Just in case any of you were wondering - I don't have Swine Flu. Not yet, at least. Just a throat infection. A primary infection - easily treated.
Some of my colleagues seem quite keen to get the new, cool Flu of the year, though. I wonder what that says about the state that most teachers are in at this time of year - that the prospect of a week's quarantine is the only way they can countenance surviving the next few weeks.
Certainly, it's tough at the moment. We're all at our least resilient. A cranky e-mail from a moderately demanding parent last night had far more impact on me than it warranted. In fact, by about 8pm yesterday I was just about ready to pack it all in (teaching, that is - not life!) - e-mails about staff needing to do more to combat graffiti in our classrooms, whinging from stressed Year 12s, Year 8 girls implicating me in why they are being badly behaved in their Maths class (no, I don't teach them for Maths) - it does make it all feel a little bit like too much hard work.
So what better antidote, I say, than to read the poetry of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Not an obvious response, you might think, and no, it's not, but it often helps to remember that there's someone worse off than yourself - better still to see someone worse off than yourself who maintains a strange kind of grace under pressure: not because he pretended to be okay, but because he admitted to God that he wasn't.
If I look to others for confirmation that I'm doing okay, I'll be just another nervous wreck. Everyone's stressed. Everyone's tired - students, teachers, parents. Everyone. It's that time of year. No-one's really in any position to help anyone else out - not while they're doing their level best to stay afloat.
But there is one place I can go to for complete security, complete stability, complete bouyancy. Bonhoeffer, facing death, knew that only too well. I'm just facing a bad throat infection, and a few cranky kids and parents. If God could give Bonhoeffer the strength to handle what he faced, I suspect that same strength can help me out.
I might give it a try.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Swine Before Pearls
When the Black Death hit London, many thought that it was a sign of God's judgment on a decadent people. Dean John Donne pondered this question, and others, in his classic Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, the work from which comes his most famous bit of prose: "No man is an islande..." through to "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." Donne, convinced that he himself had the plague, knew that he was connected to the deaths of his fellow men. One man dying meant a death for him - in both the very literal sense of contagion, and the sense of him, and of the world he lived in, losing something each time a person died.
We, unlike Donne, have grown immune to tragedy. So, when the now-infamous Swine Flu hit the news, I paid very little attention. I don't usually pay much attention to the news, I have to admit. This was no different. It felt, like most other looming tragedies, not especially real.
The jury is still out on just how bad Swine Flu actually is, but, serious or not, it is most definitely real in my bit of the world. A school teacher, I am a moving target for every Disease of the Week, and now am working in the midst of what is coming to be seen by my colleagues as a circle of Swine Flu. Schools on every side of us are closing down - first Clifton Hill, then Thornbury, then Epping, then the West...Each extreme of my trainline and Department of Education region has this new disease. And, what with the thirty-day incubation period, there's every chance that we too have the disease somewhere in our midst and are just waiting for it to emerge.
So naturally, each time someone gets a cold, the question, partly flippant, partly serious, is, "You don't have Swine Flu, do you?" One of my friends at work told me yesterday that her brother's school has it now. She lives with him. We walk and talk with the potential of disease each day.
Am I overdramatising this? Not really. Most of the time, I'm not especially concerned. But last night, when I considered doing my standard soldiering-on act at work today despite having a bad cold, I had second-thoughts on hearing my housemate, also a teacher in the North-West, say that her principal had ordered them all to stay at home if they felt at all sick. Normally happy, I suppose, to share whatever particular contagion I'm carrying, I felt that now was perhaps a time to keep it to myself. I seriously doubt it's anything more than the standard sore-threat-and-runny-nose that normally accompanies the onset of winter for most Melburnians - but, at a time like this, it doesn't hurt to be cautious.
But it's more than that. The normal response for a teacher, when sick, is to think, "But I can't afford to miss classes today. I'll have so much to catch up on." Only, now I'm thinking also about what effect a quarantine would have on end-of-semester assessment and exams, report-writing, and my planned trip to two of the world's Swine Flu hotspots in less than three weeks' time. Thinking about all that makes me realise: if my school, my life, is hit by the disease, it won't be up to me to decide what I can and can't afford to miss. Everyone's lives will be rearranged dramatically, if only for a time.
I doubt that Swine Flu says anything special about the decadence of our society today - certainly nothing more than you can tell from watching Video Hits on a Saturday morning, or looking at the glossies at the Supermarket checkout. But it says something less than ideal when a society can't afford to get sick. It suggests, I think, a bad case of priorities out of order.
I'm going to have a sleep this afternoon, and hope to rearrange some priorities before I go back to work tomorrow.
We, unlike Donne, have grown immune to tragedy. So, when the now-infamous Swine Flu hit the news, I paid very little attention. I don't usually pay much attention to the news, I have to admit. This was no different. It felt, like most other looming tragedies, not especially real.
The jury is still out on just how bad Swine Flu actually is, but, serious or not, it is most definitely real in my bit of the world. A school teacher, I am a moving target for every Disease of the Week, and now am working in the midst of what is coming to be seen by my colleagues as a circle of Swine Flu. Schools on every side of us are closing down - first Clifton Hill, then Thornbury, then Epping, then the West...Each extreme of my trainline and Department of Education region has this new disease. And, what with the thirty-day incubation period, there's every chance that we too have the disease somewhere in our midst and are just waiting for it to emerge.
So naturally, each time someone gets a cold, the question, partly flippant, partly serious, is, "You don't have Swine Flu, do you?" One of my friends at work told me yesterday that her brother's school has it now. She lives with him. We walk and talk with the potential of disease each day.
Am I overdramatising this? Not really. Most of the time, I'm not especially concerned. But last night, when I considered doing my standard soldiering-on act at work today despite having a bad cold, I had second-thoughts on hearing my housemate, also a teacher in the North-West, say that her principal had ordered them all to stay at home if they felt at all sick. Normally happy, I suppose, to share whatever particular contagion I'm carrying, I felt that now was perhaps a time to keep it to myself. I seriously doubt it's anything more than the standard sore-threat-and-runny-nose that normally accompanies the onset of winter for most Melburnians - but, at a time like this, it doesn't hurt to be cautious.
But it's more than that. The normal response for a teacher, when sick, is to think, "But I can't afford to miss classes today. I'll have so much to catch up on." Only, now I'm thinking also about what effect a quarantine would have on end-of-semester assessment and exams, report-writing, and my planned trip to two of the world's Swine Flu hotspots in less than three weeks' time. Thinking about all that makes me realise: if my school, my life, is hit by the disease, it won't be up to me to decide what I can and can't afford to miss. Everyone's lives will be rearranged dramatically, if only for a time.
I doubt that Swine Flu says anything special about the decadence of our society today - certainly nothing more than you can tell from watching Video Hits on a Saturday morning, or looking at the glossies at the Supermarket checkout. But it says something less than ideal when a society can't afford to get sick. It suggests, I think, a bad case of priorities out of order.
I'm going to have a sleep this afternoon, and hope to rearrange some priorities before I go back to work tomorrow.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Worthy causes
The past week has seen me back in my old stomping ground of Carlton a fair bit. It's always an interesting experience returning, feeling at once just I've never left and like it's years since my life revolved around that place.
One of the more awkward aspects of city life that I am always reminded of when I go back is the very challenging question of when to give money to beggars - and they abound on Lygon St, particularly outside Lygon Court. I never worked out a consistent strategy to adopt when I lived there, and am no more consistent when I go back. On Tuesday night, going to the Nova to watch a film with my old housemate from the latter Carlton days, we were approached by someone asking for money to get him and his uncle somewhere. My friend obliged with some small change, and so I felt like I might as well. I only had about $1.50, plus a few 5 and 10 cent pieces, so I got out the $1 and the 50 cents and handed it over - only, we were standing just over a drain and, much to our collective horror, the $1 fell out of my fingers and through the grate. The man stood over the drain, looking in and saying, "Is there any way of getting it out?" I didn't really know what to do - I only had what I had already dismissed as worthless shrapnel left in my wallet, which I instantly took out and gave to him as some means of making amends. The larger notes in my wallet seemed too much to give him as well - why, I wonder? Was I playing it safe, and figuring that he could hardly do much damage to himself with only 70 cents, whereas $20...well, who knew what he might do?
What stood out for me most from the whole experience was that I wouldn't miss that dollar coin that was now circulating somewhere in Carlton's sewerage system. I had parted with it because it didn't mean a lot to me, and so I was no worse off. To that man, though, the dollar was worth enough that he even contemplated climbing into the drain to get it. Speech of Arrested Development had it right, I suppose, when he said, "Two dollars is a snack to me, but it means a big deal to you." Pity "Mr Wendall" hasn't dated very well. The social message was probably once very profound.
Then, last night, I sat outside Vina Bar, sadly soon to be closed down, with some friends from my book group, when we were approached by a girl, probably about twelve years old, who was selling handmade friendship bands. We declined her offer without much thought. I wondered as she passed what she was selling them for. I had no use for a friendship band, but would probably give her money for one if it was for a good cause. One of my friends must have had the same idea, calling the girl back to ask what she was raising money for. The girl's answer was that she was trying to buy all the "Twilight" merchandise. I tried to hold back my amusement while a couple of my friends engaged her in conversation about "Twilight" and why it was important to her. The girl was delighted, clearly, to share her love of the books, and her hopes for the movie, just released on DVD - and, I must admit, while my snobbery made me feel that this was in no way a worthy cause, I suspect my friends had the better response to talk to her about it, and to make a gutsy twelve-year-old girl feel a bit more comfortable walking alone on Lygon Street on a Saturday night.
The lines to guide us in situations like this are fairly thin. If we aren't responding with love, we make every cause worthless. With love - even the most worthless of causes can gain some purpose.
One of the more awkward aspects of city life that I am always reminded of when I go back is the very challenging question of when to give money to beggars - and they abound on Lygon St, particularly outside Lygon Court. I never worked out a consistent strategy to adopt when I lived there, and am no more consistent when I go back. On Tuesday night, going to the Nova to watch a film with my old housemate from the latter Carlton days, we were approached by someone asking for money to get him and his uncle somewhere. My friend obliged with some small change, and so I felt like I might as well. I only had about $1.50, plus a few 5 and 10 cent pieces, so I got out the $1 and the 50 cents and handed it over - only, we were standing just over a drain and, much to our collective horror, the $1 fell out of my fingers and through the grate. The man stood over the drain, looking in and saying, "Is there any way of getting it out?" I didn't really know what to do - I only had what I had already dismissed as worthless shrapnel left in my wallet, which I instantly took out and gave to him as some means of making amends. The larger notes in my wallet seemed too much to give him as well - why, I wonder? Was I playing it safe, and figuring that he could hardly do much damage to himself with only 70 cents, whereas $20...well, who knew what he might do?
What stood out for me most from the whole experience was that I wouldn't miss that dollar coin that was now circulating somewhere in Carlton's sewerage system. I had parted with it because it didn't mean a lot to me, and so I was no worse off. To that man, though, the dollar was worth enough that he even contemplated climbing into the drain to get it. Speech of Arrested Development had it right, I suppose, when he said, "Two dollars is a snack to me, but it means a big deal to you." Pity "Mr Wendall" hasn't dated very well. The social message was probably once very profound.
Then, last night, I sat outside Vina Bar, sadly soon to be closed down, with some friends from my book group, when we were approached by a girl, probably about twelve years old, who was selling handmade friendship bands. We declined her offer without much thought. I wondered as she passed what she was selling them for. I had no use for a friendship band, but would probably give her money for one if it was for a good cause. One of my friends must have had the same idea, calling the girl back to ask what she was raising money for. The girl's answer was that she was trying to buy all the "Twilight" merchandise. I tried to hold back my amusement while a couple of my friends engaged her in conversation about "Twilight" and why it was important to her. The girl was delighted, clearly, to share her love of the books, and her hopes for the movie, just released on DVD - and, I must admit, while my snobbery made me feel that this was in no way a worthy cause, I suspect my friends had the better response to talk to her about it, and to make a gutsy twelve-year-old girl feel a bit more comfortable walking alone on Lygon Street on a Saturday night.
The lines to guide us in situations like this are fairly thin. If we aren't responding with love, we make every cause worthless. With love - even the most worthless of causes can gain some purpose.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Conspiracies for the desperate
Well, yesterday The Age unearthed a religious conspiracy so titillating it's got to be the basis for the next Dan Brown novel.
This week's Saturday Age published a small article in the A2 liftout revealing the little-known fact (something the author said many "good Christian folk" would be fascinated to find out) that Jesus Christ was never actually called that in the original Bible.
No. Believe it or not, his name was actually Joshua. And the "Christ" bit was a transliteration of the Greek version of the Hebrew "Messiah", for "anointed one". Amazing, I know.
Of course, he makes it sound all very farcical, by detailing all the different stages of translation: how the name "Jesus" is an Anglicised version of the Latin version of the Greek version of the Hebrew, or something like that. And he uses words like "bumbling" to make the process sound ridiculous at best, evil at worst, and emphasises the fact that the Hebrew name "Joshua" has meaning that our version, Jesus, lacks. The name "Jesus", in short, is a meaningless result of too many translations.
Now, before you all start to lose faith over all this, it's probably worth noting that, like most religious conspiracies, this is not news to any particularly knowledgable Christian with an NIV Study Bible. When you look up the passages in the Gospels when Jesus' earthly parents are told to call him "Jesus" (sorry, "Joshua"- or, to be more accurate still, "Yeshua"), the NIV note will tell you what Joshua means - not our Anglo-estimate of the word, "Jesus". In other words, Bible translators are aware that what they're working with is...a translation - a notion that any group of schoolchildren from Italy, Germany and Australia could all come to grips with when they realise that they all learnt about the same fifteenth century Italian explorer (the one we call Christopher Colombus), just by moderately different names.
Some details are lost in translation. Most Bible scholars will acknowledge that, which is why we tend to expect that Bible teachers will have at least some knowledge of the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, or at least own reputable books designed to demistify it all for us. Contrary to this knowledge being locked away in the cell of some tyrannical monastic hell- (sorry, heaven-) bent on deceiving for his own bizarre, sadistic gain, these facts are out there in the open for anyone who wants to sit through Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", or anyone who reads the liner notes in their widely accessible Bibles.
If the translation of "Yeshua" to Jesus, or "Messiah" to "Christ" somehow altered the meaning beyond comprehension; if the original words and their meanings were lost to all but the privileged elite, dressed in suitably Opus Dei-ish robes and flagellating for the camera, then we'd have reason to be concerned. But anyone - seriously, anyone - can access this information which, for the record, makes not a speck of difference to the essence of Christianity, or, if you will, Messianity.
There are other, more important issues of faith that we could be thinking about, I suspect. Like when Richard Dawkins is going to find the gene that predisposes people to become evil and Christian. That I'd really like to read an article about.
For now, I think I'll go on believing.
This week's Saturday Age published a small article in the A2 liftout revealing the little-known fact (something the author said many "good Christian folk" would be fascinated to find out) that Jesus Christ was never actually called that in the original Bible.
No. Believe it or not, his name was actually Joshua. And the "Christ" bit was a transliteration of the Greek version of the Hebrew "Messiah", for "anointed one". Amazing, I know.
Of course, he makes it sound all very farcical, by detailing all the different stages of translation: how the name "Jesus" is an Anglicised version of the Latin version of the Greek version of the Hebrew, or something like that. And he uses words like "bumbling" to make the process sound ridiculous at best, evil at worst, and emphasises the fact that the Hebrew name "Joshua" has meaning that our version, Jesus, lacks. The name "Jesus", in short, is a meaningless result of too many translations.
Now, before you all start to lose faith over all this, it's probably worth noting that, like most religious conspiracies, this is not news to any particularly knowledgable Christian with an NIV Study Bible. When you look up the passages in the Gospels when Jesus' earthly parents are told to call him "Jesus" (sorry, "Joshua"- or, to be more accurate still, "Yeshua"), the NIV note will tell you what Joshua means - not our Anglo-estimate of the word, "Jesus". In other words, Bible translators are aware that what they're working with is...a translation - a notion that any group of schoolchildren from Italy, Germany and Australia could all come to grips with when they realise that they all learnt about the same fifteenth century Italian explorer (the one we call Christopher Colombus), just by moderately different names.
Some details are lost in translation. Most Bible scholars will acknowledge that, which is why we tend to expect that Bible teachers will have at least some knowledge of the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, or at least own reputable books designed to demistify it all for us. Contrary to this knowledge being locked away in the cell of some tyrannical monastic hell- (sorry, heaven-) bent on deceiving for his own bizarre, sadistic gain, these facts are out there in the open for anyone who wants to sit through Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", or anyone who reads the liner notes in their widely accessible Bibles.
If the translation of "Yeshua" to Jesus, or "Messiah" to "Christ" somehow altered the meaning beyond comprehension; if the original words and their meanings were lost to all but the privileged elite, dressed in suitably Opus Dei-ish robes and flagellating for the camera, then we'd have reason to be concerned. But anyone - seriously, anyone - can access this information which, for the record, makes not a speck of difference to the essence of Christianity, or, if you will, Messianity.
There are other, more important issues of faith that we could be thinking about, I suspect. Like when Richard Dawkins is going to find the gene that predisposes people to become evil and Christian. That I'd really like to read an article about.
For now, I think I'll go on believing.
Friday, April 10, 2009
TGIF
Well, today is Good Friday, as you'll no doubt be aware. And how could you miss it? It's one of the only days of the year when everything shuts down. The TAB make the huge concession of only placing bets on races run overseas. Some people eat fish or chicken. Everyone, except for the poor sods at the TAB, gets the day off.
And you can cast your minds back, no doubt, to the various debates about what should and shouldn't be done on Good Friday. Should there be gambling? Should re-runs of "The Exorcist" be shown?
Which is strange, really, given how little significance the day itself still holds in society. Easter Sunday is an easier day to tackle, because at least then we get to eat eggs. Not that we tend to wait until the Sunday to eat them anyway - they've been on sale in Safeway ever since midnight of Valentine's Day.
But why Good Friday? Is this one last remaining vestige of Christendom, that we still observe it, still keep it sacred, even if we're not quite sure why?
What, I wonder, would our society look like if Good Friday was no longer observed. Probably not much different to how it looks now, I suspect, only we'd have one fewer Public Holiday. No, that's not the important question. What we should really be thinking about is what our society would look like if Good Friday had never happened at all.
It's when we start to imagine that kind of society that the day becomes significant. If you have the time to think about it today, please do, before the chocolate eggs take over and we go back to work. It isn't just tradition that makes us still observe this day. It has a meaning - a deep one, that could really change all our lives if we let it. I hope that it can do that for you this year.
And you can cast your minds back, no doubt, to the various debates about what should and shouldn't be done on Good Friday. Should there be gambling? Should re-runs of "The Exorcist" be shown?
Which is strange, really, given how little significance the day itself still holds in society. Easter Sunday is an easier day to tackle, because at least then we get to eat eggs. Not that we tend to wait until the Sunday to eat them anyway - they've been on sale in Safeway ever since midnight of Valentine's Day.
But why Good Friday? Is this one last remaining vestige of Christendom, that we still observe it, still keep it sacred, even if we're not quite sure why?
What, I wonder, would our society look like if Good Friday was no longer observed. Probably not much different to how it looks now, I suspect, only we'd have one fewer Public Holiday. No, that's not the important question. What we should really be thinking about is what our society would look like if Good Friday had never happened at all.
It's when we start to imagine that kind of society that the day becomes significant. If you have the time to think about it today, please do, before the chocolate eggs take over and we go back to work. It isn't just tradition that makes us still observe this day. It has a meaning - a deep one, that could really change all our lives if we let it. I hope that it can do that for you this year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)