I Can't Handle The Truth

Being a pacifist and having worked with young people for years, trained within the realms of youth work, mediation, counselling, mental health and pastoral care, I have learnt to control my emotions. While those around me can be quick to anger, reckless and at the whim of their emotional reactions. I tend to be quick to listen, slow to anger, non-judgemental and trying to draw the best out of people. I have treasured being called a 'calming influence'. But recent events have left a sour taste on my tongue. And when I spit, it is laced with vitriol. I'm showing signs of cracking.

The culmination so far of my journey towards losing it came through SBS's Dateline report on Manus Island. I think it was the most important piece of journalism I've witnessed all year (and another in a long line of powerful reasons why we need public broadcasters). If you didn't see the program, I suggest you should - everybody should. That is; if you think you can handle the truth.

Go here to go to the SBS Dateline page to read about or watch 'The Inside Story' 

I was so furious from it that I felt the need to express my rage. Did I punch walls? did I pick up a pitchfork and go marching to my nearest political representatives office? No. I did what any repressed activist with an inclination to blogging and social media would do - I sat down and wrote about what I thought and how I felt. Checking myself, I refrained from publishing. It wasn't because the use of the word 'fucking' as an adjective in every second sentence bothered me as lazy from the perspective of a writer. It was more that it was just a therapeutic exercise of release.

I feel sorry for Biz sometimes when I get all righteous and shouty, starting to share tidbits of the internal dialogue I have where I rip Abbott and Morrisson to shreds. I'm thankful she puts up with my outbursts. Outbursts that are coming all too frequent of late due to a Government that declares itself open for business but closed to humanity. Heck, even the Uniting Church got rejected for offering to care for children who are being punished because of the choices of others.

ABC Uniting Church offers to take child asylum seekers 
SMH church slams cold blooded treatment of asylum seeker children 

And when exactly did that happen? When in this democracy did power and business interests take precedent over the interests of people. We have a power hungry PM who has said in the past "I would do anything except sell my arse to become PM." And now he and the likes of Campbell Newman strut around like they own the place. We know power corrupts and it has surely corrupted these men to where they have forgotten (if they ever knew it) that leaders are there to serve the people. A business is not a person. We have become a nation that ignores the consequences to people and the environment because we tolerate leaders that serve business interests to serve their own self interest.

I am not always on the side of our propensity to cut down the tall poppy. It can come across as an aversion to success, a way to drag down the intellectual to our level. There are days though that I am thankful we have such a cultural system in play, I want to see it happen in this case. I want the senate inquiry announced today into Manus (thank you Greens and Labour) to expose the horror that we are accountable for. Likewise the inquiry from the UN human rights commissioner. And I want to see us take our democracy back from those that are far from conservative with their radical tea party neo-con privileged plutocrat idealogies.

Oh dear, I've gotten off tangent and turned all ranty again over the last two paragraphs. See! I have a problem.

SBS Manus island Nauru under UN spotlight 

The Guardian Senate approves inquiry into Manus island riot and death of Reza Barati 

Still, I wonder if they'll even deign to answer the questions that the senate puts to them? And if nothing changes, I wonder if (while not being individually oppressed) I can claim asylum in New Zealand? On what I consider reasonable grounds of course, that my country has gone mad with irrational fear and it is causing me considerable mental anguish?

Lighting the Dark

"This is what going to Church should feel like," Biz says to me as we walk our suburban streets hand in hand. We cross the road to the train station on our way to the 'Light the Dark' candlelight vigil.

 

Normally I face forward in the train to see where I'm going and Biz likes to sit backwards. I choose to shake things up and join her in sitting backwards to watch the scenery fall behind, like I'm acknowledging where we've been over where we are going.

Sydney teems with people, each with their own identity, their own thoughts. They are all going somewhere. I catch the eyes of a few people going in the opposite direction but on the whole to most I am but a momentary blur in the corner of their eye. Some are moving in the same direction as us and we filter into the town hall square with them under the shadow of the ornate stone masonry Church that stands to one side. There is already a gathering of people waiting in anticipation for the nights event. They are mostly older folk with bright eyes and smiles etched into their faces.

Their presence surprises me. I recall one of the defining moments in the development of my identity when I was a teenager. In the movie 'The Breakfast Club' I identified with the 'freak' as they were discussing not turning into their parents (not that my parents were an issue). She said “it's unavoidable, it just happens, when you grow up, your heart just dies.” Judd's character interjects with “who cares!” and through tears she replies “I care.”

Well I'm all grown up now and the young who now swarm into the square probably see me as a bit of an oldie but that's ok. I've gotten this far in avoiding the death of my soul and around me I see hope in my fellow bleeding hearts that I will not turn into what I hated the idea of becoming. And shouldn't our hearts bleed for the refugees we deny hope and for Reza Berati the gentle giant who came to us for protection and a new life and instead was brutally killed?

The dark envelopes the few thousand gathered here and we stave it off with the lighting of our candles. The candle I brought with me was the candle that the Church community of Deloraine gave me when I was commissioned as a Chaplain back in 2007. It has a now faded cross painted on it above the Deloraine High School emblem and written beneath are the words 'Here is my servant, whom I have chosen.' This candle of symbolic and sentimental value hasn't held a flame for seven years but tonight I light it because while I may not be a Chaplain anymore, I still feel called to serve the beliefs and values that I held and that I hold.

We find a vantage point near the rear of the crowd overlooking a sea of flickering flames to the town hall steps where the organisers have set up their cameras and microphones. With hot wax already periodically dripping onto my hand that holds the candle we are encouraged to vocalise or whistle rather than clap in response to the activists and religious leaders that are to address the crowd. Chris Taylor of the Chaser is up first acknowledging that he is not one of the religious leaders, “there's still time!” some wacko yells. From that light moment Chris builds to something heavy and the response is a clamouring of whistles, woohoo's and a few thousand raised candles. I'm glad we've left applause behind, it doesn't suit the atmosphere.

We listen to refugees and activists and people representing different faiths. I appreciate the different faiths and denominations expressing solidarity with each other, and with those of no spiritual belief, in standing together with those that we have neglected. The Jewish leader expressing that his people still remember the trauma of fleeing from persecution and so stand with all asylum seekers receives one heck of a 'hell yeah.' And the Christian leader who addressed Tony Abbott's quote that 'we will not succumb to moral blackmail' as meaning that Tony is choosing to take us on a course to moral bankruptcy elicits a chorus of “Shame, Shame Tony Shame!”

Sydney has often felt like a place without a soul to me in my short time living here. As tonights events end and as people mill around the square and I see their faces lit by the candles they hold, I sense a heart here connecting me to these others. There is a pulse here despite where forces of selfishness and fear and bigotry want to take us.

Biz and I move toward the memorial for Reza at the foot of the steps leading into the town hall. An Iranian flag is flown for him and mourners gather round flowers, pictures and messages to Reza that people are encouraged to write. We deliver our message. We walk away from that scene, a scene that is usually reserved for viewing on our tv screens of pain half a world away. But this is not half a world away, this I see with my own eyes, this that has happened in our name. This is not the Australia that I want.

Perhaps I should be facing forward as I ride home on the train but I don't know if we've turned a corner yet so I find myself facing backwards again. And it falls away behind me as I plug some Billy Bragg 'waiting for the great leap forward,' into my ears. That sacred moment of fellowship where people of different ages and shapes and sizes and cultures and beliefs can come together as one to stand for something bigger than themselves. If I was more poetically inclined I'd turn to Biz and say “yes, that is what going to Church should feel like.”