Christmas poem #4: "The Place Where We Are Right" — dedicated to Fred Nile and his like….

“The Place Where We Are Right” by Yehuda Amichai I first blogged in August 2005. I read it aloud during a service around that time at South Sydney Uniting Church.

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

How sad I am then to read of the Reverend Fred Nile’s disgraceful exploits* at Camden. I can think of few less Christ-like things the man could have done, his ill-judged bigotry being exactly the same as the reflexive anti-Catholicism of his spiritual forbears, as ill-informed, applying to Muslims standards he would complain about if applied to him. Yes, I can understand the culture shock at Camden, and no, I am not going to be drawn into screaming about either bogans or racists. But Fred Nile has disgusted me, because he is in a church, the Uniting Church, which in general knows better than Fred that such pandering to fear, prejudice and ignorance is totally out of keeping both with the spirit of Christmas and the Holy Spirit of God.

Cyber condoms?

With so many dodgy things out there on the Internet all of us (especially those using Windows) need to practise safe surfing. What protection do you use? Yes, there are firewalls, but I’m afraid having tried a few and found they have their downsides I use the one XP comes with. Given that of course, I need extra protection, aside from anti-virus where I have opted for Avast!. So I have Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster. I used to use Ad-Aware but I really don’t like the 2007 version, especially after this review on ZDNet:

I get emails from Farmer Dave

You know the one, the 2006 Big Brother contestant; I don’t know him, but as you’ll see Tim Baker, who does, contacted me last year and since then the emails have been keeping me up to date.

Dave’s blog has been interesting. It would appear from the most recent entry about Easter Island that Dave is heading in M’s direction…

According to his main site, and that’s what the emails have mainly been about lately, he has started a direct marketing scheme for his produce.