Bonhoeffer, Ethics and Kevin Rudd

Miss Eagle is thinking - hard. I don't know whether this will be the first or last post of this kind or whether this will the first post of a work in progress. I write four blogs. These blogs reflect the constant interests of a life of sixty-three and a bit years. The links are on the side bars. The blogs cover desert spirituality, social comment, home decor, and food. Into these blogs come other constants: books, film and television, rugby league football - particularly State of Origin, and - occasionally - craft and the refurbishment of furniture and furnishings.

The Eagle's Nest was the first blog but, as it progressed, it seemed too much of a jumble to put all my interests on one blog. As well, readers interested in one topic were not necessarily interested in any of the others. While there is occasional social comment in The Trad Pad and Oz Tucker which is relevant to their topics, I have - to this time - kept this blog free of social comment: a rant free zone.

But what I want to explore is in the manner of a spiritual reflection so this blog seems to be the most appropriate place to write about it. Elections for a Federal Government are due in Australia and are expected by December 2007. The government is a coalition of two conservative parties, the Liberal Party and the National Party. The major party of opposition is the Australian Labor Party. There are a few independents sitting in the House of Representatives. In the Senate there are a smattering of minor parties: The Greens, The Australian Democrats, Family First.

Our Prime Minister is John Howard. The Leader of the Opposition is Kevin Rudd. Until the last few years, religion has never been an issue in Australian politics as it is in the politics of the USA. Australians have never been fond of people who wear their religion on their sleeve. And they have been even less fond of politicians who display such a tendency. But this has changed or is changing. Pentecostal churches and their mega churches have acted as a lightning rod for this development.

Pentecostal churches have sought to mobilise their constituencies and have actually sought political power and influence. Politicians are always mesmerised by numbers and are only too happy to turn up to churches that can guarantee an audience of 5/6000 people.

John Howard was raised a Methodist. While he courts conservative Christians, there is little indication by the Prime Minister of his own faith in practice. We do not have any seminal statements of faith.

On the other hand, the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, has been more overt about his faith and has actually bought into the debate of faith in public and political life. Rudd was raised a Catholic, lived in an Anglican college at the Australian National University (ANU) and married an Anglican. I am not quite certain but I believe he now attends an Anglican Church.

During Howard's tenure as Prime Minister, his government has been seen to implement policies which cut across Christian ethics:

1. Detention of refugees in concentration camp like facilities
2. Management of harsh immigration policies which have also scooped up Australian citizens into a disastrous web of detention and deportation
3. Questionable attitudes based on the ethnic origins of Australian citizens and residents
4. Xenophobic attitudes
5. Introduction of legislation which has eliminated a just balance of workplace relations between employer and employee
6. Failure to apologise to indigenous Australians for horrendous public policy such as that revealed by the Stolen Generations report, Bringing Them Home
7. Poor funding and administration of public policy issues relating to Aboriginal people.
8. A recent sudden interest in Aboriginal issues to the extent that the army has been sent to Aboriginal communities and constructive policies are being abolished at the stroke of a pen.
9. Failure to sign up to Kyoto and - until recently - denigration of anything to do with climate change or altering behaviour to save the planet.

This list is a short list and for more details of these and other similar policies and attitudes you, dear Reader, are referred to The Eagle's Nest.

Kevin Rudd was elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party on 4 December 2006. While he was a familiar face on Australian television, Australians are still getting to know who Kevin Rudd is and what he stands for. He is ahead in the polls and it seems likely that in 2008 Australian government will have changed hands and Kevin Rudd will be Prime Minister.

Among those who long for the Howard Government and its meanness to humanity and the environment to depart from the halls of power, there is mounting concern about the man who would become Prime Minister. Who is he really? What does he stand for?

These questions are commonly being raised because, on a number of contentious issues, Rudd has supported the Howard Government when great ethical questions have been and are integral to such issues. People refer to Rudd's "me-too-ism".

The latest evidence of this is in the area of Tasmanian forest policy where Rudd has indicated that he will not move away from the policy of the Howard Government. This is clearly because a powerful trade union supports this policy. A more environmentally friendly policy enunciated by Rudd's predecessor brought protests from this union and cost the ALP two seats in Tasmania.

To-day - and this is the catalyst for Miss Eagle's personal ethical reflection - Martin Flanagan is questioning Rudd's decision and relates Rudd's statements to his previous declared admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his ethics. Martin Flanagan is a distinguished writer and journalist and a favourite commentator of Miss E. He is the brother of the much-awarded Tasmanian writer, Richard Flanagan.

Miss Eagle has had half-a-lifetime of active political involvement within the ALP ( as candidate and political staffer) and the trade union movement (as an active member and a union organiser). She is in retirement. She resigned from the ALP six years ago. She keeps up trade union linkages particularly through the Your Rights at Work campaign. Miss Eagle thinks she can see what Rudd is doing. He is not going to be distracted from the goal - and certainly not when he is so far ahead of the Prime Minister in the polls. The Prime Minister is a master of what is known as "wedge politics" and Rudd seems to have developed some deft skills in avoiding the wedge.

When Rudd takes a me-too stand, it seems to have the effect of taking contention out of the political debate. Flanagan describes this aptly thus: The game he is currently playing with the Prime Minister is known in yacht racing as tacking.

So the ethical question is this:
Opinion polls are showing that a majority of Australians want a change of government. There are great moral reasons - in the view of many but not all Australians - why the Prime Minister should leave office. How ethical is Rudd's position of tacking, of keeping on track, on keeping the campaign ship on an even keel?

Miss Eagle has raised similar questions at The Eagle's Nest asking for Rudd to display his backbone, to let us know his vision, to let us know what are those issues from which he would never resile his position.

Is Kevin Rudd correct? Just as Bonhoeffer was prepared to accept the murder of Hitler as a necessary but lesser evil in the affairs of state, is Rudd's attitude of tacking and me-tooing his way to The Lodge a small price to pay, a lesser evil, to rid this nation of Howard's tainted governance? Is the failure to enunciate a clear, environmentally friendly forest policy less important than doing what it takes to rid the nation of the Howard Government?

Existential Jesus

Imagine, dear Reader, a reading group in an Australian academic institution. Most of the members are not Christians and yet they decide to read the Gospel of Mark and read it intelligently in a manner similar to the way the group would approach other texts. The deliberations of the group have now become the subject of a book, The Existential Jesus, by Professor John Carroll, a sociologist at La Trobe University here in Melbourne. Miss Eagle went to hear John Carroll speak last Thursday night at St Martin's Anglican Church at South Yarra. This is not the historical project of the Jesus Seminar. This is more like a Lectio Divina group style except that most of the group are secular and they are approaching the work intellectually, not prayerfully. The insights are remarkable and worthy of note. Make up your own mind.

Rumi and The Right Work

The Essential Rumi - Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry, and Reynold Nicholson. Published by Castle Books, 1997.

The Melbourne Writers Festival program is out to-day. How can one ever get to everything that sparks attention! How can one ever afford it! Over at Barnabas quotidian, Barney has used a quote from Rumi. Top of Miss Eagle's list are two Rumi events. Check the information here and here. It is a challenging quote and gives much to ponder:

The Right Work

There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else, and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.

It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular Work. That Work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It’s a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It’s a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.

You say, “But look, I’m using the dagger. It’s not lying idle.”

Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose. You say, “But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest.” But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

Lives: radical and changed

Christian mystics do not dabble in altered states.

They seek radically altered lives.

From an interview

with Bernard McGinn

by Sarah Miller,

The Christian Century, 2003.

Discovered this posted at

Sacred Threshold

PolMin, along with the Victorian Council of Churches, the Uniting Church’s Commission for Mission and Anglican Church’s Social Resposibilities Committee is sponsoring a forum about Dignity at Work.

The guest speakers will be three minimum wage workers from the USA who are in Australia on an ACTU sponsored tour.

The forum is being held in the marginal federal seat of Deakin and forms part of PolMin’s Just Work campaign.

Dignity at Work Forum - Minimum Wage Workers from the USA speak out

Thursday 26 July 2007
2pm
St John’s Catholic Church
494 Maroondah Hwy Mitcham

If you require a .pdf file for printing, please email Miss Eagle

Tabling: Ancient Prayers and Blessings

I am indebted to Following the Ancient Paths for bringing to prominence the ancient prayers of the Jewish tradition - particularly those that relate to blessings before meals and after meals. Truly beautiful.

The Prayer of Charlemagne

Charlemagne by Albrecht Durer

The Prayer of Charlemagne

Creator Spirt, by whose aid

The world's foundations first were laid,

Come visit every pious mind,

Come pour thy joys on humankind;

From sin and sorrow set us free,

And make us temples worthy thee.

Attributed to Charlemagne, translated by Dryden

Life happens: Part 1

Table Setting at the first meeting of Dawn of Life, St Thom's, Upper Gully

There comes a time in the life of a blogger when what happens is life...life to be lived...life to be organised and planned...a life in which one must be enjoined, one must participate. This explains the absence of Miss Eagle.

Highlights of the absence are:

• Establishing a support group for widows and widowers at St Thom's. The group has chosen to call itself Dawn of Life.
• Attending a conference in the Anglican Diocese of Ballarat - Rural Ministry in the 21st century.
• Taking the opportunity to play tourist before and after the conference.
• And, while all this was going on, Miss Eagle was also planning and working on a Pray Vigil held on Wednesday afternoon from 1pm-4pm at St Thom's.

St Thom's is a smaller parish - approximately 125 people attend two services in Upper Ferntree Gully each Sunday. We are, like so many Anglican congregations, ageing. In the last twelve months or so, though, aged diversity is creeping in the doors. Miss E is overjoyed. You see Miss Eagle does not agree with these aged specific Gen X, Gen Y churches. Miss E heard recently about a couple turning up at St Hilary's Kew, Melbournes largest Anglican church - Anglican of the evangelical variety. They were re-directed to the service for those over 40.

Now Miss E has the view that we are the Body of Christ, that God does deal with people in families. How does age-segregation help with communication between the generations? Miss Eagle is 63, she is widowed, she has no grandchildren. But she delights in the babies and toddlers in the church. There's Georgia who is somewhere between 11 and 13 who is making wonderful progress in the guitar. There has been a quiet pleasure in watching Callum and Nicholas - the children of Susanne and Jonathan, our ministering couple - grow up and start high school. There is Claire who has grown up in the church and is now at university. It is wonderful to be able to stay in touch with her life and ambitions and plans. And this is a two-way street. Young people learn about communicating with older people. Surely, this is the way God works things out. Surely, this sort of community can be a gift to a broader more individualistic society.

So, in this parish with a substational ageing demographic, there are quite a few widows and widowers. Needless to say, there are more widows than widowers. Two of us were widowed at a young age: Miss E at 45, but Madelin even earlier, in her thirties with young children. Most are recently widowed. So, at our first meeting, we had only one man. The others were busy - so time will tell whether the others come along. If they don't, we may lose our one man and become an all female group.

We have made a good beginning. We are not a lonely hearts club and we are likely to carry on a range of activities: social, first person, speakers. Miss E wants to also guide people in to looking at the role of the widowed in the church - then and now.

...to be continued

A place apart and taking off our shoes

Glynn Cardy, an Anglican minister in Auckland, New Zealand, writes about spiritual experience at Lucky Bear.

Friends, Peace and Pine Gap

Miss Eagle has to-day received this letter and these photographs from Dale Hess.

______________
Friends,

I have just received these photos of the Quaker Meeting held at Pine Gap. To learn what is happening at the trial of the Pine Gap 4, click on: http://www.pinegapontrial.blogspot.com/

Best regards,
Dale
______________

From: Jessica Morrison
Sent: Monday, 11 June 2007 9:32 PM
To: Hess Dale
Subject: Quaker Meeting at the Gates of Pine Gap - was it the first?

Dear Dale

I thought Friends may be interested in this,

Jessica
________________________
On Saturday 9th June, 25 people attended a Quaker meeting for worship 20 kms outside Alice Springs. The venue was the front gates of Pine Gap, a US/Australian Joint Defence Facility (also known as a US spy base), and the site of many protests.

While this was the first meeting for worship, this group of activists were able to grasp the process quickly (apart from sitting still for so long!).

Ministry included:

• Hindu mantras;the query relating to seeds of conflict in ourselves;
• stories of civil disobedience by Quakers;
• that prophets went into the desert to find God and
• that we go into the desert to find the truth about our country;
• the nature of silence; and
• the experience to attend the base in listening, rather than broadcasting of our opinions.

We finished with the laying of a peace sign of flowers and holding hands.

Mystics and mysticism: a summation - #3

If we cannot follow them in the experience to which their mysticism led them, and cannot fully understand what they seek to tell us, we must remember that these inner experiences, these visions of Divine truth, are of their very nature indescribable and incommunicable. If but few can share in that mystic experience, it is perhaps because few are prepared to pay the price which the mystics have paid and to follow in their steps along the Mystic Way, for they have told us plainly that the Way is long and hard, and those would attain must be ready to die completely to Self in order to live unto God. Yet we may learn from them and gain something for ourselves from their revelations, for our own guidance and encouragement, if we should seek to share, in however small a measure, in that which they enjoyed in its fullness; they have at any rate shewn us the way, and whither it leads for those who will tread it unfalteringly till the end is achieved.

Are the mystics right then? I think we can but answer Yes, if Mysticism means the transcending of the temporal and the material for the sake of communion, even of union, with the Abiding and the Real; if it means dying to the old life of the natural man, with all its limitations and desires, in order to attain to the freedom of a new supernatural Life which is everlasting; if, in short, it means a real experience, here and now, of what we call Eternity.

From the Epilogue

An introduction to the history of mysticism
By Margaret Smith
Gordon Press, New York
1976
Reprint of the 1930 edition published by the

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.

Mystics and mysticism: a summation - #2

Have they not rather justified it beyond all denial? Their testimony bears on the face of it the evidence of being founded on experience; they speak not by hearsay, but of that which they have seen and known for themselves. These mystics are no mere visionaries, unreliable, witnesses, but men and women of strong character, possessed of sound judgment, and for the most part of practical good sense. They were known far and wide for the sanctity of their lives, the saintliness of their characters. Often they were profound thinkers, the intellectual leaders of their fellows, and withal men and women of action, with great gifts for leadership and administration, who have made their mark in the history of religion and often-times in the history of the world. Their inward vision did not make them less capable of serving their fellow-men, rather it inspired them to a fuller and richer life for others in the world. Their mysticism was a death opening up the gates of life, it was creative in the fullest sense of the word; they were not content to abide alone, but in dying unto themselves they brought forth much fruit.

From the Epilogue
An introduction to the history of mysticism

By Margaret Smith

Gordon Press, New York

1976

Reprint of the 1930 edition published by the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.

Mystics and mysticism: a summation

The mystics have given us their witness to the truth of the faith they hold; philosophers have set their seal to it, the Fathers of the Church have affirmed their belief in it; the seekers of the Orient have proclaimed in glowing terms their mystic creed; those devoted to the Religious life have found in Mysticism that which brings vital force in dogmatic theology; those who have lived in seclusion, together with those who have shared in all the activities of the busy world, men and women, saints and seers, poets and craftsmen, all alike have declared unfalteringly that the soul, already in this life, can and does enter consciously into immediate relationship with God. Have they justified their claim?

From the Epilogue

An introduction to the history of mysticism
By
Margaret Smith
Gordon Press, New York
1976
Reprint of the 1930 edition published by the

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.

Leunig: The path to your door

Michael Leunig is one of Australia's great cartoonists. Michael is a spiritual man and insightful in his art, his text, his comment. Miss Eagle is currently listening to Billy the Rabbit which the gifted Gyan has set to music. The CD comes beautifully packaged with a little book of the poems which have been set to music. Here is the last, but not least:

The Path to your Door
The path to your door
Is the path within:
Is made by animals,
Is lined by flowers,
Is lined by thorns,
Is stained with wine,
Is lit by the lamp of sorrowful dreams:
Is washed with joy,
Is swept by grief,
Is blessed by the lonely traffic of art:
Is known by heart,
Is known by prayer,
Is lost and found,
Is always strange,
The path to your door.

Listening

Iona Abbey window Christine Sine

Sometimes in a lowly cell

In the presence of my God

I stand and listen.

In the silence of my heart

I can hear his will

When I listen

Despairing people flock to me

They expect that I can see the answers

They ask my advice,

They say I am wise

I answer that nothing can deceive me

If I stand alone and silently listen

For I am but a servant

Who is guided by his king

When I listen

Sometimes in a lowly cell

In the presence of my God

I stand and listen

This Celtic poem attributed to Columba comes from Christine Sine via Listening Point.

Modern ascetism: counter-cultural, radical, spiritual commitment

In the latest Eureka, Paul Collins writes about ascetism and radical spiritual commitment in an article titled Downsizing as a form of modern ascetism.

Into Great Silence: a meditation

On Monday night, I went into the Cinema Nova in Lygon Street, Carlton to see the much awarded Into Great Silence.

Into Great Silence is a documentary. Having said that, though, filmgoers need to be warned. This is not the usual sort of documentary. There is no dialogue. No explanations, no explanatory structure or mechanism. There is no film music. The only music is the Gregorian chant of the Liturgy of the Hours. It is long. 2 hrs 40minutes. The film itself is a meditation with the theatre and its patrons quiet, silent. This is an insight into the life of Carthusian fathers and brothers - arguably the most ascetic order of monks in the whole world - living in Le Grand Chartreuse (yes, they of the famous liqueur - Chartreuse) high in the French Alps near Grenoble. There. Be warned. If you can wear all this and still front up to the theatre, you are almost certain to find this film a positive experience.

The film varies from grainy celluloid style to high quality. Some scenes are great art - to take your breath away and wonder if you are in a movie house or an art gallery. There is an overall structure to the film. It relies on the seasons: winter-spring-summer-autumn-winter as the macro theme. Within that seasonal structure is the daily life of the inhabitants of the monastery: rising and going to choir through to the deep of night office. We see the young and the old: the newcomers and the old, old men. We see the eremetic life lived in the cells and we see the active and practical lives of the brothers who cook, who feed, who garden, who manage the livestock.

We are watching men who have sought the better portion. They have left all, as Jesus commanded, to follow him into a greater reality removed from a world of human made distraction.

An excellent review is here and here is more about the Carthusians which is helpful in dealing with some of queries people have unanswered in the movie. The Anchoress has a review here.

John Garvey, an Orthodox priest, has an interesting piece in the Commonweal of May 18. John saw the movie close to the period of the massacre at Virginia Tech. He threads both together. Here is a quote from his article that I found significant:
A lot of what followed the Virginia Tech massacre was predictable: editorials about gun control and the treatment of mental illness, interviews with people about the need for reaching out. Some students expressed their concern that they may not have done enough to help Cho, though it is not at all clear that they could have. All I can think about are the human extremes here: monks who spend their time in solitary silence before God, listening deeply; and someone weeping in his own howling, desperate isolation, one that turns to evil rage and the destruction of other lives. This is the range of human possibility: you can be a person who moves through silence toward the light, or you can be destroyed by darkness. There is nothing here about morality or moral choices. This is about what we are called to be, and about those things that assist or prevent us from getting there.

As I have said in the title. This film is a meditation. It tells, it displays, an alternative story: an alternative way of being in the world. We may not all enter the cell or live behind a monastery wall but many of us who see this film will resolve once again to be who we are created to be, to serve as we are created to serve, to love as we are created to love, and to live as we are created too live.

Insight, water and transmutation of the human mind

Martin LeFevre has forwarded another wonderful contribution. Thank you Martin.

Martin says: I realize that this piece from a meditation at the sea may not fit with Desert Spirituality, but perhaps it provides a complementary contrast with it. Though I don't have a lot of experience with deserts, they evoke the same ineffable feelings in me as a wild stretch of the Pacific. Do you have the same feeling?

Miss Eagle repllies: Yes, Martin, I do. I have spent a lot of my life in deserts, but even more beside the waters of the Southern Pacific: on two great Australian harbours, Sydney Harbour and Port Denison, Bowen, at the northern end of the Whitsundays in North Queensland; and on two beautiful bays - Moreton Bay, Brisbane, and Halifax Bay, north of Townsville. For those with a similar query, Miss Eagle draws readers attention to the first post of this blog where there is a link to an article which discusses the desert as a specific place and as a symbol. There is no dichotomy. Each takes us away from our human made egotism and attachments and absorbs us into creation and the creative process by which we are re-new-ed and re-energize-d and re-awaken-ed to look at our world, as Martin points out, in a new way.

Insight Is Always New

Waves crash onto the rocks a couple hundred meters from the beach. Some shoot up like geysers, or spouting whales, in narrow plumes of white spray. Small shorebirds scamper in and out of the surf, ebbing and flowing like the tide itself.

Looking a mile or two up the protected shoreline, nearly a dozen lines of whitecaps march toward the shore. They replicate a pattern, and echo a sound, nearly as old as the earth itself.

Though it’s sunny, there is a stiff breeze. I’m tucked up against the low bluffs, which afford some protection from the wind. For a half hour there isn’t a person or sign of man in the three directions of my line of sight: directly out to sea, and in either direction along the shoreline. Then, to my bemusement, an older couple with a yapping dog and lawn chairs walks up and plops down directly in front, not 50 meters away. I move down the beach a quarter mile and continue the meditation.

The sea can make meditation easier or more difficult. Initially it is easier because the vastness of the ocean obliterates the ‘me’ immediately. But it can be more difficult to meditate (that is, move beyond thought) at the ocean because its vastness and power can induce thought to hang on. There is a deep fear of letting go, of losing oneself to emptiness. And the sea mirrors the infinite emptiness of space.

As the mind quiets down, one becomes aware of another primal fear. We humans are social apes, and have been clinging to each other for millions of years. To be deeply alone, physically or metaphysically, is to be cut off from the tribe and the clan, and for eons that meant not surviving. We carry this fear with us, which is why the tribalistic mentality remains so strong, and why so few truly stand alone.

The paradox is that though we are social creatures by nature and evolution, we can only grow to be fully human by psychologically leaving society on a regular basis. That’s what happens during genuine meditation. Returning to the world, and to thought-consciousness, we are subtly or significantly transformed.

Illumination, as I’m coming to understand it, means not returning to thought-consciousness at all. Of course, one can’t really leave society, even if one goes backpacking alone for a week in the High Sierras, since the skills and technology of society are what enable one to go. But psychologically, and even neurogenically, there is a phenomenon called illumination, though neuroscientists haven’t even begun to study it.

There is immeasurable peace in leaving the dimension of thought completely, if only for a few minutes a day. The question is, can ordinary people see not only the value, but also the imperative of doing so? In other words, can they understand what it actually means to meditate, without all the Buddhist or New Age mumbo jumbo?

Life has been unfolding for hundreds of millions of years. Yet man, who evolved along the same principles as all other life, comes along and begins to destroy everything in a matter of centuries, even generations. My basic premise is that without a transmutation of the human mind, humankind will continue to plunder the planet at an increasing rate, and destroy itself, spiritually if not materially.

What are the conditions necessary for the emergence of a new species, without setting up a duality and conflict between humans and human beings?

First of all, is the distinction between humans and human beings a useful one? I feel that it is, and that it marks a shift in the nature of consciousness greater than the difference between Neanderthals and Cro Magnons (not anatomically of course, but neurologically).

Humans are people in whom the evolutionary adaptation of symbolic thought dominates; human beings are people in whom thought no longer rules, however far from illumination they may be.

Insight is always new, wordless, and undiluted. Awakening people no longer mindlessly filter experience through words, images, and concepts (that is, thought), but in being self-aware allow insight—the flash of direct perception in the moment—to be the first thing.

That obviously means significant changes in the way the brain works--in other words, a transmutation of the human mind.

Martin LeFevre

Paradise Beach, Gippsland, Victoria, Australia - Bass Strait Rollers coming in

Season of the Soul: Pentecost - Counting the Spirit's impact on culture

Making oneself understood is not always easy. So many things can separate us: another language, our gender, our ethnicity, our social class. Christian teaching - while not always borne out in practice - goes to the heart of this separation.

This year the Feast of Pentecost is celebrated on Sunday 27 May 2007. Pentecost is a Jewish Feast - a harvest festival. The first Pentecost in the Christian tradition is described in Chapter 2 of The Acts of the Apostles.

The language barrier was broken down as thousands of visitors to Jerusalem heard the Apostles, humble Galileans, speaking in other tongues, in the visitors' own languages.

Gender, ethnicity and social class are highlighted by Paul when he tells us that in Jesus Christ:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Epistle to the Galations Chapter 3 verse 28).

Pentecost is often referred to by Christians as "the birthday of the church". It can also be a day when we take stock and ask ourselves a few questions.

• Is Pentecost truly a new day - a day of remembering new birth?
• Is it a day when people commemorate their entry into a new life, a new way of looking at the world, a new way of looking at one another?
• Do we really understand the impact of that first Pentecost when the language barrier was broken down, when cultural change under the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ Jesus actually began?
• And do we understand ourselves - if we are obedient to a risen Lord, an empowering Spirit, and a creative God - to be participants in this new and ever inclusive culture?

The Journey from '67: My mother told me a story

Mothers waiting for their children by Hazel Mackinnon

Stolen by Hazel MacKinnon

My Mother Told Me A Story

Many years ago my mother told me a story

a story about when she was a child

and it goes like this:

it was a cool sunny day

and all the coloured kids

were playing around in their way.

But coming in the distance my grandmother saw

white people

coming towards the station.

My mother told me this story

a story about when she was a child

growing up on the station -

my mother told me this story.

Some of the mothers started to run

and hide with their kids

down towards the waterhole in the bush -

but they took every half-caste kid in sight.

But my grandmother hid my mother

in an empty hay-sack bag.

My grandmother waited for the whites to go

but it was sadness that day

for the mothers of that land

'cause their children were taken away

from their dreaming and their culture.

This story makes me sad -

what my mother told me.

by Michael Fitz Jagamarra
published in Voices from the Heart:
contemporary Aboriginal poetry from Central Australia
collected and edited by Roger Bennett
and published by IAD Press, Alice Springs