leaf-fall on my head
ah! autumn's unerring dart-
now, a vast descending

I have been uncharacteristically busy recently with room painting and home-making activities. Ann goes to Thailand on Tuesday and will not be back for six weeks, so she wanted to make sure that everything was ship-shape in her absence. Indeed it is, now.

I have received some criticism for publishing more personal posts over the past few months but I stand my ground - blogs are not unlike diaries or can in fact be just the same, depending upon the intention of the author. Diaries are a place for both public and private thinking, this tradition being strong in the West though less so elsewhere. So be it but I stand my ground.

Painting, on the other hand, is something I get around to every decade or so and it takes me a while to get up to speed. Little tricks I learnt are forgotten and have to be re-learnt at some cost, each time, to the finished product and the pocket. But the old house is starting to get a lift from our efforts and will be a good home for JJ when she arrives. This year will likely be a watershed of sorts, for the better I hope. Lacking a crystal ball, I cannot foretell an outcome, though my road ahead is paved with good intentions.

I am re-reading A Pilgrim's Progress and can attest that such intentions do not always end up in the infernal regions, contrary to popular belief. Sure, I understand that good intentions and the good works that may flow from them are not a means to salvation, but they beat hands down doing nothing or thinking malign thoughts.

Tom's new computer arrived today from a shop in Brisbane. His old laptop gave up the ghost two weeks ago after working like a dog for four years. The new unit is a CPU with some new-fangled video card and a whopping hard-drive. Straight out of the box I had problems, for the new "gaming monitor" used an old tech VGA cable, so off to the shops I went for an HDMI upgrade.

Then after booting up I was confronted with the BIOS screen rather than Windows. Hmm, where is the hard-drive, I wondered? On the phone, a kind technician talked me through opening the case and reconnecting the wires to the hard-drive. Alas, every time I put the unit back together, the pressure of the case dislodged the wires. Bios screen again! And again!

"I'd like you to re-site the hard-drive," my optimistic tech-fellow said.

"I beg your pardon?" was my astonished reply.


It turned out to be far less daunting than it sounded and 30 minutes later, the machine was humming along with a Windows screen. And while it is very small potatoes, I am feeling a little proud of myself.

Have a go, is the lesson I learnt from this episode. But only if the power is off!

One hard drive in a new home.

It was Ann's birthday yesterday so went into the city for a day of varied activity. It is a tradition for Thai's to go to their local temple on their birthdays, so off to Annandale we went to spend time at Wat Buddharangsee. Ann prepared a delicious spicy egg dish for the communal meal and it disappeared within minutes of being served. The service was as always, a chanted liturgy, followed by blessings from the resident monks. I find it both interesting and strangely calming.

As chance will have it, Ann had been given a couple of free tickets to attractions in Darling Harbour and so after lunch we headed thither. These are very touristy things and I gather most Sydneysiders would give them a wide berth, but they are genuinely entertaining.

I first went to Madame Tussaud's in London in 1979, so I had an idea of what to expect. These days the franchise is set up to be far more tactile and interactive for a clearly more demanding public and many opportunities are presented for photographs with the famous. There is a bias towards pop stars, sports heroes, actors and celebrities which is what you might expect, given the times we live in. But then again, would the crowds flock to see historical figures and notable scientists? Probably not.

Meanwhile, here are two shots from our time there.

We are living in an age of increasing anger. The invasion of the public space by social media and its allies has seen an instant rush to judgement in many circumstances not experienced before outside of revolutions and social upheaval. There is outrage at everything, the smallest infraction bringing a freight of invective, almost always poorly informed. But here we are anyway.

Lately in Australia we have had some high-profile criminal cases, and the mobs have been baying. I understand that if you have been a victim of crime (and many people have) then you have a emotional stake in a judicial outcome. That's only natural. But there are victims and there are victims, just as there are crimes and crimes. Not every victim of a crime gets over what has happened to them. Others seem to brush off the hurts inflicted and move rapidly into the stream of life, warier, no doubt, but moving on nevertheless. People are different.

Whereas once there was very little support for victims of crime, there is now an awful lot. I can tell you from personal experience that, no matter how empathetic and kind the supporter is, there is a very real risk of being sucked into a self-sustaining cycle of victim-hood, if the prevailing environment fosters it. What's needed is a balance of empathy and assistance, together with an active understanding that humans have a natural resiliency which needs to be encouraged and nurtured. The crimes against the self can be processed and faced head-on, but something has to come after. I have seen people in the past week on the the television demanding tougher justice because they have been in a state of victim-hood for forty years!

I spent a year in my own counselling practise and then five years in front-line welfare services and met many people who had been victims of crimes, some too awful to describe here. My colleagues and I always gave them a good hearing and tried to supply what we could to meet their needs. Over that time I saw people pick themselves up and get on with life, such as it was, and I continued to meet with others who seemed stuck in the past. I merely observe that the former were happier and engaged with living in a way that promoted healthy change. The latter, far less so.

Jesus, who had good reason to be angry about his rough handling and murder, said in Matthew 7.1, "Do not judge or you too will be judged." Moreover leaving judgement to God alone absolves one of any need for vengeance. Not everyone can believe these things, I know, but it helps at a fundamental level in the healing process.

Yesterday, whilst reading a letter from a correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald, I came across a particularly amusing offering. It is a good thing perhaps that I had time to pre-read the missive before committing it live to air, because I had to suppress a laugh, rather unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

I should have kept the letter, but it was committed to the recycling without thought at the time. However, it being short, I have a reasonable recall of its contents and style, so here goes.

"My grand daughter has now completed Year 12 at a good school and as far as I can see, has not read any literature. There is no teaching of Shakespeare and precious little else in the way of novels, plays and poems.

I asked her recently what she thought about Keats and she replied, "What is a Keat?"

And so she will go on to do a "Bachelor of Protestation" or something like it, blissfully unaware of the literary jewels of her native tongue."

Of course, the writer is surely exaggerating to make a perfectly valid point - the quality of texts suffers when English becomes a more tertiary-style communications-based subject with the objective of unearthing supposed 'deeper meanings.' I don't doubt that many of the texts (by men) I have read and loved were written by patriarchs or misogynists or colonialists or even outright bastards, but I would prefer that the art spoke for itself, without the heavy hand of dogma interposing.

Perhaps such a reading though is impossible. Our interactions with the world, our perceptions, the structure of language means that getting at any text in a "real way" is fraught with difficulty and contradiction. Still, I'd like to think that we can.

Keats




Keets

The sparkie came this morning to install an outside power point to supply electricity to the recently bought caravan. It means that whoever is lucky enough to be our guest will have a double bed and considerable privacy, with the chatter of magpies and hissing of possums as an extra bonus. Tom is eager to sleep in the van too and I might relent and let him have a few nights a week. If I was 13, I think it would have been a dream to have my own little place outside the main house so I understand his desire for a little bolthole.

We don't have a problem fitting everyone into the house, though its tight. The caravan gives us more options, including additional storage space. But both Ann and I feel that we will have to find a bigger house in the near future, one in which we can start afresh, somewhere where there are no prior relationship associations, if you get my drift. So we are making plans to that end.

After we bought the van in late January, the gentleman we bought it from kindly delivered it to us at home, refusing any payment. Here we are together, with Mick, on that day.

I have been an admirer of the Desert Fathers for about twenty years now. If you don't know about this famous yet most obscure group of people, then it's time that you did. Back at the very beginning of Christianity, before it had become the powerful, state-sanctioned faith that it emerged as in the late Roman Empire, groups of men and women retreated to the deserts of Asia Minor and Palestine and Northern Egypt, there to lead ascetic lives. Many lived as hermits while others formed lose associations, others still chose monasteries, such as Scetis. Life was hard but that was the point, because a life lived austerely was seen as making a pathway to God more accessible.

Anyway, one of my favourite stories from the Fathers confronts the idea of judgement head-on. I speak of human judgement of course, the way we are quick to find fault in our brother and swift to condemn our sister. It is tied in with knowledge of self, that we are the worst of sinners, which is what the ascetics in the desert thought.

'A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which brother Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it.

Then the priest sent someone to him, saying, "Come, for everyone is waiting for you".

So he got up and went. He took a sack, filled it with sand and cut a small hole at the bottom and carried it on his shoulders.

The others came out to meet him and said, "What is this, father?"

The Abba said to them, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another."

When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.'


Ruins of Scetis in the Nitrian desert. Harsh, exacting, unfashionable, yet necessary.