Much has been written recently about the renewed appeal of extreme political doctrines in Western liberal democracies, including Australia. It may be that we are now a sufficient distance from the end of the Second World War (1945) and the Cold War (1991) for a kind of amnesia to take effect.

As a high school student in the 1970's, I was only too well aware of the lessons learnt from the last great conflagration, particularly the defeat of fascism. There was also the horror of the Holocaust, which proceeded almost clinically from Nazi ideology.

The Cold War highlighted that other extreme - this time on the left - communism, or at least, it's application. While some folks in democracies flirted with Soviet or Maoist Communism, the majority of people did not think kindly of a system which enslaved its people (in all manner of ways), was authoritarian and frankly, incompetent.

My advice to young people who may, for very good reasons, be disillusioned with liberal democracy, is to go back to very recent history and read the accounts of good people trapped in these bad systems, the stories about imprisonment, the massacres, forced starvations, threadbare existences, hopelessness and so forth.

Fascism and communism are pernicious ideologies propounded by fanatical ideologues, none of whom should be running a country. Human life comes second to whatever the 'plan' is. Better to focus on reforming the system we have, not return to a very dark past.

 Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast

keep warm this small hot naked star

fallen to my arms. (Rest…

you who have had so far

to come.) Now nearness satisfies

the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies

whose vigor hurled

a universe. He sleeps

whose eyelids have not closed before.

 

His breath (so slight it seems

no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps

to sprout a world.

Charmed by dove’s voices, the whisper of straw,

he dreams,

hearing no music from his other spheres.

Breath, mouth, ears, eyes

he is curtailed

who overflowed all skies,

all years.

Older than eternity, now he

is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed

to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,

blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,

brought to this birth

for me to be new-born,

and for him to see me mended

I must see him torn.

Luci Shaw

The poet enters the imagination of Mary, mother of Jesus. She reflects upon the miracle of her pregnancy, the amazing fact of God in her womb. Yet the poem ends with the understanding of where it will all end - 'for him to see me mended/I must see him torn.'

Every four years it comes around, a tournament that is impossible to ignore, even if you are not a sports fan of any ilk. I speak of the 2026 football World Cup, held, on this occasion, in North America.

Australia is back for the 7th time and for the 6th time in a row. We are podded with the United States (one of the hosts), Türkiye and Paraguay, any one of which can beat each other. There is no obvious top-seeded team in this group, which makes picking winners very tricky. You would have to give the Americans some home-ground advantage I suppose, though getting out of the group stage is easier than usual, with the top two teams progressing. Eight teams who perform best in third place spot will also go to the round of 32. That is a generous path to progression indeed.

The Socceroos, therefore, have a decent opportunity to progress. The matter is entirely in their hands. A timid, defensive-minded posture will be a quick path to elimination. Sure, we don't have quite the quality of our opponents, but we have something else - call it what you will - the shirt, Australian pride, a tough-minded refusal to quit, some other x factor.

For my money the Turks will be the toughest match. We face them first up. A draw will, in many respects, be a win, in this group.

When I was in Thailand with Ann in December last, I sought out a cheap, digital bedside clock with a backlight. I turn my phone off in evening and like to know the time when I wake during the night. I thought I'd found the perfect clock at Mr DYI, one entirely fit-for-purpose. Alas, a few weeks later, back in Hazelbrook, it gave up the ghost.

Since then I have tried to find another like it - there are many similar examples about - but the whole process, from January until the present, has been a fiasco. I have bought and returned at least three clocks that didn't work out of the box, another that stopped within a few days and currently have a wretchedly poor performer next to my bed. It is so fragile that if I pick it up, the digital display fades under the strain. If you hit the backlight switch, it collapses entirely and has to be reset.

I don't know why it is so hard to find something that works and keeps working. I have another on order but we are close to being outside the postal range for delivery. Perhaps it will never arrive. Am I fated never to own another?

Today is Mothers Day in Australia. People are busy gathering in families and catching up, all in honour of the mothers of our nation. Yesterday at mass Father John gave a lovely blessing to all the mothers present, many of whom were grandmothers too.

I went to my mum's memorial garden at Matraville on Thursday last to wish her a Happy Mothers Day. It's long way from Hazelbrook to the northern shoreline of Botany Bay - two trains and a bus - but its certainly worth it. In the same garden are my grandparents on my mother's side, my mother's aunt and a friend of the family. All came here as ten pound poms and all now lay at rest close to where Cook first landed in 1770. But that's a controversial issue these days.

I read a couple of poems to her, said a prayer, placed a potted pansy and then began the long journey home.

Keep you mum close, while you can.

 The release of new documents from the Pentagon at the behest of the Trump Administration (which is surely no distraction from the Iranian fiasco) will doubtless excite those certain that we have been visited by aliens.

In as much as grainy, blurred or otherwise unconvincing images of UFO's (more accurately called UAPs - Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) exist, and they do, there are many more reasons why these are not of alien origin at all.

As best we know, and until it is proven otherwise, the speed of light is the maximum speed limit for our universe. Most interstellar objects are so far away that travel between one star system and another is totally impractical. Even within our own galaxy, which is but one of billions, the distance across is about 150,000 light years. We are about 27,000 light years from the galactic centre alone. Even if an alien civilisation (which has to develop from a primitive society to a technological society far in advance of our own) were to develop the means to travel at a speed approaching the speed of light ( which comes with its own set of very difficult to solve problems), the sheer distances and the time to travel them (thousands, tens of thousands or millions of years) would present an intractable problem. It is just too difficult, and for what return?

That is just one of many reasons why an alien civilisation would reject travelling much beyond their own solar system. I suppose robotic probes travelling over vast time-scales is a possibility, but what are the chances of happening upon the Earth, and why play a strange game of hide and seek? I think if you bought a single ticket in the biggest lottery on the planet, your odds would be vastly better.

 It's probably fair to say that all historical periods have their mix of good and bad. There have assuredly, always been famines, plagues, wars, earthquakes and so forth. There can be no doubt that human perfidy has been a feature of daily life since humanity began. 

When the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians that 'the days are evil' (5:16) he certainly would have been aware of the human propensity for wrongdoing, but he doubtless also meant that the times he was in had an especial flavour of wickedness. Roman rule was violent and oppressive, corruption was widespread, the gap between the rich and the poor was enormous and much else besides. It was a very cruel period too - witness the crucifixion of the innocent Jesus. Human life had next to no value at all.

I am wondering whether the present time is also a candidate for the moniker 'especially evil.' The geo-political situation is worse than at any time since WW2. The gap between haves and have nots is rising. Climate change threatens to wreak chaos on civilisations across the globe, with large numbers of folks in denial or simply not caring. Political leaders (who cannot govern themselves) have arisen who are manifestly unsuited to governing anything at all, not unlike many of the Roman Caesars or medieval monarchs. All of this is backgrounded by a contestation about what is true, what is factual or even real. Added to this is my assertion that public manners and discourse are at such a low that it's hard to see how much further they can fall.

I could be wrong and I hope that I am.

Much of the lively chatter about sending humans to Mars before the end of this decade (and some tech bros were seriously talking about this) seems to have died down. People with lots of money who should know better openly opined about colonisation, the establishment of permanent communities, the inevitability of the Martian conquest - all in the very near future. Someone was even talking about terraforming Mars. Who might that have been?

Perhaps they were mugged by reality - some scientists, such as biologists and physicists - had a long chat about the obstacles and so forth. Perhaps a few only have shortish attention spans, but whatever happened, the focus has shifted again to the Moon. Rightly, it seems to me.

Lets be clear about some of the problems that a manned flight to Mars would encounter. The journey is eight months long and exposure to cosmic rays presents a serious health threat. There is no magnetosphere in space. Micro-gravity affects the body in ways which could be fatal in a long-haul mission. Landing on Mars is tricky. Building a return space rocket and harvesting the fuel from the Martian world would be an enormous (though feasible) undertaking. The launch to return home must occur in a brief window that occurs only every 26 months. The return launch is fraught with peril - you only have to look at the number of postponements on Earth - and if you have to cancel you might miss the window and be stuck on Mars. That means, most likely, that you are not coming back at all.

That's just a few. I doubt whether a manned Martian trip will happen before the end of the century, and only if technology has resolved some of the issues, and a costly infrastructure has already been built (robotically) on the Red Planet. It is nice to dream but not at the expense of the brave souls who journey forth.