Now is the Content of my Winter

About twenty years ago, René Girard said, "...in stable systems the persecutors don't realise that they're persecutors; they don't recognise themselves in the portrait that their victims paint of them when they start to complain." "I'm black and proud of it."  Nicky Winmar, 1993 Around the same time, sitting across the table in my office at World Vision was Kevin Sheedy, Coach of the Essendon Football Club. Even then Sheeds was a legend. We were talking about Nicky Winmar's famous response to being told by Collingwood supporters to "go and sniff petrol" and "go walkabout where you came from." To his credit, Sheeds had been appalled by the fans. I had been appalled by their defenders. "They just don't get it," I said. "The say 'I didn't mean it' and 'I wasn't saying it in a racist way.' Are they that blind?" Yes, blind. As Girard was pointing out in his interview on th...

[This post written before the reversal. Didn't change what I say here, but begged other questions about managing the message.] In the Olden Days, when I was working in World Vision Australia, the World Vision entity in the United States, a.k.a. World Vision (since it was the first one), was generally thought to be the most conservative in faith terms. So imagine my surprise when Christianitytoday.com ran this headline today: World Vision: Why We’re Hiring Gay Christians in Same-Sex Marriage. One former colleague shared the story with the status “Wow”. He beat me to it. Then I read the article and, with the perspective of on Old-Timer Insider, I thought I could see what they were trying to do. President Rich Stearns of the US World Vision is trying not to make a judgement. World Vision reckons this is a question for the church and denominations, not some para-church organisation like World Vision. They would rather follow than lead. But, as another FB commentator ...

     I and Lady Judith, in pre-titled days, lived in sunny Queensland. In 1970-ish the call of big-city radio drew us to Brisbane and we purchased a tiny 11 square house in the cheapest suburb of Brisbane. Right at the end of the railway line at Ferny Grove. It seemed like the Outback then. It took a whole HALF HOUR to ride my Honda into Newspaper House, Queen Street. Our neighbours were all dollar-poor, young marrieds hoping for children, driving old cars or motorbikes, and, in our case, sleeping on a mattress on the floor while waiting for the next pay cheque to fund a bed base.      The house cost $11,500 and we borrowed the deposit from my Dad. Mission Brown and White was de rigeur in 1970 Our Ferny Grove neighbours in 1970      We got to work. Created a lawn. Both Dads (not yet Grandpas) built retaining walls and steps. We planted some trees. Filled in the downstairs. Added a boy and a girl to bedrooms. And, as fashions bega...

It started strangely. At 4BK, a place of my employment forty years ago. Problems of dead air. The techs at the transmitter (as if they were permanently stationed there) filled the dead air with marching music. The Powers That Be would soon descend on those responsible. There is no greater sin in radio than Dead Air. It seems that the culprit was me. The boss, still the same one forty years later but no older, wanted to blame Mike Goldman. Why was I pleased? I’d worked once with his Dad, Grant. The boss thought this amusing. Said he’d heard stories . I told him one about having my shoes stolen. Dreams are like that. Snatches of memory. Mixed with lines from yesterday’s reading. Tossed with unresolvable dreads. Judy is sleeping in the next room. Practical considerations since her knee replacement two weeks prior. No steps between that room and the ensuite. This house has 48 steps. She counted them. Her eyes are open when I lean on the doorpost. “I had to pai...

"LIBERAL senator Cory Bernardi has been forced to resign as shadow parliamentary secretary to Tony Abbott following his remarks linking gay marriage to bestiality." The Australian, 19th Sept 2012 Thus spoke The Australian  newspaper. Almost right. Further down the story, if you cared to read so far, the paper clarified a little. During a debate last night over proposed gay marriage laws, Senator Bernardi said legalising same-sex unions would prompt calls for more extreme changes. “The next step ... is having three people that love each other be able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society, or four people,” Senator Bernardi said. “There are even some creepy people out there, who say that it's OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals. Will that be a future step?” As usual, the nuanced and "ill-considered" remarks of a politician, were spun into a simpler, and less accurate proposition. " Gay marriage leads to bestial...

I went through Los Angeles Airport two years ago for the last time. Not last in the sense of until the next time. But for the very last time this side of the Pearly Gates. Please God my final journey to meet Saint Peter is not routed through LAX. If it were I guess I would know I was heading for the Other Place. Arriving now in Sydney from Vancouver it seems Mascot Airport is rivalling LAX for traveller unfriendliness. One's mood is not improved by the body clock just registering 4am Pacific Time. I feel like a whinge. Maybe a sulk. Really? What's wrong with me? I just enjoyed two months with our daughter's family in Seattle and their four energetic exponents of sibling rivalry. The eldest, now ten years, was able to explain sibling rivalry to me with precocious knowing. We had a wonderful and precious time. In the middle we even got to fly over and visit Anne of Green Gables. That's pretty good isn't it? Aren't we lucky that we worked long enough to ...

Sitting in Seattle. Watching horrific violence on TV with two grandsons. It’s a cartoon. Something about ninjas made from Lego. A commercial starring a cartoon gecko interrupts the drama to remind us, unintentionally, that cartoons have always been violent. The gecko is crossing a desert when the Road Runner beep-beeps past followed by the coyote. Stopping for a moment to contemplate roast gecko for dinner, the coyote is crushed by a massive object falling from the sky. In the end, of course, the pure, innocent and victimised survive and succeed. Good is victorious. Just like in real life, right? It’s an important idea to teach children, there is no denying. That, in a violent and imperfect world, right and justice should prevail. But of course, this kind of violence, despite our common beliefs, is not about right and justice. No matter how we dress it up with invented logic, sixteen tonnes falling from the sky is just another form of violence. A form of vengeance for ...