Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Today's Utter Crap Alert:

The continuing debate over the access of same-sex couples to social benefits and so-called entitlements is a distraction from the real issue. The real issue is not about infringement of rights. Rather, it is about what heterosexual marriage can offer society that other forms of relationships cannot. hmm... something new and different!

and here's a copy of the letter i just wrote to the eds:

"Married heterosexual unions are not simply a legal invention with an associated bunch of benefits," writes Chris Meney of the Catholic Archdiocese (SMH, Aug. 16). I agree with him on one count- marriage is not simply a legal invention. I read on, and I find that marriage is a financial union first and foremost. He proclaims that marriage provides "an intergenerational connectedness … to save and provide for their children and grandchildren." If we opened up the law to gay marriage, he argues, all kinds of people in financial relationships would want to be "married". Marriage and family, he tells us, are institutions which can't just be changed at whim. Financial institutions, of course. Legalise gay marriage, and "this would result in further clamour for financial benefits from couples or groups on the basis of some notional entitlement."
Much of Meney's logic is ridiculous, but I am appalled by his construction of family as all about money. What happened to love, emotional and spiritual commitment? Is "intergenerational connectedness" the capacity to work longer and longer hours to buy more gameboys? Can't gay people spend money too? Marriage is about more than money- life is about more than money.
The Catholic Archdiocese's concept of family is in fact contrary to the gospel they preach. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth" (Mat. 6:19), my Bible reminds me. I would encourage Meney to spend more time with his Bible, and less time worrying about the financial status of other people's family units.

lepsdavid just pointed me to a particularly interesting JK interview, post-OotP. Given that I was then at school, and my involvement in internet fandoms was restricted to ringbearer.org, i never heard this interesting spoiler. I was busy at the time trying to hose down the rumour that she was a neo-pagan, which effort was hampered by the fact that I wouldn't actually care if she were a neopagan.

( HP 7 spoilers, and theological musings which will annoy the staunchly atheistic among us. Will probably annoy conservative Xns, as well. )

Jack Marx today quotes Prof. Terry Eagleton, who, in a critique of the new anti-religious book 'The God Delusion', described God thusly:

"... while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself ... God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or 'existent' ... He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing."

The Marx article

The Eagleton review

which also includes this great line: These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.

oh dear...
Joel, to me just now: 'Prue's breasts are bigger than Andre's head! WOOOOOW!'
how did he find this out? Andre's hat is too big for his head, but just right for Prue's breast.

why? why? why, o God, did you have to make my brother turn into a BOY?

Another less disturbing tale about Joel

did i mention that i broke my brother at camp? It came about thus: we were all eating in a circle, and Joel decided to sit on the back of Gemma's chair- meaning partly on the back of Gemma. Poor girl was folded in half. I told him to remove himself. He decided then to sit on ME. I decided to get another roll. I got up. He went down. Chair went down on top of him. He was winded.
About a week later he still couldn't run without pain. Mum took him to the doctor to see if he had a broken rib; turns out i'd managed to do soft tissue damage to his lung.

On Anglicans

EU Think Week was this week, and thursday's lecture was advertised as 'Who Would Jesus Vote For?' When we got there the actual title was 'Christianity and Politics- turning the world upside down' (which they showed no inclination to do). I am utterly astonished by the ability of Gordon Cheng to speak for forty-five minutes without commiting to ANYTHING AT ALL. Apparently the bible has no real information on where we should put our political efforts, except that we should love our neighbour whilst doing so. (although he concedes a 'bias' towards 'widows and orphans' as in James. interesting choice- widows and orphans are a whole lot less threatening than 'the poor' or 'lepers' aren't they?)
On the assertion that Christians should steer away from politics entirely: Some people do that. They go off into the desert, they go off into monasteries, or at the very least they become Americans! (a puzzling assertion given the prevalence of religion in modern American politics)
When it got to question time someone up and asked him if Jesus would vote for John Howard. He fluffed around a bit, then said some good stuff (drawn from Jim Wallis) on the limitations of left-right categories. Just as we think he's going to evade answering anything once again...
'The Left have some good stuff going for them, but the Labour Party are just out to antagonise Christians with things we simply can't support, like abortion. So would Jesus vote for John Howard?' *speaks very fast and away from the micropone* 'Yes he would, but-' *moves back to microphone* '-the important thing is WOULD JOHN HOWARD VOTE FOR GOD?'

On Concerts and Kris

As I said in my breif late night post, the Whitlams were excellent. I feel slightly... adulterous, though, due to having fallen head over heels in love with The Live Room, the first support act. Brilliant, brilliant. Gut-wrenching violin :)
The Live Room are playing every thursday in June, at the Sando. I'm there.

It was wonderous to have a quisba :) He braved the college dining hall not once but twice- my status with the Pymbles has skyrocketed, i brought a man to brunch.

We did not buy any merchandise, go us. Although i do intend to go buy the Live Room album :DDD

really late... but Jim Wallis

having mentioned him above, I'll leave you all with a few Jim Wallis quotes from the tues before easter, when he spoke at syd. uni.

his seven year old son, coming home from school: 'Mummy, I'm worried about Max and Jo. I don't think they believe in God or Jesus. I think they're vegetarians!'

On the problem with the Religious Right in America: 'They say there are only two moral issues. They make it easy for us. Abortion, gay marriage. If I'm an unborn child in America, and I want suuport from the Right, I wanna stay unborn as long as I can. Once I'm born, I'm off their radar!... They're not pro-life, they're pro-birth!'

They talk about family. Oh, I love that one... In my house, it's family first every day. I'd like to actually do that, put family first... you can't overcome poverty with 80% single families... but explain to me how gay and lesbian people are the ones doing that? It has more to do with herterosexual dysfunction.
Anti-gay marriage has become the political surrogate for supporting the family... It's possible to be pro-family and pro-gay civil rights.

I'm not talking about a Religious Left to counter the Religious Right... what our folks are hungry for is a moral centre to our public life. Don't go left, don't go right, go deeper... the left/right thing has paralysed us.

Mmkay, it's a while since I updated... lyke, four days!

Sunday: Seem to have done well with the sermon- even the deafest of the congregation could hear me; no one was upset; Roger got so enthused he offered me all his old bible study notes from his Wesley College days.
For my own records, since i seem to lose .doc files over time:

( sermon under here, you really don't want to bother with it )

Then went and saw El for the afternoon. She seems pretty good- breakup with Zain still in the painful and indecisive stages, but otherwise OK. I asked her if she'd noticed Will becoming unusually huggy lately, and apparently not. So either it's just special for me, or it's special NOT for El. *shrugs*
Went to church with El's parents. I think they thought it a bit odd because I wasn't going to the party she was going to, along with most of our other friends. Kris kept thinking I was invited. *snort* just shows he doesn't think- why would i get invited to Jemimah's party? :P
Church was their carol service... Niel did a Santa impersonation, informing us, among other things, that the sleigh needs new cushions 'cos his hemaeroids are giving him trouble; the sleigh first began to fly when he was at a party and ate one too many wild mushrooms; and that Coke are responsible for imprisoning him in red and white fur. The last one is actually true.
Interesting story about the song 'Silent Night': it was written by an Austrian preist named Joseph Mohr. He composed it for guitar one christmas when the parish organ died.
After the service we all trooped over to the Duke for wedges and beer... just wedges in my case. Nicole gave me some of her ginger beer, and ooh it was foul. If i wanted yeast I'd eat bread dough! However, sweet chilli sauce on wedges is a Good Thing. Amy Baylek's started going down there... really interesting girl to talk to. She's having huge trouble with the Australian attitude to alcohol. Neil was making jokes about New Years and people getting pissed, and she asked me if people thought it was OK for ministers to drink. I was about to say 'not usually,' because in my stodgy old town that's the case. Something stopped me, and i told her that most people wouldn't feel right about ministers drunk, but drinking is ok. Just as well, because both Nicole and Neil sat down to a big schooner after the service!

Monday: Chris came over, we went swimming and just hung around for a bit. Nothing terribly exiting.

Tuesday: I got the family photos printed, they look great. It was going to be terribly expensive unless I got a 'value pack', so I ended up with a 6"x8" enlarged one of mum and dad. It's a good photo, I wouldn't have minded putting it up on my wall, but Mum suggested we frame it and give it to Nan & Pop. That too is a good idea. I think I might frame one of the spare small copies- sadly I only got one copy of the edited one- and give it to Nan T. Might as well use the frame I used to have Chris in.
Got a Christmas card and letter from Susanne, my first OS chrissy card for the year. :D It was gorgeous, as usual. She organised her work christmas party, apparently. She got all her collegues hiking through a forest in the snow for over an hour, before they could have their BBQ and Santa impersonator and so forth. Always been to outdoorsy for her own good, methinks. She's off skiing in Austria for her holiday this year.
Saw HP. Last minute decision, decided I was no longer so obsessive that I couldn't handle seeing it. I was right about that, too. I have no quibbles about anything they deleted! I thought the dragon chase was overdone, but on the other hand the graphics way outdid the early quidditch scenes. If you ask me, a duck-and-weave scene would have been much more thrilling and shown off much more of Harry's skill than a mad broomstick flight crashing into roofs and whatnot.
My God, can Emma Watson get any more gorgeous? and that dress.... *envies lots*
Bonus points to the casting team, too, for finding so many hot guys! Was particularly impressed with the Cossack-style Durmstrang lads, with their red uniforms and their gymnastic dances. Even Fred and George are hot these days!
Plus the bonus joy of a whole scene of Harry in a bath... I feel slightly peverted, the character being fourteen and all, but Daniel Radcliffe is sixteen or so, that's not so bad is it?
Ginny is pretty uninspiring, though. Pfft.
Then what... Mum and I wrote the Christmas pageant last night. We were going to just adapt one from a book she has, but there are so many changes its more like a whole new play with some plagiarised bits.

( Christmas according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John )

aaand... today... Spent the morning writing the service sheets for Christmas Eve. You try fitting seven hymns, a welcome message, a closing message, and some clip art, onto two pages, and still having the text big enough for the old folk to read. Not only that but you also have to put things on out of order so that they make a booklet when printed out and folded once. BAH. Still, I managed it, with lots of going on the net to find lyrics (We Three Kings is not in the hymn book??) and pics.

Posted a last-minute christmas present to my dear Jenna ;) (hithluin) An Aragorn bookmark from my own collection. Her response to this offer bears noting:
'OMGWTFBBQ!' What significance a cooking device has to anything, je ne sais pas. Anyway, she now owes me :P
I even found a Christmas card with a Koala on it, just for you Jen :D

Went around to Kim not-Brown-anymore's place to pick up a gingerbread house. Wasn't too sure about driving it up our track, I'd heard horror stories about them collapsing, so we took it to the Woolmers to store it till Xmas day. It actually looked pretty sturdy, when we got it, but I'd never seen one before and didn't want to take any chances.

My SS present still isn't here :( I'm very sad. In fact, I've only got three Christmas cards so far! Lai, Tock and Susanne. *feels neglected*
and as for birthdays... apparently my birthday card is still in Lukas' desk drawer, and Will still has a birthday present for me sitting on his desk! Lukas (gryphonvere), remind me to introduce you to Kate. Forget being my alter ego, you're now hers. :P

Ok, I'm finally going to make my next dissertation in this lengthy theological discussion I'm having with Az (rayneshadow). Anyone else feel free to read ;) It might interest you Dave (lepsdavid). (the begining of the discussion is in the comments for this entry)

( I'd put this in a comment but I'm using Semagic and not connected to the net so I don't have access to the comments box. I'll leave a comment directing you here next time I'm online )

whew. was that ever exhausting. *shakes head to clear it*

I'm apparently not showing up on people's Friends pages. Should I complain, do you think?

mood: my brain hurts. but other than that, i feel good :D
music: George Thouroughgood, Bad to the Bone. But I've discovered lately how much i love 3 Doors Down.
book: After In the Fall I read 'Conversations with God', but Neil Donald Walsch. Exellent book, although I'm not sure how much I agree with him, especially in the areas on relationships. I like the way the logic works, the system of thought, at least.
Now reading: 'The Battle For God' but Karen Armstrong, which examines the phenomenom of fundamentalism in the three Monotheistic faiths, focusing on American Protestant Fundamentalism, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Sunni fundamentalism in Egypt and Shi'i fundamentalism in Iran.

Lament for the first things

See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. –Revelation 21: 3b-4 (NRSV)


I weep for the passing of those things, for the many faceted tears that bathe humanity, living beyond the moment in the veins of memory and the notes of the song. Where is the dawn without the dark?
I fear the ages. What is a day that never ends? Brief mortals we are born, born to passion and fear, courage and intensity, regret which gives birth to joy. Give me not diamonds, dead to time and love. Give me tears on familiar skin, give me pain and foolishness and silence. Give me not ages of beauty for free. Give me gemstones from the dust, ugliness to shape and form, mediocrity to polish and shine.
What price trust without hurt? What price love without fear?
Where is striving when all is fulfilled? What purpose then existence?
I will not walk in golden paths. These pavements are grimy, this city dirty. These streets are littered with the debris thrown out- cigarette stubs, bottle caps, plastic bags, the forgotten ones huddled in doorways and under bridges. I walk amongst a throng unseeing, uncaring; see and forget to care.
Where goes honour, where goes justice, when all is set right?
Sentence me no more to happiness, with nothing to see and no reason to care. Allow me still brevity and compassion, allow me beauty and laughter.
Give me tears, and give me reason to cry.