Vicarious Pilgrimage – the Camino de Santiago

camino de santiago
Image via Wikipedia

I’ve always enjoyed the long distance walks of John and Marilyn. I can do it all from the comfort of my chair. Two years ago they walked the full distance of the Bibbulman Track – I traced every inch of their journey over my own maps which have been waiting like an expectant pooch with lead in jaws waiting to be taken for a walk. Last year, my friends upped the ante and paced out the Larapinta Trail. They thoughtfully took a location device that transmitted their position on Google maps. Every night I could zero in on their campsite and track their progress through some of our driest country. Right now I am similarly monitoring their progress along the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St James) in the north of Spain. The clarity of the maps is a gift of this digital age – one can almost feel the terrain under foot and zoom eagle eyed from mountain tops over sweeping plains right down through the narrow alleys to the doorsteps of the hostels from which the signals emit. John and Marilyn are nearing the completion of this 700km leg of the pilgrimage. Others here have done sections of this walk. Shared stories on John and Marilyn’s return will certainly enliven the maps I have been pinning on the church noticeboard showing their progress.

Related Articles

Doodling vindicated

Doodle, doodles, doodling, scribble, scribbles...
Image via Wikipedia

My schoolboy doodling habit faded sometime ago – not the least because of my being caught up in the digital revolution. It’s much easier to scrawl absent-mindedly on what ever surface is available if you have a pen in hand rather than an android.

The inner censor, well trained by censorious school masters/mistresses, also inhibited what might have been a very creative trait, and this TED talk seems to bear me out.

So doodlers of the world unite! There are many possibilities out there.

A benchmark for the ‘new’ atheism

Recent discourse between theist and non-theist positions has been strident – not the least because the platform has been the very wide educational one, both public and private. Government funding of chaplains, indeed the existence of chaplains, teaching of scripture, the saying of prayers, adding faith specific verses to the national anthem – all have raised the emotional investment of both sides in the debate.

Some of the rhetoric from either side has bordered on the banal.  Neither fundamentalist theists nor taunting non-theists have served their side of the argument well.

Today however, I read – Jonathan Rée – Varieties of irreligious experience | New Humanist – presenting an atheist position that I found helpful, respectful and refreshing.  Here, I thought, is someone I, as a theist,  could have a cappuccino and a chat with sans a sense of being humoured or set up for a pratfall. Without caricature or parody, Rée surveys a history of non-theist thought and philosophy vis-vis the theist stance without parody, caricature or rancour. No straw men here. I am sure that non-theist folk of good will would also appreciate the opportunity to weigh matters with “opponents” who were not looking to trip them up and “win” an argument.

Well -articulating his atheist position – Rée is able to move it to the middle ground where people can touch and appreciate a shared humanity. No lobbing clever hand grenades at an unseen and often imaginary enemy from the safety of an entrenched position . When the current public slanging match can move to a place where this kind of conversation can happen, we’ll be in a much better place. It depends on what our vested interests are.

I am indebted to A Feather Adrift for drawing my attention to this article.

Related Articles

Time our pollies just stopped…period

 

 

 

 

I concur.

Christmas Island administrator wants end to bickering – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

We have the ludicrous situation where a Labor government is pressing for the most draconian offshore detention procedures with a conservative opposition pleading humanitarian concerns for blocking the legislation – and each blaming the other for the arrival of more boats!

The time for schoolyard politics is over. Now is the hour that calls for some good moral leadership. Bite the bullet and return to the sane practice of onshore processing for all asylum seekers, no matter how they arrive here.

Slow news day at The West Australian

Top of the World!!!
Image by JIGGS IMAGES via Flickr

Schools change national anthem – The West Australian.

Come on now! I’m prepared to discuss with some give and take the relevance of CRE to the state school curriculum, Federal funding for chaplaincy and whether or not the Lord’s Prayer has a place in public life and education, but I’m surprised anyone would want to waste their breath on this one!

The fact that some private religious schools have adopted an additional verse, albeit of historical uncertainty , is hardly front page material.
I suppose riding the momentum of the outrage stirred by the media beatup of a school abandoning its practice of the regular recital of the Lord’s Prayer is too good an opportunity to pass up!

Related Articles

The Green Thing – a Senior’s Lament

A reel lawn mower, adapted from an illustratio...
Image via Wikipedia

As a card carrying environmentalist, I can see the humour in this wry lament sent to me this morning by one of my long-suffering flock, who has herself been involved in several cane-toad busting expeditions in our state’s north east and has spent the last two weeks organising conservation measures on Rottnest Island:

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologised to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”
The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Western Australia ..
In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.
We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the tram, train or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service.
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Related Articles

Business, footy and change

Foot australien
Image via Wikipedia

Since last Thursday, the airwaves in the world’s most isolated capital city have been abuzz with the goings on at the Fremantle Football Club, which fields the AFL Docker’s team. Somewhat abruptly, following a mediocre season plagued with player injury, the board sacked the popular senior coach. Community outrage from club members and the wider community was focused, not so much on the fact of the termination, but its manner. No one saw it coming. At a public end of year breakfast on the same day, the coach had outlined his plans for the new season. The president of the club sat alongside him. Hours later, the CEO gave the coach his marching orders, the new coach waiting in the wings.

Public acrimony against the board and its principals has been strident. The “loyalty” word has been prolific in lament. The coach had been seen as extremely and transparently faithful to both club and players through his strategic planning, challenge and support through stretching times. What price the club’s loyalty to him, the team and the fans?

Eventually besieged board representatives emerged and spoke of “the club’s best interests”, “management decisions”, “key performance indicators”  and “business is business.” Of course, none of this washes with a community of fans that doesn’t give a brass razoo about these things. They follow their footy for excitement, belonging, vicarious esprit de corps and glory in either defeat or victory. In their perception, the board had turned on its own and the blindsiding dismissal of a coach deemed to be as heroic as the best of his players was perceived as nothing short of betrayal.

And so is illustrated a clash of cultures in a sea of change. Uncertain and challenging times call for courageous responses.
Some say “We must manage this proactively and dispassionately , using best management principles. The data is in; cold, hard decisions are required. Decide and act!”
Others say, “We are on hard times. Now more than ever we must stick together and allow our community values of compassion, loyalty, mutual support and generosity to prevail.”

Dry management principles applied without modification to wet and messy but aspirational human community is a volatile mix. And it is repeated over and over again in sporting clubs, churches, community groups, schools – in short, anywhere people gather and organise.

The key to bypassing such explosive impasses is wise leadership that can hold the two in tension. and this also abounds (it just doesn’t make news that sells). Good leaders understand and participate in community. They also are able to apply management principles in a way that is collaborative with and respectful of the best human and community values. They do not hide behind popular management idiom and argot.

Will the Fremantle Football Club ultimately profit from this upheaval? Only time will tell. We are all on a steep learning curve.

Too many keys…

A leather keychain
Image via Wikipedia

… hanging from your key chain can prematurely wear out your ignition.

“Partly true” says Snopes (my favourite urban legend check site) – especially for Volkswagens. Looking back over my early beetle and then Kombi days I did not necessarily find this to be so. True, I only had the beetle during my last year in seminary – an emergency stop gap when my motorbike gave out. The beetle itself ingloriously blew its engine following my graduation and ordination ceremony. Right in the middle of Camberwell Junction (Melbourne’s busiest intersection at the time) and my parents crammed in the back seat! The Kombi lasted a few years and was worked hard, including four or five return trips across the Nullarbor. One engine replacement but ignition fine all the way through. And I had a jailer’s key ring!

It was the holes in my trouser pockets that caused me to reduce the number of keys on my ring. Many have been the occasions I have had to retrieve my keys from my shoes. Although my key ring is somewhat culled these days, I have drawers full of them for which  I have long forgotten their purpose. The consolation is that everything lockable around home and office does have an associated key.

I wonder if the lost locks go to the same place as lost socks?

Musing on Writer’s Block

overcoming writer's block - crumpled paper on ...

Here we are 3/4 of the way through the year of postaday2011 and I’m hit with a severe case of writers’ block. The conventional wisdom is that you sit down and write anyway, even if it is about nothing. Apparently the discipline of so acting is supposed to “release the cork” and wonderfully creative prose gushes forth.

This reminds me of the teachings of the desert abbas ans ammas of 4th century Egypt. They taught the throngs how to pray when praying seemed impossible. Christianity had become fat, lazy and prosperous when made the official religion of empire. Desert spirituality was the backlash, unleashing ascetic disciplines in contemplation and fasting. Sitting in silence for days on end yielded an earthy wisdom that brought heaven to earth in the form of great compassion and generosity of spirit. Ennui and accidie were often among the first obstacles encountered by those who sought to emulate this path – I guess it was a kind of “writer’s block” for those seeking to come to grips with an inner journey that would yield a deeper and richer engagement with everyday living. From these times emerged the first Christian monasteries and the beginning of a legacy of art and learning.

So blockage of any kind offers an invitation to confront and wrestle it until something begins to flow. And now, it seems, I’m done!

Related Articles

Pingback on a Pingback

A Cornish pasty made by Warrens cut in half. T...
Image via Wikipedia

Can’t say I’ve ever grasped how pingbacks work – just that they mysteriously appear from time to time.
But here’s a timely one just arrived on a cold windy day in Perth where one’s mind turns to… Cornish pasties (for which I once wrote a a nostalgic ode – see below))
The pingback?  Preview of the Cornwall Food and Drink Festival 23 – 25 September « Beyond the pasty….
Pity it’s half a world away.

Related Articles