pleased to report that the back is on the mend.
very hot spa baths and much alcohol and pain relief medication plus a slow down in my normally frenetic lifestyle have helped.
The bad news is I seem to have got back onto the cigarettes again after a nine year near abstinence....

meanwhile this review touched me deeply:

Preacher who is all humanity, no cant
God, Christ and Us
Herbert McCabe (ed. Brian Davies)
Continuum, £12.99
Tablet bookshop price £11.70.
The next best thing to knowing Herbert McCabe is to read him. He died in 2001, mourned as a eminent Catholic philosopher and theologian, and a great Dominican preacher and teacher. But he left behind an enormous quantity of work, including the texts of sermons and talks he gave throughout his life. He took preaching seriously; he never ad-libbed, and he wrote down what he was going to say. This material was the basis of the book, God Still Matters (playing on the title of the collection of talks that Herbert edited himself, called God Matters) which his friend and brother Dominican, Brian Davies, edited. Now he has found enough material for a volume of sermons called God, Christ and Us, which has most of the elements that were quintessentially McCabe.

Like G.K. Chesterton, who was one of his favourite authors (P.G. Wodehouse was another and so was Jane Austen), Herbert wrote with vigour and clarity and the kind of humour that makes you snort with laughter in the middle of a deadly serious subject. He also had that remarkable capacity for discussing ideas to which we are hardened by familiarity in such a way that we see them as if for the first time: the sheer scandal of the Cross, for instance; the real bodily humanity of Christ; the animal nature of all of us; the friendship that is the Trinity and our destiny to share in it; the obvious and necessary association between faith and politics; and the mortification of the flesh. There is a lovely essay on the Trinity in this volume in which he compares us with an intelligent little girl who is looking on at a delightful get-together of her parents with their friends, where she can’t quite understand what is going on, but is destined one day to share that adult life and its pleasures.

The nature of his writing, like his teaching, can be described as radical orthodoxy, or subversive tradition. In other words, he saw Catholic doctrine – God talk – as the most interesting and important subject in the world. Which, of course, it is. It is also honest thought. He is impatient with cant. Accordingly, he never talks in formulae and there are any manner of subjects where you realise, once you read him, how often we force ourselves, in a religious context, to say things that we do not really mean. Take his pronouncements on death. “There are people who will pretend to see death as quite natural, as natural as birth,” he wrote, “but I think they should look again. Human life, unlike other life, is more than a simple cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and death; during and within this cycle there is the development of a person which is not a cycle but a continuing story that is arbitrarily cut off by death…” And for that “we are right to be angry about death…and we are right to be angry with God”.

I don’t know about you, but personally that frankness comes as a relief. Of course we get angry with God. As he says, if you think the concept of being angry with God is shocking and irreligious, then read Jeremiah, or the psalms, or Jesus on the Cross. And like Aquinas, to whom he turned instinctively, he is emphatic that we are not merely spiritual creatures. We all know people like to talk about the body as though it were something quite other than our spiritual selves. McCabe, who imbibed Aquinas’s dictum that “my soul is not me” early on, never ceases to insist that we jolly well are bodily creatures who really do die. That is why our resurrection, and Christ’s, really mean something.

But for all the fine things in the book, the sermons on prayer alone justify the price. They deal with most of the real objections to prayer that have occurred to any Christian, including the obvious one, that prayer changes God’s mind. To which McCabe’s answer is that prayer does not change God, it changes us. And his solution to the problem of distractions during prayer is perhaps my favourite. “This”, he says, “is nearly always due to praying for something you do not really much want; you just think it would be proper and respectable and ‘religious’ to want.”

So you pray high-mindedly for big but distant things like peace in Northern Ireland or you pray that your aunt will get better from the flu – when in fact these are not your most immediate concerns. Distractions are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted. People on sinking ships do not complain of distractions during their prayer.

Try it: it works. I knew Herbert, and loved him. Read his book. In it, that clipped, distinctive, compelling voice can be heard again.

In his own words ... Friendship is always with. It is always reciprocal. When Jesus consummates his friendship with the Father in his death on the cross, the Father reciprocates. And his love for this man Jesus not only brings Jesus from death to a new kind of life but brings all those whom Jesus loves to share in that resurrection and new life. So long, of course, as we abide in Jesus’ love; so long as we do not value anything else at all more than this love.
From “Jesus and Sanctity”

When Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, he was doing two things. First of all, he was expressing hospitality: these men are his guests; he invites them to share in what he has. When you invited people to eat and drink with you in Jesus’ society, the first thing you did for them as they entered was to arrange their feet to be washed. But Jesus proposes a new kind of hospitality, one in which the host is also slave and, therefore, not lord; in which the slave is also host and therefore not subservient. Here is something that is neither lordship nor servitude. Here is the meal of equals.

This washing of the feet by the one who is both lord of the feast and servant is a symbol of a new kind of relationship amongst men and women, a relationship neither of dominance nor subservience but of equality in love, a relationship in which we are equal in love to each other as Jesus and the Father are equal, a relationship in which we are one as he and the Father are one, a relationship which is the Holy Spirit.
From “Washing and Eucharist”

Faith is not first of all accepting certain truths about Jesus. It is first of all knowing who he is – which is a truth about him in a very odd sense. Faith is knowing Jesus for who he is.

It is like when you recognise a friend and say, “It’s you of course.” And then you go on to say, “Do you remember when we met in the pub? I’ll never forget how you rescued me from that terrible old bore.” Those memories are rather like the articles of faith or the story in the gospels; we use them to celebrate our recognition. We recite the creed out of our exuberance at meeting Jesus again. But the doctrine, the statements of faith, the scriptures, are nothing without the faith, the recognition of who Jesus is that they contain and express.
From “Resurrection and Epiphany”
(All extracts from God, Christ and Us)

Melanie McDonagh writing in the Tablet

oh yeah and some fluff:

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do
it himself.
A. H. Weiler

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is
always another chance for you. What we call failure is not
the falling down but the staying down.
Mary Pickford

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have
seen yesterday and I love today.
William Allen White

hurrah, I messed around with the time settings
now i show the correct time of posting, hurrah!

Thursday it is - Thursday It posts!

Several mornings ago I lifted a box of books.
I lift boxes of books daily upto about 30kg in weight.
I know how to lift, in my earlier life I was a nurse, so I got taught how to lift properly.
HOWEVER:
Tuesday morning I must have twisted slightly as i moved.
Now I have a very painful lower back....

I can sympathise now with all the people I have met with bad backs....

It hurts, man oh man, it hurts....

Hot baths, reiki, drugs, alcohol and heat packs have all helped.

But after 6 hours at work the pain level rises once again.

owwww!

hattip tfisb:

transcending credibility
emotional and otherwise
Stalin vs. Hitler
russian comic

Yeah I know not too much posted lately.
My offsider at the bookshop is away and several big displays are coming up so I am drowning in the workload. Plus domestic bliss has to be worked at so I am limiting my computer time a little....

anyway here's what's interested me over the past few days:

Spare a thought for the Church in Sudan.
Thousands upon thousands of Sudanese are turning to Christ as their one sure hope in times of trouble.

And yet an unholy alliance of persecution and poverty has the Church firmly in its grip.

Just back from the Sudan, JOHN PONTIFEX from Aid to the Church in Need tells of a people suffering the Way of the Cross and desperate for the dawn of a new era.

“THERE are many people who want to stop Christianity in this country but it will never die. I want to keep it going. I want to serve the people of God as their priest.”

Daniel* spoke his words with quiet authority – even defiance. Until that point, the teenager had been bashful and reluctant to come forward.

And then it all came out – how as a toddler he and his family had left their home in the south of Sudan as the bombs began to fall, how they had struggled hundreds of miles north – mostly by foot it seemed, how they had arrived in Khartoum and moved into the shanty town where their mud-hut “house” was built.

“I really was afraid of being killed,” he then said before falling silent again, his eyes dropping to the ground.

The 16-year-old’s story was typical of those I heard in that grass hut full of excitable children, as dark as ebony. continues : here
[hr]
and doug is a good read:

Where Are God’s Warriors and Wild Men?

also:

Caritas continues its presence in Iraq


The international Caritas agency is continuing its presence in Iraq, despite a deterioration in the relationship between the coalition forces and certain groups in Iraq in recent weeks.

Military conflict between the coalition forces and the Sunni fighters in Falluja and other areas of Iraq has escalated since then, with the bombardment of areas of Falluja and the injury of 1500 and the death of more than 700 civilians.

Caritas reports that Coalition forces have blocked all roads to the city and access to hospitals is limited. It says hospitals are suffering from a lack of medicines, medical supplies, disposables and sterilizing materials. Some operations are being done without anesthesia for the lack of anesthetics.

With the support of the international federation, Caritas Iraq’s response has been to prepare four vans of emergency drugs and medical supplies, to go to Falluja, A’adamiya and Baquba.

"The ordinary people of Iraq continue to need our support, despite the worsening situation and we will continue our work in easing their suffering , caused by circumstances over which they have no control," said Mr Jack de Groot, National Director of Caritas Australia.
Caritas

more fluff:

I've found that worry and irritation vanish into
thin air the moment I open my mind to the
many blessings I possess.
Dale Carnegie

Think deeply; speak gently; love one another;
laugh often; work hard; give freely;
pay promptly; be kind.
Anonymous

I'm grateful for all my problems. As each
of them was overcome I became stronger
and more able to meet those yet to come.
I grew on my difficulties.
J.C.Penny

blogging this way is weird, I am typing this Australian time Saturday 17th April
It gets posted on Friday 16th April
time travel for dummies or what!

After work today I am going out into the garden to pull weeds, and tidy up a little.

Hopefully this will restore my sanity and my spirit.

The world of men is a horrible horrible place, the ongoing violence has depressed me big time.

Faith in God restoreth my soul, but sanity and spirit need a little more....

btw email me my gmail w00t if ya wanna say summat to me!

Sometimes book reviews are the best source for a summary of a involved situation:
my thanks to arta for posting in the agonist bulletin board an excellent resource to the history of Islams internal and external dealings with its 'demons', originally from NYBooks.com

also in search of hezbollah is worth the read as well.. if you want to bypass nybooks read it here: agonist bulletin board link

another link for Jo's book with a review by a Birmingham friend I presume!!

It is not often 'down under' in Australia that I get to read a book ahead of reading the reviews in US or UK journals.

However I managed to complete JO INDS 'MEMORIES OF BLISS' before reading this:
the tablet

Jo has tried to discover sex but all she is doing is muddling around with post-modern conceptions of sex !!!!!! For anyone not across modern sexual practices it is probably an eyeopener of a book but for the rest ho hum.... This is not withstanding Jo's dealing with the effect of MS on her life and her courageous attempts to rise above illness. It is an interesting book nevertheless as it documents and references a wide range of philosophical, sociological and religious viewpoints. It has a very useful bibliography.

For those wanting something more Roman Catholic I recommend "GOOD NEWS ABOUT SEX AND MARRIAGE" by Christopher West. Whilst more Q&A than "Memories of Bliss it is wider in its information, but more moralistic from a 'correct' roman pov!.

I reckon that:
The trouble with sex is that it is trouble, when we are young, and when we are not so young HOWEVER life is trouble anyway.


I agree with the Tablets' reviewer :
"I see what these books are trying to do: they are trying to correct the Jansenistic and overly ascetic approach to sexuality that has characterised aspects of the Catholic Church since the eighteenth century. They are trying to say that the flesh is also God-given, as indeed it is: that is the very meaning of the word “incarnation”. This task should be done: but it should be done better. "
Mary Kenny

looking forward to the speech by the Reserve Bank of Australia Chief Ian Mcfarlane
on the state of the housing market, the economy generally and the global possibilities
of the financial markets ongoing reactions to terrorism

this google link should work in 8 or 9 hours time following the speech!

I enjoyed this....

Last words are especially fascinating. Human beings are speaking animals. For us to be alive is to be in communication. Death is not just the cessation of bodily life. It is silence. So what we say in the face of imminent silence is revealing. It may be resigned; Ned Kelly, the Australian bank robber, managed, “Such is life” just before he was executed. Lord Palmerston, “The last thing that I shall do is to die,” is more defiant or just pragmatic. One may be gloriously mistaken, like the American Civil War general who said of the enemy sharpshooters, “They could not hit an elephant at this distance.” Few of us manage the grandeur of the Emperor Vespasian’s “Woe is me; I think that I am becoming a god.” Pitt the younger is supposed to have said, “Oh my country, how I leave my country,” but the more reliable tradition gives us, “I think that I could eat one of Bellamy’s meat pies.” In fact many dying people ask for food and drink. St Thomas Aquinas asked for fresh herrings, which were miraculously provided, and Anton Chekhov announced that it was never too late for a glass of champagne.

We live in an age of profound anxiety. We are fearful about disease and illness, about our futures, about our children, about our jobs, about failure, about death. We suffer from a deep insecurity, a collapse of trust. This is strange because we are far more protected and safe than any previous generation of human history, at least in the West. We have better medicine, safer transport; we are more protected from the climate, have better social security. And yet we are more afraid.

I spent nine years as Master of the Dominican Order travelling around the world in many dangerous places. I saw civil war and genocide in Africa, thousands of people with leprosy, the signs of endless violence. But when I came back to the West, I found people who appeared to be more afraid than anywhere else. The attacks of 11 September deepened that sense of anxiety. I was in Berkeley, California, when those few anthrax envelopes were sent and the panic was tangible. But we have no need for fear. Jesus has entrusted us into the hands of the Father.

I suspect that this pervasive anxiety derives from the fact that we have a culture of control. We can control so many things: fertility and birth, so much disease can be cured; we can control the forces of nature; we mine the earth and dam the rivers. And we Westerners control most of humanity. But control is never complete. We are increasingly aware that our planet may be careering towards disaster. We live in what Anthony Giddens has called “a runaway world”. We are afraid, above all, of death, which unmasks our ultimate lack of control.

A friend of mine had a sign in his room which said, “Don’t worry. It might not happen.” I composed another for him which said, “Don’t worry. It probably will happen. But it won’t be the end of the world.” It will not be the end of the world because the world has already ended. When Jesus dies the sun and the moon are darkened; the tombs are opened, and the dead walk. This is the end of which the prophets spoke. The worst that one can ever imagine has already happened. The world collapsed. And then there was Easter Sunday.


the Tablet
- they will want your email address to register but if you like the cut and parry of good Christian writings it is worth handing it over.

Well back at work after the Easter Vacation. The city is still half empty as most Canberrans head for the coast or their hometowns for the Easter holiday. I am overloaded with work, but when in doubt blog!
Still no rain.....

This is the Australian news : Big jump in numbers at Easter services

and in Jerusalem: Holy Land's secret Passion


more floss
The bud of a rose is just as beautiful as the
full bloom. Appreciate what you have at the
moment.
--- Anonymous

The Greeks gave us the most beautiful word
in our language: the word " enthusiasm "
from the Greek - En Theo - which means
" inner God "
--- Louis Pasteur

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive
experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to
success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false
leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every
fresh experience points out some form of error which we
shall afterwards carefully avoid.

-- John Keats
***
Coz this is my blog and I can type what I want:
Michelle - I have nothing to say to you!
***
petulant annoyance dealt with!

Meanwhile I am glad that Mike is enjoying these:
murals1 and murals2

So here I am stuck half way thru the Easter observations.
My muse has ascended in a cloud of incense.
I thinks sometimes all we can ever do is regurgitate what others have said previously anyway.

The Easter triduum blows me away every year, the three day cycle of services that look at servanthood, death and resurrection affect me deep within.

The Pope says it all in his Meditation on the Easter Triduum I cannot really add anything to what the Man says.

I am now waiting eagerly for Saturday night - 24 hours away to celebrate the great vigil. Over 16 years ago I assisted at a NeoCatechumenal vigil that went from 11.00pm to 6.30am! Fortunately the one I attend at the local Church takes 2 hours

Wishing all a happy and safe Easter season G_72

more floss:
Friends are Angels who lift our feet
when our own wings have trouble in
remembering how to fly!
--- Marianne Griffith

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but
it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

-- Herm Albright

The big secret in life is that there is no big secret.
Whatever your goal, you can get there if you're willing to
work.
-- Anonymous

[serious thoughts]lateral thinking led to the combination of hijacking and suicide bombing that resulted in 911. The terrorist groups around the world are still seeking another 'next big thing' that will give them global world wide publicity and give them 'cred' with their ilk.

Ongoing terrorist action in Spain has been disrupted, but the Afghanistan problem is getting worse.

from the bbc
Rwanda is marking the 10th anniversary of the genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu militias.
The slaughter was triggered by the shooting down of a plane with Rwanda's Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana onboard on 6 April 1994.

It ranks alongside the Holocaust of the Jews as one of the worst atrocities of the 20th Century.
another pause to reflect on inhumanity!

An 'ex'-worker from my building called in today with her 5 month old baby.
Cuddling the child gave me hope amidst all the gloom. The clouds, both those above and of world events were eclipsed by the joy of life. Sadly, rain still has not arrived in Canberra, the dark clouds blew away this evening. "Possible" thunderstorms are forecast locally but I think the only real thunder is the ongoing barrage of war.

from Raed:
The souls of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of Americans are even more costly than all the money that was spent.

I was the country director of the first (and maybe only) door-to-door civilian casualties survey, Marla Ruzika was my American partner, the fund raiser and the general director of CIVIC.

But unfortunately, she didn’t have the chance to publish the final results until now.

I decided to publish my copy of the final results of the Iraqi civilian casualties in Baghdad and the south of Iraq on the 9th of this month, in respect to the big effort of the 150 volunteers used to work with me and spent weeks o hard work under the hot sun of the summer, in respect for Majid my brother that spent weeks arranging the data entry process, and in respect to the innocent souls of those who died because of irresponsible political decisions.

Two thousand killed, Four thousand injured.

Each one of these thousands has a life, memories, hopes… each one had his moments of sadness, moments of joy and moments of love.

In respect to their sacred memory, I would appreciate it if you could spend some minutes reading the database file when I publish them, read their names, and their personal details, and think about them as human beings, friends and relatives, not mere figures and numbers.

I will read and respect the lives those names represent.

Are you feeling frustrated today?

~~~~~~
OED:

absurdism n. the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless chaotic universe in which attempts to impose order are frustrated
~~~~~~

Art meets philosophy and where is reality?

Well I have been back in Australia one week!

It has not rained here for over 33 days, but it has been overcast all day today. The sky is blackening so perhaps tonight we will see rain in Canberra.

btw for those who do not know time in Australia, is 11 hours ahead of the UK and even further ahead of the USA! Monday afternoon is almost over.

The thing that struck me most flying from Sydney back to Canberra last Tuesday was the brown dirt, the grass has totally dried out, and the inland is becoming almost a dustbowl. Wherever there is a little water in a dam or a creek it is polluted by blue green algae. Australia has a harsh climate. Yet the sunshine lifts the mood unlike the dingy drab skies of the UK!

*******#######*******

Q: Who do you rely on the most?

A: Seafarers! - 95% of the worlds trade is carried by ship

*******#######*******

even the Washington Post has its moments of rewriting its own publishing:

Down the Memory Hole

John Gorenfeld notes that something has been pulled from a Washington Post article. I don't know if it was in any of the print editions or not, but here's the missing paragraph, pulled up from Nexis:


"The five great saints and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murders on Earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons. Emperors, kings and presidents who enjoyed opulence and power on Earth, and even journalists who had worldwide fame, have now placed themselves at the forefront of the column of the true love revolution. ... They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

-- Moon, founder of the Unification Church, in his address to a recent "Ambassadors for Peace Awards" ceremony at the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

from Atrios Eschaton

Holy horror JESSICA ZAFRA

The Passion of the Christ is Father Peyton’s Holy Rosary Crusade for the generation of moviegoers inured to cinematic violence. For years we have been warned that frequent exposure to killing and mutilation onscreen desensitizes us to violence in real life, i.e., we no longer react with shock or horror when we see a TV news report about the grisly murder of four Americans in Fallujah, Iraq, or a teenage suicide bomber blowing himself and others to bits in Gaza in the Israeli-occupied territories. Director Mel Gibson has made sure that we will be shocked and horrified when we see The Passion. He does this by filming the most graphic, gruesome and sadistic torture scenes in recent memory without allowing viewers the comfort of knowing that “It’s just a movie.” Gibson promotes the illusion that this is not an illusion, that this is exactly what happened in the last hours of the life of Jesus Christ.


The violence in The Passion is entirely different from the violence in, say, Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino. In Tarantino’s movie the killing and maiming is presented in an over-the-top, cartoonish style which serves as a reminder that it is not real. When a character’s arm is lopped off and the blood sprays around like a garden sprinkler, it’s so ridiculous that you have to laugh. You cannot snicker at The Passion, and not just because the well-coiffed matron sniffling into her lace hankie might smack you with her handbag. Gibson aims for brutal verisimilitude, and he succeeds. continues:
cbnnews

2004 the year of violence , just like every other year - nothing ever changes.