Compassion, Wisdom and Love.

2011-09-09T21:12:00.001+09:30

2011-09-05T18:57:00.003+09:30

Gosh, the last month of winter flew by, and I neglected the muse...

Canberra is glorious, awash in blossoms and daffodils and jonquils and many other lovely flowers.

A feast to soothe the eyes and satisfy the desire for the beautiful.

Life continues to be a mix of sorrow, confusion and trust.

Managed to catch a few hours at explo '11, thanks to invites from B and P. Too many clients to attend the actual healing services. But the music and enthusiasm was fantastic.

Fathers day came and went, and my sorrow deepened and I felt depressed - exacerbated by the news that a dear friend has major visa problems :(

This is the song I have been praying / singing for her :

I Know The Lord

Ngiyazinkosi
Izolungisindlela yam'
Uma ngihamba ngobungcwele
Ngenz’ okuhle njalo njalo
Ngiyaz’ inkosi
Izolung’ isindlela yam'
I know the Lord will make a way for me (I sing her )
If I live a holy life shun the wrong and do the right
I know the Lord Will make a way for me
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
If I live a holy life shun the wrong and do the right
I know the Lord will make a way for me
______________________________________________________
God Bless all who seek to walk in the way of the Almighty!

Finally another friend is blogging about her life - see the link lower left, Ability and Rights. Her passion is strong!

2011-08-01T16:58:00.005+09:30

re: ultrafilesdownload.com

Scam site, big time!

Do not attempt to buy Christian music from them. They don't have any music, all they do is take your money, and then proceed to debit your credit card every day!

Thanks ScamFound, wish your post had been up on 7/24!

Verified Fraudulent Website

2011-07-30T22:54:00.004+09:30

Over the past year I gained two special friends, both whom I call 'sha'.

Sha is a contraction of the Shona word for friend, shamwari, which translates mate, pal, friend.

When used as sha by me it indicates a very close personal friend. One to whom everything I have is available.

Friendship is dictated by the emotions raised thru the relationship and both of my special shas have touched my heart, mind and spirit deeply over time.

I am privileged to call them sha. Laughter,encouragement, inspiration have I gained from them.

My support for them is a pale reflection of what I have been blessed with thru knowing them.

Life is a mix of thorns and roses, my two sha's are the sweetest smelling roses I know, and it is good.

Praise be to God, who binds up the wounds of the broken hearted and restores the spirit of the crushed!

2011-07-29T22:50:00.000+09:30

My sha, Baber:

She is Not Just a Friend To You...

My Friend Broken and Tried

You have been Broken and Your Life Has Been Turned Upside Down.

And it is something of not of your accord,
It is because of something Random.

Something that was not you Fault,
Something that you do not believe you Deserve.

It is an Affliction.
An affliction upon another.

That Has Broken You.
That Has Deeply Hurt Your Soul.

I can see Friend,
I can see what you go Through.
I can feel what you go Through.

It is through your words alone that you have Delivered Message
You Have Delivered what troubles you so.

Have Faith that all things happen for a reason,
And Some People Come into Your Life for a Reason.

Perhaps she is sent to Help You Heal.
To Make you Strong Again.

I have spoken to her...
She will not expect anything of you friend.
She Will Only Offer you the Words and Affection that you need.

Say Glory to Our Majesty for Sending You What You May Not Even Know Of.

2011-07-27T10:48:00.003+09:30

My friend Baber continues to write wonderful prose and poetry on his blog.

I feel my muse stirring deep within, and wonder should I attempt to write poetry again.

There are seasons for expression, and seasons for enjoying the expression of others.

The winter cold is deep in my bones and endless cups of hot coffee do not keep my body warm but my mind and spirit are cozy and comfortable with these writings and links:

Bruce, Mauberly and of course Baber.

2011-07-13T17:56:00.002+09:30

So I am trying google + , possibly the new facebook.

If you want an invite, email me.

The winter cold has set in. Meanwhile friends in the northern hemisphere complain about the heat, heh.

Once a month now I visit a local hospital to assist the pastoral care team. A rewarding time, and the cuppa with other team members is full of surprises too.

2011-07-04T00:02:00.002+09:30

Sorry, gentle readers, time has moved on.

Many hours spent washing the ill and the disabled, shopping and cleaning for the ones in need, bringing viaticum to the dying and the housebound, caring for my darling youngest daughter, and too many hours reading tech news and following the haxors.

Facebook allows me to show much of what inspires and infuriates me.

But always only 72%!!!

So... gentle reader I also spend much time in my car each day driving from client to client. As I drive I pray and sing. I sing along to a wonderful inspiring CD collection called Joyous Celebration.

Thanks to Pheobe who introduced me to such wonderful music.

So whats new in my life?

I have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, I am 52, feel 30 but have the bones of an 80year old.

Fortunately a medication called fosamax will deposit calcium into my bones and make my skeletal structure stronger again. X-rays in late July will show what has happened since I began the medication.

Also I have had a huge experience of spiritual warfare. Beyond my understanding but God's love continues.

Finally I know how much I am loved by God. Knowing this, all is well!

PS Thanks Baber for inspiring me to blog again.

2011-04-06T08:44:00.004+09:30

John writes: "Now is the time to think about who you will be walking with, where you will be starting from and asking people to join you. Invite as many people to join you as you can. You can register an event on the Walk & Talk City with a Soul community page about where you will be walking. You know the time: 2-3pm wherever you are in the world!"

Related wordpress blog

agonist

2011-03-27T00:31:00.001+10:30

Thanks Mauberly
the passing

2011-03-16T17:53:00.003+10:30

A walk of hope around the world
On the 15th May 250,000 people from around the world will undertake a one hour walk in their neighbourhood. They will share what touches their lives and how it can make a world of a difference to others. Together we will create 1000 projects which enable a world of hope for each other by sharing one concrete action that can make the world of difference for at least one other person.

This is an opportunity to share an hour of your time in conversation with at least one other person. It is hoped that this will not only be a sacred space but that there will be some concrete action which arises which makes a difference for one other person. Together we can change the conversation of the world!

Join up Walk & Talk-City with a Soul
When you have liked this page please ask your friends to do the same. While it is one small click of a button this can start to make a difference in our world.

2011-02-12T10:23:00.003+10:30

Long work hours stifle the muse.

The cycle of life continues with pregnancies, births, illnesses and deaths.

An awesome opus of meditations on the death of a son has crossed my path. I hope the author does get it published for a wider audience.

2011-01-18T22:58:00.003+10:30

Gordon, Sue and Mother.
Time to remember times of yesteryear.

Gordon Moyes who crossed my path several times during my bookselling career wrote this in 2007:

These people in spite of all that had happened to them had become very able people. At my first chapel in the city of the first Thursday in February in 1979 I met a very remarkable blind lady by the name of Sue Newman. Sue was in her 20s. She was totally blind and walked with a long white cane. She also suffered very badly from epileptic seizures. However with my experience of epilepsy this was not going to be a problem. Soon we became close friends and she attended every church service each week. I remember inviting Sue to take part in services and to read from her Braille bible and then one night in July 1979 I was doing a special “Church in a Theatre” which was going to be telecast at the ABC network. I was going to interview her about her life and faith.

Sue was born blind. Her eyes which portrayed the white part of the eyeball when her eyelids were open had never been functional at all. She never blamed God for her blindness, nor did she believed she had missed out, being born blind. She said to me in that television interview I would rather be born blind than to have lost my sight because I feel I would have lost out so much more if I had gone blind later.

Sue had not missed out on much of the 20 years or so of life. She was very active in bushcraft and had worked for the Duke of Edinburgh award. She was also very active in athletics particularly running. She used to go mountain climbing in the Blue Mountains and other places and enjoyed surfing both in the pool and in the surf. She went on an expedition on one occasion through the Blue Mountains without a great deal of help. There were times when climbing a steep rock face she needed people to call out to her where to put her feet but with that help she was able to successfully scale a very forbidding cliff face. During her time she also spent a week nursing small children in a children’s home. She set herself the task of winning the Duke of Edinburgh top award and over a period of years completed all that was necessary to win her bronze award and then her silver award and finally the Governor General of Australia presented her with a gold Duke of Edinburgh award.

Eventually she went to Buckingham Palace and received a gold award from the Duke of Edinburgh himself. The Duke was greatly impressed with Sue’s courage and personal commitment to overcoming.

It was while she was with us at Wesley Mission that she joined helping some young people struggling with drug addiction in the inner city of Sydney. She worked with some of my staff in reaching young people who constantly pitied themselves and gave themselves every excuse for their abuse of drugs. She did a training course with us and was in a class that I taught every week through our Lifeline.

After that she was involved in helping latchkey children in the inner suburban areas. At the same time she did a bible college course to equip herself. Never once did sue complain about the fact that she was totally blind. In 1980 Rev Fred Nile appointed Sue as an office worker and administrator for the International year for disabled people. This was part of the excellent work that he was doing through his new organisation, “Festival of Light”. Sue used a Braille typewriter and other special equipment. She wrote the International Year for Disabled Peoples Beatitudes which were found by many to be a real blessing.

There was a great loss to us all when Sue took an epileptic seizure and died on Tuesday the 14th of July in 1981 at just 27 years of age. We held a service of remembrance for her at the chapel in the city which crowded out Wesley Chapel. A second service of Praise and Thanksgiving was held at St Andrews Cathedral where Rev Fred Nile gave the eulogy. The Festival of Lights subsequently named an award in honour of Sue, the Sue Newman Award—for services to humanity. The first winner of that received it here in Sydney. And that winner was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Sue Newman was one of those remarkable overcomers.

I was privileged to meet Mother in 1981:

2010-12-25T00:22:00.001+10:30

BBC Thought for the day 24/12/2010
Pope Benedict XVI

Recalling with great fondness my four-day visit to the United Kingdom last September, I am glad to have the opportunity to greet you once again, and indeed to greet listeners everywhere as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ.
Our thoughts turn back to a moment in history when God's chosen people, the children of Israel, were living in intense expectation.
They were waiting for the Messiah that God had promised to send, and they pictured him as a great leader who would rescue them from foreign domination and restore their freedom.
God is always faithful to his promises, but he often surprises us in the way he fulfils them.
The child that was born in Bethlehem did indeed bring liberation, but not only for the people of that time and place - he was to be the Saviour of all people throughout the world and throughout history.
And it was not a political liberation that he brought, achieved through military means: rather, Christ destroyed death for ever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross.
And while he was born in poverty and obscurity, far from the centres of earthly power, he was none other than the Son of God.
Out of love for us he took upon himself our human condition, our fragility, our vulnerability, and he opened up for us the path that leads to the fullness of life, to a share in the life of God himself.
As we ponder this great mystery in our hearts this Christmas, let us give thanks to God for his goodness to us, and let us joyfully proclaim to those around us the good news that God offers us freedom from whatever weighs us down; he gives us hope, he brings us life.
Dear friends from Scotland, England, Wales and indeed every part of the English-speaking world, I want you to know that I keep all of you very much in my prayers during this Holy season.
I pray for your families, for your children, for those who are sick, and for those who are going through any form of hardship at this time.
I pray especially for the elderly and for those who are approaching the end of their days.
I ask Christ, the light of the nations, to dispel whatever darkness there may be in your lives and to grant to every one of you the grace of a peaceful and joyful Christmas.
May God bless all of you.

2010-12-08T00:26:00.000+10:30

2010-12-05T00:16:00.002+10:30

Peter Kemp, Solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW blogs on the PM's comment about Julian Assange.

2010-11-26T22:13:00.000+10:30

fuller version, "don't we know you"

OUP USA 2010 Word of the Year: Refudiate

2010-11-16T22:36:00.000+10:30

OUP USA 2010 Word of the Year: Refudiate

Morning in America | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

2010-11-16T22:06:00.000+10:30

Morning in America | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Chris Davis writes

Morning in America

From the photograher Dean Shaddock:
This was captured as I collected my things from airport security (Detroit Metro Concourse A). I think of it as something like a Rorschach test. Is an elderly Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim security agent the celebration of blind justice? Or is it simply an admission of absurdity?
--------
Update: So, 3+ years after I posted this image, Drudge Report appears to have ripped it off without attribution. www.flickr.com/photos/cjd/5180735394/

2010-11-09T23:29:00.002+10:30

You went away. It should make me feel better. But I don't know how I'm going to get through"

- The Odd Passenger hattip Black Seal. thanks m8!

2010-11-02T21:35:00.006+10:30

Oh the tangled web of spying!

Paul Keating, back in the day, prevented disclosure of the wealthy mole, who passed high-level intelligence to the Soviet Union for more than 15 years, forcing the United States to limit the information it shared with Australia. The traitor - who was never identified - started selling information to the KGB in the late 1970s.

But the 1950/60's were also a time of compromise: in 2006, Les Haylen's files were revealed to show that he took a woman who was high on ASIO's list of spy suspects, Lydia Janovski (Mokras), on a tour of parliament in December 1959.

Now, the elderly Lydia Mokras has been interviewed and features in a new spy documentary as discussed by Mark Colvin on ABC radio.

Interestingly Mark Colvin has his own part in the story

Personally, I also knew a wonderful woman in the '80's who was part of the post-Petrov affair.

Australia is a small place, everybody knows somebody, and spies are everywhere!

2010-10-05T21:08:00.002+10:30

A Franciscan from Slovakia living in Assisi and attempting to live the life of St Francis.

Found at Dom's

Gentle reader , compare and contrast the war of generation y.

2010-09-28T17:55:00.002+09:30

''So, when is the last leaf falling?'' aka Guess Who's Meditating?

- Lee Kuan Yew, the man who made Singapore in his own stern and unsentimental image, nearing his 87th birthday and contemplating age, infirmity and loss.

{snip}

I'm reaching 87, trying to keep fit, presenting a vigorous figure, and it's an effort, and is it worth the effort?'' he said. ''I laugh at myself trying to keep a bold front. It's become my habit. I just carry on.''

His most difficult moments come at the end of each day, he said, as he sits by the bedside of his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, 89, who has been unable to move or speak for more than two years. She had been by his side, a confidante and counselor, since they were law students in London.

{snip}

At night, hearing the sounds of his wife's discomfort in the next room, he said, he calms himself with 20 minutes of meditation, reciting a mantra he was taught by a Christian friend: ''Ma-Ra-Na-Tha.''

The words mean ''Come to me O Lord Jesus,'' he said, and although he is not a believer, he finds the sounds soothing.

''The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts,'' he said. ''A certain tranquility settles over you. The day's pressures and worries are pushed out. Then there's less problem sleeping.''

______________________________

Q: “Tell me about meditation?”

Mr Lee: “Well, I started it about two, three years ago when Ng Kok Song, the Chief Investment Officer of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, I knew he was doing meditation. His wife had died but he was completely serene. So, I said, how do you achieve this? He said I meditate everyday and so did my wife and when she was dying of cancer, she was totally serene because she meditated everyday and he gave me a video of her in her last few weeks completely composed completely relaxed and she and him had been meditating for years. Well, I said to him, you teach me. He is a devout Christian. He was taught by a man called Laurence Freeman, a Catholic. His guru was John Main, a devout Catholic. When I was in London, Ng Kok Song introduced me to Laurence Freeman. In fact, he is coming on Saturday to visit Singapore, and we will do a meditation session. The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts. It is most difficult to stay focused on the mantra. The discipline is to have a mantra which you keep repeating in your innermost heart, no need to voice it over and over again throughout the whole period of meditation. The mantra they recommended was a religious one. Ma Ra Na Ta, four syllables. Come To Me Oh Lord Jesus. So I said Okay, I am not a Catholic but I will try. He said you can take any other mantra, Buddhist Om Mi Tuo Fo, and keep repeating it. To me Ma Ran Na Ta is more soothing. So I used Ma Ra Na Ta. You must be disciplined. I find it helps me go to sleep after that. A certain tranquility settles over you. The day’s pressures and worries are pushed out. Then there’s less problem sleeping. I miss it sometimes when I am tired, or have gone out to a dinner and had wine. Then I cannot concentrate. Otherwise I stick to it.”

from here and here and here.

2010-08-27T17:01:00.003+09:30

August in Canberra has been a cold wet month, winter drags on. But tree buds and blossoms abound. A new spring approaches, probably with the worst hayfever season for yonks. Long hours of work continue but are very rewarding.

Washing feet, speech exercises, cleaning houses, cooking, nursing all make for diverse days. Empowering people who have little in health yet can still make my heart bound and leap for joy, with their words of thanks, smiles or handshakes.

Yet its been a year of almost fortnightly deaths, age and illness kill.

A friend has emailed with news of declining chemotherapy and the desire to embrace the final journey. Included in the email a few lines from Boris Pasternak. I found the complete version:

It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all-this is creation,
And not-to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive-this only matters-
Alive and burning to the end.

I remember a young dude at McDonalds drive thru in January, 2006, telling me about his dying teenage sister telling him that pain is bearable because it let her know that she was still alive. May we all burn brightly to the end.

2010-08-20T10:02:00.003+09:30

over @ agonist actor_212 posts:

Eight years. The longest war in American history. A war of aggression. 4400+ American soldiers dead. One million Iraqis dead. Who knows how many more displaced and chronically, perhaps fatally, un- or underemployed.

America's first official war of aggression. At least we didn't bother veiling this one behind an attack on a ship. Kofi Annan.

WMDs. NBCs. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Chemical Ali. Baghdad Bob. Spider trap. Embedding. Qatar.

David Bloom: I miss him still. Peter Arnett.

Colin Powell in front of the UN with a vial of "anthrax". Bush said in a nationally televised White House speech. "Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing." "Axis of Evil". Three million Romans protesting war (there's an irony), the largest anti-war protest ever. Mohamed ElBaradei. Hans Blix. Scott Ritter. Connection to September 11 attacks. Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, allies. Muhammad Atta in Prague with high ranking Hussein official. 48% still believe that Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Yellowcake. Niger. Joe Wilson. Curveball. Valarie Plame. Scooter Libby. Karl Rove. Judith Miller. Ahmed Chalabi. Stephen Hadley. Robert Novak. Tim Russert. George Tenet. "Slam dunk". Paul Wolfowitz. PNAC. Douglas "The Stupidest Man In America" Feith.

Shock and Awe. Moqtada Al-Sadr. Sadr City. Ali Al-Sistani. Coalition of the "Willing". Coalition of the Bullied. Shi'a. Sunni. Kurds. Coaltion Provisional Authority. L. Paul Bremer. De-Ba'athification. Basra. Kirkuk. Halliburton. Humvees without armor. Karbala. Najaf. "Mother Of All Bombs".

Operation Desert Fox (probably never a good idea to name a battleplan after a Nazi). Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Then, quickly changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Regime change.

General Tommy Franks. General David Petraeus. General Ricardo Sanchez. Linndie England. Abu Ghraib. Guatanamo Bay. Jessica Lynch, saved but not saved.
Abu Al Zarqawi. The statue in Fardus Square, Baghdad. Most Wanted playing cards. Looting. $9 billion dollars vanished in nine months.

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" (seven years too early). "Commander Codpiece". Fedayeen. Insurgency.

Amy Goodman. "Fahrenheit 9/11". "Michael Moore is fat". Downing Street memo. John Kerry. Vote irregularities in Ohio. Bush re-elected. Security Moms. Endless war. No war for oil.

"Nothing.... Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq." "[T]he main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction."

Operation Option North and Operation Bayonet Lightning in Kirkuk, Operation Desert Thrust, Operation Abilene and Operation All American Tiger throughout Iraq, Operation Iron Hammer in Baghdad and Operation Ivy Blizzard in Samarra - all in 2003; Operation Market Sweep, Operation Vigilant Resolve and Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in 2004; Operation Matador in Ambar, Operation Squeeze Play and Operation Lightning in Baghdad, Operation New Market near Haditha, Operation Spear in Karabillah and the Battle of Tal Afar - all in 2005; Operation Swarmer in Samarra and Operation Together Forward in Baghdad in 2006; and Operation Law and Order in Baghdad, Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Baqouba and Operation Phantom Strike throughout Iraq - all in 2007.

Fallujah.

Purple thumbs. Jalal Talibani. Nouri al-Maliki.

And finally...Last U.S. combat convoy has left Iraq

Never forget. Never. We can never do this again. We must not let it happen. Ever.

A memory jogger of what was.

2010-06-27T20:55:00.000+09:30

2010-06-27T13:13:00.007+09:30

A Sarah Palin lunch.

Finely chop 1 celery stalk, 1/2 red capsicum, 1/2 green capsicum and then combine with a mashed up tin of tomatoes. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Coarsely chop 6 garlic cloves and quickly sear in olive oil.

Mash up a tin of pink Alaskan salmon with 30gm butter.

Combine all the above and stuff into cannelloni. Drizzle olive oil over top

Cook on 200C for 18-20 minutes then garnish with chopped coriander and parsley.

Side dish, head of broccoli steamed for 10 minutes.

Accompanied by Aldi Cab Sav! mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Followed by french style cheesecake with sour cherries. nomnomnomnomnomnom!

2010-06-15T13:25:00.002+09:30

Last Thursday night last week I was presented with the Kevin Moyle Award for my efforts in my 2009 unit Christian Symbols, Rituals and Sacraments.

The Kevin Moyle Award for Liturgy or Ministry Studies at the Canberra Campus (Signadou) was established by Mrs Janet Moyle Grad Dip RE (1993), MTheo (2001) in honour of her late husband who was also a graduate of the ACU.

Previous winner Katharine Parks was also a member of St Matthews Parish, Page. For many years St Matthews was my parish where I acolyted with Kevin, and where I was involved with liturgy preparation with both Janet and Kevin. The award is decided by University staff who possibly knew nothing of my involvement at St Matthews with Kevin and Janet!

It is a great honour both to be acknowledged for my theological studies and also to receive an award in memory of a friend.

2010-06-09T20:01:00.001+09:30

Blessings land where they will!

Many years ago a sea God called Degei sailed to the Fiji islands from parts unknown. Among the crew onboard the magnificent canoe were two trusted warriors named Cavunatoakula and Ratu Saruta whose duty was to guard a highly treasured box of blessings known as Kato ni Cakamana.

While traveling through the Yasawa group of islands the vessel was struck by a violent storm terrifying everyone on board. Still, the entire crew dared not look upon Degei’s face for leadership knowing that sure death awaited those that did, causing them to fall into a state of panic. To lighten the canoe everything was thrown overboard including the Kato ni Cakamana.

The canoe eventually weathered the storm and found anchor on an island close by Mana Island. A day of feasting and merrymaking ensued and everyone was happy until Degei approached the people to enquire as to the whereabouts of the Kato ni Cakamana, the prized box of blessings. Fearing death, the people hid their faces and were all terrified speechless. Cavunatoakula and Ratu Saruta were summoned to search immediately for the Kato ni Cakamana and without a word the two warriors diligently attended to the task. Nearing the lagoon of Mana island, Cavunatoakula spotted what looked like a small reef in the shallow aqua blue waters which scared him momentarily.

Ratu Saruta, being a fierce warrior and a man of good courage pressed on ahead. To the utter surprise of both men, a great diamond-headed sea snake emerged and drew itself towards them. They were equally amazed when the snake spoke, announcing itself as Manamanaedina, the legend God of Mana island. Manamanaedina then declared that he meant no harm and politely informed the warriors that he knew what they were searching for. He also pronounced that whatever was brought within confines of the reef at Mana could never be returned or taken away. The legend God of Mana then requested that the two men help guard and protect the Kato ni Cakamana.

Realizing there was no hope of ever returning the Kato ni Cakamana, the two warriors feared greatly for the wrath of Degei and so decided to stay and help Manamanaedina protect the box of promises. The two heaped two cairns of stones as two lookout points, which they duly mounted - one facing north and the other south while the great snake lay on the box of blessings. (These cairns remain on Mana to this day and can be found at the garden court of the hotel area and the west of the central activities area respectively).

When Degei heard about what had happened he quickly sent an emissary in the form of a beautiful woman to entice the warriors away. Nearing Mana island the noble woman caught glance of Cavunatoakula and Ratu Saruta but mistook their immobile vigilance as paralysis. Too frightened to go ashore, she returned hastily to Degei to inform the sea God that both warriors had been struck by a mysterious force.

Terrified that his people might suffer the same fate Degei ordered all his people to set sail for the main island of Viti Levu. Thus the approval was granted for Kato ni Cakamana to remain forever on Mana island. As a sign that the Kato ni Cakamana is safe, Manamanaedina can from time to time, at the first rising of each moon be seen near this Mamanuca island paradise.

2010-04-19T21:03:00.002+09:30

Long hours of work have kept me far from blogging.

BUT

the gospel and hymns at holy Mass on Saturday night re-invigorated my faith and belief.

The final chapter of St Johns gospel and the hymns "make me a channel of your peace" and "the lord is my shepherd" brought back memories of yesteryear and restored my commitment.

A commitment slightly shaken by the ongoing media feeding frenzy on the Catholic Church.

It's five years since I posted this @ agonist. And remember gentle reader that the media is focusing on the sins of yesteryear.

The sins of today are blithely ignored. It's easier to have a scapegoat, than to confront the sexualisation of todays children that is increasingly driven by the internet.

Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus! is the mantra I and many others use in Christian Meditation. A call that is more heartfelt than ever with all the tragedy of earthquakes, murders and suffering that daily occurs.

Some good things: love the new Dr Who, love the colour of the autumn leaves around Canberra, love the laughter in a group house i visit, love the memories of times gone by when life was expectant, forgiving and accepting.

shalom gentle reader. God is Great!

Compassion, Wisdom and Love.

2010-04-06T21:54:00.000+09:30

five years ago: Compassion, Wisdom and Love.

'twas the end of an era, in so many ways!

2010-03-02T22:26:00.002+10:30

Oh dear, time has flown gentle readers since my last post.

Long but wonderful days, showering, dressing, feeding, providing respite care, cleaning, putting folk to bed, have caused me to neglect brain dumps here.

At 51 my new employment as a personal carer, is exhilirating. Total care, no responsibility! Skills I learnt as an 18 year old have re-surfaced and my satisfaction and the satisfaction of clients and their families is awesome!

2009-12-21T22:14:00.003+10:30

Caribdude, an agonist m8 has posted this, I repost it to get the word out!

For some time now we in St. Maarten have been following the efforts of Sean Paton, former BBC reporter and environmental friend, in Bonaire to stop the Scientology 'training ship' Freewinds from dumping it's raw waste water into the ditches and bush lands of Bonaire. For several years now he has been campaigning and posting videos on Youtube on the issue, one of the most recent reports confirmed his predictions and warnings that the practice would contaminate the island's ground water. The fear now is that in the long term, these contaminants will leach through the largely limestone and porous rocks of the island into the sea, last year studies were launched into the possible connections with a die off of spotted moray eels in the coastal waters.

What is truly amazing and astounding is that after Sean reported that wells are now contaminated, the island government of Bonaire have decided to let Freewinds continue the practice for at least another 6 months until a treatment facility can be built. Knowing how slow things move in these Caribbean islands, we have our doubts that this will happen in this time frame. Knowing too how corrupt and self interested most of these island politicians are, I, and many others down this way have some very strong suspicions that Scientology has most likely used it's influence and money to obtain this permission, in fact we believe it has been going on for years. Freewinds, for those who are unfamiliar with the ship, is based in the Caribbean because if it entered US waters it would most likely be seized and condemned because of asbestos.

Scientology as we all know, does not like bad press, so it is our hope that by exposing this story here to all you Agonists, that maybe you can help us give them some. I will be sending this story to Huff, C&L and OGM, but we would really appreciate any help from you all to give it more exposure wherever you can.

Note : It seems that Sean(Paton) removed the two videos, he did inform us that he has been under a great deal of pressure from authorities and that vague threats have been made against him and others. I have reposted them both myself with the expectation they will come after me next to remove them, or request Youtube to, so watch them while you can.

Bonaire-State of emergency Part 1
Bonaire-State of emergency Part 2

scientology makes me a sad panda :(

2009-12-21T17:58:00.001+10:30

Sean Paul posts:

and my recent favorite, chasing the dragon, which is defined as: Originally in reference to feeding an opium addiction, this can refer to ploughing through any task past the point of diminishing returns, with disregard to one's own health, sanity or well-being.

yup, I can identify with that.

2009-12-04T20:46:00.000+10:30

found @ http://glennfriedman.blogspot.com/

2009-11-16T20:21:00.004+10:30

HOT DAYS.

It's like late January, early February in Canberra at present.

Life continues to call me onto new endeavours.

After three months leave and a wonderful semester at uni, I was made redundant from the bookshop.

I jumped on jobseek and a home care/nursing agency advert grabbed my immediate attention.

I rocked up for the interview and have begun personal care work.

It's a different pace of life, and personally rewarding.

There is so much suffering in the world in war and famine but the hidden suffering in the suburbs from illness and aging is not exposed much.

I have come full circle in many ways in my life. God is good!

2009-10-20T19:27:00.004+10:30

surfacing from study...

re-visited old posts @ agonist:

let me take off my patriarchial hat for a moment, and note that for maybe 50-60,000 years, the womb not the phallus was the predominant cultural metaphor.
Sex therefore served as an icon of the self becoming itself, a very different representational value, relating to erotic desire of divine becoming itself. We are made from stardust and we seek to return to the stars.. We are all neighbours, sharing in the cosmic dance.
The symbol of the womb is not a thrusting, pulsating overwhelming power representation. Rather the womb prefigures the whole human being, a being to be inclusive, embracing, nurturing, intimate - a gentle energy but more overwhelming than the brief pulse of the penis.
The long oppressive history of patriarchal dominance and interference, instilled by male models of philosophy initially and then male led medical practice, debased and decreased a holistic understanding of sexuality that included the female perspective.
As humanity settled into the city lifestyle and war became male dominated, the very idea of neighbour changed.
Today, as in Jesus' day neighbour is someone who lives nearby and implicity has the same value system.
Hence love your enemies became a profound metaphor for early christians. By the middle ages the dictum became personified and thus legitimised warfare between cities/states and countries.
Tolstoy railed against militant nationalism, and used the injunction to love thy enemy as his primary text.
I am continuall amazed by customers who come in and abuse me for stocking books on Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism; truly we have a long way to go in understanding who our neighbour is.

Peter Kreeft writes a reflection as Jesus: So the universe was a womb for humanity, and humanity was a womb for Israel, and Israel was a womb for Mary, and Mary was a womb for me. Thus, Mary is the point of the universe, and I am the point of that point but I have not got the book so cannot check if he is quoting someone else.

turns out the book in question was

Peter Kreeft,The Philosophy of Jesus(South Bend: St. Augustine Press, 2007), 90.

nailed it at last!...

Re-reading Kreeft, I realise with 12 lectures on Pauline literature under my belt, that Kreeft's attempt to write 'The Philosophy of Jesus' was flawed from the start. The gospels are not first hand sources for Jesus' philosophy, rather are edited constructs to re-present his thoughts at the end of the 1stCenturyCE. Ah well I've learnt something...

2009-07-22T19:18:00.002+09:30

Well its back to the cold, wet canberra winter, after a very relaxing week in Fiji.

Too many emails whilst I was gone, but one struck a chord, leading me to an interesting poem, that resonates within me:

Deeper cultures called it SPIRIT
pulled from first breath
to a hushed pivot of wingspan, a high point
of recovery over each life, a threshold of faith
in the heart's final treasure, holding its own truth,
its own measure of meaning: urgent, vivid as a myth
or a cave mural: the voice we fell from grace with. . .
it finally happened then: so much splendor went
to waste in us that eternity called collect (imagine,
the richest force in the universe!)
Who knew what to do or say? a pittance of awe
to pay attention with, & we still expected change!
Change came. An age passed, dust settled:
The first were last; a Bell went off
and there came to our senses
only shadows. . .

Michael Masley

Michael, the self styled Artist General and Berkeley street musician is better known for his posters stuck on power poles, but this poem surpasses any of them.

2009-07-02T22:11:00.006+09:30

Day 2 of ~123 days leave.

Day 1 started with a sleep in, then time with daughters, and then the d i v o r c e paper arrived. Unexpectedly I was taken out for a wonderful Indian meal by a dear friend, and the pain was numbed by the great meal: perch, potato and spinach, garlic naan and hyderabad lamb mmmmm, and being with a beautiful woman. God always picks me up when I least expect it. Then some computer work, copying over tunes to a friends ipod.

Day 2 another sleep in, then helping out a m8 with some graphical design issues.
Off to university to get my ID card for Semester II - yep I'm returning to the theology study. Daughter time, getting expert at cooking kale/redcabbage boiled in fried cumin!Took advantage of a student deal to grab ultimate office 2007 and wiled away the late evening with some serious newsposting @ agonist.org. I haven't visited Mauberly for a while, I'm glad I did: breaking open Euthyphro and Socrates discussion on piety, the hooting of the unwise owl got me cogitating.

2009-06-09T20:38:00.003+09:30

testing out windows 7 and excel 2010
Top 20 countries increase in confirmed swine flu cases:

and using wolframalpha for population figures to produce table of percent of confirmed cases:

2009-05-17T20:43:00.004+09:30

This picture keeps entering my consciousness, not sure why but still I'm hoping for a miracle.

Commonsense, statistics and reality all tell me that life has moved on, has changed not ended, but there are no easy explanations.

So I pick up one foot drag it forward and keep moving forward!

I'm taking a leap into the unknown over the next few weeks.

I'll keep on riding the dragon, high or low!

Australia confirms first swine flu case

2009-05-09T22:15:00.000+09:30

Australia confirms first swine flu case: "Australia has its first confirmed case of swine flu.
But the NSW woman who arrived in Brisbane on Thursday on flight QF16 from Los Angeles is no longer infectious and had a weak strain of the virus, authorities say.
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said the woman, who cannot be identified for privacy reasons, contracted the disease in late April while overseas and had recovered before returning to Australia"

2009-05-04T20:49:00.005+09:30

2009-05-01T17:28:00.000+09:30

SICK of garlic and wed rine? hic burp

try Oinksip!

2009-04-26T20:13:00.004+09:30

It's a real worry! The Australian Department of Health and Ageing has issued a press release that states inter alia that "unlike bird flu, strains of swine influenza do not usually cause illness in humans, and in developed countries like Australia, relatively few people are regularly exposed to pigs."

Sheesh, the issue is that a H1N1 infection is killing people in Mexico, and has also been diagnosed in the USA, whilst closer to home twenty-two students from Auckland's Rangitoto College, may have been infected with the Swine Flu.

Someone at the DHA is blissfully ignorant of what is actually happening.

This nasty may mash up with avian flu components, or may burn itself out...

Latest updates http://agonist.org/topic/bird_flu

Reference: bird flu swine flu agonist H1N1 pandemic WHO

2009-04-19T21:55:00.002+09:30

from The Australian

IAN Plimer calls himself an old-fashioned scientist. That means you question what others won't. You marry yourself to the data; you buck the received wisdom and political correctness of your colleagues.

When it comes to climate change, you say: "I was trained to be sceptical."

This is not exactly the view de jour when the great and the good, from Kevin Rudd to 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery and former US vice-president Al Gore, are singing from the same hymn sheet about the hydra-headed menace of global warming.

Australia's top earth scientist has inserted a typically discordant note into the chorus. In his latest book, Heaven and Earth, Plimer sets out the "missing science" of climate change and challenges the assumption that the world's warming is down to human activity.

Far from heating up to dangerous levels, the planet is in a lull in an ice age that began 37million years ago, he says.

True, the climate is changing within these cyclical parameters, but less dramatically than it has at other times in Earth's history and with none of the catastrophic consequences talked up by the doom-and-gloom merchants.

"There is always change going on," he tells Inquirer. "I don't dispute that. The extent and origin of it are another matter."

Plimer puts forward the case, in 485 closely argued pages, that far too much emphasis has been given to the level of atmospheric carbondioxide in the scientific modelling of climate change.

Contrary to what the Prime Minister may say in spruiking the carbon pollution reduction scheme, Plimer's position is that CO2 is not a pollutant but a necessity of life. For a start, it is food for plants. "Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and lengthen your life ... without CO2 there would be no complex life on Earth," he writes.

While an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide theoretically may contribute to temperature rise, Plimer says there is no evidence to show this and plenty of proof, if you choose to look for it, to the contrary.

He accepts that people can alter the weather: the "urban heat island effect" has proved towns and cities are warmer than thesurrounding countryside, and in Europe there is evidence that weekends tend to be cooler and wetter because of the drop in human activity.

But that is not the same as changing the climate of the planet as a whole; Plimer takes a very long view of the forces at play here.

By his reasoning, climate changes are cyclical and driven by the Earth's position in the galaxy, the sun, wobbles in the planet's orbit, ocean currents and plate tectonics. When he peers back in time, there were periods when atmospheric CO2 was much higher than it is now yet produced no disastrous shift in the climate.

To reduce climate change to the single variable of carbon emissions abandons "all we know about planet Earth, the sun and the cosmos", Plimer says, and that is a leap of faith no self-respecting scientist should take.

"Global warming has become the secular religion of today," he writes in the powerful conclusion to his book. Logic, questioning or contrary data are not permitted. To thumb your nose at the prevailing orthodoxy is to risk being branded a climate-change denier, a scientific knuckle-dragger, or worse. Plimer doesn't let it worry him. "My job is to profess my discipline and, if people don't like that, bad luck," he says.

WE'RE talking in a borrowed office at the back of the printing works where his new book is being packed. Plimer has been here since 6.30am signing copies. It is a cool morning, overcast outside, with rain spitting from the sky. A nice change for dry-as-a-bone Adelaide, his home for the past three years.

If climate change is biting, this is where the hurt could be most acute. When the PM toured the Murray River's dying lower lakes last winter, he said the parched expanse of exposed soilbed, southeast of the city, testified to the reach of global warming.

Adelaide's water supply is in serious trouble. Despite the state Government's insistence that water for households is guaranteed, the boss of the new Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Rob Freeman, blew the whistle this week when he told The Australian there might not be sufficient "carry" water to offset evaporation and seepage losses of moving supplies to the city's reservoirs.

This after a summer where up to 80 Adelaideans died in a record-setting heatwave and 173 Victorians died in the Black Saturday bushfires. Queensland and northern NSW were inundated with the worst flooding in years; a powerful cyclone threatened coastal communities between Townsville and Gladstone but spun out to sea. More frequent and fierce weather-related disasters, wasn't that what the global warmers were predicting?

Plimer agrees people are right to worry about what's next. Nature, however, has always shown a fierce face in Australia and the destructive summer of 2008-09 should be kept in perspective.

"We should be concerned about bushfires, cyclones," he says. "But they are natural disasters and this is a dry continent prone to them. Things come to pass."

Plimer knows a thing or two about taking on powerful interests. He is not a man to be dismissed easily; his impressive academic and publishing record attests to that.

In addition to his day job at the University of Adelaide's school of environmental sciences, he is emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne and the author of seven books and 120 scholarly papers.

He is Australia's best-known academic geologist and certainly one of the most outspoken. Plimer has never backed away from a fight. In Telling Lies for God, he took on the creationists. When a group of them from Sydney, claiming to have evidence the wreck of Noah's Ark reposed on a mountain in Turkey, sued him for alleged defamation, Plimer hit straight back by mortgaging his house to cross-litigate in the Federal Court.

In part, he alleged that the creationists had breached the Trade Practices Act by engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct. The court disagreed but upheld an aspect of his case over copyright; the German Geological Society made him the first Australian to receive its Leopold von Buch medal.

Plimer went on to win one of Australia's top science awards, the Eureka prize, for his first book on global warming, A Short History of Planet Earth.

Plimer, 62, see parallels with his fight with the Christian fundamentalists. "The creationists were trying to teach a religious fundamentalism dressed up as science ... and they totally changed the nature science," he says.

"The science is now based on consensus, and we have thousands of scientists who have got everything to gain by saying the world is going to end. We have lost the tie to evidence. So I make great comparison ... between the way creationists operate and the way some of the rabid environmentalists and global warmers operate. The parallels are quite similar."

Plimer reserves his sharpest criticism for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has driven the international debate. Very much for the worse, in the professor's judgment. "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism," he writes in Heaven and Earth.

Plimer argues that the IPCC is dominated by atmospheric scientists, who in turn are obsessed by carbon dioxide emissions, skewing the process. The problems are compounded by primitive computer modelling. He reviewed five computer predictions of climate made in 2000, underpinning IPCC findings, and found there was no relationship between predicted future temperature and actual measured temperature even during a short period. Ditto for a link between temperature and the atmospheric CO2 content.

"To get a complete view of the planet, you need to have far more than atmospheric scientists on the IPCC," Plimer says. "What they have done is separate the atmosphere from the way the world works ... you need solar physicists, you need cosmologists, you need astronomers, you need geologists, bacterial specialists and on you go ... we don't hear anything about those things from the IPCC."

But what about this ice age business? How does that square with melting polar ice, rising sea levels and 40C summers in northern Europe? Well, taking the last point first, Plimer says none of the temperature variations in the 20th century was outside the range of normal variability. There was alarm in the 1970s that the decreasing temperature was heralding another ice age, he says. After 1976, when temperatures started to rise again, the clamour broke out over the greenhouse effect and global warming. Yet since 1998 temperatures have been falling, to profound scientific silence, he says. "It is not possible to make computer model forecasts of climate change for the year 2040, 2100 or 2300 based on a few decades of data," he says.

The history of the planet is etched in rock, and Plimer says it shows that for half of the past six million years the Earth was warmer than it is now. The ice caps are geologically unusual; people were growing barley and wheat in Greenland 1000 years ago. Ice ages come and go, yet no one knows precisely why. Sea levels rise and fall. It was ever thus, Plimer says. The planet is in a constant state of flux. Why would that dynamic suddenly change?

buy a copy here: Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science

2009-04-19T20:46:00.003+09:30

Susan Boyle from 1999 Cry me a river charity CD

hattip sandyd

2009-04-18T20:09:00.005+09:30

Fastest rise to fame of anybody ever? 28 million you tube hits when you add up the different tubes.

From emails, blogs, twitters, bbs, newspapers, tv shows, phone texts, Susan Boyle is the name on everyones lips.

24 48 72 96 ~~120~~ ~~144~~ 168 hours of increasing exposure to the world.

I’ve read countless posts and reports of people moved to tears and joy, revelling in the sound of music sung with such joy regardless of the cynical audience.

It’s a long way to the semi-final, and Susan is having some time-out from the media frenzy.

Time will tell if Susan can be someone to unite people in caring again about all folk, maybe too much too expect of her, but she sure has made some folk take a second look at what is important, and to top it all off she sang one of my all time fav songs. w00t!

2009-04-16T19:32:00.003+09:30

A song I love, and a version that brings a tear to the eye and joy to the heart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
embedding disabled by request

Without a doubt that is the biggest surprise I have had in three years on this show! HQ version.

2009-03-27T21:31:00.003+10:30

Funny how life happens when you least expect it. An email enquiry from a young lady in her first year at uni, about Catholic mens attitudes to women, led me to some googling, and then I re-discovered this post http://graham72.blogspot.com/2007/07/life-is-living-day-today.html

and serendipity or synchronicity gentle reader had me reflecting on this picture:

look at the flow of direction of the surroundings of both Mary and Martha, Jesus is conscious of both women, and there is a balance and equilibrium at work in Vermeers depiction of the scene.

I fail so often to maintain that balance, juggling so many things and not stopping to smell the flowers or to really revel in a wonderful sunset.

hattip Neil for the painting, and kudos to Erin for asking a question, that has far more import for me than she can realise in her tender years.

YAY life is wonderful, and it's almost

and work, meditation, worship and family will all intersect once again. w00t!

2009-03-25T22:50:00.004+10:30

Ya just got to love google, the goddess does not always manage to index stuff.

So I wanted to find out who supplied Inform, INFORM, brochures pamphlets etc

no joy

so had to ring around, and finally got the information.

and edited it unto the highest edit to get it to fit without crashing the CSS!

INFORM

original site here inform

2009-03-24T21:42:00.002+10:30

in memory of Scott, a kindred spirit.

2009-03-12T22:05:00.000+10:30

2009-02-27T15:39:00.002+10:30

From zerohedge blogspot hattip tjfxh @ agonist.org

When the data is too depressing whiz over to Dear Planetary Astronomer Mike for some out of this world stuff!

2009-02-24T21:03:00.002+10:30

come back and let's try again!

2009-02-24T20:58:00.002+10:30

2009-02-24T20:54:00.000+10:30

2009-02-24T20:52:00.003+10:30

graham waves gently at Cranbourne visitor!

2009-02-21T22:24:00.000+10:30

2009-01-31T11:23:00.003+10:30

I've been noticing willow trees as i have spent some time off work and travelling around country areas. Willow is renowned both for strength and flexibility, and also possesses the ability to regenerate itself when nearly destroyed.

I guess i feel some affinity that through my life i have chosen and been forced to accept my strengths and weaknesses and found anew flexibility to re-define, re-new and re-generate who I am and how I re-act to life.

_{photo (C) bobcuthillphotography@gmail.com}

2009-01-30T16:03:00.005+10:30

Grahams Quick Guide to E-commerce:
Domain Name
A Domain Name is the address that people type into their web browser e.g. www.catholicbookshop.org to access your site. You must register a Domain Name with a Domain Registry. Once you have registered your domain name, you must configure the domain name so that it points to a Web Hosting company. If you have opted to purchase a Shopping Cart that provides hosting as part of the package, you will need to point your domain name to the Shopping Cart's servers.

Web Hosting
Before anyone can see what your company has to offer, you must elect a Web Hosting company to host your website. Everything you see on the Internet is stored on web servers around the world. There are many thousands of companies who provide this service and their prices all vary depending on your requirements.

Types of Websites
Websites come in many different shapes and forms. They can be static or dynamic. They can integrate with databases, or simply display basic information such as contact details and other company (or personal) information. They can be strictly based on your information, or can display links to, and ads for, other websites.

They can also incorporate third-party controls/services such as:
Shopping Cart Facilities
Real-Time Credit Card Processing
Content Management System(s)
Telephone SMSing / calling

Your WebsiteObviously, you will need an actual website to point your domain name to. Depending on your level of programming experience, you can either attempt to create this yourself, or employ a professional web developer to create it for you. In either case, remember that this is a virtual presence of your business and should reflect the quality of your products and organization.

Some suggested sections, which you may wish to include in your website, are;

Home page (the starting point of your website)
Contacts page (the numerous ways you can be contacted, eg. Email address, phone numbers)
About Us page (a general overview of your business)
Products / Services page (outline of your products / services)
Shopping Cart (the area of your website that allows products / services to be purchased.
Shopping Carts

To provide effective eCommerce services to your customers, you will need a Shopping Cart service attached to your website. A Shopping Cart, in its basic form, exposes a list of all your products and provides a facility to purchase them online.
Much like web hosts, Shopping Carts come in various different shapes and forms. Some carts allow you to manage your stock levels and update pictures, while other carts integrate complete Content Management System (CMS) facilities, which allow you to modify how your site looks, manage categories for products, adjust postage levels, set your own payment options and much more. A Shopping Cart can usually also be configured as a complete website, including the sections outlined above, or it can simply be used as an additional 'plug-in' to your existing site.

Shopping Carts basically provide you with the means to setup a complete online shop, with minimal effort or programming knowledge.

Since every Shopping Cart is different, here are some points you should consider when choosing the right Shopping Cart for your business.

Products
The more options you are given for your product, the better. You need to ensure that the software will provide you with the features you need. Such features to consider are Inventory Control, Stock-On-Hand (SOH) Warnings, Sales Reports and ease of use.

If were to adopt a Shopping Cart and then find that it's missing a core ingredient, such as SOH Warnings, you may be missing out on key elements, which are crucial to the automated stock-management environment. It's all about making your life easier.

Images

Pictures of products are one of the most important aspects when trying to sell online. Pictures re-assure customers and give them confidence in knowing exactly what they are paying for.

Shopping Carts should all incorporate images with their products. Desirable features of Image Management in Shopping Carts include (but may not be limited to):

Multiple images per product.

The option of using the same image for multiple products (as opposed to having to upload additional images every time).

Automatic Image-Resizing will save you time in having to adjust images manually, before uploading them to your website.

Straight-forward Image Management.

Postage
Every Shopping Cart tends to have a different method for calculating Postage Rates. Some opt to provide a per-product flat rate, while others give you the option of adding a percentage or flat rate across the board. Some Shopping Carts provide you with fields for product dimensions and calculate the postage "on-the-fly", based on rates from an online source (such as Australia Post). Other Shopping Carts have different methods and some prefer to give you free reign on how you would like to apply postage fees to your products. You should decide what would work best for you before choosing a Shopping Cart for your business. Payment Gateways

Some Shopping Carts only provide Credit Card processing through one particular Payment Gateway. Others will give you multiple options at setup time. You need to compare prices and features before making a decision on this topic. See Section 5 (Real-Time Payments) for more information on Payment Gateways.

Most shopping carts will also provide the option to accept payments by methods other than credit card, such as payment in invoice. If you choose to accept this method, you should be aware that payments are not necessarily in real-time, and to be wary of shipping goods, before payment is received.

Security

Any reputable Shopping Cart should have adequate security measures in place, or information on how best to secure your website if they do not.

If you have an SSL Certificate in place, or if the Shopping Cart provides one, you should check the characteristics of the certificate and make sure it has adequate encryption. You should also ensure that the certificate has not expired. See Section 6 (Secure Sockets Layer Certificates) for more information.

Marketing Tools

Marketing from a Shopping Cart can be of great benefit to your company. Marketing tools can differ greatly in functionality depending on the Shopping Cart you choose.

Tracking customers via Customer Accounts and Newsletters can be extremely useful and will assist in keeping your customers happy. It also helps to remind them that you are still operating. Furthermore, recording useful information from customers allows you target particular audiences (eg. Customers within ACT only; or Customers over the age of 40; etc) and will greatly improve your control over customers' interest in special deals, offers and products.

You should also consider whether or not your chosen Shopping Cart will allow you to add advertising banners and/or AdSense-type advertising on your site - these will assist your income.

Real-Time (Credit Card) PaymentsIn this day and age, Real-Time Payments are the fastest, most useful way to do business over the Internet - and they are quite safe, so long as you read and understand the remainder of this guide.

Real-Time Payments, for the purposes of this guide, are defined as Credit Card purchases made over the Internet. There are several ways of accomplishing this and you must be vigilant when choosing a suitable provider for this kind of service.

A Payment Gateway is a provider of such services. Once again, there are several Payment Gateways, around the world, who offer Real-Time Payment facilities. eWAY is Australia's leading payment gateway.

Once you delve into the realm of Real-Time Payments, you must be aware that security is your greatest concern when passing Credit Card numbers and other sensitive information to your chosen Payment Gateway. This is where Secure Sockets Layer Certificates (SSL) are a necessity.

If you've opted to use a Shopping Cart to sell your products/services online, then you should check what the Third-Party provider can offer you in terms of Real-Time Payments and the security that it demands
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates
Since you will be passing sensitive information from your website, you will require an SSL Certificate. As mentioned previously, some Shopping Cart solutions will provide SSL as part of their services. If they do not, however, you will need to apply SSL to your website. This also applies if you opt not to use a commerical Shopping Cart solution.

SSL Certificates have an encryption value showed in bits. You should ensure that the certificate you plan on acquiring is of adequate encryption (eg. 128bit, 256bit, etc).

Certificates also have an expiry date and must be renewed at the end of this period. You should not let your certificate expire before you renew it, so as to ensure it does not reflect poorly on your company.

Marketing
Now that you have the necessary information to set up your online business, you will need to start marketing your website. There are a number of ways to do this. Some methods are free and some cost money. The right marketing tool will be different for every company, but there are a few that make your life easy and some that even pay you for advertising for other businesses.

Submit to a Search Engine
There are many good Search Engines in cyber space and you should submit to as many free ones as you can. Depending on the expected revenue of your business, you may choose to pay particular Search Engines (such as Google, or Yahoo!) a sum of money to prioritise your website and essentially make your website appear above the others in search results - unless, of course, they've paid more money than you.

Advertising On Websites
There are a number of ways to advertise on the Internet. You could contact a company you wish to partner with and trade banners (small ads placed on a web page). Perhaps you could also negotiate newsletter content and include your partner's services in yours (and vice-versa). That is entirely up to you and them.

There is another form of advertising on the Internet, which has grown to be quite well known and very simple to use. This form of advertising has been adopted by a number of Internet businesses world-wide and is based on a per-click scheme. Here's how it works: You setup your website and sign-up for the advertising scheme The advertising company finds your website and provides you with links that are appropriate to the content of your website (these links may change on a regular basis) You receive money every time somebody clicks on one or more of these links. Similarly, certain advertising companies will pay you, per-click, to put their banner on your site. Afterall, you're advertising for them - why shouldn't you get paid for it? Two companies who adopt this advertising methodology are Google (AdSense) and ClixGalore Affiliate Network.

_{shamelessly stolen from EWAY}

2009-01-29T21:59:00.004+10:30

The emotional roller coast continues: grieving clergy who I have watched grow old and die, young ones with cancer, families dealing with still-births, the agony of Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Gaza. The horror of child abuse. The sorrow, disbelief and grief of sudden deaths, and suicides. The pain of cancer. Friends, relatives, customers- it's almost too much at times.

I find solace that friends have the same emotional reaction to me. I'm not alone. And the rejection and abuse is common.

Last Saturday I rang the Peace Bell in Cowra for my friends, my childrens children and world peace.

I'm not getting too excited, but I'm thinking that some special times may lie ahead for me. Otherwise I guess I just hang onto the old adage 'offer it up' I'm increasingly fond of Annie:

2009-01-29T21:31:00.001+10:30

From Sydney and New York, filmed on mobile/cell phones.

_{hattip facebook users}

2009-01-19T11:47:00.003+10:30

Palestine and Israel War in Gaza @ The Agonist Updates:
Part VI Part V, part IV, part III , part II, part I.

How Does it feel to lose two wars in a row

And People Wonder Why they hate us

Justification

turn coat

Canberra Lunchtime Gaza Protest

On the Jewish Tradition of Just War

I emailed Condaleeza Rice today

Ipologise this

EU_Israel Relations, Israeli politics and the Gaza Strikes

Should Israel talk to Hamas

Gaza as depicted by Al Jazeera

The Jewish community debates the Gaza strikes

Israel uses White phosphorus munitions in defiance of treaty

Israel goes for regime change in Gaza

Damnation indeed

George Kenney on Gaza, Forgiveness and American complicity

An Atrocity in Gaza

2009-01-16T23:13:00.001+10:30

Hard to believe I've been a python fan for 35 years. hattip Tina for above

2009-01-13T16:30:00.003+10:30

Silent vigil outside the Israeli embassy.

2009-01-03T17:36:00.003+10:30

[Anna Blatzer in Palestine]
Gaza Massacres; The Time is Now

Please, everyone, stop what you're doing. This is not just any report
from Palestine, but the worst in my lifetime, the worst in 40 years.

At this moment, Israel is raining bombs down on Gaza, an enclosed tiny area that is home to 1.5 million men, women, and children, most of them innocent civilians. This space is tightly sealed by Israel, which constantly denies Gazans electricity, food, medicine, and the ability to leave. Gaza is one big prison being bombed from above. The death toll is up to 428 in the past 7 days. That's more than the number of Israelis killed in the last 7 years. This is what I would call a massacre.

Yes, more Palestinians killed in 7 days than Israelis in 7 years, and yet no comments from President Bush or President-elect Obama. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice places blame solely on Hamas for holding Gazans "hostage," as if Israel's actions were beyond judgment. Would Rice ever respond to a Palestinian attack on Israelis by blaming the Israeli government for holding its citizens hostage with their army's violence?

I am writing you from Jordan. I arrived the day after the attacks began. The day before they began, my friend and colleague Hannah had asked me to deliver a book of poetry to her friend Summer in Gaza, hoping I'd manage to make it on a Free Gaza boat. Since then, these boats bringing unarmed witnesses to Gaza (http://www.freegaza.org) have been attacked in international waters, and Summer's house has been blown to pieces, her brother almost died under the rubble, and her father desperately needs an operation but the hospitals are overflowing. In every home or shop I enter in Jordan, people are huddled watching the stories unfold: a family killed in their home, a university destroyed, a pharmacy blown to pieces, countless bloody babies screaming or worse, silent.

I wonder if people in the US are also seeing the bodies and faces or, as I fear, only some rubble and angry Gazans. The day after attacks began, Israel's largest newspaper Yediot Aharonot covered almost the entire front page with the words, "500,000 Israelis Under Attack!" In smaller font, one could learn that in addition to 1 Israeli, 225 Palestinians had also been killed. It was surreal.

Consider where you are getting your news, and what is not being told to you. For example, the stated purpose of the attack is to drive out Hamas, i.e. to kill anyone in Hamas and scare the rest into turning against Hamas. Not only does this tactic not work (brutality fosters violence), but it clearly fits the definition of terrorism: unlawful violence intended to frighten or coerce a people or government in order to achieve a political or ideological agenda. Israel is operating as a terrorist state in the true sense of the word.

Hamas is also a terrorist organization by this definition, so it would be easy to simplify the conflict as "an endless cycle of violence" were there no historical context. But there is a context, and there are alternatives: Let us remember that Hamas was elected after an intentional shift away from violence towards a mainstream political agenda. Hamas stopped its attacks and began offering the Palestinian people an alternative to the corruption of Fatah. Hamas was democratically elected and immediately strangled by a US-led boycott, preventing the government from functioning. Hamas continued to hold to its one-sided ceasefire (totaling almost 2 years), meanwhile the US and Israel began to train and arm the opposition government, Fatah, which they preferred.
In response to plans for a coup in Gaza (anti-democratic takeover by the US-supported opposition government), Hamas secured its control (again, democratically-elected whether or not we like them) over Gaza, and continues to offer Israel an indefinite ceasefire--no more violent attacks, period--if Israel simply complies with international law. The Arab League (comprised of 22 Arab nation members) has offered the same. These offers are dismissed by Israel and silenced in the US media. Israel says it has tried everything else, but it has not tried the most obvious: complying with international law and accepting repeated offers for a peaceful resolution.

As events unfold in Gaza neither the media nor the people are silent here in Jordan, where people refuse to go on as if nothing were happening to their brothers and sisters (sometimes literally--more than 60% of Jordan's population is Palestinian refugees). Just one day after attacks began, the king of Jordan gave blood to send to Gaza and inspired hundreds of others to do the same (meanwhile President Bush was on vacation in Texas). Spontaneous demonstrations have erupted at least twice here in the capitol today, and thousands are protesting in various major cities around the Middle East and around the world.

Please, wherever you are, do something. Write a letter to the editor. Get a large group to inundate your congressperson at once. Protest! There are demonstrations being organized around the US. If there isn't one happening near you, then do what I would do: buy a poster-board and large marker and write something on it ("Gazans Are People Too," "Massacre in Gaza: Silence is Complicity," "Our Weapons Are Killing Palestinian Children," or anything you can think of). Go outside and stand on a busy corner with it. Force others to confront the reality. Talk to people, invite them to join you. People around the world are empowered enough to take to the streets; we have no excuse not to. The time is now.

hattip Sean Paul

2008-12-26T01:46:00.003+10:30

all the news!

Favourite News Sites
BBC	ABC.au
New York Times	Al Jazeera

2008-12-13T21:27:00.002+10:30

I'm waiting for you. You will turn my life upside down, I want that!

2008-10-01T19:47:00.000+09:30

It's over, except for a miracle.

I need one. But don't deserve one.

2008-09-03T21:52:00.000+09:30

Births are for the most part wonderful.

And I'm well pleased to see some continuity here, the new curevents.org!

2008-08-19T20:17:00.000+09:30

GIVEN UP

2008-08-13T19:26:00.001+09:30

18 Ways to Power Search Google - Duncan Riley

Nearly everyone uses Google, but most people search Google by entering the term or word they are looking for without ever using any of Google’s built in features. Google is great as it is, but as the web gets bigger even Google, once famed for its great results, is delivering poorer results for basic search terms.

Google power users know the tricks, and they aren’t hard to pick up at all. Using Google’s built in features helps you find what you’re looking for faster, and that’s always a good thing. Here’s 18 ways to power search Google that you can use today to improve your Google experience.

# Not: adding a minus (-) allows you to narrow your search, for example if you wanted to search for New York but not City you’d enter New York -City
# Either/or. Google looks for the combination of terms you type in, but you can tell it to look for multiple words, for example Olympic or Gold. The short cut is | so Olympic | Gold works as well
# Specific Document Types use the modifier “filetype:” if you’re looking for documents or pictures, for example blogging filetype:pdf delivers pdf documents that include the word blogging.
# Quotation marks: I use this trick regularly. If you’re looking for the exact phrase, not the words entered, do your search like this “I did but see her passing by”
# Wildcard: old DOS users will remember doing directory searches using an asterisk (*) as a wildcard, and Google supports wildcard entries as well. Example: blogging *.com.au
# Definitions: stuck on a word you don’t understand? in Google, it’s as simple as define:word to deliver you a list of definitions
# Similar terms: ~ in front of a word tells Google to look for similar terms to that word, for example ~blog web 2.0
# Site Specific Search: another shortcut I use regularly. To search within a specific site, start the query with site:name.com term. Other rules can be used in the search.
# Calculator: who would have thought you could use Google as a calculator. Google supports /*-+ for a result.
# Phone Listing: Want to know who your missed call was from? type phonebook:555-555-5555 for the answer. Works primarily in the United States.
# Links: want to know who is linking to your blog, or even specific post? enter link:url.com into Google for the answer.
# Format specific search: sometimes finding what you want in Google can be difficult, but Google offers a range of format specific search sites. Google News, Blog Search, even Video are a few Google sites you can use to find what you’re looking for.
# Area Code Lookup: type in the US area code into Google to find out where the area code is.
# Movies: Get the latest movie times at your local cinema by typing movie:movie name zip.
# Stock Price: enter a valid stock symbol for the latest reported stock price, for example YHOO.
# Music: want the details of a song? use music:song name for Music specific search on Google
# Metric conversion: convert imperial measurements to metric and back again quickly via the Google search box. For example: 100 lbs in kg
# Term location: use inurl:, intitle:, intext:, or inanchor: to tell Google where it should look for the term your looking for.
# Cache: Google keeps a comprehensive cache database of many websites, and you can search this database by starting your search with cached:

Many of these features and more, including the ability to define the date rage for content, can be access via the advanced search link next to the Google search button.

2008-08-10T11:45:00.000+09:30

Vale, Daniel, one of Canberra's special people.

A man with a beautiful voice who enunciated so well that one could imagine an angel was talking to you.

An angel with a dark side, an angel often bashed and abused.

An angel fighting demons within and self medicating so often.

'twas a privilege to care in small ways for Daniel.

Be at peace, and may the angels lead you into paradise.

2008-07-22T13:18:00.001+09:30

Ronald Rolheiser writes again...

Some Guidelines for Service

To try to serve others is to be caught up in many tensions, some that beset from without and others that beset from within. How can we remain energized, effective, and true? Here are some guidelines for the long haul:

Be beyond ideology, be both post-liberal and post-conservative

Have an unlisted ideological number! Refuse to be pre-defined by any ideology of the left or the right. Like Jesus, transcend boundaries, constantly surprise, refuse to be classified. Don’t be liberal and don’t be conservative, be a woman or man of faith and compassion and let that take you down whatever roads it takes you, liberal or conservative.

Strive to incarnate both the kenotic and the triumphant Christ.

Don’t be afraid to be nothing and don’t be afraid to be everything! Christ emptied himself and refused to claim any status or to stand out in terms of public titles, distinctive dress, or in any triumphant display of power. But he is too the Christ who rose triumphant from the tomb and who needs to be proclaimed publicly, with color, pride, and display. He is both the Christ of silent, anonymous witness and the Christ of chanting, public processions. Honor both.

Be for the marginalized, without being marginalized yourself.

Walk a fine tightrope! Take your stand with the marginalized, even as you are known for your sanity and capacity to relate warmly and deeply to every kind of person and group. Be known for your radical stance for the poor even as you are recognized for the wide scope of your embrace.

Lead without being elitist.

Be led by the artist, but listen to the street! Be a leader, an aesthete, an artist, a creative person trying to lead others forward, even as you shun elitism of every sort and ensure that every kind of person is comfortable around you. Be a leader, but with empathy, without disdaining others’ culture, sentiment, or piety.

Be iconoclastic and pious at the same time.

Don’t be afraid to smash idols and don’t be afraid to bow in reverence! The problem is that the pious aren’t liberal and the liberals aren’t pious. Be both, one doesn’t work without the other. Great hearts hold near contradictory principles, lesser ones do not. Help smash the false gods that need to be smashed, even as you are unafraid to kneel often in reverence.

Be equally committed to social justice and to intimacy with Jesus.

Learn to be comfortable leading both a peace march and devotional prayer! Do not choose between justice and Jesus, between committing yourselves to the poor and fostering private intimacy with Jesus. Don’t choose between interiority and action. Dorothy Day didn’t. There’s a lesson there.

Be thoroughly in the world, even as you are rooted elsewhere.

Live in a tortured complexity! Love the world, love its pagan beauty, let it take your breath away, even as you root your heart in something deeper so that the realities of faith also take your breath away. Carry the tension between having a hopeless love for the world and a hopeless love for things beyond it. Love the world as you would a lover with some quirks of character and weaknesses that cause you pain. Pray a lot. Cry occasionally. Sneak off to a church as needed and walk in the sun regularly. The church has secrets worth knowing, and the world is also beautiful.

Ponder, in the biblical sense, by carrying the tension inside the community.

Eat the tension around you! Mary pondered, not by thinking deep intellectual thoughts but by holding, carrying, and transforming tension so as not to give it back in kind. Like Jesus, she helped take sin and tension away by absorbing it, like a water-filter that keeps the impurities, toxins, and dirt inside of itself and gives back only pure water. Be a tension-absorber inside all the communities wherein you live. Absorb the bitterness, the anger, the hardness, the group hysteria, the lack of reconciliation, as a water-filter might. Then drink wine with a friend to rid yourself of your own toxins.

Help incarnate a deeper maturity.

Go into dark places, but don’t sin! Stand up for the God-given freedom we enjoy, even as you model and show others how that freedom can be carried in a way that never abuses it. Like Jesus, who went into the singles-bars of his time (except he didn’t sin), walk in great freedom, go into dark places, but go there not to assert human autonomy but to take God’s light there.

Make love to the song!

Forget about yourself and how others react to you! A bad singer on stage makes love to himself; a more mature singer makes love to his audience; a really mature singer makes love to the song. Service is the same. Forget about yourself, your image, your need to prove yourself, and eventually forget about your audience too so that you and your song are not about yourself or about your people, but about God.

2008-07-21T18:19:00.000+09:30

What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations? Building something that will endure? The world needs this renewal. The Church also needs renewal. She needs your faith, your idealism and your generosity so that she can always be young in the spirit.

Pope Benedict, Sydney, Australia, 2008.

2008-07-19T12:41:00.001+09:30

'Parity' with the Euro, best price around Canberra is about $1.51 Australian/litre.

For USA readers approximates to about $9.00/gallon, we can all fume together!~

2008-07-19T12:31:00.000+09:30

Mirrorball Jesus - photo Nick Moir

THE pilgrims queueing up to have their photograph taken have named him Mirrorball Jesus, Disco Jesus or The People's Jesus. Sarah Robinson, the Sydney artist who spent seven weeks making him, prefers to call him Reflection. But everyone agrees he is one of World Youth Day's biggest celebrities. The 1.6-metre sculpture, whose surface is covered in a mosaic of mirror fragments, has become a magnet for pilgrims since it was installed near the Hyde Park fountain on Tuesday morning. They kiss him, pray to him, light candles at his feet and leave gifts, including a bunch of roses. "It's amazing to watch," says Robinson, a high school teacher who applied the mirrors by hand in her Coogee flat. "I'm finding people are having really intimate, private experiences in a very public space. They drop to their knees and pray in front of him and make the sign of the cross."

2008-07-19T12:18:00.000+09:30

Back in 2005 I spent some time researching Scott Parkin, and used his story as part of a theology assignment, now ASIO is squirming.

2008-07-19T10:11:00.002+09:30

Pope Benedict pauses in his homily:

"Here I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country..Indeed I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering.

"These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain, they have damaged the church's witness.

"Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice

"It is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome environment, especially for young people. In these days marked by the celebration of World Youth Day, we are reminded of how precious a treasure has been entrusted to us in our young people, and how great a part of the church's mission in this country has been dedicated to their education and care.

"As the church in Australia continues, in the spirit of the gospel, to address effectively this serious pastoral challenge, I join you in praying that this time of purification will bring about healing, reconciliation and ever-greater fidelity to the moral demands of the gospel.

It won't be enough for some, but Pope Benedict has done good. God bless him, and all victims.

2008-07-15T21:12:00.000+09:30

Let there be rock: Benedict - Tracey writes...

SOME people have described World Youth Day events as Woodstock for Catholics, and to some degree this is true. There is usually a lot of sleeping on the ground and getting rained on while listening to music, making friends and even falling in love.

What will Pope Benedict XVI, successor of St Peter, the "vicar of Christ" and the head of the Vatican state, make of this? It is well known that when it comes to liturgy, he has no time for happy-clappy masses. He teaches that dumbing down the liturgy so that people can better relate to it is a form of apostasy, analogous to the Hebrews' worship of the golden calf.

For Pope Benedict, the liturgy is about the worship of God, not self-worship or the worship of the parish or school community. While he has nothing against building up the emotional bonds between members of a parish, he recommends that this be done at barbecues, picnics or nights at the pub, not in the middle of mass. In his pre-papal works, Benedict wrote that rock music had no place in a liturgical context, that rock concerts were pseudo-liturgies that lifted people out of themselves but gave them a counterfeit mystical experience that didn't link them to God.

In scholarly essays he compares contemporary rock music to the music of the Dionysiac cults in ancient Greece, as does the English philosopher Roger Scruton, who is not a Catholic, but shares the Pope's concerns about this musical form. Scruton argues that rock music arrests people in a state of adolescent psychological immaturity.

Some Christians, particularly evangelical Protestants, take the view that there is nothing wrong with rock music per se, just that the lyrics can be a bit crude. This has given rise to Christian rock bands that substitute biblical lyrics for explicit sexual references. Benedict and Scruton argue that there is something wrong with the form of the music itself, quite apart from the lyrics.

Critics of Benedict say he is a middle-class Bavarian snob who plays the piano, was raised on a diet of Beethoven and Mozart and needs to broaden his cultural horizons. Whatever one makes of the criticism, it is true that Benedict has had a very strong classical education with an emphasis on languages, history, literature and music and has been immersed in the world of European high culture and the great European universities.

In our postmodern times, members of generation Y tend to be open to an expansion of their own cultural horizons and find Catholic high culture fascinating. They are like children in an attic, rummaging through old boxes and finding treasures. Benedict is like a venerable grandfather who recounts the milestones in the family history and talks about things other people are too scared to mention.

In his homilies he presents youth with the historical and cultural capital they need to make sense of their place in history, including their place in the history of the church. He helps to meet their need to establish their own identity. It's impossible for them to do this if they live in a twilight zone cut free from historical moorings.

However, if Benedict is right that rock festivals are a symptom of a universal human need for an experience of self-transcendence, then the Catholic church needs to rediscover its own ways of meeting this need. Benedict's prescription is a combination of rigorous catechesis, which presents the Christian vision in its synthetic totality, with elevated liturgy, and of course, plenty of opportunities to meet other young Catholics and realise that one isn't the last surviving practising member of the church on the planet.

World Youth Day engenders a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself, of being a member of a vast universal family that transcends all national boundaries. The spiritual highs come not from drugs but from meeting people who are brothers and sisters in Christ from all over the world. Email addresses are exchanged, along with pilgrim memorabilia.

There is Christ's saying that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, you don't get in if you are sitting around like Eeyore on a bad day, bored with life and feeling sorry for yourself. While rock music might be off the agenda, at least at the official events with Benedict, there is nonetheless some common ground to be found with the spiritually lost generation of Woodstock.

While Benedict would not agree that one can find the answers blowing in the wind, he would probably empathise with the lyrics of Bob Dylan's Forever Young: May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true, may you always know the truth, and see the light surrounding you, may you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong, and may you stay forever young.

Perhaps one of the unpredictable consequences of WYD/SYD is that for a week at least we might all remember how it felt to be young and idealistic, and we might put aside our own personal psychological baggage and allow ourselves to be awed by the presence of someone who, (even if we don't think he is the successor of St Peter, or the vicar of Christ) is a person of great wisdom and warmth that transcends denominational boundaries.

Tracey Rowland is dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne and the author of Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI.

background briefing on Tracey

2008-07-14T19:47:00.000+09:30

yEs I aGrEe:

Cardinal Pell said Australia faced two challenges.

"One is the Australian temptation to believe that you can have a good, happy life without God," he said.

"And the second challenge revolves around the concept of sexuality, marriage and family."

To keep on trying, to make the effort, to keep seeking God is not easy.
To forget to see the good and focus only on the dark side, is a cop out.

So many cop out these days.

2008-07-08T21:10:00.000+09:30

'When truth goes forward it is often fragile and alone; falsehood on the other hand can have many helpers .' "

Frere Bartholome de las Casas

2008-06-29T21:28:00.001+09:30

A is for anniversary, B is for blessing.

Some things are counted in days, others in months. I celebrate with a young couple whose child with neo-natal problems reaches 4 months, and also sit with a mother whose baby died at four months. I counted months, but now count the years in my own pain.

The Roman Catholic church currently begins the Jubilee year celebrating the birth of Paul the apostle two thousand years ago. Paul who counted nothing as worthwhile except knowing Jesus Christ. Paul who experienced a conversion so deep that he endured floggings, beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonment to continue preaching the good news that Jesus Christ is the answer.

The answer to our deepest longings, angst and experiental woes.
Jesus Christ the only person who can fill the earthen vessels that we are. Jesus Christ the real treasure. Not a treasure that makes us feel good for a day, a season for a number of years, but for eternity.

Paul ran the good race, and ran until he was crucified. No stranger to his own failings he knew that Jesus was the one who made him wholly whole and well. Well for eternal life. A promise he preached around the ancient Mediterranean world.

Paul knew that nothing can separate us from the love of God, made visible and Gods' proof of resurrection in Christ Jesus. The next twelve months is a time to re-engage and deepen in the understanding of God's love for each of us.

It was Paul who prayed that:
May God give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparable great power for us who believe.

and

May your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you will be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.

It's never to late to meet Jesus again. To accept him as Lord and Saviour, to realise that the things of earth grow dim compared to the glory that Jesus offers.

Favourite Quotes:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead

With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity

and my penultimate fav:
What can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

and thus to my #1 fav:
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

And so gentle reader I pray with Paul that The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

2008-06-27T19:47:00.000+09:30

2008-06-26T18:45:00.000+09:30

hattip chickadee
vale George "I'm a Modern Man"
(Audio at Carlin George Carlin, November 5th, 2005
Beacon Theater, NYC

I'm a modern man.
I'm a modern man.
I'm a modern man.
I'm a modern man.

I'm a modern man,
A man for the millennium,
Digital and smoke free.

A diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist,
Politically anatomically and ecologically incorrect.

I've been uplinked and downloaded.
I've been inputted and outsourced.
I know the upside of downsizing.
I know the downside of upgrading.

I'm a high tech lowlife.
A cutting edge state-of-the-art bicoastal multitasker,
And I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.

I'm new wave but I'm old school,
And my inner child is outward bound.

I'm a hot wired heat seeking warm hearted cool customer,
Voice activated and biodegradable.

I interface from a database,
And my database is in cyberspace,
So I'm interactive,
I'm hyperactive,
And from time-to-time,
I'm radioactive.

Behind the eight ball,
Ahead of the curve,
Riding the wave,
Dodging a bullet,
Pushing the envelope.

I'm on point,
On task,
On message,
And off drugs.
I got no need for coke and speed,
I got no urge to binge and purge.

I'm in the moment,
On the edge,
Over the top,
But under the radar.

A high concept,
Low profile,
Medium range ballistic missionary.
A street-wise smart bomb.
A top gun bottom feeder.

I wear power ties,
I tell power lies,
I take power naps,
I run victory laps.

I'm a totally ongoing bigfoot slam dunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach.
A raging workaholic.
A working ragaholic.
Out of rehab,
And in denial.

I got a personal trainer,
A personal shopper,
A personal assistant,
And a personal agenda.

You can't shut me up,
You can't dumb me down.
'Cause I'm tireless,
And I'm wireless.
I'm an alpha male on beta blockers.

I'm a non-believer and an over-achiever.
Laid back but fashion forward.

Up front,
Down home,
Low rent,
High maintenance.

Super size,
Long lasting,
High definition,
Fast acting,
Oven ready,
And built to last.

I'm a hands on,
Foot loose,
Knee jerk,
Head case.

Prematurely post traumatic,
And I have a love child who sends me hate mail.

But I'm feeling,
I'm caring,
I'm healing,
I'm sharing.
A supportive bonding nurturing primary care giver.

My output is down,
But my income is up.
I take a short position on the long bond,
And my revenue stream has its own cash flow.

I read junk mail,
I eat junk food,
I buy junk bonds,
I watch trash sports.

I'm gender specific,
Capital intensive,
User friendly,
And lactose intolerant.

I like rough sex.
I like rough sex.
I like tough love.
I use the f word in my email,
And the software on my hard drive is hard core, no soft porn.

I bought a microwave at a mini mall.
I bought a mini van in a mega store.
I eat fast food in the slow lane.

I'm toll free,
Bite sized,
Ready to wear,
And I come in all sizes.

A fully equipped,
Factory authorized,
Hospital tested,
Clinically proven,
Scientifically formulated medical miracle.

I've been pre-washed,
Pre-cooked,
Pre-heated,
Pre-screened,
Pre-approved,
Pre-packaged,
Post-dated,
Freeze-dried,
Double-wrapped,
Vacuum-packed,
And I have an unlimited broadband capacity.

I'm a rude dude,
But I'm the real deal.
Lean and mean.
Cocked, locked and ready to rock.
Rough tough and hard to bluff.

I take it slow.
I go with the flow.
I ride with the tide.
I got glide in my stride.

Drivin' and movin',
Sailin' and spinnin',
Jivin' and groovin',
Wailin' and winnin'.

I don't snooze,
So I don't lose.
I keep the pedal to the metal,
And the rubber on the road.

I party hearty,
And lunch time is crunch time.

I'm hanging in,
There ain't no doubt.
And I'm hanging tough,
Over and out.

2008-06-23T20:55:00.000+09:30

hattip zuma

George Buttrick, a Biblical scholar, says of “offer the wicked man no resistance”: “What does such teaching mean? Our imagination recoils from it, and our everyday morality (our speedy recourse to law, for instance and our ultimate dependence on force) flatly contradicts it. Christ has in mind the injured man. Such a person’s concern for justice is never pure; it is subtly entangled with vindictiveness. Christ warns them against that revenge. Revenge is not sweet despite the proverb: it is poison, strife breeding strife in endless circle…Do our law courts and jails really satisfy the oppressed, or reclaim the oppressor? How often they confirm the oppressor in guilt, leave the injured unrequited, and thus hurt everyone! The wrongdoer must be brought to truer personhood, and that change is not wrought by retaliation. Above all Christ has God’s will in mind: He intends that the world shall be a home in which children dwell in mutual love. He is not pleading for any cowardly yielding. The children of the Kingdom must show goodwill, with no other strategy and no other ulterior motive.”

Christian reflections on the secret. I am well pleased!

2008-06-19T10:20:00.002+09:30

gratuitous meme _{hattip tina} Yes, I am aware of all internet traditions.
update: from 9 hits on google, now over 1000.

2008-06-18T22:47:00.000+09:30

I subscribe to a number of daily emails including Daily Meditation for Women and Todays Turning Point. Todays Turning Point is great:
No Excuses
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here I am! Send me."
Isaiah 6:8

An old Yiddish Proverb says, "If you don't want to do something, one excuse is as good as another." One school teacher received an apt example of that when a note arrived from the mother of an absent student. "Please excuse Jennifer for missing school," said the note. "We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday."
Another teacher was handed a note that read: "Please excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot."
When it comes to working for Christ, no excuse will do. Don't say: I don't have time, I don't have what it takes, I'm not the right person, That's not my gift, I'll do it later, I'm too shy, I don't know how, I think someone else would be better. I'm not good enough. I'm not old enough.Jesus once told a parable about those who "with one accord began to make excuses" (Luke 14:18).
Instead, just prayerfully kneel before the Lord and say: Here am I! Send me.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Benjamin Franklin

2008-06-17T21:08:00.002+09:30

Scientists tell us that the universe is billions of years "old" with billions of stars in billions of galaxies. Latest research reported from European researchers informs us that 'they have discovered a batch of three "super-Earths" orbiting a nearby star, and two other solar systems with small planets as well. They said their findings, presented at a conference in France, suggest that Earth-like planets may be very common. "Does every single star harbour planets and, if yes, how many?" asked Michel Mayor of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory.'

From the magnitude of time and space I spiral into the human condition. There are only two real questions of magnitude: Is there a God? & Does God love us? There are only whispers of answers.

The human heart at its core is loving and caring. Seeking the good of others. A restless heart, only finding peace in God to paraphrase Augustine. Whispers found in all world religions and philosophies give one pause for thought, and an appreciation that the sunsets point towards a sunrise in the opposite direction.

I have delved deeply into marriage counselling sans partner the past years and discovered that the best counsellors have found that when they encourage people to peel back the layers of their lives, the innermost core is good and seeks the best for the other.

When I peel back the layers of the universe as is known I find a wonder and care that speaks to me of God and love.

Time is more than just linear. Life appears linear, but so much of my life has become loop-like, spiral like and circular that one cannot just claim randomness.
Things that meant a lot to me 30+ years ago have become available again, and I wonder at the meanings.

There are random occurrences of repetition and that which seemed gone and forgotten re-surfaces and sheds new light on the past.

Moments of grace and wonder abound. Plans collapse and other things, better things occur within the time frame of the previous, seemingly important or satisfying, plans.

Old habits rear their head again, and humble me. Within it all Mother Julian whispers :all will be well, all manner of thing will be well, and the universe resonates thus as well.

I am well pleased with life.

2008-06-16T15:35:00.000+09:30

Change is good, gentle reader!
Even as I type it is a fact change is happening so fast that there is really no change. A second is a thousand years is a minute is a universe expanding, or was that just a side-swipe?

Telstra Tower aka Black Mountain Tower dominates the local landscape. Sunset above!

2008-06-15T22:18:00.000+09:30

So I'm actually having a sunday morning sleep in for a change. And I'm thinking why is Ms 9 watching barack saying yes we can. Then I fully woke up and realised she was watching Bob de Bouwer. Heh, barry and bob both have a positive message!

2008-06-14T20:57:00.000+09:30

"Do no harm" is the motto of many. I hope that I live up to such a motto, I know that I have to be so careful in how I participate in life. I am blessed with faith, and know that the Almighty has blessed me in so many ways. Ways that I do not fully understand at present. I know the human condition, and that so much is mystery, a painful mystery, a lonely mystery and yet there is a peace that surpasses understanding. Hurrah for life!

2008-06-13T11:30:00.001+09:30

Michael Collins has An Exclusive Interview with Bush Political Prisoner Susan Lindauer.
background from 2004 here

Democracy is alive, just, whew...

2008-06-13T08:34:00.000+09:30

Social Networking for WYD2008.

2008-06-10T12:22:00.000+09:30

I just love the moments of serendipity and synchronicity in every day.
Personally reflecting on understanding and compassion during the morning, a lunch time customer tells me unsolicited that "forgiveness leads to understanding or is it understanding leads to forgiveness." Sounds like thich to me... :)

2008-06-09T10:27:00.000+09:30

I have spent some time gazing at the latest infrared imagery of the galaxy, and contemplating that the latest data would indicate over 135 billion galaxys in the known universe.

Such ponderings, naturally make one feel more than small, and raise the eternal questions of who am I, why am I here, what's it all about...

Descarte solved it philosophically for a while: cogito ergo sum, but modernity probably says it better: I believe, therefore I am human. Belief in ones identity enables one to survive.

Too often ones identity is seen as black or white. But Ratzinger in Introduction to Christianity reflects that

The beautiful black and white into which one is accustomed to divide men changes into the grey of a universal twilight. It becomes clear that with men there is no such thing as black and white, and that in spite of all possible gradations, which do in fact span a wide range, nevertheless all men stand somewhere in the twilight.

To really live in the twilight is to fully appreciate our brutishness to others, and our loving to others, to really appreciate the brutality of others, and to accept the loving of others.

I find peace in knowing that I am loved by some who have seen my imperfections, impatience, insecurities, resentments and frustrations. When we know others accept us unconditionally ones restlessness is sated, and even more so when one comes to realise that God's love and mercy is even greater, beyond the universe.

2008-06-07T11:40:00.000+09:30

Dendy does it again, earlier in the year the projection bulb kept blowing, now this time the projectionist puts some foreign flick on, ten minutes later Then She Found Me begins, but the projectionist has the wrong soundtrack playing... aaarrghhhh....

fortunately the trailer explains the movie fairly well.

the angst ridden colin single betrayed Dad works for me, and my long time love affair with bette continues... the woes of relationship are well explained but the last three minutes of the movie seemed to lack continuity... a deep and meaningful dialogue between Helen and Colin, then quick cut to Helens adoptive bros apartment, then a lingering interaction between Helen and her chinese child..

Could it be that Dendy skipped some scenes as the movie was over time and the long snake of young things waiting to watch sex in the city were getting impatient?

2008-06-05T23:31:00.000+09:30

hattip Raja
As for lasting happiness, divorce happens in all kinds of unions – in marriages to the man of your dreams and to Mr. Okay. It can be as mysterious as love in some ways.
..... nothing is perfect: not men, not marriage and not life.

2008-06-04T07:52:00.001+09:30

streams of consciousness from The Way of the DreamCatcher - my man Robert Lax, a m8 of my m8 Merton ;)

on the state of calmness
important for good living
when you are relaxed
you can listen more,
hear all the voices,
dream more too,
that way you make the right choices
and can form a better plan for living.

"What should I do?" asked the wind.
And the voice said, Blow, blow, blow."
"What should I do?" asked the river.
And the voice said, Flow, flow, flow.

What I really need, what is essential:
Simply the grace and peace of heaven, anything more just seems to get in the way.

Bob lived out his final days on Patmos - AWESOME!