A cry from the heart from Fiji - living the truth in a time of fear

A cry from the heart from a blogger in Fiji on the impact of the military coup. Touches on issues of truthfulness in public life and the moral challenge of living truthfully in a time of repression and fear.

http://discombobulatedbubu.blogspot.com/

Responding to good and evil

Non co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.

Mohandas Gandhi

Catching up on a Papal Encyclical Caritas in Veritate

A belated collection of references and links on the papal encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) as a resource if I need to follow up the topic.

Pope Benedict Gets It Right by Brian McLaren
Of particular interest to me is his strong endorsement of the key concepts behind the sustainability and fair trade/ethical buying movements. These related movements help us see that the economy is an important sphere where we can, in a sense, cast votes with every dollar we spend, literally loving our neighbors (or not) by the way we buy (or don't buy) groceries, clothing, corporate shares, and so on.
http://blog.sojo.net/2009/07/10/pope-benedict-gets-it-right/?continue

Eureka Street:Home » Vol 19 No 13 July 14, 2009> Who deserves charity? Susie Byers
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=14956

Eureka Street: July 10, 2009> Bruce Duncan Pope Confronts Economic Injustice
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=15054

Eureka Street: July 10, 2009> Neil Ormerod Pope's 'seamless garment' bares green credentials
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=15048

Larvatus Prodeo: the PM and IL Santo Padre; and world capitalism at Larvatus Prodeo
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/07/09/the-pm-and-il-santo-padre-and-world-capitalism/

The dislocation of long distance air travel and the ambiguity of techonology

Just returned from a weekend in Darwin for work purposes - pity it was not for a holiday it is the best time of the year there - Wurgeng - the early dry season.

The experience of long distance flying on Monday, from Darwin to Adelaide and then Adelaide to Canberra left me as it always does feeling dislocated from people, life and connection with the touch of earth and slightly nauseous.

The experience for me is one of abstraction and detachment.

The paradox is that the conversations I was involved in over the weekend were intense and involved an engagement with people tracing a trajectory that could not have been achieved over a video link. They involved discussion about policy, engaging issues of political judgment and moral responsibility that extended over meals and opened up issues of personal vocation and responsibility as public servants.

Early note for 9 August - remembering Franz Jägerstätter

With travel for work taking me away over the next few days I wanted to get up a posting on Franz Jägerstätter who I remember every year on 9 august, the date of his execution by the German authorities for his unwillingness to take up arms on behalf of the Nazi regime.

The true Christian is to be recognized more in his works and deeds than in his speech. The surest mark of all is found in deeds showing love of neighbour. … Let us love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. For love will conquer and will endure for all eternity. And happy are they who live and die in God’s love. From a reflection by Franz Jagerstatter quoted in Gordon Zahn In Solitary Witness: : The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter (Revised edition, Templegate Publishers, 1986)

Franz Jägerstätter teaches us the way of Jesus. Give your life for others, even for your enemies. Surely this is a powerful witness, and one that challenges every one of us here tonight to give up war, to give up hatred, to give up killing, to follow the way of Jesus. (Bishop Gumbleton - Homily on the beatification of Jägerstätter 23 September, 2007)

"The crucial lesson to be learned," Gordon Zahn declared, "is that, however hopeless the situation or seemingly futile the effort, the Christian need not despair. Instead he can and should be prepared to accept and assert moral responsibility for his actions. It is always possible, as Jägerstätter wrote, to save one's own soul and perhaps some others as well by bearing individual witness against evil." (John Dear SJ "On the Road to Peace" 30 October 2007)

I have found myself increasingly movedin recent years by power of the witness of Franz Jägerstätter as much as I have by that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

It is worth remembering that they did not seek death and they both affirmed the goodness of God’s world and hoped despite their imprisonment that they might be able to live to enjoy it. Bonhoeffer’s final poem from prison, dating from December 1944 and smuggled out from the Gestapo Prison at Prinz Albrecht Strasse speaks again in a voice that echoes the sentiments of many of Jägerstätter’s letters from that same prison to his family.

By kindly powers surrounded, peaceful and true,
wonderfully protected with consolation dear,
safely, I dwell with you this whole day through,
and surely into another year.

Though from the old our hearts are still in pain,
while evil days oppress with burdens still,
Lord give to our frightened souls again,
salvation and they promises fulfil.

And shouldst thou offer us the bitter cup, resembling
sorrow, filled to the brim and overflowing,
we will receive it thankfully, without trembling,
from thy hand, so good and ever-loving.

But if it be thy will again to give
joy of this world and bright sunshine,
then in our minds we will past times relive
and all our days be wholly thine.

Let candles burn, both warm and bright
which to our darkness thou hast brought,
and, if that can be, bring us together in the light,
thy light shines in the night unsought.

When we are wrapped in silence most profound,
may we hear that song most fully raised
from all the unseen world that lies around
and thou art by all they children praised.

By kindly powers protected wonderfully,
confident we wait for come what may.
Night and morning God is by us faithfully
and surely at each new born day.

Remembering Hiroshima 6 August 1945

To remember the bombing of Hiroshima today is to acknowledge the devastating capability of technology and our ongoing implication in that technology through Australian links to the American empire.

Hiroshima stands as a question mark against claims that World War II fulfilled the criteria for a just war.

Christianity versus the "Church of Power"

Simon Barrow in his latest editorial on the Ekklesia website "Christianity versus the "church of Power" speaks for me when he says that the... approach we are seeking to develop, in other words, is neither a Christian gloss on a non-theologically derived secularism nor an attempt to revive ‘established religion’, but something quite distinct and different from both – namely, a recovery of the non- and anti-imperial heart of the Christian message in the midst of a plural world, in a way which emphasises and exemplifies its socially subversive, just and peaceful expression.

Much of the anxiety apparent in discussions on human rights by some of the churches betrays a hankering for a return to the privileged mode of the Christendom model of church society relationships. The record of the institutional church in terms of living out the gospel within the institutions that we have been running, in terms of protecting the vulnerable is not so good that we have got solid grounds for claiming a privileged position.