THE MELDREW FACTOR

Is that all there is?

2010-12-29T13:48:00.007+13:00

No matter how much I try to spiritualise Advent and Christmas the results are always the same. When it finally arrives I heave a huge sigh of relief knowing that I have once again made the midway marker that divides the end of the silly season from the beginning of the Great New Zealand Melt Down. A sort of religious half way house where I can momentarily catch my breath before packing up the camping gear, squashing the family into the car and heading north - the only direction one can go by road if one lives in Wellington. That’s how Christmas has always been for me, but this year I found myself sympathising with the sentiments in Peggy Lee’s song, ‘Is that all there is?’[1] . . . ‘Is that all there is?’

Long before there was a Christmas day, the 25^th of December was the mid way marker between the dark days of winter, and the promises of spring. It was a mid winter feast the Romans called festus solis invicti, - the festival of the unconquered sun. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the imagery of the invincible sun breaking forth out of winter darkness, and the invincible Son breaking forth out of the darkness of sin was obvious. The symbolism just seemed to shout it without the necessity for words to join up the dots. The festival of the unconquered sun became the festival of the unconquered Son, and nature underscored the theology it implied.

Personally I’d love to do Christmas like that, but the truth is I live in a capitalist culture, in the land of the ‘Upside-down Christmas’ [2]where the seasons give me a very different message. So, try as I might to exempt myself from the Santa Claus face of Christmas and immerse myself in purist liturgy, I can’t. Unless I spend Advent in a monastery, I’m probably doomed to be washed along with the commercial Christmas tide (no pun intended) and to repeat my previous Christmas failures again and again – like Ground Hog Day.

But if I can’t change the culture or the season, perhaps I can change the focus of the feast. What if, for example, instead of just celebrating the memory of the birth of a child, I celebrate the eternal gifts, which that child’s birth guarantees? Gifts of light (Lk2:10-14), gifts of joy (Jn1:3), and gifts of liberation (Mat 11:2-11), to name but a few.

Doing this, won’t change the commercial chaos and general holiday-mania from going on all around me, but focusing on what Jesus brought, rather than simply recalling his coming will change my perception of it. It will change my once a year ham and turkey feast into a 365 day a year feast. One that celebrates an ever-present lighting of my way, an ongoing sense of joy and gratitude for the good things God has given me, and a growing awareness of my personal responsibility to ensure that the society in which I live is just. A society where all can share equally in the good things Christ’s birth guarantees.

By all means let us enjoy and celebrate our ‘Upside-down Christmas’ holidays, but let’s not forget what we are celebrating, and that the message of Christmas extends well beyond the festive season.

For me, I need to remember that the commercialism surrounding Christmas is not all there is, just a pointer to the greater reality of the festival of the unconquered Son who brings light, joy and liberation, not just on Christmas day, but 365 day a year.

Yes Christmas is a feast, a feast of Light, a feast of love, and a feast of liberation for all.

1] Is that all there is – written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller Recorded by Peggy Lee August 1969.

[2] An Upside down Christmas, A New Zealand Christmas Carol by Shirley Murray

Perfect peace is at best fleeting and at worst, an illusion!

2010-03-29T18:17:00.003+13:00

It was lunch time, so I found myself a sheltered spot in the garden and sat down to enjoy a few moments of autumn sun. The weather over the last several days had been less than perfect, and the busyness of the lead up to Holy Week had caught up with me. The peace, the quiet and the warm sun on my face were the perfect antidote to the stresses and strains of everyday life.

Like someone who had just climbed to the top of a high hill, I decided to sit down and enjoy the view (metaphorically) for a few moments before moving on.

Perhaps it was the pastoral conversation I had just had with an elder lady in hospital who was looking back over her life because of declining health, and facing some tuff decisions about her future. Or perhaps it's just something one does naturally relaxing in the noon day sun, but pretty soon, like Alice, I found myself falling down the rabbit hole and to day dreamingly review my own past, looking at where I'd come and who had traveled with me. As I did the years (and decades) fast forwarded themselves: like the individual cards did when you turned the handle in a 'what the butler saw' slide show in an old amusement arcade. Individually they were all still shots, but viewed in succession they appeared as a movie.

It's something I've done often before but this time it was different. For the first time the memory cards seemed to show a seamless integration of past and present. There were no bits that I'd rather have left as 'cuts' on the editors floor, no bits I'd have wanted to send to technical boffins in post production to 'gloss up' on, no scenes I'd rather have re shot. There was no hierarchy in the actors cast either, big part or small part, all were significant and deserving of an Oscar. In short, nothing I would have changed.

Was it a daydream, or was it reality? Only time will tell, but in that moment all the pieces of the jig saw called 'My Life' seemed to fit perfectly, from as far back as I can remember, to as far forward as I can imagine.

Having put the world to rights an unexpected series of phone calls, unscheduled visitors and an assortment of interruptions has left me once again feeling scattered and in need of a fresh daydream.

Seems perfect peace is at best fleeting and at worst, an illusion!

Wating for a wave

2010-03-16T10:37:00.004+13:00

My Great Uncle Jock was born in Clairville, a small south Wairarapa town in the house his father Charlie had built in the late 1800's. A home from which he went to school, met and married his childhood sweetheart, took over the small family farm, raised his children, played with his grandkids and where he finally died: all within a few hundred meters of the house he was born in.

He was a Wairarapa man. He know who he was and where he belonged.

I on the other hand , was born of depression parents eager to take every opportunity that presented itself, no matter where. By the time was 10 I had lived in 6 houses and attended 4 primary schools. Just as I was beginning to fit in and make friends I moved on. By my very early 20's the number had grown to 7 schools,10 houses and I had visited more than 12 countries. By 60 it was more than 50 countries.

I knew where I was born, but unlike Gt Uncle Jock, I had no real sense of where I came from or where I belonged.

One of the most settled periods in my early life were my teenage years which I spent in Otaki and where I learned to surf during the summers of 59-63. As a surfer I would spend hours sitting, often alone, just beyond the breaker line, watching the swell and waiting for 'the' wave. I learned very quickly that waiting for the right wave, as opposed to taking the first wave, vastly improved my level of success and my enjoyment of the ride. I would watch as the waves began to form a few hundred meters away from me and try to pick the one that would be capable of taking me up in its swell and delivering me all the way to the shore. Timing was everything and when the right wave showed up I would paddle furiously, and If I had chosen correctly, the ride would be worth the wait. All waves were not created equal, and more ride for less paddle was my aim.

Like my youth, Otaki became a diminishing speck in the rear view mirror and lost in the blurr of life. But the sense of timing I learned surfing had become part of me and the analogy of 'waiting for wave' became one I resorted to often, even when my surfing days had long since ended. I would often describe my situation as waiting for a wave'; a wave of energy, a wave of inspiration, a wave of enthusiasm, support or what ever. Waiting for the right moment seemed to shorten the odds and meet my criteria of more ride for less paddle: but there was a price to pay. Because of this approach I spent more time on the outside of life looking in than on the inside of life looking out: and I spent much of today waiting for the right wave I knew would come tomorrow.

I had become very adept at sitting just beyond the breaker line of life, often alone, waiting for a wave. It had become a way of life. The paten continued and I became very good as spotting the potential in a situation, often long before others did, and in knowing how and when to paddle in time to catch the natural swell that would ensure I could ride it , , , right to the shore. Im not complaining, the 'talent' I had developed allowed me to do more things than most people would ever dream of doing. I was supremely happy, but unlike Jock I didn't really know where I belonged . . . except possibly in a place called 'mid life crisis.'

I was emotionally stateless, just an elderly surfer waiting for yet another wave.

The Otaki school reunion last October turned out to be a bigger wave than I expected, in fact, I hardly noticed the 'swell' that just visiting old haunts and meeting old friends had begun. But a swell it was, and I noticed bits of my identity floating all around me. There was no cohesion, no clear sense of anything like Jock's identity with his place of origin, but slowly over the last several months, I've watched the 'swell' gathering together the fragments of my whakapapa (?): I am John, I come from Otaki. my people are those I knew and grew up with in the late 50's and early 60's, my whenau are my wife, my children and grandchildren, my mountain is Hector and my river the Otaki.

It's not as strong ad Jock's identity, but its a beginning, an anchoring point, a point from which I can begin to grow.

It may have taken sixty something years but I now know who I am - and where I'm from.

Perception is reality . . . or is it?

2009-10-30T17:22:00.004+13:00

Suppose several of us witnessed something horrific, like a train crash say, or perhaps a road accident.

And if we were all asked, several weeks later, to write an account of what we'd seen, do you think all of these accounts would be identical? And if not, would one be the truth and the others lies?

Or would each simply represent differing interpretations of the same reality viewed from differing perspectives by different people?

Looking back at my life as a teenager I very clearly saw myself in those days as insignificant and lacking in either personalty or confidence: a Mr Cellophane character, noticed at best by no one, at worst, overlooked by all. Over the years I've grown past that early adolescent image of myself (or at least, learned various coping mechanisms to mask it), but perception was reality and beneath the mask, I knew beyond doubt that I was a social failure.

With this knowledge lodged firmly at the forefront of my mind, and my most confident smile masking my insecurity, I headed off for the Class of 59 reunion: trying hard to blend unseen into the atmosphere of the cocktail lounge (read gymnasium).

Conversations I was apart of usually went something like this . . . .

“Smith " (name changed to protect my anonymity) you old b#&^*rd' you haven't changed a bit. I'd have recognised you anywhere!

Remember the time . . . “, and then would follow a story full of life and punctuated with humour. A story I would recognise, but one in which I'd seen myself as the monochrome coloured extra rather than the center stage star of this action packed replay of someone else's memory of my past. A story where the facts were all there, but not quite as I had remembered them.

Clearly their recollection of our childhood days were at odds with mine, so one of us must have the wrong end of the stick. Or did we?

Could it be the same reality viewed from differing perspectives by different people?

But if so, which was the correct version, theirs, or mine? I certainly preferred theirs: but perhaps they were just as surprised by my remembrances of them? Perhaps their adolescent self image was about as shaky as mine?

Anyway several such encounters, and a glass or two of wine later, I felt myself walking noticeably taller, with a definite spring in my step and humming the old school victory song.

Reunions, I've decided, are a great opportunity to re write some of those old scripts that for some of us, are still running our lives 50 years on .

On the doorstep

2009-10-12T10:12:00.009+13:00

Several months ago I heard of the 50th anniversary of my old secondary school - and it got me thinking.

I thought back to that morning in February 1960 ( I can't remember the exact date) when I dressed, put on my cap picked up my school lunch and headed off out the door, just like I'd done day after day for the 8 years that had preceded it.

But as I rode my bicycle toward the gates of my Secondary School for the first time, I was unknowingly crossing the doorstep from childhood into the training room of life. A place where, over the next few years, I would learn not only academic truth but, more importantly, a place where I would absorb important truths about life. Values and attitudes that would shape me as an adult: intangible things like, an enquiring mind, confidence, a work ethic, a concept of responsibility, societal values such as etiquette the importance of team contribution, first love, etc. etc. A worldview which I would gathered eclectically, recklessly, taking from here and there what ever took my teenage fancy. Like a hungry man at a lavish smorgasbord, piling my plate with much more than I could possibly eat. A plateful that would shape my future, a starter kit for the rest of my life.

And so here I stand at 63 on another doorstep. The doorstep of what is popularly called the Second half of Life. Standing here with a worldview built by a 13 year old, and largrely unreviewed over the past 40 years.

Eric Ericson, the father of developmental psychology, who coined the now famous phrase,'identity crisis' speaks of this second half of live as a time when life challenges us to integrate our 40 year old, eclectically gathered worldview into the reality of our post family, post career, pre pensioner life. The fruit of this pleasurable/painful exercise, he assures us, will be self acceptance, contentment and inner peace,.

I'm not terribly advanced on this new journey toward a peaceful integration of myself, but I have realised that I'm on the doorstep of the last frontier and a doorway to self knowledge and acceptance.

And I thought midlife crisis was the last big hurdle.

Dream on John!

Should we be allowed to die because we are poor?

2009-09-06T16:24:00.008+12:00

I've been following Barak Obama's argument for affordable health care and I agree, access to essential social services is a basic human right and provision of these services is the responsibility of government, not private enterprise.

Of course commercial interests within the U.S. healthcare industry strongly disagree, but then health care is big business for them.

We can see the seeds of Obama's argument mirrored in our own recent history. Less than a generation ago all NZ's social services (including free healthcare) and our nations infrastructure (roading, power, transport, communications etc) were publicly owned. These enterprises didn't make a profit but they weren't meant to. They were run by government, supported by our taxes and their purpose was to offer affordable social services to all, and to ensure near full employment.

Then overnight it seemed, most of these activities of government were privatized. Sold off to big offshore companies who promised us greater efficiency and higher profits. However we failed to see that greater efficiency would be brought about by cutting jobs and higher profits through increased consumer costs.

To use John F Kennedy's words, "the fruits of our victory turned to ashes in our mouths".

Surely the bigger question Obama's argument raises though, concerns the responsibility of government: is it to the tax payer or to big business and CEO bonuses?

Maybe Obama is trying push back the hands of time, but isn't it time somebody did?

Rabbi Froman believes settlers should be prepared to live under Palestinian rule

2009-06-13T14:34:00.005+12:00

extracted from an article published by the BBC Jerusalem correspondent

Rabbi Froman believes settlers should be prepared to live under Palestinian rule

"We are now in the Holy Land, the Land of the Lord", says Rabbi Menachem Froman welcoming us to his modest house in the tiny settlement of Tekoa in the West Bank.

With his long beard and a black suit, the rabbi looks like a typical religious settler. In fact he is more than a settler, he is one of the founders of the settler movement. Moreover, he believes that settlements like his can be a vehicle for peace.

The rabbi is part of Jerusalem Peacemakers, an interfaith project with an aim to facilitate dialogue between the Jewish and Muslim community.

And the dialogue which Rabbi Froman is engaged in would shock most Israelis: he was close friends with the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Yasser Arafat, and used to visit Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the late founder and spiritual leader of the militant Hamas group, at home in Gaza and later in his Israeli jail cell.

"From the very beginning it was very clear to me that you cannot love the country, love the rocks, the trees, the valleys, and hate the people living here," says Rabbi Froman.

"Two thousand years ago one of our sages, Rabbi Hilel, was asked to explain the essence of Judaism while standing on one leg - in other words, in a very short time. And his answer was: Love your neighbour. Every Jewish child learns this story at school. And this is what I am doing here today."

Rabbi Froman says that those settlers who love the Holy Land should be prepared to live under Palestinian rule - not as occupiers under the heavy protection of the Israeli army.

More than 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, in addition to about 200,000 in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, and the vast majority are opposed to a Palestinian state.

They dismiss the rabbi's views as irrelevant. But other Israelis often admit there is logic to this unorthodox solution to the question of Jewish settlements.

Celebrated scholar

Rabbi Froman's views are shared by another unorthodox peacemaker: a Palestinian Muslim sheikh who lives in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem right next to the compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and Jews as the Temple Mount.

"No one can live here as an occupier," says Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Bukhari, an exponent of the mystical Islamic Sufi movement. "We are in the 21st century, we do not live in a jungle any more."

Sheikh Bukhari has modern views, though his family roots go back to the ninth century. He is a descendant of the celebrated Islamic scholar Imam Bukhari.

When I was in South Africa and I spoke to Nelson Mandela, he told me he thought he would never see the end of apartheid. But he did

Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Bukhari

Centuries-old books on Islamic theology written by his ancestors are proudly displayed in the sheikh's living room.

His family left Bukhara, in modern Uzbekistan, about 400 years ago, and has been living in the same house in the Old City ever since.

Sheikh Bukhari admits that he often finds opposition within his own community.

"When someone is angry, you don't shut them up, you let them speak, let them open their heart", he says.

"And then I say, OK, what other choice do you have? To fight? We have been doing this for 50 or 60 years, and we haven't achieved anything".

Sheikh Bukhari's commitment to peace was tested in this December and January during Israel's three-week military campaign against Gaza, Operation Cast Lead.

His wife's family lives in Gaza, so does his sister and one of his daughters. "No-one knows what I was going through. There was a real drama in my heart", he says.

Peace a possibility

Middle East peacemaking projects are at low ebb right now. With mainstream Israeli politics shifting to the right and far right, and Palestinian public opinion still enraged by the Gaza campaign, most analysts admit there is little scope for peace work.

"Rabbi Froman is well known, and he is serious", says Kitty Cohen of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Communities in Israel.

"I wish more people inside political establishment listened to him."

As for Sheikh Bukhari, he is careful to maintain relations with the Israeli authorities, which in turn alienates many potential Palestinian supporters who see his work as legitimising the Israeli occupation.

Bukhari draws on Islamic texts to support his views

Despite the recent shock of the Gaza campaign, Sheikh Bukhari firmly believes peace is a real possibility.

"I believe it can happen next week and definitely within my lifetime. Believe me, life brings surprises. When I was in South Africa and I spoke to Nelson Mandela, he told me he thought he would never see the end of apartheid. But he did."

Rabbi Froman is equally optimistic. He says his conversations with Sheikh Ahmad Yassin convinced him that Hamas may turn to peace.

"I see a real possibility that Ismail Haniya and Khalid Meshaal may return to their Islamic roots", he says. "Islam is a religion of peace."

Most peace activists here are hoping that President Barack Obama's new policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his recent speech in Cairo will initiate a meaningful dialogue.

If it happens, voices like that of Rabbi Froman and Sheikh Abdulaziz may become more prominent.

"In the meantime", says Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom of Rabbis for Human Rights, "the warm presence of these people is a great encouragement to the rest of us."

By Dina Newman
BBC News, Jerusalem

Getting it together.

2009-05-27T22:30:00.002+12:00

Looking back, the last time I had my act together was just after I was born.

Then I was at peace with myself and my surroundings,

Then I had no fears, no worries, no concerns.

Then I didn't have to look good, be right, justify myself, wonder what was in it for me, or worse, what was in for for them?.

I was trusting and open then, I was content and I didn't have to defend my actions.

Then I was just me, whole, perfect and complete.

Like the scriptural birds of the air, 'I sowed not, neither did I reap yet my heavenly father provided all I needed.'

As time went on though, I learned better.

For instance , if I woke and mum wasn't there all I had to do was cry and she'd come and pick me up.

And if that's not what I wanted

I could cry louder and she'd examine my needs more carefully till she discovered exactly what it was I wanted.

I had power.

And I learned other things too;

dogs were scary because they were big and might hurt me,

If i was good I got special treats,

if I was funny people laughed. They liked me when I was funny but I wasn't sure about dad.

I don't think dad liked me. He was never there, and my school teacher was always crabby.

You can't trust crabby people. Better to keep quiet and out of sight.

And strangers must be very dangerous. Every one tells you so. I think I'll stay well clear of people I don't know.

Piece by piece I was building a new reality about who I was and how best to survive in this hostile world.

A matrix which would set the parameters of what was, and was not possible for me, would define who I was.

A matrix that, if I stayed within its boundaries would keep me safe.

Being whole perfect and complete was no longer what I was, but what I might become - in time, if I really worked on it.

Easter, a time for remembering

2009-04-24T20:04:00.008+12:00

Easter is all about remembering. Remembering Christ's Passion, remembering his death, remembering his resurrection, and remembering the forgiveness of our sins. But how does the Biblical concept of remembering differ from say, remembering our last visit to the beach, or remembering our phone number?

When we celebrate Eucharist, the Prayer of Invitation prayed by the Priest calls us to 'receive . . . in remembrance that Christ died for us'. Here the word remembrance draws on the ancient Greek concept of ¹Anamnesis, a term that implies a far deeper meaning than simply recalling something to mind. Aanamnisis should be more properly understood as doing again, making present or renewing. When scripture tells us that 'God remembered His promises to Abraham, for example, it doesn't simply mean he recalled his covenant to memory, it means he actually made it present again, and renewed its power in the lives of his people

Our own understanding of this spiritual concept deepens every Easter as we considered the story prior to Calvary, back to the Exodus and explored the linkages between Passover, the Seder (the post Egyptian form of Passover) and Eucharist, all of which major on anamnisis or remembrance.

The Passover which Jesus shared with his disciples remembers the flight from Egypt (Exodus 12) where the Israelites slaughtered an unblemished lamb and place its blood on the doorposts and lintel on each house. That night when the angel of the Lord travelled through Egypt only those houses with the lamb's blood on their doorposts would be spared. The annual anamnisis of this salvivic act of God became embodied in the Seder, an intergenerational ritual meal where family and friends gather in obedience to God during Passover, to remember the events of their salvation history. Through this meal of anamnisis, each successive generation became grafted into Israel's story, and God's promise became personal to each, even though they were not even born at the time the promises were made.

It was at this meal of anamnisis that Jesus celebrated what many Christians now call 'The Last Supper' with his disciples. (Mk 14:12-16; Lk22:17-20; 1Cor 11:23-25)

At that meal there would have been three pieces of unleavened bread to anamnisis the promises made to the three patriaches, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and four cups of wine to anamnisis the four distinct redemptions promised by God (Exodus 6:6-7): "I will take you out of Egypt", "I will deliver you from slavery", "I will redeem you with a demonstration of my power", and "I will acquire you as a nation".

There would also have been a fifth cup of wine called "The Cup of Elijah." This cup is poured as part of every Seder, but never consumed. Instead it is reserved for the Prophet, who scripture tells us is to herald the coming of Messiah at Passover, one day.

During the meal, the first piece of unleavened bread is blessed and a portion of it is torn off and reserved in a linen napkin alongside the Elijah cup. It is called the afikomen, a Greek term, that means 'for what (or for whom) is to come'.

The afikomen is not consumed as part of the meal though the reason seems to have become lost, but at the conclusion of the Last Supper, all that would have been left on Jesus' table would have been the Elijah cup and the afikomen.

When the words of the liturgy tell us that, 'after supper, Jesus took the cup/bread', these are the very elements he would have taken, blessed and entrusted to us to anamnisisise him.

Being well schooled in Hebrew Scriptures and tradition, the significance of Christ's actions and words would have been very clearly understood by all present in the room. They were an unmistakable statement, almost shouted, by Jesus that he was Messiah, and that the promises made to Israel through the patriaches would pass on in perpetuity, to all who believed in him, through this new meal of anamnisis, the Eucharist, and that there was now 'neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.' (Gal 3:28)

So, just as each successive Jewish generation incorporated itself into God's promises each Passover, so we who live under the New Covenant graft ourselves into the same story as co-inherit-ants of all God's promises through our remembrance of Easter, and the salvation Christ won for us.

Anamnesis is not a simple intellectual function; it is an action (it) does not simply refer to the past, it makes present the past and the future.

As members of the eucharistic community we recall again to consciousness the economy of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection of Christ, his ascension, and Pentecost. We live them. ³

Anamnisis is not just a word, it's what church does.

Credit Crisis for Dummies

2009-04-02T09:30:00.004+13:00

Call it simplistic if you like but here's how it looks to me.

As the West moved from a land based to an industrialised economy, labour followed. Mining, heavy industry and manufacturing formed an equitable partnership providing profit for the investor and meaningful work and dignity for the workers. Urban workers needed essential goods and capitalism needed producers. The perfect partnership.

A period of affluence followed, richer workers became shareholders and shareholders, hungry for profit, moved manufacturing off shore to cheaper labour markets, Workers in the west became educated, stopped producing and began managing the process of global production distribution and sales. However as well as producers, capitalism needed consumers and production was fast outstripping consumption. Answer, the credit industry.

A stimulated investment industry talked up the value of shares and real estate against which to secure it's credit advances thus providing more and more consumers with more and more spending power to consume more and more goods and services. But the new talked up values were confidence rather than reality based, and the result: was an international credit blow out.

Answer? Run the same scenario in the developing countries where manufacture (but not consumption) is now centered. Offer them the credit they need to become consumers instead of simply producers. That should fix the problem, at least in the short term.

Have we really got the keys to the asylum, or have we given them to the financial inmates?

Is it about winning, or about how you run the race?

2009-03-26T18:20:00.007+13:00

Like most of us, I grew up learning fairly quickly how to win attention and approval, and by the time I was 5 I'd rehearsed it into an art form.

With out even trying, my young sister was working steadily on her own 'winning formula'. It was very different from mine but equally as effective. Being a petite curly headed blond with the gift of the gab, her tactic was to be cute and engaging: and it worked, every time!

Mine on the other hand (probably to gain my fathers approval) was to be enquiring and decisive as I knew these were qualities he admired. It was my winning formula and kept me ahead of the game and in control. And because it always worked, I applied it time after time after time after time. Where she played the cute and chatty card, I won my battles by being enquiring, decisive and quick to act.

But just because you have a winning formula (we all do incidentally) doesn't make it the best strategy for us. Taken to extremes, my sister risked being perceived as a bit dizzy and shallow (which she isn't), and I of being seen as cynical and closed to others input.

So if an habitual strategy learned as a child the isn't the best formula for an adult, then I need to ask myself why do I continue to allow a 5 year old to run my life? Surely there's a better way?

For me there is. It involves a deliberate decision to be open to the possibility of living a life where I'm instinctively positive and open to council. And by giving you (& all my friends, acquaintances and family) permission to let me know if I'm falling back into old my ways.

Will it change anything? I believe it will, but this way you'll be the judge, not me.

Jimmy Carter had the right idea

2009-03-03T15:08:00.004+13:00

James Hider's article, 'Single state solution edges nearer' (Dompost 3/3/09) may be revolutionary but its by no means a new idea dating back to the MacDonald White Paper of 1939. Raising it again now does however expose the dilemma currently facing Israel.

Under military occupation, the Jewish State has laid claim to much of Palestine, built extensively on it and secured it's hold over its west bank settlements by force. Huge steel walls and military check points honeycomb much of the landscape, leaving only discombobulated pockets of land, separated from each other and entirely dependent on Israel's good will for the provision of water electricity and sewage disposal.

Not much of a bargaining chip to offer Palestine by way of compensation.

Maybe its time for Israel to grasp the nettle. Separated development did not work for South Africa and will not be any more successful for Israel. To quote President Jimmy Carter, 'Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent'

Gaza conflict: Who is a civilian?

2009-02-24T08:01:00.004+13:00

The Interior Ministry was hit in the first strike targeting a government building

The bloodied children are clearly civilians; men killed as they launch rockets are undisputedly not. But what about the 40 or so young Hamas police recruits on parade who died in the first wave of Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza?

And weapons caches are clearly military sites – but what about the interior ministry, hit in a strike that killed two medical workers; or the money changer's office, destroyed last week injuring a boy living on the floor above?

As the death toll mounts in Gaza, the thorny question is arising of who and what can be considered a legitimate military target in a territory effectively governed by a group that many in the international community consider a terrorist organisation.

This is also the group that won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 and a year later consolidated its control by force.
So while it was behind a campaign of suicide attacks in Israel and fires rockets indiscriminately over the border, it is also in charge of schools, hospitals, sewage works and power plants in Gaza.

. .more . .

Looking at the bigger picture

2009-02-11T22:07:00.008+13:00

'A text out of context is merely a pretext'.

We all do it. We extract a single core element of truth, (the text) and ignoring every other argument that surrounds it, (the context), build a thesis upon it.

Politicians do it all the time. Mutter mutter 'weapons of mass destruction'; mutter mutter 'terrorism/security/terrorism'. etc. Journalists do it by focusing on the sensational at the expense of the background. Religious scholars who are past masters at it, having done it for 2,000 years, have made it an art form and earned the title 'fundamentalist.' But whatever name it goes by it distorts a truth by ignoring the bigger picture that surrounds it.

But what about us, the little people. Your every day man or woman in the street, are we exempt from this practice in our mundane daily lives?

I don't think we are, I think we do it with our memories: our selective recollection of whatever.

For example, something traumatic happens, a redundancy perhaps, or the death of a loved one, and instinctively we focus on the loss we have experienced, the smaller picture, the text. We defend ourselves and allocate blame, we become angry or perhaps, unable to face the enormity of the situation, so we pretend we're coping OK, but are often just in denial.

These are all perfectly normal responses which hopefully, help us move on, eventually, to a state of healthy acceptance. But often many of us never get over 'it' because we never talk it through, debate it or look at the wider context instead of just the text.

Let me explain. Recently I began a Progoff Intensive Journalling Exercise called 'The now period'. The rules are simple:

1/ Describe the 'Now' period of your life: an open ended period that has a beginning but no ending. Example be, 'It began 4 years ago when I was made redundant . . . '
2/ Record your feelings, thoughts, memories - what ever presents itself. Complete the phrase , "It's a time when . . . .; record images and describe the period.
3. Describe more details about this period: people,projects, activities, your health, attitudes,events, dreams, images, people who inspired you and choices or decisions you had to make.
4/ Read back what you have written and record how you feel about what you have written.

What I found when I did this was that many of the older episodes in my story had been well worked through, and I was completely comfortable with them: grateful for them. But in the more recent period there were stories (episodes) which were too fresh. Too many things I'd simply skimmed across the surface of and hadn't yet examined as part of the wider picture. In terms of my own analogy, I'd latched onto the single text (my own pain) and ignored the context. To that extent I only had a partial understanding of the truth.

This lead me to repeating the exercise again, slowly - and oft times, painfully, till my immediate memory drew me not to the pain of my loss, but to the richness that experience has bought to my life. For example, to be able to celebrate the gift my late daughters life was to me, and others, rather than resenting her premature death.

It's not always an easy journey, but it's a worthwhile one - and proves to me yet again the wisdom of the old saying that the truth will set you free.

But who will pay?

2009-01-19T09:38:00.006+13:00

As joyfulness and tears mingle together in the streets of Gaza this morning;

as those who are alive give thanks to God and mourn their dead;

as European leaders meet in Sharm El Sheikh to discuss funding for the rebuilding of the shattered Gazan infrastructure;

I'm left wondering, what recompense will Israel pay,

financially and morally?

NZ Church Leaders’ statement on Gaza

2009-01-16T23:29:00.004+13:00

The leaders of New Zealand churches are deeply concerned about the dire situation in Gaza and support the call for an immediate ceasefire in the region

The escalation of violence and associated increase in civilian casualties is intolerable. It is time for concerted action to end the suffering of the 1.5 million people trapped within the 360 square kilometers of Gaza with little food, water and medicine, and under almost continuous attack from the land, sea and air.

Before the collapse of the ceasefire in December, the borders of Gaza were tightly controlled and movement in and out very difficult. Now the conditions are much more lethal. The consequences of this unparalleled pressure cannot be underestimated. Already many innocent civilians have been killed and injured. People are living in perpetual fear and growing numbers of people are in desperate need of food and water as well as medical treatment. The trauma will have a lasting effect on everyone and is undermining any possibility of negotiating a just and sustainable peace.

To date the international community has failed to broker a lasting peace. We urge the New Zealand government to do all that it can through the United Nations and through its own diplomatic efforts to call a halt to Israel’s military offensive and the Hamas attacks. New Zealand has an obligation to uphold the international community’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’ populations from war crimes as agreed at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit.

As followers of Jesus, who exercised his ministry of reconciliation in this troubled region, Christians are deeply concerned about Jewish-Palestinian enmity. While religion is often tragically used to fuel inherited hostilities, it can also be a force for shalom/salaam. It is our hope and prayer that all adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths in that region (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) might truly seek the way of peace and reconciliation to which their scriptures bear witness.

We encourage church members and all people of goodwill to:

Pray for the victims and perpetrators of violence in Gaza and Israel.
Pray for the success of diplomatic efforts between Hamas, the Israeli Government and the international community.
Pray for peace and reconciliation.
Advocate for the New Zealand government, world leaders and the United Nations to take effective action to renew the ceasefire in Gaza and work towards a just resolution of the conflict in the interests of long term security and peace.
Support the Christian World Service and Caritas Gaza Appeals providing desperately needed food, fuel, water and medicines in Gaza.

13 January 2009
Jabez Bryce, Bishop of Polynesia
Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia

John A Dew, Archbishop of Wellington
Roman Catholic Church of New Zealand

Rodney Macann, National Leader
Baptist Union of New Zealand

Garth McKenzie, Territorial Commander
The Salvation Army

David Moxon, Senior Bishop of the New Zealand Dioceses
Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia

Graham Redding, Assembly Moderator
Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand

Mia Tay, Clerk
Quaker Peace and Service Aotearoa New Zealand
Religious Society of Friends

Brown Turei, Bishop of Aotearoa
Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia

Jill van der Geer, President
Methodist Church of New Zealand

A Prayer for Palestine

Loving God
Who cares for each one of us like a mother cares for her children
We pray for the people of Gaza: rich and poor, young and old, armed and peace-seeking
We pray for your protection in this time of desperation.
Lord have mercy in this time of great need.

We pray for those who have the power to bring hope
For those who operate the weapons that cause so much destruction, those who inflame the conflict with words and those who can broker the peace that is so urgent.

Lord have mercy in this time of great need.

We pray for the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees as they struggle to offer the means of life to so many people in need while dealing with their own trauma and suffering. We pray for the members of ACT International who are trying to deliver food and medical assistance in the most dangerous circumstances.

Lord have mercy in this time of great need.

Help us not to turn away.
In our words and our actions help us all to work for an end to the violence that holds all sides captive.
Let us forge new ways of peace that help to spread justice in this world that you have created.

In the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, we pray.
Amen

Whose Blood is worth more?

2009-01-13T14:53:00.010+13:00

A volley of machine gun fire crackled out over Wellington's Civic Square. It hit me like a hot wind and exploded like white light in my brain. My knees buckled and my head and spine jerked back as it exploded in my chest .

I slumped to the ground amid others collapsing and falling all around me, a total in excess of 800 of us symbolically dead.

The simulated gun fire continued to rattle all around us, confronting the internal silence within as we remembered, and prayed, for those living with the nightly reality of death in both Israel and Gaza.

Unlike them, we rose, symbolizing our hope that the people of Palestine and Israel would rise too. Rise above the madness that is war and realize that in God's eyes, both Palestinian and Israeli blood are of equal value.

(Today I attended a 'Die In' sponsored by the Christians for Justice in Palestine - a very moving event)

Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother: Where do you hide? The terror in Gaza.

2009-01-09T16:27:00.000+13:00

Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother: Where do you hide? The terror in Gaza.

Peace comes at a price

2009-01-06T18:34:00.013+13:00

As the world pauses to consider peace in the middle east, both Israel and Palestine would do well to look again at Pope John's reminder to the world forty years ago, of the Four Pillars of Peace which are the basis of right order in our world.

'It is an order that is

founded on truth,
built up on justice,
nurtured and animated by charity,
and brought into effect under the auspices of freedom.'

It is not some cheap cobbled together lowest common denominator statement that requires only the verbal ascent of both parties without the commitment of either.

God's love may be free, but peace comes at price.

Imagine -

2009-01-04T14:02:00.005+13:00

Imagine: the last votes are counted. Your town now has the first democratically elected Green Mayor and Councillors. Nearby towns feel threatened that your radical ideas may spread so they erect a 5 meter concrete barrier wall around your town. There are armed guards on the wall who have been ordered to shoot at anyone coming within 3 meters of the wall.

The only gates in or out are closed for weeks on end so you can't get to work, and incoming supplies are denied entry. Your town's economy soon crumbles. Your Council can't afford to buy electricity from the national grid now so power is rationed and essential service like sewage, and water pumping falter. Your small day hospital can't function without power, the crematorium closes and there's no petrol for the hearse.

Helicopters patrol overhead looking for known Green supporters and Green strongholds to blow up. Sometimes they miss and hit a children's playground, but the Greens were only using the kids as a shield - so that's OK.

You're angry at the way you are treated, no one seems interested in your plight, so hit back with the only weapons you have - you throw stones.

Welcome to Gaza!

There's always an alternative

2008-12-30T17:47:00.008+13:00

Persecution and cruelty feed the human spirit and are the manure from which patriotism and nationhood are forged.

The Roman treatment of the early Christian community and the German Concentration camps of the Second World War did not wipe out Christianity or Judaism but resulted in the worldwide spread of Christianity and the establishment of the Israeli State, for example.

So what is the likely outcome of inflicting continuing human suffering on innocent Palestinians and Gazan civilians ?

Israel's Prime Minister says, 'they left us with no alternative'.

But there is always an alternative.

Peace with our neighbours comes through dialogue & respect not aggression and cruelty.

Upside of the Credit Crunch

2008-11-28T10:24:00.005+13:00

Contrary to what my children think, I'm not that old. But I can remember,clearly, a time when the credit card was not a feature of our social landscape.

I got my wages, in cash, each week in a brown paper envelope, My employer built and sold widgets. He financed the business out of sales, but had a small development loan, from the bank, to buy bigger machine to make better widgets. I lived out of my income but had a small overdraft facility to cater for emergencies. Our property values didn't sky rocket (up or down!) but it didn't seem to bother anyone.

Now with the advent of our flexible friend, our model has changed and we are pressured to live, not out of what we have, but out of what we don't have. And that;s fine as long as you can keep all the balls in the air. But, if they fall, we realize only too clearly that credit (compared with real money) is a little like the Emperors New Clothes - pure fantasy.

The upside of this economic turmoil however, is that even if I can't now afford to retire, my widow can always rely on MasterCard to make sure I'm buried in a smart new designer T shirt and Nike sneakers, rather than the cheap undertakers shroud I would have been forced to wear in the good old days.

I guess thats progress?

World Leaders tackle credit crunch

2008-11-12T12:30:00.014+13:00

Great news that our world leaders are now poring mega trillions into the international economy to resolve the global credit crunch and revive our falling property prices. The disturbing question for me however is, where is all this money suddenly coming from?

Did governments have it stored up in new notes, hidden away for a rainy day? Not a very responsible investment plan I would have thought. Perhaps they borrowed it. But from whom? Did they blow the dust of their gold reserves and are they putting in real cash, or just signing off against some sort of international journal entry,

And who will pay for it all in the end ?

What ever the answer the question still remains, where's it coming from and why should the world put itself into hock to rescue a bunch of irresponsible, under regulated financial cowboys.

And If there is this sort of 'bottomless pit' financial resource available, how come it hasn't been used to solve the worlds huge humanitarian problems, feed house and educate the poor, fight cancer etc., etc.

Perhaps it's simply because there's no profit in it?

Empty Pram Syndrome

2008-11-10T13:24:00.002+13:00

It felt strange, sort of silly really.

There I was, walking home pushing an empty pram.

She had been our daily companion for the last 18 months and today was her first full day at daycare.
The first of many goodbyes that she would say as she moved on through life: primary school at five, her secondary education as she entered her teenage years, university, marriage and so on.

It all flashed through my mind in a few seconds as I looked down at the empty pram before me.

In some ways it felt like an end of something - but then too, it was a new beginning. The start of the next new and exciting phase in her life.

Several minutes later I found myself at home sending greetings to my closest friend on the occasion of his 65th birthday and wondering how his mum felt the first time she let him go out into the big bad world alone?

Hey Mom, I'm famous!

2008-10-31T19:19:00.004+13:00

Never to be repeated bargain prices?

2008-10-31T14:00:00.007+13:00

Almost 80 years on and history, as it has a habit of doing, repeats itself.

To quote David Letterman, " It's the 79th anniversary of the stockmarket crash and to commemorate that event, stocks are now selling at 1929 prices.'

It's amazing how quickly we forget the lessons of the past.
At the end of the day there's no such thing as a quick buck, just an advance that must ultimately be repaid,

. . . . all too often by someone else.

Going out with a BOOM!

2008-10-03T10:16:00.005+13:00

They came thundering out of the 50's & 60's like an out of control tidal wave.

A post war baby boom so large that it would fracture every social infrastructure it came in contact with for the next 60 years.

In the 50's it swamped pediatric services, burst out of undersized classrooms, created the worlds first teenage generation and fired the protest movement of the 60's. It took control of industry and politics in the 80's and, because of its shear size, now threatens to collapse retirement funds, superannuation schemes and health care services as these Boomers, as they became known, enter retirement years.

This week the New Zealand press association release details of a financial package designed to put more money into palliative care and hospice services. I also notice that my local funeral home has just spent mega thousands enlarging it's chapel and expanding (four fold) its adjoining processing and storage (mortuary) facility.

These are sure signs they, and the health care service providers, expect more business in the days ahead and that the BOOMERS next big social impact will be on an increasing level of departures from planet earth. Going out with a boom?

The wave that began in the late 40's has now crashed onto the beach. Its frothy brown foam has settled on the sand any the roar of the sea dragging its remaining waters back across the stones can be clearly heard.

A sobering sound for people of my generation.

Building on Sand

2008-10-01T11:31:00.003+13:00

It started years ago.

Like a distant rumor, or the first signs of a leak in the dam. There was no doubt that it would ultimately result in the total collapse of the entire dam with all of the devastation that would cause. But that was something we couldn't even contemplate. It was too unimaginable, so we worked away to patch up the leak and encourage each other with positive statements about the situation. There was too much at stake.

But eventually the unthinkable happened, Wall Street collapsed under its own weight. And still we tried to talk it all back together again.

Two thousand years ago a Jewish Rabbi told a story about the folly of trying to build a house on the sand. Perhaps the sand of the 'live now pay later' credit society has finally been washed away leaving us the opportunity to rebuild - this time on the rock of reality.

Save now, buy later.

The Cold Peace

2008-08-19T12:14:00.004+12:00

Hearing both sides of news story certainly makes you stop and think.
We spent 4 glorious weeks in Georgia recently. We had a great time and made lots of wonderful friends in this warm and hospitable country, so naturally we were horrified to see the advance of Russian tanks on the streets of Gori and feared for our friends in Tblisi.

Yesterday however I watched the Russian TV News Channel and was equally disturbed to see first hand the death and destruction wrought on the citizens of South Ossetia, and the very real humanitarian crisis that exists there.

It showed a perspective I've not seen explored in any western media, and it makes me wonder, who are the true victims of propaganda -

- them, us or both of us? .

We cultivate hope

2008-08-11T13:14:00.003+12:00

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:

We cultivate hope.

Mahmoud Darwish died on Saturday at age 67. He was famous throughout the Middle East and widely respected for his non violent quest for peace, and as Palestines national poet.

Delivering harsh criticisim for the factional fighting between Hamas & Fatah which he described as 'a public attempt at suicide in the streets,' he gave a voice to Palestines dreams of statehood.

Amidst all the chaos that surrounded him he did, as the opening lines of his poem, Under Siege state, live a life which cultivated hope.

His voice of prophetic wisdom will be much missed.

Higher walls or wider bridges?

2008-07-19T11:04:00.008+12:00

I have now exchanges several emails with the gentleman who accused me of being anti semitic. He is a 79 year old survivor of the Holocaust who now lives in the US and I have been surprised how easy it has been to find issues on which we can both agree. One of the thing we are both certain of is that even if a peace is brokered between Israel and Palestine it will take a generation or two to rebuild good will and trust between the two parties. To build wider bridges rather than higher walls.

When Chinese and Irish Catholic immigrants came to New Zealand in the late eighteen hundreds, they brought their culture with them choosing to remain close to each other, but by doing so, on the fringe of main stream Kiwi culture. As seven years olds my friends and I would wait outside the local Catholic school of an afternoon chanting taunts, throwing stones and scaring each other with tall tales of friends of friends who had been captured by the devil after running into the church. Fear and mistrust separated us as surely as any wall. Now, fifty years on, second millennium children would shrug in disbelief of such prejudices.

As a fifty year old, having learned absolutely nothing from this lesson, I headed off from New Zealand, back pack and culture in tow to travel overland through Asia and the Middle East to Europe, As it was hot we wore the kind of clothing we would wear at home: cotton t shirt (or skimpy blouse), shorts and flip-flops. Cool, comfortable, light and totally acceptable - or so we thought, And we were fine in countries that had embraced western tourism, but once we reached Pakistan we realised folk were not so impressed. From their perspective we were immodestly and offensively clothed. We quickly learned that replacing the Kiwi summer uniform with used local clothing from the markets immediately opened previously un known doorways to friendship and hospitality from a warm and very friendly people. A lesson that served us well through out Central Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans.

Now I'm not suggesting peace in the Middle East will be won by George Bush swapping his stetson for a turban, or by Osama bin Laden shaving his beard and waring a three piece suite, but I am saying ,that in the long run, peace is impossible unless we respect one another's differences.

Building walls may keep us safe, but it shuts us in, and it shuts out dialogue. Building bridges is more risky, but opens the way to friendship and trade.

Jesus said, 'Love your enemies.' Loosely translated, that means, ' don't have any!'

Is prejudice something we inherit?

2008-07-16T15:58:00.006+12:00

Because of my sympathy for the plight of Gazan's I was recently asked if my views were anti semitic. It made me think.

You see the New Zealand I grew up in during the 50-60's was a country that prided itself on its egalitarian attitudes and practices. It was 'God's own country' and we were lucky to live here. Yet Maori were invariably rural dwellers, educationally and economically disadvantaged, the few Chinese who came here during the gold rush days, were limited to selling vegetables and emigrants were all winging Poms who should go home if they didn't like it here.

Apart from them we were mainly white, protestant and proud of our colonial uniqueness.

Yet I grew up believing the myth of our equality and laid back acceptance of all: well, anyone who was exactly like us that is. - or unless they were Australian, of course!

It wasn't until I contemplated backpacking through central Asia and the Middle East where I would be the foreigner that I became aware of my fear of non Christian religions, my mistrust of Asia's poor, my suspicion of anyone who dressed differently from me and especially, my frustration with those who didn't speak English as their first language. I was afraid of what I didn't understand and there was much I didn't. Acceptance of others was great in theory but, like Siberia, it's may be a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Despite misconceptions about my egalitarian culture I began to realise that I was just as racist as the anti Pommie jokes that were so much a part of my colonial heritage.

What I discovered in realty was that beneath the cultural cloak we all wear, we are all the same. We share the same need of food, shelter, affirmation, justice and love because we are all made in the likeness of the one God - whatever we call him/her. However we dress and regardless of our social practices I began to learn that there are no bad men, just bad decisions.

That doesn't mean I support every Hamas policy or that I oppose every action taken by Israel. Just the political game playing of the few (on both sides) who ruin it for the majority and cause unnecessary pain and suffering on innocent people.

I wonder, is that prejudice or just the sign of an open mind?

Vivere

2008-05-26T20:04:00.006+12:00

Most corporate entities these days have a mission statement.
Something that, like a motto, endeavours to capture and express the very 'heart' of the organisation.

As individuals we too sometimes need to focus on what our own mission statement would be if we had one. Personally I can think of no better one for myself than Vivere.

It is from the Italian verb, to Live, and in this song is translated as Dare to Live, and Pausinni's English translation of the complete song is electrifying and deeply challenging.

I offer it for myself, and for all who are facing personal darkness and difficult times in their life right now. ( you know who you are).

To each of you . . . . Vivere!

Click here for full lyrics in English and Italian

Gaza cease-fire could take effect later this week

2008-05-20T20:12:00.006+12:00

Haaretz, the official Israeli News Agency ran this story in todays issue saying that Israel could announce their acceptance of the Hamas peace proposal later this week, insha'Allah.
Check it out!

Whatever happened to the good old days?

2008-05-19T17:46:00.010+12:00

It was dark as I rose at 6:30 for the arrival of my young granddaughter.

"Whatever happened to the good old days, I thought, when you only worked 9-5, retired at 60 and got a pension?' When interest on your housing loan was fixed for the length of the mortgage and education was free?

This was the social landscape my generation inherited and almost as instantly, shattered. The sheer volume of post war births meant there were more of us than them and we strained housing resources, overflowed kindergarten facilities, shot classroom sizes from below 20 to over 40, created the first teenage generation, introduced the world to Rock & Roll and took over the workplace.

And we continued to strain the resources of every emerging phase of our lives till at last we've exhausted pension funds and now threaten to overwhelm morticians as we begin to shuffle off, stage right.

So I asked myself, whatever happened to the good old days?

And then it hit me - whose been in control of world government, economics and trade for the past 25 years? Oh yes, it was us, the BOOMERS - architects of our eventual demise.

I yawned, scratched, stepped out of bed and into the darkness and commenced my 12 hour child minder shift.

Two sides to every story - The Nakba

2008-05-15T15:35:00.002+12:00

Air Force One will travel back in time this week, banking low near the southern Mediterranean coast and touching down on contested soil where the past is always present.

In the Holy Land, the battles over the historical narrative surrounding the founding of Israel in 1948 are as hard-fought as the contemporary struggles over West Bank settlers, Palestinian refugees, and negotiations for a two-state solution.

In a long and bitter dispute, there are profound consequences for the "honest broker" (as the US government has long described itself) in identifying with only one side's history.

Yet when George Bush, the US president, steps off his plane to help Israel mark its 60th birthday, he will stride firmly into the past of one side.

Officials of the Jewish state will sweep the US president into their own powerful and compelling narrative: The birth of Israel from the ashes of the Holocaust on May 14, 1948, the invasion of the state a day later from Arab armies marching from the north, south, and east and the loss of one per cent of the Jewish state's population in a fierce defence that evokes Israel's unofficial motto - "never again".

What the president will not hear is the Palestinian story.

He will not be told that one side's "War of Independence" is the other side's "Nakba", or "Catastrophe".

And no one is likely to mention that Israel's heroic survival was, to the Arabs, a dispossession in which 750,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes.

Here then, is a brief Nakba primer for the US president, a chronicle of the untold to accompany him on his visit to Jerusalem.

Palestinians mark the Nakba with wooden keys symbolising the homes they had to flee

In the spring of 1948, waves of fear gripped Arab Palestine following the April 9 massacre of more than 120 unarmed Palestinians by extremist Jewish militias in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem.

Thus, even before the war officially began, Arab villagers were fleeing for safer ground, fully intending to return when the fighting stopped.

Later that month in Galilee, Yigal Allon, commander of the elite Jewish brigade known as the Palmach, implemented a plan to spread more fear among the local Arabs.

Allon would later write that he gathered Jewish leaders "who had ties with the different Arab villages, and I asked them to whisper in the ears of several Arabs that giant Jewish reinforcements had reached the Galilee and were about to clean out the villages ... [and] to advise them, as friends, to flee while they could ... the flight encompassed tens of thousands. The stratagem fully achieved its objective."

The next month, May 1948, a similar campaign took hold in the village of Na'ani, according to local Arab and Israeli sources, when a Jewish neighbour rode into town on horseback shouting: "The Jewish army is coming! You must leave or you will all be killed!"

The villagers fled en masse, many going a few miles north to the Arab town of Ramle. There, they hoped, it would be safe.

Two months later, on July 12, Israeli forces overwhelmed local Arab defenders and occupied the refugee-choked Ramle (now the Israeli city of Ramla) and neighbouring Lydda (now Lod). The same day they began expelling the Arabs of the two towns.

According to the memoirs of Yitzhak Rabin, then a young Israeli major, the orders came directly from Isreal's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Three days later, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary, "there are 30,000 refugees moving along the road between Ramle and Lydda ... they are demanding bread ... "

Deaths of children

The people of Ramle and Lydda had left in haste and packed little, unprepared for a long hike across stony ground of cactus and Christ's thorn in mid-summer temperatures that reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

Decades later, old men and women in refugee camps would recall, above all else, their thirst and how they attempted to quench it with stagnant water found in old wells and, in some cases, with their own urine.

John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of the Arab Legion, would write that "nobody will ever know how many children died".

Sixty years later, the Nakba lies at the core of the Palestinians' identity and of their view of history and justice.

Official US ignorance of that, passed down through generations and embodied in Bush's visit only to the Israeli side, has, unsurprisingly, angered Palestinians.

"It is a slap in the face," said Diana Buttu, a prominent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank, told The New York Times, adding that the US is essentially saying: "You have no history and your past does not matter."

But more than the insult or even stupidity of such a one-sided position is the tactical bungling of an administration that wants to be seen as a fair arbiter of a long-standing dispute.

That is pretty hard to do, if all you can see is one side's pain and glory.

Sandy Tolan is the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, and a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC).

Source: Al Jazeera 12/05.2008 Sandy Tolan

Operation Canterbury?

2008-05-04T20:20:00.004+12:00

Several posts ago I hinted that something was brewing for us, and I offered the cryptic clue, Operation Canterbury.

So was it a hint that I wanted a new Polo Shirt, did I intend moving to Kent or perhaps to read Chaucer again? No.

It does however have something to do with the Cathedral - though not much!

Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, as you may know, is the one of the oldest Christian structures in all of England and the Cathedral church of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the church of England in which I now hope to be ordained a priest in 2010.

Hence the code name, Operation Canterbury. Bit cryptic I suppose, but it's the best I could do.

Those of you who know me won't be surprised to learn that it's a step I've contemplated for over 25 years, but only now does it seem right to make it.

So, pray for us, or if it's your way, think good thoughts for us and wish me well.

Like the traveler in Robert Frosts poem, The Road not Taken I'm not sure exactly where it will all lead, but like the traveler I'm committed to it and:-

'I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference'.

Carpe Diam

2008-05-02T13:27:00.001+12:00

It used to be called ' Mid-Life Crisis.'

It occurred in your mid forties with the realization that the goals you set yourself in your 20's were overly ambitious, and that time was running out.

It's a social 'gloom & doom' phenomena that is all too familiar in western society.

However today sociologists are more likely to talk about second half of life issues and a quick search of Google will bring up over 27,000 occurrences of the term in less than 0.8 seconds.

But is this just a positive spin on a negative value, or is there something more to it?

Whilst I'm not a Greek scholar I believe the term dire crisis, which we use to imply impending doom is actually derived from two Greek words that more literally translate 'on the verge of change'.

. . . . . .Change, not doom!

For my generation (Boomers) the concept of second half of life presents a crossroad of enormous choice & opportunity.

A much better option than mid life crisis. It's a (last) chance to do the things you've always wanted to do, but never had time.

Is this their official response?

2008-04-29T15:26:00.009+12:00

I've been combing the news sites to see if there had been any official response to Hamas offer of a 6 months cease fire - see previous posting, perhaps this is it?

I do hope not.

Hamas propose truce with Israel

2008-04-25T14:17:00.006+12:00

Within days of Jimmy Carter meeting with Hamas leaders, the Palestinian group has proposed a six month truce with Israel, aimed at easing a blockade on the Gaza strip.

Key points of their proposal are:

The truce between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would be for a period of six months, during which time Egypt would try to extend it to the West Bank.
The truce must be reciprocal and simultaneous on the part of Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel must lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip and re-open all its crossing points, including the Rafah crossing point into Egypt.
If Israel rejects the truce, Egypt will re-open the Rafah crossing point. If Israel reneges on its truce commitments, Egypt will keep the Rafah crossing open.
Egypt will supervise the process of reaching a consensus on the terms of the truce with other Palestinian factions. Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief, will invite whichever Palestinian factions Egypt sees fit to the country next Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the Hamas proposals.
Once the Palestinian factions have agreed to the terms of the truce, Suleiman will contact the Israeli side to ensure that they are committed to the truce and fix a starting time.
Egypt has promised to start immediate contacts with the Israeli side to prepare the atmosphere for the truce and to provide basic needs to the Gaza Strip, especially fuel.
Egypt will contact Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to make sure his rival Fatah faction does not obstruct the opening of the crossing points.
Egypt must try to persuade Abbas to put an end to abuses and violations in the West Bank - a reference to Fatah's harassment of Hamas members there.
If Israel does not meet its truce obligations by stoping attacks and ending the blockade, then the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves by all legitimate means

So, once again Condoleezza, how hard was that?

How hard was that Condoleezza?

2008-04-21T22:19:00.005+12:00

(Aljazeera 21 March 2008)

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called for Hamas to be included in peace negotiations, saying they are willing to "live as a neighbour next door in peace" with Israel if Palestinians approve a deal.

Carter said on Monday that Hamas leaders told him they would accept a negotiated peace agreement, if voted for by the Palestinian people.

His comments come after he met several Hamas leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas politico, in Syria last week.

Carter said Hamas leaders had told him they would accept a peace agreement negotiated by their rival Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president whose Fatah faction controls the West Bank, if Palestinians approved the deal in a vote.

Peacemaking

"They said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians ... even though Hamas might disagree with some terms of the agreement," Carter said.

The Carter proposals

The former US president has put forward the following guidelines in an effort to start peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis:

1. An end to hostilities, or a truce between Hamas and Israel, which includes a halt to rockets attacks.

2. Securing the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas fighters.

3. The release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
"It means that Hamas will not undermine Abbas's efforts to negotiate an agreement and Hamas will accept an agreement if the Palestinians support it in a free vote."

Carter, who has angered Israel by meeting Hamas, also said the peace efforts had "regressed" since a US-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.

He said: "The problem is not that I met with with Hamas in Syria. The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved."

In his speech to the Israel Council on Foreign Relations at the King David hotel in Jerusalem, Carter reiterated that he has no mandate to secure a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Speaking of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Hamas in a cross-border raid in June 2006, Carter said he was disappointed that his proposal to Hamas to release Shalit has been rejected.

But Carter said that he understood the Palestinian group could not free the Israeli soldier outside of a prisoner exchange with Israel.

'Side by side'

Speaking to Al Jazeera after his news conference in Jerusalem, Carter reiterated that he believe Hamas would accept the existence of Israel, if the Palestinian population voted to accept it.

"There has been a lot of conflicting statements about this issue. But from what I understood, and announced, if Abbas and [Ehud] Olmert [the Israeli prime minister] agree to a peace deal, that would ultimately allow the two states to live side by side. Hamas was asked whether they would accept the decision - they said yes."

Carter also said the "deplorable" situation in the Gaza Strip made establishing a peace deal more urgent.

"A resolution needs to be made, as people [in Gaza] are continuing to suffer. I believe however, a greater, and more effective American role is needed here - going beyond the commitments made by the Bush administration to reach a peace agreement."

Engaging Hamas

Amani Soliman, Al Jazeera's Middle East analyst, said Carter's attempt to engage Hamas was a major breakthrough.

"What he has done was a long time coming, considering that Hamas needed to be involved in the peace process," she said.

"Despite the engagement with Abbas, Tzipi Livni [the Israeli foreign minister], and other Fatah negotiators, Carter is adamant that Hamas be included in the equation – which can be viewed as a breakthrough for a Western diplomat to take this route."

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Gaza, said that Hamas's willingness to continue to secure a peace deal, implicitly reflects the movements recognition of the state of Israel.

"This effectively pulls the rug from under Israel, as they have constantly maintained that the reason they will continue isolating Hamas is because they will no recognise their state. The ball is now in Israel's court."

'Breaking the ice'

Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Damascus, said that Hamas had expressed willingness to go along with Carter's proposals.

"However, also from the Hamas side, the point being made that something must come in return," he said.

"What Jimmy Carter is trying to do is to break the ice - trying to get some sort of momentum going in a situation that has been utterly static."

Hamas officials said they talked with Carter about an internationally backed Israeli embargo on Gaza and a possible Israel-Hamas prisoner swap.

But Hamas did not respond to Carter's requests that it halt rocket fire on Israeli border towns and agree to talk to Eli Yishak, the Israeli deputy prime minister, about a prisoner exchange.

Over the weekend, Israel killed seven Hamas fighters in a series of air strikes after the group detonated two jeeps packed with explosives at an Israeli crossing on the Gaza border.

Israel and the US, which both consider Hamas a terrorist group, have criticised Carter's efforts to broker negotiations.

Rounding the first bend!

2008-04-13T16:35:00.005+12:00

Having traveled a lot I know that most of the energy in any journey goes in to the departure, and in to the arrival. The middle bit is relatively easy.

And today, I discovered that project Canterbury had successfully taken off.

We're off the ground,
we've rounded the first bend,

and I'm very excited.

So, what were those two clues again? '

My first is in Rome and also in Gnome.....

My second (and 9th) are in more and also in door

. . . . .so that's OR_ _ _ _ _ _ O _

It's got something to do with a change in direction

and, it's something I've thought about for a long time.

Mmmmm . . . what on earth could it be?

Stay tuned.

Can you guess?

2008-04-01T14:04:00.010+13:00

When we were traveling through the Middle East and Central Asia we learned to refer to anything of value by a code name.

Being over heard to say you needed to catch up with 'Charlie' (our code name for the bank) was much safer than saying that you needed to go to the bank and cash a travelers cheque, for example and it's a custom we have continued. In this regard we have code named our new journey 'Operation Canterbury'.

So what is Operation Canterbury? Is it:

a/ a brand of sports clothing?

b/ a series of short stories by Geoffrey Chaucer?

c/ a town in England?

d/ all or none of the above,

and how does it relate to the first steps I took last week?

Can you guess?

First steps

2008-03-28T17:22:00.005+13:00

Today I took the first steps.

Small and faltering steps, but steps along a new path. Steps I've considered for some time now, but taking them moves me from the dream world of wishful thinking into the realm of reality, whatever the outcome.

As yet it's too soon to know where, if anywhere, the path will lead, but it's for certain I'll find out once I round the first bend. And no matter what's there, the future will be different than if I had never taken courage to step out.

Looks like my Viaje Interior is moving me out of myself and into ???

Watch this space

It must be a girl thing

2008-03-25T12:53:00.002+13:00

I have been looking after my 16 month old Granddaughter since she was a tiny baby.

Her mum drops her off around 7am, then she's mine till after five. Each morning we have breakfast, cereal and fruit, then I dress her for play.

However this morning, just after I had dressed her, she vanished back into her room emerging several minutes later waring only her singlet and nappies and carrying a replacement set of clothing, cloths more to her liking and different shoes.

Shoes that weren't the ones I had chosen.

Although she doesn't talk yet she, never the less, made it abundently clear that this was the outfit she was waring today and that I should re dress her.

Immediately.

Funny how we strive to make children independent then, as soon they are we wish they weren't.

Five things that made me smile today

2008-03-23T15:24:00.013+13:00

1/ My beautiful Easter wife

2/My city on a summers day

3/ Walking on the beach and watching children building sand castles

4/ Seeing happy tourists enjoying the Easter sun

Oh yes and. . . . . . . .

5/ seeing someone with a good sense of direction!

see the compass?

When all else fails, crime pays

2008-03-17T21:45:00.004+13:00

Today's BBC website carried yet another story of the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from the blockade of Gaza over the past nine months.

It focused on two stories. Both are tragic but both all too common. The first concerned Nael, a young man with terminal cancer. Despite numerous official appeals to the Israeli authorities for a medical visa to leave Gaza for treatment in Egypt, treatment not available in Gaza, Naels application was continually refused and he eventually died in poverty in Gaza age 21 years. His mother left to harbor the resentment alone.

The second concerned another young man, Samir who had been an employee at Abudan as a garment machinist. The factory were he worked, like many others closed through the strangling effects of the blockade. He said he returned to the factory every day just to check if, by some chance, it was working again and he could have his job back.

He took the BBC reporter to his home: a small, dark construction of breeze-block and corrugated iron.

There his wife held the youngest of their five children as she sat on a thin mattress on the floor. Two other toddlers ran around barefooted while they spoke.

He explained how he managed to make a little money by selling bread from a cart he wheeled through the town. It was not enough, he said, to feed his family.

His eyes welled up as he told the reoprter he had not been able to pay his rent for four months but that his landlord had taken pity on him.

There was an alternative, he said, one which he had refused but which nearly half of his former colleagues had taken up.

It was to join a work-force that was still well paid in spite of the troubles everywhere else: that is, the security forces of Hamas.

The pressure being put on Gaza - not just by Israel but the international community and even the Palestinian government in the West Bank, which is run by the Fatah faction - is seen as a means of weakening Hamas, strengthening the moderates and stopping the rocket fire.

But, in fact, the rockets continue to be launched and mothers like Nael's are calling for revenge while working-age men like Samir are accepting Hamas' offer to pick up arms.

It's the same scenario we saw in Northern Ireland where unemployment and financial hardship left the IRA as the only reliable employer.

When will they ever learn?

Palm Sunday - a victory for the little people

2008-03-15T20:59:00.003+13:00

Today is Palm Sunday. In the secular world perhaps the least publicised of any of the Christian feasts. It doesn't have the commercial pull of Christmas shopping or the warm fuzzies of the Good Friday Easter bunny, but the message of Palm Sunday is perhaps more profound than either.
Jesus enters war torn Jerusalem on a donkey. Pilot, the symbol of Roman authority and might would have pranced in along the same road on a white stallion accompanied by legions of troops and the cheering of the gathered crowds. The comparison presents a satire playing off humility and individual weakness against power and corporate strength. Two thousand years later Jerusalem is still war torn, the Roman empire has vanished into the pages of history but, Jesus lives.

The lesson of Palm Sunday is the message of David & Goliath: that we, the little people, week and powerless as we seem, have the ability through that weakness, like Jesus, to effect enormous change on the world around us. More even than the Goliath oil barons and coprorate giants!

Yea, the little people!

One picture is worth a thousand words

2008-03-15T17:24:00.004+13:00

Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff reflects upon the ongoing conditions in Gaza and the middle east.

He titles this carton The Mother of all Wars

New Horizons

2008-03-11T11:16:00.009+13:00

Today I took my 16mth old granddaughter to her first play group.

Since she has discovered walking, only a few weeks ago, the boundaries of her old world have dissolved and new horizons have become the order of the day. Life is BIG and big is good.

Her eyes grew as large as saucers as she spied the vast array of play equipment, then settled immediately upon a small dolls pram (and doll) which she proceeded to push at 'top speed' around the room, knocking into walls, doors or children: what ever got in her way, going wherever the speeding pram took her.

It reminded me that no matter how much energy or enthusiasm we have, if we don't know where we're going we'll just go through life bouncing off the nearest wall.

Hopefully over the next few months she will discover this truth for herself and learn how to be in control of her own destination.

It's something I've known for some years now but still need to remind myself of. It's just so easy to let the momentum of life direct our path.

But is it taking us where we want to go?

Terrible things are happening in Gaza

2008-03-06T14:22:00.006+13:00

Terrible things are happening in Gaza.

Civilians, including women and children are being shot and killed by Israeli soldiers; the supply of adequate drinking water, sewage treatment, supplies of oil, gas and food are not being allowed through the Israeli controlled border. Helicopter gun-ships hover continually overhead and supersonic fighter planes swoop low over populated civilian areas at night.

Any yet, western press, especially here in New Zealand say little or nothing about this humanitarian disaster that looks more like controlled genocide or at best, ethnic cleansing of a democratically elected government and it's people.

If you want first hand civilian accounts of what is actually happening on the ground read what local bloggers Heba and Laila have to say or read some of the in-depth editorials of the BBC or other reliable sources such as the Independent.

And it's not a new phenomena.

When I visited this part of the world in 2000 as a 'Christian Pilgrim' I was horrified to see the plight of Palestinians who were robed of their lands, left stateless, economically trampled and forced to live as refugees wherever they could. More than 6 million of them with many still living in temporary camps through out the middle east.

You'd have to ask if Israel was serious about wanting peace with Palestine, to hand back the land it creased during the 6 day war and having a viable Palestinian Nation as its neighbor?

Well, wouldn't you?

Congratulations Gina & Martin

2008-03-03T18:09:00.004+13:00

(Gina, John & Anthea)

Weddings are a big event in anyones life, particularly the brides and especially the parents.

Congratulations to you both and happiness always.

Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza?

2008-03-02T23:00:00.004+13:00

It's an impassioned term, but on reflection. the only one I can find that adequately describes Israels current military assult on Gaza. The term in ethnic cleansing.

A recent report published by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem highlights Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.

I am the first to admit that the launching of Palestinian rockets in to Israel from Gaza must stop, but is Israel's current arsenal of responses helping or inflaming the situation?

And does Israel really want to eliminate the rocket attacks or just eliminate Gaza?

Boxes!

2008-02-22T13:19:00.006+13:00

We were having guests over for dinner later that day, so early in the morning, while it was still cool, we decided to go supermarket shopping.

A simple enough exercise (I thought), just a few grocery items and home again in time for me to gallop through my todo list; wash the car, mow the front lawn and tidy up around the garden.

The weather was good and it was shaping up to be a great day.

But after nearly three hours we had

- tried on 3 outfits,

- closely examined 4 pairs of shoes,

- visited the pharmacy,

- chatted to a couple of passers by

- admired the ear rings in the Jewelers window and exhausted,

- stopped for coffee.

'This is such fun, Anthea said, I'm so glad we could come out together this morning, now what else was it?'

'Oh, yes, the groceries.'

I was getting tense. . . . VERY tense.

Whoever wrote Women are from Venus knew something I didn't, that women's heads are wired differently from men.

The attached video says it all - perhaps I just didn't have enough boxes open!

Time changes everything

2008-02-13T09:18:00.002+13:00

The New Zealand theologian who was tried in the 1960's on heresy charges is today heralded as a national hero.

Holder of New Zealand's prestigious Order of Merit Award, the equivalent of a Knighthood in earlier years, Lloyd Geering, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University is now very definitely a respected part of the establishment, and the church that once persecuted his 'outrageous' beliefs is now to hold a special service commemorating the 40th anniversary of his heresy trial.

This illustrates how yesterdays radicals become todays conservatives, that every 'ism becomes a 'wasim' and that every 'doctrine' has its day.

As much as this evolution in our understanding of 'truth' appeals to me, it does makes me wonder (worry) about how we will view George Bush in a hundred years?

Children learn by imitating.

2008-01-09T15:11:00.000+13:00

I remember a cartoon I saw many years ago in a local newspaper.

It showed two young boys. One was crying in a corner while his elder brother, who had been fighting him, was being 'punished' by his angry father.

The caption simply read

'Boy, I'll teach you to fight with your little brother!"

The sad thing was, that is just what the father was doing. Modeling violence for his older son.

The attached video shows much the same thing. It depicts Arab & Israeli children 'at play' though it could just as easily be Catholic and Protestant children in Belfast or playground violence in your local school.

Despite the political bias of the video the end result is the same: violence hatred and prejudice is being invested into the future as children on both sides imitate their parents behaviour and practice how to behave themselves when they grow up.

A two nation solution in Palestine by 2009 may tear down the 'Walls of Shame' that physically divide Israel and Palestine but it will take generations to remove the walls that divide their hearts.

Looking outside the square

2008-01-06T12:00:00.000+13:00

Today they arrived.

When I set up the tree and placed the crib beneath it, they were on top of the window sill, on the other side of the room.

Day by day, through the 12 nights of Christmas, the 'Kings' journeyed across my living room till this morning (January 6th) when they reached their destination.

The stable in Bethlehem

Each year, as we approach the Christmas season, our preparations include revisiting the events surrounding the birth of Our Lord. Bethlehem, the shepherds, and the angels are familiar to us all. But not much is generally known about the mysterious "Magi" who came to worship the infant Jesus.

By tradition we refer to them as 'Wize Men from the East' or 'The Three Kings', though general opinion is that they were priests from Persia. Probably the Kurdish area of what is now modern day Iraq.

Their visiting Jesus in Bethleham, referred to as the Epiphany, a word meaning sudden realisation, is important because it illustrates the openness of these men to see the importance of something outside of their cultural expectation.

To find 'an answer' somewhere they would never have thought of looking.

We celebrate this every year. But how often to we take their example into our daily life?

How often do we have the courage to step outside of the comfort of our own western world view to discover truth hidden in the lives and practices of people who may not talk, dress or believe as we do?

Understand them rather than war against them?

Perhaps the significance of the Epiphany is that we need to make that journey.

To quote Neil Armstrong, it would be one small step got man, but a giant leap forward for mankind.

A one-off stance or the thin end of the wedge?

2008-01-03T10:17:00.000+13:00

Today Egypt defied an Israeli request and opened its border with Palestine to allowed more than 1000 religious pilgrims to cross back into Gaza through the Egyptian border with Palestine at Rafah.

But why was this such a big deal?

The pilgrims had left Gaza via the Rafah crossing prior to Christmas to make Hajj at Mecca. They had done this with the full approval of the Israeli authorities (as Palestinians they have no political status) and naturally expected to return the same way.

When they did arrive back at Rafah several days ago they discovered to their surprise that the border was closed to them. Israel was insisting that they returned home via an Israeli controlled checkpoint and had put political pressure on Egypt to support them by closing its border fearing some of the pilgrims might be bringing money with them which could be used in support of Hamas.

The pilgrims were 'held' in a nearby transit camp, political wrangling pursued and in a surprise move today, Egypt took control and allowed the Gazans to return to their homes without passing through Israeli controlled territory.

So, has Israel suddenly gone soft and developed a conscience?

Will Egypt's actions turn a political spotlight on the humanitarian crisis that has gone largely unnoticed since Israel 'blockaded' Gaza last June?

Or is it a one-off gesture that will be smoothed over and quickly forgotten by the international media?

Watch this space!

The True Gift of Christmas

2007-12-31T07:25:00.000+13:00

Burr,burrr. . . . burr, burr . . .

It's 4am and I stagger sleepily toward the ringing phone. Who on earth could it be at this hour I wonder?

Hello? I inquire.

Xhoni? (John?)

est Belga! (It's Bella)
Mere Menges, (Good Morning) and

Gezuar Krishtlindje! (Merry Christmas)

It was our Albanian friend Bella ringing to wish us a Merry Christmas. I was wide awake now. It had been nearly four years since we had last seen her, but in those few waking seconds since I answered the phone the years between us had dissolved, The past had catapulted into the present and the miles that divided us erased.

It was as though we had never been separated.

Then it hit me, That's what Christmas is really about! It's about God eliminating the barriers.

Making all things just as they were when Man and God walked together in the garden. Catapulting the past into the present and erasing the miles that divided us.

That's the real gift of Christmas.

Social Justice & Human rights

2007-12-04T09:50:00.000+13:00

Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of the Annapolis conference last week is a story which, understandably, the western media have failed to focus on Olmert's after conference statement to Israeli media that did not even seek to disguise his deepest fears.

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

For almost 30 years now the (impossible) idea of a two state solution has failed, mainly because one state, Israel, would control all the resources, and now Israel is left exposing its true Apartheid like nature:

As in all international conflict the bottom line is always social justice and human rights.

Perhaps it's about time Israel showed it's neighbors the same sort of compassion God once showed them?

No bad people, just bad choices

2007-12-02T16:35:00.000+13:00

Once in a while you hear something. Probably a word or a phrase you've heard before but this time it comes like a shaft of light, a sonic boom, blowing away the cobwebs you hadn't even realised were cluttering your mind.

It was like that for me this morning when a friend was telling about a series of seminars he was involved in running for some men preparing for release from prison. 'What's that like', I asked, my mind flashing me images of scary villains with striped pajama type clothing, a black ball and chain, stubbly chins and facial scars.

"Oh, mainly nice people who've just made bad choices," he said with out a pause - then continued right on in to his story.

'The thing we are trying to get through to them' he said, 'is that even though they may have made bad choices in the past, they are only one decision away from putting all that behind them, if they want to.'

No bad people, only good people who have made bad choices. . . . . .

No bad people, only good people who have made bad choices!

It made me think how quick we are to label someone bad. To judge them, rather than their actions. To distance and disassociate ourselves from them because they're not like us.

But they are just like us. Good people. It's just that some of us have made better choices than others.

At least, for my sake, I hope that's the rationale God will adopt when he and I eventually meet up.

What do you think?

So, what's in a name?

2007-11-28T22:19:00.000+13:00

Anyone who has visited this site previously may notice that I've changed its name.

Why?

Well, when I began this particular blog, just one year ago, I was a full time trainee granddad, 'Home Alone' while Anthea completed personal commitments in the UK (where we had been living), and I got a new home together for us here in New Zealand and cared for our granddaughter while her mum worked.

Well, baby is now walking, the renovation complete, Anthea is home.

I am no longer alone and the name 'Home Alone' seems somehow redundant.

Anyway, looking back on recent postings it seems this blog has evolved (degenerated?) in to the ramblings of an elderly discontent rather than the benign reflections of a trainee granddad.

So, welcome to the Meldrew Factor.

For further explaination read he sidebar opposite.

The Prying Game

2007-11-22T19:38:00.000+13:00

Several days ago New Zealand police released details of the terrorist surveillance program that lead to the arrest and detention of a number of Maori activists under NZ's new anti terrorism laws.

Much of the emerging argument centers around weather or not the media have been overly selective in the information they published but the real issue is not that journalists may have conveniently paraphrased the report, but that this report exist at all.

The fact that more and more intrusive surveillance technology is available to our police should frighten rather than reassure us. Researchers at Georgetown University in 2002 developed what they called 'Gait recognition profiling'. This technique uses CCTV monitors (as seen in banks, railway stations, etc. in NZ) to map any individuals walking style, which is as unique apparently as their DNA profile, with out that persons knowledge or consent.

Coupled with existing face recognition capabilities this technology, potentially enables CCTV systems to identify any individual from a crowd, confirm their ID by matching to their 'Gait' profile and, again potentially, link to and access any other data held about the person under surveillance.

This is fine if we only use on in rare occasions to identify real terrorists.

The question is,

. . . . is that all it will be used for?

No peace till there's justice

2007-11-14T14:03:00.000+13:00

The lead story and editorial in todays Dominion Post confirmed that not only has New Zealand entered the arena of international terrorism, but that personal surveillance by phone tapping, bugging and cctv footage is now an acceptable police tool and part of our daily life.

Of course there is a necessity to fight fire with fire and the ends of national security, it can be argued, justify the means: that civil liberties must be weighed against internal security. Like most New Zealanders, I accept that argument, but what would it take to eliminate terrorism?

One thing that 'terrorists' everywhere have in common is that they are marginalised both socially and economically. They are, generally speaking, the have nots of our society: Syrians, Palestinians, Pakistanis, Gazans, Irish Catholics and now, Maori.

We can try our hardest to control terrorism by surveillance but history shows there will be no peace until we share our wealth and address the underlying issues of social justice and equity that are the breeding ground of discontent, rebellion and, latterly, terrorism.

Insomnia

2007-11-13T15:34:00.000+13:00

The wall calendar on my kitchen fridge reminds me that it's just 21 more BIG sleeps till Anthea returns. There is much I could write about the excitement I feel at the thought of her return, but this small poem I found today says it so much better.

When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

Rumi. Persia (1207-1273)

Home again!

2007-11-11T22:37:00.000+13:00

The restoration work at St Barnabas is now complete.

The Bishop re consecrated the Church yesterday, and this morning Archbishop David Moxom presided over our first mass.

Great joy and celebration.

It may be a sad commentary on my rather dull life but I had the BEST time, ever!

Seems my 'Viaje Interior' had bought me full circle. I'm Home.

Eid Mubarak

2007-10-13T22:22:00.000+13:00

Asalam Alaykum Eid Mubaruk.The greeting is similar to the one we used at the beginning of Ramadan, though Eid Mubaruk heralds the feast of Eid ul-Fitr or Id-Ul-Fitr which marks the official end of the month of Ramadan.

Made it! :-))

Eid celebrates the compassion and forgiveness of Allah and is a time of great family celebration, a little like Easter and Christmas rolled into one. On a spiritual level it is also a time to receive and and extend forgiveness one to another.To mirror our relationship with Allah to brothers and sisters.

For me Ramadan has been a significant part of my own personal pilgrimage and has enriched my understanding and experience of God greatly.

But will I become a Muslim, you may ask? The answer is no.

Much as I love Allah (God/Yahweh) my God wears a suit not a salwar kameez,

He has a western world view, like mine

and He understands the subtlties and sensitivities of my pampered western nature: And I'm comfortable with that arrangement.

I can love Him by any name, but I can only worship Him in he way that is most natural for me.

I suppose we all ultimately create God in our own likeness, depending on weather our world view is eastern or western, but it's good to know the commonality we have in God, and to carry a bit of that as part of our individual God experience.

I have tried to express it this way;

If I wasn't a catholic,
I might have been . . . a pastor in a black pentecostal church,
praying for the sick and casting out demons.

. . . . . . If I wasn't a catholic.

If I wasn't a catholic,
I might have been . . . a high church Anglican,
rejoicing in sung pastoral liturgies and red robed choirs,
clouded in a sea of incense.

. . . . . . If I wasn't a catholic.

If I wasn't a catholic,
I might have been . . . a Tibetan Buddhist
contemplating my Ying and my Yang,
and the meaning of life,
or a fat Muslim cleric with more than one wife.

. . . . . . but I'm not,

I'm just a homogenized (monogamous?) blend
of all of the whole jolly lot

Eid Mubaruk. wa'salam

Poems

2007-10-05T22:41:00.000+13:00

It must be all the lack of food during Ramadan but I felt overcome to write a poem or two today.
They are my first so no serious critical comments, please.

The first is mildly religious. its called . . . .

Church

I went to church last Sunday,

though I'll never forget the Brukner Motet,
and Bach's Toccata in E sounded magic to me,

I can't remember a word the preacher said,

Who me, Shallow? . . . .

John Mullis October 2007

the second is my recollection of a night safari we did on Africa last year looking for Leopards. which we found . . .

The Leopard

The hot night air tore at my skin
as our jeep sped silently through the Serengeti.

The starless sky pierced only by the sweeping beam of our powerful spot light,
restlessly searching for eyes in the night.

Suddenly, they were there.

Her sleek outline silhouetted briefly in the beam,
Majestic, graceful, elegant, serene -

and way too cool to let on
she knew we were watching.

No struggle, no kill, just the chase and the thrill.

then she was gone again,

light beams flash like huge Jedi swords,
fighting to pick out her image . . . . in vain.

It reminded me of my teenage years.

Skin tight Levi's and hair Brylcreamed down,
Posing and posturing, for some girl down the town.

me pretending I hadn't seen her,

and her, way too cool to let on
she knew I was watching.

No struggle, no kill, just the chase and the thrill.

John Mullis - October 2007

Fasting & Feasting

2007-09-27T19:40:00.000+12:00

Ramadan is a time for prayer and fasting . . .

But in the evening it's a time for feasting!

Ifaar is celebrated at sun set when the days fast is broken and just prior to Isha, the evening prayer.

Here are some wonderful middle eastern recipes posted by one of the people in our group. If you want more mouth watering examples of Ramadan food check out Sara's blog site

Sep 26, 2007 (yesterday)
"Kunafa"
from Sara's Blog by Sara

Kunafa means a lot to Arab people, a special dessert, to be served everyday in Ramadan after breakfast. You can have them crunchy and round or soft and flat, there's actually lots and lots of shapes and sizes. Of course, Kunafa is served with a cup of tea with or without cream/milk. It is absolutely a must-have in any Ramadan visit to relatives or friends.

You buy the dough from the supermarket and mix it with some corn oil very well and spread it at the bottom of a oiled cake pan, in the middle you add a mixture of walnuts, raisins, coconut shreds mixed with sugar. Then, you add the top layer of kunafa dough and press down on it well. Now you can put it on the stove and keep checking the bottom layer until it's golden yellow and flip the cake pan over making the top layer at the bottom and wait till it turns golden yellow.

Of course, before all that you make the honey by mixing 2 ups of sugar with almost one cup of water and leave them on the stove to boil and thicken and voila! your kunafa's honey is ready.Add a cup of honey to the kunafa and leave it for a while, then ur kunafa is ready to be served with a cup of tea. LOL... Yummy!!

Sep 15, 2007 11:58 PM
Ramadan Secrets
from Sara's Blog by Sara

Now you're in on the most secret ingredient of Ramadan... LOL

It's called "Amar El-Deen" it's made of apricot fruit that has been hardened, gelatinized and sweetened. It is used a lot as a juice served with breakfast and Ramadan dessert just like Jelly. Decorate your dish with yummy raisins, coconut, crushed almonds and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

In order to serve this wonderful juice u need to soak a packet for 6 hours in a jug in water until it softens and vigorously stir it every few hours making a nice thick cup of Amar El-Deen. It's really sweet and healthy after fasting because your blood sugar drops during ur fast. This juice with its sugar content and fruit helps boost ur blood sugar a bit and gives u that extra energy to help clear the tables. LOL

Yesterday at the Masjid (Mosque) during the taraweeh prayer, the Imam finished the third section of the Qura'an which means Surat Al-Baqara has ended and 'Al-Emran has begun... Simply wonderful! I actually love praying in the Masjid's garden, they open it for prayers during Ramadan only and Eid. Just when you think the weather is getting a little hot, Allah sends a quiet cold breeze to help us through...
Subhan Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful...
اللهم إنك عفو تحب العفو فعفو عنا

What shape is your God box?

2007-09-25T12:49:00.000+12:00

This time last year we spent a month in a small lakeside town a few miles south of Kathmandu. It was a quiet town but like most quiet towns, Pokhara had its share of drama. The most significant, during our stay, concerned several young Hindu girls who had to be taken to the local hospital after swooning and fainting as the result of an intense religious experience during a school retreat.

Nothing unusual about that, you might say, and you'd be right.

Young girls have been fainting and swooning for just about as long as God has been revealing Him/Herself to mankind. My point is that no matter what our cultural background or social world view is, if we are genuinely looking for God, He will reveal Himself to us, no matter in what context we interpret or perceive Him.

This has certainly been my experience in sharing Ramadan with my Muslim brothers and sisters this year. To my delight I've discovered God where I least expected to find him.

A friend who worked as a radio broadcaster in the days when it was call "The Wireless" said that radio is its own wardrobe mistress. By this he meant that because the medium was non visual, each listener was forced to imagine for themselves how each of the characters looked, thereby making each character unique to each listener.

If this is so, then why couldn't the same parallel be used to describe God, whom many of us have experienced, but none of us has seen.

Could it be that we simply interpret God as either Christian, Jewish Muslim etc according to our own cultural predisposition?

David du Plessis, a respected Pentecostal world leader and advisor to Pope John Paul II's Ecumenical Council in the 1980s was sent to Madgegoria to report on the sighting by several young children of the Virgin Mary.

In his report David said that whilst he personally had no paradigm to understand or interpret their religious experience in the terms they used, he had no doubt whatsoever that they had all had an intense personal encounter with the Living God, and quoted Jesus' own words

"By their fruits shall you know them".

Perhaps God is more interested in the fact that we respond to His initiative rather than the shape of the box we put Him in.

Pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomatoes.

2007-09-21T11:41:00.000+12:00

Today is the end of the first week of Ramadan, and if there's one thing I learned so far, it's that Islam is a very uncluttered religious code.

Simply expressed there is one God, the God of Abraham, Isac and Jacob (same as Christianity and Judaism), Mohamed is/was His prophet and the the Muslim (believers) job is simply to worship Allah and live according to His word.

No complicated dogma, formula or theological premises, just 'Trust and Obey, as the old Christian Evangelical Hymn says.

And in it's simplicity there is beauty.

Like Christianity, Islam has made a major contribution to architecture, literature, art and astronomy and these are perhaps the world's best guarded secrets. The absolute breathtaking splendor of Khiva, Bukhara, Samarqand and Tashkent, which we were privileged to visit last year, are the equal of the ancient wonders of Egypt or the majesty of Rome, but unspoilt by commercial exploitation or physical decay. No ruins!

And all build & kept in perfect repair, simply to glorify God.

As I see it, our faiths are a bit like a hamburger, actually.

When you remove all the pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomato, what's left is the bun and the pattie: and no matter what else you add, unless you have the bun and the pattie, you don't have a hamburger!

From where I stand today, the essence of our shared belief is God, and His word, the bun and the pattie of each of our faiths.

Anything else is just pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion and tomatoes.

Seek first the Kingdom of God

2007-09-20T09:06:00.000+12:00

This year I'm sharing a spiritual journey along with more than a billion others, as together we pray and fast for the Muslim month of Ramadan, the 9th month in the Islamic calendar.

Like Advent, Ramadan is a time of introspection. A time to focus on myself and God and my relationship with Him.

To check my progress on the plan He has for my life, and to put this relationship FIRST, above all other demands that my worldly life style would place as distractions from that purpose: the many distractions that, unless I stop and examine then, I scarcely realise have crowded Him out.

And this takes some doing!

Esentially the demands of Ramadan are simple, fasting during daylight hours, observing works of mercy and praying 5 times each day. Apart from the fasting, pretty basic Religion 101 stuff.

However, changing your daily routine to to make sure this actually happens requires planning and commitment.

It means,for example; cooking breakfast (ready to be heated next morning) before I go to bed, making sure my alarm is set so I wake in time to pray and eat before sun rise, planing my morning prayer BEFORE baby arrives at 7:00am, ordering daily activities in order to fit in other prayer & study times and watching I don't break my fast accidentally, like licking the spoon or tasting babies vegetables, making sure I have a well balanced evening meal ready for sundown!

Because I don't understand the Arabic prayers I need to plan my prayer regime as well. For me using the Christian Monastic Office is the easiest. The 5 daily set prayers, psalms, reading and intercessions seems to fit well. But it all takes forethought.

And most of all, time to reflect and listen to what God is saying to me.

All things we should all do every day: but how easliy and subtly life helps us put God on the back burner.

Ramadan Kareem?

2007-09-14T19:28:00.000+12:00

Ramadan Kareem? - Pretty much Happy Ramadan in Arabic. It's a traditional greeting and extends a wish that the person you are addressing will feel happy & strengthened by their fast.

Well this has been my first day of my first Ramadan and I have been privilege to share it with a small on-line group who have keep in touch with what they have been doing, and why. So it's been a great vantage point and enabled me to share in it from the inside, so as to speak.

The day begins with early morning prayer and a hefty breakfast before sunrise. As the Quran requires that you neither eat nor drink between sun rise and sun set it's important to get the blood sugar off to a good start and fuel up for the long day ahead.

Then it's pretty much business as usual till sunset.

The day is peppered with occasions of prayer. There are the 5 daily prayer times (Salah) which are formal prayers said in the home, or where ever, and there are spontaneous (D'ua) petitions and alms giving or Zakah.

Breaking of the fast happens at sun set when the whole community gather at the mosque (masjid) for evening prayers (Isha) and a communal meal called Iftar.

This is as much a social as a spiritual occasion with feasting and praying going on till late.

What struck me was the sense of excitement (passion even) with which everyone embraced a month which would demand so much of them physically and emotionally, but which they wouldn't miss for the world. Their expectations of personal renewal are high. Many even make lists of things they want to achieve (spiritually & emotionally) during Ramadan. I even read on the BBC web site that people from the remote hill provinces in Kashmir have moved into more populated areas just to be involved.

I'm no stranger to religious festivals, meetings etc but I've never struck such a sense of excitement or such a ready willingness to embrace personal hardship

. . . . . . just for the love of God.

Autumn is a time to make ready

2007-09-10T19:04:00.000+12:00

It's autumn in Albania now and our friends are working long hours to bring in the last of the summer crops and prepare for the cold winter days ahead.

Hay stacks are being covered, tobacco leaves and the last of the seasons capsicums have been cut and hung out to dry on the wire fences, fermenting grapes distilled into Raki and figs, apples, summer fruit & vegetables preserved.

Autumn is a very busy time.

Village men make sure the animal barns are warm and dry then scour the hillsides with their donkeys in search of fire wood so the family can cook and keep warm.

It's a very different picture from the one we are used to in an industrialized world where summer days are carefree holiday times. In an agricultural economy summer & autumn are times when we need to think ahead and work hard to be ready for the dormant winter months when work will no longer be possible.

I was reminded of this scene today by friends with whom I am sharing this internal voyage on-line. It's an inter-faith experience focusing on Ramadan, the 9th month of the Islamic calendar and has a harvest time theme unlike Lent, which is full of spring images.

The autumnal timing of Ramadan is in many ways more like Advent and this, mixed with my memories of Albania, provides a strong imagery for my own internal voyage, my viaje interior. Like the wise virgins who needed to make sure they had enough oil for their lamps to last till the bridegroom arrived, we must work now, in the autumn, to prepare our hearts and order our lives so that we too will be ready for Him.

I'll continue to blog my journey over these next few weeks, but if you wish to join us you can use this link.You can share in the reflections by recording your comments, if you wish, or just slip in & out anonymously and unnoticed. Either way you'd be very welcome.

Asalam Alayakom (Peace be with you)

Being in Unity

2007-09-09T13:28:00.000+12:00

As someone who was at the forefront of the ecumenical movement in New Zealand for almost 20 years, one of my guiding scripture was Psalm 133 in which the Psalmist clearly says that God's blessing of eternal life is for those who dwell in unity.

This year. as part of my own personal pilgrimage, I am making an on-line inter-faith journey through the month of Ramadan. It's an informal format, responsibility for providing the reflective input lies with fellow blogger Yosra and these reflections, along with remarks and comments from readers, like myself, create a virtual support group format.

But what, you might well ask, would a Christian have in common with a Muslim?

Well, apart from cultural differences, quite a lot actually. Obviously our understanding of the Trinity and therefore the Divinity of Jesus are areas where we differ but hay, Judaism shares those same concerns about us too, and many Christians would identify quite strongly with Israel.

Otherwise all three monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism & Islam) would see them selves in unity on all other important issues and this is supported by ongoing dialogue at the highest level.

That is, we all believe in the one God and we all share the same (Hebrew) Scriptures.

But more importantly, at grass roots level, we all love God and want to deepen our relationship with Him and with one another.

. . . . and that's a lot to share in common.

Building a new identity

2007-09-07T10:36:00.000+12:00

For many years I has a poster on my study wall. It showed a rag doll caught between the huge wooden rollers of an old fashioned washing mangle Beneath it the caption read,

'The truth will set you free, but first, it will make you miserable!'

The image was a great sauce of consolation and hope to me as I struggled to get my life together back then and the rag doll and I shared many adventures over the years.

I'd all but forgotten her, and her depressingly jaundiced view of life, till today as I tried out day one of living outside my old identity. I knew she was right, and that truth was the one thing that would allow me to move on, but what is truth and do we really have to do the misery bit again?

Afraid so John . . . . .

Alright then, where do we start? What's here beneath the ego that I Can use? Let's see, hmmmm transparency, haven't seen that in a while . . . (last used 10 September 1992.)

OK, lets start rebuilding with that. At least we'll all be able to see what's going on then.

Becoming who I already am

2007-09-06T21:23:00.000+12:00

I closed my past posting by saying,

"Maybe the next big journey should be the one the Spanish call un Viaje Interior, a journey inside. The road least traveled, the spiritual voyage of faith we are invited to undertake each Lent that leads to the discovery of God within."

Well it's not lent, but it is Ramadan . . . so I decided to follow my own counsel. It was wonderful. Just me and God, then . . .

"To be what you want to be, you must give up being what you are.Yusef Islam (formaly Cat Stevens . . . .

"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are," Max DePree.

And the words of Jesus, 'If you want to find your life, you must lose it.'

Party Pooppers!

So.

What do I want to be?

The words bounced like thunder around the mountains of my mind. Despite all the self awareness courses I had been on I had no idea, in that moment, what I wanted to be, or what I needed to stop being in order to become it. All I wanted was some warm fuzzy time with God. To give him the benefit of my undivided attention for a while. Is that too much to ask God?

Like it or not, my viaje interior has started to kick in - and I didn't like it.

Was there anything holding me back? I searched my mind. My first thought was of the memory of my youngest daughter who died of natural causes just 4 days before her 20th birthday. She is in my every thought, still, so was God going to ask me to leave her memory behind as I moved on?

I went to sleep heavy hearted.

Then out of the blue this morning He showed me a burning bush. He began to show me how, in returning to my old life here in NZ, I had tried to pick up the mantle of my old reputation - and this was chaining me to a past which, though very rewarding, was none the less, past.

To move on all I needed to stop being was 'Mr Got it all together'. Simple!

For the first time I felt myself peeping under the covers of my own ego

But now I'm 'Mr Got it all, but not sure how to put it together. Oh well, back to the viaje. Maybe I should throw in a little fasting this time, just to make sure!

un Viaje Interior

2007-08-30T21:40:00.000+12:00

I can't remember the exact date it happened, but it was some time in July 1995 that we decided to take an adult 'Gap Year.' To abandon our orderly timetabled lifestyle and celebrate millennium year with a full 12 months traveling.

An overland Odyssey of discovery through south east Asia, the sub continent, the middle east and finally, wintering over somewhere on the west coast of Ireland in a small fishing village: any fishing village.

Because an Odyssey is not something you can timetable very precisely, planning gave way to spontaneity and we began to see our lives in small rather than large bytes of time. A day here, a week or two there, several weeks to make our way down from Istanbul to Jerusalem then, sometime in the Autumn, to head for Ireland, etc. etc. We had never lived like this before. It was vaguely irresponsible but very exciting.

Then, as is the way with Odysseys, one year rolled over in to two, two became four and then, before we knew it, seven years had elapsed and our life style had become permanently transitory, spontaneous and subject to sudden change. Over the course of those seven years we lived at 9 different addresses in four different countries, spent 18 months traveling and visited over 50 different nations.

The exception had become the rule and short term ruled us absolutely.

Now that we have decided to re settle in New Zealand, part of us feels we should revert to our previously well ordered long term outlook on life, like everyone else, while the rest of us wonders if we can - or even want to anymore?

Maybe the next big journey should be the one the Spanish call un Viaje Interior, a journey inside. The road least traveled, the spiritual voyage of faith we are invited to undertake each Lent that leads to the discovery of God within.

Now thats a journey that required flexibility, an openness to radical change and a readiness to embrace the unknown!

Bush warns of dangers in withdrawing from Iraq

2007-08-29T15:03:00.000+12:00

Because of the very remote areas we travelled through last year we were almost totally cut off from international news for almost seven months. For many of us this meant going cold turkey from something we had fed on daily (even hourly) almost all our lives. So on the rear occasions when a CNN or a BBC connection was available, we sat transfixed around the TV to scare and horrify our selves once more.

However, back now in a western civilisation, the international soap opera called World News, invades and bombards us from every angle. So much so that its easy to suffer from News Fatigue. To just mentally skim the headline without giving a second thought for the human story that always lies beneath.

This week it's the 'will we won't we pull out of Iraq and if so, when' episode. Beneath all the political pros and cons I discovered this letter. It was written by an Iraqi woman called Shahla who escaped from Baghdad in 2003 to live & study in Boston. Her letter was published in the National Catholic Reporter and is well worth reading.

Use this link to read her letter.

Living in the past

2007-08-16T23:04:00.000+12:00

The neatly sewn monogram on her yellow Polo Shirt announced to me, and any one else who cared to look, that she was Kylie, Assistant Manager at the local swimming complex. It was my first visit.

'Senior please Kylie', I said, - almost proud of the fact I'd reached that magic age where every thing's half price again. 'Oh yes', she questioned? 'My dad looks way older than you, and he's only 56! 'Mind you', she added, he is 50 kg over weight, a couch potato, and wouldn't come to the pool if his life depended on it.' 'Well, perhaps it might,' I replied with a smile as I ratted through the change in my jeans pocket for the $3.50 cost of a senior entrance. We're now the chattiest of friends, but her comments made me wonder, what constitutes old, and how come it doesn't always equate to age?

When I was first married I was 22 (yes, really) I was very much the trendy young man about town: 'Avengers' style 3 piece hand tailored suites, winkle picker shoes, a tailored 'car-coat' and always a colored silk handkerchief in my jacket pocket. My musical tastes were current. I went to all the right parties and to use the urban jargon of the day, I was very much 'in the grove!'

Ten years and 5 children later I found it impossible to button the suit jacket, I'd long since discarded the waist coat, the silk handkerchief had been mangled in the wash and the winkle pickers were past their best. We occasionally still got together for a 60's revival evening and a chat about how great it was back then, but the 2am feed for the little one meant the evenings finished early and the 'grove' I so proudly once occupied was now beginning to look more like a grave.

Like so many of our generation, we had built a demographic wall around our fading youth, shut ourselves off from outside stimulation and were struggling to rise our children in post war cultural vaccum which wasn't appropriate for the 80's and which only increased the hight of the wall. I knew very well where Kiley's dad was: lost for ever in the timeless 60's with no hope of ever being found.

Yes, they were 'good old days,' they always will be, but they're past. You can't live there and the only difference between a grove and a grave is the depth.

Getting in touch with Charlie

2007-08-16T17:29:00.001+12:00

'Why do you blog', a friend asked me yesterday. We were talking about creating a web presence for him and, so naturally, he wanted to know what blogging was all about.

I've been blogging regularly now for nearly 5 years (publicly and privately) and for almost 20 years, journaling as well, so coming up with an answer wasn't too hard.

'Well'. I said, 'I think the best way to explain it is to tell you a story. It's about a man called Edgar Bergan. Edger is probably best known as the father of the actress Candice Bergan, but in the 1930-40's he hosted one of the most popular radio shows in America. It was a very simply format. Edgar was a ventriloquist and the program was just him dialogging with his dummy, a character he called Charlie McCarthy.

Well, it seems that one day, one of the shows writers called to Edgar's hotel room to deliver the script for that evenings show. As he was about to knock on the door, he overheard Edgar sharing his deepest personal problems with someone else who was in the room with him. Being sensitive to the moment, the script writer waited outside for a convenient moment to enter. When Edgar had finished his story, the writer heard the other person in the room reply. To his astonishment, Edgar's counselor was none other than Charlie, his ventriloquist dummy. When all the talking was over the writer knocked, entered and delivered the script. 'It's none of my business Mr Bergan', said the writer, 'but how come you took counsel from Charlie? He's just a wooden dummy, actually Edger - he's you.'

'I know,' said Bergan, 'I know, but when ever Charlie speaks to me, I never know what he is going to say, and often what he does say astounds me with it's brilliance.'

You see, I said to my friend, it's like that when I write. It helps me get in touch with the Charlie that's in all of us. With out getting too spiritual, I said, It's a wisdom and a perspective God plants within each of us. Some people call it 'free writing,' just starting off and seeing where it leads. For me, blogging's the best way to unlock that wisdom both for myself and others. It helps clarify my thinking, it puts me in touch with my higher self so I can see a fresh perspective on my own life,

but best of all -

. . . . . it's cheaper than therapy!

Say aaah

2007-08-09T18:19:00.000+12:00

You know, it's what the doctor makes you say when you have a mouth full of finger and wooden spatula!

But did you know that the aaah sound has much more profound, even spiritual connotations, at least according to Dr Wayne W Dyer, well known author of such 'self help' books as 'Your Erroneous Zones', 'Pulling Your Own Strings' and the one I'm currently reading, 'Manifest your Destiny'

According to the good doctor, it's the one sound that is common to God, no matter what you call him: Yahweh, Buddha, Allah, 'Krishah, Brama, Siddah, etc. etc., all stem from the aaah sound.

It's also the cry of a new born baby as it draws it's first breath, and is the only sound humans can make effortessly by simply breathing out, and without moving the lips, tongue, jaw or teeth.

According to Dr Wayne aaah is not only the sound of creation, but it also happens to be the sound of joy and delight Aaah, the sound that accompanies the act of procreation, (think about it), the primary vowel sound and the first phonetic letter of the alphabet!

Interstingly in Hebrew, as you may know, the vowels are not written into the word but left for the reader to fill in as the words are spoken out. However, as it is forbidden in Jewish culture to speak the name of God, the name of Yahweh (written yhwh) is simply said as an exhaled breath, aaah!, implying that God is as essential to life as breathing and as prayer itself.

This is the sound we need to make to connect with God, says Dyer, ideally as a mantra and ideally at dawn!

Hhmmm, can't be too haaard, I'll let you know how I get on!

Will the real me stand up please,

2007-08-04T23:46:00.000+12:00

I see it happening in my 10 month old granddaughter, Sujin. The development of an individual personality. A set of cultural practices and norms she is taking onboard that will equip her socially as she grows toward adulthood. Like a jigsaw that is slowly coming together; her mothers smile, her father's quiet gentleness, her own growing sense of self awareness and importance with in the family, etc,etc.When she was born hers was a world that's borders were largely closed to us. At first we couldn't laugh together or communicate joy or sadness or personal need, or anything. She was Gods creation, born for eternity, but like a tourist from another planet who knew nothing of our culture or our ways.

I know from our own recent travels through Central Asia and across the Tibetan Plateau how totally out of it you can feel. You don't know the language, you have no idea what food to eat. You don't know the social norms and you can't even find your way to the bathroom! Its a feeling of total dependency and helplessness. Like that of a baby. And yet to survive, you need to build your own persona, a social identiikit, a construct through which you can relate to the world around you, even though your visit there may be only for a limited time. So it was for us as travelers, and If you have any belied in life after death, so it is for each one of us on planet earth. We are born with a unique (eternal) and individual personality onto which we must weld one that's more temporal and useful for the culture in which we must survive.

So which is our real (true self) identity?

The one we were born with (and will probably return to when we die), or the one we develop during our comparatively short time here? The identity which for want of a better term we call our ego, or by comparison, false self.

It's a question I have been struggling with over the past several months as I've cared for Sujin and observed this process unfolding before me. And its a question a fellow blogger from Stockholm has mentioned to me only to day. Talking of this process in her own life she says, 'It is an ongoing struggle of becoming more and more of our true selves'.

Though it's a blinding revelation to me this concept of true self / false self is not a discovery I can claim as unique. As I Google the phrase I see that religious and philosophical scholars have been using the term and discussing this paradox for years. So who am I to try to clarify the issue.

For me these are important considerations though as I work through the personal issues of my new lifestyle. So for myself, and possibly my fellow blogger, it's more a question of how to hold both of these identities, the true and the false self in some sort of healthy tension. How to know our real eternal value as a child of God/Allah/Yahweh with out believing too much, the publicity of our own burgeouning ego.

And I used to think life would become less complicated the older I became!

More to Islam than an Arab pot of gold

2007-07-31T15:07:00.000+12:00

One of the biggest debates in New Zealand at the moment, if not the biggest, centers around the possible sale of the Auckland International Airport. In recent days a very generous take over offer has been received from Dubai Aerospace Enterprises for $NZ 2.6 billion. The rationale in recommending shareholders reject the offer would, it seems, be based not so much on economic or commercial considerations as the price offered is considered a generous one, as on political expediencies and prejudice.

In an interview with local media today, visiting British MP George Galloway simply poses the question, 'why sell to anyone?' I think his reasoning makes good sense and also challenges us to look closely at what may be a growing sense of Islamophobia on our part.

The link below is to a short video recording of his intweview with the NZ Dominion Post News Paper this morning. It's well worth the 3-4 minutes it will take to listen to it.

>>George Galloway discusses Islam in NZ

The Meldrew Factor

2007-07-28T23:18:00.000+12:00

I think there's a bit of the Meldrew in all of us, well in me anyway. It's probably why I identify so easily with his character in the TV series One Foot in the Grave.

For those of you who need me to 'draw you a picture' us Meldrews' are frustrated and discontented with society. We're between 40 and 60,we're fed-up with politics, and the government in general. We aren't very positive about the future, and have particular worries about public services. Another fear is our financial future, as pensions funds seem to be dwindling. We're sick of all the talk about global warming, we're tired of reality television and we're fed up with watching sanitized news broadcasts.

Oh, you too? Well welcome to the club!

The Transatlantic Cultural Gap

2007-07-20T14:22:00.001+12:00

I suppose our nearest 'brush' with the UK Celebrity Culture was the fact that we lived just a few doors from where the once famous Spice Girl, Posh, and the now famous Victoria Beckham used to live

Despite her mega stardom in the UK ,it seems her mana failed to follower her across the Atlantic where her promotional Reality TV special 'Victoria Beckham comes to America was described by the critic from the New York Post as; 'an orgy of self-indulgence so out of whack with, er, reality. Going on (in love of course) she described Mrs Beckham as "relentlessly self-promoting" and "vapid and condescending" The LA Times was more sympathetic, saying only of her 60 minute TV Show that well, she 'got her 15 minute of fame' Which ever way you look at it, it seems the program did not find favour with the Yanks.

On a kinder note, I think our old neighbour just misjudged the enormous cultural gap that exists between the two countries. Despite speaking the same language and sharing a similar historical perspective, what works in one culture does not automatically translate to the other.

As Winston Churchill said of Anglo/US. relationships, 'two great nations separated by one common language'.

Ships that pass in the night

2007-07-17T22:24:00.000+12:00

In former times she would have been called a 'White Russian', a political opponent of the Bolshevik revolution. Her father almost certainly was. He escaped with his family to America on forged documents in the days after the Second World War, and today, nearly 70 years later that heritage still defines her.

'I came here to New Zealand nearly 35 years ago' she said, as she handed me a coffee: her strong northern European accent still clearly discernible 'It's black with sugar', 'I don't buy milk.' 'Once my family's background became known to the FBI, life there was just impossible. There could be no future for us any more. But here, no body knows. Here, nobody cares'. Her words hung there suspended in the cold morning air.

We'd met just a few minutes earlier. She had walked up her drive to collect the morning paper, right where my car had stalled a moment before following an unsuccessful crash start. 'You'll need the double A service man.' she said, ' here, have a read of the paper while I go down to the house and call him for you. You can use my membership, they'll never know she assured me' Thanks, I said, and she vanished back into the mist from which she had just mysteriously appeared.

She returned and we waited there, together in the early morning mist, waiting for the 'double a' serviceman as she called him. Standing there looking out over the harbor, sipping our coffees, discussing the world news headlines and exchanging our life stories - like people who had known each other for years.

Then just as quickly as we met, she melted back into the morning mist and, thanks to the double a man, I was able to continue on my journey, and she hers.

Things I've learned from being a Granddad

2007-07-13T15:18:00.000+12:00

Read books that you enjoy...

Do whatever you want whenever you want...

Play with simple things...

Look for affection when you need it...

Get serious once in a while...

Forget about diets...

Show some affection

Get angry once in a while...

Change your look...

Be happy, above all,
regardless what your challenges may be.

Turning back the clock - pt II

2007-07-12T22:11:00.000+12:00

I discovered this French song a few months ago. Its author Tina Arina, says of it, "This is not a political song and it’s not about a political subject. It’s a metaphor - like a poem. It’s a woman saying ... I was once beautiful and now I’m in ruins, I’m destroyed."

Je m'appelle Baghdad
I have lived so happily in my palaces of black gold and precious stones.
The Tigris flowed, on crystal paved roads a thousand Caliphs jostled to dance with me.
They called me the city full of grace, God how time goes by.
They called me the capital of enlightenment, God now everything is lost.

My name is Baghdad and I have fallen under the fire of armored tanks
My name is Baghdad, disfigured princess.

Shehaeazad, has forgotten me, has forgotten me.

I live in my land like a poor beggar, under the bulldozer the spirits haunt me.
I mourn my ravaged beauty over the smoldering stones,
It's my soul they are assassinating.

They called me the capital of enlightenment, God now everything is lost.
My tales of a thousand and one nights no longer interests anyone,
they have destroyed everything.

My name is Baghdad and I have fallen under the fire of armored tanks.
My name is Baghdad, disfigured princess.
Sheherazad, has forgotten me, has forgotten me.

Tina Arina- 2006

For those of us in mid-life (like me) this song also speaks about the temptation to try and turn back the clock. About yearnng, in vain, for a past that, though glorious, no longer exists rather than learning to delight in the present, that is with us forever?'

In many ways its the same dilemma hinted at in my last blog.

Turning back the clock

2007-07-10T14:36:00.000+12:00

Because of the winter weather I've had a bit more time on my hands than usual. Youjae (babies dad) is a painter and if the temperature falls too low the paint won't key, and if it's too damp, it won't dry. The last two weeks have been a combination of both factors, so he's become an honorary Grandparent and taken over much of Sujins routine. This leaves me free to, well - free, which as you will see from my last few postings, has given me time to catch up on world news.

Perhaps the most interesting story I've unearthed this week, as it was not a lead story anywhere, concerned Pope Benedict. As you may recall he managed, single handed to put the Church off-side with the entire Muslim world very early in his pontificate. He did however, God bless him, have the grace to
apologise (saying he was misunderstood) but this week, as he left his Vatican office for a two week summer holiday in the Italian mountains, he dropped another series of clangers. These however were much better than the Muslim one. In one or two short statements he managed to estrange himself from Catholics, Protestants, the Jewish community and 'liberal Catholic feminists' (I use the term in jest): Not bad for a weeks work.

Here's how it happened. Catholics, it seems, were upset by his approving, against the advice of his own Bishops, a return to the Latin (Tridentine Rite) mass, Protestants by him issuing a statement that Jesus Christ came not to save all, (the post Vatican II belief of the church) but simply, many, the pre 1960's position that only Catholics were saved, and Jews by the attitude the Good Friday Tridentine liturgy has to their involvement in Jesus death. Catholic women were quick too to notice the newly revised Roman Missal banning attributing any feminine characteristics/qualities to God either in the liturgy or in the choice of hymns.

Rolling back the clock on the Churches ecumenical and interfaith commitments is one thing, but the question in my mind is this. Will modern day First World Catholics, follow him back to model of church that denied their involvement as anything more than simply a passive audience to something set in a cultural climate of the 1940.s - 50's, or will this be the crack that will eventually split the dam?

As I heard it put earlier this week, 'nothing we can do will ever change the past, but everything we do will effect the future.

Help - we've been robbed officer!

2007-07-06T18:41:00.000+12:00

Wintertime, being as it is, means most of the family have gone north to soak up the summer sun leaving me (Home alone,again) to keep an eye on things.

So yesterday I decided to look in on Gina & Martins ailing Peace Lilly. Well, didn't I managed to set the burglar alarm off as I went in, you wouldn't believe the noise! I fully expected to be set upon by fierce neighbors wielding large sticks, or at least the local Khandallah policemen, truncheon in hand, flailing his way toward the door, but no। Just, 'turn that bloody noise down will ya'!!!!

Oh well, at least neighborhood watch is a good idea in principle!

What about all the other Alan Johnstons?

2007-07-06T08:08:00.001+12:00

BBC journalist, Alan Johnston is free from his 114 days of cruel captivity in Gaza and like the rest of the world, I rejoice in his long awaited release. However, in our shared euphoria, let's not forget there are still nearly 6 million stateless Palestinian men and women who, like A;an Johnston, are forced to live in equally cruel captivity. They are chained to poverty in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt or imprisoned behind the impenetrable walls of Gaza or the West bank.

Though some limited EU funding has now been released, Gaza's economic viability is still crippled by these viscous sanctions, their farm lands are denied adequate water for irrigation and their access to domestic sewage treatment is restricted to less than 80% of their need। Their only external border, at Rafah, is still closed for days, sometimes weeks on end, even to those requiring medical treatment in Egypt or returning to burry their dead in Gaza।

These are civilians entrapped in a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions, no one denies this, least of all Alan who risked his freedom and committed his life to reporting it. Yet the world watches and the world says nothing.

Alan Johnston was lucky. He not only got out of captivity, he got out of Gaza. Something those who are forced to live there can only dream of.

Global Terrorism, is there a Christian response?

2007-07-03T21:44:00.000+12:00

Until now, my stereotypical 'terrorist' has been someone on the outer fringes of our 'western society', working class, unemployed and probably poorly educated. However with recent events in London and Glasgow it seems that I need to redefine my paradigm to include,
professional, well educated - and probably everything in between as well.

So, has this Eastern (Muslim) abhorrence of everything Western (Christian) all just happened overnight? A result perhaps of 911 or the Iraq war, or is it's source further back in history? I don't pretend to know the answers, but it seems to me that Christian / Muslim tensions have been brewing for the last thousand years or so. Since well before Richard the Lionheart trundled off to the Crusades to re capture Jerusalem from the Infidels - as romanticized by Cicil B DeMilne and others.

Sir Steven Runciman, the leading western historian of the crusades for much of the 20th century, ended his history with a resounding condemnation:

"High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed.. the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".

Was Runciman right? Is terrorism as we know it today simply the fruits of seeds sown during numerous Crusades?

As I say, I don't know the answers but I do know Murphy's law says that what goes round, comes round and as a Christian I know that that there can be no progress in relationships of any sort with out contrition, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation, on both sides।

So, does that leave the reconciliation ball in our court?

Call me cynical if you like

2007-06-29T20:38:00.000+12:00

Don't get me wrong. I genuinely admire Tony Blair and hope that he will make a good envoy for peace in the middle east?

Call me cynical if you like though, but what happens to international oil prices when there is trouble in the middle east? Which two countries control the majority (if not all) of Iraqi oil? What would become of the international arms industry if he succeeded. How would the return of so many thousands of US soldiers impact a sagging US economy and does the West really want peace in the middle east, or is it all just so much political'spin'?

Well, I guess he'll make a much more acceptable envoy than George W, but it's still a little like sending Hitler to advocate for those in the concentration camps. Don't you think?

How precious are the little things we take for granted.

2007-06-26T18:23:00.000+12:00

It's Tuesday। Not usually my day off but Ciara & Youjae are having a family day with baby, so I take the opportunity and head for the country. Avoiding the main highway I trace a back mountain road (we call them hill roads) to the west coast beaches north of Wellington. I stop for a few moments at the roads highest point, 205 meters above the small township of Paekakariki, overlooking Kapiti Island just a few miles off-shore: the winter sun, filtered by high cumulus cloud casts a steely gray huge across the Tasman Sea, making its calm shiny waters mysterious and murky looking.

To my left I can clearly see the rugged outline of the the South Island and to my right, gray sanded west coast beaches stretch endlessly before me until they vanished into the distant nothingness of the horizon। Just looking down from the sheer cliff beneath my feet to the rocky coast immediately below gives me an uneasy churning deep in my stomach. It's been several years since I came this way and as I have forgotten this view more times than I care to remember, so this time I pause a little longer - to enjoy it.

What I don't know at this time is that in an hour or so, my dear aunt, Bea, will tell me of her increasing blindness, and her need to move to more supervised accommodation as her world closes daily around her.

A stark and sudden contrast to the endless vistas I enjoyed from the top of the Paekakariki hill road just a few minutes earlier. I will not forget it now.

He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.

- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Romeo (1.1.162)

a quick succession of busy nothings

2007-06-16T00:13:00.000+12:00

Winter has settled in and made herself at home, the skies remain still, but the temperature has plummeted. I've taken my winter coat from the closet and fear it will remain my constant companion now till at least the end of October.

Last weekend we pruned the rose vine under the pergola, heavily. It was just beginning to blossom when we left seven years ago and has flourish unattended since then: engulfing everything in its path, including the pergola, and the trellis which will need to be replaced.

Sujin is sleeping more now with the colder weather, so our outings are shorter and less frequent. I have taken advantage of this and busied myself indoors with planning and sourcing of trades people and suppliers for the refurbishing of the interior next autumn, Inshallah Meantime we've installed a home ventilisation system which ducts hot air from the roof cavity through the house raising the temperature and dehumidifying the air.

There has been an excellent concert , meals and outings with friend, but between the 'jigs and the reals' “Life, it seems, has become but a quick succession of busy nothings.” and I am counting the days till Anthea's return at the end of July.

Update: - 6th July, the NewLook Rose & Trellis

Don't look now John . .

2007-06-11T15:43:00.000+12:00

. . but it's finally happened. Suburban neurosis has set in! The challenging boundaries offered last year by the Sahara, the Himalayas' and the Serengeti have finally given way, not to soap operas, but only because I don't have a TV, but to vicariously living through diminishing horizons of other peoples blogs, downloaded news podcasts, talking to the baby as though she understood every word and: horror of horrors, writing letters to the editor.

This final stage, acting out, I believe it's called has finally tipped the balance. You see I was encouraged by a lead article in the local news paper, the Dominion Post, exploring issues, still unresolved, on the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, and I felt moved to congratulate the editor. This morning, I find my letter published firmly along side the 'rantings' of one who was definitely not amused by the article. Needless to say, I wrote again, reinforcing my view and now am probably committed to the debate should others decide to buy in.

Oh well, at least it's better than talking to yourself!

Who really calls the shots?

2007-06-04T09:43:00.000+12:00

Three weeks ago I strained a mussel in my shoulder. 'Parents arm', the Physiotherapist called it, from picking up babies! Anyway it was still troubling me at church yesterday, so I decided to invite a little 'divine intervention' and went forward for prayer. "What would you like prayer for John". Father Steve asked. My arm, I thought to myself, but to my surprise I heard myself say. "for someone whose life may be in danger," As he laid his hands on my head to pray I had a very clear image, like a photo in my mind, of a young boy, 7 or 8 years old splashing in the surf of a sun drenched ocean beach. The person I was concerned about did have a little boy, but he was only 2 years old, so I dismissed the incident as a bit of a day dream and went on with rest of my day.

This morning, when I checked my friends blog site guess what was centre page. a photo of a boy, 7 or 8 years old splashing in the surf of a sun drenched beach and a note below it saying life was back to normal, what ever 'normal' is in Gaza!

Often we think of ourselves as puppeteers, masters of our own lives, of our own destiny, but perhaps there's someone behind the scene who really pulls the strings? Thanks be to God.

Missing in action?

2007-06-03T20:10:00.000+12:00

I don't think anyone who knows me would describe me as an emotional person: probably more of the pragmatist. However, over the last several days I've become increasingly anxious, and worried about the safety of someone I've never spoken with, written to or met.

Laila is a fellow blogger. A Palestinian mother with a 2 year old boy, living in Gaza and working as a freelance journalist for the Guardian, Washington Post and Aljazeera. Her blog started 2 years ago with the birth of her son Yousuf , and records (in a non political style) her life as a mother on her own (husband has refugee status in US so can not return to Gaza) living in a country that is under occupation, economically disadvantaged and just downrigh dangerous.

As a professional writer, Laila posts blog entries once, sometimes twice a day, depending on what's happening. Her last blog was posted more than 10 days ago and was written as an Israeli gun ship hovered right over her apartment and took out the next door building which housed a money exchange, raising it to the ground.

I guess she is typical of many 'ordinary citizens' that get caught up in political power games and if killed, would simply be referred to by the media as "collateral damage, militant or refugee". I found it easy,in the past, to remain objective about such human suffering. but it makes a difference if it's someone you know, or think you know.

As a grand parent I simply hope that the world Yousuf and Sujin inherit will have learned to get on with itself and value human rights above power. - Yeah, right!

Another milestone

2007-06-02T20:25:00.001+12:00

At last. It's happened. Sujin is on the move. Crawling! Well, it's more of a backways shuffle, but she's also leaned how to turn around, so she can navigate here way back to where she started, if she wants to - though getting stuck under the couch required some intervention from granddad

Oh . . . . how did I get here?

Hay - Im really getting stuck in here!