Reflection on some Churches in Europe

As I sift through my life in these my latter years, (I am now 67!!...how did that happen?)
I think about many wonderful times there have been to engage with the spirituality of European Christianity
And, indeed, of European society

This is a couple of poems that I wrote as my former wife and I did a minor European Tour in 2007.
Our marriage was no doubt well over by this time.
But we decided that we should do it.
And to be fair  we had a great time.




7 May 2007

Mass in Notre Dame 

My bread is shared today
a gift from total strangers
to eat
with others
who speak not
the language of words
the language of peace.
A clasp
A nod
A word or two
not in English
but in Latin
Pax Dominum

On the top of the Eiffel Tower Sue freaked and had a panic attack, I sort of rallied ( what else can you do?)

 

On top of the Eiffel Tower

There is no redemption
but a sense of awe
there is no reconciliation
but a gift of courage.
Here, in a place
equally as foolish
as Babel
awe, courage, amazement
deep in the loins.
Most of us
get it
maybe not
the young, the brash
who think they know it all
Who smoke
to show they can
and shout
lest no one know
how brave they are,
how central
how they are.

But on this foolishness
it is not God
but Paris
all around.
And the wind changes
and cold
and we all
old and young
decide enough is enough
of human invention

6 May 2007 --10 p.m.

Mass in Sacre Coeur

On the steps of Paris
they sing
in impromptu concert
while within the white domed church
Dominus is intoned.
Each, oblivious to the other
the mystery within
flows without

In the cool darkness of the night
we flee
back to the pee stinking tunnels
and the steps
that crush the knees;
it was mystery
it is over

4 May 2007(?)

In La Sistina

We lost each other
Making our our way to the centre
I stood alone
while a spikey haired man went
"Shh!"
then would scream in anger
"No pitch!" and then "I said No Pitch!"
It does not alter the wonder
of a ceiling or a wall
declaring the mystery of God
it does tell us
No pictures! No pictures!
Save the pictures in our heart(maybe)
which we could not share
because we were lost

Afternoon in Jericho

Saturday afternoon in Jericho

Saturday afternoon

in Jericho;

the place seems deserted;

it reminds me of childhood Sundays

in Whitehaven



There is no blind man

by the side of the road,

well not one that I can see

any way.

And that is rather the point 

this is a reflection on Luke 18:35-43   The blind man who sits by the road (today's Mass Reading)

It actually alludes to a Saturday afternoon some years ago in the Holy Lands, we were coming back to Jerusalem from Galilee when we stopped for a break in Jericho. It seemed deserted .

Of course I realised only today (some years later) that we there on the Shabbat 

Likewise, Whitehaven in the 50s and early 60s reminded me of the Sabbath , which for us was Sunday.

Only got this today...so I reiterate 

There is no blind man...well none that I can see

Bloody hard

Australia is a rugged country, most people who live elsewhere get this. Perhaps we who live here find it a bit curious, and find that we are not so much rugged or tough, but laid back.
We often say that we are the land of the ‘fair go’. But like so many such statements, the ones who get ‘the fair go’ are those who are doing pretty well already, thank you very much.

One of the things that has saddened me in the more than half a century I have lived here, is that our hearts seem to have become increasingly hardened.
Not rugged but HARD.
We are no longer saying,”If you want to live here then you have to work hard, and pull your weight.”
We are saying stupid stuff like
“We are full!”
“Go back to where you came from.”
“If you come by boat you will never settle here!”
Now, I came here by boat in 1967.But then I am white, I was born in the UK…and though I may have some non-Aryan ancestry…yet of course I speak English ( and a smattering of other languages…looking forward to retiring to brush up on Bahasa Indonesia !)
Curiously we moved into a South Australian industrial town, Whyalla, as did hundreds of other UK citizens in the late 60s. There was a real sense of ‘ghetto’.

I went to the central High School ….I had never experienced ethnic discrimination before …but I did there. I was a Pom!
People laughed at my accent (NW England) as if they some how had the key as to how English should be spoken.
Let me tell you that Maroon …is pronounced MAH ROO N
Not MA RAWN!!!
That it’s perfectly OK to say DANCE with a hard ‘a’ and you can say DARNCE if you want to…but who cares?
To provincial South Australians these seemed like linguistic baseball bats.
We tended to retreat to our ethnic homelands…so my four close friends were from Liverpool, Tyneside, Luton and North Wales.
By the time I graduated with education degrees and became a teacher in the third High School the tables had reversed.
In that school 85% of the students were not born in Australia. Most came from the UK with about 10% a mix of Greeks, Italians, French and others.
While I realise I was subjected to the pejorative “Pom”…in the Eastern school, the Aussies were “Skips” in the Western school …and thought to be as thick as two planks.
This is how prejudice works, not with logic but with the prejudice of the majority mocking the minority.
All of this is of course nonsense.
I was fortunate to have teachers who realised that when I was a minority “Pom”, I had actually probably had better schooling in Maths, Physics and Chemistry before I came to school in Australia than they had been able to deliver. John Lyon my Chemistry teacher was one of the first to spot this.
He gave me an A in my first series of reports even though I had been taught under an ‘old fashioned’ way. He took time help me translate this, and I accelerated with his help.
Five years later, inspired by him I guess, I went to be a teacher in school of which he was Head (Stuart High School). I understand now that he had not only an educational vision, but also a spiritual, philosophical and theological vision of what a school might be. I liked that.
Deeply influenced by liberal Protestant theology. He promoted such epithets as “Freedom to choose!” and “Acceptance of consequence” deeply seated in the theology of Tillich, Bonhoeffer and others.
Made sense to me.

Death Penalty

A day of sadness and shame for the Asian-Oceanian region

There is surely no excuse for a a modern state: Asian,  European , African, American....and certainly not Oceanian...to support the death penalty

On a day when we are all concerned about the heaving casualties of great human tragedy in Nepal....our hearts are opened to  "a country like this......a  city like this" .
Our common humanity should remind us that we are citizens of a Common World. where  it is convenient to suggest we are privileged to live in security.

We will forget most likely about Sukumaran and Chan, executed this morning in Indonesia,......the stupid boys who became men in prison and then were slaughtered.

While there is some evidence to suggest that the 'ordinary' Australian community still has a hefty proportion of people who think it's OK to execute people.....if nothing else good has come out of this latest injustice in Indonesia it is that Australian political will appears to have been galvanised.
 against the death penalty. Equally well there is a serious issue about the way popular media has or has not aggravated this situation

One moderate commentator said this morning when the argument that "they had been rehabilitated" was again being put forward....'Well they were not there to be rehabilitated but to be......." and the conversation sort of tailored off.
I presume he was going to say punished!
Having been to Gaol in the last couple of weeks (here) I tried to talk about the process of reconciliation that the modern gaol is supposed to be on about. Mobilong Gaol seems to be doing pretty well in rehabilitating others.

Gaol is not just about punishment....though that is legitimate....we also should be about rehabilitation.

Both Chan and Sukumaran  appear to have been seriously and wonderfully rehabilitated...almost against all odds... there seems little reason to think that this is anything but genuine.

There are bigger questions too:  China continues to be the biggest executor . Dare we confront this powerful trading partner
The US, our most powerful ally,  is the most shameful and strident country participating in executions.  Where is our criticism of them?

There is much more to be said about this.

We are the world

What next? Yesterday's Religion Report reminded that nothing we do, eat, see or enjoy is without taint. (For traditional Christians this is nothing new!)

The focus...chocolate. British social activist, Steve Chalke reminded the listeners that in many places the production of chocolate is only made possible by  low cost labour  provided by children sold into slave-like conditions. This does not suprise us. 

Rather we choose to be ignorant, I guess. 

The same point has been made about coffee in times past, and it is now obvious and clear that we should look for the "fair trade" markings on almost anything.

Fair Trade is a new and necessary buzz word/concept. It applies to coffee, rice, clothing manufacture and anything else that we, the greedy West, demand that the poor make for us, to satisfy our insatiable greed.

Nothing we do, eat or use is morally neutral. Our response to that has usually (as I say) to just be plain dumb about it. 

If we are to be responsible we have to do a bit better than that.

It is popping up all around us though, isn't it?

The trafficking of people...worth more than the global illegal drugs industry.

The rebuilding of the devastated Iraq attracting the poorest of the Asian poor (here)

It is almost all we can do to worry about whether or not we can have drippers on our lawns.

We just simply have to do better!

Today, by the way, is the memoria of Vincent de Paul.  To whom we have generously given bags and bags of unwanted clothes in the last few weeks. The tribute to our own unending need to have stuff without end!

Not entirely getting the logic

I was interested to watch the youngest SC's reaction to the recurrence of the drug advertising this week. We sat quietly as we took in the theme.
"I wanted to be a fireman!" said the child voice of the desperate boy ravaging some woman's bag for credit cards or money. "I want to be a chef" said the girl who was screaming in an uncontrollable rage at her mother,. the mother who she had just confessed had given her the love of cooking in the first place.
The voice of the seven year old boy told about being a professional footballer, as his 17 year old body was zipped into a body bag.
Big SC and little SC watched quietly as the punchline was delivered. "Drugs cost lives"
They are a very powerful and good series of adverts.
Yesterday the mandatory government packet arrived in the post with the same message, being print it's a bit boring. And in fact still sits sealed in its plastic bag.
Am I too cynical to think that this latter piece of information is not about drugs at all, it is about election? It is a government who fears that it is perceived as doing nothing about issues that really hurt, and so wheels out the icing just to remind us that they are the source of this strong stuff.
It is not surprising either that the terrorism ads have also reappeared don't you think? Nor that the State Opposition has announced a policy about exposing police corruption if it gets elected.
It seems to me that it is not about any of this stuff. It is about wanting to be seen to be hard.
Unfortunately too many electors are appeased by this, when we should be saying...."I see the advertising, but are you actually doing anything?"

It ain't necessarily so

I was loaned a tape of a talk of one who has worked in Bangladesh on and off for 30 odd years. Whilst still identifying herself as an outsider she had some interesting reflections to make on matters we don't readily understand.
She notes for example that when Carey first translated the Bible into Urdu he was unaware of dialectical variants between Hindus and Moslems. Which are significant.
She noted for example that Carey was advised by an Hindu and used the Hindu variants for theological language. Thus translating the word "pray" the Hindu word means to "bow down" as in ..bow down to an idol... which is of course anathema to Moslems , thus failing to realise that a stumbling block had accidently been put into place.
She noted also that Bangladeshi converts to the Way were not keen to be called Christians...because that word has about it the hidden cultural connotations..pork eater, drinker and womaniser. Another observation concerned some of the current political dogma, which I must admit has bothered me, and that is that the presnet political orthodoxy is that Democracy is the highest form of all government.
You could have a good argument about that.
But what is often now the case is that Imperialist US and Imperialist UK joined by the little cousin wagging our tail is now going about using the road to democracy as justification for almost everything.
We invade Iraq to establish democracy.
We tie foreign aid to the establishment of democracy.
We beg the question about how our form of democracy works.
Does for example American democracy deliver health care for the poor in the US?
Does democracy provide shared wealth for society? Or do only the elite share in that particular largesse.
Does 'democracy' mean that everyone can influence the politiocal process, or only those at the top of the tree?
Does 'democracy' actually discourage ideology and replace it with popularist dogma (bread and circuses) or patronising government (father knows best)?
We note that the US and the UK are remarkably silent about the lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia and in Brunei.
We note that the US does little to protect the democratic infringement of the rights of Palestine by 'democratic' Israel.

Yes, this lady has a point. Not unquestioningly she invites the world to be more open-minded to Islam, even daring to suggest that a culture which scorns drug-taking (questionable) may in fact be the onlky thing that holds out hope to the youth of the decadent west.
Ahhhhh, interesting days.