibly inhuman not to. To try and mask that sadness and pretend we are only allowed to be happy is a mistake.
It's better to own the complex of emotions rather than suggest that some emotions are not permitted. It is certainly wrong to tell someone they should deny being sad when their whole world feels shattered.
I am glad that at least one of the secular funerals I heard of this week went well.
Some church funerals are shocking, I am glad also that the one I officiated at, which could have been difficult, seemed to go well too.
Funerals. Too important to get wrong!

Not political

2011-08-13T06:34:00.004+09:30

The riots in England are deeply confronting.
I had a couple of interesting encounters this week.
The first was someone who said to me "It's all those Moslems!" I was being castigated, I suspect, because I am a well-known lefty, Moslem sympathiser!
I was actually quite shocked!
The reason for this shock was that I hadn't twigged at all that these outrageous actions were being located either in any religious or racial group.
It would seem after a week of it (while not straight forward) that my original suspicion was correct.

This picture you may think curious, but I tried to
find an illustrative cartoon and they are all just too offensive (The Tangled Web
There are no doubt some people who have used the disturbances to reinforce their nasty prejudices...as one more balanced (so it seemed to me) commentator said during the week "Many Britains of Asian background, are very entrepreneurial; and this can be deeply resented in certain sectors of society"
It is is interesting to note this phrase "Britains of Asian background"...indeed I heard one who might as well have begun his interview with "Eeh bah gum!" rather than "Goodness gracious me!"
I can only conclude that the major reason racial and anti-Islamic prejudice is so prevalent is because the perpetrators think they can tell people's religion by the colour of their skin. (Interesting that most Anglicans are coloured or black). Many Moslems of course live in Europe...isn't that what the war in the former Yugoslavia was partly about...and look like their neighbours.
And in UK (as in Australia) immigrants who came in the twenty five years after the War now have children and grandchildren who may have racial characteristics, but who were born in England, or Adelaide, and may never have been out of the country of their birth. If you shut your eyes and listen, they speak just like everyone else.
Racism is just bizarre!

The Covenant go round

2011-08-12T12:51:00.000+09:30

Some may find this amusing, or indeed disturbing as we think about an Anglican Covenant

On your bike....Mike!!!!

2011-08-09T17:42:00.000+09:30

It has been faintly amusing to watch the transition of the South Australian leadership of the government and the Labor Party.
Not even a storm in a tea cup.
In the end Jay Weatherill is the perfect candidate and the diplomat (Do you know anyone who hates him?)
Despite the shrill imaginings of the local press...the Matts, the David and the Toms....he is prepared to allow Mike Rann to bide his time and then move into the top job.
He actually seems to be the very model of a major modern politician.
I want to be there by agreement and consensus.
The nasty boys all want him to have stabbed Mike in the back, but he is too busy walkling his kids to school.
To be fair to Mike, too, he has not been a b&%^$#d of the nth degree. Instead of hanging out till the last minute he is going 6 months earlier.
I know a lovely person who works for M, I am deeply surprised by the loyalty he engenders. But why shouldn't he; though an arrogant so and so, he has also been an effective Premier.
Good luck to them both

At the name

2011-08-07T04:07:00.003+09:30

I am sure that most have heard of singing telegrams but few would ever have heard of singing Christograms!
Though many will have seen the principal Christogram which is the letters IHS.
These are the first three letters(in Greek) of the Name of Jesus.
Today August 7th is kept as the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus by many Anglicans (and at other times of the year by other Christians).
Particularly endearing to us in Adelaide who remember with fondness Sisters of the Community of the Holy Name who used to staff the Diocesan Retreat House (when we had one)...we remember Joyce Anne, Grace Mary, Constance Agnes, Gloria, Constance Mary, Claire Christine amongst the sisters who served here.
In this country it is often observed that the name of Jesus is more often used as a swear word than an ascription of honour. I am not alone in shuddering when this happens.
My advice toi the devoutly offended is to adopt the unobtrusive practice of bowing the head.
This is a 'secret' gesture and largely goes unnoticed except amongst the cognoscenti!!! I take great pride in using an instance of profanation and turning it into a gesture of reverence.
The great second chapter of Paul's letter to the Philippians simply says "At the name of Jesus every knee should bow!"
Today you might like to join in the singing Christogram (here). dated...but great!!!

Serious resistance

2011-08-05T17:03:00.003+09:30

Have seriously resisted the temptation (sed libera nos a malo) to say the day of the printed page is over but I am increasingly coming to that opinion.
The latest brick to fall is the newspaper. While some of us have been agonising about whether or not we should subscribe to online newspapers, I noticed the other day when in my local library that they were suggesting that members should access papers on the web through the library system. ( You can do this here)
I lay in bed this morning and read the Australian and the Advertiser (actually discovered I had written a letter to the paper!! ) on my tablet... substantially the same as here.
This gets more and more exciting. When I went to the desktop to see how this worked this afternoon I discovered I was on a page (accessed through a South Australian Library!!!) called Journaux du Monde Entier.
Seems to me this means "Every Journal/Newspaper in the world!!!"
Now one of my children (K) and I usually only communicate in French these days (!!!) but I was deeply shocked to find that Mitcham Council was inviting me so to do as well!!!
Through this page I can access all or in part The Australian, the Advertiser, the Trader, The Age, Australian Literary Review, Daily Mail, Vancouver Sun, New York Post....and so it goes on
And you wonder why I think the last bastion has fallen!
As a news lover I feel pretty excited by this!
I can manage it. And I can do it in bed!!!

Follow the leader

2011-08-04T09:26:00.000+09:30

I wonder if we will look back at the last century and reflect that we seemed to spend more time wondering about leadership struggles within political parties than about policies.
One particularly annoying argument is espoused by both sides of politics when it suits them when ever a party changes its leader. And that is, "The people did not have any say in this leadership change" & "They elected John Howard/Kevin Rudd/Mike Rann/ ...or who ever, and not some faceless party hack"
Now this is just manifestly wrong!
We do not elect leaders. All the major paries have (different) ways of deciding who will lead their party. And none of them involves any member of the non-party aligned electorate casting a vote to determine who the leader will be.
It is the majority party that forms government, or the one that the Viceroy decides will best be able to cobble together a workable majority. In the case of both major parties who ever ends up leading the Parliamentary party also becomes the Prime Minister or Premier. If the internal workings change leadership then the top job switches too.
It has nothing to do with you and me.
So while it has about it a degree of fascination. Let's not get distracted from the main game.

Sad for us

2011-08-02T15:11:00.000+09:30

Following on a prior post about Daniel a young man who responded well to some experimental drug treatment (here) I am sad to tell you that Daniel died yesterday.
At the time I noted about how months ago we had given him up for dead, but the drugs have given him a few extra months.
I was discussing at the time of the original post about the nature of prayer and praying for the sick. was this temporary respite an 'answer' or a 'miracle'.
My conclusion was that we should just accept it for what it is, and give thanks for that. In the meantime I've read at least one helpful thing about praying for the sick that says while we can't explain it we should 'just do it'. I think this is quite a useful perspective.
Daniel has died. I am glad that he has had some extra months. I am sad, really sad, that he has died.
And for his faithful grandparents J & P I also feel sad.
I was thinking this morning that we often say "You should not have to see you children die". How much more should you not have to see the death of a grandchild.
As I was talking to P before the Eucharist this morning he was making the same point.
May all grieving grandparents be comforted.

Where are the bodies buried?

2011-08-02T08:55:00.000+09:30

I know it makes for sensational headlines but I am fed up with being told that we have witnessed assassinations. As far as I can see Mike Rann is still alive, indeed so is Kevin Rudd. As we look to the other parties, too, we can see a parade of former deposed leaders still alive and kicking.
We don't assassinate leaders in this country at all. We take leadership seriously and the competition is strong and robust. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but there are no bodies buried anywhere as far as I can tell.

Saatchi's life-not for the faint hearted

2011-07-31T20:52:00.000+09:30

I was interested to hear the news report about the current Art Gallery of South Australia display The 'Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now' .
It said "I can guarantee that you will not like everything".
Now, I am (or like to think I am) as outré as they come but I found it difficult to like anything!!!
This is 'modern art'.
There are an awful lot of plastic bags. And quite a lot of black dripping plastic!!!!!!
There is a bed that looks almost like the bed of two of my daughters.
And I tried not to look too closely at the empty vodka bottles and the condom packets!!
I suppose this is a credit in itself, that one work of art clearly encapsulates two totally different people. And indeed articulates the third daughter in contradistinction.
But one room is a huge plastic detritus that caused me to say to K "Is this art or just the rubbish that was left over after they unpacked the crate?"
What I found was interesting was the comment about the way Saatchi was able to influence the value, price and meaning of 'art'. The cynical say that he bought cheap stuff, and the mere fact that he bought it inflated the price...and he was then able to capitalise on this process.
Saatchi denies this and says this is the sort of criticism that the 'refined' make of those who presume to trespass on what they have thought of as their private domain.
Nevertheless I look at some of the works and wonder. Why is it that works that have indeed achieved "major art work" status lack refinement.
Why do we have to see crassly cut pieces of electrical insulation, or stupid bits of sticky tape, glue squeezed from a tube which looks amateurish and untidy.
No doubt the smug artist would say I am an arrogant snob. I don't think I am. I think I am an ordinary person who wants to appreciate challenging art.
I love to be challenged.
But I fear that this stuff is cynical exploitation.
I would that it were better.
There are some good works.
Buit it seems to me that the bulk of it is cynical crap!

Science on the attack

2011-07-30T14:33:00.000+09:30

It's good to see some scientists being a little more strident about combatting the often ill-informed criticism about the consensus that has formed worldwide.
The general thrust of "enough is enough" type of argument is who would you trust a sceptic or an expert.
Nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse tackled British sceptic journalist James Delingpole who I don't know from a bar of soap but would appear to be an angry Alan Jones! or Andrew Bolt! (if it's possible to imagine anything more angry than either of these commentators).
He is described on The Telegraph website as a "a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything".
I guess that says it all.
Now the scientists are hitting back saying that while everyone has an opinion, not all opinions are equal.
Nurse put to Delingpole a simple scenario to challenge his view that scientists were apparently not being scientific when they looked for consensus

a hypothetical question: if a dear relative was suffering from a fatal disease, would he opt for the "consensus" treatment recommended by doctors, or advice to drink more orange juice offered by a fringe maverick quack?

Delingpole took exception to Nurse's question and accused him latterly of intellectual rapine!
Anyone who has seen these shock-jock journalists in action would imagine this is a bit rich.
You might like to assess this for yourself by looking at the You Tube

St Paul's Centre

2011-07-28T15:09:00.001+09:30

This Thursday will formally mark the end of an innovative Christian ministry in Adelaide. The St Paul's Centre was established as an ecumenical venture by the Anglican Church to minister not as traditional parish but to the businesses and interests centred in the city of Adelaide. The founding director, pictured here in his later incarnation as a Bishop, Ron Williams had a quirky but entrancing vision that church could perhaps be different. I was immediate successor. And, I must admit, did not make a terribly good fist of it.

Though I understood the vision. To be church 'outside the walls', my own personal circumstances never allowed me to be able give the energy to this ministry that it deserved.

I am told that when the Anglican church finally pulled the plug the last Director, Greg Elsdon was informed "this is an idea that has had its day". When he challenged this with the question "Who says?" there was no reply. I guess someone had decided that money that had once had been so readily committed by the Synod was needed elsewhere. The Synod apparently didn't need to be consulted.

I'm some what sad about that.

Ron had a vision for a ministry that was just narrowly Anglican. It was a cooperation of Lutheran-Anglican-Roman Catholic-Uniting Church. And though this was at times maddening, I well remember Malcolm MacArthur of the SA Council of Churches reminding me how important it was to have at least one agency where the churches were struggling to work together. In my opinion none of the member churches were fully committed to the idea.

Ron also had a vision for inter-faith ministry. this led to my involvement in the SA Council of Christians and Jews and also with some some low key involvement with members of the Islamic community.

Because St Paul's Pulteney Street ( from the sale of which the original trust had been established) had also funded some involvement with aboriginal groups I had also been pleased to ensure that there was strong contact with groups working to advance aboriginal interests in the work-business community.

I hope (but do not hold my breath) that now the trust funds will be directed elsewhere that the powers-who-are will not forget that they have a trust to promote aboriginal interests.

The trouble with nuance

2011-07-27T09:46:00.001+09:30

The Bishop I think was right. It is important to not reduce important discussions to the facile simplicity of pro v con. There needs to be much more nuance than this

The trouble with this is that in the mean time we have actually done much more.

Already one of our excellent priest has said "enough is enough"!

Ali Wurm an honestly confessing person who has never denied she is a lesbian has resigned (see my previous blog)

Did we want to lose such a fine a priest?

Ali had a reputation of being pastoral, innovative, compassionate and creative.

She is caught technically buy the overkill of Faithfulness in Service.

Clearly no threat to young people, or the wider community, the church has created a casualty of a person who on most objective criteria is exactly the sort of leader we should be striving to cultivate and retain.

While the puritanesque document Faithfulness in Service has snuck into practice in the Australian Church let us not pretend it is without casualties.

I, for one, don't want to belong to an organisation that says that we don't accept you

And let us not play games with people who are same-sex attracted by saying that we love the sinner but not the sin

When we fail to recognise and accept that many, many people are just same-sex attracted...that this is not a choice they have perversely or twistedly made but a way they are...and in many cases have been since they were born

It is easy for some to say that this is just wilfulness. The testimony of thousands of gay people would suggest otherwise.

Do we, can we love and accept these people ?

Serving faithfully

2011-07-26T18:46:00.000+09:30

Some people feel that the Anglican Church's 'code for personal behaviour' was something of a Trojan horse. That is, at the time when we were all keen to ensure that we were protecting our children against paedophiles we also agreed to a whole raft of measures as a "code of conduct" called Faithfulness in Service
There are those who suggest that we agreed to more than we wanted to.
Amidst regulations about how money might be handled in churches, and how and when police checks should be done for church employees we also made without (I suggest ...certainly in the Adelaide Synod) wide ranging discussion decisions about people living in same sex relationships...in particular clergy ...
Our Bishop pleaded at a recent clergy conference that we not have argy-bargy at Synod..The curious meeting when the Anglican church pretends it is a Parliament, and adopts the most unhelpful adversarial processes of the Westminster system.
So we cannot discuss the the nuances of this issue...we have to argue a pro or con position.
The Bishop I think was right. It is important to not reduce important discussions to the facile simplicity of pro v con. There needs to be much more nuance than this

You've got to be joking - DJ's can't face reality

2011-07-16T18:03:00.000+09:30

In one of the most bizarre and self-serving pieces of anti-carbon tax propaganda David Jones department store CEO Paul Zahra has tried to blame their current poor performance on the carbon tax. (see here)
Notwithstanding that we don't yet have a carbon tax (they seem to have modified their position some what to "carbon tax fears" have caused this to happen).
It is interesting go to their Facebook site and read comments on the wall (here) because most people don't appear to be convinced.
I, for example, made the observation that the reason I bought my Mac elsewhere was because they were cheaper.(by about $400) Indeed DJ's merchandise is always on the high end of up.
The irony of this commentary is that the Carbon Tax is meant to be a simple market mechanism designed to encourage initiative and to discourage waste.
It does this simply by hitting the hip-pocket nerve.
The first principle, which is not rocket science, is that putting the price up discourages sales. DJ's real problem is that they are expensive. There once was a time when you went there to buy stuff you couldn't get elsewhere. But that didn't and doesn't mean you don't shop around.
A couple of years ago I went there looking to buy a good frying pan, I happened to have a $150 credit...but could not find one under $200.
My contention would be that it is going to be increasingly important to be honest about what this carbon tax is going to do...and not blame other stuff, like poor and expensive management practices ( I wonder if this is why DJs put out a disclaimer later in the day...after all misleading information is going to be an offence )

The Phenomenon

2011-07-13T10:38:00.001+09:30

It was quite extraordinary to be at the pictures at midnight last night to find that it was packed.

Sessions every ten minutes (sometimes less) of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 the last of the series.

It occurs to me that its significance is not so much about the literature or the film as about the generations in attendance. Not many people my age like being up until the early hours any more, the young seem to relish it. The child in the photo (the youngest SC) was with me and her bf of one month T. Both (like mostly everyone else present) had grown up with the phenomenon. Indeed S was probably not reading when the first book came out. She is now on the threshold of adulthood. Harry, Hermione, and Ron have made the same journey (Thank goodness Radcliffe's stilted acting has improved!!)

So there was a real sense of last hurrah. And we all got sort of dressed up. I all in black (with tuxedo jacket), S as a wild Bellatrix Lestrange and T ...well I don't quite know who he was but he had a funny little toothbrush moustache!!

There were death eaters, lots of male and female Harrys, and even some who appeared to have little or nothing to do with it all.

I am sort of glad it is all over...3D at the dead of night eight rows from the front is almost more than my vision and blood pressure can stand...

Film was rather good...a bit too like Lord of the Rings for its own good. But there will be no more.

My perception is that JK Rowling got bored with the whole exercise and the books got less and less disciplined as time went on...the story is certainly not ight and you might struggle to understand it if you hadn't been immersed in the story from woe to go.

It has been a real phenomenon.....all over the world
Farewell Harry et al..

Many a true word

2011-07-12T16:08:00.000+09:30

This is starting to do the round, and as always with kids, there is insight and naivete

Don't imagine it will convert anyone, but I noted one comment, which was that at least this video suggests that kids are not born homophobic.

They may be initially puzzled by it, but they are not frightened by homosexuality. And are open to the possibility that two people loving each other is a good thing.

What is reality

2011-07-11T23:35:00.005+09:30

The cold of the winter drives us inward, don't you think?
I seem to be spending a lot more time watching deliberate tv.
That is, (I am not a great television watcher) but I find that I am sitting in the warmth of the tv room a lot more. So I watch tv.
Some years ago my former partner and I had fun watching "Roswell" .......a sci fi series of the 90s .....during our holiday. We watched probably 15 hours of episodes one after the other. It was curiously therapeutic ...ie we didn't have to think much.

Well I have been revisiting that experience. It is not great drama. But it passes the grade of occupying the time...and the plot is sufficiently engaging to make it worth watching.
It's winter. And I don't know that we can ask for much more

_______________

Well since I wrote that blog...at the dead of night on my lap, in bed....I have decided I have watched enough Roswell for the next decade!!

Back to Wire in the Blood and thank goodness Silent Witness is about to begin again

So far so bad

2011-07-11T14:21:00.000+09:30

While the launch of the new carbon emission ideas has moved us on fractionally, there is not much that seems to have changed. Indeed the rhetoric from all sides seems to be very much like the rhetoric of yesterday.
The PM's smiling face assuring us that all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well on TV last evening does little to convince anyone. Equally Mr Abbott's declamations are still full of two and three word slogans...this toxic tax and a bad government getting worse
What I find lacking in this unceasing opposition is the sense that they are actually going to do something.
It simply is not good enough to say we will just oppose and repeal. We cannot simply stand still.
I am also faintly bemused by such spectacles as the Opposition Leader and the Leader of the Nationals saying they feel "disappointed" bu Labor members of Parliament not standing up for what the Opposition thinks they should believe in.
Let's face it from an Opposition that has simply opposed for the sake of opposing it is a bit rich to criticize their opponents, the Government, for not agreeing with them.

Safe Space

2011-07-06T19:03:00.004+09:30

We had an interesting discussion at a Clergy Conference today in which the Archbishop offered some tentative thoughts about recent events in our Diocese (see here for example).
He thoughtfully and a bit tentatively tried to suggest that our local diocese needed to discuss various issues which Anglicans are grappling with worldwide and that this needed to happen in a "safe space".
I agree with this. I have for a long time felt that the church is not "a safe space". Which you have to admit is a very serious indictment on our alleged commitment as Christians to love, tolerance, truth and honesty.
I bemoaned a little (I am good at 'bemoaning') that I have been waiting for this to happen...and pushed about when it might occur...apparently we might achieve it in the next twelve months.
I still feel really sad that the Church is not a 'safe space'...but I reflected that on my way to the meeting I had given a lift to one of my priest-parishioners, and on my way home to another one of my priest-parishioners. They are both dear friends and good and engaging conversationalists.
They both got an earful from me ( and listened and gave it back).
My reflection is that "safe space" may not be so much a place as a person. You know (to be deeply Christian!) what people like about the Lord is that he is is a safe place. And some of his nicer servants occasionally manage that too...my two passengers today are great gifts to me of safe space.
It is no doubt not so much about the place as the person who allows it to happen

They're gone

2011-07-03T21:42:00.002+09:30

Much as I hate to admit it I can't help but think that the Gillard government's days are numbered. It is difficult to imagine that the Labor party will be able to find another person to lead it to victory. The thought for example of a Rudd revitalization is just laughable.
To be sure Abbott's unremitting whining is being increasingly believed. The characterization of the PM as a 'liar' has been repeated so often that the electorate has begun to simply accept it.
The nail in the coffin? Nobody wants a tax. This encourages disbelief, people simply Want to believe all this because they don't want to pay.

Laurie Oakes in a feature piece in the weekend's Herald Sun offers a long sought-after critique of the parlous state of politics in this fair land. One sentence, perhaps, damns both sides

"the Opposition Leader is getting away with purveying trashy policy because the nation is mesmerised by the Government's woes. While Julia Gillard continues to stumble from one mess to another, Abbott largely escapes scrutiny."

It raises the question about whether we have the best sort of leaders or those who have been seduced by the myth of "pragmatism" versus "policy".
My feeling is that if for one moment our leaders/parties could grasp the nettle of creative policy and pursue it with vigour, whilst resisting the temptation to water down vision with some perverted notion of what is popular we would see a shift in political allegiance. distracted.
Oh dear! So shallow! On all sides. From all parties.

Expressing yourself

2011-07-02T21:33:00.006+09:30

I was faintly bemused at a meeting a couple of weeks ago when B, a key proponent of certain new manifestations of how you might express Christianity, said "I don't ever want to hear the phrase 'Fresh expressions' again"

He was particularly referring to a recent conference in our Diocese that had been pursuing this idea.

My understanding is that the "fresh expressions movement" is challenging Christians to offer the Gospel in ways that might be more readily understood by the 21st century woman and man.

This idea has much to commend it but also needs to be carefully critiqued.

Not a few people have been expressing to me in the last few weeks a certain disquiet about this idea of "fresh expression"

Not the least of which is the whole idea of what "expressions" might be acceptable.

The sad resignation of openly lesbian priest Ali Wurm who has had a powerful and confronting ministry at Semaphore leads us to wonder what on earth we are on about.

I was struck when reading Ali's statement to her parish a couple of weeks ago about how innovative and fresh her ministry had been ( see an interesting account of Ali's church community engaging with popular culture here).

But, you see, although this is one of a number of powerful examples of how a fine priest has tried to freshly express the Christian faith...the powers that be do not seem to be interested in traversing the area of homosexuality.

No wonder the world find us ridiculous!

Worse than this, the world recognises that for all our talk about "fresh expressions" we actually are only prepared (on an official level) to countenance those things which are already well catered for by the narrowness of our own moral world views!!!

What does it mean?-The Nauru Solution

2011-06-12T17:41:00.006+09:30

My real problem with the so-called "Nauru Solution" is that to think of Nauru as a country almost beggars belief.

With a population of 9,300 it is smaller than Port Augusta; with an area of 21 square kilometres it would fit into Kangaroo Island more than two hundred times. Perhaps Granite Island is a better comparison. It does not have its own unique currency

I had a friend who spent an interesting couple of years in Nauru in the 80s. By and large he was bored out of his mind. He used to crudely (but perhaps accurately) refer to it as a pile of bird sh*t. Referring to the fact that it is essentially a block of phosphate rock in the near Pacific...or I should say was.(see what the CIA tells us about Nauru here)

We might call it a country, but it is really a small Pacific Island which exists at the grace and favour of our own sovereign nation, Australia.

It is in reality....an excuse for a country....a small country town really.

And so when Mr Abbot suggests that we should farm out our national responsibility to Nauru he is either saying:

That the sovereign nation of Australia should allow the tiniest of Pacific states to shoulder the responsibility for refugees, or
He is playing a game; because Nauru is a de facto part of Australia. Totally dependent upon our largesse and subject to our whim and will

There are questions (as so often with foreign aid to small nations) about whether Australian aid has actually benefited the 'nation' as a whole or been a means by which the powerful few have been able to line their pockets.

In reality, the 'Nauru Solution' is no solution at all. It is a sidestepping of our responsibility as a nation. A facade. The 'Malaysian solution'?....not much better. Christmas Island? Exposed as a fiasco too.

What to do? Clearly we cannot just drop all our guard, but (as I have suggested earlier)...make the rules clearer, act consistently, and....I would suggest, generously.

But don't play cruel games like Nauru.

Just to let you know

2011-06-06T16:47:00.004+09:30

The parish of Coromandel Valley website has been migrated

to http://users.tpg.com.au/corowood/

or simply click here then Bookmark in your Browser

Hiatus

2011-05-18T08:47:00.002+09:30

I am lacking some motivation to blog just at the moment. I think there are many reason for this:
the infuriating state of politics both State and Federal which just seem to go round and round;
a rather busy time in my life
and the onset of winter!!!

So I am going to have a deliberate break at least until the end of June. Then at least I won't have to agonise every day about what to blog about and feel frustrated for the above reasons.

I still keep up my weekly homily blog: Coromandel Preachings...so you could check that out

Damned if you do!

2011-05-09T15:57:00.005+09:30

It would seem that the present Labor government is learning the bitter lesson that, in regard to immigration, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. And, in terms of the sort of parameters it allows itself to operate under, there is nothing much that they can think of that the former Government hadn't already considered and or implemented.

Which is why they look foolish, because no matter what they do the Opposition will always say "I told you so" and will say it, and does!

This, it seems to me, is because they lack either the will (I suspect) or the imagination (one would hope not) to actually try and envisage and implement a different approach.

This is fear driven. The fear of electoral backlash. The loudest voices in our community are shouting "Send them all home!"...but even the feeblest of intelligences must recognise that many "homes" no longer exist. So the compromise is don't let them get to our shores.

That this is absurd is apparent when ever we recognise that "boat people" are only a fraction of those who make irregular arrivals.

I am inclined to think that TWO things should happen.

1. There should be genuine commitment to and defining of those who we believe can be resettled here. This will of course be a source of widespread disagreement, but in the end our leaders should put the cards clearly on the table.

2. We must then accept the consequences of our own decisions. This would include not accepting those who we have not committed to help. We should indeed "send them back". It may be that the Malaysian solution is perhaps the best expression we have had of this so far.

BUT we should also stop dilly dallying with the system of offshore processing and process those who we do accept here.

It seems to me morally reprehensible to exploit Christmas Island, Nauru, Timor, New Guinea...and perhaps even Malaysia with the sort of game playing that we have been involved in for the best part of twenty years.

We need to stop being poll driven, and start being principled. This is hard but it is the only way forward in the face of complexity

Have a feast!

2011-05-06T17:24:00.003+09:30

Perhaps (one of) the oddest feast days of the Church is today (May 6) St John ante portam latinam...or St John at the Latin Gate.

I think it's there because the actual solemnity is kept on December 27th which is one of the great Christmas days. St John is so strongly associated with Christmas because his masterly Gospel has those wonderful words in the first chapter which sum up the whole of Christian theology

and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us

God becomes human in the form of Jesus Christ. However good old John, who is the patron of this parish and district deserves commemorating in his own right...so this strange feast...ante portam Latinam. Relates to a traditional story (story) where the emperor Domitian attempted to deep fry St John ...there is still a church called St Giovanni in Oleo (St John in Oil!) today.

I choose by and large to ignore it.

Last year, though, Sophie and I did have chips at lunch time!! But this year Kate and I refrained from eating any fried food.

Instead we had lovely steamed dumplings at the Market Food Hall

Don't quite understand!

2011-05-06T09:15:00.003+09:30

I've been quite pleased that I get about 15-30 hits on my blog each day. I sometimes reflect that despite my doubts about it, there is actually a numerical effectiveness about this contact which I don't seem to manage in my day to day life.

Though I do hope that my one on one pastoral contacts are perhaps more intimate and meaningful.

I'm a bit surprised to see that in the last 10 days my average number of daily contacts has gone from about 25 to 70. What does this mean? And who are you?

Possible (if not bizarre and/or incorrect) answers

1. I have said something controversial (I do try to occasionally) and the FBI or the CIA are now monitoring my blog!

2. I am being stalked. This actually seems possible from a couple of recent human contacts. It's a bit scary on one level...but hilarious on another

3. Someone with an awful lot of time on their hands is killing time as they sit at their desk at a particularly boring job.

4. Or....who knows what else.

Any way if you, one or many, are partly responsible then I am happy to address your concerns and blog on issues of interest to you...otherwise it will just be politics, church and family...not a bad mix I suppose. But as a would-be dilettante I am happy to turn my ADHD of a mind to most things.

Incidentally, I actually think my most sophisticated reflections are on my homily blog...but that may be a bit religious for some (coromandelpreachings.blogspot.com). These have the added advantage of meaning you don't have to come to church on Sunday to hear what I am going to say...though sometimes it gets changed in the preaching!!

One story

2011-05-05T15:40:00.004+09:30

I think there is something that need to be said in this curious week of reporting about the media's need to have one story to obsess about.

It has been one of those weeks when an awful lot has happened.

Last Friday, when William and Cate got married, there was also an awful family tragedy in Adelaide when a gunman shot down multiple members of one family. There were wild tornados in America, then Os B L got shot. SA Cricket Association members voted to allow Adelaide Oval to go through a redevelopment. .

Amidst all this interest rates stayed on hold. The Libs bleated that they would be able to get the budget into surplus faster than Labor ( quite how they could do this when they are not in Government I don't know)

It seemed almost impossible for the media (of all varieties) to actually deal with more than one story. So in the process all sorts of stuff seems to have gone unreported.

I did hear former Minister Lindsay Tanner having a go at this as part of the promo for his book.

In this he seemed to suggest that

The media are treating the public like idiots
the public are allowing the media to treat them like idiots

His analysis causes us to think carefully about the sort of effect this may be having on public policy where so much is now not done for ideological reason but for political effect.

One wonders where the slaughter of Bin Laden sits in that scenario?

Getting over it!

2011-05-04T11:43:00.005+09:30

I am sorry (maybe you are not, dear reader,) that blogging has been spasmodic of late.

I have often noted that it takes more commitment than you think, or want.

No more has that been apparent than during this week when Mr O bin Laden has been so summarily despatched. There is much that could be said, perhaps even quite a lot that should be said....and an awful lot more that need not be said.

So I have struggled about what observations I can make.

First, I am saddened about any Prime Ministerial statement that "welcomes" the death of anyone. From a person, and in a country which does not have the death penalty it is difficult to make the moral connection that anyone's death should be welcomed as an appropriate outcome.

That so many people agree with here (and J Howard who echoed similar sentiment) does nothing to allay my fear that our leaders should do more than perpetuate the sort of hysteria which seems to imply that the death penalty is OK. Let alone the death penalty for crimes not tested in a legitimate court

I have little or no doubt that bin Laden was not just a creation of the CIA, but that he was a terrorist guilty of advocating and encouraging, and probably perpetrating, the most awful violence and terrorism.

But I am not a court of law and not at liberty therefore to insist that anyone should be executed as a result of my belief. Indeed, in Australia, no one is executed even if found guilty.

Second, let us not pretend that the 'event' of bin Laden's death is not just the reporting of a neutral event.

The whole notion of painting him as a rich man hiding in a Pakistani mansion and holding his wife as a human shield is designed to affect our perceptions. It is not fact, or perhaps just fact, it is selective information. Or what we usually call propaganda.

Oh what a night!

2011-05-01T18:41:00.004+09:30

No, not Friday night...which was good and fun (The Royal Wedding)...bring on the Republic...but tonight's (Sunday's) TV is an absolute hoot.

Starts off with Channel 7 interviewing Ricky Nixon...at the moment I am writing this he is being asked "Why were you in your underpants in an under age girls' room?" This 47 year old is saying ...I don't know!! (how I was in my underpants). What the.....?

And then all sorts of questions about drugs sex...and therefore I suppose...rock and roll.

He is obfuscating (one of my favourite words).

And I found myself wondering...why on earth would you do such an interview?

It's to be followed by an interview with the rather sad Brendan Fevola who has become the sign of our present generations' social struggle with alcohol, fame and football.

And then of course there's the Logies. Won't be watching!

Because I will be truly relieved that my absolute favourite program, Masterchef, begins again tonight. PTL that my day to day life will now be dictated to by the incessant ridiculousness of this cooking show. Looking forward to it!

I frighten myself

2011-04-22T09:43:00.000+09:30

Je m'effraye

I frighten myself!
This week's fear
is that
I have not resolved
my youth.
The guilt I should have
left behind
on the beds of private concupiscence
seems ever with me as if I was sixteen.
The shame I have
is that I have not made
proper decisions
about my life.
that professing faith
I have been
faithless
that claiming love
I have been so often
loveless

it should be better
(could be worse)
I frighten myself!