Change and decay in all around I see

I was ordained almost forty years ago at  a time when the Church was ‘different’.
Within a few years we had been shaken to our bootstraps by scandals that could never have been  imagined. 
Perhaps they should have been dealt with decades before, and it is awful that they weren’t.
Confidence in the Church was deeply shaken.
I can admit , now, on reflection  that I found this difficult. More difficult than I realised

I was ordained  as a trusted community worker.
I became a person whose integrity was completely and utterly challenged.

We were betrayed by a whole range of people who had used their positions of trust and respect to abuse other persons, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Personally I recognise that I went from being a person held in high regard  to one who who was automatically distrusted.
In a few short years we went from the church being an institution where people could be safe to one where people were immediately suspicious.
One of the consequences of this was that numbers dropped quite dramatically.
In the mid 90s I would have expected  that we might have had 200-250 worshippers each week.
It is now remarkable if we have half that number.
Nevertheless, I am still thankful that many people have done more than just reject the church’s ministry. They have recognised that the majority of Christian people continue to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.
The few, and I think it is ‘a few’ who  betrayed the trust that should have been expected of them, have seriously weakened the Church.
It is probably a good...but it is certainly a painful , thing.
I want to urge any who still are harbouring hurts to come forward and invite the processes to work for their benefit. I pray that I may not have been one who has precipitated any abuse.
For the rest of us, it is good to have had our egos deflated, and our self-importance crushed.

Jesus identifies not with the abuser, but with the abused.  Not with the strong but with the weak. Not with the bully but with the victimised

(this is a reworking of a reflection I made as I left my last parish after 18 years. Much of what I said then bears repeating)

Over the hill... beyond the next Advance Care Directive

Well this is an uplifting topic !  I have written two Advance Care Directives (ACD)in the last few years .
[You can now do it quite easily on-line (Link to SA Legal Services Form is here (https://advancecaredirectives.sa.gov.au/https://advancecaredirectives.sa.gov.au/)…I guess if you live outside God’s Own Country (SA) you can Google your local links.]
 
So I’m blogging about this because it is one of those things we need to attend to as we get older.

What exactly is it?
We are simply sharing with those who are going to be affected ( our children and grandchildren, and our friends and associates) what we might like to happen as we prepare to die.
Now I am aware that when I revealed my first directive to my three daughters one Sunday afternoon a couple of years ago…I wanted them to sign their agreement to act as my agents, it was for me an invitation to say to them “I trust you”…and I realise that’s a risk, my experience has been that children do not always deal well with the deaths of their parents. Or indeed of their children, or their siblings.
But I do know and believe that though they/we may not want to do it.
That is NOT the point.
We MUST do it.
For our own well-being, for the well-being of our children and grandchildren.
The way to deal with death is to meet it in the garden (some of us will easily get this) and cry and say,
“They have taken him away and I don’t know where they have laid him.”
We said this about my own mother, they came and took her away while we were sitting around discussing what to do.
Ambulance men (sic for such they were) came and took my Dad and dealt carelessly with his body.

So, any way, getting back to that fateful  Sunday when the three beloved were to simply sign their agreement to act. To care for me, and each other and all the others.
The first ACD, was fairly innocuous.
Let’s face it I was not planning to fall off the twig.
So I passed the copies around…..
Daughter number 2 ( The third S Clark) ….couldn’t do it…
“I don’t want to do this”, she said. Tears flooded. ( It’s one of her hallmark responses)
Not quite sure what she thought …I was certainly not about to die,
and she was certainly not going to stop me from dying by refusing to sign.
I am a bit unsure whether we managed to sign the documents that day.  It doesn’t matter I have written another since then….have to get it signed.
It was instructive about how precious this stuff is with which we deal. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”
It’s not up to me to ignore my children’s sensibilities and tell them to “Muscle up!”  They are three very strong women…almost frightening. And I have observed about them in the past.
“They are exactly what I would want them to be. Assertive, intelligent and kind. I am just not so sure that I want them to assert all over me”
And of course they are my little girls, with hearts easily broken. Of this treasure I must be careful.
I hope this is a wisdom of age.

Was very struck by a discussion on RN Saturday Extra with the wonderful Geraldine Doogue (31/8/19) which talked about Palliative Care and ACDs and reminded us that we have come a long way in the forty years since I was ordained. It reminds us that ACDs are not just ‘tick boxes’ they are processes which need care
Hopefully when I present the next now to be signed ACD, we may all enter into this.
And, of course, I probably won’t be there when the rubber hits the road. I will just have to ‘trust them’.
And I do.

Looking forward

I am glad I began this series of posts with the story of Jason, he didn’t turn up for Mass today. Nor, more importantly did She.  I still hope he might connect that Tuesday or Thursday we are open. I am sad that we can’t do 24/7…we managed it in one the two churches in the last parish . But that was because I lived next door.  

And there was the famous incident of Romeo and Juliet sleeping under the altar…but that’s a story for another day… I was in that parish for eighteen years and after sixteen years  or more a couple of people did begin to articulate “It’s great that we can keep the Church open!”  But I wonder if it’s open now.






 

I didn’t mean to project a false humility about my encounter with the broken J.  But worry that I may have done that.
I think ( after a long time) as a pastor that I still don’t have much of a clue.
This series of posts is about the last two months of my full-time ministry as a parish priest.
It is not that I am going to stop being a priest. I am one of those who think that ordination ontologically changed me and I will be ‘a priest for ever’ [Hebrews 7:17 ” For it is declared: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.””]
This may be a romantic idea , but it works for me in my understanding that the call to priesthood is a universal charge on my whole being.
I am inclined to think that I cannot divorce myself from my priesthood. There is is a lot of psychoanalysis, no doubt, that could transpire. But so what it works for me!
I don’t want to be divorced from my priesthood, and I don’t think my priesthood is rejecting me.
So, this is quite an important reflection for me, because in two months I will celebrate a Eucharist as a parish priest, knowing that this will be the last time I will celebrate as a parish priest…and this after nearly forty years.
It’s taken a little while to work this through, but I am pretty sure that I am not defined by being a parish priest.
I may be defined by being a priest, but as close as I have been to parish life,  I can move away from it.
The curiosity of this is that I will have a bit of a break ( maybe six months) and then I will pickup locus work here and there .
I don’t quite know what locum work will be like. I know a lot of people in the Diocese and have a fairly good feel for how local parishes work, so I can do this.
I think I will do it gladly and with joy. I will pander to my own need to preach…and to be appreciated for being able to do this relatively well.
I think that ‘preaching’ is one of my charismatic gifts. And can act out of that model.

I wonder if you have questions about all this. And would be glad to respond.
Leave them littered around..either on the blog or on Facebook. And I will see what I can do

Making sense of being a priest

My most confronting encounter this week has been with Jason. 

After the Traditional Mass he wandered into the porch , thank God for the open Church.  He just wanted to sit down, or so it seemed, and though I was ready to ‘up and go’ I thought the least I should do was give him some time.
He was clearly in some distress, and his speech was almost unintelligible.The Grandpa in me tells me that you just have to give this some time…try talking to a two year old . It’s not that they are not talking it is that I am not hearing.
Jason sat quietly in front of the glorious image of the risen Jesus with the open wounded hands and tears were flooding.
Oh shit! What am I going to do? This guy has come wanting to receive and can I deliver? Pretty obviously, not!
It is as this point I have to realise thatI am not the one who has to deliver. Why would he want what I have to offer?
“I’ll just sit here, and you just take your time!”  It was the least I could do, and yet I rather begrudged it.
“Do you want me to pray for you?”  I asked. 
Fairly confident that I know how to pray. Not just ritualistically, but with meaning and with the courage to pray for deliverance if necessary.
“Maybe later,” he says. 
So I go and sit down quietly behind him. And for once say nothing!
His tears were flowing, makes me cry now just writing about it. 
His barely intelligible utterances talked of a woman who had been raped and told she would never have children.
That broken woman had met this broken man and they had borne a child…I wrote that they had  fathered a child….and I think that was important for Jason he was a father and felt totally incapable being so. 
In his ramblings he alluded to three others, I am not sure if he was the father. Possibly…even probably.
Then he lapsed into “I don’t want to go to jail, they are just horrible to me in there.”
What had happened I do not want to know, but we can all imagine. 
I do not want to know. But maybe my turning away is part of the problem.
I had waves of fear about him because he seemed erratic, crazed. 
I asked him if he was taking drugs.
He told me he wasn’t. And I believe him. 
But I knew, and he knew that I knew that his mind had been crippled by f&$%in’ meth. 
Don’t use that term lightly.
This was a beautiful man, of gentle spirit  whose humanity has been crippled by the careless greed of the pushers,
I repeat again:
“Oh shit! What am I going to do? This guy has come wanting to receive and can I deliver? Pretty obviously, not!”
We couldn’t sit there for ever, 
I prayed with him.
A gentle prayer, and prayer for deliverance (exorcism)…I am not afeared to pray so [ thank you A J Davies…who though a curious man taught me to trust the prayer …. and deliver us from evil]
As we took a quarter of an hour to leave 
he talked about Her…the mother of the children, 
who was coming in on an interstate bus.
“She will love this place.”
I had to tell him the Church was not open all the time, Tuesdays and Thursdays and of course Sundays.
I really hope we see them ...our prayers   genuine prayers   will be there for them

I was totally struck that he knew how he had been touched by our Shrine.
 
And my heart thrilled, whilst also being sad that he had to blow his nose on his tee shirt because he was so overcome. (  I wanted him to have my used handkerchief, but thought that was a bit disgusting....on reflection it was probably not)
 
Let us not ever begin to think that we live in a country where everyone is equal!!
 
And God forgive me for my failure to be Jesus to this beautiful man.

Spencer Dunkerley 1916-1982 (Year's mind 3 July)

Spencer Dunkerley

I met Spencer, for so he was ever  known , when I went to St Mark’s College, Adelaide in the early 70s. He was at that time  a Lecturer in History of Education at the  University of Adelaide.

But most of his students  sussed early on that he was boring and lacked the capacity to deliver… a dull voice and he had a total lack of awareness that he was NOT connecting with the couple of hundred folk who were supposed to receive his wisdom.  His content was rock solid, so thank goodness he provided good notes ..in the days long-before it was usual for Lecturers to provide same.

Spencer was born in Oldham, Lancashire c 1916 He was privileged to go to Manchester Grammar School, one of the schools which straddled the state/private school system.

He went to Kings College Cambridge in the pre-war period and consolidated an already expansive knowledge of modern history there.

There is a record of his commissioning as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps on 25 Jan 1942, my memory is that he served in the Middle East and particularly in Cairo (prior to the Israel ‘resettlement’), and then subsequently in Africa as a functionary of the Foreign Office burning unused currency ( a funny story for another day)

Post-war he tested his vocation at the Community of the  Resurrection, Mirfield, Yorkshire -(https://www.mirfield.org.uk/) but did not proceed to profession. He was however prepared for ordination and duly ordained ( not a 100% sure but maybe for St Nicholas Leicester or Coventry…by Bp Guy Smith (c 1952.) or perhaps Cuthbert Bardsley for Coventry...am thinking the latter)

Spencer subsequently came as  a ‘missionary’ to be a Bush Brother in Queensland [ maybe the Brotherhood of St Paul, or the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd…not sure which]…either way he drove outback Queensland in a Mini,  which was a miracle in itself.  he was a fairly hair-raising driver!

(Spencer (L) with the saintly Fr Percy Smith a pioneer advocate and pastor to young indigenous men in Alice Springs, and Port Adelaide watch the Charles Perkins video here )





He was seduced to Adelaide in the 60s to be a Chaplain at the University, and then to be   a senior Lecturer  in the Department of Education. He lived as resident fellow at St Mark’s College until his retirement c. 1980.



Spencer was tragically killed at Edwardstown, South Australia when struck by a motor vehicle on 3rd July 1982 at about 11 p.m. outside his home.

His funeral was held at St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Adelaide and his burial at St Mary’s on the Sturt 1163 South Rd, St Mary’s. Archbishop Keith Rayner presided at the Funeral, and I officiated at the burial. Many of Spencer’s friends  and students were present and a fine young cohort of univeristy and St Mark's students  acted as pall-bearers.



                             “he was a good priest…and I liked him”

Wish I was more optimistic about hate speech

I have said on numerous occasions that "Australian Christian Lobby" is a total misnomer. This ragtag group of aggressive evangelical/pentecostal people ( not ALL Pentecostals or Evangelicals by any means but certainly a significant and outspoken number) . I have been an Australian for over 50 years and I have been a Christian for almost 67 years...and in NO WAY does the ACL represent me...or most of the Australians or Christians I know. I find their theology violent and unloving...and indeed un-Christian. I would urge other Christians and Australians to repudiate their hate-filled homophobic agenda...I am not optimistic!!

Picking and choosing what gets you into Hell

So, like most amateur preachers,(nothing wrong with that in my opinion. )  Israel Folau picks and chooses from Holy Writ what he condemns

(why for example has he totally and grossly ignored the Levitical condemnation against tattoos (Leviticus 19:28)“‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord....which curiously (in chs 18-19) stand alongside each other.  More importantly look at 19:16 :
“Do not go about spreading slander among your people.
“Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour’s life. I am the Lord."

Given that it is clear that gay-identified teenagers are three times (at least) more likely to attempt suicide....what responsibility do the Folaus' take for contributing to this. Apparently none!

Back to bloggin' ...fig chutney

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness... not quite at Autumn yet.. but we appear to have had the 'fortnight of pain' hoffentlich...a curious German/Deutsch word which means more than hopefully
So we love this season...late summer..beautifully 30+ for some days this week then mid 20s. But looks like weeks of 40 s are gone.
So amidst all this there is the mellow fruitfulness of the late fruit harvest,
Chief amongst these are the figs. The gentle succulent fruit, which fits the SA climate because we are Mediterranean.

I picked a bag and a half from the youngest S Clark's tree yesterday....and will be back to pick more tomorrow!!....I suppose we enjoyed eating half of them. I just think they are so gentle and beautiful, and your insides feel good when you eat figs.
Any way what do you do with them when they ripen so quickly and need to be dealt with, otherwise they are wasted.
So I have made some fig and tomato chutney this afternoon.
Simple ingredients of tomatoes, figs, brown sugar, serious vinegar (viz brown,caramelised, balsamic...and I used a bit of guava. Serious amounts a garlic...we Australians are like that...and onion. A cinammon stick really lifts the flavour...and ginger ( pickled or fresh.. or both), mustard seeds and coriander. I will also add fresh basil.
I think the figs just receive the blessing of companion foods.
I am resisting the temptation to add chili...maybe tomorrow's iteration.

God bless the season of mists and figly fruitfulness

Easy for you to say

I spoke in a previous post
about  how the Ration Challenge is  obsessed with food. But I have opined elsewhere that the real battle of the 21st century is about WATER ...and not just about water...but about POTABLE water. That is, water that is safe to drink...I would not be thinking (even though I live close to the Linear Park at Allenby Gardens) that I would allow the two most beautiful grandchildren in the world to avail themselves of that water...the River Torrens Adelaide.
It's one thing to  talk about water....but can you drink it?

Save us from zealots

I continue on my merry way with the Act for Peace Ration Challenge

I know the Roti, or flatbread doesn't look particularly appetising.

But I was surprised about how good it was.

For a person who's devoted to breakfast toast; I was more than happy to have this carbohydrate of flour and water.

No breakfast eggs!

One of the things that does concern me about the Challenge is its obsession with food!

While obviously that is important, there is also lots of other stuff.

A few years ago I was privileged to be in the Holy Lands (sic)... I note that the modern state of Israel is not THE Holy Land.

OLJC was up around Syria...we drove into the Golan Heights, once a place of fierce battle..then (2011) a desolate and barren desert...but once again a battleground.



And my friends  Jen and Bill went to Damascus, thrilled to go to Straight Street (the street called Straight) where blessed Paul regained his sight...and they brought me seasonings from afar ( Za'atar  (  Arabic: زَعْتَر‎, IPA: [ˈzaʕtar]   ) would have liked them during this Ration Challenge.



And we have seen the blatant vandalism of this great city by east and west alike.

God preserve us from the causes of misguided zealots.

It's only a week!

You'll see from the change to the header that this week, 17-24 June is The Ration Challenge.
This is a promotional activity of the Council of Churches to raise money (this year) for refugee work with Syrian refugees.
They are but one group of refugees amongst many cast on the world's woes.
Basically it's a sponsorship deal ...and I am being sponsored by a few (hopefully more . go here  https://my.rationchallenge.org.au/stephan-clark).
This pic is a 'set-up' riding on my breakfast.

Today's breakfast was Rice, rice, and more rice.

I often have great deliberations over breakfast...shall my eggs be scrambled? Or shall I poach them ... in a poacher, or in a tumbling pot (where the water is gently churning). Sometime I like perfectly fried eggs...these are not just chucked in the pan...the oil is gently warmed and the eggs cooked slowly...God save us!

All this and breakfast too.
I stop for a moment and realise (trying not to be a ridiculously pious priest) that I don't imagine most Syrian refugees have an egg...let alone can worry about poaching, scrambling or frying.

And I give thanks that my grandadughter (like me) loves gruel [thin porridge]...[we sometimes phone each other during breakfast and enjoy each other enjoying porridge!]

I can't have any for a week. BUT it's only a week! I need to get over myself

One a penny...

Was interested in Big W's 'cookbook'....here are their"Hot Cross Buns" 
none of which seem to me to be Trad...but all seem yummy: 
Date Orange and LSA(don't even ask); 
Pear & Pecan with Maple Glaze[good idea]; 
Carrot and Sultana (very Sophie Vegan!); 
Mega Chocolate Buns (pictured)..(What the?) ; 

& finally Dairy & Egg-free [the closest thing to Trad...but contain 'egg-replacer' (it's the War all over again) . 
The single Hot C-B factor is that you pipe the sacred sign in 'flour paste'....
My people what have you done!

Faintly Bemused

It has now been over a week since the Federal Parliament passed legislation to allow marriage equality. I have watched local papers for the tedious flow of letters that might have followed.
But curiously there have been none.
What! The skies have not fallen in.
In fact, it all seems to be a bit ho-hum.
Exactly what we all predicted.
We have spent over a  100 million pursuing a questionnaire no one wanted, which  exaggerated popular fears and which told us what we all already knew.

I am personally glad, as a priest-religious celebrant that we have taken this step.
I doubt,  that I as a priest of the Anglican Church, under the rules of our organisation will live to see a marriage between two men or two women, or  intersex men and/or women in one of our 'hallowed precincts'. While I am sad about that I do get it.
And, as I choose to remain an Anglican, I endure that sadness.
Sorry because I think we can do better, as our Scottish, New Zealand, American & Canadian sisters and brothers have done and will do.

Meanwhile I am 'bemused' and totally GLAD that Australia has so embraced Marriage Equality that it is a non-issue

Deeply disturbing

Having been to the funeral of a saint this week.
(Going from my own experiences , and those of Fr Grant Bullen who eulogised our mutual friend Tim Deslandes)
I am deeply disturbed by how the 'net throws up 'saints'. Apparently they mainly lived in the 19th Century...what the ...
The only one who vaguely appeals to me is Mother Teresa.
When I was about18 I got into a party for her, and I shook her hand.
It was certainly worth it.
I know there are lots of questions about her practices but she just oozed the Holy Spirit.
As Ben B and WBY once said (but I was young and foolish)
None of this makes life easy or more understandable...I just think I am not a 19th century Catholic.
Here is a spooky wonderful version of Salley Gardens

10 reasons I would walk out of Church

Today was a joyous and sad day. Christians get this.
My friend Tim died, his funeral was an unhurried festival of joy. Most of the two or three hundred gathered there were walking backwards and forward from joy to tears.
As I say, Christians get this. While saddened that one of us dies, yet we are glad of Jesus's prophetic words . This day you will be with me in Paradise.
Fr Grant Bullen spoke eloquently in his eulogy about how today we have friend on 'the other side'.
While we may want to demythologise this ( I am not terribly fussed) this seemed to me an authentic expression of my relationship with this saint of a man.
In one of the conversations I had today, someone noted that Tim had walked out of a local church when the priest started ranting against marriage quality.
It caused me to wonder what else would make me walk out of church
...I don't intend to fill out the whole list but here are a few things....perhaps you can send me some more.
1. I agree with Tim, while the Church respects everyone's views...when it starts saying that LGBTIQ are disordered and not worthy of equality...I get up and walk out
2. When it says Children should be seen and not heard...I get up and walk out
3. When it says women are subordinate ...I get up and walk out
4. When it prefers the affluent middle-classes, and overlooks the faithful poor, and humble....I get up and walk out

and so this might go on...What are your suggestions?

Burning up - a new poem

I am burning up!

There is a bush,

plenty of bushes in this wilderness.

I am glad to see them

because  they break the monotony.

This one seems to burn,

or is it me. 

I am burning.

My heart is wasting

the wilderness just eats me.

I am too hot.

Too hot even to wear shoes.

I take them off.

the ground seems cooler 

than my sandals.

Don’t you think I  am?

You are what?

I am feet and sandles

I am enough for you today.

I laugh!

Tell them, I suggest, I am has sent you.

I am.

Sandals, smell, burning,

cool ground. 

Enough.

Why don’t you tell them

I am has sent you.

Marriage Equality---opportunity to act SUPPORT NOW

I have taken up the invitation to write to Parliamentarians in anticipation of next-week's resumption of sittings in Canberra about Marriage Equality.
In particular you could do likewise by following Australian Marriage Equality's link.

I chose to write to C Pyne, as a prominent SA Liberal politician ( or another similar) along the following lines

Dear Mr Pyne

You are more than well-aware  that the nation is paying close attention to the discussion in your Party room next week about Marriage Equality.

I happen to be a priest of the Anglican Church, and along with a number of my colleagues am steadfastly in favour of Marriage Equality. Many Christians are in favour of this move

I also recognise, sadly, that it is unlikely that internal processes within a number of Christian Church's themselves will allow this to happen within Church ranks.

Yet this does not mean, I suggest, that our Nation as a whole should not go forward .

It seems unlikely to me that, as a priest, the Anglican Church will allow me to pray for God's blessing on the marriage of same-sex partners who clearly wish to make a lifelong marriage commitment to each other and their children. This is to the Church's shame.

I am sorry that, as a Commonwealth,  we have got stuck, largely because the plebiscite as a process  is clearly not going to work!  

This is so atrociously political on all sides as to be offensive.

I think it is incumbent upon the party of Government to move to break this impasse and exercise leadership.

The community is more than tired of the petty-politicking and I urge you and your colleagues to move definitely to resolve this.

[I think the 'Dutton Postal Vote' option is just a bizarre distraction, and cynical in the extreme.  Non-compulsory, non-binding. In other word 'non helpful' & 'non useful']

All the best and 

Respectfully,

Stephan Clark

Parish Priest: St Mary Magdalene's  

Anglican Church, Adelaide.

You might like to write to Pyne (above), or Birmingham or similar .
Birmingham seems to have become such a 'creature of the machine' which is deeply sad as he is creative thinker and should do better

The mistake of the mandate

In the days when I was much younger and ( perhaps) more naive, a University lecturer reminded me that the Westminster system is not about mandates.
"We elect people to govern, not to implement a narrow raft of policies" he would say ( or words to that effect ).
He was not saying, I suggest, that politicians should be  allowed to make a swathe of promises and then not be held to account; but rather that we, the electorate, should pay attention to the tenor of the discussion rather than the minutiae.
We are not electing people to implement piddling little policies. that would be far too small,  but to govern according to clearly articulated principles.  This is of course easier said than done.
We, the electorate,  by and large have allowed ourselves to be seduced by minutiae...make my tax go down, stop the boats, free beer for all...
Rather than demanding that our politicians GOVERN according to PRINCIPLE.

The reason why the narrow mandate is a mistake, is that we actually discover there is not one but  a number of mandates (plural)....[housing, infrastructure, security, States' rights, increased wealth, closed borders, care for refugees, better education, military expenditure, lower taxes, improved health care, indigenous rights, marriage equality, law and order, water quality, a republic, farmers' rights, housing costs...... you get the idea...and I could go on]

Thinking back to the last election ( which was close... almost too close) all of these things and more were aired.

The electorate votes, I would say, not for one of these issues . But for the Team it believed most closely approximated most of their views in principle.
Some would hold that border control and lower taxes were what they held to be important. Others that water quality and military expenditure, law and order and marriage equality were what suited them.
We could go on and realise that some of us want part of this agenda and others want a different part.

This is NOT a mandate, this is an accomodation to a way of thinking.

So it is not appropriate or accurate to say that if I happen to have been elected, then everyone agrees with everything I said.
It is not even accurate to say that all those who voted for me ( and in this case it was barely 50%) were agreeing about the things that I was proposing.

There was no mandate for anything.
There was rather permission to govern.
Do not use the Mandate Argument to say...I cannot do this. Rather take the cudgels and govern.
Nothing would seem to be black and white, it is rather an invitation to enter into the mêlée of proper discussion.
Not applying the arbitrary mandates, but rather the principles that engender good government.

I fear that the "mandate argument" is the excuse of the craven to not declare themselves.

I do not believe that this wafer-thin government had a mandate for a plebiscite. If anything the reaction of the Houses shows that they clearly don't.

Get on and govern! You do not have a mandate for a plebiscite. And possibly not for much else either!
Get on and govern ...and realise the art of the possible......which after all according to many luminaries (Including J W Howard) is what politics is all about.

Don't we ought to have friends?

In conversation with a friend recently

I rethought these two poems

My friend threw me away 

My friend threw me away 

the other day 

Suddenly from being great 

I was ‘non grata’ 

Maybe it wasn’t sudden at all, 

from the moment 

we met 

I was being dumped. 

I should have seen the signs 

if only I had known 

what the signs 

might have been 

If only I knew now 

what happened then 

I could avoid 

doing it again 

But I am puzzled 

at why one day 

I was his friend 

and then I wasn’t 

I don’t have 

enough friends 

that I can afford 

to be thrown away 

But, rubbish does not 

climb out of the bin 

Unless the owner realises 

he has thrown way 

a treasure! 

-0--0--0--0--0-

I threw away my friend the other day 

I threw away my friend the other day 

and couldn’t get him back. 

Before I’d turned to walk away 

the rubbish van 

had scooped the garbage up 

and taken it away. 

I wrote a letter 

but they would not give it back to me, 

“I accidentally threw a precious gift away 

Can you get it back?” 

I’m sorry sir, they replied, 

if we were to answer every request 

to rescue rubbish 

then we would never collect any. 

“But it isn’t rubbish!” 

I said emphatically. 

Then why, they said, 

did you throw it away? 

Why indeed? 

A poem about - The Ascension

Without being presumptuous, always think I did quite well with this poem:

Even as you wave goodbye

 On a mountain somewhere,
lifted up for all to see
you went
Just when we were beginning to have fun.
So, as if to comfort me,
a little while
you promised to be with me
not just now but always.
 
How could I have believed you
(fool that I am)
“I’ll be with you always”
as you waved goodbye.
 
Now on that same mountain
years later,
and then a little while,
why do I stand looking up
wishing, waiting, wanting
your return.
 
My soul longs for you.
And as I stand there gazing
I look sideways,
left and right,
and backwards
and see you standing here with me.
 
While that for which I am least grateful
tries to tell me
you deserted me
That for which I am most grateful
reminds me
that you enlivened me
you thrilled me
summoned me.
 

 

Not to float away
but to remember
that with you
a promise is a promise
even as you wave goodbye.