Yad Vashem

Today we had the joy of visiting the Israel Museum. Our major purpose was to explore the giant model of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a great thing. And having spent ten days exploring the actual city it really helps to focus those explorations.
But, what a fantastic museum/art gallery it is. Apart from the fabulous display of modern Israeli art of phenomenally high quality I was also struck by teh outdoor installations, and the traditional paintings....why do there seem to be soi many Pisarros. One would think it rivals the Orsay; and the Gauguins, two beautiful Monets and Van Goghs, El Greco and Rembrandt. Didn't see a Picasso but there is almost bound to be the same!
But we then moved on to the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, which is dveadtating in many ways and needs more careful reflection than this blog.
The picture alongside is a dome of phots of holocaust victims, amidst a room full of files ....possibly 6.5 million....as you look up....or at least as I looked up,  I was quite overwhelmed. The as you look down there isa  deeep, deep pit. "Is this hell?" I wondered. And then you see a pool of water so far down and clear that it is more possible to think of it as a place of re-creation.  One hopes so.
But, as I say, it needs and will have more detailed reflection on my return. Good and great stuff.

Eastern apology

I do apologise to all those who have waited (no doubt with baited breath) for postings from Israel.
It has been a fascinating time.
Jordan was amazing, with death defying scenery as you contemplate that section of the Rift Valley.
Hundreds of steps and stairs later we have been up and down the old city of Jerusalem and it is just wondrous.
But there is no sense that any site is 'authentic' only the sense that at some place or other there is something that marks at Christian mystery. The archaeology adds much depth, but just makes a better approximation of what it might  be all about.

Just thinking about packing

We are so fortunate to be able to travel. But packing...well that's another thing.Almost there
It's also a question of what reading you might take and how you might take it. The Church Times notes that there is increasing pressure for religious books to be presented in eformat.
Excuse me! Get up to date.
By and large I haven't opened a paper bible for over a year....and I have read the whole Bible through completely in the last few months....so we are already there.
What I also want is all the good Biblical commentaries to be able to be downloaded  as ebooks, I want the holy books to be available to me on my iPhone. (incidentally when I last went on retreat and was directed by my Director to The Cloud...I was able to go back to my room and download it!)
And I have novels and classics, essays and newspapers from all around the world
And I say to myself...what a wonderful world

Any publicity

Our friend the Very Rev'd Jeremy G has an ability to go one step further.
While everyone is having fun with Pet Sundays around the celebration of St Francis Day (Oct 4), the tremendously innovative Dean Jeremy is always able to grab the community's attention

He has a high social conscience, keen to promote indigenous and refugee issues. As a Dean of Darwin so he should! This grabs the attention. Great stuff Jeremy.
Watch this fine young priest!

Social issues.A lot on the agenda (2) Euthanasia

The world of 'same-sex marriage' is an hurly burly at the moment. There would seem to be little doubt that we will find ourselves in some months/years with a ready acceptance of the reality that marriage will not be defined by (opposite) gender.
Marriage will be available to all citizens. Any two people who choose to commit themselves to each other for life will be able to do so. I am generally sympathetic with this idea.
But when a group to which I belong was advised to talk to the Pro-Euthanasia  lobby I was some what tentative.  
What was being suggested was, not that we should agree with the pro-euthanasia lobby, but that we should understand their methodology of lobbying.
I don't fully accept this idea, and I feel so nervous about euthanasia that I can't readily identify with that cause.
Although, when my mother had a stroke some years ago, I felt my views about euthanasia change almost over night....I didn't want to end her life but we were really challenged by the quality of life she may or may not be having.
I came to understand in the time that followed that the few years that she had remaining, although diminished in quality, were nevertheless good years. It would have been a serious error to cut them short.
This is what worries me most about euthanasia. Not that people shouldn't control their lives. But that we can easily get it wrong. We are so obsessed by diminishing pain that we think that getting rid of pain is the only thing that matters...when it is not.
It is also, for example, important to allow time for human beings to reconcile. Sometimes this will require just living with pain a bit longer than we would prefer. Long enough to allow forgiveness to take its important course.
BUT, pain is not an easy thing to live with; and it is difficult for must of us to understand the level of pain that is being talked about. We are not just talking about  someone having what might be euphemistically called "a low pain threshold" but people who have constant physical pain which can only be alleviated by intensive medication, if at all, and often with gross side-effects.
What is probably worse is the psychological pain.
One prominent media commentator notes of his  suicide attempt many years ago that the reason he attempted suicide was because the emotional pain became unbearable.
Such things are difficult to assess but easy to imagine.
I have not answered the question about whether euthanasia should be legalised. And don't intend to.
I agree with commentators who say the focus should be on individuals and not on protecting doctors ( a not unimportant consideration); but in a world where lines are drawn in all sorts of curious places it is not easy to conclude that there is anything like agreement.

Social issues. A lot on the agenda (1) Prostitution

I think many of our 'progressive' MPs are rather good. One of these is Stephanie Key. She continues to plug away at the issue of 'proper' laws for prostitution.
It is quite a complex issue
And although on one level the moral issues  seem clear, it is of course (as always) more complex.
The chief problem with illegality as my good friend DB has always been key to point out. The 'practitioners' are often the weakest link in the chain. 
Weak for all sorts of reasons.
They are often powerless. Women driven to sex works by financial desperation and life's awful necessity. They are most often the ones who are criminalised by its exposure.
Why should prostitutes be arrested and clients let off?
The simple argument goes:
--if we decriminalise prostitution then at least we give to the prostitutes an element of freedom  that they may not otherwise have. Freedom from blackmail. Freedom from being unable to address workplace issue because they would have admit to being involved in illegality
--Prostitution is a 'victimless crime'. A consenting sex worker offers a service to a customer who is prepared to remunerate them. The worker agrees; the 'client' agrees; so why does there need to be third party (ie. legal) intervention.
It is an important question.
A lot of resources go into marshalling the policing, and to what avail.
I have some sympathy with the steps that Ms Key and others are taking to remove the gross legal abuses that are involved in  this issue.
BUT
there are other questions that are not being addressed.
As a feminist (a male feminist albeit) I am conscious of the fact that the purest tenets of feminism suggest that female prostitution is one of the grossest abuses of the female person that out human society perpetuates.
It is wrong to use people as though they are commodities. It is wrong to see sex as a saleable commodity.
I think that this problem could largely be addressed if the law was framed to convict the 'client' rather than the prostitute.
Once we start convicting the (largely) men who solicit others for sex as though they were simply tradeable commodities we will actually be focussing on the 'bad guys'...rather than the victims.


There is often the spurious argument that prostitution is a 'victimless' crime. But I fail to be convinced by this.
Even when a person is a happy to accept an (exorbitant) amount of money to have sex with another; something has happened which has not been acknowledged. And that is that 'sex' has been allowed to be commodified. 
A person has been bought and sold!
There are deep philosophical questions about this.
Although the subject may feel this is OK as long as they are given $1000. In reality there has been a huge diminution of that person's humanity. They have sold their freedom for a pathetic price.
And the other victim is society itself.
When we start saying it is OK to buy and sell our relationships, then it is is not just the individual but also the whole of society that is diminished