We can try and create events that proscribe the words of Jesus’ deepest and most intimate prayer. We set up councils and events and programmes to “promote” Christian unity. This is good and necessary work, even when frustrations put stumbling blocks in the way.
It is not through the structures we create, however, but it is in the relationships we form in working through our difficulties and differences of perspective that we discover the unity we seek.
Jesus must have known this when he broke all human resources rules by putting together so many opposing personalities on his original team of twelve. Fishermen and tax-collectors, zealots and conservatives, idealists and pragmatists. How was he ever going to get them heading in the same direction?
Yet here is the confidence of his prayer “… so that they may be one, as we are one…” He knew something about the magnetic, melting power of the application of the kind of love that emanates from the heart of the Creator.
Source Code: a movie review
I was feeling starved of movies and had a couple of hours free this morning. Source Code seemed the best of the crop at the local multiplex, although the synopsis looked as though I might be in for another version of Groundhog Day. Avoiding spoilers, this wasn’t far off the mark. It involved romance, and it involved a plot that meant a continuous returning to a slot of time to repeat a sequence of events in order to discover something. The difference in the two story-lines illustrates the differences in the dominant preoccupations of the 90s and a decade into the new millennium. Groundhog Day was the story of a quest to find one’s true self, and its comedy genre reminds us of more optimistic times. The more complex challenge in Source Code uses some edgy sf technology and a few bio-ethical questions to harvest intelligence to defeat a terrorist attack. Both carry the sub-text of the debate between human free-will and determinism. Source Code adds the intriguing possibility of altering the course and outcome of events that have already occurred. Like The Adjustment Bureau and Minority Report, the hero fights a two-dimensional, seemingly all-powerful bureaucracy to demonstrate that the freedom of the human spirit must prevail. Endings of such story-lines are generally twee and unsatisfying (we like fairy tale endings), but I always find the struggle intriguing.
Three stars out of five, just for the fact that it casts some fresh light and shade on a theme we seem not to have gown tired of.
Aaaaarghhh!…
… is a very helpful term.
Especially when the toner runs out mid-run and you find the cartridge you thought you had on standby is the one that’s just run out.
Especially when the courier bringing the replacements neglects to take a few extra steps to the office door and, in stead, leaves a “Collect from Post Office after 4:30pm” ticket.
Especially when you are as far as possible from the office phone when it rings – you race to get to it and pick it up just in time to hear a fax tone.
I’m sure I could go on, but my blood pressure’s high enough!
They wish they hadn’t…
… invited me to step into Bob’s art class at church today. The subject was “extension” – a device of exaggeration that cartoonists use to create caricatures. So here’s the result with the aid of some technology. Everyone’s ducking for cover now for fear that I might “do” them next!
Religion & the Secular State
In the light of the current discussions on the nature of the “secular” in relation to religion in the public arena, particularly where government funding of religious programs in state schools is concerned, or even access of religious groups within the education system, it’s sometimes helpful to hear a voice from outside.
See Thio Li-ann: Religion & the Secular State. It is in response to document pointed out by a colleague today: Religion and the Secular State: National Reports as presented to the 2010 International Congress of Comparative Law. The report is over 800 pages, but p87ff gives an informed and concise account of the state of play in Australia between state and religious organisations from a historical and legal perspective. It’s worth reading because so many confuse the pervasive US stance as the rule of thumb for all free democratic societies.
Thio Li-ann’s response clarifies multiple ways of defining the term “secular.” Some would say a reference to another country’s response muddies the waters for the Australian context. Others may see some clues that create new ground for debate that is less polarised due to clarity of terminology.
A puzzling question about carbon taxes…
How come Cate Blanchett is vilified for speaking into the carbon tax debate and ever-so-much-more-wealthy mining barons are free to complain loudly while media companies sycophantly bend over backwards to ensure they are heard?
The Parable of the Abattoir Wall
This story told by an Aboriginal pastor illustrates well the connection between trusting relationships and truth as described in John 14:15-21, today’s gospel reading.
The Parable of the Abattoir Wall
For many years, the custom in one of the abattoirs had been to paint a coat of whitewash over the bloodstains on its walls. This was found to be a quicker approach to presenting a clean hygienic image than the laborious task of scrubbing down walls. However, the time came when the blood-caked stains from years of white-washing began to turn yellow and a foul smelling slime began to seep from underneath the whitewashed interior. The abattoir had no option but to scrape down the years of accumulated blood-stained whitewash and go back to the original wall surface. There came a point in time, in history, when the scraping back exposure of the cover-ups was necessary before the abattoir could do its work. We believe Australia is now “scraping off the whitewash” and finding its soul.
Pastor Bill Hollingsworth, ‘Message Stick’, Journal of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian Congress of the Uniting Church in Australia, June 1997.
A resource for the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation from NATSIEC
Vegemite and Ice Hockey
Not often I endorse commercial products, but I grew up on this and I’m still a Vegemite kid!
This is one of a series of marvelous ads that, like the spread, only Aussies could appreciate. The rest of the world scratches its head and wonders what planet we are from!
Churches where no wheelchairs go – Eureka Street
Here is a timely reminder for churches old and new:
Churches where no wheelchairs go – Eureka Street.
Universal access should be on the agenda of any community group that pursues compassion and hope as core values – and that surely includes church communities. It would be good for church board/ vestry/ management groups to voluntarily spend an hour or two negotiating their properties in a wheelchair or on a zimmer frame, perhaps with dimmed glasses and earplugs to experience how those physically afflicted experience movement, sight and sound. Then use some creative imagination to make their communities even more inclusive!
When saying and hearing “sorry” is hard work…
‘We need to forgive and be forgiven, every day, every hour — unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.’ Henri Nouwen
Today is Sorry Day, which now commemorates and builds on the 2008 parliamentary apology to Australia’s indigenous people for past policies that resulted in dispossession and fragmentation of a people. It marked a fresh new beginning – possibilities and potential for collaborative problem solving. It was quickly apparent that saying “sorry” wasn’t enough. We still carry the legacy of our shared history and it is a complex matter to deal with. Apology places a necessary burden on both the giver and the receiver. Both have an opportunity to stand back and look at the mess and say “What now?” Old mistakes are prone to be repeated, such as the paternalism of the NT “intervention” or the easy fall-back – fostered reliance on welfare. New initiatives are also born from within indigenous communities and there are many great stories of health and education programs and business enterprises. Giving and receiving apology is hard work – and it is good to have days of focus that invite reflection on how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to travel.
Eureka Street has some relevant articles today: The quote at the head of this post is referred to in The moral challenge of accepting an apology.
Mark Green in, When ‘sorry’ is not enough, leads our reflection further.
Lives of urban Aboriginal women is the title of a film review of Here I am, “a hopeful story in which forgiveness and redemption are attainable goals.”
Wondering Pilgrim 