tonight..
Jul. 1st, 2009 | 08:47 pm
Alone and exposed, she stands on the corner on this warm winter night. She defies her solitude with loud words and sobs, stabbing phrases wracked with hurt and anger while her tear-slicked cheeks glint under the streetlight.
I drop my head and try not to look, try to somehow blot her voice from my hearing. But I hear. “..she shoulda known... ..not my baby.. ...fuckin why’d she do that for?”. Words of persistence, a case being constructed, a list of injustices and hurts, directed as if to a supportive friend. Unheard words rising to an empty sky.
It strikes me what a precious sacrament it is to be heard, and it dawns on me that, though I don’t know her, i am the only person capable of giving this gift to my sister on the street tonight.
My soul wants to connect, tell her I can hear her pain and offer some comfort. “Do something, say something”, my insides urge. But I don’t know what to say, don’t want to intrude, don’t want to presume, don’t want to mess things up. So i fix my gaze on some distant object and pass by, as if oblivious of her pain.
And now, as I mull over the moment, I feel guilt, confusion, complicity in the silence of the night. There is something profoundly uncomfortable about the reality that I can let not knowing what to do be an excuse for doing nothing.
I drop my head and try not to look, try to somehow blot her voice from my hearing. But I hear. “..she shoulda known... ..not my baby.. ...fuckin why’d she do that for?”. Words of persistence, a case being constructed, a list of injustices and hurts, directed as if to a supportive friend. Unheard words rising to an empty sky.
It strikes me what a precious sacrament it is to be heard, and it dawns on me that, though I don’t know her, i am the only person capable of giving this gift to my sister on the street tonight.
My soul wants to connect, tell her I can hear her pain and offer some comfort. “Do something, say something”, my insides urge. But I don’t know what to say, don’t want to intrude, don’t want to presume, don’t want to mess things up. So i fix my gaze on some distant object and pass by, as if oblivious of her pain.
And now, as I mull over the moment, I feel guilt, confusion, complicity in the silence of the night. There is something profoundly uncomfortable about the reality that I can let not knowing what to do be an excuse for doing nothing.
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yes!
Feb. 5th, 2009 | 09:16 pm
"some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite to the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being.
This advance will (at first much against the will of the outstripped men) change the love-experience, which is now full of error, and will alter it from the ground up, reshape it into a relation that is meant to be of one human being to another, no longer of man to woman. And this more human love (that will fulfill itself, infinitely considerate and gentle, and kind and clear in binding and releasing) will resemble that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the love that consists of this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet. Letter Seven (written in 1903)
This advance will (at first much against the will of the outstripped men) change the love-experience, which is now full of error, and will alter it from the ground up, reshape it into a relation that is meant to be of one human being to another, no longer of man to woman. And this more human love (that will fulfill itself, infinitely considerate and gentle, and kind and clear in binding and releasing) will resemble that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the love that consists of this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet. Letter Seven (written in 1903)
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Coffee and Charity
Feb. 4th, 2009 | 11:46 pm
This is an article I wrote on a great new blog called sexyjustice, which some friends of mine in the salvos are putting together.
read more
Coffee and Charity
I have a weird affinity for those people who catch you in the mall and try to get you to sign up for charities. I know lots of people find them intrusive, sly, annoying, whatever, but they give me flashbacks of what was a golden era for me - my days being a desperate, single, nice guy in first-year university. Nothing seemed to repel the opposite sex more than a person who telecasted “Look! I’m quirky! And I’ll treat you really respectfully!”. Nice is always a tough sell.read more
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Paradoxes
Feb. 2nd, 2009 | 08:52 pm
mood: strangely content
music: the shins
My work in disability support taught me about ironic paradoxes of the philosophy-practise divide. Philosophically, I'm opposed to practises which restrict the freedoms of a client to make meaningful decisions about their daily life. In practise, sometimes clients are lazy and need to be coerced, tricked or coaxed into doing exercise by any and all means available. I've seen someone's life get significantly happer after a prolonged period of pressure from staff to make an (at that stage) unwanted change in their life.
Working in welfare now, I see the same things all the time. Sometimes you hear seasoned community workers sigh and say "that girl needs jail, not rehab", and you just know that they have more integrity in making that call than all the theorists in the universe. It's strange. Sometimes the most passionately held principle just doesn't work in a particular case. Like, how did Bonhoeffer, one of the great nonviolent theorists of the 20th Century, wind up involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler? Somehow, his theology, though grounded in the universalist peace-dictum "Thou Shalt not Kill", could allow room for a murder. Go figure.
I went for a jog this afternoon with a guy who is a brand new Christian. He's super naieve, his theology is sketchy and his belief approaches superstition in places. Jaded though I may be, I usually go along with what the newbies say, because, well, I'm not a total asshole. I'll get cranky at a long-time minister for having a militant view, but somehow it's easier to tolerate a simplistic view from someone who's new to it all. You figure they'll pick up the finer points along the way..
This guy was just beautiful, in love with life and in awe of God. He saw God in absolutely everything. When i told him about my coming to be part of St Michael's community, meeting Soph, and falling into the work and study i do now, he was just awestruck. "God's timing's been perfect for you, hasn't it?". I had to agree. Yep, things've fallen into place remarkably neatly a number of times in my last few years. As we jogged, I began to wonder whether my super humanistic conceptual God really accounts for the evidence my life puts forward. Maybe it does, maybe not.
I notice the incredible suggestability of the human species in this, and practically every event at the moment. The thing about arguing with smart people who disagree with you is that, as often as not, they win you over. I'm highly conscious that the saying "you are what you eat" operates in my academic and social diets as much as it does for food - I gravitate towards the ideas and outlooks of the people I read and associate with, with an alarming predictability. And as far as I can tell, most other people do too. This fascinating human impulse that renders "Birds of a feather.." a self-fulfilling prophecy in social groups, is unpacked in this fascinating - and alarming - article. For a trait so seemingly widespread in society, it strikes me as funny that our innate suggestibility isn't more commonly talked about, though I think I know why. Who is comfortable with the possibility that a majority of their originality of thought and opinion is little more than an a sedimentation of the influences around us (is this the "cloud of influences" Satre talked about? someone more philosophically savvy feel free to jump in here). It doesn't bode well for those of us who like to consider ourselves independent thinkers.
To this rather concrete sense of my own suggestibility, I now throw in the curveball paradox of occasional certainty. Acknowledging my general malleability of thought, I'm also aware of numbers of concrete ideological positions i simply hold to be true. There's something in me that, amongst the whirlwind of ideas and influences, erects a moral truth and refuses to budge on it - these are probably my best and worst thoughts. For example, despite a hundred conversations a year with people who disagree with me, I maintain a fierce dedication to the simple truth that nonviolence, not war, is the antecedent for peace. Perhaps I will come to acknowledge, from time to time, a need for this man to be executed, or for that war to be considered just (perhaps I wont, too!) - and that will be a mysterious paradox, which mustn't be seen as negating the larger truth. I have to believe that despite all my tooing and froing in the world of ideological certainty, I'm somehow also arriving at some positions which are worth holding onto.
Working in welfare now, I see the same things all the time. Sometimes you hear seasoned community workers sigh and say "that girl needs jail, not rehab", and you just know that they have more integrity in making that call than all the theorists in the universe. It's strange. Sometimes the most passionately held principle just doesn't work in a particular case. Like, how did Bonhoeffer, one of the great nonviolent theorists of the 20th Century, wind up involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler? Somehow, his theology, though grounded in the universalist peace-dictum "Thou Shalt not Kill", could allow room for a murder. Go figure.
I went for a jog this afternoon with a guy who is a brand new Christian. He's super naieve, his theology is sketchy and his belief approaches superstition in places. Jaded though I may be, I usually go along with what the newbies say, because, well, I'm not a total asshole. I'll get cranky at a long-time minister for having a militant view, but somehow it's easier to tolerate a simplistic view from someone who's new to it all. You figure they'll pick up the finer points along the way..
This guy was just beautiful, in love with life and in awe of God. He saw God in absolutely everything. When i told him about my coming to be part of St Michael's community, meeting Soph, and falling into the work and study i do now, he was just awestruck. "God's timing's been perfect for you, hasn't it?". I had to agree. Yep, things've fallen into place remarkably neatly a number of times in my last few years. As we jogged, I began to wonder whether my super humanistic conceptual God really accounts for the evidence my life puts forward. Maybe it does, maybe not.
I notice the incredible suggestability of the human species in this, and practically every event at the moment. The thing about arguing with smart people who disagree with you is that, as often as not, they win you over. I'm highly conscious that the saying "you are what you eat" operates in my academic and social diets as much as it does for food - I gravitate towards the ideas and outlooks of the people I read and associate with, with an alarming predictability. And as far as I can tell, most other people do too. This fascinating human impulse that renders "Birds of a feather.." a self-fulfilling prophecy in social groups, is unpacked in this fascinating - and alarming - article. For a trait so seemingly widespread in society, it strikes me as funny that our innate suggestibility isn't more commonly talked about, though I think I know why. Who is comfortable with the possibility that a majority of their originality of thought and opinion is little more than an a sedimentation of the influences around us (is this the "cloud of influences" Satre talked about? someone more philosophically savvy feel free to jump in here). It doesn't bode well for those of us who like to consider ourselves independent thinkers.
To this rather concrete sense of my own suggestibility, I now throw in the curveball paradox of occasional certainty. Acknowledging my general malleability of thought, I'm also aware of numbers of concrete ideological positions i simply hold to be true. There's something in me that, amongst the whirlwind of ideas and influences, erects a moral truth and refuses to budge on it - these are probably my best and worst thoughts. For example, despite a hundred conversations a year with people who disagree with me, I maintain a fierce dedication to the simple truth that nonviolence, not war, is the antecedent for peace. Perhaps I will come to acknowledge, from time to time, a need for this man to be executed, or for that war to be considered just (perhaps I wont, too!) - and that will be a mysterious paradox, which mustn't be seen as negating the larger truth. I have to believe that despite all my tooing and froing in the world of ideological certainty, I'm somehow also arriving at some positions which are worth holding onto.
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The faith journey
Jan. 12th, 2009 | 12:35 pm
Faith has always come naturally to me. I don't know whether this is because of the way I was raised, or some predisposition to belief in my psyche. All i know is that my whole life I've found belief a whole lot easier than those around me. And even as my faith has undergone dozens of significant revisions during my adult life as i've come to understand science and politics and history (and theology!) in greater scope and detail, I've found the core tenets of my faith to be a fairly robust base upon which everything else has hung. But my choice to study elements of my own religion from a scientific point of view has really shaken my foundations this past year.
It's tempting to paint a current crisis as one's most significant crisis, so I'm trying to temper the way I narrate myself. I've doubted before, I've struggled with many aspect's of the idea of God before. I don't remember my doubts having such sustained logic to them in the past, however.
Contemporary Ritology explains quite succinctly why people feel such awe around the Lord's supper, and how Hillsong songs optimise one's feeling of closeness to God. Anthropology suggests plausible explanations for the evolution of religious thought. Actually reading religious texts from other cultures presents one with the uncomfortable realisation that there are other religious concepts that explain human relationships quite well too. The Mahabharata and Prometheus Bound underscore decent ethical frameworks that are different, but not, to my mind, inferior to those lain out in Biblical narratives. Perhaps I'm a little entranced by the exotic Otherness of these cultures, and am not yet equipped to critically engage with them.. But it's nonetheless caused in me a quiet sense of alarm when I've been at Church lately.
A few years ago I was introduced to an idea of how faith develops in a person. It goes something like this..
Faith usually begins with utmost simplicity and elegance. Like a first love, it is pure and black and white and uncluttered with the fetters of reality and logic. it just works, and it is beautiful to experience. This meets a crisis when complexity is encountered. The simplistic rendering of the world into binary concepts like good and evil, sin and holiness etc are found inadequate as tools for categorising the very grey realities of life. This resolves in the development of Complex faith - Faith within Complexity. This faith acknowledges the complexities of the world, but finds ways to resolve what initially appeared to be barriers to the synthesis of faith and reason.
This model has, until recently, fairly accurately described my faith journey. As new knowledge has been received, the faith-framework works to accept the knowledge within itself. My politics and faith have found themselves in complex, but complimentary synthesis.
Looking over the model today, I notice two significant issues, however. Firstly, it neglects to mention what happens if the believer is unable to incorporate the complexity into their faith model.
Ouch. It hurts just looking at it. All those exhortations to keep the faith that resound throughout the scriptures seem to be counseling against letting this happen. The complexity of it all can overwhelm, but holding on to a simplistic faith - one that can be utterly confounded by reason - isn't a good move either. It takes a sustained course of mental gymnastics to keep your faith afloat in a world of complexity (This ought not to be bad news in itself. It must be remembered that to remain constant in any belief or conviction over the years requires the same mammoth amount of creative headwork).
The second issue, and really the big one affecting me right now, is that complexities just increase the more you learn. I don't think you can put faith and complexity in the same neat box and suggest that they represent the end of the journey. As complexity continues to increase, the process of incorporating it into a faith model becomes an increasingly difficult task. Certain critiques might come along that reveal large sections of the faith-frameworks to be a neat, but flimsy constructs, which will be discouraging and costly news to the believer. But perhaps worst of all, the process of continually tweaking their faith-model might so fatigue or disillusion the believer that their faith eventually withers away beneath the stress of it all. I'm in danger of doing this.
But then there's this:
Last night at church I couldn't help but be carried away by the simple joy of song, friendship, and the remarkable narrative of grace that Christ embodies. Despite having the tools to analyse and explain it all away, I was confronted with the reality that faith is good. On the whole, my religion is a construct of immense beauty which motivates people to celebrate and do the good things in life. It helps me to do the same. That's just wonderful, and funnily enough, it's a realisation that's not tunlike to the original one that sparks faith to begin with. There's a joyful elegance, a wonderful simplicity to faith that just is and does. The complexity can't be sidelined, but nor can this basic, elemental reality of goodness that pervades the whole thing.
So I guess that's where I am. Today I'm approaching the green box, but I acknowledge my propensity to hang out in the pink one a fair bit too.
I read a person describing their faith as a 'qualified theism' recently. I'm not sure I'm wiling to place conditions upon how God may or may not operate just yet. I haven't yet abandoned awe. But perhaps I'm moving in this direction. I also wonder whether i'll become a different kind of fundamentalist, whose unshakable belief that "God is Love" comprises in entirety, my religion. But then perhaps the faith of my childhood offers more than i've given it credit for. Who knows? I'm open.
for now there is Faith, Hope and Love.
Amen
It's tempting to paint a current crisis as one's most significant crisis, so I'm trying to temper the way I narrate myself. I've doubted before, I've struggled with many aspect's of the idea of God before. I don't remember my doubts having such sustained logic to them in the past, however.
Contemporary Ritology explains quite succinctly why people feel such awe around the Lord's supper, and how Hillsong songs optimise one's feeling of closeness to God. Anthropology suggests plausible explanations for the evolution of religious thought. Actually reading religious texts from other cultures presents one with the uncomfortable realisation that there are other religious concepts that explain human relationships quite well too. The Mahabharata and Prometheus Bound underscore decent ethical frameworks that are different, but not, to my mind, inferior to those lain out in Biblical narratives. Perhaps I'm a little entranced by the exotic Otherness of these cultures, and am not yet equipped to critically engage with them.. But it's nonetheless caused in me a quiet sense of alarm when I've been at Church lately.
A few years ago I was introduced to an idea of how faith develops in a person. It goes something like this..
Faith usually begins with utmost simplicity and elegance. Like a first love, it is pure and black and white and uncluttered with the fetters of reality and logic. it just works, and it is beautiful to experience. This meets a crisis when complexity is encountered. The simplistic rendering of the world into binary concepts like good and evil, sin and holiness etc are found inadequate as tools for categorising the very grey realities of life. This resolves in the development of Complex faith - Faith within Complexity. This faith acknowledges the complexities of the world, but finds ways to resolve what initially appeared to be barriers to the synthesis of faith and reason.
This model has, until recently, fairly accurately described my faith journey. As new knowledge has been received, the faith-framework works to accept the knowledge within itself. My politics and faith have found themselves in complex, but complimentary synthesis.
Looking over the model today, I notice two significant issues, however. Firstly, it neglects to mention what happens if the believer is unable to incorporate the complexity into their faith model.
Ouch. It hurts just looking at it. All those exhortations to keep the faith that resound throughout the scriptures seem to be counseling against letting this happen. The complexity of it all can overwhelm, but holding on to a simplistic faith - one that can be utterly confounded by reason - isn't a good move either. It takes a sustained course of mental gymnastics to keep your faith afloat in a world of complexity (This ought not to be bad news in itself. It must be remembered that to remain constant in any belief or conviction over the years requires the same mammoth amount of creative headwork).
The second issue, and really the big one affecting me right now, is that complexities just increase the more you learn. I don't think you can put faith and complexity in the same neat box and suggest that they represent the end of the journey. As complexity continues to increase, the process of incorporating it into a faith model becomes an increasingly difficult task. Certain critiques might come along that reveal large sections of the faith-frameworks to be a neat, but flimsy constructs, which will be discouraging and costly news to the believer. But perhaps worst of all, the process of continually tweaking their faith-model might so fatigue or disillusion the believer that their faith eventually withers away beneath the stress of it all. I'm in danger of doing this.
But then there's this:
Last night at church I couldn't help but be carried away by the simple joy of song, friendship, and the remarkable narrative of grace that Christ embodies. Despite having the tools to analyse and explain it all away, I was confronted with the reality that faith is good. On the whole, my religion is a construct of immense beauty which motivates people to celebrate and do the good things in life. It helps me to do the same. That's just wonderful, and funnily enough, it's a realisation that's not tunlike to the original one that sparks faith to begin with. There's a joyful elegance, a wonderful simplicity to faith that just is and does. The complexity can't be sidelined, but nor can this basic, elemental reality of goodness that pervades the whole thing.
So I guess that's where I am. Today I'm approaching the green box, but I acknowledge my propensity to hang out in the pink one a fair bit too.
I read a person describing their faith as a 'qualified theism' recently. I'm not sure I'm wiling to place conditions upon how God may or may not operate just yet. I haven't yet abandoned awe. But perhaps I'm moving in this direction. I also wonder whether i'll become a different kind of fundamentalist, whose unshakable belief that "God is Love" comprises in entirety, my religion. But then perhaps the faith of my childhood offers more than i've given it credit for. Who knows? I'm open.
for now there is Faith, Hope and Love.
Amen
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important questions
Jan. 6th, 2009 | 12:29 am
Dear LJ, I have so much I want to tell you, but i just can't seem to find the place to begin.. maybe this will help.
A - Available: for conversation, but soph has dibs on my lips, hands and heart
A - Age: 27
A - Annoyance: unambitious climate goals
B - Bestest Friend[s]: are great listeners and speak truth to me even whenI don’t want to know
B - Birthday: September 10
C - Crush: Claire Danes through the aquarium with des’ree playing
C - Car: cycle
C - Candy: was a great song by Mandy Moore
D - Day or night: day and night
D - Dream Car: Corvette convertible (lime green)
E- Easiest person to talk to?: Soph. Or Chris, or Benny M or Dad
E- Eggs: yes, please!
F - Favorite Month: whichever month the Adelaide art/film/fringe festival is on
F - Favorite color(s): mission brown
F - Favorite Memory: first concert on my own. Pearl Jam at Thebby oval, 15yrs old, felt elated, like i’d come of age, and then utterly bereft when it finished.
G - Gummy Bears or Worms: the sour worms. mouth waters at the mention..
G - Giver or taker: giver of pure white boy funk moves, taker of your adoration.
H - Hair Color: dark brown
H - Height: 176cm. Ah metric, what a system!
H - Happy: given who I wake up next to, how could I not be
I - Ice Cream: Golden Gaytime, the greatest icecream of all time
I - Instrument: my body
J - Jewelry: still getting used to my wedding ring. jewellry makes me nervous.
J - Job: Community education stuff with www.hopestreet.org.au, postgrad student
J - Jail: Would love to, for something anarchic
K - Kids: yeah sorta
K - Kickboxing or Karate: maybe capoiera? I like the pants though
K - Kindergarten: it’s still exactly the same as it was when i went there (I walked past it recently)
L - Longest Car Ride: Strzelecki Track. Oh my, what stark beauty!
M - Milk Flavor: Farmers Union Iced Coffee
M - Most missed person: hmm.. maybe Jock, by best friend from school who lives in Brissy
M - Movie: Buster Keaton’s The General. See it
N - Number of Siblings: 2
N - Number of Tattoos: one one day, but currently still sporting virgin flesh
N - Name: Timothy Paul
O - One Wish: to always share home with great friends
O - One Phobia: cycle accidents involving car doors
O - One regret: being so dependent on others’ approval when I was acting
P- Pet Peeves: drug abuse by rich young professionals
P- Part of your appearance you like best?: I really like my figure. I’m gracefully bony.
P- Part of your personality?: I don’t stay down for long
Q- Quote:
Q- Quick or Slow: Quick for eating, slow for loving
R - Reason to smile: Something that happened involving girls at my 21st birthday party :)
R - Reality TV Show: don’t really watch tv.
R - Reason to cry: 200 million more people suffering extreme poverty last year
S - Song Last Heard: Beatles - I Will
S - Season: hot Summer
S - Shoe: I’m secretly loving my birkenstocks right now
T - Time you woke up: 8am
T - Time Now: 12:05 am (poor soph’s just heading home now!)
T - Time for bed: Usually nowish
U - U love someone: very deeply
U - Unpredictable?: At restaurants, totally. I always go for the surprise
U - Underwear: yes
V - Vegetable you hate: meat
V - Vacation spot: I want to see Denmark again, or the west coast USA, or the beautiful Flinders Ranges
W- Worst Habits: pottering
W- Where are you going to travel next?: hopefully road trip down the coast with Soph
W- Weather right now: hot and muggy summer evening
X - X-Rays: I wish they were like in the muppets where you stand behind the screen and your bones appear on it
Y - Year you were born: 1981
Y - Year it is now: duh
Y - Yellow: Soph said Dandilions, and I was thinking about dirty teeth.
Z - Zoo Animal: goats. nothing beats the petting zoo goats!
A - Available: for conversation, but soph has dibs on my lips, hands and heart
A - Age: 27
A - Annoyance: unambitious climate goals
B - Bestest Friend[s]: are great listeners and speak truth to me even whenI don’t want to know
B - Birthday: September 10
C - Crush: Claire Danes through the aquarium with des’ree playing
C - Car: cycle
C - Candy: was a great song by Mandy Moore
D - Day or night: day and night
D - Dream Car: Corvette convertible (lime green)
E- Easiest person to talk to?: Soph. Or Chris, or Benny M or Dad
E- Eggs: yes, please!
F - Favorite Month: whichever month the Adelaide art/film/fringe festival is on
F - Favorite color(s): mission brown
F - Favorite Memory: first concert on my own. Pearl Jam at Thebby oval, 15yrs old, felt elated, like i’d come of age, and then utterly bereft when it finished.
G - Gummy Bears or Worms: the sour worms. mouth waters at the mention..
G - Giver or taker: giver of pure white boy funk moves, taker of your adoration.
H - Hair Color: dark brown
H - Height: 176cm. Ah metric, what a system!
H - Happy: given who I wake up next to, how could I not be
I - Ice Cream: Golden Gaytime, the greatest icecream of all time
I - Instrument: my body
J - Jewelry: still getting used to my wedding ring. jewellry makes me nervous.
J - Job: Community education stuff with www.hopestreet.org.au, postgrad student
J - Jail: Would love to, for something anarchic
K - Kids: yeah sorta
K - Kickboxing or Karate: maybe capoiera? I like the pants though
K - Kindergarten: it’s still exactly the same as it was when i went there (I walked past it recently)
L - Longest Car Ride: Strzelecki Track. Oh my, what stark beauty!
M - Milk Flavor: Farmers Union Iced Coffee
M - Most missed person: hmm.. maybe Jock, by best friend from school who lives in Brissy
M - Movie: Buster Keaton’s The General. See it
N - Number of Siblings: 2
N - Number of Tattoos: one one day, but currently still sporting virgin flesh
N - Name: Timothy Paul
O - One Wish: to always share home with great friends
O - One Phobia: cycle accidents involving car doors
O - One regret: being so dependent on others’ approval when I was acting
P- Pet Peeves: drug abuse by rich young professionals
P- Part of your appearance you like best?: I really like my figure. I’m gracefully bony.
P- Part of your personality?: I don’t stay down for long
Q- Quote:
Q- Quick or Slow: Quick for eating, slow for loving
R - Reason to smile: Something that happened involving girls at my 21st birthday party :)
R - Reality TV Show: don’t really watch tv.
R - Reason to cry: 200 million more people suffering extreme poverty last year
S - Song Last Heard: Beatles - I Will
S - Season: hot Summer
S - Shoe: I’m secretly loving my birkenstocks right now
T - Time you woke up: 8am
T - Time Now: 12:05 am (poor soph’s just heading home now!)
T - Time for bed: Usually nowish
U - U love someone: very deeply
U - Unpredictable?: At restaurants, totally. I always go for the surprise
U - Underwear: yes
V - Vegetable you hate: meat
V - Vacation spot: I want to see Denmark again, or the west coast USA, or the beautiful Flinders Ranges
W- Worst Habits: pottering
W- Where are you going to travel next?: hopefully road trip down the coast with Soph
W- Weather right now: hot and muggy summer evening
X - X-Rays: I wish they were like in the muppets where you stand behind the screen and your bones appear on it
Y - Year you were born: 1981
Y - Year it is now: duh
Y - Yellow: Soph said Dandilions, and I was thinking about dirty teeth.
Z - Zoo Animal: goats. nothing beats the petting zoo goats!
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Honouring the Truth
Nov. 5th, 2008 | 11:04 pm
During my research proposal presentation, Professor Jules stated that she disagreed with my perspective of ethics. She suggested every person is, to a degree, blind to the ideological hegemonies that dictate their perspective of ethics in a situation. I’d never thought about the unconscious dimension before.
If I understand her correctly (anybody read much on ethics, and wanna throw me a few reading suggestions here?), it goes something like this:
Let's take an ethical dilemma that many young people encounter: You’ve just finished high school and passionately want to study acrobatics and one day join the circus, but your parents want you to study biochemical engineering and become a boring engineer instead.
My cultural perspective as a middle class Australian includes the idea that a person gains the legal rights and responsibilities of an adult at 18, as well as a capitalistic understanding of enterprise, which favours a notion of the individual being largely responsible for his or her own fate.
Now I don’t regularly think about these cultural factors, but Jules' theory goes that they would inform the way I would interpret the commandment “Honour thy mother and Father” to figure out the right thing to do. My decision, If I was in this situation, might be something along the lines of: I have always obeyed my parents’ directions up until now, however, I’m 18 now which makes me my own person. They have to accept that as an adult it’s my responsibility to make my own decisions. Therefore, It is perfectly okay for me to displease my parents and join the circus. I haven’t broken the commandment.
Now what if the exact same dilemma faces, say, a young Japanese* student? This young person exists in a culture which places high importance on the notion of honour, particularly in regards to a person’s family. I imagine that in Japan, a person’s duty to honour their parents doesn’t stop once adulthood is reached. “Honouring” probably involves not just obeying the wishes of one’s parents, but also avoiding anything that might bring shame upon their family name.
This young person, I imagine, would have a difficult time justifying their decision to join the circus using the “honour thy mother and father” rule. Also, feeling a responsibility to find work that contributes to the wellbeing and honour of the family really makes the unpredictable, bohemian lifestyle of a circus performer quite the inappropriate choice. I would surmise the diligent Christian in this cultural context would have little choice but to submit to their parent’s wishes.
So in essence, what seems to be a perfectly clear and direct command (Honour thy Mother and Father) actually nets the opposite result, depending on the (largely invisible) cultural values that undergird a person’s view of the world.
If this is the case (and I’m thinking it may well be), I think it’s important to ask:
Can we rightly assume to have the capacity to correctly interpret and live out the moral commands of the Bible?
Anybody got any wisdom to offer here?
*Sorry Japan if I’m misrepresenting you here. I’m basing this almost solely on Kill Bill and few pages of a Lonely Planet guide.
If I understand her correctly (anybody read much on ethics, and wanna throw me a few reading suggestions here?), it goes something like this:
Let's take an ethical dilemma that many young people encounter: You’ve just finished high school and passionately want to study acrobatics and one day join the circus, but your parents want you to study biochemical engineering and become a boring engineer instead.
My cultural perspective as a middle class Australian includes the idea that a person gains the legal rights and responsibilities of an adult at 18, as well as a capitalistic understanding of enterprise, which favours a notion of the individual being largely responsible for his or her own fate.
Now I don’t regularly think about these cultural factors, but Jules' theory goes that they would inform the way I would interpret the commandment “Honour thy mother and Father” to figure out the right thing to do. My decision, If I was in this situation, might be something along the lines of: I have always obeyed my parents’ directions up until now, however, I’m 18 now which makes me my own person. They have to accept that as an adult it’s my responsibility to make my own decisions. Therefore, It is perfectly okay for me to displease my parents and join the circus. I haven’t broken the commandment.
Now what if the exact same dilemma faces, say, a young Japanese* student? This young person exists in a culture which places high importance on the notion of honour, particularly in regards to a person’s family. I imagine that in Japan, a person’s duty to honour their parents doesn’t stop once adulthood is reached. “Honouring” probably involves not just obeying the wishes of one’s parents, but also avoiding anything that might bring shame upon their family name.
This young person, I imagine, would have a difficult time justifying their decision to join the circus using the “honour thy mother and father” rule. Also, feeling a responsibility to find work that contributes to the wellbeing and honour of the family really makes the unpredictable, bohemian lifestyle of a circus performer quite the inappropriate choice. I would surmise the diligent Christian in this cultural context would have little choice but to submit to their parent’s wishes.
So in essence, what seems to be a perfectly clear and direct command (Honour thy Mother and Father) actually nets the opposite result, depending on the (largely invisible) cultural values that undergird a person’s view of the world.
If this is the case (and I’m thinking it may well be), I think it’s important to ask:
Can we rightly assume to have the capacity to correctly interpret and live out the moral commands of the Bible?
Anybody got any wisdom to offer here?
*Sorry Japan if I’m misrepresenting you here. I’m basing this almost solely on Kill Bill and few pages of a Lonely Planet guide.
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ritual making in New Monastic communities - can I study you?
Jul. 3rd, 2008 | 02:42 pm
Hi folks
My name is Tim, I'm a research student based in Sydney, Australia. I'm currently working on a research Masters which concerns itself with community ritual making and identity formation. I'm really interested in doing a case study on a New Monastic/intentional living community.
I'm writing because I'd like to make contact with a few people in different communities around the place to try to get a picture of what their daily lives look like. My focus is on the rituals that communities use, how they have developed, and to examine the function rituals play within the community's daily life, and in the formation/projection of its identity. I'm particulaly interested in what might be called 'spiritual disciplines' - the spiritually formative habits that are practised within the community.
So I'm really wondering if anyone here knows of, or is part of, a Christian collective that functions along the lines of an order (or maybe you're part of a more traditional order that is attempting to reinvent/reinvigorate their own ritual practises - that's interesting to me too), and wouldn't mind talking about it with me, could you send me an email? My email is: timkurylowicz [at] gmail [dot] com (or you might just leave a comment on this page - whatever suits!)
As I've said, I'm based in Sydney, which means I'm extra-specially keen to chat with Australian-based guys and girls because it's a bit easier for me to organise a research visit if you're local. I'd still LOVE to speak first hand with folk wherever they are in the world. Your group doesn't have to have published
their own liturgy resources or pioneered a new whiz bang ritual, either (though if you have, i'd really really like to ask you about it!) - if you regularly share a meal or pray together from time to time, that's interesting to me too.
If you email me, I'll get in contact with you and maybe we can organise a time when I can call you up (my expense, of course) and chat. Perhaps you know of a brilliant resource or website that's out there too - please feel free to email it to me.
Thanks very much for reading this. Have a top day!
Tim
The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. Rom 8:29
My name is Tim, I'm a research student based in Sydney, Australia. I'm currently working on a research Masters which concerns itself with community ritual making and identity formation. I'm really interested in doing a case study on a New Monastic/intentional living community.
I'm writing because I'd like to make contact with a few people in different communities around the place to try to get a picture of what their daily lives look like. My focus is on the rituals that communities use, how they have developed, and to examine the function rituals play within the community's daily life, and in the formation/projection of its identity. I'm particulaly interested in what might be called 'spiritual disciplines' - the spiritually formative habits that are practised within the community.
So I'm really wondering if anyone here knows of, or is part of, a Christian collective that functions along the lines of an order (or maybe you're part of a more traditional order that is attempting to reinvent/reinvigorate their own ritual practises - that's interesting to me too), and wouldn't mind talking about it with me, could you send me an email? My email is: timkurylowicz [at] gmail [dot] com (or you might just leave a comment on this page - whatever suits!)
As I've said, I'm based in Sydney, which means I'm extra-specially keen to chat with Australian-based guys and girls because it's a bit easier for me to organise a research visit if you're local. I'd still LOVE to speak first hand with folk wherever they are in the world. Your group doesn't have to have published
their own liturgy resources or pioneered a new whiz bang ritual, either (though if you have, i'd really really like to ask you about it!) - if you regularly share a meal or pray together from time to time, that's interesting to me too.If you email me, I'll get in contact with you and maybe we can organise a time when I can call you up (my expense, of course) and chat. Perhaps you know of a brilliant resource or website that's out there too - please feel free to email it to me.
Thanks very much for reading this. Have a top day!
Tim
The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. Rom 8:29
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living heresies
Jun. 26th, 2008 | 04:12 pm
I'm not sure if I'm spot on here with my history, but it is my understanding that the big heresy of the Cathars (and somewhere in Gnosticism too) was a splitting of God into two - an evil 'old' god and a gracious new God, which was embodied by Jesus.
For this heresy (and probably more significantly, for refusing to participate in the church's Crusades on account of their opposition to violence), the Cathars were ruthlessly eradicated in the Albigensian Crusades - a 100 year long series of bloody battles and massacres. I'm reading Walter Wink's the Powers that Be, a book which I think excellently unpacks the proceses through which religion can become a seat of power for entrenched systems of domination (patriarchy, class, caste, dogma etc). The thing that's been on my mind with the story of the Cathars, is the way that their two-God conception strikes me as (a) not that heretical to begin with and (b) an attractive way of thinking about God.
Wink points out that the one societal segment Jesus didn't pronounce blessings upon were the fathers - he didn't want to endorse or bless those who had positioned themselves as unquestioned dominators for centuries. This Jesus who I know declares a new day, a new kingdom of God that values the outcast, the child, the enslaved, the feminine. In this new kingdom, the religious dominators are likened to chaff which blows away in a puff of wind, hollow and of no real consequence to the world. It's a dominion of servants, peacemakers, friends and lovers (and also fathers - fathers gloriously freed of the crippling false notions of leadership through prowess, cunning and violence). The driving force in the new god's realm is hope, not strategy; faith, not rationality; imputed purity, not imposed piety. Its concern is with the momentary, and with a longed for future. It doesn't let the past trip it up.
When I look at the popular Christianity of today, with its penchant for emphasising Family Values that somehow revolve around a crusading "headship" male, I am tempted to split God in two. For if the church is the physical embodiment of Christ, and if the Christ-on-earth i see looks nothing like the kingdom Christ envisioned, I'll need to divorce the two. I want to draw a line in history that relegates every moment before this morning to the dominion of the old god, but the realms of 'today' and 'tomorrow' I give solely to the endlessly gracious Christ god.
There is a potential for great freedom within a community that does this. A community who focusses only on the good god is free to discard the vices of old. It isn't bound to repeat past evils under the guise of adherence to tradition. In stark contrast to the church of today, it is free to actually pose the question "what ought the body of Christ look like this day?", without consideration of centuries-old baggage that might prevent it taking action.
But then I can see the trap too. It's too easy to cast blame on a disassociated party. If the evils of the past are the territory of the old god, then i can endlessly blame him, and my own community doesn't have to take any responsibility. Absolution by disassociation is scapegoating. Scarier still, under a two-God conception, I can behave however I like, comfortable in the assumption that today's injustices will one day come to be regarded as the handiwork of the old god. So by letting there be two oppositional gods, I remove myself from the equation when it comes to questions of evil - it's always the bad god's fault. I know I sometimes use the label "emerging church" as a way of disassociating myself from the baggage of the mainstream church.
I wonder - is this what some Christians do today by the way they talk about the Devil? If the Devil is charactarised as an equal, opposing force to God, it renders humankind powerless to the whims of their gods. This takes away our agency, our call to ethical living and to wholistism, our stake in the formation of the new kingdom. So two gods doesn't work. I get why it was such a paradigm shift when monotheism came about. A single God means the world exists for a purpose, rather than as a consequence of the actions of a community of deities. It cements the need for humans to have agency.
So again we get back to the question of how the community is to relate to God. I think the challenge is this: to daily imagine and strive to realise the good; to condemn - but also to own - the bad. Or put another way, we, the body of Christ, are to envision and live out the new kingdom, uninhibited by the historical fact that we absolutely suck at it.
For this heresy (and probably more significantly, for refusing to participate in the church's Crusades on account of their opposition to violence), the Cathars were ruthlessly eradicated in the Albigensian Crusades - a 100 year long series of bloody battles and massacres. I'm reading Walter Wink's the Powers that Be, a book which I think excellently unpacks the proceses through which religion can become a seat of power for entrenched systems of domination (patriarchy, class, caste, dogma etc). The thing that's been on my mind with the story of the Cathars, is the way that their two-God conception strikes me as (a) not that heretical to begin with and (b) an attractive way of thinking about God.
Wink points out that the one societal segment Jesus didn't pronounce blessings upon were the fathers - he didn't want to endorse or bless those who had positioned themselves as unquestioned dominators for centuries. This Jesus who I know declares a new day, a new kingdom of God that values the outcast, the child, the enslaved, the feminine. In this new kingdom, the religious dominators are likened to chaff which blows away in a puff of wind, hollow and of no real consequence to the world. It's a dominion of servants, peacemakers, friends and lovers (and also fathers - fathers gloriously freed of the crippling false notions of leadership through prowess, cunning and violence). The driving force in the new god's realm is hope, not strategy; faith, not rationality; imputed purity, not imposed piety. Its concern is with the momentary, and with a longed for future. It doesn't let the past trip it up.
When I look at the popular Christianity of today, with its penchant for emphasising Family Values that somehow revolve around a crusading "headship" male, I am tempted to split God in two. For if the church is the physical embodiment of Christ, and if the Christ-on-earth i see looks nothing like the kingdom Christ envisioned, I'll need to divorce the two. I want to draw a line in history that relegates every moment before this morning to the dominion of the old god, but the realms of 'today' and 'tomorrow' I give solely to the endlessly gracious Christ god.
There is a potential for great freedom within a community that does this. A community who focusses only on the good god is free to discard the vices of old. It isn't bound to repeat past evils under the guise of adherence to tradition. In stark contrast to the church of today, it is free to actually pose the question "what ought the body of Christ look like this day?", without consideration of centuries-old baggage that might prevent it taking action.
But then I can see the trap too. It's too easy to cast blame on a disassociated party. If the evils of the past are the territory of the old god, then i can endlessly blame him, and my own community doesn't have to take any responsibility. Absolution by disassociation is scapegoating. Scarier still, under a two-God conception, I can behave however I like, comfortable in the assumption that today's injustices will one day come to be regarded as the handiwork of the old god. So by letting there be two oppositional gods, I remove myself from the equation when it comes to questions of evil - it's always the bad god's fault. I know I sometimes use the label "emerging church" as a way of disassociating myself from the baggage of the mainstream church.
I wonder - is this what some Christians do today by the way they talk about the Devil? If the Devil is charactarised as an equal, opposing force to God, it renders humankind powerless to the whims of their gods. This takes away our agency, our call to ethical living and to wholistism, our stake in the formation of the new kingdom. So two gods doesn't work. I get why it was such a paradigm shift when monotheism came about. A single God means the world exists for a purpose, rather than as a consequence of the actions of a community of deities. It cements the need for humans to have agency.
So again we get back to the question of how the community is to relate to God. I think the challenge is this: to daily imagine and strive to realise the good; to condemn - but also to own - the bad. Or put another way, we, the body of Christ, are to envision and live out the new kingdom, uninhibited by the historical fact that we absolutely suck at it.
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trickle down trip-up
Jun. 16th, 2008 | 05:32 pm
World food and oil prices skyrocketing, western booms stagnating.. and everybody's looking surprised!
I recall listening in to an argument between two economically minded uni friends a few years ago. One was a passionate advocate for "trickle down" economic policies, the other calling for some global Robin Hood to rebalance the worlds chequebooks more equitably. The argument presented against trickle down economics was that each successive tier the 'trickle' runs down hoards as much of the flow as they can, so that in reality the order of the hierarchy of wealth never changes, and the trickle usually dries up well before it gets to the people on the bottom of the pyramid. I was struck by the thought - the reality - that my class is probably one of the major culprits. We upper-lower-middle (whatever) class westerners, with our aspirations towards the impossibly rich we see on tv and in corporate boardrooms, gulp and guzzle every cent we can, ensuring only the most meagre cashflow trickles down into the subsequest tiers (the immigrant and unskilled workforces at home, and the vast industrial workforces abroad). My Robin Hood lefty friend warned that a global uprising would inevitably redistribute the world's wealth if the greedy capitalists didn't come round soon. I was surprised by his simplistic, almost superstitious projection of an inevitable revolution of such retributionary - almost karmic - weight. As it turns out, the revolution has begun, and it seems to have a surprisingly karmic quality to it thus far..
As my lefty friend pointed out, the big problem with a trickle down philosophy is that each class uses whatever benefits it can scramble together to catupult itself up a tier, rather than passing the benefits down the chain. So while those at the very bottom of the pyramid tend to stay where they are, those occupuying the top half of the pyramid are relentlessly upwardly-mobile. A pyramid doesn't remain a pyramid for long if the top tiers keep filling up with extra bricks.
So as the exploding urban middle classes in India and China discover appetites for meat and eggs, we suddenly find there's competition for our previously ample supply and voila! the prices skyrocket. So it goes for oil and cars (then there's the subsequest impact of cars' thirst for ethanol eating into a supply chain that ought to be putting food on plates, not fuel in tanks)..
So here we are in 2008, a class exorbitantly rich by global standards, feeling bewildered and out of control by the entry into our own class of more neighbours than the system can handle. Through our own trickle-hoarding and aspirational mobility, we've encouraged rafts of people to join us on this plateau - we've been so busy keeping up with the Joneses, we havent noticed the Kumars and Chans down the road keeping up with us.
What's worse, this new reality shatters our optimism regarding the fight against climate change. It was hard enough for us to concede the need to begin rolling back our own energy consumption.. the thought that hundreds of millions of asians are eagerly joining us in our gluttonous lifestyles blows all easy goals out the window! It won't be as simple as me switching to 10% Greenpower if the number of toasters in the world is going to triple this decade. is there such a thing as economic karma? Are we getting our just desserts?
Surely it's the same deal with housing prices in Australia right now. 15 odd years ago the government begain encouraging Australians to consider real estate as a wealth generation tool, and we as a nation got stuck into the real estate market in earnest. Now, with the newly made fortunes of ordinary aussies resting on record house prices - and those same record prices forcing young people into a lifetime of home rental - what hope is there of ratcheting these prices down again? We wonder how this situation got so out of hand, and cringe at the thought of what kind of country our children will grow up into - yet surely, we engineered our own fate.
Looking back, I think perhaps the biggest evil of a trickle down way of thinking is that it reminds people where they sit in the global economic food chain, which primes us to behave in a hierarchical way. How can I trust myself to trade non-exploitatively with a neighbor who i deem intrinsically lower than myself? And how can I even begin to ask questions about what generosity really is, if my eyes are fixed on those only immediately above and below me? God have mercy on us.
I recall listening in to an argument between two economically minded uni friends a few years ago. One was a passionate advocate for "trickle down" economic policies, the other calling for some global Robin Hood to rebalance the worlds chequebooks more equitably. The argument presented against trickle down economics was that each successive tier the 'trickle' runs down hoards as much of the flow as they can, so that in reality the order of the hierarchy of wealth never changes, and the trickle usually dries up well before it gets to the people on the bottom of the pyramid. I was struck by the thought - the reality - that my class is probably one of the major culprits. We upper-lower-middle (whatever) class westerners, with our aspirations towards the impossibly rich we see on tv and in corporate boardrooms, gulp and guzzle every cent we can, ensuring only the most meagre cashflow trickles down into the subsequest tiers (the immigrant and unskilled workforces at home, and the vast industrial workforces abroad). My Robin Hood lefty friend warned that a global uprising would inevitably redistribute the world's wealth if the greedy capitalists didn't come round soon. I was surprised by his simplistic, almost superstitious projection of an inevitable revolution of such retributionary - almost karmic - weight. As it turns out, the revolution has begun, and it seems to have a surprisingly karmic quality to it thus far..
As my lefty friend pointed out, the big problem with a trickle down philosophy is that each class uses whatever benefits it can scramble together to catupult itself up a tier, rather than passing the benefits down the chain. So while those at the very bottom of the pyramid tend to stay where they are, those occupuying the top half of the pyramid are relentlessly upwardly-mobile. A pyramid doesn't remain a pyramid for long if the top tiers keep filling up with extra bricks.
So as the exploding urban middle classes in India and China discover appetites for meat and eggs, we suddenly find there's competition for our previously ample supply and voila! the prices skyrocket. So it goes for oil and cars (then there's the subsequest impact of cars' thirst for ethanol eating into a supply chain that ought to be putting food on plates, not fuel in tanks)..
So here we are in 2008, a class exorbitantly rich by global standards, feeling bewildered and out of control by the entry into our own class of more neighbours than the system can handle. Through our own trickle-hoarding and aspirational mobility, we've encouraged rafts of people to join us on this plateau - we've been so busy keeping up with the Joneses, we havent noticed the Kumars and Chans down the road keeping up with us.
What's worse, this new reality shatters our optimism regarding the fight against climate change. It was hard enough for us to concede the need to begin rolling back our own energy consumption.. the thought that hundreds of millions of asians are eagerly joining us in our gluttonous lifestyles blows all easy goals out the window! It won't be as simple as me switching to 10% Greenpower if the number of toasters in the world is going to triple this decade. is there such a thing as economic karma? Are we getting our just desserts?
Surely it's the same deal with housing prices in Australia right now. 15 odd years ago the government begain encouraging Australians to consider real estate as a wealth generation tool, and we as a nation got stuck into the real estate market in earnest. Now, with the newly made fortunes of ordinary aussies resting on record house prices - and those same record prices forcing young people into a lifetime of home rental - what hope is there of ratcheting these prices down again? We wonder how this situation got so out of hand, and cringe at the thought of what kind of country our children will grow up into - yet surely, we engineered our own fate.
Looking back, I think perhaps the biggest evil of a trickle down way of thinking is that it reminds people where they sit in the global economic food chain, which primes us to behave in a hierarchical way. How can I trust myself to trade non-exploitatively with a neighbor who i deem intrinsically lower than myself? And how can I even begin to ask questions about what generosity really is, if my eyes are fixed on those only immediately above and below me? God have mercy on us.
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Isaiah 11:4
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What my life looks like..
May. 27th, 2008 | 10:03 pm
- Beaurocrat
Still working 12 hours a week for the Dept of Ageing, Disability and Home Care as a support worker. My client is one of the highlights of my life, and has been for 2 years now. He's a 29 year old man with an intellectual disability and a mental illness. I go to his house and hang out, assist, joke with, boss around, cajole and encourage this guy who is special not because he's disabled, but because he's one of the more lovely people I know. I could happily do this job without promotion till the day I die.
- Educator/imposter
For 2 months now I've worked a day a week at HOPESTREET - Urban Compassion as coordinator of their Urban Education program. This involves taking groups on walking 'orientations' through the inner city, discussing issues that marginalise people, as well as various models and projects active in the area that attempt to restore hope, trust, justice and equity. It's 'community development 101' meets 'Christian ethics 101' meets well-intentioned voyeurism* (of place, not people). I grow in confidence each week and am achieving good things, but secretly still feel a bit like an imposter.
The HopeStreet gig keeps me sane, by balancing life within the Sydney Anglican diocese (read: evil empire) with contact with some of the most open, selfless and intriguing followers of Jesus I know.
- Research student
I'm 3 months in to studying a research Master of Arts (Drama) at Flinders Uni. I spend the majority of my daytimes reading, writing and thinking (and fretting) about stuff that mostly relates to Community, Identity, Ritual, and Narrative. There are crossovers into a zillion fields (anthropology, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, historiography, performance studies, theology etc etc etc) and wonderfully rich divides and overlaps in thought and practise. It's thrilling to have a thought then discover the writings of someone who has devoted their life to investigating it. I enjoy the rigour, the wild goose-chases through footnotes and research papers, the big-ness of some of the ideas that get thrown into the ring. It's romantic. I love post-structuralist thought. I adore the selflessness of good research. I hate convoluted academic writing.
The MA ought to take me through till early 2010, at which point Soph and I will hopefully be changing nappies in Africa. But that's another story.
- Volunteer
I am on the board of Toro Integrated Childcare - a community development organisation in Uganda. Being on boards is a strange, but effective, way to get things done. I recommend the experience to anyone who wants to change the world (I'm not sure it makes the task any easier or your efforts more significant, but it sure holds you - you with all your pie in the sky ideas and aspirations - accountable to an actual community that suffers if you fuck up).
I'm also a churchwarden (Anglicanese for 'on the church board') at my local church, St Michael's Surry Hills. This community of faith is growing like an orchid - flowers might be ten years off still, but within that plant are places so sublime, developments so gloriously tiny it breaks my heart with joy when I think about it. Being in a family that's trying to learn to live and love well, is the most precious way to spend your life.
Being a warden = budgets, paperwork, faculties and property management. It also = arriving first, leaving last, praying, worrying, gardening, cleaning toilets, composting, getting plumbing quotes, donating time and resources, HOPING, empowering and equipping others, seeking and sharing visionary thoughts and inspiring attitudes. It is leadership through service, activism through quiet words and open ears.
I know I go on and on (often due to lack of maturity**) about how frustrating the diocese is, but in our own little corner of the empire, it's a whole other story.
- Lover
Love is a gift and a vocation.
*This is an admission that doesn't make me comfortable. I'm working through it, and am confident we minimise impact of orientations, but it's complicated. What is it with this western mindset that i need to experience something to believe it exists? Backpackers ought to wrestle with this more than they do. Going to some place different simply as an "eye-opener", without making yourself truly present to the people there is strange. I'll no doubt write more on this as I come to terms with it a bit more..
**sometimes mine, sometimes the Archbishop's
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The sacred word of God
May. 12th, 2008 | 01:34 pm
To draw on a distinction made by Paul Ricoeur, The Bible falls into the category of an "authoritative" text, rather than a "sacred" one. In Christianity there is a sacred God, and a sacred ecclesial Community, but our sacred text, if anything, is the person of Jesus rather than the books of the Bible.
The Biblical texts are authoritative in that they provide the formative elements of our community - our history, our values, a series of renderings of the drama of God, and the most authoritative and useful sources on Jesus. Ricoeur points out that the very formation of the Bible viewed the text in relationship to the community - those texts not viewed as significant to the cohesion or common life of the community, were excluded from the canon. Ricoeur notes a "reciprocity between the text and the community"
This has implications upon the position the community gives to the text. The text, if viewed as immutable, dictatorial voice-of-God, forces the community to fight against time, against its own continued formation - a battle to preserve the community of old. The notion that the text is somehow above critical engagement renders the ecclesial community powerless to make embodied moral decisions - it subjugates its responses to passively quoting instead of actively seeking the living God for the answers. The text mustn't be cast aside as irrelevant, for we hold it to reflect the authoritative blueprint of our communal identity; but we must be strident in ensuring the text isn't deified, either.
The scariest thought is that sacralising the text leads to a distorted image of sacred community. Conferring immutability and universality upon the text leads inevitably towards a belief that at some point such vantages were attainable within the sacred community. If true then, what now? We, the ecclesial community, are a sacred body thanks to grace, not nature. The sacrality of our community is imputed by being made one with the body of Christ. We must never forget that He - and He alone - is our sacred and mystical text.
(These thoughts springboarded from Paul Ricoeur's essay "The Sacred Text and the Community", from his work Figuring the Sacred)
The Biblical texts are authoritative in that they provide the formative elements of our community - our history, our values, a series of renderings of the drama of God, and the most authoritative and useful sources on Jesus. Ricoeur points out that the very formation of the Bible viewed the text in relationship to the community - those texts not viewed as significant to the cohesion or common life of the community, were excluded from the canon. Ricoeur notes a "reciprocity between the text and the community"
This has implications upon the position the community gives to the text. The text, if viewed as immutable, dictatorial voice-of-God, forces the community to fight against time, against its own continued formation - a battle to preserve the community of old. The notion that the text is somehow above critical engagement renders the ecclesial community powerless to make embodied moral decisions - it subjugates its responses to passively quoting instead of actively seeking the living God for the answers. The text mustn't be cast aside as irrelevant, for we hold it to reflect the authoritative blueprint of our communal identity; but we must be strident in ensuring the text isn't deified, either.
The scariest thought is that sacralising the text leads to a distorted image of sacred community. Conferring immutability and universality upon the text leads inevitably towards a belief that at some point such vantages were attainable within the sacred community. If true then, what now? We, the ecclesial community, are a sacred body thanks to grace, not nature. The sacrality of our community is imputed by being made one with the body of Christ. We must never forget that He - and He alone - is our sacred and mystical text.
(These thoughts springboarded from Paul Ricoeur's essay "The Sacred Text and the Community", from his work Figuring the Sacred)
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On having been married for one year
May. 6th, 2008 | 07:58 am
It struck me this morning that this whole wedding anniversary thing represents a new way of marking time - a most welcome addition to my mid-twenties.
Age becomes an increasingly depressing formula for counting off years, as you incrementally track your physical decline along with the outworking of history. As adulthood ticks by, birthday markations ever increasingly become signposts of doom along the road to oblivion.
So suddenly this concept of an anniversary enters my life. Yesterday's emphasis was on celebrating the growth of a relationship, the burgeoning of a new family, the first milestone in a shared journey.
Last year Soph and I asked people not to buy us wedding gifts, but to make, plant, draw, write or imagine them, and a motif that repeatedly showed up in the gifts we received was that of a tree. We received paintings and drawings of trees, poems about trees, and pot plants - many of our guests stayed on the next morning and helped plant a row of native seedings. I hear these are already taller than a person, and begin to envisage that their height can be a new symbolic marker in my life. So now there's another way to view age - a count-up, rather than a count down (I already weather the unfortunate, unstoppable count-up of hairs on my lower back).
I've heard before that having children slows time down right at the point you need it to. You get blessed with having to experience time at the painstaking pace it rolls for a toddler again at precicely the point in your life when all seems to have gotten away from you. Perhaps in a lot of ways our marriage has been like a toddler this year - prone to outbursts, shaky footed and insecure.. but then I wonder if in so many more ways it hasn't also been like a tree - quiet, persistent and beautiful. Year after year, may we grow, grow, grow.
Age becomes an increasingly depressing formula for counting off years, as you incrementally track your physical decline along with the outworking of history. As adulthood ticks by, birthday markations ever increasingly become signposts of doom along the road to oblivion.
So suddenly this concept of an anniversary enters my life. Yesterday's emphasis was on celebrating the growth of a relationship, the burgeoning of a new family, the first milestone in a shared journey.
Last year Soph and I asked people not to buy us wedding gifts, but to make, plant, draw, write or imagine them, and a motif that repeatedly showed up in the gifts we received was that of a tree. We received paintings and drawings of trees, poems about trees, and pot plants - many of our guests stayed on the next morning and helped plant a row of native seedings. I hear these are already taller than a person, and begin to envisage that their height can be a new symbolic marker in my life. So now there's another way to view age - a count-up, rather than a count down (I already weather the unfortunate, unstoppable count-up of hairs on my lower back).
I've heard before that having children slows time down right at the point you need it to. You get blessed with having to experience time at the painstaking pace it rolls for a toddler again at precicely the point in your life when all seems to have gotten away from you. Perhaps in a lot of ways our marriage has been like a toddler this year - prone to outbursts, shaky footed and insecure.. but then I wonder if in so many more ways it hasn't also been like a tree - quiet, persistent and beautiful. Year after year, may we grow, grow, grow.
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1 year today
May. 5th, 2008 | 11:25 pm
To my
precious
kind
foxy
sole
cheery
piercing
confessing
relenting
resolving
forgiving
generous
tender
soulful
warm
fragile
funny
fine
provoking
partner
understander
wrestle buddy
tea partner
bed warmer
eye gazer
mind reader
truth needer
heart giver
hand holder
moment maker
crossword helper
book recommender
co pilgrim
co-everything
from my core, I thankyou for the gift of your partnership this past year.
My treasure,
my best friend,
my wife.
I love you, Sophie
precious
kind
foxy
sole
cheery
piercing
confessing
relenting
resolving
forgiving
generous
tender
soulful
warm
fragile
funny
fine
provoking
partner
understander
wrestle buddy
tea partner
bed warmer
eye gazer
mind reader
truth needer
heart giver
hand holder
moment maker
crossword helper
book recommender
co pilgrim
co-everything
from my core, I thankyou for the gift of your partnership this past year.
My treasure,
my best friend,
my wife.
I love you, Sophie
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Lost in Democracy
Apr. 3rd, 2008 | 01:41 pm
Incredible story about the impending Democratisation of Bhutan.
something I read today, that seems appropriate:
"Among the new nations, independence has swept into history societies newly-Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History
awakened from their ethnological slumbers by colonial violation. Similarly, a
process of interior decolonization has affected ethnic minorities, families, and
groups that until now have possessed reserves of memory but little or no histor-
ical capital. We have seen the end of societies that had long assured the trans-
mission and conservation of collectively remembered values, whether through
churches or schools, the family or the state"
In other news, I'm loving being a research student. Yay!
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In praise of an Evangelical upbringing
Apr. 1st, 2008 | 09:57 am
evangelical
adjective
of or according to the teaching of the gospel or the Christian religion.
• of or denoting a tradition within Protestant Christianity emphasizing the authority of the Bible, personal conversion, and the doctrine of salvation by faith in the Atonement.
• zealous in advocating something.
Right through my young adult life, the compliment i receive most often goes along the lines of “Dude you’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I love your energy and enthusiasm towards everybody you meet”
Increasingly, I’m realising just how much I owe this to my formative church participation. My core values were shaped by the mantras of evangelical Christianity - God is Awesome(!!!), People are Incredible(!!!), Life is Amazing (!!!). It’s “Love God, and Love your neighbour”, with a big dollop of “Keep it 'zeal” on top.
To be sure, the Evangelical clique also imparts:
- rampant political conservatism, manifesting itself in a keen ability to judge a political party not by their policies or the merits of their leaders, but by the degree to which they subtly incorporate Christianese into their rhetoric.
- a belief that the best way to make people want to love Jesus is by demonstrating just how cool other people who love Jesus are. At 14, I could think of no way of serving Jesus more effectively than by thanking him in a future Oscar’s speech. Mother Theresa vomited in her grave.
- suspicion of the academe, which ‘turns people away from God’. I still think this is true, though i think the crisis university provokes in young Christians should be applauded, not derided, by the Church. The beauty of early Christianity was that when it came to purifying your faith through suffering, you only got torn apart by lions once.The coliseum of skeptical inquiry keeps you in the ring four solid years.
Though I should add that these traits are par for the course when you grow up in the outer suburbs, whether you love Jesus or not. It’s not the Church’s fault suburbs are built in a way that makes them resistant to social progression (though they betray their gospel by not offering an alternative to suburban family-unit isolationism).
Nonetheless, I’m thankful to the Evangelical church for offering me a faith that is bombastic, extraordinary and life-altering. It raised me to expect to be different from everybody else, charged with a holy fervour for life with Jesus and bouncing with love for anyone I might meet. In this way, I stood in contrast to my friends from mainline denominations, because there was actually something substantive that set me apart from normalcy. Faith had a footprint.
I’m back at square one faith-wise. I’m essentially a kid in a pile of rubble, trying to build a tower. The big questions in my heart at the moment are not about what the gospel says, but about resonance and onflow into action. If a gospel is truly good news, then it must be different news from the rest of the news that’s out there. This has to mean that followers of the gospel live different lives. What’s mine going to look like?
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Story
Mar. 26th, 2008 | 12:55 pm
Today is Good Friday. This is the time of year when Christians blab on and on about how Jesus died for all our sins, and usually, I’m right there with them.
This year i’ve increasingly felt the weight of a self-imposed estrangement from faith hanging over my life. I love the humanity of the Bible. The true to life inconsistencies in the characters. The layers of meaning, deliberate power subversions, significance of place and name and repeated motifs of hope in chaos. I love that the story retells itself in your life as you read.
Yet this year it’s trickled away. Enthusiasm, Joy, Prayer.. Faith.. trickled away. I’ve spent too much time in-between forces. Trying to mediate between warring parties. As my local church blossoms in love, the diocese it’s in has clawed its way towards a militant conservatism - and i’ve done my best to steer it backwards (like trying to hold back a tectonic plate). As friends once passionate about Christ harden towards their (often unintentionally) bigoted church communities, I’ve stood as mediator between parties - sympathetic to both but embraced by neither.. And so over time, by acting on empathy more than dogma, navigating by gut over book, I’ve drifted to the most lonely place. I’m by myself, while surrounded by burgeoning faithfulness on all sides.
Last night, heavy hearted, i went to a special Easter’s eve church service. It was quiet, it was awkward, but peaceful. We sang hymns together, lit through a dusty stained glass window that depicted the woman washing Christ’s feet with her hair. The story goes that the perfume was so strong its fragrance filled the entire house. Jesus told her she had anointed him with “burial spices”. I wonder if the executioner noticed the fragrance as he punctured Christ’s feet, just a few days later?
Like perfume, the story of Jesus enlivened me. An inner sensuality awoke to a story so sublime, so ultimate, so at odds with all the other stories I know..
I’m going to struggle for some time, but for now I can’t escape from that story - a story about a God who became lowly because his very essence demanded it. The story affirms an ideal which I know to be true because it resonates through my being - there is no truth more intoxicating than the soul that gives rather than taking, responds with reverence rather than violence, celebrates the chaos of joy over the order of institution.
This story, the one the Christians call the “good news” is what’s holding me for now. May it permeate me again.
This year i’ve increasingly felt the weight of a self-imposed estrangement from faith hanging over my life. I love the humanity of the Bible. The true to life inconsistencies in the characters. The layers of meaning, deliberate power subversions, significance of place and name and repeated motifs of hope in chaos. I love that the story retells itself in your life as you read.
Yet this year it’s trickled away. Enthusiasm, Joy, Prayer.. Faith.. trickled away. I’ve spent too much time in-between forces. Trying to mediate between warring parties. As my local church blossoms in love, the diocese it’s in has clawed its way towards a militant conservatism - and i’ve done my best to steer it backwards (like trying to hold back a tectonic plate). As friends once passionate about Christ harden towards their (often unintentionally) bigoted church communities, I’ve stood as mediator between parties - sympathetic to both but embraced by neither.. And so over time, by acting on empathy more than dogma, navigating by gut over book, I’ve drifted to the most lonely place. I’m by myself, while surrounded by burgeoning faithfulness on all sides.
Last night, heavy hearted, i went to a special Easter’s eve church service. It was quiet, it was awkward, but peaceful. We sang hymns together, lit through a dusty stained glass window that depicted the woman washing Christ’s feet with her hair. The story goes that the perfume was so strong its fragrance filled the entire house. Jesus told her she had anointed him with “burial spices”. I wonder if the executioner noticed the fragrance as he punctured Christ’s feet, just a few days later?
Like perfume, the story of Jesus enlivened me. An inner sensuality awoke to a story so sublime, so ultimate, so at odds with all the other stories I know..
I’m going to struggle for some time, but for now I can’t escape from that story - a story about a God who became lowly because his very essence demanded it. The story affirms an ideal which I know to be true because it resonates through my being - there is no truth more intoxicating than the soul that gives rather than taking, responds with reverence rather than violence, celebrates the chaos of joy over the order of institution.
This story, the one the Christians call the “good news” is what’s holding me for now. May it permeate me again.
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Earth has only 7 bn years to live
Feb. 23rd, 2008 | 04:33 pm
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jtD
..at what point will we need to start getting philosophical about this?
..at what point will we need to start getting philosophical about this?
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Pipl
Feb. 23rd, 2008 | 03:51 pm
You know that apocryphal story about bosses googling prospective new employees and finding out all of their nasty online secrets?
Today i stumbled across www.pipl.com - a site that was custom designed to do this. I just discovered 2 old myspace profiles that i thought i'd deleted, and a host of other net-remnants attached to my name.
I'm going to spend this arvo covering my tracks :)
Today i stumbled across www.pipl.com - a site that was custom designed to do this. I just discovered 2 old myspace profiles that i thought i'd deleted, and a host of other net-remnants attached to my name.
I'm going to spend this arvo covering my tracks :)