Sermons and Confessions

Yesterday I had the honor of being included in a game played by my 5 year old son.   It was all about the adventures of Catty and the Giant.  I was the giant.  Noah was Catty – a superhero who can change into the shape of a cat and fight bad guys.  We built our bases complete with fantastic gadgets and we labeled the ‘planks of doom’ which cover the ‘Pit of Sinkis’.  We fought the terrible Marsh Monster who was only killed after Cat Man ripped him apart after a terrible battle.  At one point the giant had to take an unconscious Cat Man and throw him into the pit of Cat Thief so that he could recover.

There was also the battle with the terrible Brick Man.  He was made of bricks and was eventually defeated by Cat Man’s heat ray followed by a giant bucket of cold water.  Cat Man announced that the Brick Man was dead because his brain was mush and his eyes were exploded.

Our third mission was to save New York from the giant duck that was about to lay an egg full of TNT.  We flew to New York in the Cat Plane, piloted by Cat Man.  I was able to sit in the back and get anything I wanted for dinner.   When we got there Cat Man flew up on his jet pack, located the duck and ripped him to pieces.  Then he defused the TNT egg.

Another mission was against the giant snake.  I was asked by my companion, “What kills snakes.”  Thinking like an adult I said…  “Hmm I don’t know – maybe a mongoose.”  I had to explain what a mongoose was – but that was no great obstacle to Cat Man.  He immediately issued all agents with Giant Mongooses.  They were quite cuddly things really and after the mission the giant didn’t want his mongoose to go away.

I’m told there is also a character called Joe the waiter.  I think he’s a bit player that serves the food on the plane and gets killed off in later missions.

It was fun and took me back to my own childhood.

I find the concept of timed injections of poison into the air in your home a weird one.  Most of the major flyspray companies seem to have a version of this product.  Basically it’s a can of fly spray mounted on your wall, with a timer attached.  Chemicals are periodically released into the air.  The amount released is quite tiny and it is in a misted format that is lighter than the normal spray from a can.   This is  poison being released into the air, regardless of the presence of any insects.  Couple this with the way these products are advertised.  In one add pretty green leaves are floating through your home, when they detect the presence of a nasty insect they turn to arrows and peirce them through the heart!  It’s a lie of course, every living thing in that environment will be taking in that poison.  So dogs, cats, fish, babies, are all breathing it in.  I’m sure the amounts are below the ’safe’ level but even in sub tropical Brisbane, in the middle of summer, where mosquitos and other insects can be a pest, it’s hard to imagine that we really need to flood our whole environment with poison.

Of course if you have an automatic dispenser it runs out in about a month and you need to buy more.  A traditional can of spray probably lasts years.  What an excellent marketing idea

Recently a breakfast radio program got into trouble because they invited a 14 year old girl to take a lie detector test on air.  In response to a question about sexual experience she revealed she had been raped at age 12. 

There is no defending the stupidity of the radio presenters and producers and they have been widely criticised.  I think we need to be careful however about making the girl in question feel she has done something wrong.

My point is there should never be any criticism of people who speak about their experience of rape.  There is nothing for this girl to be ashamed of in a situation that by it’s very nature was without her consent and took all power away from her.  There seems to be some people who are suggesting that being raped is not as bad as talking about it on radio. 

 A second little point.  I’ve also heard the suggestion that this girls life is ruined.  I’m not sure if the suggestion was due to the rape or due to the radio show, but either way… may I ask that we not condemn anyone to a ruined life.  Life is, if nothing else, a series of experiences.  Some of them are terrible, some of them, like rape will happen only to a few and will indeed be horrible, with far reaching consequences and long felt pain, but there is hope.  There is help, there are good experiences to come, there is love and joy and friendship and triumph that can still be had. 

To make any single experience, however traumatic, the defining one of a life is to sell that life short.

My beloved wife has spent the day watching DVDs of the American Christian TV show 7th Heaven. 

I hate this show with a passion bordering on the extreme.  Ridiculous story lines, bad acting, bad writing are one thing.  The thinly veiled theme of we’ll teach you how to live good christian lives is even fine, if they didn’t handle the complex issues so simplisticly. 

In the real world people take drugs, have sexual encounters they regret, overeat, can’t communicate and are sometimes foolish all for a variety of complex reasons.  The life lessons that come from these experience are sometimes understood and sometimes completely missed.  Also in the real world, people do the right thing, are honourable and kind and get shitted on from a great height.  This is life. 

 The simplistic crap that is peddled by certain churches (7th Heaven being one vehicle of that peddling) does nothing to help people.  It just makes them feel inadequate because they can’t live up to the ideal.

I have remained silent until now on the issue of Father Peter Kennedy and the administration of St Mary’s Parish South Brisbane.  Father Kennedy has been removed as the administrator because the Archbishop of Brisbane has declared him to no longer be in communion with the Catholic Church.

 I’ve never been to St Mary’s and never met Peter Kennedy, but my gut feeling is to agree with the Archbishop.  I respect Kennedy for disagreeing with the Catholic Church, but there is a point where if you disagree with an organisation you have to leave it.  You can’t cheer for StGeorge if you call yourself a Bronco.  You can’t work for shop A and sell the products of Shop B. 

Kennedy should have the courage of his convictions and say yes I am out of communion with the catholic church because they are wrong and then leave.  The longer he stays the more he seems like a spoiled school boy sitting defiantly on the floor and saying “Make Me!”

My 2 boys are at the local school.  The ‘young apprentice’ has started Prep now and seems to be settling in well.  At the parent information night we were informed of the ‘lockdown’ practice they have at school.  This is the procedure the children are to follow if an unauthorised person is in the school.  Of course we didn’t have them when I was at school, that was a time before the american school massacres had happened.  The prep teacher was telling us about the fine line that she walks between getting the kids to practice hiding in the kitchen and scaring them to death.

 There is a fine line too with other areas of school security.  Recently the police had to be called to the school to deal with a man who was taking photos of kids from outside the school area and wouldn’t stop.  Totally understandable and appropriate behaviour from the school.  Contrast that with the reality of the daily pickup from the same school.  Every day parents congregate under and around the school rooms waiting for their kids to finish.  There is little alternative to this as the school has no on site parking and indeed many parents and carers walk to the school to pick up their kids.  Once every few months I get the opportunity to take a day off work and I pick up our kids.  I walk right through the centre of the school, a virtually unknown middle aged male figure.  If I did it a 12.30 it would, no doubt, spark a Code Blue.  Do it at 2.30 and no one bats an eye lid. 

This is not a criticism of the school, I see no other options for them.  Just a commentary on the very complex world we live in.

I was told recently about a woman who went into a public toilet with three footballers, to give them oral sex.  The story teller was very quick to label the woman a slut.  It’s immoral she said.   I don’t know if it is immoral.  It’s not something I would like to be involved in.  It might be sordid, or distaseful but I just can’t see that it is in the same league as failing to pay income tax, failing to pay child care or even stealing stationery from the office cupboard.

Why are we so obsessed with sex?  I know of a case where a man was stood down from a management position because he used his office to have sex with a co-worker.  Unfortunately they were seen by someone in a neighbouring office and the incident was reported.  That particular company has a record of tolerating bad management and incompetence, but one whiff of a sexual scandal and they act.  This was consentual sex between adults, out of office hours.  If I were a shareholder of that company I would worry about their shoddy management practices but a bit of sex isn’t going to hurt my profits.  I’m afraid I think the morality of the person who reported it is more in question than the participants.

I hope the human race can get over itself.  After all we are all the result of a sexual liason. 

I recently attended my first parent teacher interview.  In three years of school I’ve never seen the need.  We have a bright and happy boy who has always and continues to do well at school.  My wife was tied up at work and couldn’t be there, so I found myself waiting outside the classroom alone as the couple before me went well over their allotted time.

I wasn’t sure that I really needed to be here this time.  The reason I was there was concern over the fluctuation we have between a motivated, enthusiastic boy who gets himself ready for school and makes his own lunch and the distressed, crying boy who won’t let go of his mother to let her out of the door when he is dropped off.

It makes you realise, as I have ever since his first night on earth when I held his hand in the crib at the hospital, that there is no owners manual with children.

His teacher has no answers either.  He sees a happy boy who is a good student and who is popular with the other kids.  Maybe it’s just the end of term blues, maybe he’s got a bit of a cold, maybe it’s something more serious.  Thoughts like bi-polar, aspergus and worse can’t be stopped from appearing in your head.

Thankfully the teacher and I have formed a little partnership and have agreed to monitor the problem and communicate.  I’m quietly confident we’ll get it right.  We have to, of course, because so much is at stake.

I love the old codgers who phone talk back radio.  This morning there was a guy who thought that way to solve the health issues in Australia was to get rid of all the beaurocrats and replace them with health workers like doctors and nurses.
 
These thoughts are so shallow they almost don’t need a rebuttal, but they persist in our community so for what it’s worth…
 
There are more jobs than just health care in a hospital.  Staff have to be paid, patients records have to be kept, stock levels monitored and ordered, bills paid.  This is before the government reports that have to be submitted so that we, the public, can be comfortable that things are being run correctly. 
 
A reduction in clerical and administrative staff does not result in a free up of resources for more nurses.  Rather, it results in already overworked nurses having to cover admin jobs.  A friend of mine recently returned to nursing after a few years in an office job.  One of the first things he had to do was employ his clerical skills at the nursing station and fix up a spreadsheet.  This is surely a ridiculous use of a highly skilled professional person’s time.
 
Public service bashing is a common practice at the moment.  As employee of a government owned corporation I have been the recipient of it myself.  In fact the public service can’t be as bad as they are made out to be.  Where I live the trains run, the roads are fixed, the births are registered.  Most government employees that I know are moderately hard working people who are dedicated to their jobs.  They are generally paid at a lower rate than they could command in private enterprise, but this is offset by more flexible working conditions and hours. 
 
Let’s not forget, too that the government is the largest single employer.  So chances are when next your public service bashing at least one of the people you are talking to is a public servant.
 

My employer and my union are currently negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement.  There is, as always, a lot of B.S.  coming from both sides.  It particuarly annoys me when the union says inflammatory and insulting things about my employer.  They don’t seem to understand that having been with my employer now for well over 10 years I have a loyalty and a respect for the institution.  I’m not against them, I spend my working life being for them, trying to make their business as successful as possible.

It particularly annoys me at union meetings when they get up and address us as “Brothers and Sisters”.  I mean, come on, this is not a 1930’s communist uprising. 

So why do I stay a member?  I’m not naive enough to think that a large organisation cares particularly for me.  They’re not my family, they are my employer.  I don’t think that we would have anywhere near the offer that we do have were we required to bargain as individuals.  I pay my money to have a professional negotiator sit down with the professional negotiators employed by my boss.  It puts me on a level playing field and ensures my services are sold at a fair price.

Of course, if I wasn’t a member, the unions would still exist and the negotiator would still sit down, and my pay and conditions would still be improved by the same amount at the end of the process.  I retain my membership because I don’t think it’s fair to stand back and let other people fight for benefits that come to me.

Unions have lost touch with their members, but the answer is for employees to join unions, demand reasonable union behaviour and vote no to strikes and industrial action they don’t agree with.  That way we maintain a strong voice to stand up for fair pay and conditions and we reserve the right to industrial action in extreme cases where employers behaviour is genuinely unfair.