Boats or Goats?

I meant to post this earlier in the year. I think I might start blogging again...maybe.

Early on the morning of Saturday February 7, to escape the heat radiating through the windows of my east-facing apartment, I retreated to my local High Street café. Although it has an airconditioner, the old device grunted and sputtered, struggling to cope with the rapidly rising temperature outside. I ordered coffee and spread the weekend broadsheet out on the table. Plastered in bold across the front page was a warning that, with a combination of 43 degree temperatures and gusty northerlies across an already dry state, this was to be a day ‘as bad as you can imagine’. The premier issued advice to Victorians not to go out unless absolutely necessary. We now know too well how justified the fears were, with temperatures soaring more than 3 degrees above the forecast, leading to the worst bushfires Australia has ever seen.

On that morning, still nursing a vague hope that the dreadful predictions might be overly pessimistic, I turned the page to read about the global economic crisis and the Australian government’s proposed $42 billion stimulus package. A photographic ‘vox pop’ asked a range of Australians how they would spend the cash handouts that would comprise part of the package. Acknowledging the need to spend the money (after all, it was designed to ‘stimulate’ the economy) they responded with, “Pay off bills and credit cards, buy an iPod, a romantic dinner out, a boat (!)...etc.” If the proposal was approved, I realised, then as one of the multitudes of Australians earning less than $100,000 a year, I would be eligible for a payment. Unsure what to make of this, but inevitably imagining what I might do with the cash, I took another sip of my latte. The heat felt ominous.

Turning to the opinion pages, I came across a piece by Simon Moyle, a colleague of mine at Urban Seed. Reflecting on our work with people in the grip of drug or gambling addictions, his article posed that global warming, linked to our society’s dependence on cheap energy, might also be understood in terms of addiction. The same dynamic is at work. “Rudd's recent ‘consume our way out of recession’ policies are a perfect example,” Simon wrote, referring to the cash handouts. “Despite the fact that we know our overconsumption is accelerating global warming, this Government, which was elected on taking "real action on climate change", is encouraging us to buy more, consume more… Yet without the Earth there is no human life and no economy.” These words proved more poignant than on any other day.

Finishing my coffee, stepping outside the café, I was assaulted by a blast of suffocating, hairdryer-like air, I considered where I might go to spend the day in airconditioned comfort. The local shopping centre? Mea Culpa.

Over the next 24 hours, the surreal, horrific effects began to reveal themselves. I heard many people say that Saturday afternoon felt apocalyptic. By Sunday morning the cool change had well and truly arrived, but the wind change it brought with it did not bode well for the fires. I spoke to my friend Sarah who told me shakily that a close friend of her husband, who had been visiting his parents in one of the affected regions, had been missing overnight. She knocked on my door a couple of hours later, ashen-faced. “They found his body,” she told me. Without the Earth there is no human life and no economy. We hugged and wept.

During the terrible week that followed we were warned that, with global temperatures set to rise further, fires like these would only become more common during Victorian summers. I continued to return to Simon’s article. He is no more of an expert on global warming or economic policy than I am. But he is a passionate follower of Jesus who has sought to ‘be the change he wants to see’ in the world through slow, costly, patient action in his life. He is convinced of the power of symbolic action. His gut tells him that what we need are not policies to reinforce our destructive habits, but communities animated by hope, able to imagine an alternative future. Communities who remind each other not to put blind faith in any human-made economic system. Communities who remember that the only ‘real’ economy is the earth, to which we must pay the greatest respect.

A week later, the package to stimulate the economy was approved. After adopting the changes negotiated in the Senate, $12 billion was allocated for one-off cash bonuses. For example if you, like me, have a taxable income of less than $80,000, you will receive a payment of $900. There is wide disagreement on whether this is good economics, or good politics for that matter. Not many people remind us of what a letter from Tear Australia reminded me recently: that 40 million people worldwide are predicted to fall into dire poverty as a result of the global credit crisis. Most of them aren’t earning 40, 60 or 80,000 a year.

Well might we listen to advice that it is our civic duty to spend the money before “the global economic recession wreaks havoc” on our country. Yet as I understand it, the global ‘credit’ crisis is nothing more than a crisis of debt. A crisis brought about by an addiction to consumption. This crisis is being tackled with a package that requires our government to borrow more money from our children. And research released yesterday confirmed that more than a third of the payments made as part of the Government’s $8.7 billion stimulus in December were used for extra payments on credit cards. Is something wrong here?

I am part of Loam, a Seeds community in Preston. Like the other Seedy mobs, we believe enough in the Kingdom of God, or the Economy of God, to seek to embody it in our own small, faltering ways. I could never attempt to hold my own against the abstracted spin of Wayne Swan. Joe Hockey would tear me to pieces! But what I can do, with my community, is attempt to live out what I believe. So over the next few weeks Loam will be discussing this issue at a really practical level: what will we do with the money that the tax office will put in our bank accounts in April? I want to argue that this is a question that relates not to civic duty but to faith, morality and the guts of what we believe about the world we live in.

An Advent Reflection

It was the first week of Advent 2005. I was living as part of the Urban Seed residential community in the heart of central Melbourne.

I attended the Amnesty International Candlelight Vigil at the Alexandra Gardens for the condemned Australian Van Nguyen. Having acted as a drug mule in order to pay the debts of his brother, he had been captured and sentenced to death in Singapore. Over three years the case had sparked the usual polarised debate about the death penalty. Having exhausted official appeals and in spite of pleas for clemency, he was to be executed the next morning by the Singaporean Government.

I carried with me to the vigil a heavy wooden cross. The Credo Cross was built by a member of our community the day we heard that one of our close friends, a key volunteer at our open lunch for homeless and disadvantaged people, had been found dead from a drug overdose in a laneway close to our home. On that particular day, as most from our households gathered and mourned in silence, the sound of banging echoed from from the fire escape behind our apartments as the commemorative cross was constructed. Since that time, the cross has become an icon for our community, a symbol to cling to, a trusted companion when the pain of the world falls upon us like a hammer. We use it regularly during our prayers and worship gatherings, at weddings and at funerals. We take it with us when we attend the various protests and vigils that regularly take place in the centre of the city.

And so it was with me this night. I held it for Van Nguyen. The vigil was quiet but moving. We lit our candles and made our prayers for a stay of execution and for the life and souls of the condemned, the condemners and ourselves. At its conclusion I headed home. Carrying the cross upon my shoulder, I was walking past Flinders Street Station when a group of people carrying a video camera thrust a microphone in my face.

'What does Christmas mean to you?' they asked.

I supposed that they must have been Christians, looking for 'vox pop' responses, perhaps for some sort of Christmas presentation.

'What does Christmas mean to you?'

'Well…' I started, a little surprised by the interruption. (It can be hard to think on your feet, especially when you’re carrying a cross through a crowded city!) 'You might notice I’m carrying a cross.' I continued…. 'You see, I am a Christian and it is because of this that I’ve been to the vigil for Van Nguyen, who is to be executed tomorrow.'

I spoke of my opposition to the death penalty. I spoke of how Jesus was also victim of a state execution but that through his example of nonviolent love he showed a way of life that triumphs over death. That this demonstrated that sometimes power could be weak...that what seems weak can be the most powerful force in the world. 'And so,' I concluded, 'I guess I believe not in the cold, hard hand of the law, but in a world of grace.'

'Errr...ok...' The interviewer looked a little confused. 'That’s good; but what would you say Christmas means to you?'

There we both stood.

Waiting…

Me, with a cross upon my shoulder, waiting for him to comprehend.

Him, with a camera on his, waiting for an answer he wanted to hear.

Waiting…

It’s Advent again…what are you waiting for?

(This is my story, with nods to Marcus Curnow and the Seeds Network.)

Where is the living water?

I don't know that this is a sad blog. Thoughtful, pensive, a little melancholy perhaps. But I make no apologies, because it is precisely those days - when the sky is white, the grass wet, when my chest feels heavy and my body worn - that I want to put thoughts to the ether.

On Wednesday, I completed the postgraduate study I have been plugging away at for more than four years. With the slip of a wad of paper into a slotted wooden box, I could finally do or read anything I wanted without feeling the hot breath of obligation on my neck. In fact, the very next morning I took myself down to Maize for coffee and the newspaper. I ordered some breakfast. Then I asked myself what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. And, you know, it should have been bliss.

Yet I feel...not right. It's hard to say what might be going on. My heart rate is slightly elevated, my shoulders are tight, my belly is sore, my appetite is wacked and I have slept restlessly. Instead of relief, I have experienced a strange kind of stress, as though thrust into this new place where I can't help contemplate questions that are out of my reach. I've been at a loss as to how to connect much of my reality with the narrative I have committed to. Little daily acts and events seem irrelevant, boring, ridiculously sad. So I search for hope.

I don't always reach for the Bible when I'm searching for hope. In fact, too often I grasp at what are ultimately flimsy little straws next to well of life. Despite having committed my life to its story, the journey from the text - those ancient words on a page - to a meaningful connection with my life and the world I live in - can feel complicated and difficult. Or I am just lazy.

Yesterday my younger brother asked me to read a Bible story to him - we chose the story of the woman at the well. He had a couple of fantastic questions for me in relation to the story, questions which I'm perhaps too seasoned to be asking. But how the years desensitise us to the surprises in the story. I told him as much as I knew about the characters and the context.

What is the living water Jesus is talking about? my brother asked. Where is it?

I wish, instead of giving him my best answers, that I had asked a few questions of my own. He, a gentle, sensitive, playful eleven-year-old, and I, perhaps also gentle and sensitive, but with added years of education, a good dose of cynicism and in a particularly weary moment, stood at equal distances from meaning in the text. We also stand equidistant from life's ultimate answers.

My brother watched a breakdancing movie before he went to bed last night. He went to Sunday School this morning, which will be followed by Sunday lunch with his mum and dad and some friends. Will he have reflected on anything we spoke about yesterday? Maybe not. But I'm going to ring him up and ask him what he thinks.

Laneway wisdom (2)

‘I had a lot of jobs actually because I was getting paranoid at work. One of the reasons I don’t work now is because if I went back to work and failed it might be hard…hard on me.’

‘You get judged day in day out. That’s part of life. But when it’s severe, it’s a bit hard to take.’
‘When I was young I used to worry about money more, you know, will I have money when I’m a certain age? But now I’m 48 in March, I just worry about having money for the day, not for the future.’

On a very ordinary office chair

On a very ordinary office chair on the third floor of a crumbling concrete building inhabited by a very un-ordinary group of people in a dingy alleyway in Melbourne's CBD on a cold, rainy October day sits me. Among the items on my desk: a hat, an apple, some keys, someone's annual report, a DVD about trade liberalisation and a container that used to be full of a Middle Eastern delicacy but is now full of nuts and sultanas. My body is wrapped in wool and my head is full things utterable and unutterable and I can still taste tomato sauce (we had a BBQ lunch). I haven't written much lately, though I have spoken and walked and danced and listened and drunk and cooked and stretched and smiled and nibbled and driven and pondered quite a bit. I have been mainly calm, though there have been those occasions when my heart raced, dipped, leaped or turned cold. And I do want to write but I don't know where to start.

The destination of development

'Gross national product...measures neither the health or our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It pays no heed to the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials. It measures niether the wisdom of our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be a part of it.'
Robert Kennedy

'Seek the shalom (well-being and social harmony) of the city...'
Jeremiah 29:7

Laneway wisdom

I lingered in the laneway this grey, wintery afternoon with four wise, weathered types who waxed philosophical between drags and sips.
The young man: “Three weeks ago I felt like I was in hell. But then I realised what I was doing. I was blaming everyone else for my own problems. Once I stopped doing that, I felt better.”
The older woman: “It’s funny when you realise you put yourself there.”
Nods all round.
I ask Kevin if he’s ok – he seems a bit flat.
He shrugs. “My roommate died of a stroke on Tuesday.” Shit, Kev, who wouldn’t be flat.
Silence. “It’s so sad,” I say, because it is.
The other bloke with the chiseled face: “It is sad. But you just can’t keep on being sad, otherwise it’s a waste. You gotta let it inspire you to keep on going.” I can see he is brave and hopeful.
The others leave and I am grateful to have shared an ordinary moment with them.
Kevin and I sit for a while longer on the cold concrete steps. He finishes his cigarette, downs the last of his coffee, and we go back inside where it’s warm.