dit-dit-dit-daah for Les Murray!

Challenged to tell the world what religious poet I would take to a desert island, I didn’t know where to begin. I could not have failed to mention Milton. His Paradise Lost is, after all, the greatest poem in the English language. Faced with interminable hours to explore on the beach, however, I thought I’d try something diferent. I want to join the Les Murray Liberation Front. Quite apart from anything else, Mr Murray was numbered in 1997 by the National Trust of Australia among its hundred Australian Living Treasures. How could a mere Secretary for Foreign Tongues compare with an official Living Treasure?

I’ve quoted extensively from Murray’s “Religion and Poetry” on the Guardian CIF site: But here is one of the first poems of Murray’s I read, ten years ago or so. It caught my eye straight away. What a legend! Murray calls poetry “the only whole thinking,” and this unassuming but amazing poem takes ordinary words and weaves magic. Theme, language, metre and rhythm fit together gloriously unpretentiously into one of the world’s great works of art. The best poetry is fabulous music that makes like you were there!

Morse

Tuckett. Bill Tuckett. Telegraph Operator, Hall’s Creek,
which is way out back of the Outback, but he stuck it,
Quite likely liked it, despite heat, glare, dust and the lack
of diversion or doctors. Come disaster you trusted to luck,
ingenuity and pluck. This was back when nice people said pluck,
The sleevelink and green eyeshade epoch.
Faced, though, like Bill Tuckett
with a man needing surgery right on the spot, a lot
would have done their dashes. It looked hopeless (dot dot dot)
Lift him up on the table, said Tuckett, running the key hot
till Head Office turned up a doctor who coolly instructed
up a thousand miles of wire, as Tuckett advanced slit by slit
with a safety razor blade, pioneering on into the wet,
copper-wiring the rivers off, in the first operation conducted
along dotted lines, with rum-drinkers gripping the patient:
d-d-dash it, take care, Tuck!
And the vital spark stayed unshorted
Yallah! breathed the camelmen. Tuckett, you did it, you did it!
cried the spattered la-de-dah jodhpur-wearing Inspector of Stock.
We imagine, some weeks later, a properly laconic
convalescent averring Without you, I’d have kicked the bucket...

From Chunking to Burrenjuck, morse keys have mostly gone silent
and only old men meet now to chitchat in their electric
bygone dialect. The last letter many will forget
is dit-dit-dit-dah, V for Victory. The coders’ hero had speed,
resource and a touch. So ditditdit daah for Bill Tuckett.

The Importance of Sincere Atheism

Atheism is to Christianity what Baldness is to hairdressing — a poor substitute, you may feel, but an important “absolute zero” calibration for the thermometer. Ben Myers is an Australian theologian from Sydney, who has researched the writings of Samuel Becket. As the Global Atheist Convention opens in Melbourne he offers some fascinating theological reflection.

Ben points out that Karl Barth used to begin his courses with the atheism of Feuerbach, because he believed that until you had journeyed beyond the “God” constructed by Bourgeois conformists in their blindness and blandness, with their easy certainties, you could not begin to journey towards the Real Thing. Ben goes on to suggest:

The real test of the Convention will be its willingness to resist easy certainties, its capacity to accommodate vigorous difference and debate (I nearly said to accommodate doubt). I’ve attended many theology conferences, and most of the time you’d be hard pressed to find two people in the room who actually agree with each other. Unquestioning agreement and lack of argumentativeness are always sure signs that a tradition has stagnated. The purpose of a conference or convention is not to celebrate our sameness, but to join together in a shared project of intellectual inquisitiveness and exploration. The Atheist Convention will be a worthwhile event if it creates a space for this kind of inquisitiveness, if divergent views are seen not as departures from the party line but as opportunities for argument and discussion, if the mood is one of questioning and exploration rather than certainty and collective self-affirmation.

Above all, the Convention will be a success if it cultivates serious reflection and resists the cheap allure of slogans and marketing gimmickry. I wonder what Samuel Beckett would have thought of an atheism so easy and so confident that it can fit on the front of a T-shirt or the side of a bus. Atheism as a lifestyle choice – an atheism you can believe in. Frankly, I suspect Beckett would sooner have believed in God.

Reflecting on my own teenage struggles in coming to faith, it took me a while to learn it was actually possible to doubt doubt itself — to achieve radical free thought, if you like. That’s the zone in which God’s reality first began reallly to dawn on me, rather than a Charismatic meeting or similar. I’m not saying there's any partcular virtue in that. It’s just the way the penny dropped for me. Perhaps, as Barth suggested, faith needs the astringent of taking atheism seriously (as it has since the Book of Job), to prevent itself from mushing down into mental idolatry. If so, genuine dialogue between sincere atheists and Christians could genuinely have as much to offer Christians as atheists.

How to give a Castlemaine Four-X

The Church of England Calendar today commemorates Caroline Chisholm — the original Victorian lady with a brick in her handbag, whose 200th anniversary falls this year. Born in Northampton in 1808 she died in London in 1877. Mrs Chisholm engaged in social work to improve the lives of women in India, where her husband was an army officer, and (principally) Australia. She worked tirelessly for the protection of the poor women who flooded the goldfields, providing hostels and education, confronting human trafficking, working for the welfare of immigrants.

She was actually RC (required to convert on marriage) — one of the few significant Victorian God-botherers not to be a paid-up Evangelical. She robustly took the line “I promise to know neither country nor creed, but to serve all justly and impartially.” It didn’t get her brownie points with the hierarchy, but she walked through all the bitter denominational cowboys and indians of her age, very pronounced in colonial Australia, ignoring the lot. Her integrity and energy won the respect of all, principally Lord Shaftesbury and Florence Nightingale. Mrs Jellyby in Dickens’ Bleak House is said to be a hostile portrait.
The White Hat guide gives a refreshingly honest, characteristically Antipodean view:

Caroline Chisholm is one of those remarkable women that most Australians admire but are probably secretly pleased is no longer with us.

Why do we admire her? Australia is a practical country. We admire people who roll up their sleeves and do things. rather than those who make a big fuss saying "'they ought to do something about it". When Caroline Chisholm arrived in your office or workplace it wasn't to say "You must do something about this!", it was to say "I have already done such and such and if you were to do so and so we could achieve even more."

Why are we a little relieved that she is no longer around? We realise that if we came within her sphere we would probably be bullied or charmed or shamed into doing something for 'the cause'. What excuse could we put up? We could hardly claim lack of time or resources because in front of us was a mother of five (later six) children without a lot of money in a rough and ready colony already doing significant things. Even her husband, who is buried with her, is probably a little relieved. He was a competent army officer, and spent much of his life and energy in the services of the colonies and with Caroline's causes. His name doesn't even appear on their tombstone, and he probably died of exhaustion just trying to keep up with her. He is still possibly resting uneasily in case he hears the words "Archie, what are we going to do about this?"

She has given her name to suburbs of Melbourne and Canberra, and appeared on stamps and five dollar bills. Her life is an inspiration to all good Christian women to stick a brick in their handbags and change the world. If you aren’t doing anything else about it, click here, join up, for Caroline’s sake, do something!