October 23, 2009

More Boat People…

Posted by Vawz under Politics, news
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I heard that Uganda took in 6 million refugees recently…we have 14 or 15 wanting to come in on a boat and it makes national news…we need to get over ourselves ! Here are some stats -

They [boat people] make up less than four per cent of people who come to Australia seeking asylum, yet never fail to generate an astonishing political and media storm.

So here are some facts: more than 96 per cent of asylum seekers arriving in Australia step off planes, not boats. Furthermore, the vast majority of boat arrivals are typically found to be genuine refugees – those fleeing for their lives and safety, not simply seeking better lives in wealthier nations. Far from being “illegal immigrants” they are exercising the right to seek asylum under international law.

Yet right now our Government is actually considering paying Indonesia, a country which has not signed the UN Convention on Refugees, to swoop in on people desperately seeking refuge in Australia before we’ve even had a chance to hear their claims.

In Indonesia, this group of asylum seekers, including a pregnant woman and several children, will be placed in immigration detention until they are processed by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Despite financial assistance from the Australian Government and the International Organisation for Migration, Indonesian detention centres are over-crowded and under-resourced.

Asylum seekers in Indonesia face arbitrary and indefinite detention until the UNHCR processes their claims. Amnesty International is concerned that the UNHCR has limited capacity in Indonesia and asylum seekers may be forced to spend extended periods in detention while waiting to apply for refugee status.

Refugees in Indonesia do not have the right to work, send their children to school and have no recourse to a more permanent status. Their only hope of a durable solution is to be selected for resettlement to a third country through the UNHCR, a process that can take more than six years.
[Source]

 

October 20, 2009

TED Blog: Update: Tides they are a-changin?

Posted by Vawz under Uncategorized
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TED Blog: Update: Tides they are a-changin?

Shared via AddThis

 

October 20, 2009

Great Story on Permaculture

Posted by Vawz under Environment, community, consumerism, my backyard
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<script src=”http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=int&vid=/video/international/2009/10/01/gg.lawton.fertile.land.cnn” type=”text/javascript”></script><noscript>Embedded video from <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/video”>CNN Video</a></noscript>

Found here

 

October 19, 2009

Local Church Leadership

Posted by Vawz under Church | Tags: , |
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I often ‘fantasize’ about going back…you know back to good old fashion church pastoring. A good mate, Hamo – the Backyard Missionary – he did it. Went back that is. He is heading back to Quinns Baptist Church in the next few weeks to be their main man :)

In my fantasy I ponder the kind of pastor I would be in a local church nowadays. So much has changed in side my head as well as in my day to day practice and lifestyle. I commit so much more time to staying around home than I did when I worked for a local church.

Someone once shared with me about a church they are involved with and how their pastor had been doing a series of messages compelling the church to ‘follow the vision’ and ‘get with the program folks’. On one particular week he shared all about leadership and how with him at the helm he expects everyone to follow. God has given him the towel, the mandate, the baton, the anointing, the apointment to lead this church so you should follow, if not bugger off. (my interpretation of the message I was told about!) The illustration was used about a bus. The senior pastor told the congregation that he is the driver and expects all on board to want to go the direction he is going. When the bus stops at the bus stop and you say “i want to go to Hillarys” the driver says ‘you will need to catch a taxi as this bus does not go there”. The pastor told the congregation (so I am told) that taxi wil COST you dearly. NEVER go it alone, this will cost, it is expensive.

Just to drive the point home, another one of the pastors in the church took to the stage mid-sermon to emphasise his blind obedience to the senior pastor and the blessing that comes from being on his bus no matter what, he was thanked by his boss and the congregation assured that no extra pay would be forth coming for this guy for his comments :) 416FS34YYHL._SL500_AA240_

Now – all this obviously  was shared to me by someone who was present and I have used my own language, but it got me thinking about the book I once read called Renegotiating The Church Contract by Thwaites. In the book he argues that the above model of leadership is very Old Testament. Picture Moses climbing the mountain on the peoples behalf, meeting God on the peoples behalf, hearing from him on their behalf, sharing the message about God and his commandments. Never would they try to presume themselves worthy of seeing God or hearing from him themselves – ohhh no! They sent Moses to do that on their behalf. He was their man, their priest in a sense. They followed Mo and he showed them the way to go according to what God had told him. Get on the Moses bus!

In the New Testament we open to see Jesus model of ministry as he sits in the place of a servant and washes the disciples feet in order to equip them to eat and hear from God about his imminent death. We move further and see a tear form in the curtain that seperated God and man (Read Hebrews). A new way was being formed, a new path for people to gain equal access to God, no longer needing a priest to hear from God for us. We become a priesthood of all believers, then we see an outpouring of the Holy Spirit for all people to enable them to hear God, to call on him, to do his Kingdom work begun in Christ. The leaders of this movement seem to ‘antenna men’. People moving amongst the believers encouraging them hear God, tuning in their radar to be able to discern his good pleasing and perfect will for their lives, on an equal journey confessing sins together accepting that others may provide insite for their [the leaders] own walk with God. Not telling the people God’s will, but helping them hear God. In fact more like a mountain guide taking the church up the hill rather than going himself and returning and saying ‘follow me, this is where God wants us to go’. In fact It looks more like a fleet of taxis driving all over the city doing Kingdom acts, serving people, serving God, loving people, loving God than it does a bus driver calling people onto his bus and all heading off in his ‘God given direction’.

How would I do it different if I was to go back…hmmm I know I have pondered this before. I think I would get the sack inside of a year for not attending enough meetings, not caring about the money in the bank or the budget or the building or the garden or the cafe…ok, I would care about that, not preaching proper sermons, not being in the office, swearing, drinking too much, wearing shorts and thongs on stage…and a shirt :) Not sure about it really. Not sure entirely that I would say no, but not sure I would say yes if the right looking ministry job came along.

I wore shorts and 2 odd socks to preach last week at Quinns, my pants were falling down as I left my belt behind and I forgot to shave…I think those guys overlooked most of that!

 

October 15, 2009

The Mess of it all – Going Green

Posted by Vawz under Environment, biodiesel, car, my backyard | Tags: , , , , |
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Well it’s Blog Action Day for Climate Change day – so here goes…

“Going green” is not always as easy as it sounds…if it ever did sound easy.

I live in an established house in suburbia and climate change was a burden to me and I wanted to do something about it…

1) A veggie garden. I wanted to stop buying vegetables that were grown thousands of miles away from where I live, or ones that are grown local but have petro-chemical fertilisers and insecticides all over them. There are some local semi-organic growers, and we use them when we can, but we began to plant the occasional plant in the backyard, then we dug up almost half of the backyard for this purpose. We used old roofing tiles from the rubbish dump to make raised beds and use all organic (mostly made in the back yard) compost. We made a chook pen and bought 3 chickens. The pen was also made from rubbish from the tip bits. This season we have spread into the front yard and have planted melons and pumpkin around the front rose bush. We already have olive, apricot and nectarine in the front along with a bunch of flowering native trees to attract bees and birds. We have a nice pond running on a solar pump in the back that attracts frogs, birds and all sorts of nice visitors. The upside of this is … well obvious, the downsides are, less yard for kids play (we have 3 girls under the age of 13). But this has forced them out into the parks and bush lands with friends and neighbours – so that’s not bad! The garden is very water intensive so…

2. A Water Tank. In Perth, Australia it gets pretty dry! We have major water restrictions at times and vegetable gardens are water intensive. (So is making bio diesel, but we’ll get to that later). So we found a spot that had an ideal spot for a 5000L water tank (after removing a Date Palm). We catch only the water off the patio roof, and this is enough to fill the tank to overflowing numerous times over winter. WHY DONT THESE BECOME LAW FOR EVERY HOUSE BUILT AROUND HERE!! What we have discovered is that 5000L used for the washing machine and the garden and washing bio-diesel does not go far at all. It is only just the end of our Australian winter and a few weeks into Spring and the tank has only about 800L left. I would dearly love to install a couple of others to be honest! Maybe even dig up what is left of the backyard and put in a 10 000L underground one!

3. Biodiesel. Much talk about this alternate fuel is on the internet and in the media. Just the other night on some current affairs programme I saw a guy I know from Perth here talking about running his old Nissan on straight Vegetable Oil. I had been reading about how to convert used vegetable oil into Biodiesel for a while when I attended the Sunfair in 08, an alternate fuels fair at the University of Western Australia. I met a group selling the “BioMaster” processor. I grabbed 3 mates to put in $1600 each, which well and truly paid for itself in a short amount of time. We make sure we only use oil that has already served its original purpose and would otherwise be thrown out or turned into pig food…or women’s cosmetics :)  There is too much deforestation and ‘take-over’ of existing crop for the purpose of bio fuels for me to ever justify buying new oil for the purpose of making bio fuel.

This is where the mess of it all comes in…The process of collecting used cooking oil from the back of a restaurant or sports complex etc is rather ugly. I used to hate that used oil smell that wafted up my nose if I rode past the back of the fish and chip shop as a kid, now I loath it! Take last Monday for example. I had to pick up a couple of hundred litres from one place and about 180 from another, and maybe 50 from another.

Place 1 – For some reason unknown to me mould had developed over the whole thing, it was disgusting. Bits of old fish and chicken floated around the open drum and when I tried to extract it all with my pump an old cloth got sucked up. I got as much as I could, oil dripping down my arms and on the floor. I climbed back into our nice family car, oil on the floor, steering wheel and door handles and gear stick!

Place 2 – As usual someone had left the lid open and it had rained, there was so much water mixed in with the oil it was almost worthless, again the pump jammed with some unidentifiable deep fried object and I got frustrated and moved on with only 100L and wondering when I would get back to properly clean out this drum!

Place 3 – easy, clean golden used oil, love it!

I got it all haf way home and was at the traffic lights when a pedestrian called out that I had liquid (oil) running out from the back of my trailer. I jumped out to see that one oil container had fallen over…the only one I had not fixed the lid on well :(  I kept going, leaving a small trail of oil all the way to my house. At this point I did a silly thing. I removed the trailer, the oil rushed to the end and ran out all over the road, my drive and into my garage as I pushed the trailer in there. For 4 hours yesterday I scrubbed everything with Glycerol (a handy waste product of Biodeisel that is a soap base). This did not work as the brick paved drive and road are porous and soaked it all up. The stain from the oil mixed with Glycerol is all down my street and the smell is wafting through my open office window as I type this.

My shed has never been the same since I installed the plant over 18 months ago, everything I touch around the house has a greasy mark on it, I have bundles of oil covered clothes that stink and I am constantly wondering where to pour all this waste water and glycerol, 2 by-products of the process. Some of the Glyc goes good in the compost.

In the meantime, I have a pretty environmentally clean car (not perfect, but better than normal diesel. I have more money in the bank as this process is cheep. I have a hobby that I quite enjoy and a couple of guys who have been on the journey with me that I enjoy a quiet beer and chat in the shed with while we play with chemicals.

But let me tell you this. I need a bigger bit of land and a bigger shed :) Which makes my footprint bigger I know, but this is getting ugly and the neighbours are only just smiling still – it stinks around here!

It’s fun to live greener and these ways are not the only way we try, we/I catch public transport a bit, we only have one car and a scooter. We catch excess water in buckets to flush toilets where possible, we carbon offset flights when we travel for what that’s worth…or is that just a guilt offset for using such a big carbon emitter(!!??) we compost a lot and feed every bit of food stuff to the chickens! We do a bit here and there, hoping that others might ‘catch the bug’ too. But with 2 working adults and 3 kids in all sorts of activities, it makes for a constant messy active ongoing campaign, but – you know, I think its worth it.

See other posts and pictures – Here (My Backyard) and  here (environment), also here (Bio diesel)

 

October 12, 2009

The Soul

Posted by Vawz under Life, Spirtuality, books, peace
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I think Matty B emailed this to me once. I now must be reading a book he was reading then and so I too have come across this great quote, and I publish it for you (probably again, I am sure I put it in here once before!)

Parker J Palmer says;

…the soul is [ ] shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush, especially when other people are around. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently at the base of a tree, breathe with the earth, and fade into our surroundings, the wild creature we seek might put in an appearance. We may see it only briefly and only out of the corner of an eye – but the sight is a gift we will always treasure as an end in itself.

A Hidden Wholeness (58/9)

 

October 1, 2009

God is In All Things

Posted by Vawz under Spirtuality
1 Comment 

Question of the Day:
What is it that makes the universe friendly?

St. Bonaventure (1221– 1274) took Francis’ intuitive genius and spelled it out into an entire philosophy.

God is “within all things but not enclosed; outside all things but not excluded; above all things but not aloof; below all things, but not debased.” Bonaventure was the first to speak of God as one “whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

Therefore “the origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fullness, activity and order of all created things” are the very “footprints” and “fingerprints” (vestigia) of God, according to this Doctor of the Church. Now that is quite a lovely and a very safe universe to live in. Welcome home!

Adapted from Hope Against Darkness, Richard Rohr (p. 136)

 

September 18, 2009

Rainbow Spirit Theology

Posted by Vawz under books
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Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology by the Rainbow Spirit Elders. This book has been prepared by a group of Aboriginal Christian leaders with the aim of integrating the traditions of Aboriginal culture with the traditions of Christianity.

Rainbow Spirit Theology provides a source of genuine dialogue between Aboriginal and immigrant Christians who enjoy a rich life on what was once Aboriginal land.

I found it to be an easy read at some level and a great and rich thought provoker at another.

 

September 18, 2009

Great Thoughts

Posted by Vawz under Church, Life
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Matt (OEUp) sent me this link. These reflections are definitely thoughts I regularly ponder!

Taken from – here

Pioneer and/or Pastor

Just at the moment I’m struggling with energy, it’s not tiredness in the traditional sense, it’s more a sense of being de-energised… this morning feeling incredibly down I began to reflect on just why I’ve been feeling so down/depressed for the last week or so… it’s fair to say life isn’t easy, financially things are tricky for us as a family but I began to realise that there is a deeper personal/spiritual issue for me… I’m a Pioneer, a creative etc. I need new challenges, new projects to sink my teeth into, to get my creative juices flowing again.

In the business world it seems accepted that entrepreneurs are always entrepreneurs, they specialise in “blue sky thinking” and they then work with managers and administrators… the worst thing to do with a new product/initiative is to leave it in the hands of the inventor!  Yet in the Church it seems to be assumed that a pioneer will gradually morph into a manager/pastor… I’m beginning to doubt this model.  There is nothing wrong with managing, and we all need to manage to some extent, but as a Pioneer I’m finding it’s killing me!  When I worked in the Theatre a project would last 2/3 months then it would be time to move on to the next challenge, I could never be (and never was) a stage manager who would stay with the show for the foreseeable… I had to move on… I’m beginning to realise this is my nature, I’m energised by risk, by new problems to solve, by the creative dynamic… when left to manage something I stuff it up, not by making a mess of it but because I find myself gradually drained and I lose the energy needed and I get distracted or just thoroughly demotivated… and as hard as I try I can’t find energy from nowhere!    With the creative bit between my teeth I get told off for being a workaholic, without it I can turn into a couch potato!  I’m not sure what the answer is, but it worries me that the CofE has put a lot of work into developing the Pioneer Ministry stream (both Lay and Ordained) perhaps assuming that once they have started new things they will cease to be pioneers and become Pastors… I just wonder how sustainable it is to wind up all these Pioneers if we are going to sooner or later squeeze them into being something they are not?

 

September 8, 2009

No Debt

Posted by Vawz under justice
[2] Comments 

fter four years in immigration detention, Masoud was granted a temporary visa. Then he was hit with a $264,000 bill for his “accommodation” in Baxter Detention Centre. There are hundreds more like him – experiencing unimaginable trauma only to then be slugged with an enormous bill for the privilege. Thanks to the efforts of caring Australians, like yourself, the bill to abolish detention debt passed just moments ago in the Senate. In an historic move, Liberal Senator Troeth, who met with a GetUp delegation of those affected by this policy, abandoned her party’s position and crossed the floor to support the bill. She was joined, at the last minute, by Senator Fielding – whose support we will need on other refugee reform bills in the coming months. So often we criticise politicians for not standing up and speaking out. Now it is our responsibility to thank them for doing the right thing. With other key refugee and asylum seeker reform bills up for debate shortly, it’s important that we take a moment to thank Senator Troeth and Senator Fielding who took the courageous move of voting on moral rather than party lines.

Click here to send these Senators a message of thanks: www.getup.org.au/campaign/ThankYou

Having seen the faces, heard the stories and seen the emotions of those affected by this bill, our politicians found it in their hearts to end this injustice. In no small part, the efforts of GetUp members, along with the support of so many refugee and asylum seeker campaigners across the nation, made a huge difference to the passing of this amendment. This change will see improvements in the lives of hundreds of Australians who simply want to get on with their lives. No longer will asylum seekers begin a new life in Australia under the heavy burden of hundreds of thousands of dollars of detention debt. www.getup.org.au/campaign/ThankYou

Thank you, Simon Sheikh National Director – GetUp! Action for Australia

PS – Masoud Shams, fleeing Iran, was given a debt by the Commonwealth of $264,000. Thanks to your efforts this injustice has come to an end. Use our simple tool to thank our politicians for ending this injustice by clicking here.

 

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