Birthday tea

After work today Dad came over and had a look at our garden. Then Mum and Adam and Justin came in on the train, and Nomes got back from the beach and we had Chinese food for tea. Adam gave me a bootleg of the U2 show we went to. Justin gave me some spray paint. Mum and Dad gave me some money to get some shoes. Nomes gave me two more souvienir teaspoons, one of which is from Avocado Land, which I actually went to as a toddler. (It's called Tropical Fruit World now though.) So now my teaspoon rack is full. (Paul and Amber brought me back one when they went to Canberra last year.)

What happened during the G20 - day 3

I got back to the embassy after the concert at about twelve thirty. There wasn't really any space left for me to lie down and go to sleep, so I just sat against the barricade. Ben turned up on his rollerblades, with two containers of rice that he'd cooked for us.
I ended up not actually sleeping, because there were so many people out.
Not long after I got there this drunk guy ran up to the barricade and started to climb over, and then jumped back down, and continued walking past, yelled a heap of abuse at us, and then got grabbed by the police and put in the back of a truck.
Another drunk guy came up to us, who I recognised from the U2 concert. He'd been standing just in front of us.
I said, 'Hey you were at the U2 show tonight, weren't ya? What'd you think?'
He said, 'Yeah, was good. Get a job ya f***in' hippy. Pay some tax.'
I told him that I already had a job and paid tax, but he was wandering off again.
We had a lot of people tell us to get jobs. Was talking to Ben about how it seemed as though people presumed that because you do something you strongly believe needs to be done, people presume that you're only doing it because you don't have a paid job, and therefore just don't have anything better to occupy your time. Also found it interesting that people think it's fine to abuse people that they believe to be unemployed.
We also had a lot of people come up to us because they genuinely wanted to talk to use and find out about why we were protesting. We had two Catholic students come up to us and say that we should've advertised what we were doing at the unis, because would've liked to have been involved. They asked wat I thought of Oscar Romero and liberation theology, and I said I didn't know much about Oscar Romero other than that he was assassinated by the Salvadoran government, but that I'd read a bit of Gustavo Guiterrez and liked what he had to say.
There were three Israeli backpackers who wanted to know where the protests had been, and whether there were any protests planned for Sunday. They asked if I was a student, and I said that I wasn't, and they asked what I did. I said that I did cleaning and I cooked food with people and did art with people and hung out with people, and explained what Credo and Urban Seed are like. Before they left one of them said, 'Isn't it great that two Jews and Muslim and a Christian can hang out and have a decent, civilised discussion?' Reminded me of the 'COEXIST' bandana that Bono used as a blindfold during 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'.
There was a couple who came up to us to ask us why we were protesting, because they didn't know very much about the G20 and wanted to find out a bit about it. I explained that the G20 was started after certain Asian and Latin American economies crashed in the '90s, so that the G8 countried could try to stablise the 'developing' economies that they depend on on for cheap resources and labour, so that their own economies would be safe as well. They said that they'd heard that the G20 were trying to alleviate poverty getting 'developing' countries to open up to foreign developers. This often means that people make more money, but also need more money. They go from having a subsistence economy, where they can produce everything they need themselves, or buy it locally, to being part of a global economy, where they are just producing masses and masses of the one item, and having to import everything else from far away. This is particularly a problem if they're producing a luxury item like coffee or tobacco. The fact that everything is produced a long way away also makes it a lot easier for companies to charge a lot more for a product than it costs them to produce the product.
Someone had a guitar, so Ben was playing it for a while, and one of the police asked if he took requests (they would've been pretty bored standing there all night), and he explained that he couldn't actually play any songs, he just made stuff up as he was going. And then he skated around in front of the barricade playing the guitar.
Later on we had a guy come to talk to us because he was offended that we had a cross and icons out in the street. For a long time he just kept saying, 'I'm mortally offended! How dare you? How dare you?' He eventually explained that he was offended because the cross and icons weren't made by someone who'd been ordained by the Roman Catholic Church. He also reckoned that you shouldn't mix religion and economics. There was another guy hanging around at that time who was a Pentecostal, and said that he could understand why he was offended, because he reckoned we looked like a cult, because we had a cross and icons, and some of us had been lighting candles earlier in the evening, to symbolise prayers.

He also reckoned we might be a cult because we looked like hippies. He said that he used to care about the environment and social justice too, but that was before he became a Christian. He said that now all that mattered was saving people's souls from Hell. He reckoned that we shouldn't protest, because converting people was more important. He reckoned we should just pray that God will change things. The Catholic guy also reckoned I wasn't a real Christian because I hadn't been baptised as a child.
At about five o'clock Ash woke up, and we watched the sun come up at five thirty. Then I went home to sleep for a few hours.
I didn't wake up until twelve. While I was asleep the police took the Credo cross away from the embassy, because they reckoned it could've been used as a missile. I think they underestimated how heavy it was, and how difficult a missile it would be to launch, because they gave it back again once they'd had enough of it.

(This is the same cross that Brent, Cookie and Jono stood with between the protesters and the mounted police during the World Economic Forum in 2000.)

When I got back to the embassy one of the protesters who'd been chanting the day before was there again, and some of the others from the embassy were chanting with him. There were also two elderly English ladies holding signs. We ended up having a discussion about the chanting, and decided to stop the chanting, because not all of us agreed with the chants, it didn't seem very peaceful, the police seemed fairly tense, and we'd found just being present and talking to people had been more productive.
We wrote a letter about why we were protesting, and when Peter Costello came down to the barricade to shake hands with the police (it was all set up for TV) we asked if he'd take it, but he ignored us. I suppose we weren't in his script.
At five o'clock I went up to the Baptist Church for their G20 church service, but I wasn't in there very long, because they guy running the service mentioned this guy called Simon who'd come in, asking for a Bible to read to the police, so I went out to see what he was doing. He was sitting on the trams tracks, against the Collins Street barricade, and screaming. I asked him what he was doing and he said he'd just arrived that day from the Gold Coast, and it'd taken him seven days to hitch to Melbourne, and he wanted me to scream at the police with him. I said I wasn't really into yelling at the cops, and told him about what we'd been doing at the embassy, and he said he'd come and join us later, if he could find us.
After the church service I went back to the embassy, and we ended the vigil with a shared meal. A lot of it was freegan stuff that the Jesus Christians had gathered.

We celebrated the eucharist using chocolate bars that the police had given us, and some cask wine. Afterwards with passed the peace with each other, the police and other activists who were still around.

I think that our public action was quite successful, in that we were able to have a good relationship with the police and with other protesters. I think we gained a lot of respect from other protesters (who are generally not too fond of Christians), particularly because we were there from Friday morning till Sunday evening. I think we were also able to get our message across fairly clearly, through the media and through direct conversations with people. Because we started on Friday we were able to actually talk about why we were protesting, which was good, because by lunchtime on Saturday all the mass media was interested in was violence.

Here's some of the media coverage we got:
'Christian pacifists demand tickets to G20' - Melbourne Indymedia
'Costello snubs Christian activists' - Melbourne Indymedia
'Christian protestors moved by police' - Melbourne Indymedia
'g20 vigil busted and moved' - Melbourne Indymedia
'Christian group in G20 tent vigil' - The Australian
'Christians, cheerleaders and lots of barricades' - The Age
'Christians kick off G20 protest' - Sydney Morning Herald
'Protesters pray ahead of G20 summit in Melbourne' - Reuters
'Protesters pray ahead of G20 summit in Melbourne' - oneindia
'JIHAD20' - Tim Blair
' 墨爾本: 廿國集團峰會墨市用鐵馬陣' - Singtao
'G20 Christians protest' - Herald Sun
'G20 Radical Christian response' - Crowlie
'More on the G20 Melbourne Christian collective' - Crowlie

What happened during the G20 - day 2

Saturday morning I found the embassy right at the bottom of Russell Street, which was where all of the cars and buses and police where entering and exiting the blockaded area.

This guy called Lorian turned up, and said that he'd heard about what we were doing and wanted to join us. A couple of other protesters came and stood on the traffic island, chanting at the cars and buses that went through the gate:

Globalise justice! Not exploitation!
Globalise peace! Not war!
Globalise happiness! Not suffering!
Fair trade! Not free trade!
Power! Corrupts!
Absolute power! Corrupts absolutely!
Power to the people! Not the corporations!

We had a film with photos on it from when the police made us move, so I took it up to a newsagent in Swanston Street to get it developed. Went up to the State Library, where the march was supposed to be starting at twelve, to see what was going on. There were an awful lot of people selling Green Left and handing out flyers and stuff, which I normally find fairly irritating, so I didn't stay all that long. On the way back to the embassy, when I came to the Collins/Swanston Street intersection, there were about a hundred protesters in white suits coming down from the east end of Collins Street, and a whole heap of mounted police and riot police coming out from behind the barricades, which the protesters had managed to break through.
When I got back to the embassy, almost everyone had gone up to the State Library to join the march.

During the march Simon called us and said that the march had split up, and that it seemed like some people wanted to act violently. The officer in charge at the barricade told the officers to stake out their batons, and said something about people throwing missiles, and about driving people back to Exhibition Street.
My brother Adam turned up, because we were going to be seeing U2 in the evening. We went and checked out the Make Poverty History festival down at Alexandra Gardens. Was a bit bothered by the fact that Mount Franklin had a stall where they were selling water at $2 a bottle. I was bothered because one of the causes of poverty is companies trying to turn eveything into a commodity (eg. water, public space, communication, relationships) that has to be bought and sold.
After a while we went back to the embassy.
Late in the afternoon me and Adam and Gin decided to walk around the block and see what was going on everywhere else. (The protest was quite peaceful where we were, but Simon reckoned it didn't look good in some other places.) We had a look down Flinders Lane, and the vibe there wasn't very good at all. There was a lot of broken glass and masonry on the ground, and there were people throwing stuff in the air. (Some people reckon the glass and masonry was a set-up.) There wasn't a lot of yelling, but there were a lot of people belting out a drum beat. Apart from all the protesters against the barricade, the place was almost completely deserted, and there was no traffic. Seemed really weird, like we were in an urban warzone or something. Apparently the protesters had managed to get through the first row of barricades, and had been right up against the police, who'd driven them back with their batons. Further north, a whole heap of people had gathered in the middle of the Collins/Exhibition Street intersection, and were mostly just sitting around chatting, or playing drums, or dancing. There were a few people running around with hankerchiefs over their mouths, which seemed really irresponsible, as though they were just trying to frighten people.
After we'd finished walking round the six blocks that had been joined together by the barricades, we went to the ecumenical church service at St Paul's Cathedral. The Archbishop of Capetown, who'd visited our embassy the previous day, spoke. I was quite impressed, because he actually said that Westerners need to change the way they live, and not just ask politicians to change everything. I haven't heard anyone else from Make Poverty History point out that we need to make affluence history.
After the service we went to the U2 concert. It was kind of interesting listening to some of their lyrics after what had gone over the last two days:

I was on the outside
When they pulled the four walls down
You looked over the rubble
I was lost
I am found
('I Will Follow')

Pop art and street art

Moved my stuff to the new backpackers. Seems a lot cleaner and tidier, and it doesn't smell. There seems to be a lot of students staying there.
Ended up wandering around Surry Hills today, and eventaully finding Paddington. Was a lot of street art in Paddington, compared to anywhere else I've been in Sydney.

Found a gallery of this pop artist called David Egan who does paintings and silk screen prints based on U2 songs.

December photos

Just uploaded a heap of photos that I've taken on my phone over the last month:




photos, photography

U2 ticket

Monday morning I got a ticket to see U2 in March. Hurrah.

'Wake Up'

by Arcade Fire
from Funeral


Somethin'
Filled up
My heart
With nothin'
Someone
Told me
Not to cry

But now that
I'm older
My heart's
Colder
And I
Can
See that it's a lie

Children
Wake up
Hold your
Mistake up
Before they
Turn the
Summer into dust

If the children
Don't grow up
Our bodies get
Bigger

But
Our hearts get torn up
We're just
A million little gods causing rain storms
Turning every good thing to rust
I guess
We'll just have to adjust

With my lighning bolts a-glowin' I can see where I am going to be when
the reaper he reaches and touches my hand
With my lighning bolts a-glowin' I can see where I am goin'
Better look out below!


Originally heard this song because U2 have been playing it at the start of each show before they go on stage, and my brother Doomie has a few bootlegs.
Not sure why, but I really like it. It seems like it's mourning the results of us thinking we're gods.

'Falling at Your Feet'

by Bono and Daniel Lanois
from the soundtrack to The Million Dollar Hotel


Every chip from every cup
Every promise given up
Every reason that's not enough
Is falling, falling at your feet

Every band elastic limit
Every race when there's nothing in it
Every winner that's lost a ticket
Is falling, falling at your feet
I've come crawling, falling at your feet

Everyone who needs a friend
Every life that has no end
Every knee not ready to bend
Is falling, falling at your feet
I've come crawling, now I'm falling at your feet

All fall down All the manic dazed faces that you pull
All fall down All the action is not under your control
All fall down The graffiti rolling down off of your tongue
All fall down And the compromise you make for some

Every teenager with acne
Every face that's spoiled by beauty
Every adult tamed by duty
They're all falling at your feet

Every foot in every face
Every cop's stop who finds the grace
Every prisioner in the maze
Every hand that needs an ace
Is falling, falling at your feet
I've come crawling, and I'm falling at your feet

All fall down All the books you never read
All fall down Just started
All fall down All the meals you rushed
All fall down Never tasted

Every eye closed by a bruise
Every player who just can't lose
Every pop star hurling abuse
Every drunk back on the booze
All falling at your feet
Oh I'm falling at your feet

All fall down All the information
All fall down All the big ideas
All fall down All the radio waves
All fall down Electronic seas
All fall down How to navigate
All fall down How to simply be
All fall down To know when to wait
All fall down Explain simplicity
All fall down In whom shall I trust
All fall down And how might I be still
All fall down Teach me to surrender
Not my will, thy will


Last night we were having a look at some scriptures on humility, and I was reminded of this song. It seems to be based on Philippians 2:

Because of this, God raised him [Jesus] up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Everyone and everything falls down at the feet of God. The pop star, the alcoholic, the loner, the police officer. It doesn't matter whether they realise their imperfection or not; they all fall down. The song concludes that the only way to find peace is to surrender to God, rather than trying to have our own way.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Watched the 2000 version of Jesus Christ Superstar on the weekend.
I'd always been told (by Christians) that this production was blasphemous, but no-one would ever explain why.
I think I understand why now, but I'm not sure that I agree.

Jesus is portrayed as being very human, rather than hovering one foot above the ground. He gets scared. He finds it hard to lead his followers. He wonders if he really is just a very naughty boy. I'm not surprised that a lot of Christians find this offensive, but I'm not sure it's necessarily blasphemous.

I think the display of affection between Jesus and Mary Magdalene (and his other followers) would also make a lot of Christians uncomfortable. I realise that there isn't any scriptural evidence for a romantic relationship between Jesus and Mary, but I'm not sure why this is so offensive. I think the director is suggesting that it might be one reason why Jesus' disciples were angry Mary Magdalene when she annointed Jesus, washed his feet with her hair, et cetera. (John 12:1-11) (Please tell me if this is incoherrent and I'll rewrite it.)

Lastly, when the production first went to America, a lot of conventional churches were concerned about the Jesus People (aka Jesus Movement, Jesus Freaks), a movement of hippies who wanted to follow the teaching's of Jesus. So they would've been pretty upset to hear about a play where Jesus and his disciples are portrayed as hippies.

Also, Alt Tab noticed that one of Jesus' followers is also on Queer as Folk, and I think there has been a Zoo TV influence.

Death

Just found this on the U2 Sermons Blog, from Easter Sunday:

I am death
the mighty destroyer
of the world

'Yahweh'

Went up to the Belgrave Heights Easter Convention tonight (Saturday).
Tonight David Jackman was talked about Romans 6:1-14, which is about claiming freedom from sin. One thing he suggested, based on verse 13,

'Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness,'

was to offer each part of bodies to God, for his purposes, every day. He also suggested asking for help from God, in not letting Satan use any of our body parts.
It reminded me of a U2 song, 'Yahweh', from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. I use this song to dedicate the different parts of my body to God.

Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don’t make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahewh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break

Mourning, struggles and celebration

For church, the last two Tuesday nights, we've split the gathering into four different sections: Welcome, Worship, Word and Witness. (I don't agree with the compartmentalisation, but have been working with it.) Each gathering a different person has organised each section, and last night I got to 'lead' the 'Worship' segment.

I talked a little bit about how most of the time, in terms of musical worship, we think of celebratory songs, although there is a much wider variety of songs included in the Psalms. There are psalms of celebration, but there are also psalms for times of mourning, and times of struggles.

Mourning

As an example of a song of mourning, I chose 'In the Sun' from Jospeh Arthur's album, Come to where I'm from. I chose this because Arthur's protagonist sounds like he is finding it hard to find hope, isn't sure if he even believes in God when he says, 'May God's love be with you.' I thought it might help us come to terms with the fact that a lot of people in our society haven't been finding a lot of hope in the Christian idea of God, and are trying to work out for themselves what they believe ('If I find my own way / How much will I find?').

Struggles

As an example of a song of struggles, I used 'Who will Save Your Soul?' from Spirit by Jewel. I chose this song because it confronts many of the problems people face trying to survive. I also chose it because rather than expecting God to fix everything, it repeats 'Who will save your souls if you won't save your own?' implying that we've also our own responsibility to work towards making things work again.
Some stuff that other people came up with is that when Jewel sings 'Who will save your soul when it comes to the flowers,' she might mean the flowers at a funeral.
Also, when she sings, 'So we pray to as many different gods as there are flowers,' this could be a reference to how we try to get security from so many things other than, or as well as, God.

Celebration
(comes after 'calibration' in the dictionary)
I didn't just put the celebration song at the end to finish on a high. I put it last also because before we can really celebrate, we need to mourn to come to terms with our losses, and to struggle, so that we can get to a point where we can celebrate again. A lot of the time in our public gatherings, we Christians just try to celebarte and celebrate, and I wonder why my heart isn't always into it. I think this is because we don't go through the mourning and struggles, and so there isn't much to celebrate. It's like we're trying to pretend we're still living in the Christian Era - something a lot of us never even experienced.

For this I chose 'All because of You' from U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, because I understand it as a song celebrating the fact that even though I'm pretty stuffed up, God's fixing me up.
We had a couple of different interpretations of the bridge:

I'm alive
I'm being born
I just arrived, I'm at the door
Of the place I started out from
And I want back inside

I'm pretty sure both interpretations were that it was talking about being reborn as a follower of Messiah. However, one interpretations was that it was saying 'I want back inside' 'the place I started out from' because following Messiah is hard, and the protagonist wants to go back to their old way life.
One of the ways I look at it, it seems that the protagonist has not yet gone through the 'door', and is anticipating going back to 'the place I started out from', 'back inside' God's family.

'If God will Send His Angels'

from Pop by U2

Nobody else here baby
No-one else here to blame
No-one to point the finger
It's just you and me and the rain.

Nobody made you do it
No one put words in your mouth.
Nobody here taking orders
When love took a train heading south.
It's the blind leading the blond
It's the stuff, it's the stuff of country songs.

Hey, if God will send his angels
And if God will send a sign
And if God will send his angels
Would everything be alright?

God's got his phone off the hook, babe
Would he even pick up if he could?
It's been a while since we saw that child
Hangin' round this neighbourhood.

See his mother dealing in a doorway
See Father Christmas with a begging bowl.
And Jesus' sister's eyes are a blister
The High Street never looked so low.

It's the blind leading the blond
It's the cops collecting for the cons.
So where is the hope and
Where is the faith and the love?
What's that you say to me
Does love light up your Christmas tree?
The next minute you're blowing a fuse
And the cartoon network turns into the news.

If God will send his angels
And if God will send a sign
Well if God will send his angels
Where do we go?
Where do we go?

Jesus never let me down
You know Jesus used to show me the score.
Then they put Jesus in show business
Now it's hard to get in the door.

It's the stuff, it's the stuff of country songs
But I guess it was something to go on.
Hey, if God will send his angels
I sure could use them here right now
Well, if God will send his angels...

Where do we go?
Where do we go?


I used this song in the presentation I showed at the church gathering on Sunday, because, like a lot of the people I quoted, the narrator is saying that if God is allowing so much crap stuff to happen, then either he's helpless or he doesn't care.
The first time I listened to this song I thought it was blasphemous. Later on in my spiritual journey, when I was asking some of these questions, it helped me express my frustration to God.
Now I've got another interpretation of this song, which I arrived at because of the part that says, 'Well if God will send his angels / Where do we go?' What that says to me is that maybe God doesn't intervene (as much as we'd like) because he wants us to get up and stop being lazy.