A Prince of Peace! Why not a Minister for Peace?

The picture below has come from Geraldine Robertson
wmnsweb@iprimus.com.au 

Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions 
www.womensweb.com.au  
Women Working Together suffrage and onwards
www.womenworkingtogether.com.au 
Prejudice and Reason
www.prejudiceandreason.com.auT

Spiritual disciplines and practices

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Thank you to Kurt Willems of The Pangea Blog for drawing my attention to this

Earth Quaker Action Team: Faith, Creation, Environment

In case you hadn't noticed, Miss Eagle is a Quaker.  She attends Eastern Suburbs Local Meeting (part of Victoria Regional Meeting) in Melbourne, Victoria. I want to share with you what American Friends (Quakers are  properly known as the Religious Society of Friends) are up to.  Over at Huffington Post, Eileen Flanagan has written Quakers Advocate Living in 'Right Relationship' with Creation about the activities of Quakers on the front line of the mess which is coal-mining in Appalachia.  And we have our own coal-related messes here in Australia in the form of open-cut pit mining and coal seam gas exploration and extraction.

Unfortunately, Friends in Australia have been a bit slow in getting their collective act together and really moving their Meetings into concerted action.  Sure, there are individuals like mois and like Andrew Bray from BREAZE in Ballarat to whom I have done  a shout out on The Network.  But the powerful collective factor is absent from Australian Friends at this time - although there are stirrings across the States.

In fact, my own experience of faith and interfaith environmental groups here in Victoria is that they tend towards quietism on environmental matters or, not to put too fine a point on the matter, people of faith seem to be more inclined to the warm and fuzzy and personal with regard to the environment rather than getting stuck into the pointy end where decisions are made and decisions affected.  

At my great age and antiquity, I am hardly the essence of activism anymore.  Most - although not all - is done on my posterior in front of the computer.  I could never be the chain-myself-to-a-coal-facility person even in my more active days.  However, I have to be where the people are.  I have to be where those who are affected by poor decisions are.  I have to be adding to my knowledge of issues and people to ever press for community engagement and increased knowledge of community impacts.  And I find so few people of faith - any faith - there.

For me planet and people are an outworking of my faith and an essential part of my faith practice.  I firmly agree with Paul in his Letter to the Romans (1:20) where he says - For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. And if creation so manifests the qualities of its Creator, surely it behoves people of faith to sit up straight, pay attention, and plan their next activity!  In fact (I am not wanting to sound extreme here) I think the other side of the coin is that destruction of creation, in this context, is blasphemy and sacrilege.  

You can see that I don't regard my activities - simple as they are - as warm, fuzzy, personal or self-centred.  I might not always hit my target - but, from time to time, acting in concert with others we do.  And, if I/we don't?  Well, I/we are the voice/s of the prophet/s alive in the land!

The Earth Quaker Action Team is a group of people 
dedicated to ensuring the well-being of our planet 
by using nonviolent direct action 
to stand up against destructive and unjust practices, 
This video explains the groups mission, how it came about, 
and its BLAM (Bank Like Appalachia Matters) campaign, 
It was filmed at Appalachia Rising on 9.21.10.

Anti-Poverty Week: fight poverty for a week, a month or a lifetime

I originally did the post here below a week ago. To-day is The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. To mark the occasion and to participate in the event organised by Bloggers Unite, I am putting this post to the top of the blog as well as posting pictures at the top of the blog and the side bar. Please read and act.

It looks to me like Anti-Poverty Week is a moveable feast this year (well, famine - depending on success). Check out here and here and here.  However, just to make the point that it's what you do not when you do it that counts, there are some events you can get to:

Anti-Poverty Sunday at

Melbourne Mar Thoma Church

Sunday October 11 at 3pm

featuring:

Bronwyn Darlington, Founder of Rise Up

who will speak about

working in the clothing industry

to assist people living in poverty.

and

singer/muso Joel Meadows of the Steinbecks.

Click to enlarge

Yhen on October 27 at 6.30pm
you can get in your kayak
and row over to the
Melbourne Rowing Club
Boathouse Street
Melbourne
for The Great Debate

Tickets are limited
so please pre-book your seats
by calling Lara on 9417
7985 or email appeal@smhow.org.au

Click to enlarge

and you can do this:

Make your $2 work for a better world – find out more and take the pledge!

On October 17 (the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty),

take the $2 A Day Pledge for two weeks,

choose Fairtrade and help make poverty history!

What you can do in Anti-Poverty Week 2009

We can make a start by being a part of Anti-Poverty Week 2009. Last year in Anti-Poverty Week an escape artist stripped down to his undies to fight poverty at Flinders St Station in the center of Melbourne. Rather than get arrested, he became the focus of media attention for promoting  No Sweat Shop label and Fairtrade garments (he was wearing Rise Up undies made out of Fairtrade cotton). Such clothes enables  young kids in developing countries to leave the cotton picking industry and return to school (and the model’s ‘attire’ was manufactured in Australia under guaranteed legal minimum wage and conditions). This year there is no need to strip down to your undies like our escape artist, but you can run a barbecue, invite a speaker, hold a forum or play a stunt in aid of strengthening public understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and hardship around the world and in Australia.

All you need to do is 

go to the 

Anti-Poverty Week website 

and register your event!

You can also attend an event

 in your local community.

Archbishop of Canterbury:, Rowan Williams: Climate change and becoming human again

Published on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Dr Rowan Williams says Climate Crisis a Chance to Become Human Again

by Riazat Butt

People should use the climate change crisis as an opportunity to become human again, setting aside the addictive and self-destructive behaviour that has damaged their souls, the Archbishop of Canterbury said today.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters

Dr Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, told an audience at Southwark Cathedral that people had allowed themselves to become "addicted to fantasies about prosperity and growth, dreams of wealth without risk and profit without cost".The consequences of such a lifestyle meant the human soul was "one of the foremost casualties of environmental degradation".
Small changes, such as setting up carbon reduction action groups, would help them reconnect with the world in addition to repairing some of the damage to the planet, because it was too much to expect the state to provide all the solutions.
"Many of the things which have moved us towards ecological disaster have been distortions of who and what we are and their overall effect has been to isolate us from the reality we're part of. Our response to this crisis needs to be, in the most basic sense, a reality check."
Williams added: "We need to keep up pressure on national governments; there are questions only they can answer about the investment of national resources. We need equally to keep up pressure on ourselves and to learn how to work better as civic agents."
In the lecture, sponsored by the Christian environmental group Operation Noah, Williams outlined a Christian response to the climate crisis.
"When we believe in transformation at the local and personal level, we are laying the sure foundations for change at the national and international level.
"If I ask what's the point of my undertaking a modest amount of recycling my rubbish or scaling down my air travel, the answer is not that this will unquestionably save the world within six months, but in the first place it's a step towards liberation from a cycle of behaviour that is keeping me, indeed most of us, in a dangerous state - dangerous, that is, to our human dignity and self-respect."
In a message to heads of state attending the Copenhagen summit, Williams said leaders had to create a "suitably serious plan" for the speedy implementation of protocols on carbon reduction.
"We have had unexpected signs that the east Asian countries are readier than we might have imagined to put pressure on the economies of the US and Europe. The idea that fast-developing economies are totally wedded to environmental indifference because of the urgency of bringing their populations out of poverty no longer seems quite an obvious truth."
Earlier this year Williams said that God was not a "safety net" that would guarantee a happy ending and that human pillaging of the world's resources meant the planet was facing a "whole range of doomsday prospects" that exceeded the results of global warming.
Humanity faced being "choked, drowned or starved" by its own stupidity, he said, and he compared those who challenged the reality of climate change to the courtiers who flattered King Canute, until he proved he could not command the waves by going to the seashore and trying to do so. "Rhetoric, as King Canute demonstrated, does not turn back rising waters," said Williams in a lecture in March.
Tonight's remarks came days after research suggested that Britons had little appetite for shrinking their carbon footprint by reducing the number of flights they took.
The study, from Loughborough University, showed that the vast majority of the public would rather cut energy use at home than go without flying for a year. While 88% of participants in the Propensity to Fly survey said they were willing or very willing to "reduce how much energy I use in my home throughout the year" only 26% said the same when asked if they would "not fly in the next 12 months".

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Gleaning as a spiritual practice.

Over at Godspace, Christine has a wonderful little exercise going under the title of What is a Spiritual Practice? This takes my fancy, somewhat.

You see, in this day and age, many people - even a very good Marxist atheist friend of mine - admit to spirituality. May people consider themselves spiritual or spiritual seekers while not owning a specific spiritual tradition. And, I say to myself, why not? If, as some of us believe, we are here to learn stuff and that stuff is of a spiritual nature, then all of us, whether we realise it or are oblivious to it, are on a spiritual journey.

Some of us do this in formal and structured ways. We study religious texts. We pray in certain ways. We study in certain institutions. Some of us though find ourselves entering the spiritual dimension in multitudinous ways. While I express my spirituality through two traditions - Anglican and Quaker - I find that in living my life the spiritual is expressed in many ways.

The responses Christine has attracted are testimony to this. I wish to add another: gleaning. For over forty years, I have been gleaning one way or another. Sometimes through auction sales. Sometimes through second hand shops and through eBay. However, perhaps the most satisfying has been through gleaning from the "hard rubbish" people place on footpaths.

OK, OK. I can hear some of you raising your hands in horror saying...But that's illegal. You can be fined for that. Ah well, you will have to put my actions down to plain old fashioned civil disobedience. Gleaning is an ancient tradition although in ancient ways it applied to what was left after the harvesters had completed their task. We read in the Book of Ruth that Ruth, in her asylum-seeking state, went out to glean. Boaz was compassionate and asked the harvesters to secretly leave a little more for her.

I see no difference in my gleaning from the "hard rubbish" of someone's left-overs on the footpath than gleaning for grain in a paddock. And, in my experience, most people who put out "hard rubbish" don't seem to either.

In fact, the habits of those who put out rubbish are quite thoughtful and amusing sometimes. Householders are clearly aware that their cast-off stuff will be of use to someone and, on many occasions, the goods are placed or stacked neatly. I have seen wardrobes left with a door deliberately ajar to attract people's attention to their good condition. I have seen china and kitchenware so neatly and carefully stacked that I wonder why it has been placed on the footpath when it could have been delivered to a nearby Op Shop.

And, having gleaned my selections, what comes next? For me, this is a most spiritual experience. I renovate, rejuvenate, refurbish. I make the discarded valuable once more. And I think that is what my Creator does with me. I get stripped back, re-finished, a few decorative touches and re-channeled into useful service.

Just look at the picture on this post. It is of an outdoor eating area. There is hardly a thing in this photograph that has not come off someone's footpath in the City of Knox. The table - well, I think I am the only one who could have seen its possibilities. It had peeling varnish which had turned green from exposure. The table top was rough because clearly it had been left in the open to all weathers. I sanded it back; painted it; made a nice trellis pattern; and then decorated it with flowers cut from a calendar bought at a Girl Guides garage sale. The chairs with the pink and mauve cushions at either end of the table were as good as new except that a weld had come apart. I paid $20 at a neighbourhood welding shop to have them repaired. I painted them my favourite not quite white to give them a shabby chic look. The baskets, the trellis, the hanging pots etc. etc....

And for my time and effort and gleaning, I have something original and creative. I have something that I can share with others as I bring in that other spiritual practice of hospitality.

At the dawn I seek Thee,

Refuge, Rock sublime;

Set my prayer before Thee in the morning,

And my prayer at even-time.

I before Thy greatness

Stand, and am afraid;

All my secret throughts Thine eye beholdeth,

Deep within my bosom laid.

And withal, what is it

Heart and tongue can do?

What is this my strength, and what is even

This my spirit in me, too?

But indeed man's singing

May seem good to Thee.

So I praise Thee, singing, while there dwelleth

Yet the breath of God in me.

Solomon ibn Gabirol

Translated by Nina Salaman

Contemplation, Witness, Resistance

Christine Valters Paintner over at the Abbey of the Arts has given us a link to her article: The Practice of Contemplation as Witness and Resistance. Please take time out to read this since it provides a balanced view of the contemplative life in modern practice. Such a life is not mere navel-gazing but the seeding of an active, prophetic life. The post is here.

Advent 2: Daring to Hope

SERMON PREACHED BY REV. JOHN SIMPSON

AT THE CHURCH OF ST THOMAS, UPPER FERNTREE GULLY
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT : DECEMBER 9th 2007

‘Daring to Hope’

What a theme! Hope is when I have a confident expectation that keeps me going, while I wait and work for it to come to pass! Remember the ‘waiting’ message of last week? “Practice creates Miracles”. I wait confidently; yet hope also calls me to dare to do something towards it.

I Practice; take a few courageous steps into the unknown. Like when we decided to have our new (yet old) home renovated and took the builder's advice to do more! Or when I’m on the internet and looking for a site, and at the bottom of my screen the words “unknown territory” pops up. It’s exciting, yet it’s scary! I’m confident and venturing into the unknown.

When I was ordained I had lots of utopian ideas, like those found in the first reading.

Are these great visions of peace and harmony among peoples just a fairy tale? No; they correspond to the deep longings of the human heart and point to God’s ultimate goal for us. Such visions nurture our souls and our hearts. They give energy to keep waiting, practicing and daring.

John Baptizer. Jesus Messiah : The Darer and the Doer.

John dared people to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Matthew tells us that the Baptizer was the Voice, the Voice that dares all to “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths”. From his mother’s womb, John’s life was determined by his mission – for he is said to have leapt in her womb at the voice of Mary, the mother of the Doer, Jesus. His call was to prepare us. He did not seek personal fulfilment through his work. He came to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

In our own place and circumstances, we each have a role to play. It calls for some ‘daring-do’. The divine will and purpose, like a link in a chain, depends on each of us obeying the role God’s given to us. Many great things depend on us remembering that we are children of God – that we are divine beings. John Baptizer did what God asked of him – he recalled people to their true nature. He went out daring to do this. Later we are told he did not know Jesus, until he saw a dove descend on him at Jesus’ baptism

And what a result! Allowing for some exaggeration, the whole region around the Jordan and people from Jerusalem and Judea, came out to hear him. Big turn-out! A bit like Christmas Day at Midnight! Yet that was only the beginning. As they heard him, people were said to be, “On the tip toe of expectation”- just what Advent can be for us as we practise our waiting. Many were baptized, acknowledging they’d “missed the mark”, through forgetting they were God’s. John Baptizer dared, and many had a burden lifted – not in the temple or by the priests – but in the desert and by the Voice and baptism water.

If John was the Darer, Jesus was the Doer: he also came to be baptized. Jesus did this to identify with John’s mission and with the people seeking God’s coming. Together they brought Hope into view. Hope became the people’s new Horizon. The Voice did his work. John Baptizer saw the utopian vision beginning – it must have been exciting to see folk coming with a longing to hear the word of the Lord. And doing it for themselves!

How daring was John?

John showed courage when he took on the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism.
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Produce good fruit worthy of your repentance.” They were quick to condemn the non-religious and I think John threatened them with his tongue in his cheek!

“Vipers”! They were slithering down to the Jordan, and John was not afraid of them, even if they were poisonous. That takes some daring-do! Have you ever spoken boldly to someone to make the point? I have a few times. I once told the son of a friend, who was on drugs, that he was on the “road to hell’. He agreed - though his parent’s friends thought I was wrong! His mum and dad did not!

“Who warned you to flee from coming wrath?” Not a concept we associate with Jesus and God. Can God be said to be wrathful, angry with us? John did. Maybe he had a point, that hypocrisy and not loving others, displeases God. Certainly Jesus got angry on several occasions. I prefer to think of wrath as my receiving the consequences of my own actions. “What you sow, you will also reap.” What goes around, comes around.

“And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘ we have Abraham as our father’.” In other words, ‘whatever your family tree, you’re on your own, here boys!’ Each one must be responsible for him or her self. This is a strong theme in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Elijah – the one John is most like, fiery and challenging. You’ve been baptized as children of God – so bear the fruits of this Baptism. Live like the divine beings you are.

Taking responsibility for yourself is what’s being dared here. It can be mighty uncomfortable. It’s almost like shedding your skin, as snakes do, so as to grow into a new one. Yet, Utopia will be made up of those who are responsible for themselves, ready to shed the old skin and dare to do.

Being a Darer-Doer
This is to be a people of hope, followers of the Jesus Way. Courageous and responding to the deep longings God has placed in your human heart. Daring to act from the vision. Courageously taking up the cross to bring new life. Boldly being a voice for the vision of love, harmony and Jesus the Christ. “Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone”.


Here’s some ways : “Practise Creates Miracles” So try making these ones!

• Remember each day, say to yourself, “I am a son, a daughter, of the Living God – I’m divine. When upset or distressed, stop and be calm. Remember who you are. And let the life of Jesus flow!

• Speak tenderly whenever you “hear” the deep longings of another person’s heart, they are part of God’s plan, a step they can take to bring more of heaven to earth.

• Speak more boldly than you usually do, when you hear a person going down a road that leads to death, to loss of dignity, of themselves.

• Be in touch with your own deep longings, take a moment each day to think “Have I been true to my hopes?” Share them with us. Ask how Jesus and John can guide you?

• Take responsibility for the things in others, that make you angry. These tell you the matters you do not like in you!

The Bird of Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
Did it ask, a crumb of me.

By Emily Dickinson
(from Sunday Liturgies)