ETS and the Peasants' Revolt

The Australian Liberal Party is in "meltdown" this week over the bungled Emissions Trading Scheme. It goes like this.

Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull does a deal with Labor to pass the ETS, so that Kevin Rudd can go off to Copenhagen to look like a good global citizen. Having drunk the David Cameron Kool-Aid, he's convinced being Green will play well in urban areas, and with moderate voters.

His own party, which has been long divided between "conservatives" and "moderates" does the maths, and figures out the following things.

The ETS is equivalent to a massive tax
The environmental benefits are uncertain (to put it kindly)
Copenhagen's outcome is equally uncertain (ditto)

And most importantly of all, the average Liberal Party voter, especially in the bush, hates the idea, and wants to hold off.

And they've been saying so.

Ain't that democracy a bitch?

Spooked by their full email inboxes and burning phone lines, the Liberal MP's and significant numbers in the Shadow Cabinet tell Mr. Turnbull to pull his head in.

Mr. Turnbull labels his opponents climate change deniers, wreckers, disloyal crazies, and generally acts like the Sun King on a bad day.

The result?

Revolt.

To the attack come the disloyal peasantry, demanding that the Opposition do its duty and oppose. That horrible rabble of farmers and businessmen and housewives, led by our favourite Mad Monk, and a reluctant standard-bearer press-ganged by the Mob.

This is glorious, it's quite like old times.

We're the first to fix bayonets against rebels in ordinary circumstances, but in these, we've only got two words.

Ca Ira!

Come

Today is the first Sunday in Advent--and Dr. Swift had the honour of reading the Gospel.

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Advent is the season of waiting--we wait for the Holy Child to come (to come is what "Advent" means.) But it is also the season of groaning, the season of birth, the season of trembling.

In Advent, we hear in the readings the massive facts of human evil, of natural disaster, of the four Last Things: Heaven, Hell, Death and the Judgement.

Not fashionable, perhaps. But real.

In a world of tsuamis and terrorism, of child murder and sudden death, in a world of hunger and pain, we so desperately need Advent.

The season to feel our calamities, to repent, to cry out to God for a deliverer, for Someone to help us, to be with us, to aid, comfort, assoil and strengthen us.

And the message of Advent is that He comes.

He comes, and we have hope.

From Death will come Life.

In Judgement, we will have Mercy.

From the old, the decaying, the trembling, will come a Child.

Behold the Man whose Name is the Branch.

Something about Mary

Dr. Swift is an Anglican of a High Church Evangelical disposition.

We are quite comfortable in the bell-tower to chant our Psalm, to cross ourselves, to kneel at the drop of a hat, and we are entirely in favour of crucifixes, candles, and other such trifles allowed by Elizabeth, of blessed memory.

But at the same time, we find lace on men disturbing. We are quite happy with Latin Mass, but it must be the Latin Book of Common Prayer. And while we deeply admire the Pope, we are firmly convinced that he should mind his own business.

We are in short, good, catholic minded Protestants, c. 1570.

That means, among other things, we are suspicious of Mary.

Mary, idolatrous shibboleth of Polish boot-blacks and Filapina house-maids.

Mary, inspiration of Popish Queens, and odd, Lady Marchmain-like aristocrats.

Mary, prop of bad art, milk-sop milk-maid of sickly piety.

Mary, the plain weird.

But we are nearly in Advent. And we are forced to turn our minds, and our thoughts, to the Virgin Mother of the Lord.

Mary, the simple peasant girl, drawing water for Joachim and Anna.

Mary, betrothed to Joseph, the carpenter, a good man, a solid man--an older man.

Mary of the Magnificat, that soaring hymn of hope that the weak, the poor, the lowly and the broken will no longer be shut out.

Mary, the burning eyed, at the Cross, where the sword pierced her own soul, and her Son's side.

Mary, the mother of the Church, sitting in the kitchen with John Evangelist, and the other Apostles, dispensing wine, stew and advice.

Mary at Pentecost, receiving the devouring fire.

And we find ourselves awestruck. Mary isn't simply a model of virginal sweetness (pace bad art). She is a woman of fire, of faith, of blood, of suffering.

The woman who said "Yes."

Hail, Mary, full of grace.

Yes. Just one little word.

A word for the whole world.

Here's the gorgeous, if sadly rare, Caccini Ave Maria.

Hymn Search II

Our new favourite hymn search continues, and behind Door Number Two we have Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.




Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

We really, really, like this one.

Reverence: 10 (utterly sublime)

Theology: 6 (A bit disembodied--Christ came down in flesh, and unveiled Himself to our eyes--steady on with the Invisible bit...)

Musicality: 8 (a good, thumping rhythm)

Scrubbing Capacity: 8 (Un HAS ting Un WAS ting--floor scrubbed in ten minutes. Thurible, maybe not, it doesn't rock enough)

To the Death

The above photograph shows Mr. Hulk Hogan bleeding after a "press conference" in which he had an impromptu brawl with his opponent, for the edification of the watching media.

Watching wrestling, and the cruelties regularly perpetrated on "reality" TV shows like Fear Factor, we give it fifty years before we're back in Ancient Rome and people are fighting to the death.

Lose Christian morality, and the nice things about Western culture, like not exposing your children on bare mountain-tops, and not beating each other to death for entertainment start looking...kinda shaky. Note the blood--or the scripted blood, perhaps, which is in a way worse.

What is good? The Will to Power, Power itself, in Man.
What is bad? All that proceeds from Weakness....

Friedrich Nietszche

Stop bugging me...

Hone Harawira is in trouble.

It appears the Maori Party are not happy with his display of anti-white prejudice, which demonstrates that some of them have functional political antennae.

We are not suprised that, having spent years shedding the image of extreme whinery, and mainstreaming Maori causes like the repeal of the sea-bed and foreshore Act, Dr. Sharples and Mrs. Turia are clearly cross about being forced into a corner by calculated running off at the mouth. Few want the radicalism, shouting and race-baiting days of yore back--except possibly, of course, those who continue to recall the New Zealand Wars with affection (and there are too many, on both sides, including our friend Hone).

The Maori Party are agressively implying that Mr. Harawira will sit as an Independent--or rather, that he's already acting like one.

Suspecting (and in our view rightly) he'd be toast without the label of the Maori Party, Mr. Harawira isn't budging.

It reminds us of one of those rather tragic playground situations--elder brother and sister playing cricket, and trying to persuade little brother he'd really be much happier playing somewhere else, while he wails and throws a tantrum, and insists on being as much trouble as possible.

Of course, tantrums look a little better when they are wrapped in the defence of the marginalised, my people, our tikanga, etc, but tantrums Mr. Harawira keeps throwing.

Little brother never wins in the end--Hone Harawira can take his medicine, pay the money back, submit to Party discipline, apologise (again) for race-baiting, and be re-admitted to his fielding position on the boundary. Or he can sod off for a permanent place in the pavilion.

If I were Dr. Sharples, I wonder which one I'd be hoping for?

O Crux Ave, Spes Unica

ABROAD the regal banners fly,
now shines the Cross's mystery:
upon it Life did death endure,
and yet by death did life procure.

Who, wounded with a direful spear,
did purposely to wash us clear
from stain of sin, pour out a flood
of precious water mixed with blood.

That which the prophet-king of old
hath in mysterious verse foretold,
is now accomplished, whilst we see
God ruling the nations from a Tree.

O lovely and refulgent Tree,
adorned with purpled majesty;
culled from a worthy stock, to bear
those limbs which sanctified were.

Blest Tree, whose happy branches bore
the wealth that did the world restore;
the beam that did that Body weigh
which raised up Hell's expected prey.

Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime!
Now, in the mournful Passion time;
grant to the just increase of grace,
and every sinner's crimes efface.

Blest Trinity, salvation's spring
may every soul Thy praises sing;
to those Thou grantest conquest
by the Holy Cross, rewards supply.

Amen.