Down the Rabbit Hole

Lagoon nebula in the constellation Sagittarius. My photo.

It wasn’t a sudden shock. It arrived strangely and gradually, building like a summer storm; gathering clouds, darkening light, rumblings, and a few closeby lightning strikes.

Cancer came out of the blue. A sign here, followed by a hint there. The conversations my wife and I had at first were almost hypothetical, removed from reality; implications didn’t arrive straight away. The chaos and emotional swings arrived later.

A bit of context first. I have known I have had a slow growing form of leukemia for more than two years now. No big deal, although we looked at our wills again and asked ourselves a few ‘what if’ questions. What we didn’t know, but maybe should have known, is that leukemia, because of the associated lowering of one’s immunity, exposes one to increased frequency of skin cancers of all types.

This is a short personal account of the quick and unexpected arrival of a second cancer diagnosis. I don’t know if this will help anyone. It’s helped me though, to write it down.

Early February

After months of ignoring a scaly lumpy, and increasingly ‘angry’ area on top of my scalp, I had it checked. Biopsies completed and sent off for pathological analysis. Diagnosis was that I had two large and deep squamous cell carcinomas (scc) on my scalp that would need to be removed as soon as possible.

12 March

Excision of said scc’s was executed (and I use the word intentionally) by a registrar, an offsider, several theatre nurses and what appeared a student who practised her first scalpel cut on my neck to peel off a patch of skin for a graft. Through my twilight anaesthetic I could clearly hear her hesitation and the person supervising telling her not to worry, that he would show her where to cut. None of them would have been over 25. I was well awake by the time they were driving the staples into my scalp with much frustration over how difficult it was to stop my bleeding.

Traumatic is a word that seems to fit the experience quite well.

Mid March

Staples removed from my scalp by what felt like a pair of pliers. More trauma. Resolved to avoid surgical procedures thenceforth.

Later in March

Visited G.P. with a swollen lymph node about the size of a duck egg, just above my left collar bone. Doctor Google had already prepared me that this might not be altogether a good thing. The G.P. agreed, although warned me off Doctor Google. I was referred to have two new diagnostic procedures.

26 March

PET whole body scan.

27 March

Fine needle biopsy of the swollen lymph node.

Early April

Results of the two procedures were received. The PET scan showed ‘hot spots’ on my left cheek and where the swollen lymph node was. Everywhere else in my body seemed clear. Good news, in part. The fine needle biopsy results were inconclusive, but the the lymph node looked necrotic, and it was recommended it be examined further.

Visited a skin cancer G.P, to have a couple of skin lesions removed from my face. I was due to have a couple more excised a week later. Routine. Except I had a prior phone call from the G.P. An earlier “scc” excised from my cheek had shown up as a melanoma. Could I come in earlier?

10th April

Things moved up a gear.

He had some undecorated, off the record, advice. Which I guess he thought was helpful:

“If you’d had this ten years ago, you’d have been dead within a year. There’s lots of newer, more effective treatments now, so there’s a much better outlook.”

So I guess this means our holiday is off, was what came out of my mouth.

“Once you go down the rabbit hole of appointments, diagnoses, and interventions, you may never come out the other side. You’ll follow the directions, endure the procedures, and at the end you’ll possibly die anyway. Consider taking that holiday first.”

Quite matter of factly, I thanked him, paid, and walked out. Sharing the news with my wife on the walk to the car, emotions escaped in tears and took some recapturing. The world changed in an instant. After that, things have happened quickly and a touch chaotically.

11th April

Appointment squeezed in with a medical oncologist. Promptly referred on to a surgeon.

16th April

Surgeon was empathetic, which was nice. I would need to have the lymph nodes removed from the left side of my neck, as well as the melanoma excised from my left cheek. Surgery date would be the following week, followed by a few nights in hospital.

24th April

The surgeon was the ‘best’, I was told, and I was also told he did a clean and tidy job. Even called my wife to tell her all had gone well. I now had a drain in my neck which meant I had to sleep on my back. I snore when I sleep on my back. It wasn’t my fault. He saw me the next day and told me that he had had to remove quite a few other lymph nodes which were also swollen, and that they had not looked very ‘good’, meaning, I guess, that he was looking forward to the pathology report. I’’m not at my best in a hospital bed so I didn’t have the presence of mind to question him further.

27th April

Drain removed, I was discharged into the care of my wife at home. I would have danced out of the ward but low blood pressure made that an unsafe thing to do.

And now we wait again for pathology test results which tell us . . . What?

Right now, I am happy to leave worry behind and live each day. Next week, the tests might suggest the rabbit hole is deeper than hoped and the ultimate exit might be not the one we hope for. If not the test next week, then the one next month might be the one, or next year, or next . . .

Somewhere along the way, pushed and pulled between prescriptions and advice, you can lose perspective, and ultimately yourself. You can become a victim; things are done to you, rather than by you. I don’t want to be a victim. I sit here, praying that circumstances allow me that priviledge.

So, cancer has had its first stab at me. I’ve moved from spectator to participant (not victim). Empathy is no longer a second hand thing, felt at a distance. It’s real, it’s close, it’s there freely for other people who are having a much harder journey than I am.

For the last six to eight weeks I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out feelings, praying, worrying about possible outcomes, the effect on those I love, and sometimes withdrawing into myself, looking for solutions, or at least principles for dealing with it all. Other people handle this stuff differently. Me? I look for underlying principles.

Faith

I am a Christian. I am a created being. I matter to God, who will never let go of me. As for death, I’ve thought about that a fair bit. What does death mean? I honestly don’t know. What does eternal life mean? I honestly don’t know. What I cling to is the faith that God, having made me, will not abandon me. Just how that comes about I need to leave to him/her. Makes sense to me anyway.

Love

Matters hugely. Things don’t matter. People do. Family and friends give me more than my identity. They share love and life with me. I grow more aware as days pass of the enormous gift of the love from my wife, children, extended family and friends. Short messages of love from all sorts of places have made recent days sing for my wife and I. Where would we be without live? Without hope. Alone and dead.

Love does not need to shout its virtues. Love comes in small things: like the moments of trust and intimacy felt only by a husband and wife after many years of marriage; the simple trust of a child; the acceptance of faults in friends (and in myself); the comfort of knowing I matter and showing others they matter.

Courage

To withstand doubt; to face truth; to meet what comes squarely in the face. To feel and acknowledge emotions but not let them rule me.

Dignity

It’s a little harder to define this one. I may be ill, or I may be well, but I do not want to be a victim. I do not want to plead, whimpering for my life. I want to stand rather than simper. I do not want to need anyone to shower or toilet me, or to treat me like a child because I have trouble making decisions. Get the drift?

I will mention that I am not comfortable with the practice called ‘assisted dying’ or any of its variants. No thanks. My life was and remains a gift. No earlier departure for me (see ‘Courage’ above).

Principles are great things, and we hope they will stay with us when we need them.

I have to admit, that in the operating theatre and afterwards in the ward, some of those principles wavered a bit, and another factor entered the frame: Fear.

As the oxygen mask was pressed down on my face this week, I began to feel fear. As I lay in the recovery room, the fear did not lessen. It gripped my chest, and faith, love, courage and dignity seemed further away than I wanted them to be.

I remember trusting the fear would pass, but its claws were well embedded at the time. I am human. Humans get cancer. Humans have principles. Humans feel fear for very good reasons. We read cancer recovery statistics and fear is never far away. We wait for pathology results and we feel anxiety. We wait on the operating table or in a treatment room, and disturbing thoughts seep in.

This human hopes other humans can know there are things much more powerful than cancer and fear.

This human has found faith and love, for instance, for all his imperfections, to be his salvation.

I hope your salvation finds you.

Life is a gift.

Who’s in Charge?

Why we don’t need laws dealing with religious discrimination.

(Open Star Cluster NGC 3532 in the constellation of Carina. My Photo. March 2024)

I’ll begin by saying I am not a supporter of the idea of making laws dealing with religious discrimination. I certainly don’t support discrimination against religious people, but I don’t support discrimination in favour of them either.

I don’t support such laws for two reasons: One is that the very existence of such laws supposes that the state is in charge where religion is concerned. For religions of the Book (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) at least, this presents a problem. When the requirements of the state part company with a person’s deeply held beliefs, a choice must be made. For some, this is a hypothetical choice. For me it is not.

Maybe I should qualify that a bit. I know there are people for whom such a choice would present no problem. Nominal followers of any religion are thick on the ground. For those whose faith permeates the way they see the world, it is not so straightforward.

Placing people of faith in a position where they feel they need to make a choice between honouring their faith and submitting to the dictates of a secular state can not end well. It is something a state and its laws should not try to do. People of faith do not want or need the state’s protection. We have done quite well on our own for some time now, and we will continue to do so with or without it’s permission or blessing.

The second reason is that having laws to control how religions and their followers interact with the state is risky for everyone. Actions can have unforseen consequences, as they have in the process I will talk about below:

In Australia, the Australian Law Reform Commission has proposed legislation whose purpose (to safeguard religious institutions and their members from discrimination) has been diverted to achieve, apparently, a different outcome.

The unexpected recommendation of the Australian Law Reform Commission is to remove the right of religious schools to dismiss staff members or expel students whose public opinions or lifestyle are at odds with those promoted by the school. The right of the school to uphold values flowing from religious beliefs is not recognised as sufficient reason to discriminate against, for example, a person who publicly does not support the school’s ethos, undermining it through their words or actions. For example, a school would be obliged to continue to employ, without any adverse action, a person whose avowed intention was to undermine the institution.

Seems reasonable? Not to me.

How about students though? Are they not adults and should they not be granted more latitude? I’m inclined to say yes, but I believe religious schools have grounds to object to the proposed legislation on this aspect as well.

Under the proposed legislation a student who, because of sexual orientation, gender preference, or philosophical conviction, does not support the school ethos will be immune from disciplinary action or expulsion. And rightly so perhaps, except for a couple of points. One is that, while there are costs to being different in any institution, religious schools presently do not set out to persecute any student who presents as different from the norm. The opposite is the case, at least in my experience of 40 years in secular and religious schools. Schools bend over backwards to accomodate difference, as an article of faith. You may or may not accept that, and you may be able to cite contradictions, but in general I believe that to be true.

I accept my generalisation doesn’t prove anything, but there it is. I believe the legislation sets out to deal with a problem much magnified in the imaginations of secular ideologues.

Secondly, while I believe there is a case for blanket protections for students who present as ‘different’ for whatever reason, there is a reason to be cautious in legislating it. To require a school to continue to accept the enrolment of a student whose behaviour points to their intention to disrupt or undermine its ethos would be unreasonable and unjust.

I believe that, in this instance, the proposed religious discrimination laws have been co-opted as a weapon to undermine religious schools and impose a secular agenda. They are trojan horses that will allow activists to undermine religious schools with impunity.

Religious schools can have their faiths, beliefs, and values in private, but the state will not countenance challenge to its dominance when it counts. That seems to me to be a mighty big red flag to schools that take their faith background seriously. To be good citizens, under this proposed legislation, they will need to leave their faith and beliefs at the door and publicly admit that the secular worldview of the state is the one that really counts.

It is if the secular authorities are saying: “Have your fairy tales and myths, as long as you don’t take them seriously”. I understand why religious schools, if they take their faith seriously, will not take kindly to that.

So, who’s in charge?

Maybe, in Australia, we are about to find out.

Walking on the Outside

Try as I might, to walk calmly and unruffled down the avenue of life, it is not always the easiest of things. May I give an example?

Other people are not my responsibility. Well, what I mean is, their attitudes and behaviour are not my responsibility. I have enough to do managing my own. So, mostly, I leave people to make their own messes, as they please. Mostly.

It’s when others decide that I should subscribe to their ways of thinking; their values; and their lifestyles, that I sometimes get a bit prickly.

Values of a lifetime, taught to me in childhood, are hard to shake, and I like it that way. Yet time and again I am confronted with demands that I change my values to suit someone else’s preferences, so that I can fit in.

I ask myself, why can’t I just be me? Why can’t people accept me as I am? Why must I adopt fashionable values and junk my own to be acceptable?

I am happy to leave people to their choices and walk on down the avenue. I mean no harm to anyone and see no point in condemning something I probably don’t understand fully anyway. I know other people can see things differently and have different values from me. I don’t feel at all threatened by such things. I do bristle however, when ‘acceptance’ implies that I need to do much more than that. Acceptance of someone’s choices is not at all the same thing as adopting their values over my own, but time and again that is exactly what is demanded.

Sometimes, for me at least, the price of membership is too high.

When I feel pressured to kneel at the altar of the latest cause du jour, and adopt values quite different from those I grew up with, I ask myself why it is me who needs to change. Why do those who insist on my tolerance and my willingness to compromise my values, not show the same tolerance to me and my values?

Any principle that is applied selectively is a principle that is applied dishonestly. People who bang on about inclusivity, diversity, respect for this group or that group, for the right of people to be who they really are, or whatever, and who deny these same rights to anyone who doesn’t toe their ideological line are themselves dishonest hypocrites.

If it is wrong to condemn a person because of their lifestyle or their values or their religion or lack thereof, or their family background, or their tribal or racial or cultural background, or their sexual orientation, or their gender, or their political beliefs, then why is it not similarly wrong for me to be condemned for my lifestyle, values and so on?

A good question? Certainly it seems to be a dangerous one, as asking it or ones like it invites immediate judgement, condemnation and ostracism. It seems to me that questioning the logic or the authenticity of the buzzwords of ‘inclusivity’, ‘diversity’, ‘non judgementalism’, and more recently the need to feel guilt for being a member of one racial or cultural group as opposed to another, is anathema. One becomes a non person by doing so.

Tolerance and acceptance are commodities doled out to people who think the right way, or at least, who agree with the values we hold. They are not so common when we meet people who don’t reflect our own values back at us.

Final thought:

If you want to know whether a person is authentic and aligned to good; if you want to know whether a value system or lifestyle choice is worth following; just observe the fruits that they produce.

Each of us is a mixture of good and bad. It is, in my experience, impossible to separate out the bad from the good. Consequently, looking at any one of us humans we will see good things as well as bad. We will see habits, values and lifestyle choices that are unedifying, as well as others that are inspirational. It is a good idea to observe the effects of all those habits, values, and lifestyle choices and avoid the ones we see that cause misery and harm.

Not rocket science, but it seems not at all obvious either, to a lot of us.

Living your best life.

High Ropes. (My photo).

I came across this phrase again this morning. Each time I do, it irritates me a little more.

“Living your ‘best’ life”.

What’s not to like?

Well, I think it trivialises most people’s life experience. It brings an image of a person choosing from a menu: A large serving of nice things perhaps? No complications or messiness. No disappointments, sorrow, or setbacks. Ample portions of affirmation and self actualisation; sides of self centredness, and pious platitudes; finishing off with a dollop of patronage towards those who are apparently not managing to “live their best lives”.

The thing is, not everyone gets the same menu. While some are freely choosing their ‘best’ life, others are forced down alleys they don’t choose. What an insult to a single parent struggling to stay on top of their casual job and their children’s needs! What a trivialisation of the daily struggle lived through by those affected by abuse of one kind or another! What willful ignorance of those not blessed with regular food or a roof over their heads! It may be true that everyone has choices, but not everyone has the same menu to choose from.

Live your ‘best’ life? Yes, wise advice. So much easier to do when you’ve been handed a menu full of options. So easy to turn your eyes from others who don’t have as many as you do.

Secondly, ‘living your best life’ suggests to me how desirable it might be to to bale out from the life we’re presently living. To live our ‘best life’, it seems, we would need first to find an escape hatch. Once we climb through we can leave the present one behind. Unspoken but definitely there, is the implication that we can leave behind troublesome people or situations holding us back from all we deserve. No blame, no regrets. Hop through the rabbit hole to our ‘best’ life. Others can tidy up the mess we leave behind.

Where would such an escape hatch be found? Perhaps among glittering prizes? A prestige car? A promotion at work? Changing jobs? Changing wardrobe? A different life partner? A retreat with a spiritual guru? Self help books of one type or another? Moving to another town? Living off grid? The list of menu possibilities is long.

Running away from our present life may, or may not, help us find our ‘best’ life. I am not so sure it will work as well as it promises to.

I guess my main irritation with the ‘living your best life’ stuff is its appeal to self centredness; its trivialising of what I believe life is about. I know, from the common appeal it has, that many do not agree with me. So be it. I’m not the boss, but I’ve had my say.

Could I finish by suggesting better, more honest, quests for life actualisation?

How about: “Living your life as a gift to others”? “Living your life as if it matters”? “Living your life with purpose”.

I’m sure you can think of even better ones.

Christmas 2023

Impromptu song of praise at the Church of St Anne in Jerusalem. September 2023.

I have been posting on this blogsite for over ten years. Topics have ranged fairly widely. I do like writing!

More recently I’ve been drawn to write more about Christian spirituality and related things, and, by and large, have had good feedback. I’ve loved exploring ideas and presenting my take on the world, on life, and on existence. Whether or not readers agreed totally with me they have generally done one of two things: They have responded warmly; or they have ignored me. Very few have attacked me. Which is good as I don’t set out to offend and nor do I seek never ending point scoring about religion, existence of God, etc., etc. which some seem to enjoy.

At the same time I have noticed that my Christian themes were leading me to situations where I felt the need to embrace controversy rather than to avoid it. Tribalism and cancel culture are powerful influences presently at work in our society. They are, in my opinion, influences that imprison rather than set people free.

Avoiding controversy or disapproval by not posting, might have worked for a while, but I keep getting called back to the blog. It won’t do to keep lying low.

In a sense nothing has changed. I will continue not to set out to offend or insult anyone. I do not believe that my job is to convince you of anything. I think I can learn from others. I wish you well, whatever you believe. However, I believe stuff too, and am not prepared to hide it, run away from it, or to apologise for it.

Rather than disparage anyone else’s beliefs, I will set out to express and explain my own, as clearly as I can. Having said that I do not believe that all beliefs are of equal value, or that all religions are basically the same. Far from it. (Just so you know).

You can expect me to not shy away from controversy quite as often in the New Year as I have in the past. I detest politics. I am suspicious of ideologies. I want to talk about a new lens through which to see the anger, unhappiness, injustice, crime and evil that infests our world.

So, here I am, with Christmas here already. A merry and happy and blessed Christmas to you, whether or not you are a believer.

The Words of Jesus

A trip to Israel in September has left me with lots to think about. In this short photo and video essay the captions are the words of Jesus.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.”

Luke 6:41
“. . . why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, ‘Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.”

Luke 18:9
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 22:24
Then they began to argue among themselves about who would be the greatest among them. Jesus told them, “In this world the kings and great men lord it over their people, yet they are called ‘friends of the people.’ But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant.

Luke 12:13
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

Luke 12:22
Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

Luke 5:29
Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor-sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

Luke 18:16
Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

John 11:25
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.”

A Second Decade of Poems

Galaxy C70. My photo.

The Fragile Why

High above Eauripik Rise.
South south west of Guam.
Four hours short of Kansai.
Time to ponder,
and wander
through existential whys.

Time hangs,
resisting change,
in the cabin of a long haul flight.
Hours loiter
in the fidgets, snaps, clicks 
and shuffle sounds,
in pseudo twilight.

Existence is precarious
mid flight,
when the white noise of engines 
drowns the throb of hearts.
Questions long neglected,
stir and jostle; 
surfacing in fading light.

Why am I?
Why are things?
Why is anything?

Why is cold?
Why is soft?
Why is old?

Why something?
Why not nothing?
Why begin and why end?

Flying through the sky,
so fragile,
so transient, am I.

What I ask for

Is Courage
to face the fear
and stare it down.
To not give up.
To breathe.
To make every difference,
while I can.

Is Faith
to trust and accept
my Lord’s will;
that whatever descends
accords with it.
That beginnings and ends
are entirely in His hands

Is Grace
to endure with calm.
To give, not take.
To weave remembrance.
To celebrate
the gifts of life 
in the fact of its ending.

Is Love
To rejoice in love 
unexpected, undeserved.
To dwell in it,
delighted.
And to know that
love lives on
when life does not.



When it’s Time

Lest I cry,
remind me of the life 
I’ve lived with you.

When I’m afraid,
let your hugs 
soak the tears.

Tell me again,
and again,
that you love me.

Easter from within

What’s my purpose in writing this? I ask myself.

Not to argue, or to preach, debate or convince, or (heaven help us) convert. Done with that sort of thing: Pointless. Tiresome. Offputting. Best left to those who think anyone is interested in what they have to say.

I’d like to think I’m not writing to you at all, but to myself, from within myself.

As I see it, the message of Easter is not one for me to understand, in the way I used to understand stuff before exams, but one to be experienced and lived. It flies in the face of my expectations of how justice should be done, and undermines how I was taught that the world worked.

It upends reality, in tumultuous ways, if I pay attention.

The ‘Pillars of Creation’, part of M16 nebula in the constellation of Sagitarius. My photo.

A humble itinerant without material possessions, Jesus spoke into peoples’ souls. Powerless, as the world understands power, he pricked the pretensions of the self important and the self righteous. He was drawn to the dregs of society; the losers; the sick; the outcasts; and they loved him.

He was betrayed and executed by those who were afraid of the effect he was having on the status quo. After they had used the tried and true method of silencing him, he showed his followers just how powerless the ‘powerful’ actually were. He came back from death. His followers were first astounded, then overjoyed, and then convinced that he was God.

I cannot understand that, but neither can I dismiss it.

It speaks to something deep inside me and causes me to reevaluate things the world would have me believe are true and central. More than that, it brings a tide of hope to my cynical, battered soul.

It changes me inside and out.

There are plenty willing to put all their (Easter) eggs in the one basket, and dismiss the Easter message, quoting science, common sense, or whatever. I wish them well, and hope they are not too disappointed when I choose not to engage on their terms. I have found such arguments, while they can be quite entertaining, convince no one, and lead nowhere.

Cleverness is no help there. Neither is self belief, and still less, ego.

The world is not how I want it to be, but I don’t see it as a hopeless place. I remember that Jesus came in among us, lived with us, and pointed to a reality that transends all that discourages me and imprisons me. More than that, as I see it, God displayed unequivocally through Jesus’ death and resurrection that I matter to him, as do all the other strugglers and misfits in this world (i.e. all of us).

The Hill of Crosses. Lithuania. My photo.

There is hope.

All is not as it appears.

Thank God for Easter.

Some recent astrophotographs

These are a few recent images I have taken, clouds permitting. Hope you find them as fascinating as I do.

Carina Nebula.

Taken through a Tamron zoom lens (200mm) and a canon dslr on a tracking mount with 30 second exposure. 20 images were stacked on topof each other to get this one.

Horsehead nebula.

Taken through a 115mm refracting telescope with a canon dslr. 20×180 second images stacked.

Carina nebula again.

Taken through a 115mm refracting telescope and a CMOS astronomical colour camera. 12×120 second exposures stacked. This image is a magnified and smaller field version of the earlier one.

The Rebel writes . .

Kenya. March 2020. My photo.

Having spent a large chunk of my life drinking from the well of conformity and compliance, my retirement years have seen me wander down a different path.

Don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with conforming and being compliant. I wear those clothes very comfortably still. After all, where would we be without conformers? It’s just that I now wear them to blend in and live a comfortable life, rather than to define me or to derive meaning.

I am not an anarchist, as order and the rule of law have their place, but I am certainly a rebel. I shy away from groupthink. I try not to worship at the altars of materialism, careerism or greed. I treat patriotism, nationalism and militarism with careful scepticism. I have lost faith in the political process and don’t involve myself in the mindlessness of political point scoring any more. I don’t like feeling coerced into positions promoted cynically by activists of any stripe. I am deeply sceptical of popular movements seemingly fueled by emotion and ‘feel good’ vibes. Finally, I reserve my deepest cynicism for politicians and community ‘leaders’ motivated by ambition and the pursuit of power rather than altruism.

I’m fond of sitting outside the herd and wondering why and how things are as they are. What meaning attaches itself to our life? Why does our life have coexisting threads of good and evil? Why does such horrible cruelty and evil, hopelessness and degradation coexist with goodness, love, safety and nurture? How you approach such questions, even if you can’t really answer them, will I believe, either lift you up or push you down.

A couple of observations. You may or may not agree but they may give food for thought:

Western countries are no longer Christian (if they ever really were), but their people are overwhelmingly religious – just not Christian. The worship of the self competes with the worship of nature, but the self wins by a comfortable margin. The ‘self’ is the major deity with ‘nature’ or ‘Gaia’ a close second. Other minor deities are ‘wealth’, ‘sex’, ‘power’, ‘charisma’, intelligence’, ‘beauty’ and a host of others. People everywhere devote their lives to worshipping themselves. They have made themselves into their own god without, perhaps, realising it.

It would take much longer than I am willing to spend to argue the above observation properly, but perhaps you may recognise some truth in it?

The second observation:

For as long as we continue to worship ourselves; our freedoms; our rights; our happiness; our fulfillment; we will continue to have to deal with the threads of evil which run through our lives.

It has been the hardest, the most difficult thing for me to come to understand: that I am tempted every day to worship myself, my abilities, my strength, my intelligence, my happiness, my grievances, my fulfillment. I am tempted in so many ways to see myself as the centre. I frequently succumb in just as many ways. In doing so, I inevitably damage others around me.

I believe that there is only one god worth worshipping: The God who created all that exists, including me, and who loves me enough to continue to put up with me. The God who gave himself up for me and for you in a way I can only pretend to understand. The God who is calling me out of my self centredness and into communion with him.

This God is worth my worship.

It is a subversive belief, offensive to our world full of competing deities; a world that can’t seem to understand why none of its interventions and none of its ideologies make the slightest bit of difference to the pervading evil.

It is a belief deep and wide enough even for this old slow learning rebel.