On Conversion

I’ve known people who’ve converted, or reconverted, to Buddhism, Judaism, Catholicism, and Born-Again Christianism. One man went from Catholic to Islamic to Biblical Fundamentalist: that’s a lot of conversion. Conversion can change families and friends to unrecognisables, having drastic and sorrowful effects; or it can give illumination and life.

            Scientific conversion talks about energy. Energy being moved from one state to another. Heat to mechanical movement, for example. In closed systems, energy cannot be lost. Maybe it can be frittered away, though.          

            What does Benedict mean by ‘conversion of life?’ Some say the correct translation is ‘conversation’ as a way of life within the monastic setting. Such conversation is with one’s fellows as well as one’s environment as well as with God. The monastic environment is one of constant prayer and saying of the Hours, in the midst of daily work.

            Work is conversion of energy.

            Conversion implies change. And since most of us aren’t monastics, the lay life could be changed to reflect our conversation with God, our fellows, and our environment, or context. Ongoing conversion.

            Try changing something today. Even something small: wear a different colour, pray a new prayer, speak to someone you often ignore. A major conversion would find you. But conversion of energy as a way of life, you can find.

On Compromise

Jesus said: ‘Rise, take up your bed, and walk.’ He says this after he has forgiven the sick man’s sins. The bystanders say, ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ But what’s more difficult? The healing is a kind of arbitration, so they will agree that Jesus has authority over disease.

            Compromise is a third way; the parties combine, rejecting part of each other’s demands and abandoning others. What’s left is the true gold. Compromise also has a negative aspect: computer systems, privacy, health can all be compromised, failing to act ideally due to malware, lack of security, or maladies. This lays them open to vulnerabilities, perils, and harms.

            At present, I sometimes have to compromise with my compromised body. I try to take Jesus’ words as a prescription: rise, get up out of bed, and walk. The purpose of walking in Luke’s Gospel is to glorify God. The purpose of healing is to glorify God. So each day I try to walk a little more.

            You get a compromise between what you want and what you get. We know too much science now to think sins cause illness. We pray for God to be glorified by healing.

On the Tide of the Morning

Lao Tzu said the hallmark of the Sage is the love of doing things at the right time. Finding the right time is a skill and a gift of God. Times of tides are listed and charted for mariners: the moment when the tide turns to retreat or advance can be known.

            Melissa had been ill and bedridden for months. Alzheimer’s had robbed her body of the memory of how to nourish with food. She was thin; the time of her tide was unknown. Her family lovingly stayed and visited, and her devoted mother followed her to the time of the tide. I have the word ‘follow’ from a friend, who was in Vienna to be with her dying aunt, and there’s no English equivalent to this German word. ‘It’s like what the bridesmaid is to the bride,’ said the Austrian nursing staff.

            The right time, with so much suffering, was surely coming, surely. Time then passes another portal; it flows slowly; it’s time beyond measurements and human designs. Waiting for its nature to be revealed.

            It chose the hour after 3AM, the body somehow knowing to take its tide at this instant. ‘If I have knowledge, it will come to an end,’ says Paul, but ‘love never ends.’ And if I have not love, I am nothing.

On Irreplaceable

Everyone has someone who is irreplaceable. In one sense, all of us are, and to God all are surely known. But in terms of daily life, all of us are hanging by a thread.

            Who do you depend on? How would you replace this person? If you were unable to act for yourself, who would act for you? How much depth is there in that list?

            Ideally, all families would be large, devoted, and free of trouble. If instead it seems the Buddha was right, and suffering, especially in the forms of old age, sickness, and death, is pervasive, the possibility of losing the irreplaceable is ever present.

            Children are irreplaceable to parents. The parent mourns the child: in past centuries it was common, leading to the idea the world is a vale of tears. Often it is. Can we be irreplaceable to someone, not living merely for our own concerns?

            I regret spending so little time being reliable, attentive, protective to those outside my circle, so little time seeing what’s actually going on. The Shire of Yarra Ranges community services say they have 3000 frail people on their books for home assistance. Who is irreplaceable? Who’s irreplaceable to you?

On Past Photographs

Last night I dreamed about my photographs from art school. In the morning I gathered enough energy to go downstairs and look around for them. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I found others, that I’d forgotten, that had an important effect on my aesthetic. There was the time a roll of film got misdeveloped, producing curtainlike sheets of light. My teacher thought it fascinating; I thought it bizarre. When I printed them out, they were fascinating. There were portraits, and genre scenes at the school. The passage of time: remembering images floating up through the chemicals, and how they’ve changed by now.

            When I got to choose a major project, I decided to photograph Mont Albert Road. The school was in Box Hill, and that road is notable for beautiful trees and autumn colours. The buildings were changing. I caught it in the 1990s. And much has changed.

            What I do now owes a lot to what I did then. I was looking for the Mont Albert photographs: no doubt I’ll find them. I find them in the pictures I take today. If you take a photo on the street, you document a moment in the flow of unceasing time. The light, the relationship to beauty, the evidence of where and when. Then chemical; now digital: always changing.

On Remission

After the first flare of statin induced illness that afflicted me in 2011, I was told I was in remission. That lasted only four or five months. I was put onto another course of medication that terminated in 2014, and I was walking, standing, sitting freely for four or five months. The time spent on the medication which (albeit with serious side effects) contained the muscle inflammation, was in its own way a kind of remission. Now they’re giving me chemo, and I’m not in remission with this yet.

            Remission is the good time between the bad times. What did I do with my remission? I finished my MA thesis and got my degree. I worked, and helped put the Carmelite Library catalogue online. I learned to play the Venetian Gondola Songs. I read the lesson at St. Peter’s Eastern Hill and volunteered in St. Peter’s Bookroom.  I homed a lovely rescue dog who spent two happy years with me. I was able to get around and photograph the beautiful city in its many layers of meanings.

            Remission also refers to forgiveness: of sins, debts, guilts. Mark’s Jesus says: ‘Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven?’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your mat, and walk?’ And for this they glorified God.

On Philemon

Several people in the online course I’m taking question how an officer on Hadrian’s wall can address his slave as ‘brother.’ Paul’s letter to Philemon treats of just this situation. Onesimus, a slave of Philemon, has been assisting Paul in his prison in Rome. Paul is returning Onesimus to his master, calling the slave his 'child' to whom Paul has become a 'father'. He’s tempted to keep Onesimus with him, to help him during his 'imprisonment for the gospel,’ in place of Philemon himself. Note how Paul positions himself as also a father to Philemon in this rhetoric. He wants Onesimus freed as a good deed which is voluntary: a good son, like Philemon, would seek to obey his father's wishes by his own volition, not as 'something forced.’ Willing obedience is honourable. The result will be that Onesimus is no longer a slave, but a 'beloved brother.' Paul expresses his expectation that Philemon will 'do even more than I say' for Onesimus. Note that brothers are sons of the same father, so this title will have reference to Paul as patron.

            The Letter to Philemon is the shortest book in the Bible, but one of the most fascinating stories.