Hello,
I’m a saint in a straitjacket who blogs about nothing in particular in an obscure corner of cyberspace called DogfightAtBankstown. Obviously that means I’m a Christian who lives in Adelaide and types with their nose. I’m pretty ordinary, neither erudite nor expert in anything, and I rarely have anything profound or witty to say.
I was surprised and flattered when Mark invited me to guest post. But how could I give up a chance for fifteen minutes of blog fame and a demonstration of how fast I can make blog stats plummet with a single post?
Then, when I saw who else he invited and the first set of posts, I got stage fright.
Foucault? He writes in words with more than two syllables. He’s got double vowels in his name.
*gulp*
But this morning I thought, hang it, it’s Sunday. Let’s get mercenary and seize the day. Make it MY day. After all I’m no saint. Straitjacket remember.
Oops what do I see? C.L agreeing with Kim about condescending putative foundations. Testing times alright: I’m already reaching for the dictionary. And discover pusillanimous is on the opposite page to putative in the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary 2nd edition. Page 924 to be precise.
Pusillanimous that’s me.
So gather up the courage, return and see everyone is getting into the act today. But I’m swallowing hard, and like a good little lemming I’m going to jump in anyway. Well just poke my toe in a bit and test the water in the jacuzzi.
Um. What have be got. What can I say. Orgasms!!!! Yes God invented those thank you very much.
Hey it’s SUNDAY (11.55pm CST to be precise). It should be time for a real G-spot. And some rollicking godblogging.
A disclosure: this is a bit of a bleg (told you I was mercenary).
I’ve been asked by an overseas blogger to write something about Aussie god blogs but I’ve been thinking about changing the brief a bit. (Further disclosure: I find a lot of ‘god blogs’ boring). And I need some help. So maybe you can give me some thoughts on what I can write about. Or just give me any thoughts whatsoever. On anything remotely connected to Aussie god blogging however you want to define god blogs or god. Maybe on topics like this…
- Aussie god blogs: what would Jesus do with them?
- Has Archbishop Rowan Williams been reading some of our Aussie political blogs
- Questions you have always wanted to ask a god blogger but were afraid to ask
- The most ridiculous answers for those questions which you were unpusillanimous to ask
- Gideons’ Bible abuse: are you guilty? (blame FXH)
- Religion journalist Stephen Crittenden once said that Aussies are happy to talk about religion but afraid to talk about Jesus Christ. Discuss.
- Why I am godless. By God. And here’s the URL to prove it.
- Your favourite godspotting moment on an Aussie blog. Any god. Any blog. (Already an icon: Tim Dunlop’s wonderfully written and moving discontinuous religious narrative. Wanted: URLs for David Tiley’s hidden gems about the Anglicanism of his youth, tucked away in comments threads. Glorious: Ken Parish’s prickly honesty in one of the more intriguing comments threads at Troppo Armadillo.)
- The overwhelming majority of Aussie bloggers are lapsed Catholics. Analyse this. Analyse them.
- I disclosed my religion as Jedi in the last Aussie census and I can get past step 26 (PDF)
Shameless pusillanimousness. I’m going to hide behind James Farrell who once wrote
This may be an outrageous intrusion on your spiritual privacy, but you have been known to be candid once or twice before, and I’m dying of curiosity, so I’ll chance it.
I’m chancing it too. Not just because this piece I promised to write is seriously overdue and I am so not a writer, much less a creative one at that. And I have a really, really busy week ahead. And I reckon some of you would have some fun things to say.
But because I too, am dying of curiosity.
I’m still regretting having correctly picked Cardinal Ratzinger that I didn’t put money on him!
You can’t talk about Oz godblogs without mentioning the most bizarre of all - our friend Dreaddie!
And then there’s Michael’s writing on Pentecostalism which I think played a very useful role in bringing some facts to a rather heated debate over the politics of FF and Hillsong.
I must confess my unfamiliarity with Oz godblogs. I did get sidetracked last night looking at some stuff on the very interesting Oxford theologian/philosopher Catherine Pickstock’s Radical Orthodoxy movement into a few weird hours looking at restorationist Catholic liturgy blogs. Like Fr Jim Tucker’s fiddleback chasuble sighting blog. A weird world it is on the religious interwebs!
Nice to have you here, saint!
He’s a smart one, that Dr Williams. A quick scan of the article suggests he’s got some pretty valuable ideas about media. I’ll look forward to reading it at a less late hour!
FWIW my favourite Troppo God-post.
In the spirit of James Farrell’s comment, Ken also talked a bit about his own spiritual position in the comments on the thread where he had a bit of a spray about Pope Benedict.
I was very fond of Mark’s posts about religion on Troppo (the link also gets you Ken’s and Sophie Masson’s but most are by Mark) but sadly he doesn’t seem to have said much about it here of late after lots on Ratzinger/Benedict around the time of the papal election.
Kim, I’m writing something for Eureka Street on Benedict and Europe so I’ll probably post a version here at some point in about a month or so.
And thanks!
Why Catholics bloody well should poach the Eastern Orthodox. Amazing story.
Yeah-no Saint, you’re not a creative writer at all.
Yes I miss Mark’s religion posts too (hint: finish that thesis)
That last sentence seems a bit snarky, C.L. I’m quite a fan of saint’s writing myself.
Yeah-no Saint, you’re not a creative writer at all.
Dry Aus-speak for he IS a creative writer.
You need some rest Mark obviously.
Yes C.L. that’s been a gruesome story. I was going to blog about the spate of weird exorcism stories which have resulted in deaths, even of children at Dogfight.
I dare say, C.L.. Bloody cricket kept me up!
And I was supposed to be in bed. Some good stuff posted at LP today. Hope this goes on. You might not get the keys back Mark.
I was going to blog it too Saint but I just don’t know what to say.
(PS: On writing - I still think of that essay where you mentioned your Mum’s hands. Remember?).
Mark: so you’re procricketating! Back to work!
PPS: LP is pretty good anyway but this group thing was a great idea. They’re all too clever for me though I’m afraid.
Back to sleep instead, I think, C.L.!
Tim Dunlop has blogged on it but he hasn’t added any substantive commentary either.
Me too, C.L. I think I was getting pretty stale… I find sustained work on the thesis dumbs me down for everything else.
Maybe we should see how it all goes and see if we want to make it a group blog. I don’t know! But, saint, just to reassure you about the safety deposit on the keys, I have Level 10 access and you lot have Level 2
Seriously, though, it’s fabulous stuff. Some really excellent posting!
Well C.L. I give you permission to channel through me while I’m on LP
Mark, I figured as much. And expected no more. Auggh I’ve been imprisoned by LP and hijacked the thread on my own post…and am so glad I don’t have a plane to catch tomorrow. Night folks.
Oh and thanks C.L. Don’t know why that one hit a spot with so many people. I think I explained how I came up with it. Anyway, my mother’s wedding ring still clicks on the plates when she washes dishes. And her mother’s which I wear on my right hand (gave grandpa’s to a cousin who had the same name) clicks on the dishes too.
“I‚Äôm a Christian who lives in Adelaide”.
Once I stopped cackling over that, I thought well “why the hell not?”. There are worse places to believe in worse sky god religions.
But your best comments around the blogsphere (and there have been quite a few) could just as well come from someone who could be an agnostic in Hobart. Basically decent common sense. Why do you need an imaginary superhero from outer space to frame and endorse your thoughts?
Which is leading me into your first dot point “Aussie god blogs: what would Jesus do with them?”
For starters, comment on them until he got banned or disemvowelled as a troublemaker. Not the first time JC has had that happen to him is it? Nothing an organised belief system hates more than its original truth showing up in person.
Then I’d reckon him, Siddhartha Gautama, Mohammed, Zhong Ni (yeah it’s who you think it really is) and Zoraster would start a group blog together - where no one would be disemvowelled and all points of view woud be heard, and then charmingly ignored. Whyda think they call ‘em prophets?
But Adelaide!!??
The city of (mostly empty) churches.
Lapsed Cattle-tick here as well. I’m planning on writing a post on why Catholocism still gets me: spent a few hours yesterday in a church for a friend’s choral performance and I had to stop myself genuflecting before I sat down and looked for the holy water before chiding myself that I am no longer a believer, or at least, I am not that sort of believer. The ritual still pulls; the sense of mystery is deep even if I think the answers offered within are simplistic.
Maybe I won’t write that post. The thing is, I am deeply drawn to the Catholic idea of struggle. The whole Calvinist faith alone doctrine always struck me as rather, well, cruel, while the Catholic idea of struggling to be a good person, doing unto others etc, really still resonates. Not that many Catholics seem to espouse this anymore.
Lex orandi!
The interesting thing about Catholicism and Orthodoxy is that much of the dogma (if you like) is really expressed through the ritual in a more meaningful sense than through texts. Exact opposite to Protestantism as a religion of the Word. So if you wanted to stay lapsed, Kate, probably best not to genuflect or take holy water! You’re very right that it’s got an enormous pull. But that’s what sacraments and sacramentals are about in Catholic understanding - visible and tangible signs of the sacred.
Oops, my last sentence is a tad Lutheran. Sacramentals are signs of the sacred, sacraments are the sacred. In persona Christi referring to the sacramental action of the Priest loses something in translation - the Priest doesn’t just stand for Christ in forgiving sins or consecrating the Eucharist, there’s a real sense in which he is united with Christ and he loses himself in Christ in performing sacramental actions. The understanding of time in both Catholic and Orthodox theology and practice is important here - in the early undivided Church the understanding was that the Eucharist stood outside secular time and was the eschatological time. Margaret Barker’s work on the Temple roots of Christian liturgy, and Cardinal Ratzinger’s liturgical theology are both good on this - the Orthodox understanding of divinisation of believers probably best represents the understanding of the early Church.
Mark, this sounds a lot like the whole transubstantiation issue… is the communion partaking of a symbol, or partaking of the actual flesh and blood of Jesus?
Anyway, that is why I don’t genuflect, cross myself or dip my fingers in the holy water. The action affirms belief, and I think not only is it untrue to myself but it is also an insult to true believers should I partake in the rituals.
Of course, this is particularly relevant to the eucharist, in which I haven’t taken part since I was in my teens.
Yes, it is Kate. My point also was that the action inculcates belief as well as affirms it, which I think was implicitly there in your comment.
Hunting around for Chris Shiel’s rampant paganism probably wouldn’t actually be all that helpful, on reflection.
I’ve searched the internet to find God’s work and it’s at http://www.suicidegirls.com