AN ABORIGINAL VISION OF THE SPIRIT
The symbol dominating Pope Benedict’s visit to Australia and World Youth Day (WYD) is an image of the bird of the Holy Spirit as seen in vision by an Aboriginal woman, Marjorie Liddy on Melville Island in August ‘04. It’s unusual for churches, especially the Catholic, to emphasize the Holy Spirit. One reason it’s now doing so is because Australia, as noted by the Pope at the start of his journey to WYD, is Terra Australis del Espiritu Santu, (Great Southland of the Holy Spirit) according to a declaration in 1606 by the Portuguese explorer, Pedro Fernandez de Quiras. It’s a title Catholics and Protestants alike have subsequently taken as “prophetic” for a country so far not notably spiritual – even “godless” according to the Pope back in 2005.
But now it seems the Holy Spirit has appeared and done so to signify what many believe could be a turning point in Australia’s spiritual destiny. However, much hinges here on the credibility of Majorie Liddy’s vision which it would be easy to dismiss as a superstitious tale seized upon in the interests of Vatican hype. But this would be wrong. The coincidences I shall outline are too many to dismiss and if Christians care to dismiss them then perhaps they should start protesting reference to the Magi and their signs get extracted from their Bibles. But first and briefly there is the vision itself. It is undeniably precious since visions of the Holy Spirit are almost never reported though I have considered the significance of a modern case in the article: If the Holy Spirit Can Be Seen (19th March ‘07 on this Blog)
A VISION AT FULL MOON
August 30th 2004 was the day of the full moon. That evening Majorie Liddy, a devout Catholic of the Tiwi tribe, had been fishing on the Timor Sea with her son. Around 9pm Majorie’s son began staring at the sky. Majorie looked and saw a vast “painting” of a bird in dots (i.e like many Aboriginal dot paintings), its wings covering the whole sky and touching the ends of the horizon. A golden halo surrounded its head. Majorie began to sing a hymn and dance with joy. Her son who saw a large bird was puzzled but Majorie insisted it wasn’t just a bird it was the Holy Spirit, upon declaring which the halo burst showering “sparkles of gold” such as Majorie had never seen towards the earth. The indigenous picture of this bird of the Spirit is adorning the chusables (priestly over garments) of Cardinals during the current WYD celebrations.
IT WAS TRUE AND A MOMENT OF REVELATION
Apart from affirming a person involved in a vision is honest and reliable and effects of the vision positive there’s no way unless one to certify what was seen was somehow objectively the case and that is to take the qualities and symbols of the time if known. In this instance the pattern of meaning within the same heavens Majorie was looking at (but in a different way!) could hardly be stronger. I’ll take data of the event bit by bit - connecting the dots one might say!
Rising over the eastern horizon at 9pm was the asteroid, VERITAS (truth). There is an asteroid, Lie, in case you were wondering. And the truth of this moment was involved with a revelation. How can we affirm “revelation”?
In event patterns the moon is deemed the timer/trigger. Suitably enough for a vision while out fishing the moon was in the fish and seas sign, Pisces, conjunct THE PART OF REVELATION. And this same Part was, besides, in the sector of dreams and visions (the 12th). The PART OF REVELATION like all so called Arabic Parts is only a mathematical point yet it works. As I noted in an article of New Zealand’s Investigate Magazine last April at the time Seven Colombians alleged that in 1995 they were transported to hell and saw among others there John Lennon who called out to Christ, not only were the asteroids for Lennon and Christ in conjunction, reflecting a claim they met, but they were so in the hell sector of the Event chart in which was placed THE PART OF REVELATION.
A TIME THAT WAS JESUS LINKED
The same truth telling VERITAS that was rising over the horizon at 9pm, was doing so in Aries the same sign rising in the commonly accepted chart for modern Australia. By convention Aries rising in any pattern means the “ruler” of that pattern has to be Mars. Significantly Mars at the time of the vision was conjunct the JESUS asteroid as though the event had Jesus’ authority or permission. In any case the sun of the day was conjunct the CHRIST asteroid, which surely reinforces any such religious readings of the vision event…..
THE EVENT WAS ABOUT AUSTRALIA
To inquire what any event is “about” one needs to look especially especially at the Midheaven angle (destiny/reputation/career) of the time and its adjoining sector (the 10th). The vision’s Midheaven was Capricorn, birth sign of the Australian Federation (1.1.1901). Fortunately trining it was asteroid AUSTRALIA as though to make the Australian association absolutely clear. (Specialists might also note the sun on the fateful day was likewise in exact fortunate aspect to Australia’s foundational Saturn the nation’s “ruling” planet given the Federation’s birth under Capricorn).
THE POPE WAS DESTINED TO GIVE THE VISION PROMINENCE
Conjuncting the destiny Midheaven was asteroid RATZINGER, the Pope’s name. This if nothing else seems like a promise that what happened at this moment is something that subsequently the present pope would absorb, endorse and associate with as he is presently doing.
THE VISION’S SPECIAL ABORIGINAL RELEVANCE
Beyond specific associations with political Australia earthy Capricorn is very much the sign of any aboriginality and long tradition. The aboriginal roots of Australia, the suffering and historic complaint of such as “the lost generation” seem highlighted within the picture by the fact that Chiron, the “wounded healer” planetoid, is near the Midheaven in the destiny house in Capricorn. Something ancient, powerful and wounded is being emphasized and it is this energy which is perceiving the vision. And this vision must to some extent be linked, as here it is, to Venus – traditional symbol of art and of any doves, the doves of Venus. And here I am going to be a bit precise….
LINKS OF THE VISION TO THE FIRST PENTECOST
I claim to possess the true and still working chart for Christianity, i.e. the chart of the first Pentecost when the spirit descended as a fiery dove. That pattern shows Venus in fire conjuncting Christianity’s destiny Midheaven. I knew this pattern was correct and relevant to this day years before I could also know the asteroids for remote dates which now support my assumptions about various exactitudes of the chart. So I knew Venus was the symbol of the Holy Spirit in at any rate any visible, revealed form – in other contexts the proper symbol would be Uranus and this planet was again highlighted in Majorie’s pattern albeit by certain technicalities (like its empowerment on a so-called critical degree, one also corresponding to the degree of the fated nodes that day). But what is the relevance of the Venus factor to Majorie’s vision of the Spirit?
Majorie is an Aboriginal who sees things in terms of the land and the earth. She has maintained the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of the Land itself. Suitably the wounded Chiron symbol is in earthy Capricorn directly opposite Venus in watery Cancer. Accordingly the Spirit which appears to Marjorie over the waters challenges her beliefs (after the manner of oppositions) so she declares the Spirit is also the Spirit indwelling the land. However Majorie who doesn’t name the bird did, in Pentecostal style, see a bird and still fiery in its way – it showers supernatural golden sparkles over the land.
MAJORIE’S “BIRD” WAS A DOVE
Years after I was convinced that Venus represented the Spirit at Pentecost against all probability confirming this I discovered that at Pentecost Venus was conjuncted by the asteroid, COLUMBIA, a variant of the latin Columba and meaning DOVE. So I find it significant that at the time of Majorie’s vision, the wounded Chiron in aboriginal earth that opposed (was challenged by) Venus was itself conjuncts COLUMBIA. We may take it that the unnamed bird of the vision that assumed an aboriginal aspect was, as we might expect, still the Dove of Pentecost.
THE MESSAGE WAITING FOR A MARJORIE TO RECEIVE
Any messages are linked to Mercury. Mercury at the time of Majorie’s vision was not only fortunately trine the Galactic Centre (events in religion) but Australia’s own Mercury which itself is conjunct the Galactic Centre. Small wonder Australia would get to hear what she said and the message would have strong reverberation in the world of religion. And small wonder that a Majorie would give the message. Though purists might prefer a slightly closer conjunction for an asteroid with a planet the fact is there happens to be an asteroid MARJORIE and it was within 2 degrees of conjunction with Mercury!
PROPHECYING AUSTRALIA: WILL IT BECOME THE SOUTHLAND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT?
It has always been a slight problem for interpreters of modern Australia’s birth pattern that it almost incongruously shows a strong ninth sector, traditionally and principally “the house of God”, of philosophy religion and pilgrimage. This has been explained, (or explained away!) by emphasizing linked themes of the sector like emigration and the tyranny of distance. More likely however it is a prophecy. One day, Australia might actually become a very spiritual and visionary place.
If that’s so it could happen and soon. The Pope’s visit and WYD in some respects only helps exteriorize and reflect more subterranean trends beginning to surface of which Majorie Liddy’s vision is symptomatic and would be more recognized if some of us were not so pre- censored by a mostly disinterested Australian media and publishing that we can’t get important facts and information out.
I have given a little indication of this situation in my article of July 1st, Ruckins McKinley Chooses a Good Time, Ruckins being a prophet who has declared truly dramatic things over Australia. Even there I haven’t described just what was said or what was going on, the crowds calling down the fire of the Spirit in what some would have felt was a very unnerving and special performance of something. At least on some (like someone I trust reporting on an occasion I didn’t attend) the effects were devastating even by the standards of those perfectly familiar with the more charismatic expressions of religion – it was like being hit by bolts of lightning.
More than the Pope the Holy Spirit, it seems, has special designs upon Australia and you have seen and heard nothing yet.
CHRISTIANITY AND FULL MOONS AND THE FUTURE
In the days before astrology and horoscopes as we know them even existed the prophet Isaiah inveighed against those who forecast by new moons. Times have moved on and not only was Christ’s birth an event for astrology but full moons are rather important if you know how to read them as they didn’t in Isaiah’s times. Full moons are not just the property of witches dancing in a ring. Majorie’s vision occurred at full moon. Last month’s full moon hit the Galactic Centre and had affinity for the likes of Ruckins’ mid month declarations. This month’s full moon conjuncts Australia’s destiny Midheaven and puts the country under the international spotlight as the Pope comes here. Sydney’s papal mass of this Thursday falls just prior to the full moon which oversees Friday’s Stations of the Cross around Sydney.
When the excitement of the papal visit is over it is unlikely to be the end of something ,it will only be a beginning. All the signs are that a lot more is on the way, that something right now is only beginning and it could indeed be that the ancient Portuguese “prophecy” will turn out to be Australia’s unexpected new reality.
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Monday, July 14, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
HIDDEN ASPECTS OF THE ANGLICAN GAY SPLIT
HOMOSEXUALITY DIVIDES THE ANGLICAN CHURCH
On Monday June 30th The Australian newspaper declared what had happened in Jerusalem that weekend (Saturday evening according to London’s Sunday Times ) was perhaps the most historic event for the Anglican Church since the Reformation.
The statement may yet prove a bit extreme but the now actual or virtual declared split of the church into opposed liberal and conservative factions, the former under the Archbishop of Canterbury and the latter guided by Australia’s Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Jensen and Nigeria’s Archbishop Akinola(Christianity’s version of Robert Mugabe for high handedness) is undeniably unprecedented and serious. But it shouldn’t have been a surprise and amid all the uncertainties afflicting the Anglican Churches worldwide one thing was reasonably certain and that is that the split that has created FOCA, (The Fellowship of Conservative Anglicans) was pretty inevitable - “fated” one might say.
Since I regularly claim to have a unique knowledge regarding the astrology of Christianity which is working clearly for this crisis I shall emphasize this hidden aspect of affairs but there are others and I mention these especially later on.
ANGLICANISM AND THE DANGEROUS MONTH OF JUNE
At the beginning of June just prior to the month’s lunation (new moon) as this would be falling so closely conjunct the Saturn of Christianity’s birth I wondered what restriction or loss of rights somewhere on the globe it might portend given so much report of persecution recently. I was puzzled because, as indicated in my June 11th article about Ruckins McKinley’s declaration over Australia and the coming spiritual big wave, by contrast the full moon (which so often brings the promises of a lunation to fruition) was right on the Galactic Centre (events in religion) at 27 Sagittarius. So, to the extent I considered the matter I preferred to be positive and imagine contested but important affirmations, not historic church splits. And I didn’t give the subject much thought since, thanks to Telstra, I still wasn’t netted for purposes of research and was anyway much otherwise preoccupied.
However the Galactic Centre contact might be expected to produce rather more than the powerful, but still somewhat secret, events surrounding McKinley on which I have yet to comment. And I should have given more thought to how anything to Saturn in Gemini, the divisions sign, could be involved with undermining disputes, disputes that could especially affect the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. The Archbishop happens to be born under the Twins and has been regularly accused of two faced behavior and (in effect) sitting on the Geminian see-saw where his beliefs and policies are concerned. But Christianity itself was born under Gemini. It suffers this tendency to split, something that has bedeviled (Saturn equals Satan in religious contexts) the entire history of the faith in contradiction of Christ’s wish that “you may all be one”. Then, by tradition, though I’m not sure of its basis in dates historically, pragmatic Virgo is Anglicanism’s sign. (The Anglican Communion is a rather moralistic, pragmatic, rather than mystical sort of church much influenced by policies of the Virgoan Elizabeth 1st). If tradition is right then Saturn currently in Virgo should make things tricky for Anglicans and perhaps too for churches beyond it since currently Saturn in Virgo is setting up afflictions to factors in the birth of Christianity such as Sun (its identity) and Jupiter (its beliefs).
When in November ‘03 a gay bishop was consecrated in America Jupiter (religion/beliefs) was going direct in Virgo (sign of Anglicanism) and making positive aspect to Christianity’s Mercury in its leadership sector. Now that the same ordination is being declared an abomination, Jupiter, currently in conservative Capricorn, is moving in retrograde so in line with this is the call to “get back” to basic, traditional beliefs. But significantly Saturday’s declaration occurred almost exactly as Uranus (any issues to do with homosexuality) after many months also turned apparent retrograde, so that the desire is to reverse, go back upon, the whole development of openness regarding gay issues.
ASTEROID CANTERBURY MARKS THE ANGLICAN LEADERS, URANUS IS ANY GAY CONTROVERSY
While Anglicanism as a religion is associated with Virgo its leadership is indicated by the asteroid, Canterbury in another ritualistic earth sign, Taurus. Asteroid Canterbury though still unnamed at the time was at almost 28 Taurus at Christianity’s birth. Two thousand years later, in November 03, when gay Bishop Robinson was consecrated as first(out) gay bishop - there have been plenty of the closeted variety across history! - the always gay relevant Uranus was making direct difficulty square to asteroid Canterbury from 28 of Aquarius, the sign of Uranus’ rulership while Venus (ceremonies and good feelings) was opposing Canterbury from 28 Scorpio. And there would of course be plenty of difficulty and on any purely PR rather than theological basis arguably Robinson was not the best candidate for any first gay bishop and only a certain American emotionalism pushed him in. But that’s another issue.
On June 16th in London what some saw as a virtual gay marriage, an Anglican first, was celebrated in St Bartholomew’s Church for a New Zealand priest and his chaplain. This was the final straw for the conservatives. On Saturday 29th June ‘08 the aggressive action planet Mars was at 28 of Leo, opposing the position of Uranus at Robinson’s consecration and making difficulty square to Christianity’s Canterbury. Anglican leadership was in trouble, indeed its Archbishop was copping a lot of flack. Gayness, in religion at least, was in trouble too because if we take asteroid, Gaily as the gay asteroid (which empirically there is every good reason to believe we should), Mars at 28 Leo last Saturday was declaring war though a conjunction with Christianity’s Gaily at 29 Leo.
Uranus of course can never be overlooked whenever there’s any controversy around gays or almost any controversy about anything the problem for gays being that they are all too often allowed to be the symbol of any dispute and function as the proverbial scapegoat. Typically and disgracefully in recent controversies over a gay parade in Jerusalem, a leading rabbi was trying to organize opposition on the basis Jewish gays were all “evil criminals”.
HOMOSEXUALITY WORSE THAN ATHEISM? AND WHAT ABOUT ARCHBISHOP JENSEN’S INTEGRITY?
Even if you believe homosexuals and homosexuality are immoral what mental trick arrives at this criminality idea? And we may well ask that regarding the abrasive, fanatical Archbishop Akinola. He has been actively encouraging the Nigerian government to jail gays for 5 years at a time. At the last Lambeth conference of Anglicans in ‘98 which nearly came to blows over homosexuality with Akinola doing a lot to turn up the heat (one bishop present told me the atmosphere was so aggressive he would prefer never to attend another Lambeth) gay and revolutionary Uranus was directly afflicted by conservative Saturn in the horoscope of Christianity. And now again for this July’s Lambeth conference Uranus is again in aspect to Saturn though less drastically.
There is a huge irony in what is going on. Strictly speaking, the Anglican Communion should have been soul searching, (and if it wanted to heresy hunt then heresy hunting) over priests who denied the church’s creed or even the existence of God through the Christian atheism of the Sea of Faith movement. Yet just this got passed over in favour of making mere blessings on gay unions (marriages aren’t even in question as in the Scandinavian churches!)and the ordination of gay clergy (which the church has always tacitly been doing) its trigger point for schism. But then, although as mentioned the St Bartholemew’s ceremony of gay blessing whose ritual was seen as virtually a marriage was a trigger for the wrath of conservatives , it’s pretty clear the split is interested beyond simply the gay issue that is its pretext.
There is an urge outside of England and America (in the “Global South”) to establish what is thought of as a post-colonial, non western independence from foundational Anglicanism plus, over in Nigeria where the church has been periodically harassed by Muslims, Archbishop Akinola seeks to appease Muslim criticisms that Christianity is decadent and the pervert church. So, respectability and power issues come into play here. But also some rank fanaticism. As said, Akinola supports jailing gays. We don’t hear all his evangelical supporters condemning him for this. Many may even tacitly support it thus encouraging the suspicion of liberals and secularists that all contemporary talk from conservative Christians about loving the sinner but not the sin and that of course gays must have their rights (an idea none would have had and never voiced prior to Gay Liberation) is convenient lies or at least serious self deception best ignored. And what about Archbishop Jensen? Precisely who and what is this Sydney cleric who makes himself party to support of the Akinola who doesn't wish to sit at table or be in the same room as a homosexual?
It is interesting that Archbishop Jensen of Sydney is a Cancerian (11.7.1943). Cancer is a prime difficulty sign as regards homosexuality. On the one hand Gay Liberation itself was founded under Cancer (on the 28th, rather than the 29th of June, 1969 and at that in America, the nation founded under Cancer, the mother sign. The Great Mother can seem at once permissive and threatening. She tolerates and includes much that others wouldn’t so easily but certainly she troubles heterosexuality, or at least that of heterosexual males. Cancerian males frequently distrust their own and other men’s feminine side and can quite sensationally overcompensate a la Ernest Hemingway who was all for boxing and bull fights and abusing gays in the street. It is in America that homosexuality is most promoted and contested. So, within Anglicanism it is not surprising that once again Cancer will produce the schism trump card – and although homosexuality wasn’t the basis of the schism but rather a divorce let’s note that Anglicanism’s great schism began through the work of the Cancerian Henry V111.
The fire-cracker natal astrology of the rather impossible Archbishop Akinola, an Aquarian (27.1.1944) is something I had better not comment upon. As rebel and maverick Akinola is all of a textbook Aquarian but the sign is also traditionally the sign of all things alternative while a conjunction of Mars and Uranus such as Akinola sports is quite a feature of gay charts (Akinola himself has six kids). So Akinola is finding his own ways to be subversive and different and above all divisive since his Mars/Uranus is of course, in Christianity and Archbishop William’s Gemini.
THE LEGACY OF AFRICAN CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE
Since this July the Lambeth Conference brings Anglicans from all quarters together it is interesting that the July full moon hits within minutes Christianity’s Part of Homosexuality - interesting because obviously despite, (or even because of), the split the issue will continue to be discussed and I gather that some people, like those of the Other Sheep organization, are pressing for consideration of matters the bullying approach of Archbishop Akinola and other African clergy and their Australian supporters are overlooking.
African clergy may protest that English and American Anglicans (i.e. Episcopalians) have gone too far for the church to be recognizable but they also conveniently ignore the incredible and themselves unchristian oppressions they have been overseeing in the African churches. They constantly promote the lie any anthropologist can refute that homosexuality is not native to Africa but an English import; they have silenced and dismissed theologians from colleges if they express any kind of sexually liberal view and are so damning of gays there is a legacy of depression and suicides among gay African Christians as a result.
I fancy that with Canterbury in easy trine in one direction to Christianity’s Part of Homosexuality mainstream Anglicanism would always be something of a gay friendly church no matter the consequences – and as said, all that has really happened is that what was previously closeted has become open - but it will be interesting to see just what the consequences now are. However, I’m inclined to suppose that events in church and world over the coming year may somewhat distract from this question, pressing though it is and may be expected to remain. I suspect the solar and lunar eclipses of August will keep things lively in and out of the church in more ways than one.
J’ACCUSE: AUSTRALIAN CENSORSHIP DIDN’T CHALLENGE ARCHBISHOP JENSEN
My final word is the sour grapes one from someone writing in Australia which is not quite the West of the controversy (though it would like to think so) nor the Global South of many dissidents but simply a place where too much censorship and secrecy favouring every cabal and intrigue prevails. It is plain now that it would have been better for church and world if there had been more close examination and intelligent debate of the divisive Archbishop Jensen’s ideas. Like so many who presume to deal with the issue of gays in the church he gives no indication beyond conservative cliches of really knowing anything about the subject whether at the social or theological level. Developments in thought and scholarship regarding it pass him and others of his kind by and the whole crudely dismissive Australian system allows it.
My A Special Illumination, published in London at the end of '04 was based on a world first, trans-cultural, trans-historical doctoral study on the varieties of gay spirituality from a religious studies department. It included what a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury judged as probably the best survey of gay theology available. But I obtained no support whatsoever in Australia for promoting it. Likewise a friend from the same dept, Michael Carden, who has published on what is probably the definitive study of the history of Judaeo-Christian understanding of the Sodom story has not been inquired of here. What is the point of study and research in Australia?.....
I was rudely told by a member of the ABC religion department that I hadn’t even written about religion. The editor of a leading paper pompously assured me Australia had experts enough to talk about these religious affairs – in this area that’s hardly true, but at least he didn’t deny I was talking about religion. I could go on but the roll call of questionable conduct in this area just goes on and on. I have never even had apology from another paper for the terrible trouble caused by the disinformation I had done a doctorate not on gay issues but Jesus’ sexuality! Australia’s black and white crude approach to the gays and religion subject makes for simply dismissing Archbishop Jensen as a conservative. That’s not good enough, it reduces everything to media bites and it’s ineffective to assist real change. Information and intellectual pre-censorship keeps Australia behind Europe in mumbers of ways and it has helped to support the questionable policies and actions of the Archbishop of Sydney at what The Australian would define as a historic moment.
On Monday June 30th The Australian newspaper declared what had happened in Jerusalem that weekend (Saturday evening according to London’s Sunday Times ) was perhaps the most historic event for the Anglican Church since the Reformation.
The statement may yet prove a bit extreme but the now actual or virtual declared split of the church into opposed liberal and conservative factions, the former under the Archbishop of Canterbury and the latter guided by Australia’s Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Jensen and Nigeria’s Archbishop Akinola(Christianity’s version of Robert Mugabe for high handedness) is undeniably unprecedented and serious. But it shouldn’t have been a surprise and amid all the uncertainties afflicting the Anglican Churches worldwide one thing was reasonably certain and that is that the split that has created FOCA, (The Fellowship of Conservative Anglicans) was pretty inevitable - “fated” one might say.
Since I regularly claim to have a unique knowledge regarding the astrology of Christianity which is working clearly for this crisis I shall emphasize this hidden aspect of affairs but there are others and I mention these especially later on.
ANGLICANISM AND THE DANGEROUS MONTH OF JUNE
At the beginning of June just prior to the month’s lunation (new moon) as this would be falling so closely conjunct the Saturn of Christianity’s birth I wondered what restriction or loss of rights somewhere on the globe it might portend given so much report of persecution recently. I was puzzled because, as indicated in my June 11th article about Ruckins McKinley’s declaration over Australia and the coming spiritual big wave, by contrast the full moon (which so often brings the promises of a lunation to fruition) was right on the Galactic Centre (events in religion) at 27 Sagittarius. So, to the extent I considered the matter I preferred to be positive and imagine contested but important affirmations, not historic church splits. And I didn’t give the subject much thought since, thanks to Telstra, I still wasn’t netted for purposes of research and was anyway much otherwise preoccupied.
However the Galactic Centre contact might be expected to produce rather more than the powerful, but still somewhat secret, events surrounding McKinley on which I have yet to comment. And I should have given more thought to how anything to Saturn in Gemini, the divisions sign, could be involved with undermining disputes, disputes that could especially affect the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. The Archbishop happens to be born under the Twins and has been regularly accused of two faced behavior and (in effect) sitting on the Geminian see-saw where his beliefs and policies are concerned. But Christianity itself was born under Gemini. It suffers this tendency to split, something that has bedeviled (Saturn equals Satan in religious contexts) the entire history of the faith in contradiction of Christ’s wish that “you may all be one”. Then, by tradition, though I’m not sure of its basis in dates historically, pragmatic Virgo is Anglicanism’s sign. (The Anglican Communion is a rather moralistic, pragmatic, rather than mystical sort of church much influenced by policies of the Virgoan Elizabeth 1st). If tradition is right then Saturn currently in Virgo should make things tricky for Anglicans and perhaps too for churches beyond it since currently Saturn in Virgo is setting up afflictions to factors in the birth of Christianity such as Sun (its identity) and Jupiter (its beliefs).
When in November ‘03 a gay bishop was consecrated in America Jupiter (religion/beliefs) was going direct in Virgo (sign of Anglicanism) and making positive aspect to Christianity’s Mercury in its leadership sector. Now that the same ordination is being declared an abomination, Jupiter, currently in conservative Capricorn, is moving in retrograde so in line with this is the call to “get back” to basic, traditional beliefs. But significantly Saturday’s declaration occurred almost exactly as Uranus (any issues to do with homosexuality) after many months also turned apparent retrograde, so that the desire is to reverse, go back upon, the whole development of openness regarding gay issues.
ASTEROID CANTERBURY MARKS THE ANGLICAN LEADERS, URANUS IS ANY GAY CONTROVERSY
While Anglicanism as a religion is associated with Virgo its leadership is indicated by the asteroid, Canterbury in another ritualistic earth sign, Taurus. Asteroid Canterbury though still unnamed at the time was at almost 28 Taurus at Christianity’s birth. Two thousand years later, in November 03, when gay Bishop Robinson was consecrated as first(out) gay bishop - there have been plenty of the closeted variety across history! - the always gay relevant Uranus was making direct difficulty square to asteroid Canterbury from 28 of Aquarius, the sign of Uranus’ rulership while Venus (ceremonies and good feelings) was opposing Canterbury from 28 Scorpio. And there would of course be plenty of difficulty and on any purely PR rather than theological basis arguably Robinson was not the best candidate for any first gay bishop and only a certain American emotionalism pushed him in. But that’s another issue.
On June 16th in London what some saw as a virtual gay marriage, an Anglican first, was celebrated in St Bartholomew’s Church for a New Zealand priest and his chaplain. This was the final straw for the conservatives. On Saturday 29th June ‘08 the aggressive action planet Mars was at 28 of Leo, opposing the position of Uranus at Robinson’s consecration and making difficulty square to Christianity’s Canterbury. Anglican leadership was in trouble, indeed its Archbishop was copping a lot of flack. Gayness, in religion at least, was in trouble too because if we take asteroid, Gaily as the gay asteroid (which empirically there is every good reason to believe we should), Mars at 28 Leo last Saturday was declaring war though a conjunction with Christianity’s Gaily at 29 Leo.
Uranus of course can never be overlooked whenever there’s any controversy around gays or almost any controversy about anything the problem for gays being that they are all too often allowed to be the symbol of any dispute and function as the proverbial scapegoat. Typically and disgracefully in recent controversies over a gay parade in Jerusalem, a leading rabbi was trying to organize opposition on the basis Jewish gays were all “evil criminals”.
HOMOSEXUALITY WORSE THAN ATHEISM? AND WHAT ABOUT ARCHBISHOP JENSEN’S INTEGRITY?
Even if you believe homosexuals and homosexuality are immoral what mental trick arrives at this criminality idea? And we may well ask that regarding the abrasive, fanatical Archbishop Akinola. He has been actively encouraging the Nigerian government to jail gays for 5 years at a time. At the last Lambeth conference of Anglicans in ‘98 which nearly came to blows over homosexuality with Akinola doing a lot to turn up the heat (one bishop present told me the atmosphere was so aggressive he would prefer never to attend another Lambeth) gay and revolutionary Uranus was directly afflicted by conservative Saturn in the horoscope of Christianity. And now again for this July’s Lambeth conference Uranus is again in aspect to Saturn though less drastically.
There is a huge irony in what is going on. Strictly speaking, the Anglican Communion should have been soul searching, (and if it wanted to heresy hunt then heresy hunting) over priests who denied the church’s creed or even the existence of God through the Christian atheism of the Sea of Faith movement. Yet just this got passed over in favour of making mere blessings on gay unions (marriages aren’t even in question as in the Scandinavian churches!)and the ordination of gay clergy (which the church has always tacitly been doing) its trigger point for schism. But then, although as mentioned the St Bartholemew’s ceremony of gay blessing whose ritual was seen as virtually a marriage was a trigger for the wrath of conservatives , it’s pretty clear the split is interested beyond simply the gay issue that is its pretext.
There is an urge outside of England and America (in the “Global South”) to establish what is thought of as a post-colonial, non western independence from foundational Anglicanism plus, over in Nigeria where the church has been periodically harassed by Muslims, Archbishop Akinola seeks to appease Muslim criticisms that Christianity is decadent and the pervert church. So, respectability and power issues come into play here. But also some rank fanaticism. As said, Akinola supports jailing gays. We don’t hear all his evangelical supporters condemning him for this. Many may even tacitly support it thus encouraging the suspicion of liberals and secularists that all contemporary talk from conservative Christians about loving the sinner but not the sin and that of course gays must have their rights (an idea none would have had and never voiced prior to Gay Liberation) is convenient lies or at least serious self deception best ignored. And what about Archbishop Jensen? Precisely who and what is this Sydney cleric who makes himself party to support of the Akinola who doesn't wish to sit at table or be in the same room as a homosexual?
It is interesting that Archbishop Jensen of Sydney is a Cancerian (11.7.1943). Cancer is a prime difficulty sign as regards homosexuality. On the one hand Gay Liberation itself was founded under Cancer (on the 28th, rather than the 29th of June, 1969 and at that in America, the nation founded under Cancer, the mother sign. The Great Mother can seem at once permissive and threatening. She tolerates and includes much that others wouldn’t so easily but certainly she troubles heterosexuality, or at least that of heterosexual males. Cancerian males frequently distrust their own and other men’s feminine side and can quite sensationally overcompensate a la Ernest Hemingway who was all for boxing and bull fights and abusing gays in the street. It is in America that homosexuality is most promoted and contested. So, within Anglicanism it is not surprising that once again Cancer will produce the schism trump card – and although homosexuality wasn’t the basis of the schism but rather a divorce let’s note that Anglicanism’s great schism began through the work of the Cancerian Henry V111.
The fire-cracker natal astrology of the rather impossible Archbishop Akinola, an Aquarian (27.1.1944) is something I had better not comment upon. As rebel and maverick Akinola is all of a textbook Aquarian but the sign is also traditionally the sign of all things alternative while a conjunction of Mars and Uranus such as Akinola sports is quite a feature of gay charts (Akinola himself has six kids). So Akinola is finding his own ways to be subversive and different and above all divisive since his Mars/Uranus is of course, in Christianity and Archbishop William’s Gemini.
THE LEGACY OF AFRICAN CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE
Since this July the Lambeth Conference brings Anglicans from all quarters together it is interesting that the July full moon hits within minutes Christianity’s Part of Homosexuality - interesting because obviously despite, (or even because of), the split the issue will continue to be discussed and I gather that some people, like those of the Other Sheep organization, are pressing for consideration of matters the bullying approach of Archbishop Akinola and other African clergy and their Australian supporters are overlooking.
African clergy may protest that English and American Anglicans (i.e. Episcopalians) have gone too far for the church to be recognizable but they also conveniently ignore the incredible and themselves unchristian oppressions they have been overseeing in the African churches. They constantly promote the lie any anthropologist can refute that homosexuality is not native to Africa but an English import; they have silenced and dismissed theologians from colleges if they express any kind of sexually liberal view and are so damning of gays there is a legacy of depression and suicides among gay African Christians as a result.
I fancy that with Canterbury in easy trine in one direction to Christianity’s Part of Homosexuality mainstream Anglicanism would always be something of a gay friendly church no matter the consequences – and as said, all that has really happened is that what was previously closeted has become open - but it will be interesting to see just what the consequences now are. However, I’m inclined to suppose that events in church and world over the coming year may somewhat distract from this question, pressing though it is and may be expected to remain. I suspect the solar and lunar eclipses of August will keep things lively in and out of the church in more ways than one.
J’ACCUSE: AUSTRALIAN CENSORSHIP DIDN’T CHALLENGE ARCHBISHOP JENSEN
My final word is the sour grapes one from someone writing in Australia which is not quite the West of the controversy (though it would like to think so) nor the Global South of many dissidents but simply a place where too much censorship and secrecy favouring every cabal and intrigue prevails. It is plain now that it would have been better for church and world if there had been more close examination and intelligent debate of the divisive Archbishop Jensen’s ideas. Like so many who presume to deal with the issue of gays in the church he gives no indication beyond conservative cliches of really knowing anything about the subject whether at the social or theological level. Developments in thought and scholarship regarding it pass him and others of his kind by and the whole crudely dismissive Australian system allows it.
My A Special Illumination, published in London at the end of '04 was based on a world first, trans-cultural, trans-historical doctoral study on the varieties of gay spirituality from a religious studies department. It included what a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury judged as probably the best survey of gay theology available. But I obtained no support whatsoever in Australia for promoting it. Likewise a friend from the same dept, Michael Carden, who has published on what is probably the definitive study of the history of Judaeo-Christian understanding of the Sodom story has not been inquired of here. What is the point of study and research in Australia?.....
I was rudely told by a member of the ABC religion department that I hadn’t even written about religion. The editor of a leading paper pompously assured me Australia had experts enough to talk about these religious affairs – in this area that’s hardly true, but at least he didn’t deny I was talking about religion. I could go on but the roll call of questionable conduct in this area just goes on and on. I have never even had apology from another paper for the terrible trouble caused by the disinformation I had done a doctorate not on gay issues but Jesus’ sexuality! Australia’s black and white crude approach to the gays and religion subject makes for simply dismissing Archbishop Jensen as a conservative. That’s not good enough, it reduces everything to media bites and it’s ineffective to assist real change. Information and intellectual pre-censorship keeps Australia behind Europe in mumbers of ways and it has helped to support the questionable policies and actions of the Archbishop of Sydney at what The Australian would define as a historic moment.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
RUCKINS MCKINLEY CHOOSES A GOOD TIME
A FORECAST FOR THE RECORD
Australia should either be witness to remarkable events soon....or it just won't...But Ruckins McKinley, whom you probably haven't heard of (nor myself till very recently) is expecting much and there are some reasons to think he might be right. Since Ruckins McKinley,though a former black Hollywood TV star, isn't much known here I'll introduce the following unusual subject through my own experiences first before referring to events of June 22nd and after.
At the end of '06 before leaving China for over a year I lived through one of the more intense periods of my life. During this time I kept a diary over a three month period,called Thunder Perfect Minds: Chronicles of a Maleny Vision. Sensing something sublime, crazy, or somewhere inbetween was afoot where I was living I decided it would be worthwhile to keep record. I did this knowing it would be the only thing of any scope or detail that, if anything like what was anticipated came to fruition, could depict for the general public or media the background to a movement and main figures in it. And these persons were aware and approved what I was doing. Since I'm a published author and the themes I was writing up could be considered quite significant for Australia (and from any critical/anthropological standpoint still significant even if things didn't turn out as the group expected) what has so far prevented publication here is itself almost part of the story, of interest in its own right as mentioned later.
The journal records fraught issues in my professional life like dealing with an impossible TV company with whom I never get to make a documentary in Jerusalem, along with how I get involved with a group of people who introduce me to a secret. Committing myself, quasi-anthropological style, to be participant-observer to what's happening (my first entry suggests I could be in for something like a Carlos Castenada journey without the drugs) I soon find myself at an unexpected cross roads of contending spiritual forces where almost anything could happen....and does. I didn't, for example, at first take it too seriously when told I had a suppressed gift of prophecy which would soon be awakened. But such seemed to be the case and my first, and disconcerting, experience - which proved to something that only in light of recent events makes more sense - involved a solemn curse I was compelled to declare upon the leadership of Burma,
VISION AND THE SOUND OF THUNDER
The diary's story effectively begins when a leader of the Maleny group invites me to a fateful supper on an evening of violent thunder - thunder proves a keyword in my record from the storm the night someone in Sweden imagines they are astrally visiting my home, to when God finally speaks and it's like a peal of thunder. The leader aimed to prepare people towards fulfillment of local prophecies in relation to Maleny and Australia more widely. There were reasons to expect approaching fulfillment including because some, if minor, elements of certain forecasts had already come about.
Anticipated was something way beyond what Americans might call "revival", namely a God event, a more or less leaderless spiritual wave of happenings, revelations and miracles with some novel features that could change everything. Though this would eventually be an Australia-wide phenomenon it would be particularly associated and begin with the Sunshine Coast hinterland region (Maleny and environs) and (north) Brisbane though Maleny for certain reasons could prove more distinctive, producing in the long run something which sounded like an ecumenical Lourdes, a hill region centre of healing and spiritual illumination.
AN HISTORIC PROPHECY AND SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND
Now it's all very well for a group to be influenced by some Australian "prophets" making a few extreme claims over the last decade, but who wouldn't want to have further and more historic confirmation?. While composing the diary I was aware the group's leader had been trying to discover in books, libraries, on the Net and just asking people, about a prophecy from a noted British visionary, Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947). Was it fact or mere rumour he forecast remarkable events for Australia on one of his visits here? Only this April when a still sprightly 99 year old healer, Mary Jenkins, a long time protege of Wigglesworth, visited Australia from America has it been confirmed that Smith did make this forecast but not only this. He had declared (but without saying Maleny and/or Brisbane) that Australia would be impacted through especially South East Queensland.
Not long after this and back from China, I learned that, almost out of the blue, a certain Ruckins McKinley of California, due to great prophetic conviction in the matter, had earlier flown out here to declare a great spiritual wave would hit Australia soon. Since Australia is not on Ruckins' Net given schedule for this year evidently this was an independent decision. He told people in Brisbane that the matter was so certain the earth would shake to certify his words before he left and there was a small quake south of Charleville on February 13th, in suitably enough, Queensland, before Ruckins left. He has also now arranged matters that he would return before long actually to declare the great wave into existence which it seems would include summoning legions of angels upon Australia
SUMMONING THE WAVE
.....In case this sounds just too novel and/or mad for you, perhaps you need to be aware such declarations and big waves of something are all of a sudden not so unique, indeed bid fair to become almost trendy. You could see such as the film starrish Matt Sorger on Net TV calling down the divine energies upon Medellin in Colombia and waves and floods and divine energy and miracle are what are presently being reported in Florida and Texas in unprecedented degree. Only last week Sorger turned up in Fort Worth, Texas, and declared "open heavens" and lightnings over it and there was violent thunder and lightning over Texas followed by heavy rains putting out the ubiquitous fires in the tinder dry conditions of the state due to recent drought-like conditions. Rather as once for Elijah, it seems the elements are for the commanding. After all.....even in Maleny where there had been forecasts (I was hearing such in a seminar of late 06) of great rains as a sign of future spiritual outpourings there was so much of it at the end of '07, it rained there solidly for 3 months! This occurred while across Australia more generally drought hadn't broken. It has not quite done so in Queensland where conditions appear to be improving.
Possibly thickening the plot about the role of Ruckins in what will occur is the fact that during a brief trip to the Gold Coast and New Zealand in March the noted Canadian healer and visionary, Todd Bentley, declared (I am quite reliably informed) that in June "a prophet" would arrive in Australia in June to begin release of the great wave. Bentley did not supply the name because he supposedly did not have it or know it. Ruckins is known but not that well known while Bentley obviously likes to be deemed honest - he doesn't have the aura of suspicion around him that attaches to some evangelists these days.
Whatever, Ruckins will formally make declaration for Australia at a gathering in Brisbane on 22nd June following which there will be "crusade" meetings on the 24th and 25th and on July 1st and 2nd - except that these crowd meetings aren't really "crusades" but more like information/conference sessions, preachings to the converted, warm-up sessions for the believing one might say. Even so it will draw crowds. Attendees need to book and have armbands to get through the doors and already I gather every spare room outside the main auditorium at the Carina Worship Centre has been released to deal with massive demand. The meetings could last up to 3hours after which Ruckins individually prophecies over each person present who wishes it. (Apparently he enjoys a reputation for great accuracy, so people will wait their turn however long it takes). Apart from the kind of authority prophetic accuracy is liable to bestow one could well wonder, assuming there truly are to be important developments for Australia, why any non Australian should be the elect vehicle to summon them.
A possible clue is in Ruckins' unusual ministry in the area of music and dance. It is a fact that in some of the prophetic material I excerpt in Thunder it is forecast the Australian wave will be unusually involved with music. It even proposes that groups of people will spontaneously begin worshipping in the most complex imaginable, unrehearsed musical forms of expression. So, at that level it might be said Ruckins has affinity for what he is due to call down into these lower worlds.
SYMBOLS OF PROMISE FOR RUCKINS AND AUSTRALIA
Call me of little faith but my position is that I believe something will happen. But whether it will ever be on the scale or with the effects and with the degree of impact some envisage, is another question. What I can and do see is something some believers would object to my even considering - though that's their problem more than mine as stars and astrologers are very much part of even Jesus' birth narrative. The fact is that, historically, events in religion and super dramatic waves of spiritual anything enjoy a special connection with the Galactic Centre which for the whole Christian era has been in the religions sign of Sagittarius. When John the Baptist started preaching Jupiter and Pluto were conjuncting the GC and when the first Pentecost occurred, Pluto, the nearest thing to a God symbol in astrology, was in religions sign, Sagittarius.
Suitably, then, just preceding Ruckins' declaration the full moon of June will have directly conjuncted the Galactic Centre. And this aspect will have occurred only days after Pluto, for the last time in 248 years, will have retrograded back into Sagittarius and the GC. The actual day of declaration will have the sun between 0 and 1 Cancer, i.e. conjuncting a solstice point, one of the world points, good for indicating any major or widespread significance. So Ruckins is going with the flow, as it perhaps Australia, which anyway seems set up for something in the religious sphere.....note even the Pope is due to arrive in early July!
Anyway, to enlarge the picture it happens the mentioned full moon is almost to the minute conjunct Australia's foundational Mercury (good for communicating messages) which is to say it is itself nearly conjunct the Galactic Centre. This is possibly an inbuilt stellar promise that some day, some time, Australia would produce the religiously significant, even to becoming more in harmony with the image of the great "Southland of the Holy Spirit" as Australis was originally called by the Portuguese explorer who passed by the continent long before the First Fleet reached its shores.
Last among a variety of factors one could note I'll mention that the arrival of Ruckins falls within a lunation period marked off by its challenging opposition to the national Uranus - symbol of surprise, difference, revolution and in religious reference, the Spirit. So undeniably there's potential there. Even if what's hoped for only slowly emerged it still ought to have begun under the kind of symbolic signs mentioned. All things considered, then, whatever precisely happens, Ruckins has elected a good moment, the best possible.
AN AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATIONS BARRIER AND WHAT WITCHES DON'T WANT.
But what might be the response to any wave? Australia, anyway a secular society, will often ignore what seems too different or difficult. This could be the fate of any new movement, at least initially, though prophecy would have it that what will occur will not be able or allowed to remain too hidden. But perhaps a foretaste of the communication problem is the peculiar reception, or rather non reception, of my Thunder Perfect Minds evocation of the movement.
Before leaving for China I tried to place the book and not before testing excerpts on people of different beliefs and backgrounds inside and outside of Australia and they had positive reactions. Indeed, they found the account exciting either for what it was describing or for a certain poetic mood or literary feelings it engendered - one reader insisted I keep reading the account at considerable length to them on the phone from the other end of Australia.
However...I was informed on fairly good authority within the publishing business that acceptance within Australia would be virtually impossible since for all practical purposes I was writing (no matter how I might classify the subject matter) within a "New Age" publishing niche Australia never or hardly ever deals in. (One felt like asking couldn't Australian publishing be a bit more original or flexible especially for something concerning primarily Australians within their own country - albeit there are international connections and points of interest). I did track down a house which agreed to read the book if I cared to pay for its professional assessment outside their house, an unfamiliar arrangement I very reluctantly agreed to.
Upon reading the reports I was aghast to learn my book was supposedly the account of a Quaker (I'm not a Quaker - the book mentions I'm Anglican!) trying to find the meaning of life by joining a healing sect (the Maleny group was no sect but an ecumenical group and healing is scarcely mentioned the length of the ms). Another reader simply couldn't believe I was writing a journal as opposed to what seemed some oddly presented fiction. I don't know how one replies to this. The point of the record is that it's a unique true one of the often "unbelievable" along with some controversial inquiry into aspects of personal and spiritual experiences people don't usually have or reckon to atomize, a feature which arguably makes the enterprise groundbreaking but also not easy for the average conservative minded religious publisher to take on board - the reason I have not pursued that side of publishing here. So that was that. Nothing doing.
While I was overseas someone in Maleny recommended me to a small Queensland publisher with an open policy who might prove cooperative. I applied and explained matters but in the course of correspondence accidentally discovered who one of my two readers would be. When I knew that I wrote there was little point pursuing the matter as I was virtually guaranteed to be rejected - which duly happened without explanation. By singular coincidence one of the readers was a Maleny resident, an anthropologist professionally known to me who has connections and sympathies, perhaps initiated ones, with wicca circles in the area. The person's academic objectivity was not, I was certain, going to stand the rather special challenge my account presented! Enough that occult circles in the region wouldn't favour my tale and its vision of things.
Though in its way there's a wider than relevant to my account as is Ruckins McKinley's intervention from overseas in the the destinies of Australia, it will be rather shocking if the ultimate fate of the book is to be issued at some date overseas. Hopefully Australia might prove nore flexible about just what is national material. Meanwhile, with Ruckins soon to declare I have to wonder, regardless of witches and other problems, should I begin a sequel, a new diary of events......?!
Australia should either be witness to remarkable events soon....or it just won't...But Ruckins McKinley, whom you probably haven't heard of (nor myself till very recently) is expecting much and there are some reasons to think he might be right. Since Ruckins McKinley,though a former black Hollywood TV star, isn't much known here I'll introduce the following unusual subject through my own experiences first before referring to events of June 22nd and after.
At the end of '06 before leaving China for over a year I lived through one of the more intense periods of my life. During this time I kept a diary over a three month period,called Thunder Perfect Minds: Chronicles of a Maleny Vision. Sensing something sublime, crazy, or somewhere inbetween was afoot where I was living I decided it would be worthwhile to keep record. I did this knowing it would be the only thing of any scope or detail that, if anything like what was anticipated came to fruition, could depict for the general public or media the background to a movement and main figures in it. And these persons were aware and approved what I was doing. Since I'm a published author and the themes I was writing up could be considered quite significant for Australia (and from any critical/anthropological standpoint still significant even if things didn't turn out as the group expected) what has so far prevented publication here is itself almost part of the story, of interest in its own right as mentioned later.
The journal records fraught issues in my professional life like dealing with an impossible TV company with whom I never get to make a documentary in Jerusalem, along with how I get involved with a group of people who introduce me to a secret. Committing myself, quasi-anthropological style, to be participant-observer to what's happening (my first entry suggests I could be in for something like a Carlos Castenada journey without the drugs) I soon find myself at an unexpected cross roads of contending spiritual forces where almost anything could happen....and does. I didn't, for example, at first take it too seriously when told I had a suppressed gift of prophecy which would soon be awakened. But such seemed to be the case and my first, and disconcerting, experience - which proved to something that only in light of recent events makes more sense - involved a solemn curse I was compelled to declare upon the leadership of Burma,
VISION AND THE SOUND OF THUNDER
The diary's story effectively begins when a leader of the Maleny group invites me to a fateful supper on an evening of violent thunder - thunder proves a keyword in my record from the storm the night someone in Sweden imagines they are astrally visiting my home, to when God finally speaks and it's like a peal of thunder. The leader aimed to prepare people towards fulfillment of local prophecies in relation to Maleny and Australia more widely. There were reasons to expect approaching fulfillment including because some, if minor, elements of certain forecasts had already come about.
Anticipated was something way beyond what Americans might call "revival", namely a God event, a more or less leaderless spiritual wave of happenings, revelations and miracles with some novel features that could change everything. Though this would eventually be an Australia-wide phenomenon it would be particularly associated and begin with the Sunshine Coast hinterland region (Maleny and environs) and (north) Brisbane though Maleny for certain reasons could prove more distinctive, producing in the long run something which sounded like an ecumenical Lourdes, a hill region centre of healing and spiritual illumination.
AN HISTORIC PROPHECY AND SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND
Now it's all very well for a group to be influenced by some Australian "prophets" making a few extreme claims over the last decade, but who wouldn't want to have further and more historic confirmation?. While composing the diary I was aware the group's leader had been trying to discover in books, libraries, on the Net and just asking people, about a prophecy from a noted British visionary, Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947). Was it fact or mere rumour he forecast remarkable events for Australia on one of his visits here? Only this April when a still sprightly 99 year old healer, Mary Jenkins, a long time protege of Wigglesworth, visited Australia from America has it been confirmed that Smith did make this forecast but not only this. He had declared (but without saying Maleny and/or Brisbane) that Australia would be impacted through especially South East Queensland.
Not long after this and back from China, I learned that, almost out of the blue, a certain Ruckins McKinley of California, due to great prophetic conviction in the matter, had earlier flown out here to declare a great spiritual wave would hit Australia soon. Since Australia is not on Ruckins' Net given schedule for this year evidently this was an independent decision. He told people in Brisbane that the matter was so certain the earth would shake to certify his words before he left and there was a small quake south of Charleville on February 13th, in suitably enough, Queensland, before Ruckins left. He has also now arranged matters that he would return before long actually to declare the great wave into existence which it seems would include summoning legions of angels upon Australia
SUMMONING THE WAVE
.....In case this sounds just too novel and/or mad for you, perhaps you need to be aware such declarations and big waves of something are all of a sudden not so unique, indeed bid fair to become almost trendy. You could see such as the film starrish Matt Sorger on Net TV calling down the divine energies upon Medellin in Colombia and waves and floods and divine energy and miracle are what are presently being reported in Florida and Texas in unprecedented degree. Only last week Sorger turned up in Fort Worth, Texas, and declared "open heavens" and lightnings over it and there was violent thunder and lightning over Texas followed by heavy rains putting out the ubiquitous fires in the tinder dry conditions of the state due to recent drought-like conditions. Rather as once for Elijah, it seems the elements are for the commanding. After all.....even in Maleny where there had been forecasts (I was hearing such in a seminar of late 06) of great rains as a sign of future spiritual outpourings there was so much of it at the end of '07, it rained there solidly for 3 months! This occurred while across Australia more generally drought hadn't broken. It has not quite done so in Queensland where conditions appear to be improving.
Possibly thickening the plot about the role of Ruckins in what will occur is the fact that during a brief trip to the Gold Coast and New Zealand in March the noted Canadian healer and visionary, Todd Bentley, declared (I am quite reliably informed) that in June "a prophet" would arrive in Australia in June to begin release of the great wave. Bentley did not supply the name because he supposedly did not have it or know it. Ruckins is known but not that well known while Bentley obviously likes to be deemed honest - he doesn't have the aura of suspicion around him that attaches to some evangelists these days.
Whatever, Ruckins will formally make declaration for Australia at a gathering in Brisbane on 22nd June following which there will be "crusade" meetings on the 24th and 25th and on July 1st and 2nd - except that these crowd meetings aren't really "crusades" but more like information/conference sessions, preachings to the converted, warm-up sessions for the believing one might say. Even so it will draw crowds. Attendees need to book and have armbands to get through the doors and already I gather every spare room outside the main auditorium at the Carina Worship Centre has been released to deal with massive demand. The meetings could last up to 3hours after which Ruckins individually prophecies over each person present who wishes it. (Apparently he enjoys a reputation for great accuracy, so people will wait their turn however long it takes). Apart from the kind of authority prophetic accuracy is liable to bestow one could well wonder, assuming there truly are to be important developments for Australia, why any non Australian should be the elect vehicle to summon them.
A possible clue is in Ruckins' unusual ministry in the area of music and dance. It is a fact that in some of the prophetic material I excerpt in Thunder it is forecast the Australian wave will be unusually involved with music. It even proposes that groups of people will spontaneously begin worshipping in the most complex imaginable, unrehearsed musical forms of expression. So, at that level it might be said Ruckins has affinity for what he is due to call down into these lower worlds.
SYMBOLS OF PROMISE FOR RUCKINS AND AUSTRALIA
Call me of little faith but my position is that I believe something will happen. But whether it will ever be on the scale or with the effects and with the degree of impact some envisage, is another question. What I can and do see is something some believers would object to my even considering - though that's their problem more than mine as stars and astrologers are very much part of even Jesus' birth narrative. The fact is that, historically, events in religion and super dramatic waves of spiritual anything enjoy a special connection with the Galactic Centre which for the whole Christian era has been in the religions sign of Sagittarius. When John the Baptist started preaching Jupiter and Pluto were conjuncting the GC and when the first Pentecost occurred, Pluto, the nearest thing to a God symbol in astrology, was in religions sign, Sagittarius.
Suitably, then, just preceding Ruckins' declaration the full moon of June will have directly conjuncted the Galactic Centre. And this aspect will have occurred only days after Pluto, for the last time in 248 years, will have retrograded back into Sagittarius and the GC. The actual day of declaration will have the sun between 0 and 1 Cancer, i.e. conjuncting a solstice point, one of the world points, good for indicating any major or widespread significance. So Ruckins is going with the flow, as it perhaps Australia, which anyway seems set up for something in the religious sphere.....note even the Pope is due to arrive in early July!
Anyway, to enlarge the picture it happens the mentioned full moon is almost to the minute conjunct Australia's foundational Mercury (good for communicating messages) which is to say it is itself nearly conjunct the Galactic Centre. This is possibly an inbuilt stellar promise that some day, some time, Australia would produce the religiously significant, even to becoming more in harmony with the image of the great "Southland of the Holy Spirit" as Australis was originally called by the Portuguese explorer who passed by the continent long before the First Fleet reached its shores.
Last among a variety of factors one could note I'll mention that the arrival of Ruckins falls within a lunation period marked off by its challenging opposition to the national Uranus - symbol of surprise, difference, revolution and in religious reference, the Spirit. So undeniably there's potential there. Even if what's hoped for only slowly emerged it still ought to have begun under the kind of symbolic signs mentioned. All things considered, then, whatever precisely happens, Ruckins has elected a good moment, the best possible.
AN AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATIONS BARRIER AND WHAT WITCHES DON'T WANT.
But what might be the response to any wave? Australia, anyway a secular society, will often ignore what seems too different or difficult. This could be the fate of any new movement, at least initially, though prophecy would have it that what will occur will not be able or allowed to remain too hidden. But perhaps a foretaste of the communication problem is the peculiar reception, or rather non reception, of my Thunder Perfect Minds evocation of the movement.
Before leaving for China I tried to place the book and not before testing excerpts on people of different beliefs and backgrounds inside and outside of Australia and they had positive reactions. Indeed, they found the account exciting either for what it was describing or for a certain poetic mood or literary feelings it engendered - one reader insisted I keep reading the account at considerable length to them on the phone from the other end of Australia.
However...I was informed on fairly good authority within the publishing business that acceptance within Australia would be virtually impossible since for all practical purposes I was writing (no matter how I might classify the subject matter) within a "New Age" publishing niche Australia never or hardly ever deals in. (One felt like asking couldn't Australian publishing be a bit more original or flexible especially for something concerning primarily Australians within their own country - albeit there are international connections and points of interest). I did track down a house which agreed to read the book if I cared to pay for its professional assessment outside their house, an unfamiliar arrangement I very reluctantly agreed to.
Upon reading the reports I was aghast to learn my book was supposedly the account of a Quaker (I'm not a Quaker - the book mentions I'm Anglican!) trying to find the meaning of life by joining a healing sect (the Maleny group was no sect but an ecumenical group and healing is scarcely mentioned the length of the ms). Another reader simply couldn't believe I was writing a journal as opposed to what seemed some oddly presented fiction. I don't know how one replies to this. The point of the record is that it's a unique true one of the often "unbelievable" along with some controversial inquiry into aspects of personal and spiritual experiences people don't usually have or reckon to atomize, a feature which arguably makes the enterprise groundbreaking but also not easy for the average conservative minded religious publisher to take on board - the reason I have not pursued that side of publishing here. So that was that. Nothing doing.
While I was overseas someone in Maleny recommended me to a small Queensland publisher with an open policy who might prove cooperative. I applied and explained matters but in the course of correspondence accidentally discovered who one of my two readers would be. When I knew that I wrote there was little point pursuing the matter as I was virtually guaranteed to be rejected - which duly happened without explanation. By singular coincidence one of the readers was a Maleny resident, an anthropologist professionally known to me who has connections and sympathies, perhaps initiated ones, with wicca circles in the area. The person's academic objectivity was not, I was certain, going to stand the rather special challenge my account presented! Enough that occult circles in the region wouldn't favour my tale and its vision of things.
Though in its way there's a wider than relevant to my account as is Ruckins McKinley's intervention from overseas in the the destinies of Australia, it will be rather shocking if the ultimate fate of the book is to be issued at some date overseas. Hopefully Australia might prove nore flexible about just what is national material. Meanwhile, with Ruckins soon to declare I have to wonder, regardless of witches and other problems, should I begin a sequel, a new diary of events......?!
Sunday, June 1, 2008
TELSTRA TROUBLES
A WORSE THAN USUAL TELSTRA TALE
Almost everyone in Australia has their Telstra story but my own might be a bit worse than some, It's also the principle reason I have put nothing to this Blog for the nealry two months since I returned from China. Two politicians and the department of the Ombudsman for Communications has been contacted in the course of this sorry tale but it doesn't mean resolution has been or will be any faster. In fact, not even for a politician is Telstra necessarily available to give answer.
Under unforeseen circumstances pressing in since January in early April I left Hong Kong where I had been teaching and living a fairly leisurely existence for around 15 months on Lamma Island. Lamma used to be referred to as Hippie Island and you still walk or bike around because there are only paths not roads but it's not so remote from civilisation I didn't have all mod cons including phone and full broadband access and within days of obtaining myself a apartment with a view there.
One reason I'd been in HKong was to be in reach of my elderly father who had had a triple by pass operation. Early this year I realized he was in various difficulties where he had been living for years and I needed to get him back to Australia rather fast, buy and settle him into a property there. We moved into a house in rural but not outback Queensland (back of Sunshine Coast Hinterland) on April 18th. Things have been fairly good here except......we have had no phone and myself no internet apart from what the kindness of the local real estate office has allowed me to use as I am doing right now for basic work.
BLOCKS AND BLINDSPOTS AND TRENCH DIGS
Australia's main communication service, Telstra, promises, and is supposedly under some kind of legal obligation to provide phones within 2 or 3 days to anyone having, or, as in my case, dealing with anyone who has some kind of potentially serious medical condition. My father has had a heart condition and was under a doctor in HKong as he is here in Australia. Already since being here he has been briefly in the nearest hospital for a bleeding condition after a minor op ..... So there isn't much case my father qualifies for speed as regards phone installation and when I applied for a phone the point was not disputed. True anyone can use a mobile phone and I have done that. I have used an expensive Telstra pre-paid one, the only one said to be able to manage the "blind spots" which the hills and ranges of this area can produce. You make two or three calls and you find you need another card recharge and if you take the phone out with you shopping or anywhere, there's no house phone for my father.
The house which, given our situation, got bought rather quickly stands at the end of a road at the edge of the town/village. On one side is an open field on the other a vacant block which for the time being has little chance its owner will build on it. But they nearly did so last year and there begins the problem. Our house which had been unoccupied for some time used to have phone connection but the neighbour who never built at some stage in their plans had an accident with the cable that runs in front of the vacant block, There now needs to be a new cable laid and a new trench dug for it by Telstra and a new trench dug by us to the front of the road from our house to join the cable, but that should be no big deal. There are people with bobcats can easily serve us for that little problem.
Initially any delay was supposed to be because a Telstra technician didn't have the right length or type of cable or that the waiting list to have anything dug was too long to deal with us immediately and I was receiving promising mobile calls about that. Then it was supposed to be that Telstra could go ahead but that the council couldn't, it needed to give permission for the cable laying. When I finally obtained somebody who was council related they spoke with the local mayor and it was agreed nothing of the sort was involved. Nihil Obstat to laying cable,the responsiblity was all Telstra's. A month had gone by.
Periodically I received letters from Telstra about what I could do and who contact about whatever. Chiefly it was that I should consider accepting a temporary radio phone. This of course would be no help to me personally and my work as it gives no access to internet but my own situation that prevents me from sending files to such as magazines or publishers is of no concern to Telstra only the case of my father even slightly counts. It is notorious people in Australia can be left waiting months for internet facilities.
However, locally I was receiving serious warnings about accepting any radio phone, which incidentally is said to be a "free" service but isn't, (this merely means it is delivered free, otherwise one pays despite levels of inconvenience that could well justify a free ride for anyone!). I was hearing that radio phones assuming they work can be a trap i.e. you could be stuck with this substitute instead of the real item plus related internet access for months. One friend's sister in Brisbane, (which being an urban area one wouldn't even expect to be saddled with what is normally a rural area option), complained she couldn't work her radio phone. About all she could contact or be contacted by was some mad number in Mumbai, India! It seemed one should consent to radio phone as a last desperate resort. It is incidentally a fact that many people in Australia feel so exploited by Telstra that they have cancelled their landline services and use mobiles exclusively (but they need to be urban - I have already alluded to the mobile problem for rural areas!)
POLITICOS AND THE OMBUDSMAN'S OFFICE
As time went by I was advised to try the influence of state politician, Dorothy Pratt, with whom I had had friendly meetings in the past over the legal case, just recently settled to media attention, of queensland artist, Ken Wenzel, who had been nearly three years battling an absurd charge of indecent exposure....on a deserted beach, which is the sort of place you feel you're situated when battling Telstra. Dorothy had had successes obtaining Telstra cooperation in the past but they must have got tired of her successful complaints as she couldn't even get a reply out of them. In the face of this frustration she advised getting hold of a federal politician, Bruce Scott, or pursuing the deparment of the Communications Ombudsman as a last resort. Bruce Scott's office was sympathetic and helpful but as they could not get back to bring me joy I approached the Ombudsman's office for which one rings Melbourne (from the real estate office here).
Around the time I did so I received a communication from Telstra that the first stage of the job could begin on 13th June (Black Friday 13th, lucky for some) and the actual connection could be made on the 16th (As this isn't busy China it seems it would be too much to dig and connect the same day!). I was told I could agree to accept this delay into June or ring and discuss this at a certain number. Not unsurprisingly the person I was advised to ring was uncontactable. So too was the person at the default number provided. But as I didn't see waiting more weeks for a simple job I chose to contact the Ombudsman's office.
I waited from 9th in call line to tell my tale and receive their special job complaint number and though I had hoped the office itself might use its authority to ring Telstra I was next given a number, the office's number, for contact with a high official within Telstra to re-tell my woes. If this didn't do the trick and the matter hadn't been settled by Telstra within 10 days (working days!) I could get back to the O's office for further action. (Back in 10 working days to sort out a job Telstra should supposedly solve within 48 hours and which they had already left undone for 5 to 6 weeks?!)
FORTRESS TELSTRA
The special number given to penetrate fortress Telstra is hardly worth having or perhaps it is so only for the very determined which I somewhat am. Evidently there is a desire not to answer because for forty minutes I just heard music, none of it interrupted with the usual promises or apologies for waiting. It's psychhological warfare to get complainants to ring off in despair. Finally I was speaking to somebody who didn't sound or behave much like any high official except that he was on all of a high horse when his best response to my understandable irritation at how I had been treated was: "If you speak to me like that I will put this phone down". He could not be drawn on what Telstra's much touted promises actually are, or once were, but said I was free to go through the 10 (working day complaint system of the Ombudsman) otherwise....I had kept on insisting upon an alternative until I learned, yes, I could otherwise speak to "Connections" if I wished though it would be no improvement. I hesitated at more runaround but declared I did so wish.
At Connections I at least encountered some polite helpfulness from Christine (down on the Gold Coast rather than Melbourne but still nowhere near me). Christine took all details and said I could wait while she tried to sort things out. When she came back she said she had been trying to twist arms but could get no one to budge on the issue of first work to be done on 13th June, i.e, almost 2 months after application for a job Telstra promises and is supposed to sort out within 48 hours. Asking for the firmest of promises that receiving a temporary phone would not interfere with my place on the list for cable laying, I took the advice to receive a radio phone. I was told it would arrive within 24 hrs and probably the same evening.
I can report that it was brought around at about 8.30pm by some courier, contracter hired by Telstra (i.e.not any Telstra engineer) who wasn't quite sure what the phone would do but efficieintly enough set it up into working order. He believed since the latest kind of modem was involved a USB cable would be sufficient to give me radio Internet. But no such luck as I discovered upon inquiry with Telstra next day. There is no question the phone works but not perfectly. I sometimes have to ring more than once to a number to obtain any ring and the sound is sometimes a problem. One can't seem to leave volume up at a desired point; you ring and are may have to start hitting volume plus in order to hear or be heard. But I concede it's better than nothing at all. Whether I shall be so positive in mid June is another matter. .
Yet perhaps something just might cause connection before the given date. At the very end of May I have received a form from Telstra telling me ( and my doctor) to sign up, for priority treatment with Telstra. This communication is likely to be a response to my various complaints but is also very likely to be material that should have been sent to me long ago and which if it had been sent to me might have speeded a process that I have always been told can't be speeded up. I suspect the simple office problem is that I am not, as the papers assume I would be, an existing customer of Telstra requesting an extra service as opposed to a new customer, a situation not bureacratically foreseen. But how many more surprises will this tale turn up?
TELSTRA AND A VALUES QUESTION
By now I have questions of another more philosophical kind especially as soon as this issue is raised - and by now I can hardly meet anyone or enter a shop and not be asked on the progress of the affair - I am hearing other stories, not just Telstra tales though they do seem particularly symptomatic. I hear about people left with problems councils here or there in Australia couldn't deal with in years, of money constantly lost - in one case $8000 a week because promised decisions re buildings are postponed - the buck passed on to others. It is a picture of almost unbelievable inefficiency, unreliability and no feeling of proper consideration towards people. I ask myself what is the reason? What is Australia about?
As someone not native born and somewhat disadvantaged for that - the Aussie style and accent and savvy is a help at least sometimes - I do ask questions. I suspect that at least part of the problem could be that the much vaunted egalitarianism is paralyzing action. With no one willing either to give or take direction people finish victim to either somebody's resentment or endless will to postpone as soon as the obvious course of action is declared. Whether I am right or wrong about this the simple fact is a lot of people across Australia are unnecessarily suffering for often quite silly pretexts. Since it is the basis of communications in the nation reform not just the organization but attitudes of Telstra might be a good place to set about reforming a few things out of kilter in Australia.
TELSTRA TROUBLES UPDATE June 17th
TELSTRA MAD, BAD OR INDIFFERENT BUT ALWAYS OUTRAGEOUS
After ringing for and obtaining confirmations the work could begin on the 13th June I went ahead to obtain the bobcat and get the trench cut outside the house towards the street on the 12th. This is a job supposed to be done within 24 hrs of Telstra's own work as one shouldn't leave open trenches in front of the street into which people might trip - it's a potential legal liability. A member of Kingaroy council told me to ring her Friday if this time no one turned up or did anything as she would wish to speak to Telstra herself. (Several friends were saying it's time to contact media itself).
Too late to cancel the job and because anyway I received a third confirmation that I would be visited on Friday between 8am and midday, at the last minute I open a letter to discover that, without explanation, the job would be done not as indicated in an earlier letter on the 13th June but 15th July (recall the first Telstra visit was in April!). However this could mean almost anything and is no guarantee either way of action or delay from an institution which by now I knew footballs you back and forth from dept to dept undecided whether you represent a "fault" or a "new line" or unsure whether you even have the job number you cite.
Accordingly, and despite July 15th, I was contacted by Ernie on Friday at 11 am apologizing he could not arrive that day but he would come Monday. I conveyed this information to the councillor and that I felt since something was happening I would have to wait. On Monday it was Alan was in contact, he was coming but then he couldn't come, he would come Tuesday. On Monday afternoon I had spent over an hour listening to music and Telstra pre-recordings while waiting as some persons, and eventually one fairly helpful assistant rang back and forth between depts inbetween which I learned she said there were such terrible arguments raging she was glad I couldn't hear them. (But I could imagine!). I received two calls from Alan on Tuesday (after another assistant) Lackshmi swore someone would be with me Tuesday, it was all arranged and set) but Alan is a technician - better than nothing but we need the contractor as well - and Alan recalled he had visited us in April to do things he couldn't do. He said he was ringing different depts to try to settle things and would ring back later that day but didn't.
Today, Wednesday, by deliberately trying to trick the silly system by ringing a couple of wrong numbers (after having checked my specific pin number for call up was as usual not available - is the pin no assistant on permanent holiday and using an answerer for secretary?) I actually got hold of a, or the, case manager for the job. He seemed more interested in Alan the technician than I am in the circumstances and said he would contact him and get back to sort all this out. Not hearing anything after about 3 hours I went through the slow process of ringing the more automatic than person manned Telstra system again and learned, after suitable wait, that though the case manager thinks my case is a new line, I am all of registered as a "fault" case.
With this degree of mix and muddle no wonder they can't sort out what the council plainly tells them (told them) weeks ago and what the contractor understood he would be doing weeks ago. I was told by Tony the case manager would ring in about ten minutes (two hours later he hasn't) but that he believed the job's preliminary works were for 15th July. Would or could anyone know that and what would be the guarantees?
TELSTRA, THE NIGHTMARE, "CAN'T DO" COMPANY FROM HELL
This is how Telstra treats PRIORITY cases for which I have a certified letter, following a doctor's signed application that we supposedly are such. When I spoke this morning to one assistant I could barely hear her for the fade effect of the radio phone whose volume control I kept adjusting to understand her at all. How can this inferior substitute for a phone cover Telstra's legal obligations or professional work conscience if it has any in the case of priority persons. Clearly if I have these problems my father who is hard of hearing can't be expected to use the phone easily in my absence for any problems or emergency that might crop up.[The answer to this I learn is one is not priority enough!. We can give you another better radio phone - I doubt it, it's how the waves carry over the ranges here - or the condition must be so extreme one is linked to some data flow and a life support machine]. Can you do anything at all before July 15th? "No we can't". Can you give any guarantee that 15th July would deliver anything? "No we can't guarantee anything" As has been expertly pointed out to me alternatives are possible,a temporary wire could easily be laid and arguably the trench along the front of the road which needs endless inquiries, checks, permissions, isn't even necessary. But Telstra the incarnation of Can't can't do anything. It has now been suggested I might take on their radio internet service. This needs looking into. I long ago read an advertisment for it and I recall it said such was a more than a leisurely 28 days to arrange for. (Actually, June 19th, I was told I would be rung between 9 and 10 am about radio internet - but no one rang. Perhaps there isn't a service to talk about. I am living about 130 kms outside Brisbane which is not super rural or outback by Australian standards but the alternative, Optus, tells me they still haven't set up South Burnett Shire as a wireless region!)
Telstra, this seemingly shameless, almost totally disorganized bureaucratic maze, a Kafka's Castle of a can't do company for so many people (I went into the real estate office for essential internet work today only to hear two more tales in variation on my theme) has put my working life on hold since April when I returned from abroad and it makes things between difficult and risky in the case of my father. The stress is terrible every time just to deal with them and waste time and energy again and again telling the details of a story they can't or won't understand or deal with...... And this company needs months to lay and connect a single line?
Who are these people that place Australia in company with the worst organized third country systems, so busy saving or making money on their privatized system they never have staff enough to deal with what's basic? No civilised society should tolerate such shoddiness and mess. Telstra should be round here within hours (or even work through the night if necessary to just keep their word and responsiblities!) No doubt they are, or consider themselves, legally protected against such matters and couldn't care less about anyone and clearly they don't understand what it means to "provide a public service".
Almost everyone in Australia has their Telstra story but my own might be a bit worse than some, It's also the principle reason I have put nothing to this Blog for the nealry two months since I returned from China. Two politicians and the department of the Ombudsman for Communications has been contacted in the course of this sorry tale but it doesn't mean resolution has been or will be any faster. In fact, not even for a politician is Telstra necessarily available to give answer.
Under unforeseen circumstances pressing in since January in early April I left Hong Kong where I had been teaching and living a fairly leisurely existence for around 15 months on Lamma Island. Lamma used to be referred to as Hippie Island and you still walk or bike around because there are only paths not roads but it's not so remote from civilisation I didn't have all mod cons including phone and full broadband access and within days of obtaining myself a apartment with a view there.
One reason I'd been in HKong was to be in reach of my elderly father who had had a triple by pass operation. Early this year I realized he was in various difficulties where he had been living for years and I needed to get him back to Australia rather fast, buy and settle him into a property there. We moved into a house in rural but not outback Queensland (back of Sunshine Coast Hinterland) on April 18th. Things have been fairly good here except......we have had no phone and myself no internet apart from what the kindness of the local real estate office has allowed me to use as I am doing right now for basic work.
BLOCKS AND BLINDSPOTS AND TRENCH DIGS
Australia's main communication service, Telstra, promises, and is supposedly under some kind of legal obligation to provide phones within 2 or 3 days to anyone having, or, as in my case, dealing with anyone who has some kind of potentially serious medical condition. My father has had a heart condition and was under a doctor in HKong as he is here in Australia. Already since being here he has been briefly in the nearest hospital for a bleeding condition after a minor op ..... So there isn't much case my father qualifies for speed as regards phone installation and when I applied for a phone the point was not disputed. True anyone can use a mobile phone and I have done that. I have used an expensive Telstra pre-paid one, the only one said to be able to manage the "blind spots" which the hills and ranges of this area can produce. You make two or three calls and you find you need another card recharge and if you take the phone out with you shopping or anywhere, there's no house phone for my father.
The house which, given our situation, got bought rather quickly stands at the end of a road at the edge of the town/village. On one side is an open field on the other a vacant block which for the time being has little chance its owner will build on it. But they nearly did so last year and there begins the problem. Our house which had been unoccupied for some time used to have phone connection but the neighbour who never built at some stage in their plans had an accident with the cable that runs in front of the vacant block, There now needs to be a new cable laid and a new trench dug for it by Telstra and a new trench dug by us to the front of the road from our house to join the cable, but that should be no big deal. There are people with bobcats can easily serve us for that little problem.
Initially any delay was supposed to be because a Telstra technician didn't have the right length or type of cable or that the waiting list to have anything dug was too long to deal with us immediately and I was receiving promising mobile calls about that. Then it was supposed to be that Telstra could go ahead but that the council couldn't, it needed to give permission for the cable laying. When I finally obtained somebody who was council related they spoke with the local mayor and it was agreed nothing of the sort was involved. Nihil Obstat to laying cable,the responsiblity was all Telstra's. A month had gone by.
Periodically I received letters from Telstra about what I could do and who contact about whatever. Chiefly it was that I should consider accepting a temporary radio phone. This of course would be no help to me personally and my work as it gives no access to internet but my own situation that prevents me from sending files to such as magazines or publishers is of no concern to Telstra only the case of my father even slightly counts. It is notorious people in Australia can be left waiting months for internet facilities.
However, locally I was receiving serious warnings about accepting any radio phone, which incidentally is said to be a "free" service but isn't, (this merely means it is delivered free, otherwise one pays despite levels of inconvenience that could well justify a free ride for anyone!). I was hearing that radio phones assuming they work can be a trap i.e. you could be stuck with this substitute instead of the real item plus related internet access for months. One friend's sister in Brisbane, (which being an urban area one wouldn't even expect to be saddled with what is normally a rural area option), complained she couldn't work her radio phone. About all she could contact or be contacted by was some mad number in Mumbai, India! It seemed one should consent to radio phone as a last desperate resort. It is incidentally a fact that many people in Australia feel so exploited by Telstra that they have cancelled their landline services and use mobiles exclusively (but they need to be urban - I have already alluded to the mobile problem for rural areas!)
POLITICOS AND THE OMBUDSMAN'S OFFICE
As time went by I was advised to try the influence of state politician, Dorothy Pratt, with whom I had had friendly meetings in the past over the legal case, just recently settled to media attention, of queensland artist, Ken Wenzel, who had been nearly three years battling an absurd charge of indecent exposure....on a deserted beach, which is the sort of place you feel you're situated when battling Telstra. Dorothy had had successes obtaining Telstra cooperation in the past but they must have got tired of her successful complaints as she couldn't even get a reply out of them. In the face of this frustration she advised getting hold of a federal politician, Bruce Scott, or pursuing the deparment of the Communications Ombudsman as a last resort. Bruce Scott's office was sympathetic and helpful but as they could not get back to bring me joy I approached the Ombudsman's office for which one rings Melbourne (from the real estate office here).
Around the time I did so I received a communication from Telstra that the first stage of the job could begin on 13th June (Black Friday 13th, lucky for some) and the actual connection could be made on the 16th (As this isn't busy China it seems it would be too much to dig and connect the same day!). I was told I could agree to accept this delay into June or ring and discuss this at a certain number. Not unsurprisingly the person I was advised to ring was uncontactable. So too was the person at the default number provided. But as I didn't see waiting more weeks for a simple job I chose to contact the Ombudsman's office.
I waited from 9th in call line to tell my tale and receive their special job complaint number and though I had hoped the office itself might use its authority to ring Telstra I was next given a number, the office's number, for contact with a high official within Telstra to re-tell my woes. If this didn't do the trick and the matter hadn't been settled by Telstra within 10 days (working days!) I could get back to the O's office for further action. (Back in 10 working days to sort out a job Telstra should supposedly solve within 48 hours and which they had already left undone for 5 to 6 weeks?!)
FORTRESS TELSTRA
The special number given to penetrate fortress Telstra is hardly worth having or perhaps it is so only for the very determined which I somewhat am. Evidently there is a desire not to answer because for forty minutes I just heard music, none of it interrupted with the usual promises or apologies for waiting. It's psychhological warfare to get complainants to ring off in despair. Finally I was speaking to somebody who didn't sound or behave much like any high official except that he was on all of a high horse when his best response to my understandable irritation at how I had been treated was: "If you speak to me like that I will put this phone down". He could not be drawn on what Telstra's much touted promises actually are, or once were, but said I was free to go through the 10 (working day complaint system of the Ombudsman) otherwise....I had kept on insisting upon an alternative until I learned, yes, I could otherwise speak to "Connections" if I wished though it would be no improvement. I hesitated at more runaround but declared I did so wish.
At Connections I at least encountered some polite helpfulness from Christine (down on the Gold Coast rather than Melbourne but still nowhere near me). Christine took all details and said I could wait while she tried to sort things out. When she came back she said she had been trying to twist arms but could get no one to budge on the issue of first work to be done on 13th June, i.e, almost 2 months after application for a job Telstra promises and is supposed to sort out within 48 hours. Asking for the firmest of promises that receiving a temporary phone would not interfere with my place on the list for cable laying, I took the advice to receive a radio phone. I was told it would arrive within 24 hrs and probably the same evening.
I can report that it was brought around at about 8.30pm by some courier, contracter hired by Telstra (i.e.not any Telstra engineer) who wasn't quite sure what the phone would do but efficieintly enough set it up into working order. He believed since the latest kind of modem was involved a USB cable would be sufficient to give me radio Internet. But no such luck as I discovered upon inquiry with Telstra next day. There is no question the phone works but not perfectly. I sometimes have to ring more than once to a number to obtain any ring and the sound is sometimes a problem. One can't seem to leave volume up at a desired point; you ring and are may have to start hitting volume plus in order to hear or be heard. But I concede it's better than nothing at all. Whether I shall be so positive in mid June is another matter. .
Yet perhaps something just might cause connection before the given date. At the very end of May I have received a form from Telstra telling me ( and my doctor) to sign up, for priority treatment with Telstra. This communication is likely to be a response to my various complaints but is also very likely to be material that should have been sent to me long ago and which if it had been sent to me might have speeded a process that I have always been told can't be speeded up. I suspect the simple office problem is that I am not, as the papers assume I would be, an existing customer of Telstra requesting an extra service as opposed to a new customer, a situation not bureacratically foreseen. But how many more surprises will this tale turn up?
TELSTRA AND A VALUES QUESTION
By now I have questions of another more philosophical kind especially as soon as this issue is raised - and by now I can hardly meet anyone or enter a shop and not be asked on the progress of the affair - I am hearing other stories, not just Telstra tales though they do seem particularly symptomatic. I hear about people left with problems councils here or there in Australia couldn't deal with in years, of money constantly lost - in one case $8000 a week because promised decisions re buildings are postponed - the buck passed on to others. It is a picture of almost unbelievable inefficiency, unreliability and no feeling of proper consideration towards people. I ask myself what is the reason? What is Australia about?
As someone not native born and somewhat disadvantaged for that - the Aussie style and accent and savvy is a help at least sometimes - I do ask questions. I suspect that at least part of the problem could be that the much vaunted egalitarianism is paralyzing action. With no one willing either to give or take direction people finish victim to either somebody's resentment or endless will to postpone as soon as the obvious course of action is declared. Whether I am right or wrong about this the simple fact is a lot of people across Australia are unnecessarily suffering for often quite silly pretexts. Since it is the basis of communications in the nation reform not just the organization but attitudes of Telstra might be a good place to set about reforming a few things out of kilter in Australia.
TELSTRA TROUBLES UPDATE June 17th
TELSTRA MAD, BAD OR INDIFFERENT BUT ALWAYS OUTRAGEOUS
After ringing for and obtaining confirmations the work could begin on the 13th June I went ahead to obtain the bobcat and get the trench cut outside the house towards the street on the 12th. This is a job supposed to be done within 24 hrs of Telstra's own work as one shouldn't leave open trenches in front of the street into which people might trip - it's a potential legal liability. A member of Kingaroy council told me to ring her Friday if this time no one turned up or did anything as she would wish to speak to Telstra herself. (Several friends were saying it's time to contact media itself).
Too late to cancel the job and because anyway I received a third confirmation that I would be visited on Friday between 8am and midday, at the last minute I open a letter to discover that, without explanation, the job would be done not as indicated in an earlier letter on the 13th June but 15th July (recall the first Telstra visit was in April!). However this could mean almost anything and is no guarantee either way of action or delay from an institution which by now I knew footballs you back and forth from dept to dept undecided whether you represent a "fault" or a "new line" or unsure whether you even have the job number you cite.
Accordingly, and despite July 15th, I was contacted by Ernie on Friday at 11 am apologizing he could not arrive that day but he would come Monday. I conveyed this information to the councillor and that I felt since something was happening I would have to wait. On Monday it was Alan was in contact, he was coming but then he couldn't come, he would come Tuesday. On Monday afternoon I had spent over an hour listening to music and Telstra pre-recordings while waiting as some persons, and eventually one fairly helpful assistant rang back and forth between depts inbetween which I learned she said there were such terrible arguments raging she was glad I couldn't hear them. (But I could imagine!). I received two calls from Alan on Tuesday (after another assistant) Lackshmi swore someone would be with me Tuesday, it was all arranged and set) but Alan is a technician - better than nothing but we need the contractor as well - and Alan recalled he had visited us in April to do things he couldn't do. He said he was ringing different depts to try to settle things and would ring back later that day but didn't.
Today, Wednesday, by deliberately trying to trick the silly system by ringing a couple of wrong numbers (after having checked my specific pin number for call up was as usual not available - is the pin no assistant on permanent holiday and using an answerer for secretary?) I actually got hold of a, or the, case manager for the job. He seemed more interested in Alan the technician than I am in the circumstances and said he would contact him and get back to sort all this out. Not hearing anything after about 3 hours I went through the slow process of ringing the more automatic than person manned Telstra system again and learned, after suitable wait, that though the case manager thinks my case is a new line, I am all of registered as a "fault" case.
With this degree of mix and muddle no wonder they can't sort out what the council plainly tells them (told them) weeks ago and what the contractor understood he would be doing weeks ago. I was told by Tony the case manager would ring in about ten minutes (two hours later he hasn't) but that he believed the job's preliminary works were for 15th July. Would or could anyone know that and what would be the guarantees?
TELSTRA, THE NIGHTMARE, "CAN'T DO" COMPANY FROM HELL
This is how Telstra treats PRIORITY cases for which I have a certified letter, following a doctor's signed application that we supposedly are such. When I spoke this morning to one assistant I could barely hear her for the fade effect of the radio phone whose volume control I kept adjusting to understand her at all. How can this inferior substitute for a phone cover Telstra's legal obligations or professional work conscience if it has any in the case of priority persons. Clearly if I have these problems my father who is hard of hearing can't be expected to use the phone easily in my absence for any problems or emergency that might crop up.[The answer to this I learn is one is not priority enough!. We can give you another better radio phone - I doubt it, it's how the waves carry over the ranges here - or the condition must be so extreme one is linked to some data flow and a life support machine]. Can you do anything at all before July 15th? "No we can't". Can you give any guarantee that 15th July would deliver anything? "No we can't guarantee anything" As has been expertly pointed out to me alternatives are possible,a temporary wire could easily be laid and arguably the trench along the front of the road which needs endless inquiries, checks, permissions, isn't even necessary. But Telstra the incarnation of Can't can't do anything. It has now been suggested I might take on their radio internet service. This needs looking into. I long ago read an advertisment for it and I recall it said such was a more than a leisurely 28 days to arrange for. (Actually, June 19th, I was told I would be rung between 9 and 10 am about radio internet - but no one rang. Perhaps there isn't a service to talk about. I am living about 130 kms outside Brisbane which is not super rural or outback by Australian standards but the alternative, Optus, tells me they still haven't set up South Burnett Shire as a wireless region!)
Telstra, this seemingly shameless, almost totally disorganized bureaucratic maze, a Kafka's Castle of a can't do company for so many people (I went into the real estate office for essential internet work today only to hear two more tales in variation on my theme) has put my working life on hold since April when I returned from abroad and it makes things between difficult and risky in the case of my father. The stress is terrible every time just to deal with them and waste time and energy again and again telling the details of a story they can't or won't understand or deal with...... And this company needs months to lay and connect a single line?
Who are these people that place Australia in company with the worst organized third country systems, so busy saving or making money on their privatized system they never have staff enough to deal with what's basic? No civilised society should tolerate such shoddiness and mess. Telstra should be round here within hours (or even work through the night if necessary to just keep their word and responsiblities!) No doubt they are, or consider themselves, legally protected against such matters and couldn't care less about anyone and clearly they don't understand what it means to "provide a public service".
Sunday, March 30, 2008
SO WHAT IF AVIAD COHEN WERE GAY?
QUESTIONS AS IMPORTANT AS ANSWERS
In case you don’t know his story and what’s most distinctive about the definitely different American Jewish rap and heeb hop artist, Aviad Cohen (b. 11th March 1975) I’ll be providing some facts presently. But despite the title I’ll say immediately this isn’t an exercise in outing someone who wouldn’t want to be outed. Though I have my ideas I don’t have the facts finally to assure you if Aviad is gay - whether by my definition or yours. The point in what follows is almost more in the problematic of the question, its what if, than in the precise answer because in this instance even just asking and imagining highlights a scandal not of Aviad’s persona or personal life but issues for society, for Jews and Christians they still can’t handle. There are issues here which retain much of the perverse complexity and suppressed hysteria Eva Kosofsky demonstrated in The Epistemology of the Closet (1993) where everything can become mirage and lie.
Consider how if I propose, (especially to any Jew or Christian) that Aviad could be “gay”, there’s still no real agreement about what I mean. Terms and expectations in this area elude and collide. Conservative Christians will prefer to speak of “homosexual” rather than gay - no gay can be happy in their book! - and whatever word gets used they might think I’m referring to Aviad’s lifestyle or morals when I could be referring to his mentality and style. In which case some might say I was taking unnecessary liberties with truth and casting slurs on the decidedly original Aviad, something I’m not willing to admit. Others might think, in light of certain statements from Aviad himself, that given any grounds at all to raise the gay issue we ought to be talking rather about bisexuality. Some would also protest, if I talked about Aviad as a rather glamorous “gay Christian” I was employing unacceptable oxymorons akin to that of “Christian Jew” in the opinion of conservative Jews. (Neither identities supposedly exist with any meaning, the reason Christian Jews prefer “Messianic Jews”). So if Aviad was in some, or any, sense “gay” he would need for some people somehow not to be so in act or feeling. Or some might allow him the feeling but not the behavior. So definition keep shifting. Where’s the truth, what’s the (possible) identity?
And identity for this latter day son of Aaron (priestly Cohens descend from Aaron) is the question that Aviad’s life seems so far to have been very much about. My contention is that he hasn’t finished with his identity making, category defying process because identity is not just established by one’s beliefs, however important. Identity is also about one’s very self and the Ruach Ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit) Aviad believes he talks to and who talks to him and who scripture says leads into all truth, requires self knowledge as well as God knowledge.
AVIAD COHEN: A JEW IN QUEST OF VOCATION AND IDENTITY.
Aviad Cohen is a stylish Jewish rap artist who after a successful, even famous Hollywood stint as 50 Shekel, made a dramatic and influential conversion to Christianity in 2004. This has given him a new identity that’s the subject of controversially successful performances like Hooked on the Truth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMlRS1z040Q
Aviad Cohen, a true Piscean keen to serve has always wanted to give something to the Jewish community. Doing Jewish rap in Hollywood to wide acclaim seemed a novel way of achieving this. But unsatisfied with his most kosher boy reputation he also wanted to know what a Jewish vocation meant. He returned from Hollywood to New York’s Brooklyn to become a good Orthodox Jew. Study and ritual observance nevertheless confused and disappointed him. He wanted to find God and encountered a religion without real prayer and devotion that seemed dry as case law studies and full of rituals sometimes so complicated he got lost in them. The rabbis came to seem oppressive – one tried to prevent him from leaving Shabbat observance when he was in a distressed state, others refused to discuss subjects like Jesus with him nearly throwing him over in their vehemence.
Pisces is the sign of tears and Piscean crises often manifest in violent weeping fits such as got England’s Prince Edward out of the navy. Aviad’s weeping fits proved to be a way out of Judaism. He was now asking for God to reveal himself. God began to do so as a result of his discovering and doing the forbidden, furtively buying and anxiously watching a video of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a film widely condemned among Jews and trendy Catholic scholars like Paula Fredrickson as anti –Semitic. For Aviad it was simply the truth. There didn’t seem to be a vast difference between his rabbis and the film’s pharisees and he realized with horror his people had done away with the only Messiah they were going to get. Things developed from there. In no time Aviad was talking to God and had found his vocation. He would represent Jesus. He had found the truth and peace. In fact, as one of his raps had it, he is “Hooked on Truth” and moreover, “hooked on a Jew”, namely Jesus.
He needs to be a bit hooked as he’s certainly taken on a hard gig. Though response from many quarters including from even a few Orthodox Jews has been surprisingly positive, there is still a considerable degree of prejudice and rejection in Jewish circles (though more especially in Israel where there are anti conversion laws), against any Messianic Jews. You are socially on the outer, much more so than if you had declared himself one of the Jewbuds (Jewish Buddhists) and within Israel Messianics have recorded physical attacks and synagogue burnings. So Aviad is probably correct to say he has had to give up a lot since easier 50 Shekel days and there has been the sad alienation from a family that doesn’t accept his beliefs.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PUER INPUT
I don’t question the sincerity and authenticity of Aviad’s conversion as such, but I am reminded of my own statements in A Special Illumination, a study of gay spiritualities, to the effect that Christianity, which psychologically and spiritually speaking is so geared to especially the dynamics of the puer archetype, is accordingly the most “gay” of the world religions. Like the gay mindset it breaks out, it “comes out”, it overthrows, it resurrects, it shocks and surprises, it’s aerial aspiring and visionary, it feels itself chosen and right - much like Aviad who unabashedly sings, “I’m a man after God’s own heart” and “I have the truth”. But winged feet back on the ground where puer hates to be this impulse also often fails to understand and recognize itself at a certain level, the level of its own puer eros. It’s the reason the faith has such church splitting difficulties around homosexuality but has its gay following, which like its female following it attracts in every generation despite the condemnations and discriminations historically where both gays and women are concerned.
It would be hard to overstate how much some of Aviad’s performances are like a gay “coming out” session transposed right up to (or down to) the will to be raising one’s hands not to be ashamed, throwing out (normal) pride to have proper pride and identity. Aviad, though always wanting to be accepted as a Jew, even a more correct one, (“jewjew”, “true jew” as he would say), has taken on a Christian pride role so well that he and his fans don’t feel any need to ask other questions that might meaningfully be asked. If he lived two thousand years ago one feels Aviad’s position might be vaguely akin to that of the enthusiastic young gospeller, John Mark, who was odd (queer?) enough to fall foul of the Alpha male, Paul (for whom he was worthless as a travel/mission companion but “useful for serving”) and different enough to throw unnecessary comments into his record like Jesus looking on a young man to love him, and a nameless youth (himself?) running away naked into the night.
To look at him Aviad (a name corresponding to one of the five titles of the Messiah) seems less like a rap artist than a cute member of one of the classic modern boy bands like Boyzone. And one recalls how one of Boyzone’s members, Stephen Gately, a Catholic and also an emotional Piscean like Aviad, after many struggles came out reluctantly, but very publicly as gay. The puer (divine child) archetype seems dominant for Aviad whether physically or psychologically. Emerging coyly between balloons for YouTube and his thirty third birthday, he could pass for eighteen or at any rate someone in his twenties. Psychologically his transition to Christianity (described and dramatized in clips on the Sid Roth It’s Supernatural show run by a Messianic Jew) was like a puer revolt against the senex (old man) figures of the rabbis. Hooked on the Truth (one of its versions) is quite funny, or at least ironic in aping a rabbi/student exchange on Isaiah 53 and messianic prophecy, “Well my son, this is about us” (the Jews), “No rabbi it says he, not we”. “You’re not God rabbi”. I am struck by this same kind of puer-in-revolt, ironic, almost in-your-face gay style (I didn’t say identity) of another young Christian convert from an Orthodox Jewish family expounding his beliefs in a YouTube slot near to Aviad material.
The rap artist in Aviad is nonetheless increasingly leaving criticism to become in his own estimation, “a praise singer”. In doing so this son of Aaron is becoming almost more like an innovator of a kind of gay disco spirituality, swaying, singing and raising hands to Yah “on the dancefloor”. There is talk about wanting to be “holy high” on things spiritual and there is always talk about being hooked. Admittedly there’s a dance/trance strain of the mystical to Hasidic Judaism but it doesn’t seem to have been an item with Aviad’s severe mentors. Anyway, something like the obsessional, ecstatic, sometimes narcotic world of gay club celebration is after a manner getting assimilated and transformed in the Aviad performance though not necessarily in the direction of the mystery of the divine. (I can’t judge of music and style here but the all-apparent immediacy over mystery may be a matter of emphasis partly theological. The Praise Yah song implies that like numbers of people Aviad wouldn’t identify Yah(weh) with Jesus who is necessarily son of El Elyon, the Highest. But if one is going to praise and thank Yah for Jesus as though Yah (the traditionally ecstatic God name hence most suited to any music and dance) should refer to the Father one maybe misses a bit of the mysterious otherness specific to the High God behind Yeshua, Jesus, the truer Lord of the Dance figure who in the Sermon on the Mount advises dancing even amid persecution.
Disappointingly, a black gay pastor I cite in my A Special Illumination on gay spiritualities doesn’t reveal precisely what was supposedly revealed to him on a dance floor about the need to reclaim, and how to express, the gay difference spiritually, but Aviad seems to have started down a road towards realizing whatever that difference might be, even if he and we haven’t quite thought he might himself be a gay person doing a gay thing. And I don’t doubt Aviad would be the last to admit he was gay if he was or even to let himself imagine he might be – his main identity aspiration is to be accepted as “truejew”, so anything else is just a further barrier in the way of that. And needless to say there would be plenty of Messianics with kneejerk homophobic reactions that Aviad wouldn’t wish to offend along with all the fans determined to convince him he couldn’t possibly be “homosexual” and that anyone like myself even imagining such things was the very devil come to deceive and destroy every good work. (This, incidentally, is doubtless how sexual issues got swept under the carpet in early Christianity never to find adequate resolution later. The too long period of persecutions reduced everything to purely religious rights with identity making mainly in terms of martyrs and martyrdom rather as today Israeli Messianics are more interested in not having another synogague burned down than if anyone has marital or sexual problems acknowledging which could lead to further community controversies). Nevertheless, if there were any self awareness and communication problems in this area for Aviad they began long before he turned Christian.
PROBLEMS OF AVIAD, THE MOST KOSHER BOY
Curiously enough the newly successful kosher boy (See YouTube’s Diary of a Jewish Rapper and 50 Shekel’s Search for Lil’ Spenda) Aviad comported himself more gay/queer and even effeminate than he has ever done since so that it was a mini-miracle he wasn’t early on in his career singled out, if not outed, by irate Jewish groups defending holy Zion against attack from the rolling eyes and gushing gestures of queendom. He speaks of the perfect mother and his desire to have the one true wife. He says: “I don’t want chicks, I want one good woman”. Fine, except that other kosher Jewboys like David and Solomon had no problems around wanting a few chicks. Plus there’s a distinction that some who can’t imagine any life beyond married domesticity won’t make between liking women’s company, (something quite a few gay males enjoy) and actually wanting chicks.
Anyway, at this early stage when queendom was more evident, and was presumably dismissed as youthful inexperience or embarrassment, Aviad still hoped to make his act into something like a Sonny and Cher duo in which he would be assisted by an imagined rhymer girl, Lil’ Spenda. Invitation went out to find her and suggestions poured in from all quarters. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely - if anything it’s the oldest gay story in the world - kosher boy found not one of the charmers quite right. He was even prepared to say he didn’t want to spoil their lives because they lived too far away etc etc. Who was he trying to convince?
Arguably the Piscean dream-cum-fantasy net was already taking over but it was the kind of dream (and if it was also self deception then it was the kind of deception) that conservative societies Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Chinese etc are well known to indulge. If the person doesn’t understand or care to reveal their desires, needs or identities because they know their society wouldn’t appreciate it, a relieved society rewards them by playing along with what helps keep their customs and value systems intact unquestioned. Thus the Sir Galahads can’t find a girlfriend because, well, it’s perfectly obvious there’s not a girl good enough the length and breath of the land and because every woman is little better than a slut or hussie in the face of the Galahads’ shining idealism. Another covering myth can be work. The Galahads are so “on the job” obviously they can’t be expected to waste precious time on dalliances towards life mission destroying marriages. Not yet anyway.
Around thirty or beyond pressure mounts to marry at all costs. The Galahads often graciously concede and it can have troubling results. Stories and studies I recall reading on homosexuality in Israel and among Jews are full of sad tales of marriages that don’t work leading to depression and all manner of problems. This happens especially if there is labour to have a child, labour which can finish the relationship off entirely as the gay person having done their duty and (sort of) proved themselves according to the rules of what Jewish lesbian poet, Adrienne Rich, dubs “compulsory heterosexuality”, can’t take the strain any more and bolts leaving the partner holding the baby at the first sight of promising same sex love. As a phenomenon bisexuality exists and occasionally too quite effeminate men can be ardently heterosexual so that one can never be perfectly gay sure about any given individual’s orientation, but in conservative societies opposed to individualism, homosexuality often masquerades, and often with tragic consequences, as a bisexuality felt to be more flattering to male egos. (He’s so virile he can take on anyone!)
BUT “SOME ARE BORN EUNUCHS”…….
In traditional societies whatever rights or freedom in terms of self expression might be appropriate it’s something necessarily subordinate to the question of freedom from the system, hence from marriage. Without this freedom established almost nothing else can be dealt with as otherwise marriage with compulsory heterosexuality looms like an eleventh commandment, the great ideal to follow as it does for fundamentalist Christians who in reality read their Bibles very selectively, quite as selectively as everyone else they criticize. And they want a Bible that tells them all “homosexuality” (they never seem to realize the word isn’t in the Bible) is always unnatural and all gays always curable. Which the Bible doesn’t obligingly affirm.
Notably Jesus links the subject of the eunuchs (Mt 19: 12,13), some of whom he maintains are that way “from their mothers’ wombs”, to the theme of who should marry. As I have been recalling for Swedish and Norwegian radio recently an ignored forgotten point (but which Norwegian theologian, Ragnhild Schanke, has stressed as regards a little understood gospel passage) is that in Jesus’ era, “eunuchs” didn’t necessarily imply men castrated or sexually inactive. The term was more like latin spadones and Hebrew saris – not attracted to the opposite sex, not fit for marriage for whatever reason. It was therefore the nearest word Jesus’ world had to the modern and more psychologically geared “homosexual”. I therefore maintain one way to read Jesus on the eunuchs, especially today, is to see him as regarding it as necessary for all believers to become just a little bit socially marginalized and psychologically “gay” in their perspectives to be truly children of the kingdom. Modern revisionist Christian defence of gays on the basis Jesus never mentioned them or homosexuality is almost universal but incorrect and not even the eunuchs theme is the only reference Jesus made to gays and any homophobia regarding them though I won’t enlarge on that controversial claim here.
It is however an interesting development in the wake of gay liberation that gays are now claiming the right to marriage and those Christians who don’t agree with conservatives in wanting society’s “eunuchs” to be the castrates of their imagining via an automatic total celibacy, want to have them in unions exactly like and ethically assessed like heterosexual marriage. Though this is another theme beyond present scope, the idea of perfect equivalence in satisfaction of modern equality ideals could be questioned. If difference defines the socio/sexual “deviant”, might there not need to be a variant form or name of relationship and ethics? After all, can love, relating, spirituality, understanding of the sexual act, ever be quite identical for gays and straights? Why should heterosexuals have the last word on the mind, lives values and titles of homosexuals any more than men on those of women?
These are weighty questions and the concept of a gay ethics a whole field which I have myself been somewhat prevented (denied study, writing, debating opportunities) by both spiritual and secular gays, not to mention Christians at large, from sufficiently exploring despite certain qualifications in my case to do so. However….. all one need ask in the case of any person like Aviad caught in a model religious role at once imposed on them and self imposed is can such an individual be fully integrated without integrating at least some elements of sexual psychology beyond their new found spiritual one?
I don’t believe it’s enough to assume such persons automatically can and that they should live “beyond” their eros in the role of eunuch-as-castrate to satisfy some mainstream (of too often alpha male bully boys who push to the front of churches and decide for everyone what “freedom in Christ” will be – Nigeria’s Bishop Akinola and America’s David Virtue of VirtueOnline who doesn’t seem to want gays even darkening Anglican/Episcopalian church doors comes to mind). I would argue it can’t be done with much conviction and authenticity and unless I am seriously wrong in things I see and read about Aviad I think the non connections, the non sequiturs in his style, gestures, the sometimes rambling TV interview and YouTube statements, the charming mix of coy with blatant that to Christian fans simply make him “unusual” are linked to a measure of other direction of the self that the artist in Aviad doesn’t completely recognize.
In whatever sense you care to read the signs and whatever Aviad’s true orientation may be, his style and performances are somewhat “queer”. You find almost anything can mean something else for him. He will tell you he “has a peace” and make a sign like he’s picking up a piece of something. But this tendency to a kind of double think is more liable to occur where it’s not perfectly clear who we are and we may prefer people not to know.
CONTACTING THE UNCONTACTABLE, SAYING THE UNSAYABLE
Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to someone who’s genuinely and bravely trying hard and at least sometimes succeeding. And it must be admitted that in the best of all possible worlds I should anyway have been able to send some of my ideas to Aviad directly and privately. But one can’t do this. It’s not peculiar to Aviad but almost axiomatic for all American based “ministries” that it’s virtually impossible to reach their leader, star, prophet or mastermind directly. You can send just about everything from fan mail to prayer requests and of course donations now that all these oracles have faith but almost none of them reckons to live “by faith” in divine provision. But you can’t reach any ministry’s star performer even if God had a message for you for that person. It’s the sort of situation has helped bigotries and heresies and hypocrisies of all kinds thrive within American religion because criticism is blocked entirely, filtered out by secretaries or the contact system of modern net sites.
I have for example never as a writer been able to write to such as popular fundamentalist preacher, David Wilkerson, who deserves to be seriously rapped over the knuckles about some quite scripturally unjustified statements re homosexuality, not to say some seriously failed prophecies he should never have made. I could tactfully have gone via Aviad’s interviewer, the mentioned Sid Roth, but what use? When I wrote to that gentleman who seeks the supernatural everywhere that the horoscope of Israel is a miracle of biblical information (even asteroid Solomon conjuncting the Part of Wisdom) he, or rather his minders, couldn’t manage even an acknowledgement. Ignorance, including of the Talmud on astrology, doubtless dismissed my revelations as “witchcraft” and infraction of various tortured readings of Torah – in which case why not dismiss Christ’s birth with its astrologers on the same lines? So, tactful interventions aren’t possible these days and this kind of article becomes of necessity the means of saying things that ought to be communicated.
I shall conclude by saying blessings on an original, experimental Son of Aaron and let’s hope Aviad finds somebody, who needs to be sustained with raisins and refreshed with apples because perhaps he, rather than she, is faint with love (Song 2:5) for the super cute praise singer. Or perhaps such wishes are by now already irrelevant. There’s always the possibility - one I haven’t explored here - that spiritual devotion in this case has become like some Jewish/Christian version of Hindu bhakti or Hari Krishna cult where ecstatic devotion finishes by masking, or substituting for, whatever the person’s romantic/erotic urges may be. I leave to the reader to sort out the queerness of my title as applied to these reflections and whether or not a comma should be inserted after the word, so, to render a different sense. Go with what sense you like. Answer these issues as you will. It doesn’t matter and/or maybe it matters a lot.
AFTERWORD: A BIT MORE AVIAD COHEN MYSTERY
From some further Net reading I see I am not the only person to have noticed what seemed like a gay/queer persona around Aviad Cohen. Rather inexcusably – it’s the reason they nowadays pass the anti discrimination laws that some conservative Chrstians are determined to object to! – someone cruelly wrote in response to Aviad’s rather incoherent YouTube comments on The Golden Compass film, that he seemed like “a fag who has just lost his boyfriend”. But suppose that gross cariacture doesn't describe the real Aviad at all. We then find the following at
http://www.cbn.com/cbnmusic/interviews/hg_aviadcohen110406.aspx
which however itself shows the cited 50 Shekel ‘Lil Spenda statements I cited about not wanting chicks was PR and couldn’t have been true unless again we are not being told something amid the confessions. We read that:
“….Aviad dropped the 50 Shekel label symbolizing his turn from an old lifestyle and his new faith in the Messiah. He left everything behind: his plans as a rap artist, an entertainment company owner, and his lustful actions in looking for satisfaction through sex. All of that is behind him now. “Who cares about the sex? I want the Savior,” he says. Life isn’t easy, but knowing the Truth and love from Yeshua makes everything more than bearable. He’s also just taking it one step at a time.
“I used to commit adultery against God,” Aviad says. “It was destroying me…. I’m staying celibate until I get married or even if I never get married. It’s not a suggestion from God. It’s a requirement.”
One could ask what exactly committing adultery against God means. Jewish Torah defined adultery is taking somebody else’s wife and God has no wife. True one could, like ancient Israel behave like an unfaithful wife or go a-whoring and there are elements of prostitution in the porn business but it’s not really “adultery”. We may suppose, or are expected to suppose from these frank, perhaps unnecessary confessions that these porn interests and maybe sexual adventures 50 Shekel had said he didn’t want but was maybe having were heterosexually driven. In which case we are maybe talking about bisexuality.
Yes, it's all a bit bewildering. I revert to my original assertion that the questions are almost most important than the answers in this story because they force us to think about how especially religious people assess people's identities. Beyond that the one certainty in all this is we are talking about some kind of mystery - a rather Piscean one, I think.
In case you don’t know his story and what’s most distinctive about the definitely different American Jewish rap and heeb hop artist, Aviad Cohen (b. 11th March 1975) I’ll be providing some facts presently. But despite the title I’ll say immediately this isn’t an exercise in outing someone who wouldn’t want to be outed. Though I have my ideas I don’t have the facts finally to assure you if Aviad is gay - whether by my definition or yours. The point in what follows is almost more in the problematic of the question, its what if, than in the precise answer because in this instance even just asking and imagining highlights a scandal not of Aviad’s persona or personal life but issues for society, for Jews and Christians they still can’t handle. There are issues here which retain much of the perverse complexity and suppressed hysteria Eva Kosofsky demonstrated in The Epistemology of the Closet (1993) where everything can become mirage and lie.
Consider how if I propose, (especially to any Jew or Christian) that Aviad could be “gay”, there’s still no real agreement about what I mean. Terms and expectations in this area elude and collide. Conservative Christians will prefer to speak of “homosexual” rather than gay - no gay can be happy in their book! - and whatever word gets used they might think I’m referring to Aviad’s lifestyle or morals when I could be referring to his mentality and style. In which case some might say I was taking unnecessary liberties with truth and casting slurs on the decidedly original Aviad, something I’m not willing to admit. Others might think, in light of certain statements from Aviad himself, that given any grounds at all to raise the gay issue we ought to be talking rather about bisexuality. Some would also protest, if I talked about Aviad as a rather glamorous “gay Christian” I was employing unacceptable oxymorons akin to that of “Christian Jew” in the opinion of conservative Jews. (Neither identities supposedly exist with any meaning, the reason Christian Jews prefer “Messianic Jews”). So if Aviad was in some, or any, sense “gay” he would need for some people somehow not to be so in act or feeling. Or some might allow him the feeling but not the behavior. So definition keep shifting. Where’s the truth, what’s the (possible) identity?
And identity for this latter day son of Aaron (priestly Cohens descend from Aaron) is the question that Aviad’s life seems so far to have been very much about. My contention is that he hasn’t finished with his identity making, category defying process because identity is not just established by one’s beliefs, however important. Identity is also about one’s very self and the Ruach Ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit) Aviad believes he talks to and who talks to him and who scripture says leads into all truth, requires self knowledge as well as God knowledge.
AVIAD COHEN: A JEW IN QUEST OF VOCATION AND IDENTITY.
Aviad Cohen is a stylish Jewish rap artist who after a successful, even famous Hollywood stint as 50 Shekel, made a dramatic and influential conversion to Christianity in 2004. This has given him a new identity that’s the subject of controversially successful performances like Hooked on the Truth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMlRS1z040Q
Aviad Cohen, a true Piscean keen to serve has always wanted to give something to the Jewish community. Doing Jewish rap in Hollywood to wide acclaim seemed a novel way of achieving this. But unsatisfied with his most kosher boy reputation he also wanted to know what a Jewish vocation meant. He returned from Hollywood to New York’s Brooklyn to become a good Orthodox Jew. Study and ritual observance nevertheless confused and disappointed him. He wanted to find God and encountered a religion without real prayer and devotion that seemed dry as case law studies and full of rituals sometimes so complicated he got lost in them. The rabbis came to seem oppressive – one tried to prevent him from leaving Shabbat observance when he was in a distressed state, others refused to discuss subjects like Jesus with him nearly throwing him over in their vehemence.
Pisces is the sign of tears and Piscean crises often manifest in violent weeping fits such as got England’s Prince Edward out of the navy. Aviad’s weeping fits proved to be a way out of Judaism. He was now asking for God to reveal himself. God began to do so as a result of his discovering and doing the forbidden, furtively buying and anxiously watching a video of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a film widely condemned among Jews and trendy Catholic scholars like Paula Fredrickson as anti –Semitic. For Aviad it was simply the truth. There didn’t seem to be a vast difference between his rabbis and the film’s pharisees and he realized with horror his people had done away with the only Messiah they were going to get. Things developed from there. In no time Aviad was talking to God and had found his vocation. He would represent Jesus. He had found the truth and peace. In fact, as one of his raps had it, he is “Hooked on Truth” and moreover, “hooked on a Jew”, namely Jesus.
He needs to be a bit hooked as he’s certainly taken on a hard gig. Though response from many quarters including from even a few Orthodox Jews has been surprisingly positive, there is still a considerable degree of prejudice and rejection in Jewish circles (though more especially in Israel where there are anti conversion laws), against any Messianic Jews. You are socially on the outer, much more so than if you had declared himself one of the Jewbuds (Jewish Buddhists) and within Israel Messianics have recorded physical attacks and synagogue burnings. So Aviad is probably correct to say he has had to give up a lot since easier 50 Shekel days and there has been the sad alienation from a family that doesn’t accept his beliefs.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PUER INPUT
I don’t question the sincerity and authenticity of Aviad’s conversion as such, but I am reminded of my own statements in A Special Illumination, a study of gay spiritualities, to the effect that Christianity, which psychologically and spiritually speaking is so geared to especially the dynamics of the puer archetype, is accordingly the most “gay” of the world religions. Like the gay mindset it breaks out, it “comes out”, it overthrows, it resurrects, it shocks and surprises, it’s aerial aspiring and visionary, it feels itself chosen and right - much like Aviad who unabashedly sings, “I’m a man after God’s own heart” and “I have the truth”. But winged feet back on the ground where puer hates to be this impulse also often fails to understand and recognize itself at a certain level, the level of its own puer eros. It’s the reason the faith has such church splitting difficulties around homosexuality but has its gay following, which like its female following it attracts in every generation despite the condemnations and discriminations historically where both gays and women are concerned.
It would be hard to overstate how much some of Aviad’s performances are like a gay “coming out” session transposed right up to (or down to) the will to be raising one’s hands not to be ashamed, throwing out (normal) pride to have proper pride and identity. Aviad, though always wanting to be accepted as a Jew, even a more correct one, (“jewjew”, “true jew” as he would say), has taken on a Christian pride role so well that he and his fans don’t feel any need to ask other questions that might meaningfully be asked. If he lived two thousand years ago one feels Aviad’s position might be vaguely akin to that of the enthusiastic young gospeller, John Mark, who was odd (queer?) enough to fall foul of the Alpha male, Paul (for whom he was worthless as a travel/mission companion but “useful for serving”) and different enough to throw unnecessary comments into his record like Jesus looking on a young man to love him, and a nameless youth (himself?) running away naked into the night.
To look at him Aviad (a name corresponding to one of the five titles of the Messiah) seems less like a rap artist than a cute member of one of the classic modern boy bands like Boyzone. And one recalls how one of Boyzone’s members, Stephen Gately, a Catholic and also an emotional Piscean like Aviad, after many struggles came out reluctantly, but very publicly as gay. The puer (divine child) archetype seems dominant for Aviad whether physically or psychologically. Emerging coyly between balloons for YouTube and his thirty third birthday, he could pass for eighteen or at any rate someone in his twenties. Psychologically his transition to Christianity (described and dramatized in clips on the Sid Roth It’s Supernatural show run by a Messianic Jew) was like a puer revolt against the senex (old man) figures of the rabbis. Hooked on the Truth (one of its versions) is quite funny, or at least ironic in aping a rabbi/student exchange on Isaiah 53 and messianic prophecy, “Well my son, this is about us” (the Jews), “No rabbi it says he, not we”. “You’re not God rabbi”. I am struck by this same kind of puer-in-revolt, ironic, almost in-your-face gay style (I didn’t say identity) of another young Christian convert from an Orthodox Jewish family expounding his beliefs in a YouTube slot near to Aviad material.
The rap artist in Aviad is nonetheless increasingly leaving criticism to become in his own estimation, “a praise singer”. In doing so this son of Aaron is becoming almost more like an innovator of a kind of gay disco spirituality, swaying, singing and raising hands to Yah “on the dancefloor”. There is talk about wanting to be “holy high” on things spiritual and there is always talk about being hooked. Admittedly there’s a dance/trance strain of the mystical to Hasidic Judaism but it doesn’t seem to have been an item with Aviad’s severe mentors. Anyway, something like the obsessional, ecstatic, sometimes narcotic world of gay club celebration is after a manner getting assimilated and transformed in the Aviad performance though not necessarily in the direction of the mystery of the divine. (I can’t judge of music and style here but the all-apparent immediacy over mystery may be a matter of emphasis partly theological. The Praise Yah song implies that like numbers of people Aviad wouldn’t identify Yah(weh) with Jesus who is necessarily son of El Elyon, the Highest. But if one is going to praise and thank Yah for Jesus as though Yah (the traditionally ecstatic God name hence most suited to any music and dance) should refer to the Father one maybe misses a bit of the mysterious otherness specific to the High God behind Yeshua, Jesus, the truer Lord of the Dance figure who in the Sermon on the Mount advises dancing even amid persecution.
Disappointingly, a black gay pastor I cite in my A Special Illumination on gay spiritualities doesn’t reveal precisely what was supposedly revealed to him on a dance floor about the need to reclaim, and how to express, the gay difference spiritually, but Aviad seems to have started down a road towards realizing whatever that difference might be, even if he and we haven’t quite thought he might himself be a gay person doing a gay thing. And I don’t doubt Aviad would be the last to admit he was gay if he was or even to let himself imagine he might be – his main identity aspiration is to be accepted as “truejew”, so anything else is just a further barrier in the way of that. And needless to say there would be plenty of Messianics with kneejerk homophobic reactions that Aviad wouldn’t wish to offend along with all the fans determined to convince him he couldn’t possibly be “homosexual” and that anyone like myself even imagining such things was the very devil come to deceive and destroy every good work. (This, incidentally, is doubtless how sexual issues got swept under the carpet in early Christianity never to find adequate resolution later. The too long period of persecutions reduced everything to purely religious rights with identity making mainly in terms of martyrs and martyrdom rather as today Israeli Messianics are more interested in not having another synogague burned down than if anyone has marital or sexual problems acknowledging which could lead to further community controversies). Nevertheless, if there were any self awareness and communication problems in this area for Aviad they began long before he turned Christian.
PROBLEMS OF AVIAD, THE MOST KOSHER BOY
Curiously enough the newly successful kosher boy (See YouTube’s Diary of a Jewish Rapper and 50 Shekel’s Search for Lil’ Spenda) Aviad comported himself more gay/queer and even effeminate than he has ever done since so that it was a mini-miracle he wasn’t early on in his career singled out, if not outed, by irate Jewish groups defending holy Zion against attack from the rolling eyes and gushing gestures of queendom. He speaks of the perfect mother and his desire to have the one true wife. He says: “I don’t want chicks, I want one good woman”. Fine, except that other kosher Jewboys like David and Solomon had no problems around wanting a few chicks. Plus there’s a distinction that some who can’t imagine any life beyond married domesticity won’t make between liking women’s company, (something quite a few gay males enjoy) and actually wanting chicks.
Anyway, at this early stage when queendom was more evident, and was presumably dismissed as youthful inexperience or embarrassment, Aviad still hoped to make his act into something like a Sonny and Cher duo in which he would be assisted by an imagined rhymer girl, Lil’ Spenda. Invitation went out to find her and suggestions poured in from all quarters. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely - if anything it’s the oldest gay story in the world - kosher boy found not one of the charmers quite right. He was even prepared to say he didn’t want to spoil their lives because they lived too far away etc etc. Who was he trying to convince?
Arguably the Piscean dream-cum-fantasy net was already taking over but it was the kind of dream (and if it was also self deception then it was the kind of deception) that conservative societies Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Chinese etc are well known to indulge. If the person doesn’t understand or care to reveal their desires, needs or identities because they know their society wouldn’t appreciate it, a relieved society rewards them by playing along with what helps keep their customs and value systems intact unquestioned. Thus the Sir Galahads can’t find a girlfriend because, well, it’s perfectly obvious there’s not a girl good enough the length and breath of the land and because every woman is little better than a slut or hussie in the face of the Galahads’ shining idealism. Another covering myth can be work. The Galahads are so “on the job” obviously they can’t be expected to waste precious time on dalliances towards life mission destroying marriages. Not yet anyway.
Around thirty or beyond pressure mounts to marry at all costs. The Galahads often graciously concede and it can have troubling results. Stories and studies I recall reading on homosexuality in Israel and among Jews are full of sad tales of marriages that don’t work leading to depression and all manner of problems. This happens especially if there is labour to have a child, labour which can finish the relationship off entirely as the gay person having done their duty and (sort of) proved themselves according to the rules of what Jewish lesbian poet, Adrienne Rich, dubs “compulsory heterosexuality”, can’t take the strain any more and bolts leaving the partner holding the baby at the first sight of promising same sex love. As a phenomenon bisexuality exists and occasionally too quite effeminate men can be ardently heterosexual so that one can never be perfectly gay sure about any given individual’s orientation, but in conservative societies opposed to individualism, homosexuality often masquerades, and often with tragic consequences, as a bisexuality felt to be more flattering to male egos. (He’s so virile he can take on anyone!)
BUT “SOME ARE BORN EUNUCHS”…….
In traditional societies whatever rights or freedom in terms of self expression might be appropriate it’s something necessarily subordinate to the question of freedom from the system, hence from marriage. Without this freedom established almost nothing else can be dealt with as otherwise marriage with compulsory heterosexuality looms like an eleventh commandment, the great ideal to follow as it does for fundamentalist Christians who in reality read their Bibles very selectively, quite as selectively as everyone else they criticize. And they want a Bible that tells them all “homosexuality” (they never seem to realize the word isn’t in the Bible) is always unnatural and all gays always curable. Which the Bible doesn’t obligingly affirm.
Notably Jesus links the subject of the eunuchs (Mt 19: 12,13), some of whom he maintains are that way “from their mothers’ wombs”, to the theme of who should marry. As I have been recalling for Swedish and Norwegian radio recently an ignored forgotten point (but which Norwegian theologian, Ragnhild Schanke, has stressed as regards a little understood gospel passage) is that in Jesus’ era, “eunuchs” didn’t necessarily imply men castrated or sexually inactive. The term was more like latin spadones and Hebrew saris – not attracted to the opposite sex, not fit for marriage for whatever reason. It was therefore the nearest word Jesus’ world had to the modern and more psychologically geared “homosexual”. I therefore maintain one way to read Jesus on the eunuchs, especially today, is to see him as regarding it as necessary for all believers to become just a little bit socially marginalized and psychologically “gay” in their perspectives to be truly children of the kingdom. Modern revisionist Christian defence of gays on the basis Jesus never mentioned them or homosexuality is almost universal but incorrect and not even the eunuchs theme is the only reference Jesus made to gays and any homophobia regarding them though I won’t enlarge on that controversial claim here.
It is however an interesting development in the wake of gay liberation that gays are now claiming the right to marriage and those Christians who don’t agree with conservatives in wanting society’s “eunuchs” to be the castrates of their imagining via an automatic total celibacy, want to have them in unions exactly like and ethically assessed like heterosexual marriage. Though this is another theme beyond present scope, the idea of perfect equivalence in satisfaction of modern equality ideals could be questioned. If difference defines the socio/sexual “deviant”, might there not need to be a variant form or name of relationship and ethics? After all, can love, relating, spirituality, understanding of the sexual act, ever be quite identical for gays and straights? Why should heterosexuals have the last word on the mind, lives values and titles of homosexuals any more than men on those of women?
These are weighty questions and the concept of a gay ethics a whole field which I have myself been somewhat prevented (denied study, writing, debating opportunities) by both spiritual and secular gays, not to mention Christians at large, from sufficiently exploring despite certain qualifications in my case to do so. However….. all one need ask in the case of any person like Aviad caught in a model religious role at once imposed on them and self imposed is can such an individual be fully integrated without integrating at least some elements of sexual psychology beyond their new found spiritual one?
I don’t believe it’s enough to assume such persons automatically can and that they should live “beyond” their eros in the role of eunuch-as-castrate to satisfy some mainstream (of too often alpha male bully boys who push to the front of churches and decide for everyone what “freedom in Christ” will be – Nigeria’s Bishop Akinola and America’s David Virtue of VirtueOnline who doesn’t seem to want gays even darkening Anglican/Episcopalian church doors comes to mind). I would argue it can’t be done with much conviction and authenticity and unless I am seriously wrong in things I see and read about Aviad I think the non connections, the non sequiturs in his style, gestures, the sometimes rambling TV interview and YouTube statements, the charming mix of coy with blatant that to Christian fans simply make him “unusual” are linked to a measure of other direction of the self that the artist in Aviad doesn’t completely recognize.
In whatever sense you care to read the signs and whatever Aviad’s true orientation may be, his style and performances are somewhat “queer”. You find almost anything can mean something else for him. He will tell you he “has a peace” and make a sign like he’s picking up a piece of something. But this tendency to a kind of double think is more liable to occur where it’s not perfectly clear who we are and we may prefer people not to know.
CONTACTING THE UNCONTACTABLE, SAYING THE UNSAYABLE
Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to someone who’s genuinely and bravely trying hard and at least sometimes succeeding. And it must be admitted that in the best of all possible worlds I should anyway have been able to send some of my ideas to Aviad directly and privately. But one can’t do this. It’s not peculiar to Aviad but almost axiomatic for all American based “ministries” that it’s virtually impossible to reach their leader, star, prophet or mastermind directly. You can send just about everything from fan mail to prayer requests and of course donations now that all these oracles have faith but almost none of them reckons to live “by faith” in divine provision. But you can’t reach any ministry’s star performer even if God had a message for you for that person. It’s the sort of situation has helped bigotries and heresies and hypocrisies of all kinds thrive within American religion because criticism is blocked entirely, filtered out by secretaries or the contact system of modern net sites.
I have for example never as a writer been able to write to such as popular fundamentalist preacher, David Wilkerson, who deserves to be seriously rapped over the knuckles about some quite scripturally unjustified statements re homosexuality, not to say some seriously failed prophecies he should never have made. I could tactfully have gone via Aviad’s interviewer, the mentioned Sid Roth, but what use? When I wrote to that gentleman who seeks the supernatural everywhere that the horoscope of Israel is a miracle of biblical information (even asteroid Solomon conjuncting the Part of Wisdom) he, or rather his minders, couldn’t manage even an acknowledgement. Ignorance, including of the Talmud on astrology, doubtless dismissed my revelations as “witchcraft” and infraction of various tortured readings of Torah – in which case why not dismiss Christ’s birth with its astrologers on the same lines? So, tactful interventions aren’t possible these days and this kind of article becomes of necessity the means of saying things that ought to be communicated.
I shall conclude by saying blessings on an original, experimental Son of Aaron and let’s hope Aviad finds somebody, who needs to be sustained with raisins and refreshed with apples because perhaps he, rather than she, is faint with love (Song 2:5) for the super cute praise singer. Or perhaps such wishes are by now already irrelevant. There’s always the possibility - one I haven’t explored here - that spiritual devotion in this case has become like some Jewish/Christian version of Hindu bhakti or Hari Krishna cult where ecstatic devotion finishes by masking, or substituting for, whatever the person’s romantic/erotic urges may be. I leave to the reader to sort out the queerness of my title as applied to these reflections and whether or not a comma should be inserted after the word, so, to render a different sense. Go with what sense you like. Answer these issues as you will. It doesn’t matter and/or maybe it matters a lot.
AFTERWORD: A BIT MORE AVIAD COHEN MYSTERY
From some further Net reading I see I am not the only person to have noticed what seemed like a gay/queer persona around Aviad Cohen. Rather inexcusably – it’s the reason they nowadays pass the anti discrimination laws that some conservative Chrstians are determined to object to! – someone cruelly wrote in response to Aviad’s rather incoherent YouTube comments on The Golden Compass film, that he seemed like “a fag who has just lost his boyfriend”. But suppose that gross cariacture doesn't describe the real Aviad at all. We then find the following at
http://www.cbn.com/cbnmusic/interviews/hg_aviadcohen110406.aspx
which however itself shows the cited 50 Shekel ‘Lil Spenda statements I cited about not wanting chicks was PR and couldn’t have been true unless again we are not being told something amid the confessions. We read that:
“….Aviad dropped the 50 Shekel label symbolizing his turn from an old lifestyle and his new faith in the Messiah. He left everything behind: his plans as a rap artist, an entertainment company owner, and his lustful actions in looking for satisfaction through sex. All of that is behind him now. “Who cares about the sex? I want the Savior,” he says. Life isn’t easy, but knowing the Truth and love from Yeshua makes everything more than bearable. He’s also just taking it one step at a time.
“I used to commit adultery against God,” Aviad says. “It was destroying me…. I’m staying celibate until I get married or even if I never get married. It’s not a suggestion from God. It’s a requirement.”
One could ask what exactly committing adultery against God means. Jewish Torah defined adultery is taking somebody else’s wife and God has no wife. True one could, like ancient Israel behave like an unfaithful wife or go a-whoring and there are elements of prostitution in the porn business but it’s not really “adultery”. We may suppose, or are expected to suppose from these frank, perhaps unnecessary confessions that these porn interests and maybe sexual adventures 50 Shekel had said he didn’t want but was maybe having were heterosexually driven. In which case we are maybe talking about bisexuality.
Yes, it's all a bit bewildering. I revert to my original assertion that the questions are almost most important than the answers in this story because they force us to think about how especially religious people assess people's identities. Beyond that the one certainty in all this is we are talking about some kind of mystery - a rather Piscean one, I think.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
THE ODD SPECTACLE OF OBAMA MANIA
HILLARY C. BATTERED BUT NOT OUT
When Hillary Clinton’s campaign began to confront real difficulties in February due to Obama mania I did not make concessions or alterations to comments I posted last December about HC’s long term prospects. I was almost sure that despite the obstacles she would win the Texas and Ohio primaries - as she has done - and I would be very surprised if she lost Pennsylvania on April 22nd.
Obama mania is at once alarming and embarrassing to observe. Especially so for non Americans like myself who are more likely to desire an aura of experience and the statesmanlike in politicians who they prefer would not appear like Hollywood show people, high school heart throbs or revivalist preachers – there are even people fainting in front of Obama. What really has this person got to offer and say beyond the theatrics which in line with his Leo sun sign Obama is good at? One constantly feels like asking how could America still be so immature as to be caught up in a lala land performance of slogans of hope and warm to these super expensive, utterly wasteful campaigns (millions for the TV ads alone) conducted like a boxing match. It is too typical that Hollywood film star, Susan Sarrandon, has declared she is backing Obama and is looking forward to understanding what he represents. Quite! And then there's an Oprah endorsement. The New Age succumbs!
SLEAZE ABOUT WHO FROM WHOM
One aspect of affairs that has been distinctly disturbing is the more than usually interested press coverage. Sleaze has been directed from all quarters upon Republican rival McCain’s private life but as regards Obama’s private life it has been almost wholly ignored (except that very recently the gossip/entertainment paper, The National Inquirer has headlined about Obama’s wife’s screaming fits over his women). In reality, however, Obama may be more bisexual than a classic womanizer. Anyway, a gay man, Larry Sinclair, has been protesting threats from Obama staff and refusal of the press to deal with this after he put up a YouTube account of Obama giving him cocaine and having sex with him and not many years ago – there was a bit of early gossip about university years drug taking.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56626
I don’t care that such tales may be coming from the right. I don’t think it matters where they come from. In this instance I merely ask why tales supporting the bisexual picture are so covered up when for years Hillary, (portrayed in the press over recent weeks as a has-been for losing small or strongly black states to Obama), has had to take any amount of lesbian slurs based on little more than she appears bossy hence mannish to some people.
Whatever the precise biographical truth of the matter one has to recognize a basic plausibility for the claims to the extent Obama does have the fatal afflicted Neptune pattern that from the astrological standpoint is the necessary building block for any bisexual conditions and/or drug involvements. And it is this afflicted Neptune is a factor in the public obsessions and projections affecting Obama from outside. Though the Illinois senator's birth time is unknown the datum of his sun square Neptune is unmissable and the glamourizing, deceptive afflicted Neptune at 8 Scorpio falls exactly on the ascendant of America’s natus, the clue in astrological terms to why the masses can be so easily mesmerized by this candidate. Or perhaps even why and how Obama can so easily deceive himself.
OBAMA DOUBTS AND CONFUSIONS
What does this young senator believe? He may not even be too clear himself under the kind of aspect I’ve indicated. The much contested issue of religion is a good case in point. We may accept he is not as some detractors would like to make out a covert Muslim but his Christian affiliations are peculiar all the same. The minister of his chosen Chicago Church of Christ church adheres to some strange Africanized form of faith and one that has been very friendly to the founder of America’s Nation of Islam movement. Long before Obama became a hot issue I recall an interview in which when asked about Christian doctrines it seemed that Obama was unclear about such basics as resurrection and immortality. There is also no question that this senator has fought more strongly than almost anyone for partial birth abortion, ie. live birth abortions or virtual infanticide, something Hillary Clinton though known to support abortion and criticized by religious conservatives for it, has opposed because it happens to be quite painful and cruel for the foetus and does raise questions about respect for life. This is a strange record for someone trying to push Christian credentials but it fits with the confusion pattern I am seeing everywhere where Obama is concerned.
I think the final doubts about the correct birth time of Hillary are dissolved by what happened in early March. Those like myself who assumed the 8am birth also assumed the pivotal time for Hillary’s career would be early March when Saturn, a crucial planet for politicians and their careers was right on Hillary’s career/destiny Midheaven angle brought her the needed success. On the basis we can know her chart it would be incredible given the super aspects enjoyed by her chart around April 22nd if she were to lose Pennsylvania. She would have to enjoy her loss for some reason or have some wonderful compensations at the time to be losing at such a time. And this could be a turning point for her that sets her on the road to the White House.
At any rate – and it’s a point I didn’t make in the earlier article – by inauguration time Hillary will have her progressed sun fortunately trining her destiny Midheaven, which is like an assumption of power and hardly the mark of a loser (though I suppose it’s possible she could be given certain honours, a good job, a vice president’s role or something that would fit this picture without giving her the highest role). Even her husband and daughter’s charts mark something positive. So unless I don’t know things about Obama’s chart – and it’s certainly a disadvantage not to have the birth time - I think Obama mania could spend itself and have its day. I would feel some relief for the world which needs more experienced leadership through America, if it did.
(Readers will notice I have been putting out less material so far this year. This reflects preoccupation with various situations here in HKong and plans to return soon – next month – to Australia and a new home there. This month I have also had flu, done a long interview with Swedish radio about gay spirituality issues, and had an article based on material re John Lennon that was issued last year in articles of this Blog published in New Zealand’s Investigate Magazine. Until I am well settled into Australia the reduced production will probably continue).
When Hillary Clinton’s campaign began to confront real difficulties in February due to Obama mania I did not make concessions or alterations to comments I posted last December about HC’s long term prospects. I was almost sure that despite the obstacles she would win the Texas and Ohio primaries - as she has done - and I would be very surprised if she lost Pennsylvania on April 22nd.
Obama mania is at once alarming and embarrassing to observe. Especially so for non Americans like myself who are more likely to desire an aura of experience and the statesmanlike in politicians who they prefer would not appear like Hollywood show people, high school heart throbs or revivalist preachers – there are even people fainting in front of Obama. What really has this person got to offer and say beyond the theatrics which in line with his Leo sun sign Obama is good at? One constantly feels like asking how could America still be so immature as to be caught up in a lala land performance of slogans of hope and warm to these super expensive, utterly wasteful campaigns (millions for the TV ads alone) conducted like a boxing match. It is too typical that Hollywood film star, Susan Sarrandon, has declared she is backing Obama and is looking forward to understanding what he represents. Quite! And then there's an Oprah endorsement. The New Age succumbs!
SLEAZE ABOUT WHO FROM WHOM
One aspect of affairs that has been distinctly disturbing is the more than usually interested press coverage. Sleaze has been directed from all quarters upon Republican rival McCain’s private life but as regards Obama’s private life it has been almost wholly ignored (except that very recently the gossip/entertainment paper, The National Inquirer has headlined about Obama’s wife’s screaming fits over his women). In reality, however, Obama may be more bisexual than a classic womanizer. Anyway, a gay man, Larry Sinclair, has been protesting threats from Obama staff and refusal of the press to deal with this after he put up a YouTube account of Obama giving him cocaine and having sex with him and not many years ago – there was a bit of early gossip about university years drug taking.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56626
I don’t care that such tales may be coming from the right. I don’t think it matters where they come from. In this instance I merely ask why tales supporting the bisexual picture are so covered up when for years Hillary, (portrayed in the press over recent weeks as a has-been for losing small or strongly black states to Obama), has had to take any amount of lesbian slurs based on little more than she appears bossy hence mannish to some people.
Whatever the precise biographical truth of the matter one has to recognize a basic plausibility for the claims to the extent Obama does have the fatal afflicted Neptune pattern that from the astrological standpoint is the necessary building block for any bisexual conditions and/or drug involvements. And it is this afflicted Neptune is a factor in the public obsessions and projections affecting Obama from outside. Though the Illinois senator's birth time is unknown the datum of his sun square Neptune is unmissable and the glamourizing, deceptive afflicted Neptune at 8 Scorpio falls exactly on the ascendant of America’s natus, the clue in astrological terms to why the masses can be so easily mesmerized by this candidate. Or perhaps even why and how Obama can so easily deceive himself.
OBAMA DOUBTS AND CONFUSIONS
What does this young senator believe? He may not even be too clear himself under the kind of aspect I’ve indicated. The much contested issue of religion is a good case in point. We may accept he is not as some detractors would like to make out a covert Muslim but his Christian affiliations are peculiar all the same. The minister of his chosen Chicago Church of Christ church adheres to some strange Africanized form of faith and one that has been very friendly to the founder of America’s Nation of Islam movement. Long before Obama became a hot issue I recall an interview in which when asked about Christian doctrines it seemed that Obama was unclear about such basics as resurrection and immortality. There is also no question that this senator has fought more strongly than almost anyone for partial birth abortion, ie. live birth abortions or virtual infanticide, something Hillary Clinton though known to support abortion and criticized by religious conservatives for it, has opposed because it happens to be quite painful and cruel for the foetus and does raise questions about respect for life. This is a strange record for someone trying to push Christian credentials but it fits with the confusion pattern I am seeing everywhere where Obama is concerned.
I think the final doubts about the correct birth time of Hillary are dissolved by what happened in early March. Those like myself who assumed the 8am birth also assumed the pivotal time for Hillary’s career would be early March when Saturn, a crucial planet for politicians and their careers was right on Hillary’s career/destiny Midheaven angle brought her the needed success. On the basis we can know her chart it would be incredible given the super aspects enjoyed by her chart around April 22nd if she were to lose Pennsylvania. She would have to enjoy her loss for some reason or have some wonderful compensations at the time to be losing at such a time. And this could be a turning point for her that sets her on the road to the White House.
At any rate – and it’s a point I didn’t make in the earlier article – by inauguration time Hillary will have her progressed sun fortunately trining her destiny Midheaven, which is like an assumption of power and hardly the mark of a loser (though I suppose it’s possible she could be given certain honours, a good job, a vice president’s role or something that would fit this picture without giving her the highest role). Even her husband and daughter’s charts mark something positive. So unless I don’t know things about Obama’s chart – and it’s certainly a disadvantage not to have the birth time - I think Obama mania could spend itself and have its day. I would feel some relief for the world which needs more experienced leadership through America, if it did.
(Readers will notice I have been putting out less material so far this year. This reflects preoccupation with various situations here in HKong and plans to return soon – next month – to Australia and a new home there. This month I have also had flu, done a long interview with Swedish radio about gay spirituality issues, and had an article based on material re John Lennon that was issued last year in articles of this Blog published in New Zealand’s Investigate Magazine. Until I am well settled into Australia the reduced production will probably continue).
Thursday, February 7, 2008
FROM PIG TO RAT: SOME CHINESE NEW YEAR DAY REFLECTIONS
A COLD AND NOISY START
Pig to Rat hardly sounds like a terribly attractive transition but for the Chinese calendar the Year of the Rat is the energetic, optimistic beginning of a new cycle that docile, generous Pig has ended. The 12 year cycle of animals appears originally to have been built upon the fact that Jupiter has a twelve year run through the zodiacal signs but not the signs familiar to the western zodiac. The latter offers a set of images more empirically determined – the Chinese cycle has more to do with Buddhist myth and the animals that ran up to the Buddha of which rat was first. Considerations of the kosher variety don’t enter into this picture.
The Chinese hope that Rat year will be rat dynamic. Even here on Lamma Island the Rat came in with big noise. I had just begun at long last to read Ma Jian’s Red Dust but was also just about gratefully to drift off to sleep in warmth (it is still quite cold here following China’s Big Freeze) when the midnight fireworks started up and nearer than I expected. The noise was tremendous and there was no option but to wake up and watch. As opposed to last year it seemed the local show or one of them had been set up nearer to home here and just down by the nearby Temple and Kindergarten that are in a little square. The coloured sparks having flown high were nearly coming in the windows.
The question remains what will this year bring? I wouldn’t be asking the question on this Blog if it hadn’t happened that my intended subject for the month, a review of the implications of Joe Perez’s Soulfully Gay, is not possible because a consignment of books has got lost in the post which Alibris has just refunded. So I will go back to my last subject which was about prophecy and make two points, one in relation to astrology since I have mentioned the Chinese cycle, and one in relation to prophecy more generally. Actually in this instance I see a connection.
Numbers of the would- be prophets, i.e. charismatic ones I mostly criticized last article, have been assuring us that this year will be a year of surprises “suddenlies” and miracles in course of which America will have it rough. In all of this they could well be right, or at any rate the astrology they reject and despise pretty much confirms such ideas.
SOME AQUARIAN SURPRISES
There is an important solar eclipse today (and being new moon it’s the pretext of Chinese New Year) and a lunar eclipse in August. Both eclipses fall in Aquarius and Aquarius is the sign of precisely any surprises, “suddenlies” and miracles. Also this eclipse neatly falls conjunct the IC or Nadir of America’s chart (if one accepts as I believe one should that the Scorpio rising chart which supplies America an Aquarian IC). It is too suggestive and true to astrological rule that right in the shadow of this eclipse America suddenly suffers terrible tornadoes that have killed 57 people. The IC is about a n
Pig to Rat hardly sounds like a terribly attractive transition but for the Chinese calendar the Year of the Rat is the energetic, optimistic beginning of a new cycle that docile, generous Pig has ended. The 12 year cycle of animals appears originally to have been built upon the fact that Jupiter has a twelve year run through the zodiacal signs but not the signs familiar to the western zodiac. The latter offers a set of images more empirically determined – the Chinese cycle has more to do with Buddhist myth and the animals that ran up to the Buddha of which rat was first. Considerations of the kosher variety don’t enter into this picture.
The Chinese hope that Rat year will be rat dynamic. Even here on Lamma Island the Rat came in with big noise. I had just begun at long last to read Ma Jian’s Red Dust but was also just about gratefully to drift off to sleep in warmth (it is still quite cold here following China’s Big Freeze) when the midnight fireworks started up and nearer than I expected. The noise was tremendous and there was no option but to wake up and watch. As opposed to last year it seemed the local show or one of them had been set up nearer to home here and just down by the nearby Temple and Kindergarten that are in a little square. The coloured sparks having flown high were nearly coming in the windows.
The question remains what will this year bring? I wouldn’t be asking the question on this Blog if it hadn’t happened that my intended subject for the month, a review of the implications of Joe Perez’s Soulfully Gay, is not possible because a consignment of books has got lost in the post which Alibris has just refunded. So I will go back to my last subject which was about prophecy and make two points, one in relation to astrology since I have mentioned the Chinese cycle, and one in relation to prophecy more generally. Actually in this instance I see a connection.
Numbers of the would- be prophets, i.e. charismatic ones I mostly criticized last article, have been assuring us that this year will be a year of surprises “suddenlies” and miracles in course of which America will have it rough. In all of this they could well be right, or at any rate the astrology they reject and despise pretty much confirms such ideas.
SOME AQUARIAN SURPRISES
There is an important solar eclipse today (and being new moon it’s the pretext of Chinese New Year) and a lunar eclipse in August. Both eclipses fall in Aquarius and Aquarius is the sign of precisely any surprises, “suddenlies” and miracles. Also this eclipse neatly falls conjunct the IC or Nadir of America’s chart (if one accepts as I believe one should that the Scorpio rising chart which supplies America an Aquarian IC). It is too suggestive and true to astrological rule that right in the shadow of this eclipse America suddenly suffers terrible tornadoes that have killed 57 people. The IC is about a n