RIP Denise

This has been some week.  An insight into the magnitude of the week that is mine is the loss of Denise and how quickly it all happened. 

Norm was our cook at Echuca where I was parish priest between 1999 and 2002.  He and Denise, his wife, along with their lively, well loved and not so little family all became part of my life.  Norm and Denise have been my great mates ever since and we have even met here in Thailand, down in Phuket for some eventful and memorable coming togethers. 

On Tuesday, I got an email from the family that Denise was to die soon.  I emailed back the next day a message of love and solidarity, only to get the news on Thursday that she has died that day.  I felt sad and shocked.  Today is Friday and it all seems so quick, so surreal.  I can only imagine how Norm and the family feel. 

Denise was one of those larger than life characters.  She and Norm were the best of mates.  They did everything together - family, entertaining, holidays, travel, haircuts (as one daughter is a hairdresser), cooking, St Vincent de Paul and so the list goes on.  It was like where one was, so was the other.  You never just had one friend, you had two.  They were both very different in their own way but always a delight together or separately. 

I can see Denise being there at home reading or doing the crossword puzzle, while getting the dinner or herself ready for the night ahead.  It would be the picture of her having her hair up in curlers ready to be the star yet again that night. 

You see Norm and Denise's life had been running a pub or a restaurant.  So they were always together running the show with the children nearby.  Denise was the publican's wife, always ready for a chat and able to engage anyone in a conversation.  So she always had a consoling word, an understanding ear or just a simple hug with the invite to sit down here and have a drink.  It would always be - "It'll be allright, John" - and then a big smile, a laugh and maybe a kiss on the cheek. 

What a great woman!  You might have gone quickly, Denise, but you won't be forgotten that quickly.  You have left us something to remember.  To the Denises of our life!

Another year - a time to reflect

Well, today is my birthday and Sunday was the last Sunday of the Church year.  So it is a natural time for me to stand back and reflect and take count. 

To be honest neither has been the immediate impetus for my sitting down and writing this at such at an early time in the morning.  They serve rather as the context for my motivation which comes from watching last night's Q&A on the Australian Network.  Q&A is a weekly political and social forum put on by the ABC where politicians, thinkers, writers, actors and others respond to the questions of the public audience. 

The issue once again was asylum seekers and the government's handling of it.  One member of the night's panel, a playwright, spoke like this on the issue. 
  "Not enough Australians care enough about these poor bastards to make a difference."
I would have gone one step further and said that not enoiugh Australians seem to know anything beyond their own limited experience of life and so they don't even know about these poor bastards in any real and rational way.  They only know what they hear and read. 

Then the other side was expressed.  It went like this. 
  The government is about stopping people smugglers and controlling who comes to Australia. 
Both stances may be admirable and justifiable when looking at the role of government but they just lack any sense of compassion. It is just a blatant, public presentation of the party line without any expressed sense of being with these poor bastards. 

Senator Penny Wong was there from the government side.  When questioned about another present and pressing social issue - gay marriage - she was full of compassion.  On asylum seekers, her public demeanour was the party line - people smugglers and controlling the borders - with a basic lack of compassion. 

I ask where is the consistency?  How do you be so full of compassion on one issue of social justice and so lacking on another?  What is it that we don't get on asylum seekers and refugees?  Or maybe we do get it and so we act in response according to specific interests.  They just aren't always the interests of the underdog. 

The now deceased but great Cardinal Bernadin of the US Church was the one who noted that all social justice issues lie together.  One cannot be looked at in isolation from another.  His image was that of the seamless garment which cannot be dissected to be fixed.  It has to repaired as a total garment or not at all. 

He came and he went

Well, Obama did come to town last Sunday and stayed the night.  I never saw him but knew he was here because I saw him on the news.  By now, he is back in the US for Thanksgiving.  Life does move at a pace and we keep going on. 

Bon Jovi has had to deal with his daughter's recent drug overdose and I am impressed by his approach to this time of distress and worry.  He just said:
"It's human.  What I do for a living seems glitzy and glamorous but if you don't take it too seriously it's a great way to make a living.  And then life goes on.  Things happen.  This tragedy was something that I had to face too.  So we'll get through it." 

All this so fits in with this upcoming Sunday as it is the last Sunday in the Church year.  It is the end of one year and the start of another for the Church.  It is a time to look back, reflect, learn and move on in faith. 

Next week sees the Thai festival of Loy Krathong which comes at the end of rainy season.  It is a lovely festival with a wonderful ritual in which all participate.  The ritual involves making your own symbolic float which features a lit candle and incense sticks, a piece of your hair, a finger nail and a coin, all placed on a banana leaf or similar environmentally friendly base that you can let go into the water - a lake, a river, a pond.  The symbolism is about asking forgiveness of the water goddess for having polluted the waterways and showing gratitude to the same goddess for her gracious gifts.  As well, it is about asking for forgiveness generally and seeking good luck and good wishes for the year ahead.  It is a colourful and moving ritual joined by all in Thailand, telling us that we do do wrong but we can move on in gratitude. 

It is all very human, as Bon Jovi says. 

Obama's coming

Obama will be in town this weekend.  It will be a big show feting a big world leader who comes to visit on his way to Myanmar.  There will be lots of people, lots of security, lots of excitement, lots of activity in Bangkok for his visit.  It will be an exciting and colourful event but it will also be chaotic as there will be the inevitable, and much more so, traffic chaos at play. 

I guess that reflects life.  Amid all of its excitement and happinees and successes, there is the other side, the chaos and messiness that we only know so well.  It is as if the two sides go together.  Maybe one side sustains us, while the other teaches us.

I have been reading a lot this week about the horrific child sexual abuse issue in Australia.  As I follow a side presented by the Australian Catholic Church, I have come to name that the 'powers that be' in the Church have set up over the last 30 years a 'medieval bubble' which has become so divorced from our reality of the 21st century.  It is a bubble from which you tell people what to do, while not listening to them.  It is a bubble from which one appears princely and arrogant and just so above people's everyday reality.  It does not seem to allow for an understanding of the chaos and messiness within which people live and have to cope. 

There is still that other side in the same Church that I also saw this past week, screaming to be free of this bubble, living in the 21st century, listening rather than telling and helping rather than controlling. 

I am sure there is a connection between these two big stories of this week.  The chaos of a Bangkok will cope with the glory of an Obama visit and will continue to go on after all the glory and excitement of his visit have subsided.  Such is life and its power to keep on moving!  Let's enjoy it!     

The coming together of themes

I wrote recently about how having heroes fails us in life and then the story broke last week about General Petraeus and his affair.  I wonder how many people held him up as a hero but, like the rest of us, he is only human and not perfect.  I wonder how many people from a distance now feel let down by what has become world news.  We so often feel let down by others, by ones who mean so much to us and by ones for whom we have such high expectations and you know what?  It is probably mainly about us and our needs and not about the others whom we have made into heroes in some way.  We do everybody, including ourselves, a disservice by making ourselves, no matter who it is, into who we are not. 

I know how human and imperfect I am.  I am just like the rest of the human race.  Yesterday, the manager here at BRC made a personal comment that hurt me.  I saw it as a lack of tact.  Then today, when we met in the meeting area of BRC, I thought that I justly stated my position on the matter.  She told me, as Thais always do, not to get angry but I saw it as my speaking strongly (or my mind as my mother would say) and not as being angry.  We then come to an understanding, or for me a new insight yet again.  She said what we have here is a cross-cultural misunderstanding.  She said that what I took as an offence was never meant as one.  Yes, you may not talk like this back home in Australia but we are in Thailand and what was said yesterday speaks of how we play with each other as Thais.  So no offence!  And I have a healthy reminder before me of what is happening and that I, like my manager and everyone else, am only human and should never be too ready to judge or to hold grudges. 

I believe there is a connection here between the two stories.  For me, it is all a bit 'has been' but it is still worth naming as it is what has happened yet again.  Through crisis (no matter how little or big), there is growth; through misunderstanding (no matter how little or big), if confronted, there comes understanding. Herein, there is a hard lesson as it involves hurt and sometimes shame or disgrace.  It also involves facing oneself and sometimes admitting wrong or having to say sorry.  None of this is ever easy but, as they say - again 'a 'has been', no pain, no gain OR anything worth having or being does not come easy. 

The week that was

For an Aussie, the 'week that was' featured the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday afternoon, Melbourne time.  What does that mean for an Aussie in Bangkok?  Well, maybe not much but it is still a time when the cultural strings are pulled.  It was also a time when my American mate here in Bangkok, who always backs football, could for a change study the form and come up with all sorts of statistics.  Amazing!  It is the pull of the Cup. 

The 'week that was' also featured the US Presidential election and that also was Tuesday.  What amazes me is the number of Thais who are so into the US elections and Obama.  For me, it speaks of a world that so needs leaders and Obama is one hope for the side. 

On a more personal note, the 'week that was' also focused on Tuesday as that afternoon I was one of two people responsible for the running of an important meeting in our area of work with urban refugees.  This meeting saw the coming together of all stakeholders who help these people in Bangkok  This meant we had a forum made of a range of strong characters with a range of views on the topic at hand - how to help urban refugees.  What united us was our passion for helping such a desperately needy group in our midst and how to do it most effectively.  Is this not in part what makes us truly human - serving a cause greater than self.  

You know, I got this line, not from some cheap theology book, but from a look at consumerism and how it is destroying our humanity presented last night on Aljazeera.  Its basic line was that our relationships are meant to be with people and not things, and it is in relating with others that we find our happiness.  Good theology certainly agrees with this. 

Heroes?

You know during the past I yet again lost a hero in my life.  No, he didn't die.  He just showed that he could not live up to my expectations as one of my heores.

I tend to do that - proclaim heroes for me in my life.  And you know what?  Time and time again, they fail the test once I have proclaimed their hero status.  I have to say that what I do to them is unfair as, in making someone my hero, I place for my sake too high an expectation level on them and I don't think anyone can meet my required expectation level to be my hero. 

The other side is that proclaiming heroes may be my way of coping and abrogating responsibility as it is not for heroes to do for me what I cannot do but for me to keep trying to do my bit.  It may also be my way of finding a comfortable fantasy world which just does not exist. 

I live in a city full of people who seem to live in a fantasy and just not grounded in any reality.  I am not sure why here or if it is just more noticeable here.  On Wednesday, I met an Australian I have not seen for awhile.  He had apparently gone home for business.  Now that he is sorting out his business, he is looking at returning to living in Bangkok.  What are his plans for the future?  Return and settle in Jomtien next to Pattaya.  There he has western, male companionship and it is still close enough to Bangkok where his Thai male partner lives.  Why then not live in Bangkok?  Well, by living in Jomtien, he can indulge in seeing the Thai guys of Pattaya, while he is still with his chosen partner who is a solid citizen and decent guy with a good professional career.  In Australia, while divorced, he is still the straight grandfather and father.  He expresses an amazement at why he does what he does when he has so many good people in his life.  As a businessman, he presents as the hardline rightwinger.  I present this not to lay any moral judgement but simply as a real life example of what I mean by people not grounded in reality and living in some fantasy. 

As I say many times, THE QUESTION in my Bangkok is this:
Is it real or unreal?  Or  What is real? 
Just now I thought of the childhood tale of the velveteen rabbit who asked the same question and found the answer in a rather perceived uncomfortable corner.