A CRE teacher reflects…

I begin this year’s round of Christian Religious Education (CRE) classes at the local primary school tomorrow – this is in response to the national statutory permission for churches to negotiate access to Education Department schools for the purpose of “religious instruction” for 30 minutes per class per week.

The experience for a student is quite different from my day, when any untrained but enthusiastic volunteer could enter the classroom and give forth. I remember the dutiful but boring clergyman with the collar that came in and droned on from some book for half an hour. I also remember the delightful motherly woman who told great stories and knew how to engage and encourage us. We knew we mattered to her, collectively and individually.

To teach CRE today, one has to be trained to standards acceptable to the Education Department and observe a curriculum that is negotiated between the churches’ representative service provider and the school authorities. In Western Australia, the CRE curriculum works hand in hand with the values component of the school syllabus.

I experience more adrenalin stepping into a classroom than behind a pulpit. A classroom is a microcosm of the diversity and multiculturalism of our society and one can make no assumptions  about family background and experience. I do not have the luxury of assuming common motives and values where “religious education” is concerned yet there is the responsibility to assist each student along a learning pathway.  The 30 minute lesson strategy is to open up  for exploration a common experience – for example “What is it like to receive generosity? What is it like to offer generosity? What are situations where it might or might not apply?” We would then look at the contribution of the Christian tradition from Bible and people’s lives for further understanding. A period of ideas for application and reflection brings the session to a close. At such times I sometimes feel I receive more wisdom from the kids than what I impart.

The value of CRE is always under scrutiny by church and school alike. The school I serve is very supportive and considers CRE a valuable contributor to its ethos and educational philosophy. It is easy to rest on laurels in such a situation. At the age of 61, perhaps I should stop feeling nervous before entering a classroom – but if I did, I suspect that would be the time to quit teaching.

Up the Mountain Down

Glimpses of what is revealed when the curtain is pulled back and “uncreated light” blasts us with awareness of more than our finite minds can comprehend contrasts with the daily grind and the drudge of dealing with the continuous crap of mundane living. Up the mountain down!

Peter, James and John weren’t up there long (Matthew 17:1-7) but what they saw perhaps equipped them better, if not perfectly for the journey with Jesus to Jerusalem for what would become the ultimate test for them all.

What epiphanies and transfigurations act as starting blocks for our own journeys?

The Adjustment Bureau: a film review

Our view of life influences how we approach seemingly random events – not that we take all that much notice – unless it’s a coincidental series of related happenings or a significant interlude on life’s journey, like a shadow on an x-ray, an unexpected relocation or even a romantic encounter. Are these things predetermined according to some underlying plan? Are they purely the result of chance upon which we, to the extent we desire order, attempt to force some grid of meaning? Is it some of both? To what extent can interference in “the Plan” be tolerated? After all there would be no advances in human knowledge if we totally and passively capitulated to the series of events that make up our lives.

The Adjustment Bureau seeks to use a nice Hollywood romantic story to explore some of these questions. It is a rather convoluted attempt to arrive at an “answer in a box”, but, for me, this failed – not that my expectations were high. After all the followers of Augustine and Pelagius, Calvin and Arminius, empirical determinism and quantum physics still haven’t satisfactorily  resolved the degree to which our views of fate and free will orientate us to our life choices.

Still, after the vein of Inception and The Matrix, it has the potential to expose many to fresh engagement with the big questions of who we are and why we are here. Otherwise – it’s just another story.

Red Letter Christians » Love Wins: Rob Bell and the New Calvinists

A controversial book of the moment before it is even released is “Love Wins: a book about heaven, hell and the fate of every person who ever lived” by Rob Bell. Apparently it is creating a storm amongst the leading lights of the “emergent ” part of the Christian spectrum, with some condemning what they imagine the author says and others saying, “Hang on, who reviews a book on the basis of a publishers PR blurb anyway – and, should his views be more inclusive than you would like them to be, why the vehemence?”

Jumping into the fray is our old mate Jarrod McKenna, who is becoming a well known media commentator, and who reviews not so much the book, but the storm. I have seen his article pop up several times this week, most recently at Red Letter Christians » Love Wins: Rob Bell and the New Calvinists.

Nothing like a good controversy to get a book noticed. Must get a copy.

Churches across Australia assist the world’s newest nation

Act For Peace is the action arm of the National Council of Churches in Australia. The annual Christmas Bowl Appeal raises large sums of money for its programs. This report shows how churches across the land contribute not only prayer, but muscle, towards peace building endeavours that carry the hallmarks of sustainability and justice, particularly in Southern Sudan.

Churches across Australia throw their support behind the Christmas Bowl.

Native Wisdom For White Minds

I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more.
– Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht (chief Joseph)
Nez Percé

American Indian

Today’s offering from a neat little book of days called Native Wisdom for White Minds: daily reflections inspired by the Native Peoples of the world. (Ballantine, 1995) by Anne Wilson Schaef.

Flicking through, it impresses me how universally applicable the axioms are – and the deep wisdom they express.


Celebrating the carbon tax – Eureka Street

Fasten your seat belts, folks – we’re in for a bumpy ride. Tony Kevin does a good job of identifying political, scientific and economic juggling pins that must be kept in the air over years to come in Celebrating the carbon tax – Eureka Street.

“What’s to celebrate?” is a question I hear, however, from both climate change protagonists and deniers. Perhaps it’s the fact that we are now moving from debate to action, no matter how slight. My take has always been that, regardless of your stance on climate change, clean energy is a worthwhile pursuit in its own right.

Funding school chaplaincy

Australia’s National School Chaplaincy Program is under review and the public is invited to respond to a discussion paper through submissions that are due no later than March 18th.

As I predicted when government subsidies for chaplains in schools was announced by the Howard government in 2006, religious organisations would need to prepare for a rough ride. As has been experienced in public subsidies for aged and health care, welfare and other community work, faith based communities not only have to negotiate competing philosophies and mountains of paperwork, but put a lot more effort into transparency and accountability to a wider range of stakeholders. This is not necessarily a bad thing – we can’t rest on our laurels and the drive to improvement of services is constantly on the radar, as it should always be.

There will be opposition, much based on misconception. Google “school chaplaincy funding” and the second highest link is to a campaign against the program on the basis of “separation of church and state.” In my view, this argument relies on a misunderstanding of the Australian Constitution which sanctions against the State establishing any religion. This has never been interpreted as non-cooperation. Historically, right from the time of the First Fleet, public policy has entertained “collaboration between Church and State.”

If the law decreed that chaplaincy funding cease based on a reinterpretation of the Australian Constitution, the government, to be consistent, would need to withdraw funding from a wide range of aged care facilities, hospitals, and welfare programs as well as withdraw chaplains from military  and other services.

The best outcome, in my view, is to continue collaborative engagement with all parties bringing goodwill to the table and agreeing on the most serviceable results for the Australian community.

Thirteen Moons: a book review


My regrets at not inquiring more closely when I traveled through Cherokee country in 2008 were compounded when reading this novel by Charles Frazier. His protagonist is Will Cooper, all but abandoned as an orphan at the age of 12. In his role as a bound boy running a remote trading post, Will finds himself adopted by the fading remnants of a Cherokee community. Through his eyes, we see the tale of dispossession of indigenous homelands as the invading “brave new land of the free” steamrolls its way through 19th century North America.

There are many differences and many parallels when comparing the histories of indigenous dispossession in the USA and Australia. Treaties were made and reinterpreted and broken in one context – and the doctrine of terra nullius ensured there was no thought of a treaty in the other. The end product seems similar however. A people degraded, exploited and robbed of culture and dignity, even when attempting to grasp the nettle and adapt to dominant ways.

Will Cooper, himself a materially successful exploiter of the accident of his circumstances, is regarded with suspicion, leaving him with unfulfilled issues of identity. One is left with the feeling that our tragic history of racial exploitation has left us all depleted.

Prayer – a light side!

My faith community purposefully set itself up in the 60s as non-gender biased – quite a statement in the conservative setting of the times. It did not matter whether it was male or female that performed ministry functions among us and there continues to be no distinction at all levels of leadership.

This does not suppress us from expressing levity at each other’s expense, however.

As prayer has come up on the blog several times this week, I offer this contribution from one of those viral emails that do the rounds and that arrived in my inbox from one of my long-suffering flock this morning:

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large raging, violent river.

Needing to get to  other side, the first man prayed: ‘ God, please give me the strength to cross the river. ‘
Poof!!!   God gave him big arms and strong legs…and he was able to swim across in about 2 hours, having almost drowned twice.

After witnessing that, the second man prayed: ‘God, please give me strength and the tools to cross the river.’
Poof!!! God gave him a rowboat and strong arms and strong legs… and he was able to row across in about an hour after almost capsizing once.

Seeing what happened to the first two men, the third man prayed: ‘God, please give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to cross the river’

Poof!!!

HE WAS TURNED INTO A WOMAN!!!

She checked the map, hiked one hundred yards upstream… and walked across the bridge.

And I have just demonstrated the largesse and tolerance (if not intelligence) sometimes attributed to my gender by reprinting it here !!!