Trying to grasp the other.
Following the holocaust (world war 2) the Blake prize was established in Australia to encourage Synagogues and Churches to obtain Australian artwork, rather than European works.

Portraits of Osama bin Laden, a madonna wearing a veil a la islam, a toilet bowel representation of an Indian god are some of the recent entries.

The acclaimed winner this year however is a sand / ochre portrait of the stations of the cross by an indigenous artist, Shirley Purdie. This work is confronting, it speaks of a God that belongs to the outback, to the desert. The sand is not the paint of western artists, and has some commonality with buddhist mandalas. It reflects thus the fact that religion is universal. The sand also represents the land that is out there, past western civilizations attempt to conquer Australia.

The Jesus suffering in this art work is abrasive and represents the personal Jesus and the God of the indigenous people of the desert. It is the other, but still is a human endeavour to portray the mystery of a God who becomes personal. It is not the safe European or American art that city dwelling white Australians may have some identification with. The artist has managed to speak of her relationship with her God in this work of art. It also personalises her own history of holocaust as it reflects the massacres of her tribal ancestors 70 - 80 years ago. The 2000 year old western story of the passion of Jesus thus is incorporated into the more recent personal trauma of the last century.

The philanthropist and widow of millionaire businessman Kerry Packer yesterday declared her admiration for the Kushan dynasty second century Seated Buddha, her new $1 million-plus gift to the National Gallery of Australia's Asian art collection.

I recently viewed this statue sans fat belly ;) that has recently been purchased by the NGA. It also speaks of the other to me.

Both works of art challenge my perspective and relationship with spirituality and my attempt to reconcile myself with the created world and the world of eternity.

Both works are mysterious, created by people who are not culturally identifiable to me. Thus I share in the wider humanity and gain some idea that the world is populated by many who do not share my western consumerist ideals, that are shaped also by an attempt to identify with a global christianity. A christianity that can be interpreted in the context of an indigenous community far from mainstream Australian society far from my comfort zone.

Somedays bring home to me the fact that life teaches us far, far more than we ever learn from books. I have been humbled to meet in a circle with others who have experienced loss and heard stories of cruelty that make me weep.

No matter how awful life can treat people, people still dig deep within and find compassion and the ability to move on with life.

I know how much my capacity to live has been diminished over the past 20 months and I struggle greatly to make sense of the betrayal I have suffered. Sure I am to blame for being passive and letting events unfold into utter chaos, and I can understand how the cards I have been dealt in life made chaos happen.

Yet I have so much to be thankful for and know that life will continue to unfold. I can satisfied that there is a time for everything, and this is a new time.

Please pray for me gentle readers that I will choose wisely and embrace the future.

25 metres from shooting
Dan Glaister writes in the Guardian about Kenneth Foster.

Texas is poised to execute a man for a crime he did not commit. While the perpetrator of the murder in San Antonio was executed last year, Kenneth Foster, who was sitting in a car 25 metres away at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to death under the "law of parties".

The controversial Texas law removes the distinction between the principal actor and accomplice in a crime, and makes a person guilty if they "should have anticipated" the crime.

While a federal appeals court declared that Foster's death sentence contained a "fundamental constitutional defect", a legal anomaly means the state appeals court cannot overturn his conviction, there being no new evidence.
After the failure this month of Foster's most recent appeal, the 30-year-old African-American's final hope of avoiding execution on August 30 rests with an appeal for clemency to the Texas parole board and the Texan governor, Rick Perry.

continues here hattip Tina

Fr Michael Whelan writes:

The American Jesuit, William Lynch, speaks of the “absolutizing instinct.” (See William Lynch, Images of Hope, Notre Dame University, 1974, 105-125.) On the basis of this “instinct” – which affects us all in one way or another – we turn means into ends and relative things into absolute things. In other words, this “absolutizing instinct” has us turning the world upside-down. We probably do this, ironically enough, so we can be in charge of the world, even if it is upside down. If that plot sounds familiar, it is because you have read it in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis.

Lynch writes of the consequences of this “instinct” when it is allowed to create an upside-down world:

“The absolutizing instinct is the father of the hopeless and adds that special feeling of weight that hopelessness attaches to everything it touches. It is, in general, the creator of hopeless projects and the creator of idols.” (106)

Lynch goes on to note a particularly sinister aspect to this process. Human beings are inclined to give other human beings absolutized status and power and other human beings are inclined to accept this:

“Such is the need and such the demand of people for gods and absolutes, that it will often be wise to descend slowly but firmly from the throne. It is a pity that this must be. But the fact that there is one God and no more is for all of us, the well and the ill, the most difficult proposition in this world.” (125)

All human lives and all human systems are subject to this dynamic. The “absolutizing instinct” will, sooner or later, make itself felt unless there is constant vigilance and constant work to counter its insidious movements. Even then, it is hard to imagine any system that could remain entirely free of it.


So, I find some understanding. Not sure if it makes total sense, but at least I can comprehend that choices lead to other choices.

After the brain dump yesterday I find myself somewhat sated intellectually. On the eve of another anniversary I find much solace in quotes from yesteryear:

both from 1980:


and

Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go." John 21:18

I can look back over the past 26 years and realise that I am the product of so many influences both personal and societal, and that I have allowed the spirit of the living God to touch me. I have failed but I have also succeeded, I have been true to the greater ideals, yet fallen short in the minute details at times. I can celebrate so much and give thanks for so much. It is enough.

Shock and sorrow have been a bitter pill but I do know about grief! Hopefully I am becoming a more compassionate person, more understanding, more forgiving and loving. Empathy and self denial have still some way to go, but the grief hole has made me who I am now and I am less shallow and less oblivious to the pain of others.

I have a long way to go to understand fully how one enters into the shared suffering of Christ, but I dimly see the light.

Two movies that gave me pause for thought in the past six months have been V for Vendetta and Children of Men. Both movies attempt to contextualise violence within a future somewhat near to the present reality of western life today. Government and societal power structures have lost the ability to serve, and today perpetuate a new vision of broken and fragmented humanity. The anti-heroes of both movies have moved beyond saviour status and instead reflect broken, wounded men, striving to make some sense of the times and situations they find themselves in. At the expense of being a little too profound I hereby attempt a synthesis of some of my reading over the past six years.

The instant now society, gives people little chance of honouring or accomodating deeper desires. Spirituality has been sublimated into the excesses of a consumer driven society, fearful of the possibility of terrorist attack. People increasingly choose to hide inside suburbia, with bigger and larger LCD screens watching the world unfold somewhere out there, or otherwise drop down the rabbit hole into simulations such as Second Life.

Peoples minds, psyche and spirit are increasingly battered by the pace of modern life, and normality is no longer identifiable. Human beings are identified as being innately violent across various disciplines: from the pop psychology of I'm Ok, you're OK, to the bad parenting theories of Alice Miller, to the fracturing of relationships espoused by Carol Gilligan and Robin Morgan, The 'evolutionary' need for aggression taught by Lorenz and Morris, to Ellacurias' comments on the need to defend property. Weber saw State relationships as an initiator. Rene Girard postulates mimesis and scapegoating as integral. Foucault and Alison have attempted to nuance the place of sexuality within society and church as a pre-cursor of violence. Naturally one could argue that religion used to moderate base desire, but now the floodgates are open and desire becomes destructive. Interestingly society points the finger at the church and the abuse in indiginous communities rather than address the increasing violence in personal relationships in mainstream society.

This increasing violence is more and more typified by the breakup of relationships. Family law statistics reveal that over 65% of cases involve defacto couples, with drug and alcohol related problems almost present in 100% of cases. People are hurting and cannot anymore solve their problems without litigation. Increasingly, married couples too are finding the all pervasive violence too much to cope with, and retreat into solitude to lick their wounds and foster the rampant consumerism. The domestic GDP benefits so much from the increase in house building and the necesarry increase in the sales of white goods and electronics to set up another household.

Peter Black calls us to seek attributes of the erotic, after Gafni: intensity: an antidote to superficiality and passive aggression,
pleasurable common to both the erotic and the experience of the holy,
being present to the infinity of the moment,
the other as subject not object.
radical giving and receiving;
the defining of self discovering the self through intimacy with the other; overcoming alienation, as each opens up to the Other and engagement of the creative imagination. All calling one to seek the other, not to pay another to find oneself.

Daniel Bell and also Carrette and King note that the need for counselling and therapy has become another consumer product. I identify with them that New Age capitalism's overriding characteristic is the hawking of “personalised packages of meaning . . . rather than offering recipes for social change and identification with others.” Suffering has not been conquered, rather capitalism and consumerism have co-opted the new age.

Gail Bell has written on the worried well, the depression epidemic and the medicalisation of our sorrows. Whilst I have some sympathy with the radical orthodoxy movement and appreciate that relaxation is inducive to salvation, I find solace more in Henri Nouwen who challenges us to move downward and find security in less, not more. I recommend his "Selfless Way of Christ."

Object Lesson.

A glass with a huge crack in the base, has been used for beer, coke and water for many, many months.

However the integrity of the container was inadequate and today the base fell out with the resultant liquid mess all over the carpet.

I have fond memories of tfisb and his beloved visting me when I was in deep shock in late January 2006. They endured a mad Australia Day afternoon with my son and his mates. The mainsubset of the boys and a couple of girls called around tonight with several slabs, bottles of bourbon, rum and sundry wine.

Ms 9 was excited to meet again a babysitter from happier times.

Discarded chairs from the house where the hottest one hundred party was held, were consigned to the flames tonight.

As the evening wore on more people arrived. It's funny how a house can seem so empty one evening then 24 hours later it is alive, with Pink Floyd blasting out, people watching Dr Who, then Monsters Inc and much frivolity.

And to hear my son strumming the guitar and singing brought tears to moi eyes.


mp

For the past two weeks there has been a lot of one dimensional mosaic lego pattern making going on.

Today I was a bit bored, as all the patterns had been accomplished, so I began building up.

Ms 9 called it a maze, I taking a more poseur view saw it as an installation:

After the NGA.

Life, any life, has a value beyond anything else. There are just and reasonable alternatives to the death penalty. I, too, have made my choices and they are my own. I choose to believe in redemption and the power of forgiveness. I cannot change the world, I can only change myself and in that choice, I can be an example to others. So, to you all, I come to you and ask for your help, prayers, and any participation in my case and struggle

read more from Kenneth here .

Kenneth Foster jr.
Over the course of my adult life I have been privileged to have contact with criminals. As a nurse I cared for them when they had been bashed by other crims or their wardens. When the wardens were on strike I went into the jail and tried to feed them, but had food flung back out of the opening in the cell door and copped spit and verbal vitriol for my effort. I have experienced the uneasy standoff with a guy on the other end of the phone in a motel room with a gun, resisting going back inside, and having a friend in the room with him. I have been caught up in drug busts in the carpark of the building I work in, almost assaulting an officer until I realised his black shiny shoes meant he was the law, not the young hoodlum he was dressing as. Over the past eighteen months I have sat in the foyer of the court and watched the parade of humanity caught up in legal tussles. I have assisted friends who are penpals of prisoners in the USA and Africa with 'comfort bundles'. I have a workmate whose son was viciously killed in London.

However all this has been an outsider basically looking in. I have not personally had a friend killed.

Sean Paul has and his posts here, here and here show something very special. An attempt to reach beyond normal moral norms and strive to show a very deep form of love. I am impressed.! Life is so complex, and many just accept the social mores, but Sean Paul is confronting that complexity!

something is broken at blogger...

we apologise for this break in posting.

The internet has spawned chatrooms, alt.lists, pornography, blogs, bulletin boards, YouTube, wikis, and much else. One phenomenon which has intrigued, informed, puzzled and increased my empathy is Post Secret.

Now the site has posted a mini-movie - enjoy!

This is the door to Master 23's bedroom. A photograph of the inside I will leave to your imagination. Winter has seen the door become sticky, and on Thursday morning Master 23 wrenched the door handle off the inside, becoming stuck inside, requiring me to open the door from the hallway to let him out. Being 23 he did not bother screwing the handle back on. Off to my special weekend I went on Friday. Master 23 went off clubbing with gf on Friday night, and got home about 3.30am. Jumping out of bed to go to work at 6.30am on Saturday morning he forgot the handle was loose, pulled it and yep he was trapped in the room, with his house and car keys in the lounge room...

Meanwhile I had an extremely full on three days with much journalling about feelings.

348th post.

so many words dumped here, from times when life was happy and fun and the future appeared rosy and sparkly.

times when I wrote deeply of the things that gave me life

times when shock and disbelief saw me posting using cab sav as the muse

more recently an attempt to rationalise at varying levels the reality of the past 19 months.

soon it will be the 26th anniversary of our wedding.

I look down at my hands. Hands that caressed, held our children, toiled at work, chopped wood, cooked meals, clasped my beloveds hands.

I know my mind continues as always to believe in forgiveness, acceptance, trust and hope.

I move forward now into a time when I confront loss and determine what beginning this apparent end will create.

50 something hours spent away from my security zone, listening and talking to others who have had endured something similar to this alter-reality that I have been pushed into by the vagaries of life.

Storm clouds rolled in this evening, but no matter how bad the storm, a time of sunshine and quiet will return.

The journey continues. The way is unclear, uncertain and oh so confusing. But love endures.

I get continually amazed how marketing computer code crunchies manage to insert hot links into websites that divert you away from your intended location. WHilst at a Bulletin Board that has made me somewhat famous, my screen dissolved into the following text:


Gratitude and appreciation are some of the most transformative energies that are available to us. The Universe acts much like a giant photocopier - bringing you more and more of what you already claim to have.

Gratitude is becoming consciously aware of all that is there for us in life, and then acknowledging the gift.

Gratitude releases a dynamic current of energy flow of the highest vibrations into the universe, which magically returns to you in physical form, more of what you are grateful for.

How does this work??

Gratitude works on the principles of The Law of Attraction which states that like energy attracts like energy, like a magnet. Energy of a certain quality or vibration tends to attract energy of a similar quality and vibration. You attract to you the essence of whatever you are predominantly thinking about. If you are consistently thinking about what you already have and express your gratefulness for having it, your results will reflect more of that. (By the same token, if you are consistently thinking about what you do not have, your results will equally reflect that.)

Whatever you hold your attention on, you will attract, IF you know how to do it and how to apply it in your life with exact precision and how to use it with 100% accuracy. When used properly, it is absolutely infallible, as predictable as gravity, because it is a Universal Law that cannot be changed.

Having an attitude of gratitude AND practicing gratitude, has several major beneficial effects:

It will change your life from lack to prosperity,

From sickness to health and harmony,

From struggle to abundance and quality of life.

It will help you focus on what you want rather on what you do not want.

It will raise your 'feeling good' vibration, and

Help you remember how good your life really is!

You will feel abundant and naturally produce more abundance in your life.

You get to know yourself better.

Brings out your natural beauty and wisdom.

Helps you identify your values.

Reveals the depth of who you are.

Is life empowering.

Supports you to detach and let go of the past.

Is fun, playful and can be humorous.

Creates more positive results in your life.

Improves congruency and integrity.

Brings about turning points in your life.

Helps you achieve balance, clarity and peace of mind.

Helps to recreate your self.

Changes your state of consciousness.

You move out of reactionary emotions and take charge of your personal energy.



Whilst I have some sympathy to such thoughts, I am so sorry Annette that my Roman Catholic spirituality, practice and theory are quite adequate for my internal illumination, stability and sanity. Congratulations and kudos to whatever company is promoting your site, nicely engineered!

PS I deleted the identifying code from the site link :D

a diversion:

I have been told that some strangers have been visiting! Welcome to my wonderworld!

Remember "what you live today you will live forever." We all end up scattered as dust or buried in a box. But resurrection comes, yes!

For those who are confused, join the club.

To paraphrase another: Grow old along with me, together or apart the best is yet to be.

I have read prayerfully the writings (poems, stories, letters, journal entries, snippets of thought) of my beloved many times over the past 18 months. Some I had already viewed, some contained with lecture notebooks were new.

I have held these writings in my hands with a deep sense of the sacred, words that were true and lifegiving when they were written. Words that relate a reality that life has overrun and destroyed.

Words that give truth to what I believed I was living. What has changed I cannot really grasp or relate to, I can guess and accept that an overwhelming sense of difference and the desire for some space in the midst of the mess of life suddenly exploded and changed the world.

So much that was life-giving and worth celebrating has become yesterdays story. The narrative has been changed and inner pain and suffering and others lives have been projected and transferred.

I rejoice in the knowledge that I tried. Along with 65% statistically of the population I am now just another man whose life has been changed due to the pressures of society.

I am a sinner and a saint. I am human, and being human I remain able to wonder at life in all its tragedy and beauty. Sunrises and sunsets give me pause for joy and the ability to accept that life goes on.

I am blessed by what I know. Pain and sorrow may have diminished some aspects of my life. However, life goes on with people continually coming my way with stories that give me pause, and make me realise that I am stronger and wiser than ever before in my life. I know I know less now than once I thought I knew. Yet I can trust that life indeed is mysterious and every day is to be rejoiced in.

I have more than I need, spiritually, physically and emotionally and this humbles me.
What a wondrous thing is human life,for all the suffering in the world both natural and manmade I can celebrate life!

All that shall pass away is but reflection.
All insufficiency here finds perfection.
All that's mysterious here finds the day.
Woman in all of us show us our way.

Faust if I recall correctly tried to hold Helen, but was left clutching her clothing.

Life has left me with possessions which I don't want or need...

Meanwhile once again a circular path weaves through stuff Jung would have had fun with: Aileen/Eileen/Helen. Light bearer is the meaning of these names and all have relevance.

Light moves me onto fire or little fire. I have been burnt.

The story so far, another perception.

Childhood and teenage problems can be sublimated for many years until they overwhlem the ego. Whatever someones definition of self is, it seems that as self-concepts, self-feelings, and self-images alter due to internal and external stimuli, the personality changes, too. One can feel and sense oneself to be different.

When not only a sense of difference occurs but several dark experiences overwhelm the ego at the same time a huge explosion occurs with far reaching circumstances. Throw into the mix pharmacological and life-altering circumstances coupled with a new insight and it may take years for bonds to be mended.

One can debate terms such as animus and anima, transference and projection. Yet such theoretical understandings can not mend a broken heart. Terms can give the intellect some sense of calm and understanding. Compassion continues, empathy grows. It is enough.