On Blessing

When I was young, I thought everything around me already existed, whether built order or social realm. But often it was built from nothing by another generation, even the people around me. Much exists as a blessing, by favour, or at least a decision, by will.

Praise, bless, preach, say the Dominicans.  And this is intimately associated with veritas, the truth. Praise results from gratitude; blessing shares benefits; preaching tells the truth: a trinity. Much thanks to give, much change to require. Preaching doesn’t mean I’m telling you I know it all; you can preach by listening alone. You don’t need a great many words to speak truth.

Each of us is a blessing though we may not know it. It can take a lifetime to find you have something that comes into play by itself, that others notice while you remain unaware. Blessing doesn’t need force, or even direction. You are uniquely gifted with an ability which may be quirky and you may never know what it is. You might not even need to find out.

Blessing makes holy, both giving and receiving. The bread is blessed before it is broken; truth is blessed before it is spoken.

On the Day and the Hour

Terrorism has come to our city. Not to our country: we’ve had the Bali bombings, the Sydney café siege, and yesterday we confronted its presence here. It’s not so unusual. East, West, North and South people have left home in the morning expecting to return at night, not prepared for suddenly ending their days, accounting for their time on earth. Eulogies will follow. Never so much are the living praised as the dead. Yet they were just as praiseworthy then.

Attackers of random strangers also often die, even in their deeds. Their account may be somewhat different, depending on who makes it. But terrorism, for all the fear it is meant to inspire, isn’t the only way to unexpectedly depart. Jealousy costs many lives, family conflict more; accidents arrive at work, on roads, in the air. The Litany prays against ‘dying suddenly and unprepared’ as if there were some way to become prepared.

The elder Church insisted on frequent confession. Absolution puts the mind at rest. But change, in this house of fire, is constant, from purification and readiness to unstable human truth. How do you want to be remembered? How loving, how loved? How shall we live in farewell?

On Builders

Does anybody else know any unreliable feckless builders? How did the trade get such a bad name? You can build all sorts of things, given time. You can build kitchens, extensions, and decks onto houses. You can build walls, ladders to scale walls, or ladders for angels to descend and ascend from heaven to earth, earth to heaven. We hope the plans for these are correct.

The Romans built roads you can walk on today. We build machines of surprising expressiveness, hotels on wetlands, prison camps for exiles and wounded refugees. We’re exhorted to build ourselves into cathedrals of living stones, a gruesome image in these days of climate change and accelerated devolution. What would you build with a living stone? Where are the jaws, the paws?

When the stone the builders rejected was made the head of the corner, it gave us England’s greatest Queen. What did the builders know, after all? The architect would appear to have exerted authority here. We build towers of words upon laws and scriptures: the architect is always right. We can build houses of cards and cities of gold and can follow the money where it flows, more active than stone.

On Knowledge

Do we know more and more about less and less? St. Paul knew less and less about more and more; he liked it that way. Disaster equation: all knowledge plus all wisdom minus all love equals tragedy. We live in tragic times.

            I recall Brautigan’s poem on ‘cybernetic ecology’ All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. They’re here, not as foreseen. They know more and more and especially ever more about us. They know the truth and the false and dish out either impartially.

            We need real mothers, not machine mothers. Absent real mothers, we have the Mother of God, the Lady of Grace. To have real mothers, we need real lovers, not machine lovers. I recall Aquinas who knew everything in the 13^th century. After a vision at the end of his life, he wrote nothing more: ‘After what has been revealed to me, all I have written seems to me as straw’. Yet Jesus also spoke to Thomas, saying “You have written well of me.’ This is the straw spun into gold by the lady in the tower who escaped by climbing down a rope made of her own golden hair. Seeing, sensing, hearing, knowing.

On Voting

On Voting

St. Paul identified himself, saying “I am … a citizen of no mean city” being Tarsus, of Cilicia (Asia Minor), now in modern Turkey. To be a citizen was, and still is, an honour, while being a stateless person is a complication at best: perhaps more likely a troubled status.

            Some find our Parliament too much like a circus, with acrobats doing flip-flops and hanging by their toes: confronted with politicians too hard to respect, they’re tempted not to vote. If both sides of politics (meaning the affairs of the city — polis in Greek — or matters for the whole body of citizens) lack creditable candidates, what to do?

            Idealists shudder at the thought of the essentially democratic process of compromise, confronted with uncompromising factions, cabals and ideologues. We long for benevolent, charismatic, successful politicians and discover left- and right-wing weaknesses. We are, however, citizens.

            We are citizens of no mean country. We must use thoughts and hearts to find those closest to our principles, even when choosing from the charmless, ignorant, divisive: we have an obligation to the affairs of the citizen body, matters before the nation. There is never perfection. But we can do the honourable thing, and vote.

On Relationshhips

I sometimes think of Traleg Rinpoche, the incarnated guardian of a Tibetan tradition. I knew him peripherally, met briefly a few times, yet he was generous to a Christian looking in to his world from outside. This good man, highly educated in both Tibetan and Western ways, had a skill of relationship that appears to last beyond death.

I’ve heard it said that the body is the city of illusion, but to us it seems architectural in its solidity. Relationships are cities of illusion also, though to us full of pulsing traffic as in noon sun. What if they are empty, deserted streets of blinded walls? Sometimes we continue holding on to relationships that keep trying to almost not work. These are on the shaded side of life.

The relationships of living to living are not like those of living to dead. Relationships to saints, for example, are intercessory, delimited, mediatory. Relationships to ancestors: protective, intriguing, defining. To the lost and sought: cherishing, appealing, wounding. A thought may be the lightest touch, or an unending stream of emotion — a motion towards another reality — groping toward resolution of outraged love. Seek, then, harmonious, well-tempered relationships: we have only so much time.

On Taxing Times

The doers of good works are getting desperate. Every day mailbox, email, phones from charity appeals. Tax time: a chance to do more. We ought to pay more tax, of course; it could solve so much. Except that governments shift tax money into false imprisonment and colonial misadventures, such a waste. The truth is suffering, says Buddha. What to do? Who to trust?

Methods. Pressure: when I get dramatic invasive robocalls I block the number. Getting aggressive sales pitches saying I’d give more if I really cared I hang up. When I’m told I’m not caring I tune out. Bribery: when little packets arrive (pens, stationery, plastic logoed shopping bags) I run out of places to send stuff from people I know and those I don’t know. Manipulation: The gift economy implies a return. Then I hear from someone who wants me giving dead as well as alive.

Blame: whatever you’re doing it’s not enough. Taxes rightly directed could heal, educate, house, protect. Whose name and face on this coin? The times are taxing. Pay attention to the hungry, unclothed, imprisoned, mistreated, and sick. Struggling pieces of suffering everywhere. We do what we can, with such grace as we may.

On Tax

Follow the money, follow the goods. I confess my ignorance of economics. If a tariff is designed to prevent goods entering a country, what prevents goods leaving a country? An embargo. Tariff is basically a tax; both are trade barriers. Different from outright bans on, say, illegal drugs.

Locally, our Treasury decides to tax all overseas goods, including it seems items not subject to tax here: books, second-hand goods, and so forth. Overseas, although not a nation-state, Amazon embargoes all goods to Australia, (excepting limited local stores). The causes are not so interesting: what actually happens is an attempt to prevent goods entering the country or leaving the warehouse.

            Currently, the US taxes steel to prevent steel imports. During the US Civil War, the US embargoed cotton to prevent the South financing the war from its principal crop. Resulting shortages in the English textile industry led to Indian cottons taking over the trade.

            What results from tax? When the coin bears Caesar’s name, tax must be paid, and they say the inability to collect taxes brought the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Little things have big consequences. In the case of trade barriers, who profits? Someone else, it 

On Pottery

Paul, my neighbor, died in his sleep one night, and his children held a garage sale. Among the tyre chains, tools, and ladders that filled our street with tradesmen’s vehicles were a number of shelves of pottery, for Paul practiced an art thousands of years old, the way of the potter.

     It put me in mind of Psalm 2: ‘Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel’. Who shall be broken? The nations. A cursory glance at the news confirms this as just truth: the kings of the earth breaking and taking from one another.

The greatest of vessels is called Theotokos, the Mother of God, who carried the Lord Jesus. Like every mother who has ever lost a child to death, she is a broken vessel, yet the light that shines through her as a result of this breaking illumines the world. Blessed, broken, given. Can you ever separate a mother from her child? Are they not one flesh?

They say the church is our mother (broken in its own way), and we are thus one body. Paul, without meaning to, nonetheless preaches after his death. His vessels preach for him. What preaches for you, and me?

On the One Lost Lamb

How did your one lost lamb come to go missing? Lambs are lost due to causes and conditions. While the other animals are comfortably controlled, bearing wool in a way to make you proud, the one lost lamb, through fright or frisk, has left the pasture for otherwhere.

            It might be one thoughtless word when under pressure, or one act parlous in consequence. Looking back, was the intention always clear? Is fear, greed, anger, an intention at all? Where is your lost lamb, loose somewhere in the world, to cause you so much regret?

            Forgiveness is foregoing of compensation or punishment by one who could rightly claim such. Who lost your lamb? Was it you? (Neglect.) Fate? (Ineffable.) Outside forces? (Incalculable.) Inside forces? (Inscrutable.)

            Try to find your one lost lamb in order to forgive its wayward progress. Blame is never useful. No lost lamb is ever retrieved that way. Find it first: what’s found is reprieved.

            Yes, this one lost lamb belongs to me. See the earmarks? I’m afraid so. How troublesome! The god in the pasture will have something to say to me. Come here, my darling. What a fine fleece you’ve grown.

On the Invisibility Problem

Are you really invisible? When, and where? And what was not seen? Many of us are invisible after the age of 50, but in our 20s and 30s, even earlier, more than one may feel unseen. Does being unseen mean I can get away with more? Am I undetected? Am I undervalued? Opaque? Unidentified? Invisibility happens still in the midst of active careers and accomplishments.

            A friend confessed surprise, finding old letters that showed people missing her, for herself, that is, personally, because of who she is. She’d thought she was invisible all those years, so full of achievement and event. That the closest people saw only her deeds.

            The slave Hagar fled into the wilderness from her master’s abusive household and met an angel she named: Thou God seest me. Seeing is everywhere in this mysterious story: looks of contempt, envy, triumph, suspicion, and grief. Hagar was astonished: Have I also here looked at him that seeth me? When her eyes were opened, she saw a well of water in the desert.

            I often feel invisible. It’s a gift to a photographer, seeing rather than seen. But in truth you are seen both by the known and the unknown.

On Who Am I?

What do you say to someone you meet at party? How do you identify yourself? Probably from the outside in.

            Not by your religious condition. I’m a ‘miserable sinner’ (prayer book); I’m a ‘child of God’ (catechism); I’m an interrelationship with everything in the universe (Buddhist); I’m a compendium of chemicals strung together with electrical impulses (atheism): I am dust, and will return to dust.

            Nor with family: a good parent (I feed my children), or bad (I beat them); a filial child (heeding my parents), or neglectful (ignoring them). The wise avoid politics: gripping hard to the right or spinning out with the left. More approvable your football team or favourite band. No strong emotions: I’m in love, I’m pregnant; I’m gay; I’m inspired. Or I loathe, I hate, I despise.

            Even work shuns the personal. Who says: I’m a trustworthy employee (honest), or slipshod and lazy?  a sincere CEO (devoted to the good), or corrupt (follow the money)? Do the arts save us? I’m a pianist, an actor, a watercolourist? Am I first an artist or a teacher? Am I a ball of skills, personalities, impressions? All these? Or only dust, gold dust, maybe?

On False News

Disinformation aka false news appears historically in 1939. Note the date. As a branch of intelligence, false news was deliberately spun to confuse, disconcert and disorientate the enemy. When practiced as an arm of government policy, in every aspect of statecraft or politics, across the civic realm, it’s fair to ask: who is the enemy? Answer: the entire population.

            If no news is good news, and false news is no news, who has ears to hear any kind of news at all? It comes down to Pilate’s question: what is truth?

            News is not rumour, conspiracy theory, or urban myth. Not propaganda, relations public, or celebrity puff.  Generally there’s an event involved. News isn’t opinion, reflection, ideological comment or indeed suppression.

            Can we cast away the works of darkness, like the baptismal child rejecting Satan through its sponsor’s voice? How much do we have to know? How much can we know? How much do we dare to know, and through whom?

            A little knowledge, in St. Paul’s view, is not only dangerous, but beside the point. ‘Repent, and believe the good news’ not the false news, says Mark’s Gospel. Verify the event. Without love, we are nothing.

On Keys

Keys with mysteries. Ones that don’t engage, need coaxing or slip to the bottom of the bag. Passwords that don’t connect. Streets that won’t turn right, or left. Secret solutions defying permissions. Ianuarius, like all months, was entered invoking Janus, god of beginnings and endings, standing at the year’s turn governing doorways, transitions, passages, past and future tenses. Protector of keys.

            I wonder if it’s better to focus on beginnings rather than endings. Everything falls away from its first glory, and the past is filled, as Milarepa warns, with events concluded in sorrow. All worldly enterprises fail at last. Better to remember the beginning, appearing in hope and joy?

            Peter held the keys to heaven: are they future keys? Like Janus, Peter could open the way to the divine: Christ’s door-ward. The ancients believed the future lurked behind, ready to overtake you unawares. Surely the future is a key: will it turn in the lock?

           The two-faced god, acknowledged at the start of any action, also represents a present continuous, a point in time engaged with change: it travels with you. Other times fall away. Be attentive to beauty. The only valid key is the key to my heart.