Greater minds than mine, of which there are many, have considered the question - 'can there be a moral code without God?' - and there have been a lot of well-considered answers. 

Apparently that answer is 'yes', followed by a perfectly reasonable justification. Here is one very common response:

'The truth is, morality doesn't require a belief in God. Secular morality offers a compelling alternative, grounded in reason, empathy and our shared human experience.' (Sacrilegious Discourse)

It is surely possible to build a moral code, one that informs our legal system, one that reflects the grounding elements mentioned above. It may even function well for a period of time.

But Christians (and other people of faith) will argue that without the imprimatur of God, and the sanctions that only a divine creator can employ, such a moral code, good as it is, will eventually decay into relativism. Secularists disagree. Who might be right?

My observations, subjective as they are, suggest that just such a decline into relativism is happening now and has been ongoing for a century or longer. With the decline of faith and belief in God, together with the teaching of moral codes such as the ten commandments, the idea of truth, of what constitutes right and wrong and what this means in practical liveable terms, has been muddied, challenged and undermined. It really is getting worse by the year.

The folks who postulate theories of secular morality are smart, well-educated, decent people, who are actively interested in the well-being of society. They are a tiny minority. I don't know if, outside their virtuous circle, they notice the increasing amorality of many of the citizens around them, the disregard for human life, the decline of public discourse, the normalisation of practises and ideas that are repugnant to human dignity. Do they notice the 'my truth/your truth' brigade as they play out a classic relativistic scenario?

Yes, a moral code is possible without God. It's capacity to maintain itself though, is somewhat in question. Just look around.

 It's easy to worry about things, especially when you don't have all or any of the background information. This is even more so when it involves loved-ones. Incomplete pictures create uncertainty and uncertainty, like it's opposite, security, is decidedly 'mortals chiefest enemy.'

As a Christian, uncertainty is something that we have to live with, trusting that God has matters in hand. Because many of us want to control situations, even micro-manage them, giving up is difficult. Moreover, as soon as we do try, we find ourselves endeavouring to take up the reigns again. It is hard to 'lay it down' and not pick it up again.

I have found this especially so recently. Wondering what is going on, wondering if there is something I can do 'to help', is a challenge. It is a daily challenge - surrendering a situation to God, trusting that whatever the pathway He chooses, will ultimately be for the best.

 Father John's homily today was bang on, a rarity is which both my brain and my faith were fully engaged. He was, in essence, gives us a Cook's Tour of some of the thinking of Pope's over the past 120 years. More narrowly, I suppose, he touched on the manner in which the Papacy has engaged with what was happening in the world around us at that time, including the rise of Marxism, the degrading of the environment and the ascendancy of AI. These of course, are hugely consequential issues. Even Marxism, despite the defeat of communism in the 1990's as a serious socio-economic choice, remains a hot-button topic amongst those who think and those who chatter.

Despite my centre-left origins, I find myself agreeing on just about everything. Today we are in the thrall of a kind of world-wide delusion - that we can go on consuming the way we do, that life is primarily about the material and its uses, that technology will ride to the rescue as the curtain begins to fall. But I sense a panic under the surface, a sidewards glance that knows at some level, these things are not true. I claim no special knowledge in these matters. Moreover, I know nothing about it except what I have read and what I observe around me.

On another note, though related, the Father's weekly column was preceded by this quotation attributed to one Elmer G. Letterman (about whom I can find nothing), which reads:

'A man may fall many times but he won't be a failure until he says someone pushed him.'

There is certainly some truth in that.

When I first read Philip Larkin's verse, somewhere in the early 80's, it struck a deep chord inside me. I made an immediate connection with both the way he saw the world and the manner in which he said it. Larkin is not everyone's cup of tea, of course. His pessimistic take on reality (tempered by a certain reluctant joy) will not impress the young 'world is my oyster' squad. But they are not likely to be reading poetry anyway.

I don't always agree with Larkin and what he thinks about life, even though I understand why he does. I was reading, by way of example, Aubade, on a recent 2RPH program, which is a marvellous poem. Larkin was an atheist, or at least an agnostic, so for him Christianity is

'..the vast moth-eaten musical brocade/Created to pretend we never die.'

It's a brilliant metaphor, so visual, but only true if you are without faith. I can appreciate the skill, even the idea, but still respectfully disagree. Written 20 years earlier, Church Going (one of my favourite poems), talks of a time  when 'superstition, like belief, must die' and 'what remains' is but 'grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky.' The juice has gone from the fruit, leaving only a crumpled skin.

It's very tempting to take this position - all that is is purely material - but we all breath a final breath. Faith is not necessarily about living forever, crossing the Jordan, if you like, but that is a component. It is very much about the now, how I live my life from day to day, where I place my trust, to whom do I look towards.

I wouldn't want any of Larkin's poems to be unwritten, just because I hold a different world view. Some of them are masterpieces.

Looking at the world as it appears today, it is hard not to be seized by an eschatological terror. As we enter a new phase of the 'information age', one that may be dominated by A1, the hype about the potential for human progress is counterpointed by what looks, to a keen observer, like a new age of decline.

I have written before about the most obvious areas of concern - climate change and it's uncertain consequences, nuclear arms, the breakdown of the post-war consensus, the demise of social mores and so forth. 

Never let it be said that I am a prophet of doom - for I am not - but if you add all the natural disasters that are upon us - earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, bushfires, floods ( I could go on) - then it would take a true Panglossian to make a case for long-term human thriving. There are tipping points as far as the eye can see.

From a Christian point of view, this was all foreshadowed in Scripture. The exact nature and timing of 'the end' is a mystery, entirely in the hands of God. But we are told to watch out for the signs. They seem to be plentiful, though one should be careful not to be self-deceiving.

I am fast running out of ways to keep fit. My years of running were stopped by knee problems. My three decades of lap swimming ended with shoulder injuries which only surgery might repair. And my walking career has been constantly thwarted by both knee and foot problems which will not get any better.

I could take up cycling again, though likely with another e-bike. I do have a tendency to fall off from time to time so spectacles will be necessary. To stop more falls, need it be said.

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.