Big Stuff

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

Conscience vote...the fallacy

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

Drei T繹chter

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

Speaking to the world

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


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

Refuge

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


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

q & a

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

An amazing journey

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

Towards the east

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

Yad Vashem

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

Eastern apology

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

Just thinking about packing

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

Any publicity

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Amazing graces

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

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

And the other a lovely, self effacing saint.

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

Great women in our families.

I do not have to have to go far.

My prattling began with Great Grandma Sewell

who ruled her family

from top to bottom.

It was the dynamic of need.

Like so many post-war matriarchs

thrust into the situation to just protect her family

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

It seemed to me she was able to love  her family

children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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