Die another day

Well, another apocalyptic prediction goes unfulfilled, though Harold Camping has cleverly countered his critics by proposing a new date: 21 October. That oughta hold ’em. It’s oh so easy to mock such fatuous certainty (especially after the non-event), but I wonder if instances like this one, not uncommon in themselves, are simply extreme manifestations of something more broadly present, and not altogether unfounded. After all, the end of the world is neither provable nor disprovable by observation: the only assurance we have that the world won’t end tomorrow is that it never has before. The absurdity of doomdsay predictions lies, I think, in the confidence of a fixed date and time, not the concept of the world’s end. The idea in Genesis that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth is not in itself absurd, but Bishop Ussher’s idea, that God created the heavens and the earth on 23 October, 4004 BC, is. Doomsday is not confined to the religious (remember Y2K?). Sometimes it borders on hysteria, but it has more to do with moral sensitivity than with emotional or rational responses to data. Almost any worldview with a moral imperative has an implied apocalypse; the end of the world as a natural consequence, if not a divine judgment, of human error. Climate change is the obvious modern example, but every age has its judgment day as the climactic settlement of its peculiar debts. At one level, there is something healthy about a sense that our lives are contigent, temporary, lived at the mercy of events beyond our control – and that our debts will have to be paid.

Let them sleep, Lord

According to a Californian preacher slash media mogul, the world will end tomorrow, May 21, at 6pm. Predicting the end of the world is a venerable occupation, not entirely without foundation, but mostly without vindication. Responses range from riotous shopping for candles and canned goods, to extraordinary poems like this one from John Donne. It's his Holy Sonnet number 7, published in 1633. 

At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

Afternoon post

Too busy to post anything substantial this week, so before another Friday arrives clamouring for its poem, here are some things I've been reading, thinking about, writing in the last sennight:

1. I read that Stephen Hawking thinks heaven is a fairy tale for those afraid of death. I admire his courage, but I find his flat dismissal of heaven bemusing, given the wildly speculative nature of his own exploration of the heavens.  Is a belief in other universes we cannot know or see so very different from a belief in heaven? (See Jon Stewart's excellent interview with Marilynne Robinson for more on this). I also read (a few weeks ago) a Sydney blogger who claimed that we now know enough about the physical universe to be pretty sure that it contains no such place as heaven. To which I think most thinking Christians, at most times in history, might reply 'Well, duh.'


2. I read that a strange conjunction of planets occured this week, (though I think I slept through it) and that astronomers have discovered as many as ten 'wandering' planets in the Milky Way: ie, planets that are adrift from any bright, particular star.  I've also been enjoying the immense moon. Though I'm in love with it, I have always resisted learning more about the moon. Part of my enjoyment comes from that startling wonder of seeing it where I don't expect to; finding it fuller or more golden or more luminously white or more cloud-haloed than I thought possible. If I knew its phases and motions, more than half the magic would be gone.  (I am also deeply annoyed about the whole 'moon landing' thing.  How dared we?)


3. I read an interesting post at The Millions about what Philip Roth calls 'the indigenous American berserk.' This is what impels the regular interruption of American pastoral by episodes of insane violence, and it's been happening since America began.


4. A wedding I went to on Saturday made me think that what I like about my country is how an Indonesian girl can marry a Malaysian boy in a big old gothic church in a big white dress and sing Welsh hymns, and how they can have a Chinese tea ceremony at their reception and also sing a duet from Phantom of the Opera.


5. I read that Donald Trump has withdrawn his presidential bid.  Not sure whether to be glad or sorry. And I think he probably represents indigenous American something, but I'm not sure what that is. (Whatever it is, it's not that far from berserk.)


6. I wrote and sent a proposal for an ABC Radio National 'Encounter' episode - another step towards radio stardom!


7. Last night, I thought about Jesus' words: 'what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet forfeits his soul?'

And that was my week.

Only God can make a tree

Ben has been taking beautiful photos of Canberra's autumnal trees (though he told me this morning that for him the beauty of a tree is in direct proportion to its climbability).  The leaves of red and gold really are exquisite, and they'll probably only last another few weeks before winter blows them all away. I like this poem by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886 - 1918). I like the femininity of the images, and the little riddle of a poem founded in its own impossibility.

I  think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Which is rich?

In his Quarterly Essay on “The Happy Life,” David Malouf argues that a concept of limitless happiness has somehow infiltrated our collective soul, to our detriment.

Among the many pronouncements that fell from the Treasurer's lips on Tuesday night, one that seems to have stuck in the collective craw is his notion of $150,000 as the line between rich and poor. People on or over that line protest that they are not rich, that they too find it hard to make ends meet.  Perhaps rich is relative; they are only rich compared to the bottom 85% of Australian households. 

Today's Australian has an interview with the Fowlers, a couple on the 'wealth' line. Mr Fowler says: "We've accumulated a nice house full of stuff over the last ten years, but there's no way in the world we're wealthy."  His comment is revealing. An outsider might reasonably assume that in our country, a nice house full of stuff is regarded as both a sign of wealth and a measure (if not a means) of happiness.  Yet someone who possesses such a house, indeed has spent a decade of his life pursuing it, still feels want. Astounding, given that his relative wealth in Australia is nothing to his relative wealth 'in the world.'

'Feels' is the operative word here: are the rich really rich if they don't 'feel' rich? If they feel pressure, want, status anxiety? If they feel supply is unequal to their demand? Given that they're already in the top 15th percentile, a nicer house more full of stuff is clearly not going to make the Fowlers feel better. Something else is going on here. Wealth, like happiness, is qualitative, not quantitative.  Numbers don't guarantee it, and even lines around it, as Malouf suggests, don't guarantee that the quantity measured off will be enough. Maybe - and we have good evidence - there's no such thing as enough.