[ hold :: this space ]

but not so much anymore:

retail king slams ‘no-hoper’ charity

Just a warning that there are a few behind-the-scenes changes happening with the blog that are preceding some bigger front-of-house changes… apologies if things like rss feeds do something weird…

I had coffee yesterday with Phil McCredden who is the new director of Forge Victoria. Our relationship with Forge has always been pretty rocky, so our conversation yesterday was an attempt to find a way to work together differently - thanks to Phil for initiating it. Forge Victoria are reconfiguring themselves at the moment, and it’s going to be an interesting couple of years coming up. It feels very healthy - I walked away from the meeting thinking the space I’m working in is a little less lonely, which was an unexpected outcome!

Phil blogs here. He and Dan, his wife, used to blog at signposts, which was an extraordinary phenomena in the australian religious blogosphere. The new blog is quite different in focus, and will be really interesting reading.

Three of the four men who wrote the psalms that were part of the collection of Hold This Space liturgies published by Proost are back in prison, after short periods on the outside. The men were part of the Marlborough Unit at Port Phillip Prison, the unit which houses those who are intellectually disabled or have acute psych conditions.

I was walking next to someone today on the way into work who looked like he was only just holding his demons at bay, talking himself back into sanity with muttered entreaties. That could so easily be me, i thought, aware again that i felt i had much more in common with him than with the other professionals walking around us. i thought again about how much i dislike the phrase ‘except for the grace of god’, which i always think comes awfully close to being another version of prosperity gospel… i know i’ve not unravelled because i’ve had the money to get help when things could have gone either way; because i’ve had education and jobs that have given me confidence, resilience and options; because i’ve got people around me who are honest about their own fragility and who give me courage to understand my own… to say i have those things by the grace of god places the blame back on god for those who don’t.

If you get the link in all of this, the Port Phillip West Communal Justice Network is next meeting this friday morning at the Judy Lazarus Transition Centre. This meeting is to discuss with staff at the centre how we can work together to offer practical help and advocacy to prisoners in transition, and to begin formulating proposals for conversations with Corrections Victoria. Email if you want to know more.

I’m back from holidays, which were very lovely and all too short… The time between getting back from the UK and going on leave was pretty relaxed, but that’s well and truly over now…

I spent the week in Adelaide, mostly hibernating and doing the family thing, but I did have dinner one night with Sarah and Michelle, who were both part of this year’s UK trip. Over the last few years Sarah has been organising Black Wood Jazz, which is ‘an alternative style ‘church’ space in which to enjoy live jazz and thought provoking stories and conversation’. She sent me through the following information about the next evening:

Kick off Christmas with an event that can be as kicked back, or stimulating as you make it. 6.00-8.30pm on 30 November 2008

BYO picnic, folding chairs, (and a table if you are that way inclined), cold drinks, friends, neighbours and good conversation to Christmas under the stars in the Blackwood Uniting Church carpark (At the Roundabout, 266 Main Road Blackwood, Adelaide).

Hot drinks available for gold coin donation.

Enjoy the smooth sounds of Daniel lee and Friends. Enjoy cool company – bring your own if you aren’t to sure about ours. We will unwrap some stories of hope too as the evening gives way to stars.

Donations will be collected to support Blackwood Jazz and the Christmas Bowl Appeal

And a couple of other Melbourne based things coming up:

We’re hosting a pre-christmas space in the basement on December 7. It’s invitation only, so let me know if you want to be invited!

I’m leading a workshop tomorrow on Psalms at the ‘Preaching in the Year of David and Mark’ conference. Hope to see some of you there.

NCYC is happening again in January. It’s not too late to register… Shane Claiborne is speaking, along with a host of others. I’m leading some electives and am involved in worship one evening [but don't let that stop you from registering...]. It should be a great week.

i’m writing less here at the moment, partly because i’m working on things that aren’t mine to publish, but also because i’m trying to write more intentionally and deliberately, rather than just spout things off the top of my head. that doesn’t suit a blog format quite as well. the world has more words than it needs at the moment, it feels good to limit the amount one adds to them…

a call to worship, based on mark 1:21-28

we come afraid
in search of hope that is stronger than evil

we come bewildered
in search of truth that will bring us to life

we come trusting
there is a love that will cast out our demons

holy one
in this space and moment
still the voices that betray our hopes
and calm the chaos that denies our peace

gather us into your love.
amen.

[written after visiting gloucester cathedral, and hearing an all-too familiar voice...]

i go for months without thinking of you
and then there you are

and again
against my will
i want you.

seduced by a memory
of space and time
redolent with whispered secrets
and ancient prayers,
certainty and promise:

i’m yours
i hear my echo
bend me
break me.

familiarity enfolds me
in a tissue-thin layer
of endearments and nostalgia,
wrapping a once-full box of promises
with the gift already taken.

i know myself here
but it’s not a self i want to know.

This is the power
of old lovers and gods

made from a time
i was naked before you
whispering my dreams
fears
tears
hopes
into a space
i did not know was unsafe.

i wrap myself tight against the memories.
i will not let them be enough.

Andrew Denton interviewed Philippe Petit on Enough Rope tonight, in anticipation of Man on Wire opening in Australia this week.

Denton: Of all the amazing things in this act, the thing that most astonishes me is when you lie down on the wire, you lie flat, and then you stand up again. That strikes me as breaking several laws of gravity.

Petit: [bemused, as though the idea of laws of gravity is entirely new to him] You know, I never thought of the high wire as a technical world,  although i am practicing still today three hours a day on the wire. I always thought of the wire as theatre, as something really very special and inspiring, where the physical act should not have the most importance… and when you say that laying down the wire and standing up is physically demanding and physically difficult, i’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the idea… of a man or a woman walking on thin air or a little wire, that at some point will be so well in their world that they can fall asleep…

Is that not our task?  Finding the way of being so well in the world that we are bemused by the idea that some law of gravity might get in our way…

Anyone in melbourne got a copy of Amy-Jill Levine’s ‘A Feminist Companion to Mark’s Gospel’ that I could borrow this week? [the UFT library's is borrowed] I’d buy one, but I can’t locate it in a bookshop in australia, and delivery times from overseas are too long.

[associated question: why is it that feminist biblical commentary's seem to only focus on the stories that include women? surely there's a feminist perspective on other passages too...]

The next meeting of the Port Philip West network is on Sunday afternoon, at the Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre. We can’t take any more into the prison this Sunday, but if you are interested in being part of the ongoing work of the network, let me know. The network is working in three particular areas: advocacy [in government and communities], post-release integration [mentoring, housing and employment], and post-release support [metcards, phone cards, toothpaste, clothing...].

Word on the street is that the next state election [which is not due for a couple of years] will be fought on law and order.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations… We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil. On one side are Us, Our Kin, and Our Kind; on the other side of that line we cast Them, Their Different Kin, and Other Kind. Paradoxically, by creating this myth of our invulnerability to situational forces, we set ourselves up for a fall by not being sufficiently vigilant to situational forces.

The SPE [Stanford Prison Experiment]… reveals a message we do not want to accept: that most of us can undergo significant character transformations when we are caught up in the crucible of social forces. What we imagine we would do when we are outside that crucible may bear little resemblance to who we become and what we are capable of doing once we are inside its network. The SPE is a clarion call to abandon simplistic notions of the Good Self dominating Bad Situations. We are best able to avoid, prevent, challenge, and change such negative situational forces only by recognizing their potential power to “infect” us, as it has others who were similarly situated…

Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us - under the right or wrong situational circumstances. That knowledge does not excuse evil; rather it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots - of Them but not Us.

from the truly chilling Lucifer Effect: How good people turn evil, by Philip Zimbardo