Thank you

My people are hurting. Floods have ravaged my lands but amazingly few have died. Over 15% of the continent has been hit, laying waste to the land, destroying infrastructure and causing horror in our lands. But we are thankful.

People have died but without the rescue and relief volunteers hundreds would have been lost. We have the military here protecting and cleaning up and its working. Our mines are underwater but these are the sort of mines which already have pumps. Our houses have been crushed but we have relief structures put in place after the horror of the fires just over 2 years ago. people are hurting but they could be far far worse. The damage will be horriffic to the mental, physical and economic health of the entire nation but it is not the end.

We have been offered assistance and help from our old friends and found ourselves with the blessings and help of new friends around the world. We cannot thank everyone enough for all the offers and attempts to assist. It will be a long time before we finally fix this nation but we have found ourselves blessed by the friends we have around the world.

looking at a new society: Responsibility

Well its that weird time again when I start thinking about my society and its problems. Again and Again I see the inherent corruption in our people, the failure to believe, the dangerous emptyness that comes from burnout, the inability to want something better, the dangerous problems of post economic thought, and the horrible reality of political destruction. of cultural and social values.

I hate seeing my society this way, seeing the crap that is in it and the corruption that is enveloping it.To see what I am seeing you need to understand were I am coming from. I can accept people having vices but I see all vices from greed, to sexual imorrality to lack of religious conviction as being a parasitic social penalty. I can accept that people contain different moral stances and generally belive that people deserve to have their own views and to be able to live by and take responsibility for them, but not if those moral stances are to the detriment of the society as a whole.

Responsibility is the key word there, as I am glad for all people to have the right to believe and follow their own moral dictates but only if they take the responsibility for their actions that go along with it. You screw someone and leave them with a kid, you pay for it and don't expect anyone else to. You fail to attempt to render critical assistance to those in life threatening situations, expect that you will get hit with a manslaughter charge, fail to solve your problems with words accept that you will have to pay for your problems some other way. Take drugs, accept the morning where you are lying face down in the gutter unable to move, with out friends and with broken brain-cells.

The problem here is the disconnect between doing something, accepting a sin and taking responsibility for it. I see it every week with my friends, associates and family. people forget to understand that people need to take responsibility, that it is their actions that got them where ever they are, that every time you fail to take responsibility you screw someone else who in turn will corrupt the society you are in and poison the environment for its trust.


However my viewpoint also contains acceptance of the various moral stances and with it the different sexual, religious, cultural and political view points that are beneficial to the society as a whole. Things like family, collectivism, positive cultural traditions, religious freedom, the right to take responsibiltiy for your actions, the removal of actual discrimination between the sexes, preferences and genetic variances and positive economic values are all things I see as worthy ideals that should be added to.
 Obviously I only see my own moral and cultural outlook as the most valid, and my belief in Christ, true monarchy, and the ten commandments as the most appropriate outlook for a functioning and healthy society. But I am backed up by the studies in most cases.

Corruption is too obvious and is spreading because the strong moral outlook and the positive values are being swallowed by the negative. There are too many people without strong empathy, without an understanding of responsibilty, without conscience, without an understanding of social responsibility or cultural requirement, willing to spread hate, wanting to coddle others and with it remove others rights of responsibility.

Taking responsibility from others is fine if you are working with children and teaching and nurturing them to adulthood but if you are just removing others worth and giving people rights without responsibility you stunt a people and build into a subculture dependancy, hatred, and selfishness. You get what we see in the mental health sector, the broken suburbs, the aboriginal communities and to a much lesser extent the dole ques.

So what do we do about responsibility? what do we do about a moral outlook that is failing? Maybe next time..

 

Christmas with family

I have a fantastic family. Not only my flesh and blood but mostly the one I have in my friends family. I am an oly child but this was seen as been a benefit to me not a detriment but only because of my best friend and my relationship to him. My best friend from reception or in American speak kindergarten, is still my closest and best friend and his sister and brother are my virtual brother and sister, his mum and dad the other parents I never had.

Without the gift of these fantastic additions to my growth and experience I would have been a major disappointment and become something I do not wish to think about but unfortunately see every day when I role play and enjoy my hobby of choice. I would have been faithless, angry, impatient, probably violent, and definitely dead before now. The person I would have been is there hiding in my soul, waiting to recover and get up from its burial so long ago. I know it as I see, read and enjoy the company of people who didn't get blessed with my extended family and the incredible love and security they provided.

Instead my friend showed me his childish faith, tried to save a friend we both knew from his downward spiral and anti-religious rhetoric, gave me patience when I wanted to destroy myself, gave me understanding when I needed to talk to another, gave me a series of events that allowed me to vicariously experience the up's and down's of love and romance, showed me the idea of joy, and for a very long time allowed me to see past his barriers. His family tried to show me how to be a better person, taught me how a faithful family can operate, gave me love as if I was another member of the family, and has always been connected to the better part of my nature.

I have never fully shared my inner workings with him as I know much of the man I know now is anouther being than the person I once knew past the barriers, but when I have a chance to see him and his wife I am always transported into another time and the better part of my nature comes to the fore.

Last night was one of those nights. I got to enjoy the night with my family, their husbands and wives and their children. It was a night to remember where I wasn't the odd one out. I was in the presence of people I love and truly care about. Enjoying the company. Enjoying the fellowship. Without jealousy. WIthout the normal pain of my existence. Just a chance to be and see the best in others. .

Then as left tired and spent I saw with terrifying clarity who I would I have been without them. Without their structure and their faith. with the generalised Australian belief system instead of a strong moral, sexual and religious code. I would have been much poorer without them and I started to think about all the other people I love and care about; all my role-playing friends, all the guys and girls from uni, all my school friends, all the guys from my work groups, and I started to see how few friends really are there with the incredible riches of love and faith that I have been blessed with.

I have watched friends lose themselves in love and life, breaking hearts, losing love, causing upset and hatred, actively inviting discord, causing pain, acting in Machiavellian manners, hating others, and taking passion so seriously that they forget to enjoy it. I have seen people forget to live a life and instead desperately fight for the moment forgetting the whole, living for the momentary pleasure, forgetting the pain that comes for themselves or others in that action. Others choose the path of excess and need with drunkenness, orgies, sex, violence, discord, hatred, drugs, passion, pain, fetishes, purchases, debt, and I have been scraping up the brain cells and credit cards of these people for years now. Sin of all sorts has been around me briefly touching me and the demons in them are as obvious as the angels in the songs of praise to god. I could have been one of the many Australians that are part of them, lost in the easy way out but instead I was given a gift of family and friends that made me a very different person.

The strength of love they have given me lead me to my god, the grace they held me by allowed me to erect the barriers to my empathic abilities and allowed me to be silent in myself, their boisterousness broke my sloth and laziness prompting me to action, their sense of justice allowed me to stand up for others and get cut down for it losing my job but not my faith. Their hope for me kept me moving when I was dead and wanted death so much it was in every fibre of my being. Their knowledge of sexual morality was instilled into me allowing me to hold off advances and the biting back the choices of drugs and sex when they were presented keeping me from being so easily overcome by them. Their understanding of alcohol and joy has allowed me to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol and fellowship and not take the path of excess and desire. Their joy in the company of each other has made it so that I want the same thing. and their understanding of death, their understanding of pain and anger has allowed me to grieve and slowly heal from the loss of my first love and her murder.

I cannot but help thank them for this gift and a wish to impart at least the basic level of understanding to others.

in getting to know oneself

I am starting to finally see some the problems in my psychological make up and my empathic makeup. I felt it more today than I have in a long time and it hurt me more deeply and effectively to know myself than I have ever done before. It was when I was offered a gift I would have been glad to have had the day before and not only did I not want it but I found myself upsetting people I love just by my body language and inflection. They didn't even know I was doing it but I could feel it in my empathic make up and couldn't stop the upset and hurt I was feeling and projecting, for no real reason, translating into the world around me. If I hadn't kept away from the crowds at this time I know I would have started fights and vamped joy from others.  

I would have at another time gladly taken the assistance, and the gift offered but today the need to project that pain, anger and sadness was unable to be contained and ruined what should have been a good thing. 

The wound that was seen in that moment when I projected without recourse or ability to contain it was something I have been shying away from for a very long time. It has caused some things in me that I would rather not see but equally I cannot escape. It came to me with sudden sadness that I am a person with a mood disorder as well as empathic gifts, normally held in check in a numbness of sloth and depression, punctuated with a deep sadness that brings me to the edge of weeping for myself, the world I live in and the people I will never know. 

But the flip side is there too, even if it is shorter and less well developed. I know that for tiny moments I am blessed with extreme insight, if not happiness, and when I let my guard down can even feel joy. This is not my natural state any more although I remember when I was open and able to experience that joy I close myself off from so tightly now. I remember before I went to school, and was bullied and called fat constantly leading me to eat more in an emotional redundancy loop.

I hated running around, I enjoyed and still enjoy food, and blocked the world out by trying to not conform and growing larger, fatter and more obese because the children around me poured scorn into me. I was one of those people who reacted to the scorn by taking it as my mantle and taking it as my banner. I bottled the rage, the hurt and the violence I knew would be released if I really reacted to the constant pressure against me. I made it into a core of firey rage that allowed me to build barriers and slowly rebuild my internal outlook but it also has crippled me.

I am an empath, not strong but generally able to pick up the surface feelings, the lies, the betrayals, and the obvious thoughts of people around me. If I know someone well it becomes background, and I actively avoid what would really hurt them to know only intervening if people are hurting, out of sorts or carrying another life, but I am not that good with people I am getting to know. I find myself looking at their thoughts, getting to know the language that is part of their make up, and sometimes looking deeper than they expect. It is that first moment of proper connection I crave, its an addiction I cannot describe. better than any drug because it is the person exposed fully and for a brief moment they have no secrets, no hang ups, and my barriers disappear. but it doesn't last, everyone puts up their barriers..

the person that does it the most is me. 

I cannot allow myself to exist as a full person. I cannot feel joy without the barriers being down as joy is the expression of hope and happiness with others, it is not just a mild moment of endorphin rush, it is not just a change of the sadness to lack of sadness, it is far bigger than that and as an empath I know it more fully than most. 

instead i have crippled myself with rage, sadness, numbness and pain. hiding in a shell of flesh to reduce the noise of others emotions (it does work), ignoring my empathic senses for just what I can see, forgetting that I can touch, taste, smell and hear as well with my empathic senses giving me clues and building the picture clarifies that which is who I am. I find myself unable to feel true happiness, as the absence of sadness is not happiness, the absence of pain is not joy. I find that I have smothered the ball of fire that once I could use to motivate my righteousness, my rage is crystalised and numb but the fire is still there in a heart of ice, burning cold making me icy and hurting others without my control. 

It also reminded me that I am an egotistical man with the belief that all people deserve to have a real chance to contribute to the society that we all inhabit. I believe that people need to live lives not just exist in them. To "wake up" but at the same time I see that I have been asleep to my own internal dialogue. I have hidden from myself my needs to rebuild my internal map, open myself to opportunities of joy, to return to my faith.

The only thing that has kept me from killing myself when in this emptiness comes to me is my faith in god. I have made my peace with death, and uriel and I have an understanding that when he comes for me finally I am not upset with it. however because I believe that suicide is a sin and it is not my life to lose, or use, but Jesus's it makes it fairly obvious that I won't give up my life unless that is what is needed for the greater good. Not the human "greater good" but god's.

The odd thing is I know that if I had not made the commitment to god this way I would have destroyed others by now. I am a microbiologist with the knowledge of thousands of fungi and virus. the skills to use them in the wrong way, and with the ball of rage burning in me, the incentive to use them that way. I would have killed myself but so many others would have gone with me and areas around the world would have been quarantined for generations. I could not have constrained the rage that was in me. I could not have forgiven others for the wrongs that they dealt me. Innocence would not have been a good enough excuse. Instead I would have turned the heart of fire onto others instead of internalising the pain and crippling myself in the process. I choose the right way but I need to heal and this requires more than I can deal with by myself. 

Instead I was saved by faith and the horrific knowledge I held  was safely avoided. 

It is a moment of wonder to me that I didn't choose the path of destruction. that I chose to love others, to want the best for all people. To not become a bully. To not become a liar, a thief and a murderer. To not allow my machevalian tendancies and knowledge to be the primary part of me. Instead i have been granted faith, hope and love. and the greatest of these really is love. I may not feel joy often, but unconditional love is always there, even if I forget to notice it. It is there, greater than me, greater than the love I get from my family and friends, greater than the love I touch on when I see the entrails of the world. Not Éros, Agápe, Philia, or even  Storge. Instead there is a love that transcends the love I as an empath can comprehend and I cannot avoid it. Everyone is embraced in it but only those that choose to open their hearts, their minds and their souls to it can ever understand what an incredible force it is guiding and moving through us all. 

Once you choose to open your heart it is there, waiting, changing the world one person at a time. it is never reduced, eternal not infinite, and I can finally see how much it has been part of me for so long supporting my healing, and finally today exposing me to the realities of my internal processes. But I know that I need something more than just my faith to do the healing. God performs wonders but the tools are here for a reason. 

I'm going to have to change and heal again or this is going to be a problem in me forever. I am being shown this for a reason now I have to do something about it. 

musing on music

Music is one of the great ideas of the universe. it is every where, hidden in rings of electrons, in the background radiation of the stars, in the moment between infinities. And amazingly we have been born to hear and to produce it. The possibilities of music, the mathematics of tone, tempo, and rhythm, the magic of empathic response, and the facets of memory that music invokes have been rebuilding me over the last few years.

The frisson that comes as I sing for my god, as I listen to the words of truly gifted singers and music makers and as I hear the music in the background of the world change me and make me something else each time I hear it. I hear it all trying to sing his name even as we humans change it with the noise of industry to sing our own praises it still is there the universe making music to a greater force than we will ever understand.

I really do understand now why Jesus talked about the rocks praising and calling his name because it is there in the very structure of the universe praising him with every movement. It is there if you want to listen to it but it needs a still silent place to hear the song that is everywhere. To feel the frission move through you, cut you to the quick and change you in its song.

Death at sea

The deaths that occurred today on the shores of Christmas Island are horrible. But totally expected. It is what happens when people take a leaky boat into the heart of a storm. What amazes and heartens me is that over 40 people were saved but they were all sold a lot of bullshit that they were going to make it and what happened was totally avoidable if they had chosen a more wise course.

We are not happy to take people in via the seas. We are willing to take people from the refugee camps. The problem is that every person who comes in on the sea, spends money to break the order, and risks their lives and the lives of the Australians who have to rescue them, detain them and process them cost someone in a camp their chance. 

My friends who have come here through the proper channels via the camps, through the refuge process are exemplars of the right way. By the son sponsoring the rest of the family into Australia allowing them to contribute to our society, by teaching our language to all of his family and the other people he has sponsored into this nation since, by the family providing jobs, shelter, and chance we are blessed by their presence. But the tragedy today will forget the right way again and take places that people who have been in the camps for years should have had. 

However the real villains here are the people who sold the poor fools the dream of Australia and its tolerant laws. These are people that need to be exposed more than any other and deserve to be published in the Jakarta times for sending people to their deaths. In a world where Wiki-Leaks is leaking the misconduct of politicians, senior public servants and diplomats the leaks that really need to be seen are the ones that tell of the real villain's here. The murderers, the organized criminal fraternity, and in the case of today's deaths the people smugglers who sell dreams of illegal action, and send people to their deaths in rough seas. 

It should be remembered that in the old days of Australia sinkings were a common occurrence with thousands dying from the nature of the storms that surround our nation. It is not a place for the unprepared, and storms, sinkings and dying are not unsurprising even if we as a nation mourn for the people who would have been rejected if they got here.

Brokenness

I love miniatures and the joy of painting them. I love the static models of figures that never were, of people I will never meet, of machines that cannot be or I will never actually experience. I love using them in games, designing them, constructing them, and making them something more than little pieces of plastic and metal. giving them personalities, giving them something in the moment of joy.
But it is in models I have the hardest time when I am unemployed, when I am without hope, when I am numb. for in their static nature, I see myself reflected and an infinite loop is born. I find myself hating, hungering for something, willing these tiny figures to "be". I find it so hard to make them alive when I feel so dead inside, so empty of hope and wonder. How can I paint and design something that mocks you with its life in a static moment when you cannot even live a real moment.
I don't love anyone special right now, I feel little lust, little eros, little hurt, desire, or pain. I cannot but feel without the core of who I am, aimless, adrift and under the numbness an anger burns that I need to deal with soon or it will turn to bile and degradation. It is only my faith, my moments of joy, my mother and father, and the few friends I have not alienated that have kept me from breaking completely. But in the models, in the figures I have completed and made I see something else, the brokenness I have isn't always mine, sometimes the brokenness is a source of beauty, a moment where life could nearly be. It hurts to see them but it brings me back from the numbness, and sometimes changes the anger that burns from so many years of taunts, insults, rejection, fear, and outright hatred; into something milder and then I find myself with a brush in hand changing the world one tiny figure at a time.