Last night I watched John Howard concede defeat in the Australian Federal election with more dignity and integrity than has characterised most of his time in office.
I have no desire to gloat over a fallen man, however, I am convinced that history will record Howard as the most mediocre individual ever to have been Prime Minister of this country. Which is not to say that his influence and impact on Australia have not been enormous; just that, in my view, Howard's influence on this nation has been almost entirely negative.
Howard's one, shining moment when he acted with genuine integrity occurred early in his Prime Ministership, when he introduced some sanity into the nation's firearms legislation in the wake of the dreadful Port Arthur shootings. Howard did so in the face of bitter protest and opposition from the right-wing of his own support base, and he is to be credited with standing up to the loony shooters fringe and acting in the national interest.
For the rest of his term in office, however, it was a steady downward decline.
Howard has always peddled the "honest John" label that attached itself to him early in his political career. And yet honesty was conspicuously and frequently absent when it came to Howard's decision-making; he much preferred a dissimulation or obfuscation that engendered political capital, as opposed to acting with true statesmanship. Granted, he is not the only politician who has done this, nor was he the only member of his Government who did this; but as the Prime Minister, he set the tone and established the pattern. The reasons for entering the Iraq War and the Howard Government's allegations that refugees threw their children overboard are just two of the more conspicuous examples of dishonesty; and yet in these and other cases, Howard has denied all responsibility, blaming others for supposedly providing defective information, or no information at all. And yet, while it was politically advantageous for him to do so, Howard readily latched onto these lies to entrench his own power.
Howard's dishonesty went further than this. There was, of course, the notorious "never, ever" GST; however, even worse than this was the glib "core and non-core promises" excuse bandied out to the electorate as to why he hadn't kept his election promises; apparently, some of Howard's promises ranked higher on the "I intend to keep" scale than others (not that the electorate was told this, or given the rankings, before an election). Now, Howard is not the only politician to have broken a promise; but the absurd and insulting justification he produced for his dishonesty pointed toward the sinister manipulation of language that would characterise both his government and his approach to realpolitik. This was the Government that changed "refugees" to "unlawful arrivals"; "soldiers" to "enemy combatants"; "dissenters" to "un-Australian". This was the Government that deemed a whole raft of workplace conditions and entitlements to be "non-allowable" in industrial awards, and then had the temerity to attach the phrase "Workchoices" to its punitive industrial legislation. This is the Government - and the Prime Minister - who routinely demonised select groups of people for its own purposes, while at the same time prattling on about "mateship" and "Australian values".
And it is this last that is the defining characteristic of the Howard Government, and of Howard's legacy to Australia: fear. For Howard has manipulated both the underlying racism within Australian society, as well as our habitual insularity and sense of superiority, to secure his own place in politics. When the Hansonite movement threatened to undermine Howard's power-base among conservative, racist whites, Howard not only didn't oppose Hanson directly, he appropriated most of Hanson's policies, especially with respect to Aboriginal Australians and refugees. Hanson's disappearance from politics was not due to any integrity on Howard's part, but was a consequence of Howard's cynical, blatant usurpation of Hanson's power-base. In the wake of 9/11 and the Bali bombings, instead of choosing to comfort the traumatised and offer a platform of hope and engagement, Howard chose to invoke "fortress Australia" and stoke up the fires of mistrust and suspicion. The Howard government's willingness to participate in the unlawful detention of Australian citizens by a foreign power, without trial and subject to every violation of due process imaginable, speaks to the depths to which it was prepared to descend in the pursuit of power.
Australia has been a dark place in the bit-over-a-decade in which Howard has been in power. We are a nation obsessed with material consumption and plunging further and further into personal debt in its pursuit. We claim to be an open and egalitarian society, yet we are suspicious of difference and demand that "others" conform to our "values" and norms. We claim to be fighting on the side of freedom and humanity, yet we have willingly acquiesced in the perpetration of an illegal war, with all the ghastly consequences - including the fostering of new generations of violent extremists - which doing so involves. We claim to be an optimistic and cheerful people, and yet we brood over threats from within and without, and scan the stock reports for signs of impending disaster. We claim to be a nation of anti-establishment larrikins who think for themselves; and yet we have cravenly kowtowed and grovelled to whoever we have thought might offer us security and a few dollars more.
And at the centre of this darkness has stood the figure of John Howard, Prime Minister. Not that I'm suggesting Howard has woven some sort of fiendishly clever web in which he has imposed a dystopic society without us realising the fact. Rather, Howard has been the quintessential expression of our collective weakness; when we needed leadership and statesmanship, we got politicking and manipulation. When we needed courage and hope, we got fear and loathing. When we needed genuine egalitarianism and compassion, we got demonising and finger-pointing. We are to blame for what we are; but Howard, as Prime Minister, is to blame for not trying to make us see what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature", for not trying to make us be bigger than the sum of who we are. Howard is to blame for allowing us to wallow in our self-absorption, instead of lifting our eyes to new lights.
What Australia needs now more than anything else is hope and vision. I hope this new government can at least be the starting point for this; otherwise, we're in a lot of trouble.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Of all lives, the political life always ends in failure. (Enoch Powell)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
My Other Blog
Now that my Dearly Beloved and I are formally candidates to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia, and because we are starting to get many more opportunities to preach sermons, lead worship services, and do other associated activities, I have decided to start another blog dedicated to sharing my sermons, prayers, and reflections on faith.
The new blog is called The Still Circle.
But don't worry! I won't be climbing off the Comfy Couch any time soon - I'll still be ranting about all sorts of stuff from the serious to the silly on these pages; it's just that matters of faith will now have their own dedicated site.
I'll begin the new blog with the most recent sermon I preached on Luke 21:5-19, and will also add a couple of recent reflections that have already appeared on this blog. However, as time goes on, I'll add more and more new stuff.
So, there you go - something new. Once you've had fun bouncing around on the Comfy Couch, you can pop over to the Still Circle for some calming down and spiritual centering.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
The new blog is called The Still Circle.
But don't worry! I won't be climbing off the Comfy Couch any time soon - I'll still be ranting about all sorts of stuff from the serious to the silly on these pages; it's just that matters of faith will now have their own dedicated site.
I'll begin the new blog with the most recent sermon I preached on Luke 21:5-19, and will also add a couple of recent reflections that have already appeared on this blog. However, as time goes on, I'll add more and more new stuff.
So, there you go - something new. Once you've had fun bouncing around on the Comfy Couch, you can pop over to the Still Circle for some calming down and spiritual centering.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
The Fall of Rome
The chorus to the James Reyne song Fall of Rome concludes with the following couplet:
Well, everybody might say that I can't do so, but staying home and thinking about the Fall of Rome is exactly what I've been doing in recent times. And my thinking has been prompted by an excellent book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather (Pan Books, London, 2006).
Heather's book is subtitled A New History because he takes issue with the view, inherited from a long line of historians starting with Edward Gibbon, that the Roman state collapsed under the weight of moral and political corruption generated by over-prosperity arising from the Empire's conquests and sheer, over-weening power. While Heather does not deny that internal factors - the limitations of an agrarian, pre-modern economy; the constraints imposed by primitive communications; the tendency toward civil strife inherent in any change of leadership in an authoritarian state; and the inability of the imperial tax system to respond to increased fiscal demands beyond a certain limit - were weaknesses that made the Empire vulnerable to collapse, he argues that these factors alone, individually and severally, were not sufficient to cause the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Afterall, Heather argues, the Roman Empire survived in the Eastern Mediterranean for another 1000 years, even though it suffered from the same internal weaknesses.
Indeed, according to Heather, the late Roman Empire, far from being an ungainly edifice perched precipitously on the edge of inevitable disintegration, was in robust good health, internal weaknesses notwithstanding. It had survived the military crises of the 3rd Century AD more or less intact, had contained the threat of the rising Persian (Sassanian) Empire in the East, and was firmly in control of the territories it had ruled since the days of Augustus. And yet, in a mere matter of a decade, from 468-475AD, the Roman Empire in the West completely collapsed. Why?
Heather places the blame squarely on external sources. He argues that these sources did not act in isolation from the aforementioned internal sources, but neither did they merely exacerbate or speed up those internal weaknesses. On the contrary, the external sources, reaching back centuries before the final collapse, were primarily responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. The internal factors only become critical in response to the external sources; had those external factors never developed, the internal causes would have remained dormant, or taken centuries longer to become meaningful.
And what were these external factors? Heather identifies two major culprits: the Huns; and the Romans themselves.
Concerning the Huns, Heather identifies the rise and collapse of the Hunnic Empire as setting in train a series of events that were ultimately to lead to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The emergence of the Huns as a new power north of the Danube in the period 350-375AD caused massive displacement among the peoples living in these regions, especially the Goths and other Germanic peoples such as the Vandals (who were also accompanied by smaller, allied and vassal groups, such as the Suevi and the Alans). But what made these displacements unique when compared to earlier population movements was that they generated a nascent sense of nationhood among the refugees; the hardships suffered at the hands of the Huns, as well as the necessity for a unified response in the face of their overwhelming military power, drove home the advantages of acting and existing en bloc as opposed to operating in tribal and clan units. Thus, gifted barbarian leaders, through a mixture of persuasion, conquest, and the ready submission of potential rival groups, forged coherent national groupings where had previously existed, at best, loose confederations.
The significance of this was that, unlike previous occasions when eastern invaders drove barbarian peoples up against the boundaries of the Roman Empire, the Romans were faced not with a few hundred or a few thousand refugees, but tens of thousands, a suitable proportion of whom were armed fighting men. In the short term, the Romans were able to prevail militarily over such groups; however, whereas previously they had been able to enslave or absorb the civilian population and draft the fighting men into the field army, the new national groupings were far too large to be facilitated by such tactics; and their new-found nationalism meant they would resist any attempt to scatter and absorb their numbers into the Empire's wider population. Thus, the Romans were effectively obliged to settle such groups within the Empire in autonomous or semi-autonomous enclaves, allowing them to live as unified communities in return for payments of tribute and military assistance.
To begin with, these settlements presented a benefit to the Empire. They solved the problem of migrating nations placing pressure on the frontier; they were a source of additional military manpower; they were confined to discrete regions and were thus militarily controllable; and they were a much need source of additional tax revenue. However, as more and more such groups sought entry to the Empire, the land resources available to satisfy the demands of these new groups grew ever scarcer, leading to an increase in conflict, both between the Romans and the newcomers, and between the different barbarian peoples themselves. This conflict resulted in some groups seeking to annexe parts of the Empire exclusively, while other groups sought to expand the size of their enclaves at the expense of others. For example, the Goths settled in south-western Gaul gradually began to increase their dominion, while the Vandals annexed the whole of Spain, eventually moving on to conquer the rich North African provinces. The net effect of this conflict was that vast areas of revenue-producing land were lost to the Roman Empire, undermining the tax base and the Empire's capacity to maintain its armies and resist further invasions.
However, what is most striking about Heather's book is that he sees the collapse of the Hunnic Empire as equally, if not more, significant than its emergence. At first glance this appears anti-intuitive, and yet further analysis reveals that it makes perfect sense. The powerful Hunnic military machine was based on a core of Hunnic fighters supplemented by the fighting-men of conquered peoples - much the same arrangement as that which the Mongols would use to such devastating effect a thousand years later. In order to maintain this machine, perpetual warfare and conquest was necessary, both in order to replace losses and to ensure the control of the Hunnic minority over their conquered subjects. The net effect of this was that the Hunnic Empire, while itself a threat to Rome, also helped contain the threat which the numerous other barbarian peoples also represented; their submission to the Huns neutralised their capacity to threaten the Empire.
However, when the Hunnic Empire collapsed after the death of Attila in 453AD, it released the bonds that tied the subject people to their Hunnic masters; the Huns were overthrown, and the newly-freed subject peoples began to struggle against one another for the resources previously controlled by the erstwhile Hunnic overlords. The inevitable result was that the losers of this brutal contest for survival inevitably sought refuge in the Empire, contributing to and exacerbating the tensions and difficulties created by the settlement of the earlier Germanic nation groups within the Empire. These later arrivals - Rugi, Herules, Burgundians, Sciri, Alemanni, and another group of Goths known as the Ostrogoths ("Eastern Goths") - all competed with one another for land within the Empire, and for positions of influence within the imperial administration that would ensure their success. The result was, after 454AD, a series of largely ineffectual Emperors who ruled at the behest of various barbarian warlords. Combined with the loss of revenue producing lands in Gaul, Spain and North Africa, the weakness of the central administration persuaded many of the rich provincial landowners to throw in their lot with the new barbarian kings, thus providing them with the nucleus of an effective bureaucracy, while further denuding the Empire of talent and sources of income.
The consequence was that the Roman Empire in the West did not so much "fall" as faded away. As central authority weakened and the flow of resources from the centre to the provinces failed, the infrastructure of Roman society gradually whithered away, reverting to village and small town based agrarianism. In the more central regions, barbarian kingdom replaced the Roman imperium; these new kingdoms continued to admire Roman systems of law and governance, resulting in the emergence of what would one day become the feudal bureaucracy of the medieval period, and also ensuring that Latin would transmute over time into the Romance languages of French, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, etc. Of course, the imperial authorities did attempt to fight back, and frequently gained short-term success; but their efforts were constrained by the inability of the Eastern Empire to provide sustained, large-scale support owing to its own military commitments on the ever-dangerous Persian frontier. And when the last attempt to recapture the rich provinces of North Africa in 468AD collapsed in ignominious failure, the writing was on the wall; the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in 475AD was not so much a coup as a formal acknowledgement of the prevailing state of affairs.
But what about that other external source, the Romans themselves? How is this possible? It is in arguing that the Romans themselves created the external sources of their own extinction that Heather provides his most original - and, given the state of affairs in the world today - his most perceptive analysis.
Heather's proposition is simple: through centuries of economic, political, and military contact, the Roman Empire demonstrated to the barbarian peoples along its frontiers the benefits of creating and preserving a unified national grouping. Centuries of trade between the tribes and the Empire lead to increased material wealth, creating economic and social elites among the barbarian nations that had not previously existed. Likewise, the coherent command and authority structure of the Empire's civil and military institutions was better able to respond to crises than the loose confederacy of the barbarians that was usually reliant on the individual charisma of a strong leader, and which was susceptible to being undermined by the rivalry and mutual hostility of the tribal and clan groupings. Further, the frequent punitive military expeditions that were part and parcel of the Empire's policy of dealing with, and ensuring the compliance of, the barbarian tribes ultimately resulted in those tribes developing both an intensified sense of their own identity (and the spirit of independence that goes with this) as well as a desire to create more coherent social and political structures that could better preserve the nation-group.
In other words, it was precisely because of the dangers - military raids, invasions, enslavement, and conscription into the Roman army - as well as the opportunities - enrichment, attainment of political legitimacy, access to material goods and weapons - which the proximity of the Empire afforded that set in motion, over a number of centuries, processes that were to transform the barbarian peoples of the Rhine-Danube frontier from loose tribal and clan confederations locked in ongoing rivalry and warfare to solidified national groupings conscious of their particular identity and prepared to act in its preservation. This process then "collided" with the shock caused by the rise of the Hunnic Empire: national identity was strenghtened as some groups sought to preserve themselves by fleeing into the Roman Empire and setting up enclaves, or as they watched for an opportunity to throw off Hunnic dominion at the least sign of the collapse of the Huns' power. The slow process of socio-political evolution created by Roman-barbarian contact was vastly accelerated by the intrusion of the Huns into Western Europe: and the consequence was a desire for political independence and control of resources that ultimately brought down the Roman state.
Heather demonstrates this thesis by comparing the fallout of the Hunnic invasion with that of the Sarmatian invasion of the 1st century AD. The Sarmatians, Iranian-speaking nomads from the central Asian steppes, overran much of Europe north of the Rhine-Danube frontier just as the Roman Empire was forming itself after the collapse of the Republic. The consequence was a tide of movement against the Empire's boundaries as various barbarian peoples sought refuge from the Sarmatian conquest. However, at this time, the barbarians were divided into many small tribes and clan groupings; their social structure was loose and undefined; their technological attainment had scarcely advanced beyond the early Iron Age; and they appeared at the various frontier posts in small groupings that were managed with relative - though not always complete - ease by the Romans. The upshot was a set of circumstances in which the Romans held all the power: in return for providing shelter, the tribesmen of fighting age had to agree to conscription into the Roman army, while the civilian population was settled in a manner convenient to the Romans. Consequently, the result was absorption of the population and neutralisation of any threat. By contrast, the Hunnic invasion, as we have seen, resulted in the migration of whole population groups conscious of the national identity and determined to preserve it; such groups were not able to be divided and absorbed, but were able to bargain from a position of power, forcing the Romans to allow settlement on generous - if initially controlled - terms. And when the circumstances allowed as the Roman state broke down under the pressure of the building external forces, these enclaves expanded into powerful successor kingdoms to the Roman state.
Thus, Heather skilfully weaves a dual narrative of the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire, combined with the centuries-long consequence of Roman-barbarian contact, as the primary causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. But what is its relevance for today? Simply, this relevance is to be found in the very final paragraph of this fine, absorbing book: a paragraph that warns the American Empire may, like the Roman, be laying the groundwork for its own destruction. It reads:
BB
Quote for the Day: Who does not learn from the past is doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana)
Everybody says I can't stay home
Still thinking about the Fall of Rome.
Well, everybody might say that I can't do so, but staying home and thinking about the Fall of Rome is exactly what I've been doing in recent times. And my thinking has been prompted by an excellent book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather (Pan Books, London, 2006).
Heather's book is subtitled A New History because he takes issue with the view, inherited from a long line of historians starting with Edward Gibbon, that the Roman state collapsed under the weight of moral and political corruption generated by over-prosperity arising from the Empire's conquests and sheer, over-weening power. While Heather does not deny that internal factors - the limitations of an agrarian, pre-modern economy; the constraints imposed by primitive communications; the tendency toward civil strife inherent in any change of leadership in an authoritarian state; and the inability of the imperial tax system to respond to increased fiscal demands beyond a certain limit - were weaknesses that made the Empire vulnerable to collapse, he argues that these factors alone, individually and severally, were not sufficient to cause the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Afterall, Heather argues, the Roman Empire survived in the Eastern Mediterranean for another 1000 years, even though it suffered from the same internal weaknesses.
Indeed, according to Heather, the late Roman Empire, far from being an ungainly edifice perched precipitously on the edge of inevitable disintegration, was in robust good health, internal weaknesses notwithstanding. It had survived the military crises of the 3rd Century AD more or less intact, had contained the threat of the rising Persian (Sassanian) Empire in the East, and was firmly in control of the territories it had ruled since the days of Augustus. And yet, in a mere matter of a decade, from 468-475AD, the Roman Empire in the West completely collapsed. Why?
Heather places the blame squarely on external sources. He argues that these sources did not act in isolation from the aforementioned internal sources, but neither did they merely exacerbate or speed up those internal weaknesses. On the contrary, the external sources, reaching back centuries before the final collapse, were primarily responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. The internal factors only become critical in response to the external sources; had those external factors never developed, the internal causes would have remained dormant, or taken centuries longer to become meaningful.
And what were these external factors? Heather identifies two major culprits: the Huns; and the Romans themselves.
Concerning the Huns, Heather identifies the rise and collapse of the Hunnic Empire as setting in train a series of events that were ultimately to lead to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The emergence of the Huns as a new power north of the Danube in the period 350-375AD caused massive displacement among the peoples living in these regions, especially the Goths and other Germanic peoples such as the Vandals (who were also accompanied by smaller, allied and vassal groups, such as the Suevi and the Alans). But what made these displacements unique when compared to earlier population movements was that they generated a nascent sense of nationhood among the refugees; the hardships suffered at the hands of the Huns, as well as the necessity for a unified response in the face of their overwhelming military power, drove home the advantages of acting and existing en bloc as opposed to operating in tribal and clan units. Thus, gifted barbarian leaders, through a mixture of persuasion, conquest, and the ready submission of potential rival groups, forged coherent national groupings where had previously existed, at best, loose confederations.
The significance of this was that, unlike previous occasions when eastern invaders drove barbarian peoples up against the boundaries of the Roman Empire, the Romans were faced not with a few hundred or a few thousand refugees, but tens of thousands, a suitable proportion of whom were armed fighting men. In the short term, the Romans were able to prevail militarily over such groups; however, whereas previously they had been able to enslave or absorb the civilian population and draft the fighting men into the field army, the new national groupings were far too large to be facilitated by such tactics; and their new-found nationalism meant they would resist any attempt to scatter and absorb their numbers into the Empire's wider population. Thus, the Romans were effectively obliged to settle such groups within the Empire in autonomous or semi-autonomous enclaves, allowing them to live as unified communities in return for payments of tribute and military assistance.
To begin with, these settlements presented a benefit to the Empire. They solved the problem of migrating nations placing pressure on the frontier; they were a source of additional military manpower; they were confined to discrete regions and were thus militarily controllable; and they were a much need source of additional tax revenue. However, as more and more such groups sought entry to the Empire, the land resources available to satisfy the demands of these new groups grew ever scarcer, leading to an increase in conflict, both between the Romans and the newcomers, and between the different barbarian peoples themselves. This conflict resulted in some groups seeking to annexe parts of the Empire exclusively, while other groups sought to expand the size of their enclaves at the expense of others. For example, the Goths settled in south-western Gaul gradually began to increase their dominion, while the Vandals annexed the whole of Spain, eventually moving on to conquer the rich North African provinces. The net effect of this conflict was that vast areas of revenue-producing land were lost to the Roman Empire, undermining the tax base and the Empire's capacity to maintain its armies and resist further invasions.
However, what is most striking about Heather's book is that he sees the collapse of the Hunnic Empire as equally, if not more, significant than its emergence. At first glance this appears anti-intuitive, and yet further analysis reveals that it makes perfect sense. The powerful Hunnic military machine was based on a core of Hunnic fighters supplemented by the fighting-men of conquered peoples - much the same arrangement as that which the Mongols would use to such devastating effect a thousand years later. In order to maintain this machine, perpetual warfare and conquest was necessary, both in order to replace losses and to ensure the control of the Hunnic minority over their conquered subjects. The net effect of this was that the Hunnic Empire, while itself a threat to Rome, also helped contain the threat which the numerous other barbarian peoples also represented; their submission to the Huns neutralised their capacity to threaten the Empire.
However, when the Hunnic Empire collapsed after the death of Attila in 453AD, it released the bonds that tied the subject people to their Hunnic masters; the Huns were overthrown, and the newly-freed subject peoples began to struggle against one another for the resources previously controlled by the erstwhile Hunnic overlords. The inevitable result was that the losers of this brutal contest for survival inevitably sought refuge in the Empire, contributing to and exacerbating the tensions and difficulties created by the settlement of the earlier Germanic nation groups within the Empire. These later arrivals - Rugi, Herules, Burgundians, Sciri, Alemanni, and another group of Goths known as the Ostrogoths ("Eastern Goths") - all competed with one another for land within the Empire, and for positions of influence within the imperial administration that would ensure their success. The result was, after 454AD, a series of largely ineffectual Emperors who ruled at the behest of various barbarian warlords. Combined with the loss of revenue producing lands in Gaul, Spain and North Africa, the weakness of the central administration persuaded many of the rich provincial landowners to throw in their lot with the new barbarian kings, thus providing them with the nucleus of an effective bureaucracy, while further denuding the Empire of talent and sources of income.
The consequence was that the Roman Empire in the West did not so much "fall" as faded away. As central authority weakened and the flow of resources from the centre to the provinces failed, the infrastructure of Roman society gradually whithered away, reverting to village and small town based agrarianism. In the more central regions, barbarian kingdom replaced the Roman imperium; these new kingdoms continued to admire Roman systems of law and governance, resulting in the emergence of what would one day become the feudal bureaucracy of the medieval period, and also ensuring that Latin would transmute over time into the Romance languages of French, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, etc. Of course, the imperial authorities did attempt to fight back, and frequently gained short-term success; but their efforts were constrained by the inability of the Eastern Empire to provide sustained, large-scale support owing to its own military commitments on the ever-dangerous Persian frontier. And when the last attempt to recapture the rich provinces of North Africa in 468AD collapsed in ignominious failure, the writing was on the wall; the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in 475AD was not so much a coup as a formal acknowledgement of the prevailing state of affairs.
But what about that other external source, the Romans themselves? How is this possible? It is in arguing that the Romans themselves created the external sources of their own extinction that Heather provides his most original - and, given the state of affairs in the world today - his most perceptive analysis.
Heather's proposition is simple: through centuries of economic, political, and military contact, the Roman Empire demonstrated to the barbarian peoples along its frontiers the benefits of creating and preserving a unified national grouping. Centuries of trade between the tribes and the Empire lead to increased material wealth, creating economic and social elites among the barbarian nations that had not previously existed. Likewise, the coherent command and authority structure of the Empire's civil and military institutions was better able to respond to crises than the loose confederacy of the barbarians that was usually reliant on the individual charisma of a strong leader, and which was susceptible to being undermined by the rivalry and mutual hostility of the tribal and clan groupings. Further, the frequent punitive military expeditions that were part and parcel of the Empire's policy of dealing with, and ensuring the compliance of, the barbarian tribes ultimately resulted in those tribes developing both an intensified sense of their own identity (and the spirit of independence that goes with this) as well as a desire to create more coherent social and political structures that could better preserve the nation-group.
In other words, it was precisely because of the dangers - military raids, invasions, enslavement, and conscription into the Roman army - as well as the opportunities - enrichment, attainment of political legitimacy, access to material goods and weapons - which the proximity of the Empire afforded that set in motion, over a number of centuries, processes that were to transform the barbarian peoples of the Rhine-Danube frontier from loose tribal and clan confederations locked in ongoing rivalry and warfare to solidified national groupings conscious of their particular identity and prepared to act in its preservation. This process then "collided" with the shock caused by the rise of the Hunnic Empire: national identity was strenghtened as some groups sought to preserve themselves by fleeing into the Roman Empire and setting up enclaves, or as they watched for an opportunity to throw off Hunnic dominion at the least sign of the collapse of the Huns' power. The slow process of socio-political evolution created by Roman-barbarian contact was vastly accelerated by the intrusion of the Huns into Western Europe: and the consequence was a desire for political independence and control of resources that ultimately brought down the Roman state.
Heather demonstrates this thesis by comparing the fallout of the Hunnic invasion with that of the Sarmatian invasion of the 1st century AD. The Sarmatians, Iranian-speaking nomads from the central Asian steppes, overran much of Europe north of the Rhine-Danube frontier just as the Roman Empire was forming itself after the collapse of the Republic. The consequence was a tide of movement against the Empire's boundaries as various barbarian peoples sought refuge from the Sarmatian conquest. However, at this time, the barbarians were divided into many small tribes and clan groupings; their social structure was loose and undefined; their technological attainment had scarcely advanced beyond the early Iron Age; and they appeared at the various frontier posts in small groupings that were managed with relative - though not always complete - ease by the Romans. The upshot was a set of circumstances in which the Romans held all the power: in return for providing shelter, the tribesmen of fighting age had to agree to conscription into the Roman army, while the civilian population was settled in a manner convenient to the Romans. Consequently, the result was absorption of the population and neutralisation of any threat. By contrast, the Hunnic invasion, as we have seen, resulted in the migration of whole population groups conscious of the national identity and determined to preserve it; such groups were not able to be divided and absorbed, but were able to bargain from a position of power, forcing the Romans to allow settlement on generous - if initially controlled - terms. And when the circumstances allowed as the Roman state broke down under the pressure of the building external forces, these enclaves expanded into powerful successor kingdoms to the Roman state.
Thus, Heather skilfully weaves a dual narrative of the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire, combined with the centuries-long consequence of Roman-barbarian contact, as the primary causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. But what is its relevance for today? Simply, this relevance is to be found in the very final paragraph of this fine, absorbing book: a paragraph that warns the American Empire may, like the Roman, be laying the groundwork for its own destruction. It reads:
There is, I suspect, an inbuilt tendency for the kind of dominance exercised by empires to generate an inverse reaction whereby the dominated, in the end, are able to throw off their chains. The Roman Empire had sown the seeds of its own destruction, therefore, not because of internal weaknesses that had evolved over the centuries, nor because of new ones evolved, but as a consequence of its relationship with the Germanic world. Just as the Sassanians were able to reorganise Near Eastern society so as to throw off Roman domination, Germanic society achieved the same in the west, when its collision with Hunnic power precipitated the process much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case. The west Roman state fell not because of the weight of its own "stupendous fabric", but because its Germanic neighbours had responded to its power in ways that the Romans could never have foreseen. There is in all this a pleasing denouement. By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was responsible for its own destruction. (p.459)
It's an analysis that certainly gives you pause for thought.
Talk to you soon,BB
Quote for the Day: Who does not learn from the past is doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana)
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Mmmmmmmm, Nigella (incoherent Homeresque gurgling)...
I've just watched the first installment of Nigella Lawson's latest cooking series, Nigella Feasts.
In the last week, I've read a few previews of this series, and I have to say they've focused on everything but the food. Comment has been made about Ms Lawson's physique, her manner in front of the camera, even the supposed hints of socio-economic elitism which her selection of ingredients and demeanor betray. These comments boil down to two basic categories: Nigella as porn and Nigella as snob.
The porn breaks down into two further sub-categories: gastronomic, and Nigella herself. Regarding the former, the observation seems to be that Lawson's use of food is somehow sexually suggestive. The way she kneads dough, for example, or the language she uses to describe ingredients, is said to be more about titillation than it is about cooking. Concerning the latter, Ms Lawson is routinely described as "buxom", "bosomy", "busty", "voluptuous", and so on and so forth. The suggestion seems to be that her body shape is somehow deliberate, a self-created pose whose sole function is to inflame passions and arouse lust.
Now, don't get me wrong. Nigella Lawson is indeed coquettish, and the way she glances strategically at the camera and employs double entendres does carry more than a hint of sexual suggestion. But let's face it: by the standards of most "reality" TV and what passes for "general" entertainment these days, Lawson is positively tame. Indeed, she seems to hark back to an earlier time of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" that has its origins in the music hall tradition of Victorian England. Sure, I cringe at some aspects of Lawson's on-camera performance; sometimes the banter is a tad too obvious. But I can't help thinking that the reason why so many people seem to find her so captivating is that, if Lawson is indeed suggestive, it's precisely because she uses the power of suggestion to enthrall, as opposed to rubbing our faces in anything explicit. In other words, it's because she hints at something other than food creates the electric charge many react against; if she were to stand at her cooking station naked, she'd simply be dismissed - I doubt she'd raise an eyebrow (or anything else).
So, contrary to what most of the reviewers would have you believe, Ms Lawson isn't some gastro-nymphomaniac who overwhelms you with sexual electricity; on the contrary, it's precisely because she's so subtle (by relative standards) that she captures attention. It's because she stands in such stark contrast to the blatant exhibitionism of pop culture that she is noticed; quite apart from being one of the stew of "notice me" celebrities, she is, in fact, the (even if not complete) opposite.
Concerning the issue of snobbery, the allegation appears to be that Nigella is essentially a phoney: a silver-spooned private-school girl who is attempting to manufacture a "common person" identity which she patently lacks - indeed, which she would probably scorn in her private life. In other words, it's all a crock: Ms Lawson might appear on our TV screens, but she wouldn't be seen dead watching television with any one of us.
First, the disclaimer: I know next to nothing about Ms Lawson's life, background, and socio-economic circumstances. So I have no idea if she is actually a snob, or actually does possess what is called the "common touch". I have no doubt that she enjoys a more than financially secure lifestyle as a consequence of the success of her television series and their spin-off cookbooks. But I'm sure the same could be said of Jamie Oliver - and no-one seems to be suggesting that he's a phoney. Perhaps it's just Lawson's admittedly plummy accent that attracts the opprobrium; unlike Oliver, who says "pukka" a lot and speaks with an accent that, in my humble opinion, makes him sound like a severely mentally retarded five year old. Or maybe it's because Ms Lawson makes no attempt to be anything other than who she is that ticks people off; maybe she was expected to develop a "persona", a character that people could identify with (or which would make them feel less self-conscious).
So it could be that her "crime" is just to have exercised some integrity. I mean, she's no more plummy than the Two Fat Ladies, but nobody accused either of them of snobbery (possibly because they were old and eccentric, and therefore easily patronised). Mind you, if Lawson started saying "pukka" and ran programs for homeless kids who wanted to be chefs, I'm sure she'd also be accused of hypocrisy. Maybe this is just a "no-win" for her; damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.
So what's all this to me? Well, yes, it's because I am an unashamed fan of Ms Lawson. And no, it's not just because I think she's hot. My Dearly Beloved happens to think Ainslie Herriot is sex on a stick, but she'd bristle at any suggestion that was the only reason why she watches him. Hell, I like watching Ainslie myself - and for the same reason why I like Nigella. Because both have an unabashed enthusiasm for food. In this age of eating disorders and image consciousness, both have an almost visceral approach to food and eating that runs counter to the prevailing mood of pop culture. And it's because they're so counter-cultural that I like both Nigella and Ainslie: they like food, and they're not ashamed of the fact.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'll keep watching Nigella. I don't know about the porn, or about the snobbery; what keeps me coming back to Nigella is not the suggestive remarks or the raised eyebrows, but the fact that she enjoys food for it's own sake. She enjoys food because it looks good, tastes great, and sod the calories. That's good enough for me.
And besides - she's a babe...
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Sex is something that's allowed in Scotland only when Rangers beat Celtic. (Ronnie Barker)
In the last week, I've read a few previews of this series, and I have to say they've focused on everything but the food. Comment has been made about Ms Lawson's physique, her manner in front of the camera, even the supposed hints of socio-economic elitism which her selection of ingredients and demeanor betray. These comments boil down to two basic categories: Nigella as porn and Nigella as snob.
The porn breaks down into two further sub-categories: gastronomic, and Nigella herself. Regarding the former, the observation seems to be that Lawson's use of food is somehow sexually suggestive. The way she kneads dough, for example, or the language she uses to describe ingredients, is said to be more about titillation than it is about cooking. Concerning the latter, Ms Lawson is routinely described as "buxom", "bosomy", "busty", "voluptuous", and so on and so forth. The suggestion seems to be that her body shape is somehow deliberate, a self-created pose whose sole function is to inflame passions and arouse lust.
Now, don't get me wrong. Nigella Lawson is indeed coquettish, and the way she glances strategically at the camera and employs double entendres does carry more than a hint of sexual suggestion. But let's face it: by the standards of most "reality" TV and what passes for "general" entertainment these days, Lawson is positively tame. Indeed, she seems to hark back to an earlier time of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" that has its origins in the music hall tradition of Victorian England. Sure, I cringe at some aspects of Lawson's on-camera performance; sometimes the banter is a tad too obvious. But I can't help thinking that the reason why so many people seem to find her so captivating is that, if Lawson is indeed suggestive, it's precisely because she uses the power of suggestion to enthrall, as opposed to rubbing our faces in anything explicit. In other words, it's because she hints at something other than food creates the electric charge many react against; if she were to stand at her cooking station naked, she'd simply be dismissed - I doubt she'd raise an eyebrow (or anything else).
So, contrary to what most of the reviewers would have you believe, Ms Lawson isn't some gastro-nymphomaniac who overwhelms you with sexual electricity; on the contrary, it's precisely because she's so subtle (by relative standards) that she captures attention. It's because she stands in such stark contrast to the blatant exhibitionism of pop culture that she is noticed; quite apart from being one of the stew of "notice me" celebrities, she is, in fact, the (even if not complete) opposite.
Concerning the issue of snobbery, the allegation appears to be that Nigella is essentially a phoney: a silver-spooned private-school girl who is attempting to manufacture a "common person" identity which she patently lacks - indeed, which she would probably scorn in her private life. In other words, it's all a crock: Ms Lawson might appear on our TV screens, but she wouldn't be seen dead watching television with any one of us.
First, the disclaimer: I know next to nothing about Ms Lawson's life, background, and socio-economic circumstances. So I have no idea if she is actually a snob, or actually does possess what is called the "common touch". I have no doubt that she enjoys a more than financially secure lifestyle as a consequence of the success of her television series and their spin-off cookbooks. But I'm sure the same could be said of Jamie Oliver - and no-one seems to be suggesting that he's a phoney. Perhaps it's just Lawson's admittedly plummy accent that attracts the opprobrium; unlike Oliver, who says "pukka" a lot and speaks with an accent that, in my humble opinion, makes him sound like a severely mentally retarded five year old. Or maybe it's because Ms Lawson makes no attempt to be anything other than who she is that ticks people off; maybe she was expected to develop a "persona", a character that people could identify with (or which would make them feel less self-conscious).
So it could be that her "crime" is just to have exercised some integrity. I mean, she's no more plummy than the Two Fat Ladies, but nobody accused either of them of snobbery (possibly because they were old and eccentric, and therefore easily patronised). Mind you, if Lawson started saying "pukka" and ran programs for homeless kids who wanted to be chefs, I'm sure she'd also be accused of hypocrisy. Maybe this is just a "no-win" for her; damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.
So what's all this to me? Well, yes, it's because I am an unashamed fan of Ms Lawson. And no, it's not just because I think she's hot. My Dearly Beloved happens to think Ainslie Herriot is sex on a stick, but she'd bristle at any suggestion that was the only reason why she watches him. Hell, I like watching Ainslie myself - and for the same reason why I like Nigella. Because both have an unabashed enthusiasm for food. In this age of eating disorders and image consciousness, both have an almost visceral approach to food and eating that runs counter to the prevailing mood of pop culture. And it's because they're so counter-cultural that I like both Nigella and Ainslie: they like food, and they're not ashamed of the fact.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'll keep watching Nigella. I don't know about the porn, or about the snobbery; what keeps me coming back to Nigella is not the suggestive remarks or the raised eyebrows, but the fact that she enjoys food for it's own sake. She enjoys food because it looks good, tastes great, and sod the calories. That's good enough for me.
And besides - she's a babe...
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Sex is something that's allowed in Scotland only when Rangers beat Celtic. (Ronnie Barker)
Monday, November 19, 2007
The Heat Is On!
Because I've been studying full-time this year, my Dearly Beloved has borne the brunt of maintaining the family finances. Accordingly, and in order to make my contribution to the co-nuptial coffers, I have just managed to score a job as a console operator at a local service station.
No, I'm not going to tell you the location, the name of the company, or what shifts I'll be working. It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I don't trust you that much. So don't even ask!
Anyhoo, I've just completed a week's intensive training. Who would have thought there was so much to learn? But believe me, the information overload was phenomenal: Trade Practices Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Food Safety Act, as well as all the various safety procedures, money handling and security protocols, and company policies. It really was overwhelming. And then, of course, there's the console itself: authorising the petrol pumps and processing the sales transactions (and, just to make everything even more complicated, being aware of all the discounts, special offers, and product promotions that go with the job!).
Last Friday was my first day on the job. I was only on a shortened shift, but it was nerve-wracking, trying to process transactions without making too many mistakes, and all the while maintaining my professional cool. And, of course, there's always someone who asks you something you don't know or haven't learned yet, or who requires a transaction that you haven't been introduced to while you bed down the basics. Luckily, the manager and a more experienced staff member were on hand for most of the shift, so they were able to correct my stuff ups and give me plenty of useful pointers. Still, by the time I got home, my legs felt like jelly, and I was thinking: what have I let myself in for?
So it's with just a little trepidation that I'm approaching the summer of work lying ahead of me. Of course, I'm hoping this job survives longer than the Summer and continues into next year, but right now it all seems a little daunting. Afterall, when I stopped working full-time, I was leaving a job that was completely familiar to me, in an environment well within my comfort zone. This is all alien territory.
I'm just looking forward to the day when something in my head goes click and it all becomes second nature. But until then, prepare for more tales of woe...
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Employment: death without the dignity. (Brendan Behan)
No, I'm not going to tell you the location, the name of the company, or what shifts I'll be working. It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I don't trust you that much. So don't even ask!
Anyhoo, I've just completed a week's intensive training. Who would have thought there was so much to learn? But believe me, the information overload was phenomenal: Trade Practices Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Food Safety Act, as well as all the various safety procedures, money handling and security protocols, and company policies. It really was overwhelming. And then, of course, there's the console itself: authorising the petrol pumps and processing the sales transactions (and, just to make everything even more complicated, being aware of all the discounts, special offers, and product promotions that go with the job!).
Last Friday was my first day on the job. I was only on a shortened shift, but it was nerve-wracking, trying to process transactions without making too many mistakes, and all the while maintaining my professional cool. And, of course, there's always someone who asks you something you don't know or haven't learned yet, or who requires a transaction that you haven't been introduced to while you bed down the basics. Luckily, the manager and a more experienced staff member were on hand for most of the shift, so they were able to correct my stuff ups and give me plenty of useful pointers. Still, by the time I got home, my legs felt like jelly, and I was thinking: what have I let myself in for?
So it's with just a little trepidation that I'm approaching the summer of work lying ahead of me. Of course, I'm hoping this job survives longer than the Summer and continues into next year, but right now it all seems a little daunting. Afterall, when I stopped working full-time, I was leaving a job that was completely familiar to me, in an environment well within my comfort zone. This is all alien territory.
I'm just looking forward to the day when something in my head goes click and it all becomes second nature. But until then, prepare for more tales of woe...
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Employment: death without the dignity. (Brendan Behan)
Monday, November 05, 2007
My Dearly Beloved Speaks!
On the weekend, my Dearly Beloved preaced the sermon at our local Uniting Church congregation. And what a fantastic job she did, too! Using multimedia, a sense of humour, and some pecant observations, she turned the familiar tale of Zacchaeus up his tree into a challenging and thoughtful exploration of friendship, and what the friendship of the divine means for humankind.
She's posted an account on her blog - I urge you to take a look, it will be well worth your while.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
She's posted an account on her blog - I urge you to take a look, it will be well worth your while.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Where is God Taking Me?
Last night, I watched the final installment of the wonderful television series The Abbey, which was featured on the ABC's Compass program.
One of the things I have found fascinating about the show is how the five women who were chosen to live in the Abbey and experience the daily life of the nuns - ordered according to the Rule of St Benedict - adjusted to the discipline of monastic life. Most people, I suspect, believe that living in a monastery is easy, that it involves little more than saying a few prayers, doing a few chores, and basically having a lot of leisure time to laze around and do very little. But the reality is quite different: as the nuns kept reminding the women (and the audience), the rhythm of daily life is governed by the seven daily prayer and worship sessions (which begin at 4:30am!), around which the various jobs of the self-sufficient abbey must be completed. In other words, the life of the nuns is one of work suffused with prayer and contemplation. It amounts to a very full day, seven days a week; and the women discovered for themselves how difficult it actually is.
Another interesting aspect was the amount of silence which the women had to keep - not only at night (the "Great Silence") but also during many parts of the day. This is something which the Rule insists upon in order that the individual might develop the capacity to really listen; listen to the secrets of their true self, to what their life experience is saying to them, to what God is saying to them. Some of the women were actively searching for God; others were either dubious about God, or didn't see God as relevant. But the silence forced them to be open to the possibility of God, and to the fact that God might actually be speaking to them. And that was very confronting for them, because they were used to a world of noise, to the sound of their own and others' voices. It was not simply the amount of silence that troubled them, but its depth, and what it was revealing.
But there is also another reason why this aspect of silence engaged me. This reason resides in the fact that silence, for me, has never been a troubling or confronting experience. On the contrary, I have always found silence deeply comforting and refreshing; it is in silence, and stillness, in the almost physical quietude of the "dark, sacred night" (to quote from the song What A Wonderful World) that I have most deeply and powerfully experienced the presence of God. So, unlike these women, silence for me has never been a problem; what I have flinched from is crowd and noise and the absence of quiet.
Which isn't to say that I'm anti-social. Rather, that I've never been very good at "working a room" or introducing myself to strangers, or just thrusting myself into a conversation. Nor am I very good at "small talk"; a conversation I can sustain until the cows come home, but ask me to talk about the weather, and I'm lost. You could also say that I'm not an "events" kind of person: my idea of a good night out is a sharing a meal and a drink and chatting with a couple of friends in a snug pub or nice restaurant. Likewise, I prefer entertaining a few friends at home and cooking them dinner than going to a club or a loud party.
Yes, there is an element of shyness involved, but it's also part of my nature to prefer calm and convivial events rather than a roisterous "bash". I was even like this as a teenager (much to my mother's exasperation!). But in light of The Abbey and observing the women's difficulty with silence, I am prompted to reflect on my difficulty with noise, especially in the context my candidacy to the ordained ministry.
Will my preference for silence, for small, quiet events, sometimes even solitude, interfere with my pastoral duties and responsibilities? Will my natural reserve, containing as it does an element of shyness, prevent me from being open and welcoming to people? Will my difficulty with "small talk" stop me from engaging with others?
I don't think so. Afterall, I've managed to make friends with many people, partly off my own bat and partly through association with others. Moreover, my work in the union movement was intensely pastoral, requiring me to engage with people and enter into their suffering. And when it comes to functions, I've always managed to find a way to break the ice, however awkwardly. So I don't think my natural inclinations will cripple my capacity to be sociable.
But it will be a struggle, and a struggle for my whole life. I am conscious of that fact, even as I am conscious of the difference between difficulty and debilitation. But the point is not so much how I will deal with situations I find confronting but the fact that God is seemingly taking me into places and situations in which will have to square up to these confrontations. You see, as I was watching The Abbey, it occurred to me how many times I have told people that, had I been born in another time and place, I would almost certainly have ended up in a religious community. Moreover, this is a prospect that I still find deeply compelling: the notion that, at the end of my life, when I have done all there is to do in the world, I could spend the last years of my existence with God.
But I dare say that will never eventuate, even as I know it will always remain an attractive possibility. Because I think the point is that my life is not meant to be comfortable, that faith is not about letting me escape from the world, but enter into it. Not that I think any of the sisters in the Benedictine monastery that was featured in The Abbey are inadequate types who cannot cope with the world; on the contrary, I think they are performing a profound service in which they offer a radical alternative to the materialism and self-absorption of the present cultural climate. What I mean is that I suspect, for me, entering a religious community would in many respects be the "easy option", it would represent a retreat from the life of the world I find so often confronting and challenging. And, for me, I think that is the point of the ordained ministry; it's about not letting me get away with the "easy option", with taking the line of least resistance.
Recently, in another post, I wrote this about myself:
I suspect I will be both bruised and blessed along my journey. I don't look forward to the bruises; but I will try and see beyond them to the blessings.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Easy street never leads anywhere. (Anonymous)
One of the things I have found fascinating about the show is how the five women who were chosen to live in the Abbey and experience the daily life of the nuns - ordered according to the Rule of St Benedict - adjusted to the discipline of monastic life. Most people, I suspect, believe that living in a monastery is easy, that it involves little more than saying a few prayers, doing a few chores, and basically having a lot of leisure time to laze around and do very little. But the reality is quite different: as the nuns kept reminding the women (and the audience), the rhythm of daily life is governed by the seven daily prayer and worship sessions (which begin at 4:30am!), around which the various jobs of the self-sufficient abbey must be completed. In other words, the life of the nuns is one of work suffused with prayer and contemplation. It amounts to a very full day, seven days a week; and the women discovered for themselves how difficult it actually is.
Another interesting aspect was the amount of silence which the women had to keep - not only at night (the "Great Silence") but also during many parts of the day. This is something which the Rule insists upon in order that the individual might develop the capacity to really listen; listen to the secrets of their true self, to what their life experience is saying to them, to what God is saying to them. Some of the women were actively searching for God; others were either dubious about God, or didn't see God as relevant. But the silence forced them to be open to the possibility of God, and to the fact that God might actually be speaking to them. And that was very confronting for them, because they were used to a world of noise, to the sound of their own and others' voices. It was not simply the amount of silence that troubled them, but its depth, and what it was revealing.
But there is also another reason why this aspect of silence engaged me. This reason resides in the fact that silence, for me, has never been a troubling or confronting experience. On the contrary, I have always found silence deeply comforting and refreshing; it is in silence, and stillness, in the almost physical quietude of the "dark, sacred night" (to quote from the song What A Wonderful World) that I have most deeply and powerfully experienced the presence of God. So, unlike these women, silence for me has never been a problem; what I have flinched from is crowd and noise and the absence of quiet.
Which isn't to say that I'm anti-social. Rather, that I've never been very good at "working a room" or introducing myself to strangers, or just thrusting myself into a conversation. Nor am I very good at "small talk"; a conversation I can sustain until the cows come home, but ask me to talk about the weather, and I'm lost. You could also say that I'm not an "events" kind of person: my idea of a good night out is a sharing a meal and a drink and chatting with a couple of friends in a snug pub or nice restaurant. Likewise, I prefer entertaining a few friends at home and cooking them dinner than going to a club or a loud party.
Yes, there is an element of shyness involved, but it's also part of my nature to prefer calm and convivial events rather than a roisterous "bash". I was even like this as a teenager (much to my mother's exasperation!). But in light of The Abbey and observing the women's difficulty with silence, I am prompted to reflect on my difficulty with noise, especially in the context my candidacy to the ordained ministry.
Will my preference for silence, for small, quiet events, sometimes even solitude, interfere with my pastoral duties and responsibilities? Will my natural reserve, containing as it does an element of shyness, prevent me from being open and welcoming to people? Will my difficulty with "small talk" stop me from engaging with others?
I don't think so. Afterall, I've managed to make friends with many people, partly off my own bat and partly through association with others. Moreover, my work in the union movement was intensely pastoral, requiring me to engage with people and enter into their suffering. And when it comes to functions, I've always managed to find a way to break the ice, however awkwardly. So I don't think my natural inclinations will cripple my capacity to be sociable.
But it will be a struggle, and a struggle for my whole life. I am conscious of that fact, even as I am conscious of the difference between difficulty and debilitation. But the point is not so much how I will deal with situations I find confronting but the fact that God is seemingly taking me into places and situations in which will have to square up to these confrontations. You see, as I was watching The Abbey, it occurred to me how many times I have told people that, had I been born in another time and place, I would almost certainly have ended up in a religious community. Moreover, this is a prospect that I still find deeply compelling: the notion that, at the end of my life, when I have done all there is to do in the world, I could spend the last years of my existence with God.
But I dare say that will never eventuate, even as I know it will always remain an attractive possibility. Because I think the point is that my life is not meant to be comfortable, that faith is not about letting me escape from the world, but enter into it. Not that I think any of the sisters in the Benedictine monastery that was featured in The Abbey are inadequate types who cannot cope with the world; on the contrary, I think they are performing a profound service in which they offer a radical alternative to the materialism and self-absorption of the present cultural climate. What I mean is that I suspect, for me, entering a religious community would in many respects be the "easy option", it would represent a retreat from the life of the world I find so often confronting and challenging. And, for me, I think that is the point of the ordained ministry; it's about not letting me get away with the "easy option", with taking the line of least resistance.
Recently, in another post, I wrote this about myself:
And I think therein lies the reason why God is leading me down this path. Jacob wrestled with God all night and ended up with a limp and a dislocated hip; he was renamed Israel, which apparently means "he struggles with God". And that is what faith is; not an easy assurance, but a struggle, a wrestling match from which we come away both bruised and blessed. It bruises us because it confronts and challenges us deeply, with the most powerful and painful aspects of our existence; but it also blesses us because from that suffering arises a richness and depth of being that would not otherwise be possible.I don't think God wants me to be happy; I think God wants me to be fully human, to be what I truly am. I think God wants to take me out of my comfort zone of complacency and familiarity, so that I can grow up, and love, and be loved. And in order to do that, I need to heed the call of vocation which God has been issuing to me my whole life long.
I suspect I will be both bruised and blessed along my journey. I don't look forward to the bruises; but I will try and see beyond them to the blessings.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: Easy street never leads anywhere. (Anonymous)
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