Essays
Open Letter from Quakers Australia on Marriage Plebiscite
Read moreThis was posted today as an open response to the Marriage Equality Plebiscite from Quakers Australia:
The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, supports the right of adult couples in loving and committed relationships to marry, regardless of gender. We also support the right of such couples to have their marriages accorded equal recognition and respect under the law of Australia.
Facebook:Disconnect
Read moreI’ve decided to leave Facebook. I’ve two primary reasons: first, I don’t think it’s allowing for the type of connection I want to build and maintain with my friends; second, it is frankly starting to creep me out.
Facebook, on the surface, has been a way to keep tabs on friends spread far across the world and reach back in time to maintain friendships from the past. However, I don’t find that I’m engaging with people in the considered way I need to on order to make these relationships substantive. I often feel I’m peering round the corners of connections as if looking through your living room window across the street. I have friends on Facebook with whom I’ve not communicated directly in a dozen years or more but from whom I receive regular updates on the state of their health and families, their travels, work, and major life decisions. Likewise, when I sporadically share something on Facebook, I often am either bringing out something very deep from my life in a passing way or making a comment on a specific situation that might not translate well to social media. In both cases, I’m sending or receiving a partial picture of life that isn’t making that essential connection in the way that I want or need with my friends—and I am feeling the lack of that in the process.
The homosexuals aren't coming for your children
Read moreThis morning I received an email from Lyle Shelton, Managing Director of The Australian Christian Lobby. I have neither met Mr Shelton nor communicated with him in any way, yet he saw fit to send an email encouraging me, as a ‘‘Church Leader" to ‘‘activate’’ in response to the postal plebiscite on marriage equality. Mr Shelton did not contact me previously about aid for refugees fleeing to Australia from conflicts abroad; he did not contact me about the need for interfaith dialogue in a pluralistic society; he did not even contact me last week about an appropriate faith response to the homeless encampment in Martin Place. Mr Shelton has reached out, for the first time, about an issue he assumes must be the primary point of agreement that I, as a Quaker, have with the general community of Christians in Australia (namely that a sizable portion of Australian residents are less deserving of a given set of rights than ‘‘us’’).
Mother's Day Without
Read moreThis has been a year of firsts which, inevitably after someone’s death, follows a year of lasts. This is the first mother’s day without my mother. The picture above is, I think, the last picture we had together. It was on a walk a few days before I returned to Australia in late April last year. By this time today in May, Mom was back in hospital with a recurrent infection. We had several walks like this in the time we had last April. On this one or another, we sat on a bench and she said that she was okay if she had to go—that she had lived a good life and was content with whatever was to come. I’m content too; I dearly miss her, but in some ways one can’t argue the point of contentment with a dying person. We bring who we are to this life and, if given that opportunity in our passing, we have first opinion in the matter as we go. I can try to rationalise a peace right now by considering how mom was going and the likelihood that, had she lived till now, she would probably be very ill, that her quality of life would be poor, etc. But, that’s almost beside the point. She wasn’t expressing contentment about dying just as an escape from pain; she was content because I think she genuinely felt she had a good life and was fulfilled in it. She said, of course, she wished she had more time but that would be the wish of anyone living a contented life. I’m just thankful she had the time and opportunity to express this as we transitioned through our lasts and firsts.
Remembering a Life of Joy
Read moreMy mother passed away last week; I spoke at her funeral on Monday. When I began to write the words I would say, it was my intention to make a eulogy. However, I need someone to write to so rather than speak of her, I wrote to her in a letter. I placed a copy of this in her casket and read it at the funeral service.
Where are we again?
Read moreI’ve had several conversations in the past months with Australians whose families have been here for generations as well as more recent immigrants. I’m noting that Australia, and this is really generalising, does not offer a strong sense of common cultural identity. There just isn’t a critical mass of shared history, art, language and literature that acts as an underlying core for people to hold. In contrast to, say the UK, which can look back at a thousand years of ‘place’; regardless of who people are or where they come from they can have some sense of place in where they have arrived. This just isn’t apparent in Australia; the Aboriginal past is so completely wiped from the culture that even Aboriginal people struggle to grasp it—so that’s not a viable thread (and would not really be for the majority of people living here anyway). The Colonial history doesn’t offer much in the way of a positive underpinning to society either. I sense that, for the majority of white Australia, there is this general unease over one’s identity. It’s as if there is a projected form over the envelope of who they are that doesn’t quite fit.