Friday, March 20, 2009

Election Eve in Queensland: Processing the Icons

It's Friday night and my brain is feelng rather fried from an early start for tutoring at Griffith today - two two hour tutes, the first at 8am. Last night I was at a 4 hour induction seminar for new casuals at Griffith so I got home at around 10.30pm, my brain still fired up and, thus, didn't get to sleep until mid-early morning about 2.30am.

Tomorrow is election day here in Qld and all the prognostications seem ominous for a possible change of government although I heard something on the news about a last minute rally to Labor in a poll to be released tomorrow, I think, in the Australian. You can get more info over at Pineapple Party Time. Today on the way home I lit a candle in the chapel at St Stephens Cathderal and said a prayer for Labor scraping home. My flatmate and I were talking tonight about mounting a procession with icons in good old Constantinopolitan style. Whenever the barbarians were at the gates, the good folk of the city would process along the walls with icons and candles and incense and chant calling on saints and angels - especially St Michael the archangel - and, of course, Mary Theotokos. So tomorrow I just might go back to the Cathedral for the morning Marian mass, and call on not only Mary Theotokos and St Michael but also St Anne, by tradition, the mother of Mary and for whom our Premier, Anna Bligh, is named. I do not want to live again under a National Party gov't and the LNP, despite its change of name, still smells as foul, foul as any breath of Mordor. Mythology, even modern mythology like Tolkien's, can still provide an viable framework to view the world. And the Borg, well, doesn't sound that much different to orc - would you trust a man with a smile like this?

And just to cap things off, a friend has sent me a link to a latest piece of silliness at St Mary's, this time by the other priest no one wants to focus on, Terry Fitzpatrick. He concludes thus:

What makes St Mary’s different is that the views in the pews matter, and out of those views, supported by priests who acknowledge the reality of paradigm shifts and are not afraid to embrace them, have come models of God, Christ and Church that make sense to people as they struggle to live their lives, faithful to the message of Jesus, in the twenty-first century.

St Mary’s is at the vanguard of a paradigm shift. Like all heralders of such shifts, the Community may well be extinguished as one would a spot fire. But the spot fires will continue to break out and grow in number and then eventually explode into a roaring inferno. And the hierarchical Catholic Church will once again be overtaken, thankfully, by the innate wisdom of the people of God.

Stuff and nonsense! Terry wouldn't know a paradigm shift if it bit him on the backside. But then on the strength of a few retreats at Chenrezig Institute he feels qualified to teach Buddhist meditation! And as I said in my last post, I'm hearing reports that Peter Kennedy, and no doubt Terry in his shadow, have been quite authoritarian in the handling of this affair, without any real concern for the people on the pews who of course don't know all the issues behind these dramas.

St Anna, St Michael and Holy Mary Theotokos, save us from the Borg and his L National Party and save Premier Anna, even though Labor has been unworthy in its campaign. I don't ask that you save the backroom boys who foisted this mess on us - they deserve the accounting they must surely get after the votes are counted tomorrow night, regardless of the outcome. Just save Anna as our Premier. And save us, too, from such "paradigm shifting" priests as these.


But on a brighter note, I recommend this latest from Slacktivist, Jericho to Jerusalem. Not only will you find out about the Inn of the Good Samaritan along the road between Jericho and Jerusalem but when you get to the end you can also follow the link and end up here, St George's Monastery, Palestine.


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