Saturday 12 December 2009
Monday 26 October 2009
Letters to a Fellow: 2
And these are the names. That’s not the way to start a sentence, let alone a paragraph, let alone a chapter. In fact they are the first words of one of my favourite books.
I have been told to keep the vision clear before the artists who I lead, myself first amongst them I suppose. Some artists need no more leading than to be continually pointed in the right direction, that is to say the same direction. What direction is that? From the top to the bottom of the common page. For some that is enough, and they must be left alone after that. I like that idea; I shall try it with my team.
A leader of artists must be an advocate: a go-between who goes between the artist and her art, but also between the artist and her commissioning buyer. The needs of artists are not a great mystery, neither are the economics of the council, but if each is not known to the other, or if it is not expressed in a lingua franca, then discord shall arise. Discord sets off a whole other set of artists, and suddenly you have a very colourful mutiny on your hands.
Deadlines are deadly to creativity, and kill creative minds. Pressure is good and a little stress is a wonder of motivation, but unless you are J.S. Bach or of such prodigious talent the demand for something unique and mind-blowing every Sunday for 52 Sundays is not going to end well for anyone.
Artistic and creative integrity are not all that matters. Character issues must be confronted immediately on team: we work in creative tension and harmony requires the use of a set of several chords in the one bar, but there is only one harmonious chord and many more discordant ones.
Artists want to be lead in love.
I have been told to keep the vision clear before the artists who I lead, myself first amongst them I suppose. Some artists need no more leading than to be continually pointed in the right direction, that is to say the same direction. What direction is that? From the top to the bottom of the common page. For some that is enough, and they must be left alone after that. I like that idea; I shall try it with my team.
A leader of artists must be an advocate: a go-between who goes between the artist and her art, but also between the artist and her commissioning buyer. The needs of artists are not a great mystery, neither are the economics of the council, but if each is not known to the other, or if it is not expressed in a lingua franca, then discord shall arise. Discord sets off a whole other set of artists, and suddenly you have a very colourful mutiny on your hands.
Deadlines are deadly to creativity, and kill creative minds. Pressure is good and a little stress is a wonder of motivation, but unless you are J.S. Bach or of such prodigious talent the demand for something unique and mind-blowing every Sunday for 52 Sundays is not going to end well for anyone.
Artistic and creative integrity are not all that matters. Character issues must be confronted immediately on team: we work in creative tension and harmony requires the use of a set of several chords in the one bar, but there is only one harmonious chord and many more discordant ones.
Artists want to be lead in love.
Letters to a Fellow: 1
I wonder whether even artists understand each other. Perhaps that in itself is a rather woolly statement, and particularly self-indulgent, but I have been reading about artists and it has set me to thinking. I once heard a speaker describe leading leaders as being like herding cats, but for the first time I have been shown the difficulties of leading artists.
I am an artist. Not as creative as you are in your chosen field, in fact I am pathetic in your chosen field: but you in your field excels me in mine. And I have two fields that I am aware of, or perhaps it is the one with a peculiarly large annex.
I think artists do understand each other in that we understand that we are artists and that we have “needs” that less creative people do not have. Nevertheless our common needs are not identical, so perhaps there is a unique confusion amongst artists too. Especially so among practitioners of different forms of The Arts.
The house where I have been least allowed to be creative over the past ten years was the one with the most artists in it. Beside me there were three other people in the house, a graphic designer who was also a painter, a singer/dancer/actress, and a make-up and costume designer. I entered the house excited to be living among other artists, and relaxed my defences so as to be able to better breathe the air of creativity. What I found was that with my defences down I was set-up to be hurt. I did breathe the creativity in the air, and at times as able to engage in the background work to what I do, but I also breathed the tension of three artists who had lived and worked together for decades: my presence unbalanced them, and their apprehension-becomes-hostility destroyed me. It has taken more than a year to recover my craft, and some things have been lost eternally, unable to be recovered. I still feel frightened to even remember that house.
Now I live among people who have creative skills, but whose skills have been buried for the sake of propriety in having to do “work” of a different kind. One can draw and paint, and would do for relaxation, if time and supplies were forthcoming. The other was an actress in her youth, and still has ideas and passion for performance and presenting outside the box, but who has been put back in her box far too many times and now she smoulders and explodes with frequent unpredictability. From one there is a vicarious push to shine my light, from the other a veiled desire to hide that light lest it be displayed only to be extinguished
Right now I feel as though if my candle were placed under a bowl it would ignite the bowl and destroy the whole house, which begs the question, is it a safe candle to burn indoors at all?
I am an artist. Not as creative as you are in your chosen field, in fact I am pathetic in your chosen field: but you in your field excels me in mine. And I have two fields that I am aware of, or perhaps it is the one with a peculiarly large annex.
I think artists do understand each other in that we understand that we are artists and that we have “needs” that less creative people do not have. Nevertheless our common needs are not identical, so perhaps there is a unique confusion amongst artists too. Especially so among practitioners of different forms of The Arts.
The house where I have been least allowed to be creative over the past ten years was the one with the most artists in it. Beside me there were three other people in the house, a graphic designer who was also a painter, a singer/dancer/actress, and a make-up and costume designer. I entered the house excited to be living among other artists, and relaxed my defences so as to be able to better breathe the air of creativity. What I found was that with my defences down I was set-up to be hurt. I did breathe the creativity in the air, and at times as able to engage in the background work to what I do, but I also breathed the tension of three artists who had lived and worked together for decades: my presence unbalanced them, and their apprehension-becomes-hostility destroyed me. It has taken more than a year to recover my craft, and some things have been lost eternally, unable to be recovered. I still feel frightened to even remember that house.
Now I live among people who have creative skills, but whose skills have been buried for the sake of propriety in having to do “work” of a different kind. One can draw and paint, and would do for relaxation, if time and supplies were forthcoming. The other was an actress in her youth, and still has ideas and passion for performance and presenting outside the box, but who has been put back in her box far too many times and now she smoulders and explodes with frequent unpredictability. From one there is a vicarious push to shine my light, from the other a veiled desire to hide that light lest it be displayed only to be extinguished
Right now I feel as though if my candle were placed under a bowl it would ignite the bowl and destroy the whole house, which begs the question, is it a safe candle to burn indoors at all?
Saturday 30 May 2009
Being Enactors of Significance
Being Enactors of Significance
Unity Hill Christian Ministry Centre
Worship Workshop
16th May 2009
For some it seems Worship means creative arts and Word means sermon: we have a time of worship and then we listen to the word. But worship does not of itself mean creative arts, worship means to ascribe worth and to bring honour. Worship, if it is to bring God all that He deserves, (regardless of what He desires), must be holistic. My Utmost for His Highest cannot be my utmost if it is not my everything and my all. For our acts of devotion to be worship, they must take place in every facet of our being:
• Spiritual
• Emotional
• Physical
But also:
• Social
• Cognitive (Educational/Intellectual)
• Economic
With everything, with everything...whoa!...oa!....oao!
Boredom is not a lack of activity, it is a lack of significance. Acts of worship are about enacting significant things, either in ascribing worth to God or in receiving grace and blessing from Him.
Worship is knowing: I remember Brian Houston introducing his wife Bobbie at a conference, and saying as she entered the platform “you will enjoy this woman’s preaching and the word she brings from God. I am confident in this woman’s ministry because I know this woman. In fact I have known this woman in the Biblical sense.” To know something in the Biblical sense is shocking: knowing from the Bible involves experience of and intimacy with God in all that God is. If I know the Truth then the Truth shall make me free: as Tim Hansel says “when theology has become my biography”. Whilst not at the same level of intimacy it is important for worship leaders to know their people, the people whom they are leading into worship. This is where the praise of God can be lost in the people’s sense of not belonging: to worship is to be welcome in the presence of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, but people who do not feel welcome in his church will struggle to feel welcome in his presence. What does it mean to belong? Maybe “we want more hymns” or “we want modern music” means “I don’t know these songs, this culture, and I feel left out in my own congregation”.
God added daily to the early Church: and He is adding daily to the megachurches. He does so because He is able to and because it is the desire of His heart that He can connect His lost to His found, His hurting children to his hurting-but-knowing children. Is He able to add to our church? How readily or frequently is He able to add? Are we ready for those who will be brought into The Church through revival to be brought into our congregation? What if I was successful as Chaplain at the High School, and teenage “new converts” starting coming in on a Sunday? (Indeed if I were successful they’d not be new converts when they came here, they’d be seekers: still unsaved, and unchurched, trying out the community of faith to see if they fit.) What do we need to do to be ready? Who do we need to be?
It was the jargon phrase of our faith when I was entering my teenage years that Christianity is not a religion, it is a lifestyle. I think that’s not entirely true, Christianity is not a lifestyle: Christianity is a relationship, the lifestyle is worship. Christianity is our becoming like Christ, returning to the image of God in which we were created as men and women in God’s image. Christianity is our being, worship is the expression of our being, it is our doing: worship is a verb.
Worship is what the Celts described as the psalm on the five stringed harp: a making use of all of the senses to express deep things. One of the critiques I have heard of Celtic modes of daily prayer is “bless me as I brush my teeth and bless my little toe”. The Celts had prayers for every activity and every event. In the same way Thomas a Kempis started out as the cook in The Congregation of The Common Life a monastic house in what is now The Netherlands where he lived during the greater portion of the fifteenth century. In his well known devotional book The Imitation of Christ he puts forward the idea of Man’s complete dependence on God’s love and the futility of life without Him. Brother Thomas spent his days growing herbs, cutting vegetables, baking bread and brewing ale: later he entered the scriptorium where he wrote his devotional book and copied and translated the work of others, (it is thought that he copied out the entire Bible four times in the course of his life). In everything he gave glory to God and made each activity an act of simple devotion. Bless me as I plant these seeds and as I knead this dough.
This is the air I breathe.
Your worship is an expression of your Christianity: worship is our connection with God in ways that are uniquely significant. Many people may connect through the same uniquely significant events, (which is why you can have 2000 people all in a “moment”), but it is only worship for you if it is significant to you.
Praise has been defined as telling the truth about God. Praise is telling your truth about God, while worship is your story of God’s activity in your life; past, future, and present tense. And of course as such they are not distinct.
This is my prayer in the Desert,
When all that’s within me feels dry.
This is my prayer in my hunger and need.
My God is the God Who Provides....
Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my saviour am happy and blest...
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my saviour all the day long...
I will bring praise, I will bring praise
No weapon formed against me shall remain,
I rejoice, I will declare,
God is my victory and He is here.
What matters to you is significant to you. Worship is the expression of your “things that matter”, in the minutes of performing The Arts, in the snatched seconds of personal moments of devotion, and in the hours and years of everyday life. When you know that what matters to you matters to God you can worship Him with abandon. When you know that what matters to God matters to you, then you can serve Him in the same way.
This was the first of two sessions I delivered at the worship workshop held by Unity Hill (my home church) in May 2009. The second session was a practical workshop in using drama in church.
Unity Hill Christian Ministry Centre
Worship Workshop
16th May 2009
For some it seems Worship means creative arts and Word means sermon: we have a time of worship and then we listen to the word. But worship does not of itself mean creative arts, worship means to ascribe worth and to bring honour. Worship, if it is to bring God all that He deserves, (regardless of what He desires), must be holistic. My Utmost for His Highest cannot be my utmost if it is not my everything and my all. For our acts of devotion to be worship, they must take place in every facet of our being:
• Spiritual
• Emotional
• Physical
But also:
• Social
• Cognitive (Educational/Intellectual)
• Economic
With everything, with everything...whoa!...oa!....oao!
Boredom is not a lack of activity, it is a lack of significance. Acts of worship are about enacting significant things, either in ascribing worth to God or in receiving grace and blessing from Him.
Worship is knowing: I remember Brian Houston introducing his wife Bobbie at a conference, and saying as she entered the platform “you will enjoy this woman’s preaching and the word she brings from God. I am confident in this woman’s ministry because I know this woman. In fact I have known this woman in the Biblical sense.” To know something in the Biblical sense is shocking: knowing from the Bible involves experience of and intimacy with God in all that God is. If I know the Truth then the Truth shall make me free: as Tim Hansel says “when theology has become my biography”. Whilst not at the same level of intimacy it is important for worship leaders to know their people, the people whom they are leading into worship. This is where the praise of God can be lost in the people’s sense of not belonging: to worship is to be welcome in the presence of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, but people who do not feel welcome in his church will struggle to feel welcome in his presence. What does it mean to belong? Maybe “we want more hymns” or “we want modern music” means “I don’t know these songs, this culture, and I feel left out in my own congregation”.
God added daily to the early Church: and He is adding daily to the megachurches. He does so because He is able to and because it is the desire of His heart that He can connect His lost to His found, His hurting children to his hurting-but-knowing children. Is He able to add to our church? How readily or frequently is He able to add? Are we ready for those who will be brought into The Church through revival to be brought into our congregation? What if I was successful as Chaplain at the High School, and teenage “new converts” starting coming in on a Sunday? (Indeed if I were successful they’d not be new converts when they came here, they’d be seekers: still unsaved, and unchurched, trying out the community of faith to see if they fit.) What do we need to do to be ready? Who do we need to be?
It was the jargon phrase of our faith when I was entering my teenage years that Christianity is not a religion, it is a lifestyle. I think that’s not entirely true, Christianity is not a lifestyle: Christianity is a relationship, the lifestyle is worship. Christianity is our becoming like Christ, returning to the image of God in which we were created as men and women in God’s image. Christianity is our being, worship is the expression of our being, it is our doing: worship is a verb.
Worship is what the Celts described as the psalm on the five stringed harp: a making use of all of the senses to express deep things. One of the critiques I have heard of Celtic modes of daily prayer is “bless me as I brush my teeth and bless my little toe”. The Celts had prayers for every activity and every event. In the same way Thomas a Kempis started out as the cook in The Congregation of The Common Life a monastic house in what is now The Netherlands where he lived during the greater portion of the fifteenth century. In his well known devotional book The Imitation of Christ he puts forward the idea of Man’s complete dependence on God’s love and the futility of life without Him. Brother Thomas spent his days growing herbs, cutting vegetables, baking bread and brewing ale: later he entered the scriptorium where he wrote his devotional book and copied and translated the work of others, (it is thought that he copied out the entire Bible four times in the course of his life). In everything he gave glory to God and made each activity an act of simple devotion. Bless me as I plant these seeds and as I knead this dough.
This is the air I breathe.
Your worship is an expression of your Christianity: worship is our connection with God in ways that are uniquely significant. Many people may connect through the same uniquely significant events, (which is why you can have 2000 people all in a “moment”), but it is only worship for you if it is significant to you.
Praise has been defined as telling the truth about God. Praise is telling your truth about God, while worship is your story of God’s activity in your life; past, future, and present tense. And of course as such they are not distinct.
This is my prayer in the Desert,
When all that’s within me feels dry.
This is my prayer in my hunger and need.
My God is the God Who Provides....
Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my saviour am happy and blest...
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my saviour all the day long...
I will bring praise, I will bring praise
No weapon formed against me shall remain,
I rejoice, I will declare,
God is my victory and He is here.
What matters to you is significant to you. Worship is the expression of your “things that matter”, in the minutes of performing The Arts, in the snatched seconds of personal moments of devotion, and in the hours and years of everyday life. When you know that what matters to you matters to God you can worship Him with abandon. When you know that what matters to God matters to you, then you can serve Him in the same way.
This was the first of two sessions I delivered at the worship workshop held by Unity Hill (my home church) in May 2009. The second session was a practical workshop in using drama in church.
And you will be my witnesses...
In many of the more traditional congregations and denominations of the Church the Thursday just gone was celebrated as the Feast of The Ascension. This is the day which Christians have historically set aside to remember Jesus returning to Heaven forty days after his resurrection. There are three accounts of this event in the New Testament, in each of the gospels of Luke and Mark, and in Acts (which Luke also wrote). In each of those places Jesus gives a final set of instructions to his gathered disciples; directing them to go out and to make disciples from all of those who will come to have faith in him through their message.
In Luke’s version Jesus is very clear in separating the parts of the world and in outlining how the planet is to be reached: first Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, and then the Ends of the Earth. Jesus also tells the gathered disciples to remain in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes on them with the Power from on High, so we know that Jerusalem is where they were at the time even though they had all started out in Galilee. But what do these four geographical locations mean for us? Is Jesus’ command to Unity Hill to go to Port Lincoln, the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, and beyond? Is such a request reasonable of us as individuals, or could it mean something else in this day and age? I want to suggest to you that we can each, as individuals, operate in each of these four areas:
Jerusalem: The people we live with, work with, and spend time with. The people we have direct contact with.
Judea: The people we might have occasional contact with, or “friends of friends”. How we interact within our circles has an effect on how those in our circles interact with the other people in theirs.
Samaria: The people beyond our indirect contact, but with who we share similarities.
The Ends of the Earth: People we will never meet this side of Heaven and with whom we share nothing more than air and the love of our gracious and beautiful God. (Quite possibly they are aware only of the first one.)
In each of these groups God has plans for us as individuals, and as a local church. In twenty-first century Unity Hill where Mwandi may be Judea for some, and Mallee Park the Ends of the Earth for others, we can rely on Him to lead us in being influential and active in all four spheres.
After all, it was Jesus’ idea in the first place.
This was the newsletter message I wrote for my church for Sunday 24th May 2009. I also preached the sermon that week, but have not included the text of that message here.
In Luke’s version Jesus is very clear in separating the parts of the world and in outlining how the planet is to be reached: first Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, and then the Ends of the Earth. Jesus also tells the gathered disciples to remain in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes on them with the Power from on High, so we know that Jerusalem is where they were at the time even though they had all started out in Galilee. But what do these four geographical locations mean for us? Is Jesus’ command to Unity Hill to go to Port Lincoln, the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, and beyond? Is such a request reasonable of us as individuals, or could it mean something else in this day and age? I want to suggest to you that we can each, as individuals, operate in each of these four areas:
Jerusalem: The people we live with, work with, and spend time with. The people we have direct contact with.
Judea: The people we might have occasional contact with, or “friends of friends”. How we interact within our circles has an effect on how those in our circles interact with the other people in theirs.
Samaria: The people beyond our indirect contact, but with who we share similarities.
The Ends of the Earth: People we will never meet this side of Heaven and with whom we share nothing more than air and the love of our gracious and beautiful God. (Quite possibly they are aware only of the first one.)
In each of these groups God has plans for us as individuals, and as a local church. In twenty-first century Unity Hill where Mwandi may be Judea for some, and Mallee Park the Ends of the Earth for others, we can rely on Him to lead us in being influential and active in all four spheres.
After all, it was Jesus’ idea in the first place.
This was the newsletter message I wrote for my church for Sunday 24th May 2009. I also preached the sermon that week, but have not included the text of that message here.
Friday 13 March 2009
Book Reviews
I have been invited to join the team which writes book reviews for New Times, the South Australia Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia's monthly magazine to congregations. Below are two reviews I wrote for the one book, as a type of practice before beginning work. I am currently awaiting my first batch of books to review to be sent from Adelaide.
‘The Betrayal’
Author: Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
Published by Tim Doherty Associates
Considering the title, and the picture on the front of the hardback edition of this book I was expecting a fictional account of the last days of Judas Iscariot. Having now read the book I wonder in fact what “the betrayal” actually is: who or what has been betrayed by this story? There is nothing new or potentially shocking here; a fiction based around scholarship which disproves the resurrection, denies the virgin birth to consider Jesus to be the illegitimate son of Pantera, and links Jesus emotionally with Mary Magdalene goes past the words of Dan Brown at least as far as the film Jesus of Montreal in my Generation-X memory.
As a story I found the book readable without being gripping. It has intrigue and action; a traditional chase narrative set inside a not uncommon story of the pagan woman and the Christian monk slowly falling in love during a time of hiding out from the baddies. And these are Church baddies too: Constantinian rather than Vatican, but even in the fourth century no one expected the Spanish Inquisition with their chief weapon of fear and surprise. I enjoyed the retelling of the last days of Jesus from the point of view of Joseph of Arimathea and once I became used to the use of Jewish spelling rather than the more traditional forms the story moved quickly; but the occasional passages set in second person (“you turn and enter the room”) left me puzzled as I’m still not certain who I was supposed to be at that point. (Judas Iscariot? But why?)
Perhaps this book is little more than has-been scholarship dressed up in has-been sensationalism: but if you know who you are in Christ, and He in you, there’s nothing too scary here for you, and you may well enjoy the story.
‘The Betrayal’
Author: Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
Published by Tim Doherty Associates
Jesus, possibly romantically linked to Mary Magdalene (who is the same person as Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus), the bastard son of a roman soldier, does not rise from the dead but his body is stolen from the tomb and hidden away by the Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea. High Priest Caiaphas had done all he could to save Jesus, but Annas subverted the plan out of a sense of personal vendetta, (his family are the temple traders in doves who Jesus kicked apart a few days earlier), and Jesus was sent to a sadistic Pilate who delighted in having him flogged prior to crucifixion just to see the look on Joseph of Arimathea’s face. Centuries later a small band of rebel monks (and their pagan but stunningly redheaded washerwoman) discover the truth and must outrun the Church police sent by Constantine to stop them at all costs.
It’s all here, murder, torture, intrigue, forbidden love, and a Church desperate to hide The Truth to protect the integrity of The Way. It worked for Dan Brown, and the players of Jesus of Montreal, so why not for two “Biblical Archaeologists” from the mid-west.
I found the use of Hebraic spellings needlessly complicated; the fiction of scholars showing how dreadfully clever they are, but once I was able to work out who each word actually referred to I was able to read around it. This book is an entertaining if not an engaging read, but in terms of shock value I was left undaunted and rather “been-there-done-that” by its claims.
‘The Betrayal’
Author: Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
Published by Tim Doherty Associates
Considering the title, and the picture on the front of the hardback edition of this book I was expecting a fictional account of the last days of Judas Iscariot. Having now read the book I wonder in fact what “the betrayal” actually is: who or what has been betrayed by this story? There is nothing new or potentially shocking here; a fiction based around scholarship which disproves the resurrection, denies the virgin birth to consider Jesus to be the illegitimate son of Pantera, and links Jesus emotionally with Mary Magdalene goes past the words of Dan Brown at least as far as the film Jesus of Montreal in my Generation-X memory.
As a story I found the book readable without being gripping. It has intrigue and action; a traditional chase narrative set inside a not uncommon story of the pagan woman and the Christian monk slowly falling in love during a time of hiding out from the baddies. And these are Church baddies too: Constantinian rather than Vatican, but even in the fourth century no one expected the Spanish Inquisition with their chief weapon of fear and surprise. I enjoyed the retelling of the last days of Jesus from the point of view of Joseph of Arimathea and once I became used to the use of Jewish spelling rather than the more traditional forms the story moved quickly; but the occasional passages set in second person (“you turn and enter the room”) left me puzzled as I’m still not certain who I was supposed to be at that point. (Judas Iscariot? But why?)
Perhaps this book is little more than has-been scholarship dressed up in has-been sensationalism: but if you know who you are in Christ, and He in you, there’s nothing too scary here for you, and you may well enjoy the story.
‘The Betrayal’
Author: Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
Published by Tim Doherty Associates
Jesus, possibly romantically linked to Mary Magdalene (who is the same person as Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus), the bastard son of a roman soldier, does not rise from the dead but his body is stolen from the tomb and hidden away by the Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea. High Priest Caiaphas had done all he could to save Jesus, but Annas subverted the plan out of a sense of personal vendetta, (his family are the temple traders in doves who Jesus kicked apart a few days earlier), and Jesus was sent to a sadistic Pilate who delighted in having him flogged prior to crucifixion just to see the look on Joseph of Arimathea’s face. Centuries later a small band of rebel monks (and their pagan but stunningly redheaded washerwoman) discover the truth and must outrun the Church police sent by Constantine to stop them at all costs.
It’s all here, murder, torture, intrigue, forbidden love, and a Church desperate to hide The Truth to protect the integrity of The Way. It worked for Dan Brown, and the players of Jesus of Montreal, so why not for two “Biblical Archaeologists” from the mid-west.
I found the use of Hebraic spellings needlessly complicated; the fiction of scholars showing how dreadfully clever they are, but once I was able to work out who each word actually referred to I was able to read around it. This book is an entertaining if not an engaging read, but in terms of shock value I was left undaunted and rather “been-there-done-that” by its claims.
Saturday 14 February 2009
Stone The Flamin' Crows
So far over sixty-five million dollars has been raised by Red Cross for their 2009 Victoria Bushfire Appeal, a staggering amount of money compared with events I have seen staged in the United Kingdom for disaster relief, but then that is how Australia is. Aussies love a battler, and more than a battler Aussies love other Aussies. In 2005 the fires were here on Southern Eyre with the loss of thousands of hectares of farmland, hundreds of animals, and nine South Australians, (including three known to our close friendship group). Then millions of dollars and shedloads of stuff was sent from across Australia to help us; a generosity and acts of love not forgotten by us as we now have the opportunity to give as well.
It may be true that Australia is not the best country in the world in rallying around itself during times of trial, (although it probably is true); and I am certain that other countries must do this sort of thing, but right now I am proud to be Australian and to hear and see the heart of my nation for my people. I was pleased to see the envelope passed down the Regional Express 1135 from ADL to PLO last Wednesday, to see that over $800 had been raised just from that little 30 seat SAAB in a little more than three hours of flying. It was just an A4 envelope, passed hand to hand down the rows and we were the aircraft’s third flight of the day; I was blessed to see bush-blokes pulling several orange and yellow notes from their wallets, not just the pink or blue ones, and putting them in the envelope as if they were posting mail. “Just doin’ me job mate.” Of course you were: and you’d probably already done it at Adelaide Airport before boarding the flight and at Elders before heading for the airport. You know you’re in the right country when the national news tells you to “stop sending stuff as we are swamped”, to send money instead, and the national giving to one appeal total tops ten million dollars a day, each day, for several days on end.
What has also been brought home to me as a Melbourne-boy, born and raised then moved away, is the locality of this season’s fires. The campsite where my brother and I used to go “to camp” as pre-teens lost two of its five bunkhouses and the main dining room/auditorium complex. I think of that place often as I had some great experiences there, both as a growing boy and a growing Christian. Now it’s gone and there are photos on their website to prove it: along with the news that every member of staff and each of the ninety campers onsite at the time were all successfully evacuated. The office is already being moved to Healesville so as to continue their mission of ministering to their community. Legends!
Kinglake was a place suburbanites like us would drive through on our way from “The City” to “The Snow”. I was at secondary school with kids from Bunyip.
In 1983 the fires of Ash Wednesday burned down the houses of two of my school friends in North Pakenham, along with the “other church” of the two-congregation Anglican parish where I was Confirmed. It burned close to us as it went through Mount Macedon, and as it burned across the Adelaide Hills it destroyed places more familiar to us now as new resident citizens of the People’s Republic of South Australia.
My family has stories of the bushfires near Melbourne in the 1930s and 1960s; of my grandfather disappearing for four days while “away at the fires”. My brother and I were present to defend our house in Hobart in 1995 as the flames came over Mt Nelson and burned out a paddock across the road from us while we stood in thick jumpers and jeans and hosed down our roof and spouting. Fire is what we do, but then we are an Australian family and fire is what everyone does and has done for at least 221 years.
It is true that Australia burns like clockwork. This year is an El Nino year: every eleven to fifteen years we see extremes of weather while South America sees the inverse effect. Floods in the north, fires in the south: welcome to Australia in 2009, (1995-97, 1982-83, 1967-69). This has not, as some have said, anything to do with “so what is God saying to Australia”; El Nino means “the child” in Spanish, and yes it is named for Christ since the effects rise around the time of Christmas: but if God is saying anything to Australia is it what He says to anyone in distress; “I am with you”, “behold I make all things new”, and other less Biblical stuff like “yeah I know mate, this sucks it happened to you but you’ll be right”. (Or even “you’se’ll be roit” on occasion; this is The Great Southland of The Holy Spirit after all, and everyone knows Eden is just over the NSW side of the coastal boarder with Victoria, Paradise a suburb of Adelaide, and The Promised Land and Beulah just inland from Devonport in Tasmania.) We learned as children how to live in Australia; primary school when I was a boy featured repeated lessons on how to survive a bushfire, or snake bite, or spider bite, or poisoning by octopus/jellyfish/stonefish; we know this happens and we know what to do.
But this year it has been different, and that is what makes 2009 bigger than normal. (Yes “normal”.) Stay home and defend your well prepared property we are told; and people died. Get in your car and escape because cars will not often explode we are told; and people died. The Adelaide Advertiser today reports on Marysville in narrative form: at 17:15 people were kicking back with the aircon and a coldie as the fires burned ten miles away. By 18:15 the town had been wiped off the face of the earth and almost a hundred had died: maybe a hundred by the time forensics have finished: and what with the chance that this was arson the whole town has been cop-taped off as a crime scene.
When your Prime Minister appears in tears on internationally televised news and swears that we will find every one of the fire-bug arsonists, you know you’re in the best country on earth. When you read of the nine charred bodies found in one house, eight huddled around the baby at the centre, it breaks your heart that “home” could be so cruel.
It may be true that Australia is not the best country in the world in rallying around itself during times of trial, (although it probably is true); and I am certain that other countries must do this sort of thing, but right now I am proud to be Australian and to hear and see the heart of my nation for my people. I was pleased to see the envelope passed down the Regional Express 1135 from ADL to PLO last Wednesday, to see that over $800 had been raised just from that little 30 seat SAAB in a little more than three hours of flying. It was just an A4 envelope, passed hand to hand down the rows and we were the aircraft’s third flight of the day; I was blessed to see bush-blokes pulling several orange and yellow notes from their wallets, not just the pink or blue ones, and putting them in the envelope as if they were posting mail. “Just doin’ me job mate.” Of course you were: and you’d probably already done it at Adelaide Airport before boarding the flight and at Elders before heading for the airport. You know you’re in the right country when the national news tells you to “stop sending stuff as we are swamped”, to send money instead, and the national giving to one appeal total tops ten million dollars a day, each day, for several days on end.
What has also been brought home to me as a Melbourne-boy, born and raised then moved away, is the locality of this season’s fires. The campsite where my brother and I used to go “to camp” as pre-teens lost two of its five bunkhouses and the main dining room/auditorium complex. I think of that place often as I had some great experiences there, both as a growing boy and a growing Christian. Now it’s gone and there are photos on their website to prove it: along with the news that every member of staff and each of the ninety campers onsite at the time were all successfully evacuated. The office is already being moved to Healesville so as to continue their mission of ministering to their community. Legends!
Kinglake was a place suburbanites like us would drive through on our way from “The City” to “The Snow”. I was at secondary school with kids from Bunyip.
In 1983 the fires of Ash Wednesday burned down the houses of two of my school friends in North Pakenham, along with the “other church” of the two-congregation Anglican parish where I was Confirmed. It burned close to us as it went through Mount Macedon, and as it burned across the Adelaide Hills it destroyed places more familiar to us now as new resident citizens of the People’s Republic of South Australia.
My family has stories of the bushfires near Melbourne in the 1930s and 1960s; of my grandfather disappearing for four days while “away at the fires”. My brother and I were present to defend our house in Hobart in 1995 as the flames came over Mt Nelson and burned out a paddock across the road from us while we stood in thick jumpers and jeans and hosed down our roof and spouting. Fire is what we do, but then we are an Australian family and fire is what everyone does and has done for at least 221 years.
It is true that Australia burns like clockwork. This year is an El Nino year: every eleven to fifteen years we see extremes of weather while South America sees the inverse effect. Floods in the north, fires in the south: welcome to Australia in 2009, (1995-97, 1982-83, 1967-69). This has not, as some have said, anything to do with “so what is God saying to Australia”; El Nino means “the child” in Spanish, and yes it is named for Christ since the effects rise around the time of Christmas: but if God is saying anything to Australia is it what He says to anyone in distress; “I am with you”, “behold I make all things new”, and other less Biblical stuff like “yeah I know mate, this sucks it happened to you but you’ll be right”. (Or even “you’se’ll be roit” on occasion; this is The Great Southland of The Holy Spirit after all, and everyone knows Eden is just over the NSW side of the coastal boarder with Victoria, Paradise a suburb of Adelaide, and The Promised Land and Beulah just inland from Devonport in Tasmania.) We learned as children how to live in Australia; primary school when I was a boy featured repeated lessons on how to survive a bushfire, or snake bite, or spider bite, or poisoning by octopus/jellyfish/stonefish; we know this happens and we know what to do.
But this year it has been different, and that is what makes 2009 bigger than normal. (Yes “normal”.) Stay home and defend your well prepared property we are told; and people died. Get in your car and escape because cars will not often explode we are told; and people died. The Adelaide Advertiser today reports on Marysville in narrative form: at 17:15 people were kicking back with the aircon and a coldie as the fires burned ten miles away. By 18:15 the town had been wiped off the face of the earth and almost a hundred had died: maybe a hundred by the time forensics have finished: and what with the chance that this was arson the whole town has been cop-taped off as a crime scene.
When your Prime Minister appears in tears on internationally televised news and swears that we will find every one of the fire-bug arsonists, you know you’re in the best country on earth. When you read of the nine charred bodies found in one house, eight huddled around the baby at the centre, it breaks your heart that “home” could be so cruel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
