Survival Day 2008

I snapped this photo from Anzac Pde Kensington yesterday after my visit to the UNSW T_Visionarium [more on that later] but it seemed a fitting part of the Harbour based festivities for our national day and in the lead up to the new Federal Government's commitment to say "sorry" in the first week of the new parliament!! News was the plans were given the once over by the team of Malcolm Fraser and Lowitja O'Donohue ahead of the event!
I believe the very 'soul' of this country needs us to say 'sorry' in ways that any 'but I'm not responsible why am I saying sorry' kind of way simply cannot grasp. It is like the sorry we say at a funeral where it still isn't the right word but is an attempt to say not that we understand but that we wish it hadn't happened and we want the person to know we care!!
It's a word which means despite not quite knowing whether its the right word or not we do know it will mean something to the hearer and in fact they've told us that 'loud and clear'! It's also more than clouds in the sky and at some point will cost this nation money, resources, choices or determination... and perhaps it's time that it did!
If we are genuinely to find the intersection between "our passions, wellbeing and vocation AND God's burning desire for the world"... then surely a cultural ache at the heart of our culture/s and identity is an obvious place to start!
In the way indigenous creativity symbolically flavoured the Sydney Olympic festivities then we would experience that for real in our way of life and living.
Where globalisation is the current great wave of paradigm shift in this country we can hopefully make great strides in our own backyard along the way!!

Instead of Yothu Yindi, Warumpi Band or the Oils, today its reminding me of Kev Carmody and his song [covered by many people] currently in the Triple J Hottest 100 by the Herd!!


COMRADE JESUS CHRIST
He was born in Asia Minor
A colonized Jewish man
His father the village carpenter
Worked wood in his occupied land
He was apprenticed to his father's trade
His country paid it's dues
To the colonial Roman conquerors
He was a working-class Jew

Though conceived three months out of wedlock
The stigma never stuck
He began a three year public life
But he never made a buck
Because he spoke out against injustice
Saw that capitalism bled the poor
He attacked self-righteous hypocrites
And he condemned the lawyers' law

But they've commercialised his birthday now
The very people he defied
And they've sanctified their system
And claim he's on their side!
But if he appeared tomorrow
He'd still pay the highest cost
Being a 'radical agitator'
They'd still nail him to a cross

You see
He'd stand with the down trodden masses
Identify with the weak and oppressed
He'd condemn the hypocrites in church pews
And the affluent, arrogant West
He'd oppose Stalinist totalitarianism
The exploitation of millions by one
And 'peace' through mutual terror
And diplomacy from the barrel of a gun

He'd fight with Joe Hill and Waleca
Mandala and Friere
Try to free the third world's millions
From hunger and despair
He'd stand with the peasants
At the pock-marked walls
They'd haul him in on bail
He'd condemn all forms of apartheid
And he'd rot in their stinking jails.

He'd denounce all dictatorships
And Mammon's greed
And the exploitation of others for gain
He'd oppose the nuclear madness
And the waging of wars in his name
He'd mix with prostitutes and sinners
Challenge all to cast the first stone
A compassionate agitator
One of the greatest the world has known

He'd condemn all corrupt law and order
Tear man made hierarchies down
He'd see status and titles as dominance
And the politics of greed he'd hound
He'd fight against
The leagues of the Ku Klux Klan
And the radical, racist right
One of the greatest humanitarian socialists
Was comrade,
Jesus Christ.

Listen to it here from the album "Cannot Buy My Soul"