Letter from Australia

A Prayer

O, that You would heal my soul
For it is afflicted
The odds are ten to one
Without You I am undone
I struggle to open the door
Yet open it I must
For victory enters when You arrive
In You I place all my trust
Hasten to my aid, O LORD
I need You by my side
To put to death my false selves
For which You willingly sacrificed
Your life for mine, so that I can grow
My sin for Your perfection, Your Blood doth flow
Hold me, cleanse me; make me anew
That I will guide little sheep
To journey where they must
Your Plan I will follow until the time to sleep

Out of the Storm

Amidst the storm the search resumes
Unabated despite the tumult – wind, hail, rain
Unceasing the struggle, relentless the current
Against mountain waves, steadfast and persevering
In spite of nature, Her barristers rage
Concerning laws, rights and conflicts that chill
Within, the heart seeks tranquil peace
From the soul’s depths, permanent solace and plea
Beneath the façade of apparent calm
Throughout the land, the emptiness is stark
Between mountainous terrains, the soil lies barren
Apart, desolate from neglect, though always close to anguish
Forlorn, worn from weather and labour
Is there no comfort from such toil?
Could the grand vision be,
Or is it but a nice distraction?
Infuse thyself with the obscure truth, that which brings serenity
Embrace the warmth of the eternal rays
Focus, and behold the spark of delight
Stoke embers of joy into flames of thanksgiving

The incidence of parents or caregivers reading to children at home today seems to be less frequent than as recently as twenty years ago. Today, parents hardly read at all, let alone to their children. The pressures of sustaining the lifestyle of the Jones’s necessitate many couples to adopt a dual-income strategy, with or without children. If they are present, Children are left in the comfort of the living room, with emissions from television and, more recently, personal computers and handheld electronic games. The present and future generations seem blissfully unaware of the daily trade made for comfort and passivity – the silent debilitative effects of myopia, and the more expressive (but just as) insidious symptoms of epilepsy.
 
While this may sound a trifle alarmist, it is of concern to few, except to political parties quick to exploit public sentiment, and radical social commentators such as yours truly. The transmission of time-honoured fairy tales from elder to younger generations has, over the course of one mere century, morphed into a deluge of visual garbage and other miscellaneous trivia from sources of irrelevance and irreverence to passive captives, through the values-neutral (though some may assert that ‘ammoral’ would be a better term) medium of television. Predictable plots and almost as predictably graphic depiction of violence pervade the consciousness of mankind, from the cradle to the grave.
 
Our children are denied the memory of parental nurture; these have effectively been uploaded onto web pages, archived to CD ROMS, and consigned to television programming staff. Yet modern technology fails to back up the essence of story telling: face-to-face human interaction. Although programmes such as Sesame Street, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, and Bush Tales aim to provide some form of values education, these are the pitiful minority compared to the superficiality and mundane cycles of violence and inane plots of animations such as GI Joe, Pokemon, and Power Rangers.
 
Allowing young children to interact with machines is in itself not a negative phenomenon. Skills such as differentiating between a right-click and a double click of the mouse are undoubtedly useful. However, time spent on electronic playthings (especially television) at the expense of social interaction endangers children as it reinforces the fallacy of equating independence with isolationism. Throughout nature, especially in the case of mammals, the need for survival has highlighted the role of transmitting learned behaviour from one generation to the next; cases of survival through agoraphobia are a rarity, if these do indeed exist.
 
In a world of cut and paste, creativity is slowly but surely draining out of society. Indeed society today values creativity in cutting and pasting for the masses; original thought is left to the aristocrats, those deemed ‘lucky’ enough to get a break, and those deemed ‘crazy’ enough to risk losing a life of comfortable sterility. The death of the fairy tale begins with the suspension of the vibrant imagination inspired through social interaction in favour of the lifeless conformity as led by the characters of the Sims computer game. Taken to the extreme, technology’s Xerox machines extrapolate to a world where one mind is a replica of another, each responding to stimuli with the ‘right’ answer. Have we forgotten that those who possess sufficient human technology create social machines to manipulate those who have long sacrificed theirs?

Horrorshow


The eyes of the criminal, hard and cold
Some say it is learned; others say such evil is old
Indeed good and bad are ancient as days of sin
Yet the heart of man struggles with free choice within
Tempting the tempted once again
The lure of power, the opportunity to reign
Over another, if not the divine itself
The man who inherits all the earth desires more wealth
Puny successes bring heightened cheer
Sheer failure to control self is only too clear
On what grounds would man claim to desire
Any greater mandate consummated by fire?

Trends may be trendy, and hands handy
Yet will the mind be mindful, and the conscience conscientious?
Stewards wear eyes that are not their own
Imprisoned by blindness, of purpose and reason
Abuse from boredom, or from malnourishment
Of spirit, helpless and powerless victims of illusion
Denying alikeness, the civil war of humanity
Casts out brothers in the name of expediency
Or ownership, or right, even truth!
Will old age conquer the folly of youth?
Madness possesses wardrobes varied and large
In science’s guise of tools and herbs, man feigns God’s justice

Melbourne-Sydney Train Ride

A dozen ten-dollar bills
Small price to pay for
An invitation into the heart of nature
That beauty, cultivated by the
Spirit of God, through the hand of man
Yet untamed, pristine, majestic
Through the ages, the miracle that is
Shaping, moulding; ranges and plains; great and vast;
A billion replications of a single leaf, or river drop
The aloof cocoon stirs within, yet unaware
Its cloak of insularity, blind to power
Gradual yet active; the renewal of creation