Making things

I've got a friend who makes furniture out of old pieces of wood and metal etc he finds in in the hard rubbish left on the street. Last night he was showing me some of what he has made and how he makes it.

It occurred to me that what he was doing would make a great community TV program. It is also a metaphor for how we should treat others.

Since I didn't have a camera on me at the time I wrote a poem instead...............

Carpenter

Every now and then

The fuzz clears from the brain

And you see

Reality

Not the illusion of what is

But the reality of

What is meant to be

It’s in the old wood

And rusty iron

Not just recycled

But reshaped

Not loosing any of the defects

That make it what it is

Even perhaps gaining some

A hole accidently drilled in the wrong place

Filled with a spare rusty bolt

Useless as application

But essential for the nature

Of its existence

The hands of the maker

Glide softly over the surface

Sanding lightly

Clearcoat only

Anything else would destroy the patina

Devaluing beyond words

In vain attempt

To make better

Our natural tendency

Is to panel beat the surface

With a blunt hammer

And a coat of shiny paint

As long as it looks

The same as everything else

It’s OK

If you hide what’s underneath

Maybe like the quantum

It’ll cease to exist

At least for a time

But the inconvenient nature

Of the quantum universe

Ensures that it just

Pops up again

At random

Someware else

It’s much better

To help the ladder

Become the table

That it’s meant to be

Than to force it

To be the shiny

Set of steps

That you want

 

An addition to the cosmic dustbin

I haven't posted to this blog in almost two years - partly because I haven't written much poetry in a while - but mostly because I couldn't be bothered.
 

There is probably no one reading this - and it didn't seem worth the effort - but then it occurred to me last night that even though no one may read this now, it will hang around in cyberspace probably for millennium after I have returned to star stuff, and in the far future some alien cyber archaeologist having a particularly boring day wading through the financial documents of countless 20^th and 21^st century corporations or the equally inane musings of our media moguls and their lackeys of both the print and video and audio variety will come across this and may actually read it before tossing it into the cosmic recycling basket of history

Out of the Dark

Out of the dark

And into the black

As mercy fades into morning

And imaginations spirit

Floats along with the dawn

Through the byways of the world

Among the dust and the darkness

The scared, the scarred and the sacred

The walking wounded

Lost wandering the world

Stuck on one marble

Blue amongst the black

And pinpricks of light

Unrealised destiny

Dust to dust

And back to dust

But

Star stuff are we

Every molecule

Born in the heart of a star

Sometimes an exploding one

And scattered to the four ends

Of the universe

Along with suffering

And mercy

And the pain of forgiveness

That we must accept

From ourselves

Our scattered selves

Our shattered selves

Individual and collective

For where mercy and compassion

Doth begin in the heart of one

It needith to not stay there

Least it die

But hard it is

And terrifying in the least

To break the hereditary chains

Of ego

And isolation

To accept the other

As the self

And set one free

From expectation, achievement and doubt

The little boy lost

That will never grow up

And maybe should not be encouraged to try

Suffer unto

The little children

The little child

Unless you be as such

As one of these

Lost among the stars

And the dust

And the darkness

From which it was born

Wandering the byways of the universe

Away from the imagined safety

Of the cradle

The marble

Blue amongst the black

Star stuff

Dust and destiny

Life’s promise

And terrible reality

One and the same thing

To be embraced with

Arms outstretched

As we float in the blackness

Punctuated with

Pinpricks of light

Our universe

The universe

Any universe

Every universe

Punctuated with pinpricks

Of thought

And feeling

Wrapped in heredity

And dust

From the heart

Of an exploding star

But still greater

Than

The universe

Any universe

Every universe

Our universe

Locked in thought

And feeling

Arms outstretched

Amidst the blackness

And the pin pricks

Of light

Around us

Our stars

And

Our

Selves

The Madness of Life

The last couple of days I have been filming the Communities in Control Conference - which I do each year - and the last speaker was Ita Buttrose, who is, amongst other things president of Alzheimer’s Australia. She spoke about the need to educate people about how to support people with dementia, in and as part of society.

My mother and grand mother both lived the last years of their lives in this condition. My mother passed away a few years ago in a psycho geriatric nursing home in New Zealand with me only able to visit her for a week at a time a year or two apart, and totally unable to emotionally deal with her condition.

Recently a good friend of mine passed away in similar circumstances. I had lost touch with him over the last three years mainly because I was unable to deal with his condition.

I wrote this poem on reflection of this and other things at the conference.......................

A Prayer

Oh Lord I beseech thee

That with thy beneficent mercy

You look upon your people, all people

The lost, the lonely

The mad, the angry

The hurt, and the sad

The winners, the losers

The strange and the happy

The correct and the less so

The wrong, the right, and the left

And the victims in the middle

And teach us to forgive our own trespasses

And those of our neighbor

And our crazy old mothers and grandmothers

And ourselves

Lost in the fear

Of going slowly nuts in a nursing home

Incontinent and unable to remember

Which planet we are on

And what universe we are in

Certain that everything we try

To make the world better

Is in vain

And dust and dirt

Is all that will remain

After we are gone

Like the dinosaurs

Frozen in cold hard stone

A reminder to those that come after

That the more powerful your are

The more extinct you will become 

 

Cogito Ergo Sum

I've been thinking a bit about thinking - and I've come up with my latest poem.......

Des Cartes

I think therefore I am

I thought therefore I was

I’m not thinking at the moment

So does that mean I’ve ceased to exist?

We think too much

Processing electrical signals in the brain

Trying to make the universe

Make some sort of logical sense

Quantum mechanics, string theory, uncertainty principle

Behavioral psychology, neuroscience, brain plasticity

Bible study, comparative religion, theology

It’s all in a cloud somewhere

As we pick bits out

They become real

Only to vanish again

Back into the uncertainty

When we move on to the next idea

The reality of sanity

Depends on

How many ideas

We can hold in our heads

At any one time

Before they vanish

Back to heaven

Through the quantum tunnel

The more ideas

In any single moment

The closer to

The divine 
We come

But it hurts!!!

Then I thought I'd better do some research on Rene Descartes who (as I found out long ago from Monty Python) came up with "I think therefore I am" - and I found this wonderful video on you tube which pretty much sums up what I've been thinking lately (especially the bit about the proof of God - which despite having thought about it for quite some time, still makes sense to me) - maybe theres hope for me after all and I'm not as crazy as I think I am - or maybe its just that the rest of the world is as well !

The "Yes Win" Situation

Like James T Kirk I don't believe in the no win situation. Failure is only an indication that you haven't succeeded yet, not an excuse to stop trying. Look at Nelson Mandela in Robin Island, he didn't give up when they took everything away from him and locked him up, and out of a seemingly impossible situation he succeeded. The list of people who have succeeded when they should have failed is not endless, but it is much longer than we think. Mandela, Bishop Tutu, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and the ultimate example of failure that is success - Jesus.

The idea of mutual unconditional love is definitely a vote looser to those who prize immediate success above everything else, which in today’s modern western society appears to be just about everyone (or at least according to the media, everyone that matters).

The ultimate truth is all about the last being first "unless you are like this little child" - always trusting, always learning, and always making mistakes.

And now for the poetry...........

Hard Rubbish

Forgiveness is like a hard rubbish collection

We must put on the kerb

All the things we collect daily

Or by the hour

Or by the minute

Or by the second

And let go of them completely

And immediately

If we clutter up the present moment

With the past

Or the future

We lose it

But it's not easy to do

The vagaries of life

Hang round in the unconscious

Like an inconvenient unpleasant odor

That we tend to blame on others

Or on God

Or the devil

And blame is counterproductive

Even blaming ourselves

Is only a hole to fall into

Repentance is not about blame

It's about resurrection

And the fall

Can only be understood

In the light of the cross

And it's aftermath

-----------------------------------------

Sacrament

Celebration of suffering

Celebration of mercy

Celebration of forgiveness

Celebration of sacrifice

Celebration of death

Celebration of life

Celebration of joy

Celebration of spirit

Celebration of truth

Celebration of love

Celebration of unity

Keep on Keeping on

Often times it seems that no matter what one does, whether one starts new projects, or keeps on doing the same things, that one only ever gets so far (however far that is - it seems to vary from person to person), and life keeps going round and round in circles, and that it is always someone else that is on dancing with the stars, or Australia's next top whatever.

And I'll bet that that the person who is currently Australia's next top Whatever feels the same way.

I don't think that the famous, the rich, and the powerful are fundamentally and different from the rest of - they are just stuck in their own circles, going round and round and never seeming to break out.

But I think the key word in all this is "seeming".

No matter how similar each circle seems to be from the last, no matter how imperceptible the difference, we are all progressing - whether we are progressing forwards or backwards seems to me to be a trick of the mind.

Some people just have a harder time than others in finding the "trick" that works for them - which may be a good thing if you follow the premise that "the more  pain the more gain" (though I think that this is fundamentally flawed - especially when applied by one person on another - the phrase "to be cruel to be kind" I think is just plain WRONG)

Though on the other hand there may be something to be said for the idea that what we get for nothing is worth exactly what we pay for it.

 The best things in life are free - or to be more precise - bought with things other than money - Love, Trust, Faithfulness, Perseverance.

And I think the "trick" is to try and shrink the circles down to points - to individual moments - and do your best in each - going from each moment to the next will then generally take care of itself..

And now for what really matters - the poetry (This was inspired by Paul Mitchell's reading at tonights "Rotunda" event) ................

The Pen

The pen is indeed

Mightier than the sword

And each key on the board

Is something to skip over

And dance upon

Until

An understandable nonsense

Spills forth

From the brain

That is mired 
In molasses

Into the ether it goes

And clowns around

Totally overlooked

By the ostrich like masses

As it passes by 
The forests of the righteous

And the award winning

And discovers one soul

At the back of the room

At the end of the universe

To resonate with

And create

A totally unseen

And unheard

Symphony

Truth is in the Ear of the Beholder

At the recent Communities in Control Conference, at which I was filming, the second question raised at the Our say Panel session was about the importance of oral communication and language skills – it was: 

"One in 14 children in Australia is born without the capacity to gain, understand or use language. Without intervention they face a drastic future, so much so that 50% of youth offenders in this country have a serious oral language deficiency. Why, as a nation, are we not tackling the challenges that these children present us with?"

Stephen Mayne in response to the question highlighted the importance of Oratory skills, citing Barack Obama as the most obvious recent example of someone whose oratory skills has been crucial to their success. Click here to see the You Tube video of this

But while I agree with the importance of oral communication skills  I think we often miss the other side of the coin on  this issue – there will always be people who for one reason or another are worse at communicating than others.

We need to not only train people to have better oratory skills, but also, and more importantly, train people to listen to those who don’t have oratory skills - they often have something worthwhile to say, and sometimes the have things to say that are absolutely critical, that we need to hear for the good of ourselves and more importantly our society as a whole.

Sometimes the most powerful oratory can consist a very few words and a lot of silence for people to understand their meaning. I am reminded that Lincoln’s Gettysburg address lasted just over two minutes.

Even shorter were Jesus’ words when faced with an angry self-righteous crowd hefting rocks – “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone” – and then he sat down and drew in the dirt letting the silence that followed speak even more powerfully.

And now for a poem....... 

Black Hole Reflection

Is belief more than

The filtering process of the mind

Faith is an insubstantial whisper

Louder and stronger

Than the greatest ocean

Faster than the swiftest comet

Hurling through space

Carrying all our destinies

A plug for the black hole

At the core of our being

That we only recognize

In the contrast

Of the brilliance behind

Star stuff are we

Every molecule of our being

Born in a furnace

Hurled through the endless void

Forever and a day

Until it ended up

Here and now

And we don’t think that’s a miracle?

It’s the filtering process of the mind

There are some things we can’t handle

So we break them down

Into molecules and atoms and strings

And rearrange this dust

Back into us

By the process of random chance

But who are we kidding?

There’s still a black hole

At the core of our being

That we see only by reflection

Of star stuff

And no matter how hard

We ignore it

It’s shape

Can only be described as

God