H2O

It’s Blog Action Day and the topic is “water.”

I grew up with a love/hate relationship with the stuff. Loved playing with it. Hated the enforced swimming lesson that entailed jumping off the Port Adelaide wharf into the canal on the end of a rope. Swallowed lots of water and never went back. Never learnt to swim  after such a dis-motivational experience. Yet I find holidays by the water very restful – whether its pounding waves against a rocky cliff-face or a still mill-pond.

I guess this  reflects the ambivalence we have in this land that thirsts for decent rainfalls – most of the time there’s not enough. Suddenly there’s too much. Like Hanrahan, there’s the prevailing mood that “we’ll all be rooned.” As a son of South Australia, once nominated as “the driest state in the driest country”, I suppose I should be somewhat more passionate about water. After all, the Murray flows now following superlatively high rainfalls, but the water fights upstream look set to continue for a while. My hometown of Adelaide will always be at the behest of access to water “allowed” to flow from the the east.

Yet my thoughts turn to other places on the planet where the need for water is not so easily met. It’s always been close at hand for me. Just turn on the nearest tap which is never far way. Thousands of communities have no access at all to potable water, let alone the convenience of a tap. For some years now my Google home page has been set to http://www.wateraid.org/australia/ – a running background reminder to just how critical water is for maintaining healthy sustainable communities. This is just one of many aid organisations aimed at improving provision of this most basic of commodities.

I hope this Blog Action Day project will heighten awareness and stimulate international and political will for imaginative solutions to water access problems.

World Communion Sunday

I used a day of leave to experience communion in a tradition quite different to that which I am accustomed, so I took myself off to the 10 am Choral Eucharist at St Georges Cathedral of the Anglican Arch Diocese of Perth, Western Australia.

I have participated in communion services of the higher liturgical traditions before, most notably at our local ecumenical Pentecost services. I was quite looking forward to cathedral pageantry and the sacred music of Bach and Handel. I was not disappointed – on the contrary there were some moments where the sacred took me by surprise.

Let me share three moments in particular:

  1. The reading of the gospel from Luke 17:5-10. I knew how this was to be done, with the bible carried aloft to the midst of the congregation with organ fanfare and choral alleluias. The whole congtregation stands in expectancy of the words to be heard. The cantor chanted the words of the passage, and it was as if I heard them anew. It was a thin moment.
  2. The address by The Reverend Bill Sykes, Chaplain Emeritus and Fellow of University College, Oxford. It was one of the best sermons I’ve heard in a long time (not that I hear many – I’m usually dishing them out!). He was speaking to the gospel text “Increase our faith” and described how he answered a question asked of him by a very intellectual post grad student – “What do you believe?” It was one of the most straightforward and comprehensive yet rational evangelistic presentations I have encountered. He went on to explain how he has set up thirty reflection groups throughout Oxford that explore a range from 220 issues pertaining to faith and life. Apparently the reflections, designed for multi-faith discussions, are in his book, The eternal vision: the ultimate collection of spiritual quotations. (Mental note to get a copy).
  3. The communion service.  The pew sheet says, “We break bread for the whole world. We invite all who seek God and are drawn to Christ, and all who walk the way of faith to come forward to receive communion or a blessing.” The Open Table in a high liturgical tradition suddenly melded with my more familiar homely table in the free church restorationist tradition.

World Communion Sunday. If you are participating in a communion service somewhere in the world today, may the peace of Christ be with you!

Our streetscape is changing…

For two years our street has been a bit like a ghost town… some would prefer to say serene and quiet. It is only four weeks away from the second anniversary of the Sunday afternoon fire that took out the shopping centre – all eight businesses including the supermarket that had just had a multi-million dollar upgrade. That second anniversary will be pretty close to the opening celebrations of the new centre that is nearing completion. The community will have its marketplace back with enhanced gathering and eating areas. As the final coats of paint are applied and signage erected, one can sense the growing anticipation. The street will be abuzz again with the sounds of people of all ages meeting, greeting and shopping.

In addition, an adjoining site has been cleared for new development. The Liberty service station has been demolished to make way for eleven additional shops and eight apartments. Our quiet residential street is about to become once again the even busier commercial hub of the suburb. Some of our neighbours will lament the loss of peaceful days. Others will relish the fresh influx of people into the street. I am looking forward to the renewed interface of church and community that these developments will make possible.

Hung Parliament?

Who would have thought? Even though pundits predicted it, no-one really considered the implications. The parties that have dominated the post-war political scene will now be frantically crunching gears, throwing the transmission into neutral (and possibly)even reverse in order to pick up the few independents, until now relegated to the wilderness of irrelevancy, and thus form a minority government. Nothing is certain. Our would-be hitch-hikers have a choice of rides to select from. The Greens won’t necessarily go ALP, nor the conservative independents LNP. Regional and philosophical points of view will vie for accommodation. Should be an interesting week – and we thought it would all be over when the campaign ended!

Wembley Downs shops nearing completion

Mostly of interest to Wembley Downs folk who have been missing their local agora for almost two years. The proposed al fresco areas seem to be marked by the low curving balustrades to the middle and left. My church office being just across the road, I can see me setting up my laptop there and having meetings over coffee and croissants! I can feel the ambiance already! I am guessing the opening will be fairly close to the second anniversary of the fire that took out the old centre, although some expect it to be as soon as the end of next month.

“Creation” – a human face for Charles Darwin

The publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species” became a lightning rod for conflict between theists and non-theists alike that lasts to this day. Both are treated sympathetically in this exploratory dramatisation of Darwin’s home life and the struggle that surrounded his work. Against a background of the harshness of polarised positions, one side depicted by the cruelty and platitudes of a one dimensional vicar and family friend, and the other by an equally brittle and one dimensional depiction of Thomas Huxley, the tenderness and tragedy of human life plays out in Darwin’s family and marriage.

This brings a third voice to the strident debate between the so called “New Atheism” and the different expressions of  “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”.  The debate doesn’t exist or continue in a vacuum that is divorced from the drama of human life – it is part of the warp and woof of human affairs.

The closing scene left me with a sense of  open-ended hopefulness – the possibility that strongly and passionately held non compatible positions can not only co-exist, but find meaning together – and that within the mystery of life opposite perspectives can find a meeting place in synthesis. The challenge then becomes its articulation.

Hearing the Lord’s Prayer anew.

Formal recitation of the Lord’s Prayer is under scrutiny as its place is considered in parliaments of this land. Secularists would abandon it, traditionalists want to retain it, and some of us think the boat is being missed altogether – for to really pray the prayer as Jesus intended would be too explosive for governments to entertain or contain.

This morning’s lectionary had us considering it again. To avoid over-familiarised conditioning, we considered a translation from Aramaic, the familiar language of Jesus.

We noted the intimate invitation to familial relationship with the Divine, creating a human-Divine unity of being out of which the action of God’s reign flowed, expressing itself in forgiveness and just action.

Consider this translation into English from Aramaic (one of several provided by http://www.thenazareneway.com/lords_prayer.htm )

The Prayer To Our Father
(in the original Aramaic)

Abwûn
“Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes,

d’bwaschmâja
who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration.

Nethkâdasch schmach
May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest.

Têtê malkuthach.
Your Heavenly Domain approaches.

Nehwê tzevjânach aikâna d’bwaschmâja af b’arha.
Let Your will come true – in the universe (all that vibrates)
just as on earth (that is material and dense).

Hawvlân lachma d’sûnkanân jaomâna.
Give us wisdom (understanding, assistance) for our daily need,

Waschboklân chaubên wachtahên aikâna
daf chnân schwoken l’chaijabên.
detach the fetters of faults that bind us, (karma)
like we let go the guilt of others.

Wela tachlân l’nesjuna
Let us not be lost in superficial things (materialism, common temptations),

ela patzân min bischa.
but let us be freed from that what keeps us off from our true purpose.

Metol dilachie malkutha wahaila wateschbuchta l’ahlâm almîn.
From You comes the all-working will, the lively strength to act,
the song that beautifies all and renews itself from age to age.

Amên.
Sealed in trust, faith and truth.
(I confirm with my entire being)

The freshness of these words were at first somewhat dis-orienting to some of this morning’s worshippers, but I guarantee that the next time we come across the formal use of this prayer, we will hear the whisper of the radical transformation of self and universe that is at its centre.




Plinky.com wants to know about my favorite summer memory

On this freezing Perth day when the temperature plunged below zero? Trips across the Nullarbor in my old Kombi van in searing heat seem rather inviting right now. That was in my pre–responsible days – collecting hitchhikers, driving non-stop with the windows down just to create the illusion of moving air.

Edinburgh 2010 comes to Perth


Great celebration of Edinburgh 2010 in Perth today. 100 years ago missionary organisations came together in Scotland in the recognition that Christian mission could only advance with a united front. The modern ecumenical movement was born. We celebrated at St Peter’s & Emmaus (a combined Uniting Church/Anglican parish) with the help of choirs from local Indonesian and Korean congregations, a reading from Matthew 28 in Aramaic (courtesy of the Syrian Orthodox Church) and a challenging message from the Anglican Dean of Perth, the Very Rev’d John Shepherd.

Model railways are cool again? (via sabrage)

This is what would happen if I let my head go!

Model railways are cool again? Seriously cool. I want to rampage through its streets. My dad built model railways – after he and mum spent thousands extending our house so we could have a rec room, he took over the table tennis table in it and built a model New Zealand bush mining town with people tending to tiny little cabbages in their teeny gardens. I think that was his plan all along. … Read More

via sabrage