Over the past nine months fanatic elements within the Egyptian Muslim community have stirred up civil unrest all over Egypt. Copts have been attacked, houses and shops looted, and churches burnt down. While it is true that a general degree of anarchy has prevailed in the country since the revolution, one expects that as the new order comes to fruition, such anarchy will quickly be brought under control. THis is to be expected when so drastic a revolution happens in any nation. But acts of violence along religious lines will divide the country and turn it into another Lebanon. As thousands of Egyptian Copts protested the lack of protection from the ruling Army since the revolution, the army opened fire killing dozens of civilians and injuring hundreds. The Army has blamed “unknown culprits” for the violence. Yet surely, there is no doubt as to who did the killing?

If Egypt is ever to become a modern country it has to embrace modern standards of integrity and accountability. Provocateurs are being blamed for inciting the violence, yet we have often seen armies in other countries counter such violence without killing anyone. Why can’t the Egyptian army do the same? Are they not well enough trained? It is simply not good enough to say “they started it”. You are the ones with the training and the weapons!

After this terrible incident any decent army command would very quickly find out who gave the orders to fire on civilians and make a public example of them so that the rest of the soldiers understand that this absolutely unacceptable. The Army showed admirable constraint and what seemed to be great wisdom in refusing to use violence against protesters during the January revolution. Why has that restraint disappeared now? Why does it disappear only against Christians?

If the army does not want to be seen as being selective in who it protects, it MUST take immediate, decisive action against those in its own ranks who have shown this lack of discipline and were responsible for this atrocity. Only in this way can it prevent this tragedy from being repeated. Covering up and blaming others is a green light for atrocities like this to recur in the future. There is an old adage that says, “What you allow, you teach”. If I were a Muslim army officer, with the slightest tendency towards sectarianism, and I saw the perpetrators of this violence getting off scott-free, what message does that give me? If on the other hand, i saw them being severely punished: tried, courtmarshalled, perhaps imprisoned; then I would certainly think twice before repeating their mistake.

Egypt is not at war. Soldiers killing civilians is simply not acceptable! Those responsible have committed murder. When will it be recognised for what it is?

Persecution is nothing new for the Copts. We have survived nearly two thousand years in an environment that has been hostile for the vast majority of that period. But the events unfolding in Cairo are the fork in the road for the Egyptian nation. The Army can use this crisis to point the way for a better, brighter future for all Egyptians by exercising transparency, integrity and responsibility. Or it can just fall back on old ways of the old regime and plunge an Egypt that has tasted true freedom back into the dark ages.

His Holiness Pope Shenouda has called for three days of fasting and prayer starting today on behalf of the peace and security of Egypt. This is indeed a watershed moment.

Related Posts:

http://www.frantonios.org.au/2010/10/25/292/

http://www.frantonios.org.au/2010/11/03/fanatical-drive-against-copts/

Three interesting new resources I have come across recently, and thought I might share with you today:

In 1991 a huge project came to fruition with the publication of the eight volume Coptic Encyclopedia. Containing nearly three thousand entries by a variety of authors, both members of the Coptic community and foreign scholars in Coptology, it is perhaps the most comprehensive reference on all things Coptic ever produced. The hard cover eight volume set is not only very expensive, but has also been out of print for some years and hard to get a hold of. So it was with great pleasure that I came across this wonderful project at Claremont Graduate University in California. An excerpt from the announcement of this project: 

The Coptic Encyclopedia, published by Macmillan in 1991, is an eight-volume work. Its 2,800 entries, written by 215 scholars, took 13 years to compile. But as a paper-bound document it was only available to a limited readership and nearly impossible to amend. The digitized version, renamed the Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia, can be constantly updated and is available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Apparently, Phase 1, which began in 2010, is to digitise and make available all 2,800 articles in the original 1991 edition. You can access the articles far completed here.  Last I checked, they were somewhere in the “O” section, working alphabetically from “A”. Phase 2 will be to add multimedia accompaniments to appropriate articles, especially pictures and perhaps audio. Phase 3, and most exciting of all, is to provide continuous updating of existing articles and add new ones to reflect ongoing research and developments in the field of Coptology, and to track the unfolding history of the Coptic Church in the twenty first century. Three cheers for CGU!

How often have you turned up at Church on a feast day or during a fast and wondered why everyone was doing things differently? Many of the special seasons of the Coptic calendar have not only their own unique tunes, but also their own unique rites. And none is without meaning. To understand and be aware of these rites and their meaning is to experience Coptic worship in its full depth and beauty. But where can one find all this information? Till now, I have had to depend on my ponderously slow and rather unreliable command of written Arabic and an old book written by HG Bishop Mattaos for the correct rites throughout the year. But now, all that precious information has been made available online, and … in ENGLISH!

The Choir of the Heritage of the Coptic Orthodox Church website provides articles, audio and a really useful guide to the rites of every occasion in the Coptic Orthodox sacred calendar. Not only is it in English, but for the extremely pedantic, each article on the seasonal rites lists the source, just to give the reader comfort that the description given wasn’t just some variation that old Uncle Abdelmessih thought up last Sunday. 

And finally, have you ever had to prepare for a lesson or a talk and wondered why you were taking so much time putting together a snazzy powerpoint presentation when surely hundreds of others have done exactly the same thing before you? Wouldn’t it be great if you could have access to the fruit of their labours? Well, the Church of St Mary and Archangel Michael in Houston Texas have made a huge library of talks and lessons, including powerpoint presentations, available on their website. Here you’ll find almost any topic you can think of (although they were a little light on the apologetics, I must say). My only criticism is that this excellent resource would be so much more useful if it had a search engine.

Enjoy!

One of the nicest things about living in Australia is that you don’t really have to go out and visit the world – the world comes to you. Being a multicultural society, Australians are born or trace their heritage to nearly every country in the world. Our society is enriched by a multitude of languages, accents, and forms of dress, not to mention the delicious cuisines and tastes of scores of cultures. 

Through marriage and through the blossoming Outreach Service to the neighbours at our parish, we now count as members of our Christian family people from a rich variety of backgrounds. The map shown illustrates the various countries from which members of our parish have come, and they are listed at the end of this post.

The Apostles’ Fast is all about celebrating the incredible work of the Holy Spirit in spreading the Good News of Christ to all the nations. Whereas the Old Testament chosen people tended to be isolated and keep to themselves, the New Testament Christian is commanded to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

That is not to say that this is an easy command to carry out. One of our experiences over the years has been a certain tension between our history and our destiny. On the one hand, there is fourteen centuries of being a relatively insulated faith community that was beaten into submission by hostile Muslim suppression, so much so that we lost the desire or the skill to evangelise others. When we came to Australia, much of this mindset came with us, and we found ourselves being suspicious of ‘outsiders’, mistrusting their motivations and their morals. On the other hand, younger generations of Copts have been imbued with the Australian ethic of respect for others as equals regardless of their race or colour, and a desire to connect and interact with the Australian society of which we are a part.

Let’s not mince words: people who have converted and been baptised into the Coptic Orthodox Church have often found it quite difficult to adjust. It is not easy to feel ‘different’ in a community, to be the only one, for example, with blond hair and blue eyes amidst a sea of Middle Eastern olive skin and brown eyes. It is not easy to have people around you speaking in a language you do not understand, or to be constantly afraid of doing something that might be considered inappropriate according to the prevailing culture. Many Coptic immigrants experienced this sense of alienation when they came to Australia, so of all people, we should be able to sympathise with the non-Copt who joins our Church. And just as we found kind and thoughtful Australians who went out of their way to make us feel at home here, we too should go out of our way to make everybody feel at home and welcome in our Church.

And things have indeed changed considerably over the last few years and continue to change at pace. Our Church should never be for just one ethnic group to the exclusion of others – I fail to see how that could possibly be in accord with the commands of Christ and the example of the Apostles whom we revere and honour at this time of year. Today, we open our arms and we embrace those who have joined us in the Body of Christ with joy. They bring with them new languages and customs and cuisines, and they are most welcome, for they enrich our lives, just as the entry of Christ into their lives and the ancient and profound Coptic Orthodox spirituality are to them a blessing beyond price. 

So to commemorate and mark this historic change in the nature of our Church community, below is a roll of the backgrounds of Copts who attend our parish of the Archangel Michael and St Bishoy in Mt Druitt. I apologise if I have left anyone out – please let me know. We embrace each and every one of you; you are each a precious part of our lives and fellow travellers in this world, seeking the Kingdom of God, and humbly working out our salvation together in the footsteps of the Saviour of all humanity.

Aboriginal

Armenia

Anglo Saxon

Canada

Chile

China

Czech Republic

Egypt

Ethiopia

India

Italy

Lebanon

Liberia

Mauritius

Philippines

South Africa

Southern Sudan

Sudan

Syria

Thailand

USA

Sitting at home in bed with a nasty respiratory infection is not my ideal way of spending a Sunday morning. My groggy head makes it hard to focus, and I find my thoughts turning to the heavens above…

 A milestone was recently passed: the 555^th extrasolar planet was confirmed. An extra solar planet is a planet orbiting a star other than our own sun. When I was growing up, there was a debate going on as to whether such planets even existed. Then in 1992 a few thousand years of wondering came to an end when the first extrasolar planet was discovered, whizzing around a pulsar. Since then, the discoveries have come thick and fast, with new methods for detecting the slippery little creatures being developed all the time. A few of the planets have even posed for a photo, like this one orbiting Fomalhaut (see picture), a star just 25 light years away in the constellation of the Southern Fish (Fomalhaut is Arabic for ‘mouth of the whale’). The Kepler space observatory is expected to take the figure into the thousands.

 How exciting! Imagine what it might be like to travel to one of these planets orbiting around an alien sun. What exotic landscapes would we see? What new science might we learn there? For all human existence, we have been limited to one little, tiny corner of the universe. Until a few decades ago, we had no direct physical access to anything except what we could find here on earth. And then, as we began to send robots to the moon, the planets, the asteroids and comets of our own solar system, we were constantly surprised by what we discovered. Our furthest explorers, the Viking probes launched in the 1980s, are only now approaching the edge of our solar system, and again, making unexpected discoveries. What might we discover in an alien solar system? 

Could there be life?

 The scientific answer to that question is an interesting one. Most scientists who think about it believe the chances are pretty good that life exists somewhere else in the universe, but that our chances of ever coming across it are pretty dismal. Much of this thinking can be traced back to the famous Drake equation that calculates the probability of life and compares it to the number of planets that might be capable of harbouring life. There is ample speculation out there on the scientific and social questions that are raised by the possibility of alien life, so I won’t go into them here. But there is another set of questions that is a little harder to find being discussed.

 The theological questions are no less interesting. I recall hearing HG Bishop Moussa commenting on this topic at a conference once: “If we find life on other planets, we’ll just tuck our Bibles under our arms and go and preach to the aliens” he said. A nice repost for an impromptu response, but perhaps there is more to the matter?

 I see no problem in God creating life on other planets in the universe: it is abundantly clear that He has created a wildly huge universe, most of which is completely inaccessible to us anyway, so whether some of it has life or not hardly makes any difference. But what about intelligent life? Would such life be conscious in the same way we are? Might there be creatures who are like us but have no eternal spirit? Or if there are creatures with eternal spirits, would we meet them in Heaven? Perhaps that joyful meeting will not only be with angels and saints, but also with Alpha Centaurans! And would the aliens also be created in the image of God? Perhaps there are aliens throughout the universe, each of which is some variation on the image of God, much like a painter who paints the same scene in a number of different styles?

 Would conscious aliens also have free will? If they fell from grace, would God need to incarnate in their form to save them? Or was that a one off solution for the particular problem of humans, and there are other solutions He might use for the particular problems of alien races? Would their sins be the same as our sins, and their virtues the same as ours? If “God is love”, surely Love would have to be a universal virtue, whatever you or your alien society looked like? Perhaps by making contact with the aliens, and studying their morality and beliefs, we could better work out which truths are universal truths, truths that hold everywhere and at all times, and which ones are just local rules suitable for earth alone.

 Might some aliens be more in tune with the world of the spirit than we are? Are there worlds where the very question of the existence of God is not even raised because given their senses and brains, the answer is as blindingly obvious as a sunrise? Would they laugh at our debates over this topic (if they had laughing organs, that is)? Could they teach us new ways of experiencing God? Could they tell us new things about Him? What effect would this have on our relationship with Him? Could this kind of knowledge actually be harmful to us – something more than we can cope with?

Could there already be aliens out there on one of those very planets our telescopes are now imaging, peering back at us, watching and waiting for us to reach a level of maturity where we can sensibly communicate with them? If we found a planet ruled by cockroaches, we wouldn’t bother communicating with them, after all. Perhaps there aliens who think the same of us? What would such a discovery mean for how we see ourselves? Medieval theology considered humans to be God’s greatest creation ever (although I don’t think the Bible ever actually says that). What if we weren’t? What if we’re just one of many different creatures created by God in this wide universe, some greater, some lesser than we?

And what of the tantalising possibility that God only created one conscious species in each galaxy? If interplanetary travel is impossible for us in the near future, intergalactic travel is impossible for as far as we can imagine into the future! The distances are just mindboggling, even to the nearest galaxies. Even messages travelling at the speed of light would need to travel for millions of years before they got to us. By the time we messaged back, the whole alien civilisation would more than likely be long gone! What if the quota is exactly one conscious species per galaxy? That would mean that there are something of the order of 200,000,000,000 other conscious species living their lives, seeking their destinies, and we would never, ever know. Neither would they know about us.

Wow. If God’s intention in making this big universe was to help us realise how utterly small and insignificant we are, He did a really good job.

 The questions seem as endless as the rain that gently, irresistably falls on the lawn. Like the raindrops, they seem to disappear unsatisfyingly without a trace as soon as they land. Shall we ever find answers? Regrettably, I can’t see interplanetary travel happening in my lifetime, nor even in my grandchildren’s. If it were, I think I would work really hard to be the first Coptic priest in space. But sometimes, on a cold, wet Sunday morning, with no one but God and few noisy birds outside my window for company, it is interesting to ponder….

 Fr Ant

In the January/February edition of Scientific American Mind there was an interesting article about ‘Attachment Styles’. Apparently getting married and living under the same roof means that things like your heart rate, breathing rate and hormone levels all come to be regulated by your partner. The two ‘form one physiological unit’. That’s what the Church has been saying for centuries: “And the two shall become one flesh”.

The premise of the article is that we all fall into one of three attachment styles; patterns of behaviour in our relationship with our spouse. The compatibility of these styles is a big determinant of how successful and happy a marriage is. Here is an excerpt defining the three styles:

SECURE Attachment Style
I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.

AVOIDANT Attachment Style
I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others: I find it difficult to trust them completely and difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often romantic partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being.

ANXIOUS Attachment Style
I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.

Imagine then, ‘Mary’, with an Anxious style marrying ‘John’, who has an Avoidant style. Can you see the potential for problems in that relationship? They are likely to spend their lives with Mary constantly feeling rejected, unfulfilled and unloved, and John feeling stifled, trapped and looking for a way to escape. Not a good foundation for lifelong marriage!

So evaluating your styles is a good way to assess the suitability of a prospective partner. A person with a Secure style is the one most likely to get along with the other two styles. It is not necessary to have the same attachment style, but it is crucial to know whether or not you can understand each other’s attachment style, and whether or not you are both sympathetic and willing to accommodate the style of the other.

The authors also suggest that if you are already married you can dramatically improve the success and happiness of your relationship by first identifying your own attachment style; second, indentifying that of your spouse; and third, communicating together about those styles. Understanding why your spouse behaves in certain way can go a long way towards alleviating the hurt and disappointment that some behaviours can cause. It’s almost always nothing personal – just that men and women handle things in different ways.

These principles can also be applied to other relationships in one’s life. We often just take our relationships as they come, without putting a lot of thought into them, just reacting to things as they happen. But relationships need to be cared for and nourished. They need to be healed when they are sick and exercised when they are well.

I have found other systems of categorising our relationship styles to be extremely helpful and effective in real life situations. For example, Dr. Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages are an extremely powerful tool for understanding what makes both yourself and the significant others in your life happy. And I always recommend highly John Gray’s Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus to prospective and married couples. It is a biological fact that men and women are just built differently and they approach life in very different ways. Understanding each other’s ‘planetary’ mindset can remove so many of the obstacles to happiness in a marriage.

So, what’s your attachment style?

 One of the major issues challenging our ethics in the 21^st century is the issue of human cloning. There are compelling parallels to the rise of nuclear energy 60 years ago. Whilst nuclear energy has given us a relatively clean source of incredible amounts of energy, and is even used in medicine to save lives, it also brought with it the ability to destroy the world as we know it. Would we have been better off if the power within the atom had never been unleashed?

Cloning today provides a stunningly similar set of ethical questions. Most people are happy with the idea of cloning plants or even animals if it will provide some benefit to humanity, but when it comes to considering cloning a human being, we run into a minefield of questions, for most of which we have yet to find satisfactory answers.

Nor is it a hypothetical question any more. At this very moment, as you read these words, there are serious efforts underway to produce the first living human clones, and they are getting closer and closer to succeeding.

Firstly, a few basic definitions. I am talking here about reproductive cloning, the production of a fully functioning living human being from the cell of another human. This is different to therapeutic cloning which only involves the production of groups of cells or even tissues from the cells of a human being. With reproductive cloning, the cloned individual is genetically identical to the donor, sort of an identical twin, except they might be born 30 years apart!

Now, we have had test tube babies (IVF) for a few decades. But IVF involves combining genetic material from two individuals to produce a baby, much the same as nature does. Even here, we find a multitude of ethical questions…

-          When does life begin?

-          Can we destroy unneeded embryos?

-          Is it right to implant an embryo in a surrogate mother?

-          If the husband is unable to provide viable sperm, is it acceptable to use sperm from a stranger? Could this be considered a form of adultery (although no actual adulterous relationship has occurred, the results are the same).

-          Is it acceptable to use IVF to give a gay or lesbian couple their own child?

The Coptic Church has a more developed position on these sorts of questions than it does about cloning, obviously because IVF has been around for a lot longer as a real world issue. We consider that life begins at conception, for that is the first moment at which the embryo has all the genetic information that makes her who she is. In a sense, the only difference between a fertilised egg and an adult human being is one of number, not nature. Both are individual human beings, but one has one cell, the other has trillions.

This answers the question of whether it is right to destroy unneeded embryos – no it isn’t, for that means killing a human being, one that is unable to defend itself too. With the issue of surrogacy we start entering muddy waters. There are many social and psychological pitfalls here, and most in the Church would say surrogacy is not an acceptable option. Certainly not for money. Others might say it is in a way an extension of the “wet nurse” that is even mentioned favourably in the Bible. Instead of another woman providing milk for a newborn baby, she is now providing a little bit more – sustenance and protection for the nine months before birth. Interestingly, there is an old Egyptian tradition that says that you cannot marry a person who has suckled from the same breast as you, for that is considered to have made you siblings. I wonder how that might apply to surrogate motherhood? Especially since breast pumps have made wet nurses obsolete these days.

Then of course there are extensions to IVF that haven’t yet happened, but are quite possible. Techniques are available today for finding out quite early whether an embryo has the genetic defects that lead to serious and sometimes life threatening hereditary diseases. Although the Church would not condone the fertilisation of a dozen embryos and then the destruction of those with the faulty gene, it can accept using genetic engineering to correct the problem in a gene and thus produce a healthy child instead of a sick one.

But imagine a donor catalogue where parents could choose the sperm or egg donor with the characteristics of their choice. Choose a famous concert pianist and get a child with musical genes! Genetic Engineering may open up the way to creating your own baby, much the way you create your own computer at a Dell website. Instead of choosing the specifications of your RAM and hard drive, you choose eye colour, height, physique and so on.

A brave new world indeed! Are we ready to cope with such power? Disturbing images of the Tower of Babel spring to mind. Do we have the right to “play God” in this way? Is there anything morally wrong with parents choosing the eye and hair colour of their children, or the inherent abilities they will have? Or were we meant to just accept whatever God gave us? How do the Christian concepts of humility and surrender to God’s will apply to these issues?

I will try to address these questions and raise some more regarding human cloning in coming blogs. In the meantime, your comments are most welcome.

 Fr Ant

Australia's first female Prime Minister.

Angela brings up the topic of Australia’s new Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard.

She is right in saying that priests tend to stay out of politics, and so it should be, but I am going to offer a few non-political observations on the political landscape. I have always thought that faith ought to be applicable to every sphere of our lives, without exception. Politics is one area where perhaps we need to apply our faith the most, for it is the sphere where the major decisions that determine the external nature of our lives are made. Living in a democracy, we get to choose who makes those decisions, and thus have a responsibility to make the best choices we can.

Firstly, it is the first time Australia has ever had a woman Prime Minister. Someone actually pointed out to me that we now have a women-only government, starting from the Queen, the Governor General, Prime Minister, Governor of NSW, Premier of NSW and even the Lord Mayoress of Sydney – all of whom are women! In today’s world, the ideal of equal opportunity has, rightly I think, largely emilinated older ideals of the fragility of women. We should get the best person to do the job, regardless of race, colour, creed or gender. There are many who feel at the moment that Julia Gillard is the best person for the job, so let’s see what she can do.

There is no doubt poor old Kevin Rudd, until recently, Prime Minister of Australia, has been dealt with rather harshly. By most accounts (including his own of course) he has been a pretty good Prime Minister. Whether he was heading in the wrong direction in recent months is up for debate, and now perhaps we shall never know. He has always been an unusual politician: meticulous, excessively hard working, driven almost. Reportedly, he drove the people around him crazy with his high expectations of them as of himself. Thus he was never really so popular among his own party, which I find a little sad. One could almost say the reason he lost his job was because he gave too much of his attention to the job of running the country and paid little attention to the job of lobbying and playing the game and shoring up his support among his own party. This is one of the weaknesses of our democratic system as it stands today. Those who are most likely to reach power are those who play the political numbers game the best. If they are also wise rulers, that’s a bonus, but it is by no means guaranteed. There must be a better way to do things!

On the other hand, we have seen another pattern in Australian government that has been both disturbing and disruptive. Here in NSW, we travail under a government that has just been in power for too long. The bright lights that led it into power a decade and a half ago are all long gone, and they do not seem to have paid much attention to getting good people in to replace them – another of the drawbacks of our current political system. You see, if you are in power, you have to be careful not to recruit people to your party who are too capable, or one of them may one day rise up to take your place! This “King Herod” mentality has seen too many long running governments drop in the quality of their personnel and fall into the pit of corruption, hypocrisy, and ineptitude. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing to have a change of leader every few years? Perhaps that will help to keep the government fresh and on its toes? The years will tell.

I was certainly moved to tears for the man, standing at that podium with his family behind him, trying valiantly to keep it all together and go out with dignity. I was impressed with his appearance on the back bench in parliament the same day. It says a lot about his character. I don’t think we have enough of that in modern politics. Too many politicians who stand for nothing, really, except their own ambitions. No doubt there are admirable exceptions, but not enough.

As always, the real challenge for Julia Gillard will be to stick to her ideals and principles in the maelstrom of Canberra politics. Her opposition is formidable. Tony Abbot has long been renowned as something of a pitbull terrier in the political arena, something I always find sits uncomfortably with his openly Christian faith. How does he reconcile the two? Wouldn’t it be intriguing to have a quiet coffee with him one day and find out?

We once invited a group of politicians to Church for a panel discussion on just that topic: the challenge of maintaining one’s Christian faith as a politician. We were enjoying some illuminating discussion until they began to turn on each other and attack each other’s parties and policies, in spite of our clear agreement before the meeting that this would be an apolitical discussion.

Can they help it? Can Christianity be applied to politics, or can politics be played in a Christian way? I can’t help feeling that it can, but it must be incredibly hard. Other Christian politicians I have spoken to describe their bitter disappointment with the system; how those who do the right thing in the right way are almost always trodden down.

And yet, I wonder. If a genuine and sincere politician came along one day. Some one who always told the truth, even if it were against his personal interests. Some who gave his word and stuck to it. Some one who focused on the real issue rather than on merelygaining popularity and scoring political points. Could you imagine the respect and trust such a leader could command? Can you imagine the good they might do? But could such a person ever succeed in our current political system?

There was actually such a person in Australia. His name was Ted Mack, and he had to run as an independent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Mack_(politician) ). As mayor of North Sydney, he sold the mayoral Mercedes Benz and used the money to buy community buses.  He always spoke out against the huge superannuation payouts made to politicians, and then put his money where his mouth was by retiring one day before he qualified for his own parliamentary pension. He was a beacon of integrity for a number of years, but his usefulness was limited because of course, you can only do so much if you are not in one of the major parties.

Where are the Ted Macks of this world? All running away from politics as fast as they can, sadly.

Fr Ant

The moment you decide to go for it, the instant you steel your will and take up your weapons for battle, something has to happen to make your goal suddenly seem that much harder.

Last time I shared my intention to be more punctual – a brave thing to do. What followed was an illness that meant I had to not only not arrive on time for my next few days of appointments, but cancel them altogether! Talk about not keeping your word. The good news is that I’m back out of hospital now with little permanent damage done, and I’m not going to give up! It may well be some time before I can make appointments again, that’s true, but when I do, I am going to try to be punctual to them.

This kind of thing does not surprise me. It is for me one of the indirect proofs of the existence of God. If God didn’t exist, why should it prove so consistently darned hard to obey Him?

It is also good for the soul. Obstacles give us an opportunity to be stubborn in a good way, and that’s something most of us relish. At least you are sure whose side your on. Give me a clear path with lots of obstacles over a confusing path anytime.

Fr Ant

Time Stress...

I have a confession to make.

I am not always very punctual.

The more cynical among you may be thinking right now, “Isn’t that compulsory for a Coptic priest? Don’t they teach that during their 40 days of training?”

Of course, the reality is that Egypt lies at the junction of the Middle East and Africa, two regions of the world where puncuality as a priority rates somewhere between eating your greens and polishing your carburettor. If the West enjoys occasionally being ‘fashionably late’, everyone in the Middle East is a trend leader, while the dark continent loves to remind you, “No hurry in Africa”. No wonder that Egyptians, by and large, are not a very punctual people.

But here’s my problem: not only do I serve with a priest who is abnormally punctual, but I am married to one of the most punctual people I know! I am developing an inferiority complex! If they can do it, why can’t I?

Lateness is an attitude. If you are engrossed in the thing you are doing at the moment, it is easy to lose track of time. It is easy for the person you are talking to now to seem more pressing than the person you have not yet reached. Somewhere in the back of mind lurks the idea that nothing so terrible will happen if I’m a little bit late. And of course, the little bit becomes a little bit more, and little bit more, and… oops.

I can see spiritual benefits in this attitude, not to mention health benefits. Surely it is a good thing to give the person you are with your fullest attention? Doesn’t that let them know that they are important to you? It also means that you can do things properly, rather than leaving things half finished. Then of course, there is the valuable humility you gain from constantly apologising to people when you are constantly late. Healthwise, it is really good for you not to stress over the little details of life. Your blood pressure will thank you, even if the person waiting for you will not.

But my wife said something to me once that gave me pause: “Being punctual,” she said, “is keeping your word.” I had never really thought of it like that. If Egyptians are famous for lateness, Upper Egyptians (of which I am one) are proverbial for keeping their word – no matter what. So every time I am late, I am actually breaking my word to someone. “I’ll be there at 7,” I confidently tell them. When I eventually arrive at 7:30, not only have I kept them waiting for me for half an hour, but I have also broken my word. That’s not a nice thing to do. The message it sends is that the person waiting for you is not that important. Perhaps that your time is more valuale than theirs, so it is fine for them to wait for you.

Punctuality is often viewed as a cultural thing. But if so, I wonder why many of our Coptic youth who have been brought up here in Australia still seem to have the lousy punctuality of their parents. I begin to wonder whether there is not more to it than just culture. Maybe there is a personal choice to be made here. Can an unpunctual person really change? Can a Coptic priest really turn up on time? I have known some who do, on a regular basis!

Well, I’m going to give it a try!

I’ll let you know how it goes … some time …

Fr Ant

Trust is never an easy thing to attain...

Among the difficult questions in life is trust. We cannot survive without trust, but then again, we are constantly anxious about who, when and why to trust.

 On the simplest of levels, you trust that the glass of water you drank this morning did not contain some deadly germ, and that the brake pedal in your car is actually going to stop the car when you need it to. (I once owned a car where this was not always true, by the way. We developed a very close relationship, that car and I. We came to know each other’s limits intimately; I knew the distance the car required to stop on the flat using only the manual downshifting of gears and the hand brake, while it came to know what I sounded like when I thought I was about smash into a tree.)

 But it’s not usually the inanimate objects that give us grief with trust. Far more often, it’s the other humans. I think we are all born with an innate willingness to trust; an innocence if you like. You need only watch a three year old being tossed high into the air by her Daddy, see the huge grin and hear the cackling, to know that here is an example of absolute trust. Daddy drop me? The very thought is impossible!

 But by the time we are adults, we find it hard to take people at their word or completely depend on someone. Between innocent childhood and suspicious adulthood something changes. Of course, the change occurs through bitter experience. Once someone lets you down, you find it hard to trust that person again. If it ever happened that a Daddy did actually drop his daughter (surely not!) that daughter would no doubt be quite wary of games with Daddy after that. And so it goes on through our early lives: promises broken, agreements dishonoured, honesty repaid with humiliation, secrets betrayed…

 If it only happened once, perhaps we would have a fighting chance of maintaining our innocence. But when it happens many times, we naturally develop an instinct of wariness and caution that eventually comes to colour our personality and our whole approach to life. Shatter trust often enough and the person will withdraw into their own safe little world of lonely isolation where no one can hurt them anymore. How sad.

 Life a lot nicer when you can trust. To live in constant doubt about others is to live without peace. If we are ever to share a sincere relationship with someone, we have to let them in to our inner thoughts and emotions, share with them the experiences that made us who we are. But to do so is to leave oneself incredibly vulnerable to the other. he might go and tell someone else, or criticise me, or not like me, or worse of all, laugh at me! It is so hard to trust another person with your real self, and yet, if we don’t, we are doomed to a sad life of loneliness.

As a parent, you learn how important trust is in the relationship with your child. You cannot be with them twenty four hours a day, so they have to learn how to keep safe, how to be sensible in their choices, how to resist temptation and how to be honourable and remain steadfastly true to their principles. That trust is not easy to achieve. It involves a lot of heartache, not knowing how things are going to turn out, sometimes even running the risk that the child may be hurt in some way, but it’s the only way to develop true trust.

 And the trust has to work both ways. A child can only learn to be trustworthy if they have a living example of trustworthiness before them every day. The parent who takes the shortcut of telling a little fib to escape to buying those chocolates at the checkout today will find their child telling them fibs about anything and everything tomorrow. There are no shortcuts to trust, no discounted sales: it’s expensive, and part of the price is being utterly trustworthy yourself.

 God trusts us.

 He shows us His trust in the incredible degree of freedom He gives us. Yes, if I choose foolishly to eat unhealthily or to blow myself and others up as a suicide bomber, he doesn’t forcefully stop me. God grants every one of us genuine freedom of action, even knowing the consequences of a bad choice. Why does He do that? Why doesn’t He make the world such that no one can hurt anyone else? Perhaps He could enclose every human being in a sort of force field that is impervious to evil actions! Every time you tried to hurt someone, you couldn’t pierce the shield around you. Wouldn’t that be a much nicer world to live in?

 Or would it? I know many parents who would love to get their hands on an invention like that, and would love even more to get their children shackled inside one! But then, where is the freedom? Where is the chance to learn real lessons? Where is the trust? No, God does not deal with us like that. Instead He chooses to unleash us on the world and leave us to make our own choices, choices with real consequences not just for us, but for others also. Only in this way can we become the kind of creatures He wants us to be, or develop the kind of relationship He wants with us.

 Can you trust God?

 As life goes on, everyone goes through experiences that shake their trust in God, and in some cases, destroy it completely. “How could God have let such a thing happen?” is not an uncommon question. How can we trust God when things go so wrong in this world? How do we know He’s not going to drop us?

 Bu there’s the beauty of it. He never does! Oh sure, there are times when it really feels like He has. We see the ground screaming crazily towards us and we get that sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that this time, everything is not going to be alright. But then, it is. Maybe not when we want it to be, maybe not how we want it to be, but wait long enough and sure enough, there it is: the safe hands that reach out at the very last moment when all seems lost and gently hold us and draw us back into that powerful safe embrace.

 Those who have been up and down often enough learn to trust those powerful hands. They know that it simply cannot happen that He should ever drop one of His children.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb?

 Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you.”

Isaiah 49:15.

Now that’s a promise worth trusting.

Fr Ant