In prepping another Writers from the Vault episode for 2RPH I came across a monologue that I hadn't thought about in three decades. In the prologue to Henry V, a character named 'Chorus' enters, and proceeds to tell the audience that the play they are about to see involves vast armies, battles, foreign locations and so forth. But alas, you will have to use your imagination, for here we have only a bare stage and 'this wooden O.' So, go to it.

In Branagh's film of the same play, the Chorus is played by Derek Jacobi, who gives a masterful performance throughout. I decided that I would use the opening speech for the next Writers program, but, having watched Jacobi again, have no hope of coming anywhere near his magical level.

But I am not an actor, merely a cipher for the works of others. And contentedly so.

 The elderly man holding 'The End is Nigh' sign as passers-by give him a wide berth is very much someone who is ridiculed, being either mad, fanatical or plain foolish.

And yet, budding eschatologists can hardly have missed the plethora of end-time signs can keep popping up with increasing frequency. Sure, it is a fraught business and we (I speak here of Christians) are encouraged to tread carefully, as only God the Father knows the actual time in human history when the curtain will fall.

Still, the last 100 years or so has provided much to muse about - two world wars, the invention of atomic and nuclear weapons, the amazing emergence of Israel as a state after a two and half thousand year hiatus, the increasing fragmentation of international relations, the faster pace of life, the rise of AI, the threat of climate change, the scourge of illicit drugs....It just goes on and on really and provides decent material for the consideration of anyone interested in a Biblical interpretation of the end of history.

It is unwise to be drawn into making predictions or claiming the fulfilment of prophecy. But it is certainly wise to pay attention.

 FIFA have hinted that they might be interested in expanding (yet again) the number of teams playing at World Cup Finals every four years. So far we have moved up from 16 (the original formulation) to 24, to 36 and currently, 48. The figure they have in mind, apparently, is 64 nations. Why? 

The answer we keep getting is equity and participation. After all , look how well minnows Cape Verde did as a result of the most recent expansion. Don't we want more of that?

Of course, the truth is far less idealistic. It's all about money and FIFA wants a lot more of it, which they would get in spades with a bigger competition.

Surely a better idea would be to allow all of the current list of FIFA men's rankings - 211 nations in total - to participate in the finals competition. That way, all the pesky qualification rounds could be eliminated. The duration of the tournament would likely be a few months so FIFA could make a packet from sponsorship and advertising and broadcast rights.

Come to think of it, it might be prudent to add in a few extra places, bringing the number of participants to 220, to account for nations that currently don't exist, or potential colonies on the Moon and Mars.

 Lately I have been 'camping in', my expression for living in a house that has no running water. On Sunday a pipe attached to an outside tap burst and I had to shut off the water at the meter. I can draw a little water for a bucket-full but only for a minute or two. There is, of course, no hot water as I shut off that service too as a precaution.

Luckily, the girls are in Melbourne for a few days. I can cope with the inconvenience but I doubt that they could. I do enjoy the somewhat spartan manner of heating a jug and sitting in a thimbleful of warm water in the bath. 

The plumbers are here and having a hard time of locating where the gal pipe meets the copper, the better to shut off the former. This house is old and jerry-built and nothing conforms to any proper specification so they will have to improvise. I hope things are resolved today for the sake of my family, who will be home on Friday.

The FIFA World Cup has proceeded to the knockouts (Round of 32) and already, heavyweights Germany and Holland have fallen. The Germans, like the Italians before, are an excellent tournament team but have curiously departed early over the past decade. I suppose no one nation can be on top forever, but there must be something going on in German football for this to occur.

England continue to underwhelm and narrowly beat DR Congo this morning. Since 1966 they have been the perpetual bridesmaids of the WC despite having some excellent talent at their disposal. I suspect that if they could bottle some of the Socceroos grit and determination and administer a dose before every game, they might have won won silver by now.

As for the latter, they play a very good Egypt side in a day or two and will need to figure out how to deal with Mo Salah, who is apparently fit to play. Salah had a very patchy season with Liverpool but is a match winner on his day. Egypt are more than Salah of course but this is probably his last WC so he will be determined to make an impact.

On your guard Socceroos!

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.

Memorial Garden

What seed was sown here?

That rows of teeth

Grow slantwise from the ground.

What ligament or root,

What tangle underneath?

If there is breath

It's a lisping bay-breeze,

Or a rap-rapping

Of lately orphaned leaves,

Whose fall and twist

Conjures a clement

mantle all around.

As dust settles and roses hang,

A lone cloud sits like tufted ink,

There's so much toing and froing here,

Shadows in a diorama,

I think,

And there's my mother,

Two years gone now,

Underground.

 

“The battle of Fromelles on 19 July 1916 was a bloody initiation for Australian soldiers to warfare on the Western Front. Soldiers of the newly arrived 5th Australian Division, together with the British 61st Division, were ordered to attack strongly fortified German front line positions near the Aubers Ridge in French Flanders. The attack was intended as a feint to hold German reserves from moving south to the Somme where a large Allied offensive had begun on 1 July. The feint was a disastrous failure. Australian and British soldiers assaulted over open ground in broad daylight and under direct observation and heavy fire from the German lines. Over 5,500 Australians became casualties. Almost 2,000 of them were killed in action or died of wounds and some 400 were captured. This is believed to be the greatest loss by a single division in 24 hours during the entire First World War. Some consider Fromelles the most tragic event in Australia’s history.”

This is an extract from an article on the battle of Fromelles that I found at the Australian War Memorial Museum (internet site) in Canberra. Because today is Anzac Day, and because Anzac Day is most famously associated with Gallipoli, I thought it worthwhile to highlight one of the many other battles that the AIF fought in in WW1.

In fact the AIF fought widely across the Western Front and in the Middle East, but it is the Gallipoli landings and the subsequent defeat that lives most vividly in the imagination. It is not hard to understand why. A dramatic landing under heavy fire in the wrong place, a terrible slog to get a purchase on the cliffs and slopes. A long period of attrition in trenches, with the Turks having the home advantage all the while. Finally, the cleverly thought deceits that allowed for a safe mass evacuation. Some of the elements of the campaign look forward to another war – D-Day and Dunkirk.

Today we remember those servicemen and women who fought and died for Australia. One can hate war and still be grateful for their sacrifice.

‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.’

Lest We Forget

Yesterday I had surgery on a BCC on the bridge of my nose, a procedure that necessitated general anaesthetic. It's been worrying me for weeks now, but I was surprised at how calm I was on the morning and calmer still before being wheeled into the theatre.

It need not have worried or surprised me really, because I had prayed quite earnestly about it and knew with certainty that whatever the outcome, God was beside me. A greater peace than that is hard to imagine.

My wife drove home since I was not allowed to and sleep was restless, probably due to the anaesthetic. I also had to try to lie in a position that would leave my nose unencumbered, which is not my usual way of lying. Still, very much a first world problem. How grateful I am for good medical care and the means to pay for it I cannot account for, it being greater than the sum of my words.

Sunday last Ann and I did the Grand Canyon bushwalk at Blackheath. It surprised me that I have never done this walk before because when I first moved up here, I regularly did weekend walks. Perhaps it was the drive to Blackheath that put me off - I can't remember.

Grand Canyon is a name that might be hard to live up to, but grand it is, not in terms of size, but the sheer beauty of the steep gorge, with creeks and waterfalls abounding. Part-way down we encountered some canyoners geared up to explore the recesses and caves. The water is very cold and I'm sure they were repayed with a fine experience.

For the last few days my calf muscles have been aching, for while I was certainly fit enough for the 7 km track, I was not used to climbing up and down so many stairs. But a great walk it was and much to be recommended.

 Good Friday

Am I a stone and not a sheep
 That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
 To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
 Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
 Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
 Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
 A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
 But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
 Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Christina Rossetti

After a couple of wisely considered delays in launch, Artemis 2 has finally set off on its mission to orbit the moon and return. I watched the launch and subsequent NASA press conference this morning.

It's exciting that a manned crew are returning to our only lunar friend after a 50 year hiatus. The Apollo missions of that time were extraordinary, full of risk and courage and achievement. Technology has moved on but the rocket itself seems eerily similar in many respects to the Saturn 5 - humans perched atop a massive load of burning fuel.

The orbital path of Artemis is also very interesting and I republish a NASA diagram below. I look forward to reading articles about the mission on 'What's in Space 'in coming broadcasts. May God keep them safe, both outbound and inbound.

When people pass away they (or their earthly remains) go to cemeteries for burial or interment, for the most part. The condition of their memorials, whatever form they take, is largely in the remit of their families. 

Yesterday I went to the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Garden at Matraville (which is a long hike from Hazelbrook) to visit my mum. Her garden bed, which is a rose garden, hosts the memorial tablets of four family members and one family friend. There are long stories to tell about all of them, though this is not the time.

A few years ago we had the tablets of two grandparents remade as they had crumbled. My mum's, being only 15 months old, is shiny and new and made of far sturdier materials than the older versions, though what they will all look like in 60 years remains to be seen. For as long as I have breath I will visit regularly to polish and clean the plinths and weed the general area. The staff there seem to do a pretty good job too.

It is sad to see tablets that are uncared for, some now impossible to read, or having missing or lose plaques. I have a mind to take some super glue next time and repair a few of them, for surely they are worthy of more respect than this. I wonder if the neglect they now experience was once also the way they left the world - lonely, largely unknown.

I miss my mum, our daily phone conversations, her sharp memories of the past. I have a place to go to chat and pray - that at least, is a blessing. The gardens themselves are not far from the sea - Botany Bay on one side, and the Tasman on the other. Hence this small poem.

One Sea-Side Grave

Unmindful of the roses,
Unmindful of the thorn,
A reaper tired reposes
Among his gathered corn:
So might I, till the morn!


Cold as the cold Decembers,
Past as the days that set,
While only one remembers
And all the rest forget, -
But one remembers yet.

Christina Rossetti