afoot and empty-handed

praying for rain

2005-06-06T17:29:00.000+10:00

yesterday in church we prayed for rain. most of the state of nsw, in fact most of australia, is besieged by one of the worst droughts on record (and in many places it is the worst on record). the inland city of goulburn, just an hour down the road from where we live, is at under 10% of it's water supply capacity. warragamba dam, the main reservoir for sydney's water, is getting close to 40% capacity. farmers all over new south wales are being forced deep into debt or off the land completely. so we pray for rain.

the problem is, i feel very uneasy about asking god to supernaturally send rain at this time and in this place. it's not that i don't believe all good things come from god and it's right and proper to acknowledge our reliance on god, it's that praying for rain feels extremely disingenuous when the reason it isn't raining is because of what we've done as humans to the climate and the environment.

tim flannery writes about a few of these human causes in today's smh ("Forecast deteriorates for the dry country"). according to flannery, the three major mechanisms behind the lack of rainfall are:

"the 0.63-degree warming that has occurred in the past 100 years, which has caused Australia's winter rainfall zone to contract";

"the ozone hole: with less ozone the stratosphere is cooler, causing circulation around the Antarctic to speed up, which draws winter clouds further south";

and that "[the] Pacific Ocean has warmed, and computer models predict that this will cause a semi-permanent el Nino phase of the el Nino southern oscillation cycle - the part that brings drought to Australia."

from other reading, i would add to this list the massive and ongoing land-clearing which has been done in eastern australia especially, because trees and bushland attract rain and also help to retain water in and under the ground.

how can we honestly rely now on god to save us from the effects of our greed and folly? is it even right to do so? in many ways it seems just another example of the modern malaise of do what you feel like and somebody else will pay to clean it up. as the u2 song says, "daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car".

god is infinite in mercy, but i don't believe he really wants to bail humans out for their wickedness or stupidity. what he wants is for us to grow up, to learn from our mistakes, to be better stewards of this incredible, beautiful planet he's given us.

will we learn greater respect for the earth and to treat her resources and environment better if god comes through now and sends rain supernaturally (because it just ain't gonna happen naturally)? maybe, but i think it's wrong to just sit back and expect god to intervene. all we can do is throw ourselves on his mercy, acknowledging our failings in caring for the earth and asking him to forgive us and save us. then we need to back up our words by doing as much as we can to fix the problem, relying on his boundless forbearance to do what we cannot and send rain back to this parched country.

you'll never walk alone

2005-05-26T13:09:00.000+10:00

liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool liverpool

need i say more?

not that i'm a fanatic or anything, but what a comeback and what a win. only my masochistic streak kept me watching the game at halftime. nobody comes back from 3-0 down, especially against italian teams that are historically shut-up-shop defensive. but in "six minutes of madness" (as ac milan's coach put it), liverpool scored 3 goals to even the score, then managed to hold on right through 30 minutes of extra time before winning on penalties. actually, i don't feel as elated as i would have been if it had been a field-of-play win. i don't like penalty shootouts to decide these kinds of games, and i feel sorry for milan losing in this way, but they're professionals and they'll get over it (and they did in fact win the championship league final - on penalties - against juventus two years ago).

(pictures courtesy of soccernet)

universalism and all that

2005-05-20T15:41:00.000+10:00

or, dave comes out of the closet...

to put it bluntly, i just can't believe that sending sinners to eternal torment in hell amounts to justice, no matter what the crime. it defies every principle of justice and punishment fitting the crime that we hold to as humans, and, as george macdonald says, if we don't think something is fair or right, it's tantamount to blasphemy to attribute it to god. god's sense of fairness must be at least as strong as ours, or else he's not the holy and just god we believe he is. on the other side of the coin, we also need to beware of attributing to god our human sense of revenge and wanting to get even. god's righteousness would mean nothing to us without his infinite capacity to forgive.

compounding the issue is the fact that we sin in ignorance: no child knows or understands before they start sinning that they will be forever damned for their actions. still further, even if we did understand the consequences, it wouldn't make a difference because of the innate sinful nature we inherit as descendents of adam. so we are in a catch-22 situation: we cannot help sinning but we are forever damned for it. how is that just?

this of course is an argument that has been made many times. i do not deny that we have been gifted (or burdened?) with free will, so we must take responsibility for our actions, but at the same time i do not believe god looks at us with a demanding, legalistic attitude, just waiting for us to slip up so he can get the rod out. i do not do this with my daughter, who i love more than my life, but instead expect her to be independent and (increasingly) rebellious, wanting to go her own way and do what she wants. in the same way, i believe god understands our rebellious natures and treats us with immeasurable forbearance, going so far as to give his son to provide a way out of our bondage to sin and into a new life of true freedom.

george macdonald put forward another argument against the eternal punishment doctrine which i find, if anything, even more compelling. if even one soul is separated from god for eternity, with no possible means of return, it means that satan has won a victory against god, and that is unthinkable. god must have the final, complete victory, but it would not be, could not be, an absolute victory if satan has succeeded in capturing any souls forever. when he died, jesus descended to hell and opened the gates, rendering it no longer an inescapable prison. if anyone chooses, they may simply walk out, and the eternal father is forever on the lookout to welcome each one with great celebration. since jesus' death, it is only our will that keeps us from god, but the way back will never be closed off. never ever.

obviously the implications of a universalist stance are many, going right to the heart of how we are to live as believers in this world. most importantly, i think, it puts a big question over many missionary and proselytising efforts. to my mind, that's not such a bad thing, because these kinds of endeavours have often had disturbing overtones of manipulation and coercion, if not downright convert-buying. at the more mundane level, i've always been at least a little uncomfortable with exhortations to befriend people in the hope of 'winning them to christ', because it smacks of false pretenses. don't we befriend people because they are fellow human beings who we can share our lives with and whose outlook and experience can teach and inform our own lives?

so why tell anyone about the good news of jesus, and why bother believing it and living it ourselves if it doesn't really make a difference for whether or not we go to heaven? after all, it's a lot easier and a lot more fun to ignore god and do our own thing...

well, no doubt it'd be easier, but since when was that the point? since adam and eve ate the forbidden fruit it's always been easier to follow our own desires, but that doesn't mean it's the better way to live. on the contrary, the bible makes it abundantly clear that the best way to live is according to god's law. as michael casey says in his book toward god:

"The ultimate truth of human life is that all our searching leads to God. In Saint Augustine's timeless words, 'You have made us for yourself [O God] and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.' This is something we know about every human being. He or she is made for God; there will always be an incompleteness until a person arrives at God.

...

"We were created with an orientation toward God, and so actions that direct us toward God accord with the imperatives of our nature. When we try to live moral lives after the example of Christ, and open our minds and hearts to prayer, we are not simply doing something 'religious'; we are fulfilling the most fundamental requirement of our humanity. By God's gift we can turn away from the intangible and immediate, transcend the attractions of sense and image, and stretch forth into the infinite sea of eternity. We can add a new dimension to our human experience." (p.3)

just before he slipped away, jesus gave his disciples 'the great commission':

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (matthew 28: 18-20, niv)

jesus knew what people need, how their lives can be lived to the full, and he taught this to his disciples, then told them to go tell it to the ends of the earth. there is nothing here about telling people that if they don't believe they'll go to hell for eternity, and neither was such a message part of the "everything I have commanded you" he told the disciples to pass on. it's true, especially towards the end of his ministry, jesus said a lot about the consequences of not following his teachings, but those words were all directed at the believers. in the parable of the sheep and goats, it is to the ones who claim to know jesus, who call out, "lord, lord," that he says, "depart from me, i never knew you." the others, who put their faith into practice, didn't even realise they were doing it for jesus, and he welcomes them into his rest.

which brings me to the second reason we should be following jesus and encouraging others to do the same: what we do has consequences, both here and after we die. i don't subscribe to the view that we'll all just stroll into heaven the minute we leave this mortal coil. such a view makes a mockery of god, and isn't in any way consistent with the bible's teaching. god is holy, and demands holiness from us. but while purity is a state (that disappears quickly!), holiness is a life. we cannot be declared holy, we can only learn to be holy through repentance. even jesus needed to be proved holy by his life, as it says in hebrews 5:8-9:

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him." (niv)

this doesn't mean jesus wasn't perfect through his life, but his perfection, his holiness, wasn't complete until he'd finished his work. we tend, i think, not to apply this to ourselves, but it doesn't make sense to me how i can be, for example, hateful to my neighbor one minute and holy the next, just because i died in between. being holy means learning how to love my neighbor, and i won't be holy until i've done that. and we will never enter the holy city of god, our final destination where all our desires will be completely fulfilled, until we are holy, until all unholiness has been purged from our lives, which can only be achieved by a long process of repentance, turning from our pride and selfishness and choosing to love.

george macdonald frequently made the point that jesus saves us from our sin, but not the consequences of our sin. i don't fully understand what he meant by this, but one of the obvious examples is our inevitable human death. the promise to adam and eve was that if they ate of the tree they would die, and as children of adam we inherit that promise, and hence we will all die as a consequence of our sin. but that's not the end of the story, as romans 6:23 says:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (niv)

this verse has most popularly been used to support the eternal punishment doctrine, but it doesn't seem inherent to me that the second part cancels out the first. instead, i think it makes sense to see it as saying that, yes, we die, but then god gives us eternal life as a gift, completely gratuitous and unearned. and this gift, this act of grace on god's part, is meaningless unless it is also universal, given freely and in equal measure to all.

finally (and maybe ironically having spent so much time on the subject), i don't actually get the impression from reading the bible that what happens to us after we die is an issue god wants us to be concerned about to a great extent. i believe that saving is god's work, and our task is to live as true followers of christ. the commandment of jesus was for us to love each other as he taught and modelled, and thus the world will know we are his disciples. to me this means that the primary mode of evangelism is believers living in community, demonstrating to the world the kingdom life which is love and service to each other. of course, this doesn't mean we ignore non-believers and stay in our holy huddles, but that we go and live the life of following jesus out in the open, in the view of all, and especially where there is no witness of this kind. and by being salt and light in the dark places, we will be used by god to draw all people to himself.

the good war?

2005-05-12T17:21:00.000+10:00

there's a great piece in today's smh by richard drayton, senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University, called War's moral compass is flawed and points in all directions (originally published in the guardian as An ethical blank cheque).

drayton mentions taken by force, a book by robert lilly which is a study of the rapes committed by american soldiers in europe between 1942 and 1945. lilly suggests a minimum of 10,000 rapes (which is probably a conservative estimate). elsewhere in the essay, drayton talks of crimes committed by allied soldiers in the pacific against japanese captives, quoting edgar james, an 'embedded' pacific war correspondent:

"We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments."

the point of bringing these things up is primarily because they are never mentioned or talked about, and thus largely unknown by the general population. we very readily remember the atrocities committed by the 'enemy' but sweep our own shameful actions under the carpet. once again marx's adage that history is written by the victors is proved correct. it's not just an issue of good guys and bad guys, needing to believe your side is right in order to sustain the will to win the war. as drayton says, the effect is much farther reaching:

"All this seems innocent fun, but patriotic myths have sharp edges. The 'good war' against Hitler has underwritten 60 years of warmaking. It has become an ethical blank cheque for British and US power. We claim the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial on the basis of direct and implicit appeals to the war against fascism.

When we fall out with such tyrant friends as Noriega, Milosevic or Saddam we rebrand them as 'Hitler'. In the 'good war' against them, all bad things become forgettable 'collateral damage'. The devastation of civilian targets in Serbia or Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the war crime of collective punishment in Falluja, fade to oblivion as the 'price of democracy'."

i find this all very interesting, and i'm not just trying to wack the purpetrators and supporters of the iraq war over the head once again (no matter how much i enjoy it :^). at the least i think we need to keep being reminded that, especially with issues of war, there is no black and white, right and wrong. not for the first time, bruce cockburn puts it perfectly:

God, damn the hands of glory
That hold the bloody firebrand high
Close the book and end the story
Of how so many men have died
Let the world retain in memory
That mighty tongues tell mighty lies
And if mankind must have an enemy
Let it be his warlike pride
Let it be his warlike pride

(from It's Going Down Slow, Bruce Cockburn, 1971)

new music

2005-04-29T17:17:00.000+10:00

a couple of weeks ago i received the shipment of 4 cds i'd ordered from pastemusic: drunkard's prayer, the latest offering from one of my favourite bands, over the rhine; their live cd changes come; one time otr guitarist ric hordinski's solo cd when i consider how my light is spent; and whoever it was that brought me here will have to take me home by welsh singer/songwriter martyn joseph.

all four discs are superb and i'm very happy with the purchase. over the rhine write some of the more thoughtful and challenging lyrics going around at the moment, their music is rich and melodic with generous (often sole) use of acoustic instrumentation, and karin bergquist's classically-trained voice is a delight to listen to. ric hordinski's half-instrumental cd is beautiful and atmospheric. and after wanting to get more of martyn joseph's music for ages (i've had the live cd an aching and a longing for over 10 years), wiwtbmhwhttmh doesn't disappoint, confirming my regard for him as an excellent songwriter who faces up honestly to the struggles and ambiguities of life. as the opening sentence of the pastemusic review puts it, "Perhaps there’s never been as adept a blend of the Bruces (Springsteen and Cockburn) as Welsh singer/songwriter Martyn Joseph."

one of the things i especially appreciate about both otr's drunkard's prayer and the martyn joseph cd is that they contain songs which deal with mature relationships going through less than rosy times, a place i know well. drunkard's prayer actually grew out of a period of major re-evaluation for linford and karin, as linford writes in the liner notes:

"[A] few months into our [Ohio] tour, Karin and I realized that although good things were happening with our music, there was just very little energy or creativity or time left over for our marriage, and it was taking a toll on us. I think we had to learn that puting a long-term relationship on autopilot indefinitely can be dangerous if not fatal. We decided we had to pull the plug on the tour and go home and figure out if being together was something we were still committed to.

We opted to start over, reinvent our own relationship, dig deep and do the homework to see if we could make our marriage sing. We decided to redirect the same thought and energy, that we had been putting into writing and performing, toward our life at home together. We prayed a lot. Our friends prayed a lot. It was the beginning of a wonderful new chapter for us..."

talking about the song Born:

"When we came home from the tour, we bought two cases of wine and decided we were going to put a bottle on the kitchen table every evening and start talking until nothing was left. The idea was not to get plowed, but to talk face to face deep into the night."

sounds like a great idea, though it would be difficult for couples with kids or for whom one or both had to go to work in the morning!

my favourite song, though, is from martyn joseph. i can relate to so much of what he says. janette had her hair cut quite significantly a few days ago, and she had to mention it to me before i noticed. of course, there were mitigating circumstances - it was dark, i was late home and tired, she went to bed early - but the words of the song ring too true, there are many days when i don't see her anymore, missing...

Every Little Sign

Susie, drain your glass
Let’s head on up the hill
Bring the coat I bought you
Against the evening chill
There's question marks between us
As you slip your arm in mine
There are days when I don't see you
I miss every little sign.

The lights are throwing shadows
And the streets are raining slow
In the yellow of the valley
We can hear the dreams below
I hope I read you right
From the angle of your chin
The our hearts are feeling sore tonight
And this town has hemmed us in

I want to take you somewhere
Where the clouds are never seen
Where now could be replaced
By a bigger brighter dream
Those nights when we were lovers
Have made us distant friends
Can you tell me how this happened
And who goes first to make amends.

I want to bless your heart with magic
And give you all you're due
I want you to have your radiance back
I want to fill your glass anew
To turn our bland verse conversation
Into sentences that rhyme
We could maybe make a rainbow
Instead of marking time.

It's hard to find the strength in love
When everything is frail
When words are wrapped and guarded
Too scared they're gonna fail
But we could ask for healing now
'Til all the veils have gone
And let the moonlight find for us
A better journey on.

Copyright Joseph/Henderson, 2003

more committed?

2005-04-22T16:44:00.000+10:00

thanks to backyard missionary andrew hamilton for the link to this excellent article, It's No Longer About Commitment.

i especially agree that real, 'deep', discipleship must start with the those in leadership (not just pastors, but including elders, deacons and those who may not hold any 'office' but who are effectively leaders because of their maturity in the faith). As the author, stephen hinks, says:

"The starting place for sacrifice to re-enter our parlance and practice is with leadership. Leaders need to lead the way with deep personal change. Leaders need to model what sacrifice is, how choices are made, how costs are weighed and how fruits are enjoyed. When the language of sacrifice is recaptured by individual Christians we can put depth into our disciple-making."

bunch of scheming swindlers

2005-04-21T17:01:00.000+10:00

i know this is lazy blogging, but i came across this excellent quote by soren kierkegaard at emergingsideways (picked up originally from mike at waving or drowing?) and wanted to pass it on:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

the wonderful uighur

2005-04-15T16:36:00.000+10:00

last lot of pictures is from western china, home of the uighur (pronounced weeger)people, amongst others. uighurs are central asian, with a language and culture (including food) completely different to the chinese. they are in fact ethnically and linguistically related to turks, though they use a modified arabic script similar to urdu (turkish is written in a roman script). i don't think the uighurs have ever ruled themselves, their lands belonging to one or other of china, mongolia, russia, khasakhstan, etc., etc. through their history. the western chinese province of xin jiang, where most uighurs live, actually borders mongolia, russia, khazakhstan, kyrgystan, afghanistan, pakistan, india and tibet (it's a big province, rugged and beautiful, with snow-capped mountain ranges rising out of the barren deserts). we spent easter there, and i found it a little ironic that i had to travel to western china to hear the best sermon i've heard in many years, if not ever. but maybe that's not so surprising.

you can even see it from space*

2005-04-14T16:57:00.000+10:00

a few more pictures from our trip, mostly of the great wall. being the end of march, it was still pretty cold, though not as bad as we were told to expect. we were pretty lucky, actually, on the day we went to the wall, because the next day was miserably cold with a biting wind from the northwest.

*obscure bruce cockburn reference - this is a line from his song 'embers of eden', off the 1999 cd 'breakfast in new orleans dinner in timbuktu'.

there and back again

2005-04-12T13:46:00.000+10:00

in case you didn't notice, i haven't been around for a little while. janette, freya and i just got back from a three-week trip to hong kong and china. the main purpose was to visit friends (my brother and his family live in hong kong, and we have other friends in h.k. and in china), but we managed to fit in some sight-seeing along the way. our enjoyment of the trip was somewhat lessened by a bad flu we all picked up along the way, but it was great to visit our family/friends and see where they live, and get a few glimpses of what life is like for them.

naturally, we took a lot of pictures. we only took along a film camera (how terribly 20th century of us), but we've had some of the pics digitised. here are a few highlights from beijing, others to follow presently...

framing and families

2005-03-11T18:01:00.000+11:00

thanks to rowen at sailing close to the wind for the link to don't think of an elephant from a few weeks back. the link contains a review of, and extract from, george lakoff's book Don’t Think of an Elephant – Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (scribe publications, melbourne, 2005).

the idea of 'framing' is thought-provoking and provides a plausible explanation for the hold the bush and howard (aus) governments seem to have over the minds of their electorates at the conceptual level. what piqued my interest most, though, was the depiction of the conservative/progressive divide in terms of two different models of the family: "a strict father family and a nurturant parent family." the description of the 'strict father' model is made with reference to conservative christian author dr. james dobson, who's book dare to discipline has been the bible of child-rearing for conservative/evangelical christians for 30 years. lakoff summarises the set of assumptions behind this paradigm as follows:

The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good.

What is needed in this kind of a world is a strong, strict father who can:

• Protect the family in the dangerous world,

• Support the family in the difficult world, and

• Teach his children right from wrong.

What is required of the child is obedience, because the strict father is a moral authority who knows right from wrong. It is further assumed that the only way to teach kids obedience—that is, right from wrong— is through punishment, painful punishment, when they do wrong. This includes hitting them, and some authors on conservative child rearing recommend sticks, belts, and wooden paddles on the bare bottom. Some authors suggest this start at birth, but Dobson is more liberal. “There is no excuse for spanking babies younger than fifteen or eighteen months of age” (Dobson, The New Dare to Discipline, 65).

The rationale behind physical punishment is this: When children do something wrong, if they are physically disciplined they learn not to do it again. That means that they will develop internal discipline to keep themselves from doing wrong, so that in the future they will be obedient and act morally. Without such punishment, the world will go to hell. There will be no morality.

from what i know, this is a fairly accurate summary of the conservative attitude to child-rearing (as well as to social policy, as lakoff goes on to explain). it has particular personal resonance for me because it is more or less the model with which i was raised (as i expect most children of conservative christians have been from the 1950s to this day). based on my experience, and extensive subsequent reflection, i think that the assumptions and conclusions of this model are fundamentally flawed, and often have very harmful consequences. while it may produce a semblance of obedience and discipline, fear of punishment never by itself engenders true maturity. on the contrary, what it teaches is passive-aggressive conformity while the authority figure is present, and undisciplined free-for-all when it is believed there is little chance of 'being found out'. this is a far cry from the goal of producing adults who make the right choice because they believe it to be the best action, not because they are afraid of the consequences of doing the 'wrong' thing.

this whole subject is especially pertinent for me now that i have a child of my own. as with all children, she needs to learn that she can't do whatever she wants whenever she wants, but she often doesn't understand the boundaries we set for her or why we tell her not to do something, so she screams and resists or defiantly does what we've told her not to. i find it quite hard sometimes to resist dishing out some sort of physical punishment such as a slap, and occasionally i cross the boundary and immediately regret it. on the one hand i'm aware that my reaction is often more to do with what's going on for me than for her (for instance, i'm frustrated that she doesn't obey me, or she has done something that will require me to clean up - she's not of an age to clean up after herself yet). my greatest fear, though, is that she grows up in fear of me. i desperately want her to feel protected by my strength, for it to be a refuge for her, not a threat - no matter what she does.

if freya knows that our love for her is unconditional, that to the best of our knowledge and abilities we have her interest and well-being at heart, then i believe she'll be less likely to question and resist the things we ask her to do, even if she doesn't understand the reason behind it. at the same time, feeling secure in our love will allow her to explore and expand her boundaries, knowing that if she fails or does something wrong, we'll be there for her. then, as she grows up, she'll learn to seek and trust our advice and guidance, eventually becoming an adult who can trust herself to make good decisions based on a good understanding of the consequences.

at least that's the ideal. problem is, we're far from perfect parents and who knows what life will throw at us. boundaries and unconditional love is the principle, but i know we're still going to stuff things up big time. thank god for the resilience he's built into us as human beings. and most of all for his amazing grace to cover over our failures and make all things work for good.

pick of the pics

2005-03-08T17:13:00.000+11:00

if you haven't had a look at the world press photo site, i highly recommend it. the winners gallery for 2005 gives a great retrospective of the events of 2004, both high profile and low, ordinary and historic. excuse the pun, but i think this collection of photos (if it is preserved in any way, which i assume it will be) will be a fascinating snapshot for future generations of the world as it was circa 2004, providing as it does the occasionally intentional but often incidental glimpses of technology, fashion, living conditions, sports, and just about everything else that was part of life as we knew it in the last year.

i especially like these from the nature category:

the weirdest photo must be the headless gymnast:

my favourite, though, is the swimmer who left his legs behind:

also superb (as you'd expect) is the gallery of winners of the last 50 years. for the most part it is a chronicle of tragedy and suffering, but in many ways that is the exactly the history of the last 50 years. after how many millenia of living together in this world, the cruelty and indifference of human beings to others is absolutely shocking, and it continues seemingly unabated.

viewing these pictures, it is easy to believe the assertions of rene girard, that all human societies are structured around the making of victims, killing and excluding in order to define and assert the identity of the group. in knowing jesus, james alison brilliantly turns this idea to the dealings of god with humankind as told in the bible, reframing the gospel as the story of jesus, the gratuitously given, forgiving victim, who willingly suffered the ultimate exclusion and became the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide the way and means for us to have true life in ultimate freedom. this freedom is only found in escaping the tyranny of reactionary and reciprocating violence, moving from the endless cycle of victimhood and victimising to relationships of free and joyful giving of oneself to others, and, in so doing, joining the new society of forgiving victims which is the kingdom of god founded in jesus.

well, i didn't really intend to get all heavy, but these things are on my mind, and i am increasingly sickened by the violence and cruelty in the world and the wilful, repugnant indifference of the privileged (myself included) to the suffering of others. may we grow each day closer to the life god requires of us, in the words of the prophet, "to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (micah 6:8, NIV).

timeless

2005-02-21T15:49:00.000+11:00

guess who wrote this:

"We have heard something lately about being willing to go to war for an idea. To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justified to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in other respects."

sound pretty recent? think again...

these words were written by philosopher john stuart mill in 1859, in an essay entitled A Few Words on Non-Intervention, originally published in Fraser's Magazine and afterwards republished in the third volume of Dissertations and Discussions.

i got the quote from the piece in today's smh by owen harries, It pays to be prudent when it comes to morality in world politics (the article mistakenly attributes it to mills' treatise on liberty, though harries gets it right in his paper Morality and Foreign Policy).

victim mentality

2005-02-18T17:28:00.000+11:00

i'm just over a quarter of the way through james alison's knowing jesus, but from the first pages i knew it was going to be a significant experience, similar to my first encounters with henri nouwen and george macdonald. alison has an amazing way of presenting multifaceted truth in wonderfully simple language, and to make it feel revolutionary yet entirely traditional at the same time. this is the best kind of theological writing, drawing and stimulating and inspiring.

the foreward to the book is by archbishop of canterbury rowan williams, and is excellent in its own right. i'd like to quote it at length, because it does a great job of introducing and setting the tone for the book:

[We] do not meet Jesus simply as another human individual; but neither is he just the subject of inspiring stories. We meet Jesus as the resurrected one - the one who, after those closest to him have betrayed him and left him to die alone, returns as the source of grace and hope to those treacherous and fearful friends. What this means is that Jesus 'appears' now as the agency of a completely gratuitous love, right outside the calculations, rewards and punishments of human relationships, outside the complicated negotiations for living space that dominate the 'ordinary' human world, with its underlying assumption that we all live at each other's expense. And this makes clear to us as never before just how deep that assumption goes, and forces us to look afresh at those at whose expense we live - our victims. The resurrection of Jesus makes it impossible to take for granted that the world is nothing but a system of oppressors and victims, [an] endless cycle of reactive violence. We are free to understand ourselves and each other in a new way, as living in mutual gift not mutual threat. We can collaborate in the relations that the resurrection sets in motion, relations of forgiveness, equality and care. And if we recognise our habitual bondage to reactive relations, passing on or returning the wounds we have received, and feel in our lives together the solid reality of relationships that transcend this, then we 'know Jesus'.

...

James Alison is - among other things - restating what some of his Dominican ancestors meant by 'knowledge through participation', and indeed what the whole early and medieval Christian tradition understood as becoming 'divine' in communion with Christ - growing into freedom, beyond the prison of self-absorbed, self-referential feelings, beyond the reactive and repetitive world sustained by sin. But this recovery of older wisdom is given a profoundly contemporary slant in its concern with violence and victimage. As a culture, we have become more alert to the depth and breadth of historical and personal violence, to just how many victims our 'normative' culture creates. But if we are to believe in the hope of something more than just reparation or settling scores, we need the concrete presence of relations that transcend reaction, jostling for space, rivalry; we need Christ and the Church.

...

[True] theology, truthful reflection on what God is and does, can't be done without conversion to a new perspective on yourself and the world. God is not to be known unless we grasp the depth of our freedom and our unfreedom, unless we give up fictions about our purity or our innocence and become committed to searching out those we exclude and suppress, creating with them the promised community of mutual gift. This is the community that depends on the resurrection of Jesus; to belong wholeheartedly to it is to know Jesus - and the God whom Jesus called 'Father'.

Rowan Williams, Foreward to Knowing Jesus, pp vii - ix

there is so much here, and it certainly doesn't need me to add anything to it. the whole topic of "our freedom and our unfreedom" is in itself a huge one. the real gem in this for me, though, is that in bringing to light the victim mentality which is so strong in us. especially in our closest relationships, but to some extent with everyone we come in contact with, we are so quick to "[pass] on or [return] the wounds we have received". it is a natural and automatic response, which we feel is completely justified - after all, isn't it proper and just to punish the wrongdoer? but it is through the resurrection of jesus that we can gain access to "the solid reality of relationships that transcend this," and we can "collaborate in ... relations of forgiveness, equality and care." the resurrection of jesus breaks "endless cycle of reactive violence," and sets us free to live together in "mutual gift not mutual threat."

what a world that will be!

glimpsing the mystery

2005-02-05T23:57:00.000+11:00

this quote jumped out at me as i was reading on the train on the way home from work on friday evening:

The paradox of faith and of nature is this: the knowledge we gain will bring with it an overwhelming amount of mystery. One escalates in proportion to the other.

Cindy Crosby, The Reconstruction of a Prairie and a Faith, Mars Hill Review Issue 23, pg 130.

i think it's brilliant. the more we know about the world and in our faith, the more we become aware of how much we don't know. but it's not just about us, an awareness of our own ignorance. if we turn our eyes outside ourselves we catch a glimpse of the staggering depth of mystery out there, that we are part of something huge which for now is beyond our ability to see and understand. it's at once awesome and incredibly exciting.

book bonanza

2005-01-31T17:36:00.000+11:00

on the weekend i received a load of books i'd ordered from amazon, delivered to me by my brother scott who is visiting with his family from hong kong. scott picked the books up last week from his parents-in-law's home in los angeles, where i'd had them sent to save a bundle on shipping costs. many, many thanks, scott (and wolitarskys). i owe you big time!

i can't remember being as excited by a book purchase as i am with these. i decided, as i had the u.s. delivery option, to go bulk and blow my year's book budget (and then some...) on the complete james alison set, as well as the complete set by australian catholic monk and author michael casey. here is the entire list of books:

by james alison:
knowing jesus
the joy of being wrong: original sin through easter eyes
raising abel: the recovery of eschatological imagination
faith beyond resentment: fragments catholic and gay
on being liked

by gil bailie:
violence unveiled: humanity at the crossroads

by michael casey:
sacred reading: the ancient art of lectio divina
toward god: the ancient wisdom of western prayer
a guide to living in the truth: saint benedict's teaching on humility
fully human, fully divine: an interactive christology

you might notice that i'm a bit of a completist. it's one of my vices, i suppose, but when i find an excellent author (or singer/band) i just want to devour everything they've produced.

so it looks like my reading for this year (and beyond) is pretty much mapped out. i intend to read the books in chronological order, starting with alison's knowing jesus. i prefer to read an author's works in the order in which they were written anyway (another of my obsessive traits), and doing it this way will also mean skipping from author to author, which will help maintain a bit of variety. if the chronological order means consecutive books by one author, i'll intersperse with one or more of the many other books on my shelf (which i'll probably do anyway to get some fiction into the mix).

can't wait to get into them. this is going to be a great year - and this blog will no doubt be something of a james alison & michael casey journal, or rather (i hope), a dave roberts encounters god in new and life-changing ways through the teaching and facilitation of james alison and michael casey!

bring it on!

military takeover

2005-01-24T17:31:00.000+11:00

via juan cole's informed comment (from a couple of weeks ago - i'm a bit behind in my reading), a very informative and disturbing (though long) article by tom engelhardt. in it, engelhardt demonstrates how the military has come to dominate the u.s. government's response and approach to just about everything outside it's borders:

"The military has become not just our war-fighting and occupying force, but our main "nation-building" force, our major diplomatic force (now that military-to-military relations have become the essence of foreign policy), our preponderant intelligence force, a major propaganda outfit (or call it public diplomacy, if you will), our central ministry for advanced R&D research and basic science, the only part of the government seriously preparing for a global-warming world, and our planetary rescue outfit as well -- to name just a few of its roles. With more clearly to come.
...
That sums up our present Bush moment. In fact, little that this country does from diplomacy to torture to foreign aid is any longer imaginable absent the military. We are a nation whose public face -- however we may still think of ourselves -- is no longer a civilian one, not just in Iraq but in the world at large. This is essentially because, if the Bush people could be said to have a religion, it would not perhaps be fundamentalist Christianity so much as a deep and abiding belief in the ability of a militarized superpower to impose its views and desires on the world through military strength alone."

as part of his analysis, engelhardt highlights something that i have found quite puzzling myself - the u.s. contribution to the tsunami relief:

"[Three days after the event,] George emerged from hibernation to praise American generosity ("we're a very generous, kindhearted nation") and to announce that we would indeed mount a mighty relief effort to be led by… don't be surprised now… the Pentagon. ("We're dispatching a Marine expeditionary unit, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and the Maritime pre-position squadron from Guam to the area to help with relief efforts."). The very concept of a civilian relief effort naturally never came to mind, except -- for an administration intent on stripping civil government of its role in society -- in terms of private charity for which two former presidents would later be mobilized. We then largely ignored the various global relief outfits (including the UN), civilian in nature, with extensive experience in such things, sent Hurricane Jeb and our increasingly pugnacious exiting secretary of state off to do an American assessment of Asian needs; declared our own coalition of the willing (Australia, Japan, India) willy-nilly, and generally rushed unilaterally into the breach."

of course, this all hasn't been a sudden development that can only be laid at feet of the bush administration, but neither have they been backwards in taking it forwards:

"As with extraordinary rendition in the Clinton era, or neocon plans laid out in the 1990s to take down Saddam Hussein, or the establishment of a national security state in the early years of the Cold War, or (as former Latin American prisoners from the 1960s to the 1980s can attest) torture methods employed or taught by CIA or U.S. military interrogators, much of what's happened since September 11, 2001 has a good deal of history behind it. The Bush administration hardly created our American world from scratch. But it certainly accelerated the trend toward militarism, brought torture out of the closet -- making it something close to official state policy -- began to build a small-scale global gulag to go with it, melded extremes of American political and religious expression in new ways, and established what might be called a National Insecurity Homeland in the process."

it's hard not to be deeply disturbed by this. when the guiding principle is 'might is right', neither peace nor justice (nor real freedom, contrary to bush's apparent belief) can prevail. violence of any kind only begets more violence. those who claim to be acting in the name of god are treading on very dangerous ground, as the psalmist says:

"The LORD examines both the righteous and the wicked. He hates everyone who loves violence." (Psalm 11:5, New Living Translation).

authentic

2005-01-21T18:12:00.000+11:00

i've been going through something of a personal crisis in the last few months, which is one of the reasons behind the sparsity in posting on this blog. i don't think it has been all that obvious to those i've been around, excepting janette of course (and probably freya too), but underneath the surface it's been a veritable battle royale.

a couple of days ago i read an essay in mars hill review (the surreal mccoys: a search for authenticity, by dale keller, issue 23), and a few quotes jumped out and grabbed me by the throat. discussing 'pure' as one of the meanings of authentic, keller writes,

"Applying this insight to authenticity in the human character, 'pure' people are those who are the same both inside and out."

the same both inside and out? that's definitely not me. on the contrary, there's a massive difference between what you see and what's happening 'on the inside'. hiding, for me, is more than a habit, it's a deeply ingrained response to the world and other people. it's the outworking of one of my deepest held (and hardest to dislodge) beliefs, that the 'true me' is too dirty, too warped and defiled, to be shown in the light of day, so must be kept deeply hidden. i know from experience that others either don't want to know about or can't handle the real me, so i never bring 'it' out in company.

problem is, i don't believe god can handle it either, that he doesn't want to know about me until i've gotten rid of the dirt. much of my christian experience has reinforced this, teaching me that what's important is maintaining the correct image, not rocking the boat, keeping that messy realities hidden from view. whatever the reason, and we can all play the blame game ad nauseum (and, after all, i'm the one who's ultimately responsible for my actions), the simple fact is that god can handle who i am, not matter how dirty. actually, it's even better than that - the truth is that god has handled it. it's not even a future certainty, it's something that has been accomplished already, the deal is done, the job finished, nothing more to say or do.

but even knowing that, i still fight against it constantly, thinking that i can handle it on my own. and the crap keeps building up, while i scamper around like a fool trying to keep it hidden from view.

later on in the essay, keller writes,

"God wants us to allow him to make a difference in others as a result of the difference he is making in us."

that's the meat of the issue. it's not just about me. i don't like admitting that who i am affects others, but it's an unavoidable reality of human life, if i care at all about those around me i need to face up to it. no matter how good i am at convincing myself that i'm not worth much, that i don't need to let god in for me, i don't want to stand in the way of what he wants to do for the ones i love, first and foremost my lovely 'girls', janette and freya. they are so worth it.

i know i posted this song not so long ago, but it fits too well with what i'm feeling, so here it is again:

Fascist architecture of my own design
Too long been keeping my love confined
You tore me out of myself alive

Those fingers drawing out blood like sweat
While the magnificent facades crumble and burn
The billion facets of brilliant love
The billion facets of freedom turning in the light

Bloody nose and burning eyes
Raised in laughter to the skies

I've been in trouble but I'm ok
Been through the ringer but I'm ok
Walls are falling and I'm ok
Under the mercy and I'm ok

Gonna tell my old lady
Gonna tell my little girl
There isn't anything in the world
That can lock up my love again

(Fascist Architecture, by Bruce Cockburn, from Humans, 1980)

giving, p.s.

2005-01-06T15:03:00.000+11:00

just as a postscript to my previous post, i've just read killing vs helping, an excellent essay by george monbiot on the aid given by the u.s.a. and britain to the tsunami relief effort compared to their spending on the iraq war:

"The US Government has so far pledged $US350million to the victims of the tsunami, and the British Government $US96 million. The US has spent $US148billion on the Iraq war and Britain $US11.5billion. The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the US is the equivalent of 1 days' spending in Iraq. The money Britain has given equates to 5 days of the British involvement in the war."

(originally published in the guardian on tuesday, reprinted in today's smh)

giving

2005-01-06T13:35:00.000+11:00

one of the biggest stories in the wake of the bay of bengal tsunami disaster, sometimes even threatening to engulf news of the tragedy itself and its aftermath, is the amount of aid being given. a few news outlets (the abc among them sadly) were even reporting it like a contest or medal-tally between countries over who was giving the most. i'm disgusted by this apparent need we have to make everything into a contest, even generosity in response to an overwhelming tragedy. such news stories are obscene in the extreme and the editors or producers or whatever making the decision to run them need to take a good hard look at themselves and learn some decency and humanity.

there's no doubt, though, that the giving by individual australians to the disaster relief has been incredible and unprecedented. i'd like to say it's something we should be proud of, but that kind of sentiment seems completely inappropriate in the face of such a catastrophe. giving out of our comparative wealth to those that have lost everything is the absolute least we can do, and it's nothing to boast about.

i personally haven't made any donations yet towards the tsunami emergency appeal. i've been considering how to honour my christmas challenge, and have been thinking that my funds might be more usefully directed elsewhere because of the huge amount already donated. i'm not saying that no more needs to be given, because i know the disaster relief will continue for many months, but there are numerous other ongoing, daily, less glamourous tragedies around the world which are desperate for more to be done. nicholas kristof makes this point in his ny times column. for example, more people than died in the tsunami die every month of malaria - at least 165,000 (over 2 million a year), mostly children and mostly in africa. malaria is almost always curable, but the vast majority of africans can't afford the US$1 a dose medicine that would save them or their children. while not begrudging the millions donated towards the tsunami disaster, it's to causes such as preventing deaths from malaria that i wish more was given more often. which doesn't mean i can't do both...

i want to give special mention (and huge thanks) to my wonderful little sister elizabeth for giving me an adult literacy program from tear australia's (arguably) the world's most useful gift catalog for christmas. i was actually really surprised at how much it meant to me, seeing at how mercenary i usually feel about presents. i can honestly say that it was one of the best gifts i've ever received. huge thanks again, eb!

the christmas challenge

2004-12-20T16:43:00.000+11:00

i've been doing my best to ignore christmas this year, but it's creeping up with ominous inevitability. of course, i've been to a few christmas parties and get-togethers already, but they've been remarkably un-christmas-y, with just the obligatory "merry christmas and happy new year" on parting, if that. last night was the first christmas family gathering (janette's side, for her brother and sister-in-law who will be away on christmas day), but even then there was almost no mention of the 'c'-word, which suited me fine.

i'm certainly not alone in being disenchanted with the whole christmas thing. to me, it has become about as far removed from the 'real meaning' of christmas as you can imagine. i'm not even sure if i agree with the idea of having a holiday to celebrate the birth of jesus - apart from the dubious origin of christmas as the 'christianisation' of a pagan solstice festival, i have a strong feeling the apostles and early believers would have found the idea ludicrous if not blasphemous. the celebration of the gift of jesus is for every day, not to be relegated, as it were, to one day a year (two days including easter). of course, that's exactly how it turned out - jesus is conveniently ignored by most people apart from christmas and easter (and increasingly even on those days), just as he is ignored by many church-goers during the week. on the other hand, you could argue that those people would ignore jesus the whole 365 days of the year, so having two days to bring attention to him is better than none. but i think that's confusing things, because christmas and easter are not primarily 'evangelistic' days (ie. with the purpose of 'spreading the gospel') but days of remembrance for believers. and if that is the case, i can't see any justification in having a set-apart day for christmas, either for believers or as a public holiday (assuming, as is the case, that we live in a secular society).

be all that as it may, there's no ignoring the fact that christmas is a big thing in our society, especially for kids and the retail business. and it's not inherently a bad thing to have a day of giving gifts to the important people in your life. what is bad, in my opinion, is that it has become a time of consumer feeding-frenzy, in which the only consolation to the pressure and stress of getting gifts for everyone else is the loot you'll get yourself (though that's usually disappointing, one of the reasons, i'm sure, for the family 'unrest' that often occurs on christmas day).

it takes a huge amount of imagination, ingenuity and effort to come up with gifts that don't buy into the consumeristic mindset, but that all takes time which most people in our rat-race society don't have. the challenge i would like to set, then (for myself as well), is to match dollar for dollar (at least) the money spent in retail outlets for christmas with donations or gifts to the the most needy in the world. one of the ways to do this is to shop at tear australia's (arguably) the world's most useful gift catalog. apart from that, a couple of excellent organisations to support are data (debt aids trade africa) and oxfam.

hope your christmas is filled with love and the joy of giving.

ahhhhh life

2004-12-02T12:11:00.000+11:00

the last few weeks have been a bit rough, but i feel like i'm on the up again. nothing major has gone wrong but my mental has been way out of wack.

funnily enough (or maybe not), i think much of the depression has to do with blogging - or more to the point, not blogging. for quite a while (six months or more) there wasn't a whole lot to do at work, so it was easy to justify spending time reading and writing on the 'net. i suppose i got spoilt, because the appearance of a good block of stuff to do at work, and hence little time for 'personal work', hit me pretty hard.

it doesn't help that i'm really disliking this job. it's never been the most riveting or stimulating, but i'm getting right sick of it, along with the whole 'getting up at the crack of dawn and getting home after the bub's gone to bed' song and dance. problem is, there's not much alternative at the moment so it's the old case of bite the bullet. i'm really really hoping the book editing and proofreading course i'm working through (slowly) will lead to something.

what i really long for is an unhurried life, with time to read and contemplate and write, to sit (or walk or whatever) with friends and family and have meaningful conversations without feeling the pressure to leave, to go somewhere or do something 'useful', to work but not be consumed or overwhelmed by it. i want my work to be honest, contributing to the good of people and the environment, not just helping some corporation or other make more money out of its customers more efficiently. i want it to be something i believe in, not just something i have to do to maintain a certain 'lifestyle'.

ahhh, dreams...

checking back in

2004-11-23T17:36:00.000+11:00

yes, i'm still here (i know you've missed me), just been mighty busy at work and home. everything's pretty fine, though freya's been sick with a virus the last week (which we thought might have been a form of measles but apparently isn't).

finally got the fence at home we've been working on for months pretty much finished last weekend, thanks to janette's excellent uncle brian. now it's just the gates to be done!

i have a whole bunch of stuff on the back-burner waiting to be put down in writing, but for now i'll just leave you with the latest u.s. republican party ad campaign...

long-time love

2004-11-12T17:49:00.000+11:00

since i don't seem to have too many of my own words this week, i'll go with what looks like becoming a tradition on fridays - something from bruce cockburn...

A Long-Time Love Song

Can't trace this conversation --
Words fragment and fall
Into blue shadows by a white-baked wall.
Through shimmering spaces a single thrush calls --
A song when it's over is no song at all

And you know I long to feel that sail
Leaping in the wind
And i long to see what lies beyond that rim
Oh, ever-new lover and friend
Sing me that love song again.

Time measured in summersaults
And flickering kids' play --
Cross-world and southward it's a fine summer day
Translucent life-span evaporates away
To bead on the cool grass in a cyclic ballet

bruce said about this song:

"There was an old people's home near where I used to live in Toronto - sometimes walking the dog late at night I'd come upon them loading a body in a long black hearse. Only at night. In the light of afternoon, you could see them enjoying the large garden. One wizened gray couple was always holding hands and looking at each other so romantically that it had to be a song."

(from "All The Diamonds" songbook, edited by Arthur McGregor, OFC Publications 1986)

this is a song i want played at my funeral. it connects with my heart-song in a way that no other song does. i love the counterpoint between the images of the transient and cyclical nature of life in the verses and the yearning for something more permanent, "ever-new", in the chorus. it is a beautiful expression of a yearning to be free of the confines of this present life.

there's something in me that really identifies with this longing to "feel that sail leaping in the wind", to know the wildness and freedom of life "beyond that rim" (images here of reepicheep at the end of the voyage of the dawn treader from c.s. lewis' narnia series).

i can't imagine a better articulation of 'what it's all about' than the final lines of the chorus: "ever-new lover and friend, sing me that love song again". this is the purpose and goal of all god's dealings with his creation, the expression of his perfect and undying love, for ever renewing and being renewed.

prized peace

2004-11-04T15:06:00.000+11:00

there's been a fair bit of controversy surrounding the recipient of this year's Sydney Peace Prize, indian author arundhati roy, though not quite as much as last year's, palestinian hanan ashrawi. personally, i think both were excellent choices, and both women very deserving of the prize. this edited extract from roy's peace prize lecture, given at the seymour centre in sydney last night, is well worth a read.

"It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other."