Congratulations to James's daughter Ho-jung Kim and her husband Min-soo Kim!
They were were married in Seoul last Saturday, 26 June 2010.

Jane Kramer's long article in the New Yorker "A Canterbury Tale: The battle within the Church of England to allow women to be bishops." (26 Apr 10) offers insights into the dilemmas faced by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Church generally in trying to resolve deep-rooted disagreement—and not only about the role of women in ministry. Some extracts:

An Archbishop of Canterbury is not a Pope. His authority is limited; by canon law, it extends no farther than his Canterbury diocese. Rowan Williams's moral and spiritual influence, as Primate of All England, is considerable, but he does not "rule" the Church of England—or, for that matter, the churches of the Anglican Communion, whose eighty million members in more than a hundred and sixty countries make up the third-largest Christian denomination in the world. Anglicanism's offspring churches are, for the most part, national, and constitutionally independent.

There is no formal covenant holding those churches together. Their one connection has been their common bond with the mother church in England, and Williams is determined to preserve what remains of that bond. It may be a lost cause. Schism is hardly new to Christianity, and many Anglicans believe that a case can be made for a smaller, more cohesively just church. But insofar as it is Williams's cause—or, as he sees it, his responsibility to a legacy of "Christian imagination" under attack from all sides—he has been urging patience to a few thousand angry female priests at home. He told me that the "most fundamental reason" for his own patience, during eight years as England's Primate, remains a reluctance to rule—"to invent powers I don't have" is how he put it. "I don't believe that is the role of a bishop or an archbishop," he said. " 'Agonizing' is a strong word and a melodramatic word. But it's real for a lot of people, and the agonizing question is how long you can go without compromising the dignity of women in the Church." A few weeks later, after a lesbian priest was elected to serve as a suffragan bishop in Los Angeles, Williams begged the Americans to reconsider. In March, her election was confirmed.

... [Rowan's friends] suspect that the qualities of mind that distinguish him as a scholar . . . are precisely what undermine him as a leader. "Rowan is the only one who can hold us together—he has the humility, the holiness, and the intellect," John Pritchard, the Bishop of Oxford, told me. "But the job is a misuse of his skills, which are spiritual and theological. Instead, he's got the politics of the Church to handle, and the danger is that we will lose the battle to the kind of people who want to win victories. The issue of women bishops is a straight choice. A bishop is a bishop is a bishop, not a male or a female one. . . . As a pastor, I can understand and care for the people who don't want women, but as a bishop I would say that we can't withhold truth and justice in the name of unity. Not anymore." Judith Maltby put it this way: "My feeling is that Rowan's head is in the right place—he knows that taking away the right to discriminate is not a form of discrimination. But he's an emotional man. The pull of that Anglo-Catholic tradition works on him. He's been bending over backwards to save the marriage—even now, when it turns out that those guys were seeing another woman, in Rome. I have great affection and respect for him. We all do. It would mean so much for the Church if he were to say, just once, 'I want to be the one who welcomes women to the House of Bishops.' "

The great Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch—whose new book "A History of Christianity," or, in America, "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years," prompted Williams to write, "It will have few, if any, rivals in the English language"—told me, "Rowan has enormous grace, he gives his opponents space, but he has a lack of killer instinct, which I'm afraid is a necessary quality for leadership." MacCulloch, who is gay, trained for the Anglican priesthood, withdrew as an ordained deacon, and later explained his decision this way: "I was determined that I would make no bones about who I was; I was brought up to be truthful, and the truth has always mattered to me. The Church couldn't cope and so we parted company. It was a miserable experience."

. . . "I think we suffer these days from a short-term memory of history," Rowan Williams said, that morning at Lambeth Palace. "I used to teach early church history, and occasionally I'd say to people, 'Go and read about the fourth century if you think we've got problems.' In the fourth century, you have bishops invading other bishops' territories to ordain people, you have three rival bishops in one of the great cities of the empire at the same time, you have a group in North Africa claiming that they alone are the true church and everyone else is wrong. You have basically half a century of really bitter and sometimes violent confrontation around the words of the Creed, and what you learn from that, apart from quite a bit about human sinfulness, is don't expect Christian conflicts to resolve themselves quite cleanly. Take a deep breath!"

. . . Williams admits that the lessons of fourth-century Christian conflicts are cold comfort to women fighting for equality in their church in 2010. Most of the conflicts dividing the Anglican world today have settled directly on them and, if not on them, on the openly gay priests who are waiting in line behind them—the result, in part, of an epidemic of literalism that is hardly confined to Anglicans. "One of the odd things about fundamentalism in its American form, but not exclusively, is that it's paradoxically a very modern thing," he told me. "A crude nineteenth-century reaction to a crude nineteenth-century scientism—a kind of mirror image of that positivist yes-or-no knowledge that you can pin down." He described it, in England, as a wholesale rejection of intellectual engagement and intellectual depth in Scripture and compared it to what was happening in Islam. "I've sometimes argued with people on the other side of the river here, in Parliament, saying, Don't talk about fundamentalist and modern Muslims, talk about primitivist and traditionalist Muslims—ones who only know the Koran and ones who actually know what it is like to have a thickly textured cultural and intellectual Islamic life."

Earlier, Williams had told me, "We—Anglicans generally—didn't spot soon enough the degree to which the different parts of the community were drifting apart . . . and the degree to which we'd become too used to talking to ourselves and to the liberal Western world, and left other bits of the world talking to themselves. And somehow we didn't quite get hold of that." He kept returning to the subject of Africa. He said that colonialism had left "a deficit of trust" and that "a bitterness and anger arises these days from the sense that someone else is taking up the decisions, just as they always did . . . that someone makes a decision about gay bishops in the United States and we're the ones who have to have our churches burned by local fanatics. . . . These are very religious societies, and Anglicans can easily feel that they are being left exposed, left looking weak, unconvincing, compared with strong answers coming from elsewhere. . . . Occasionally, I've said to people, 'You think of Peter or Henry"—Peter Akinola, in Nigeria, and Henry Luke Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda—"as ultra-conservative. Let me introduce you to a few of the people to their right so you can see that they are liberals in their own context.' They are trying to maintain some elements of traditional Anglican discipline and spirituality, to present Anglicanism as a credible faith in their society, and it's not easy and they feel that we are making it harder." He said that, under the circumstances, some "mutual self-restraint" among Western Anglicans could be considered a "gift" to the whole Church.

I was often mystified to hear priests, both conservative and progressive, attribute Williams's own restraint to Hegel. "He's a Hegelian!" Jonathan Baker, at Pusey House, told me. "He thinks that truth comes out of conflict." Giles Fraser, the liberal canon at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, said, "It's Hegel! You take the two poles and bring them together and the little guy gets crushed between them." It seemed to me that the Archbishop had exhausted himself resisting conflict. He wants justice for women in the Church of England; Pauline Perry remembers a dinner at Lambeth Palace, the year Williams was enthroned, where his wife, Jane, raised her glass to the ordination of female bishops, and when I asked him about the elevation of Katharine Jefferts Schori he said, "I think the greatest tribute you can pay to women's ministry is that it has come to look ordinary to have a female in that position." Liberals in the Church remember another, more impassioned Williams—the Oxford professor who, in the late eighties, delivered a luminous speech called "The Body's Grace," about the theological possibility of same-sex union; or the young bishop who, in the early nineties, put his career on the line by joining a brilliant gay priest named Jeffrey John to speak with his evangelical predecessor at Canterbury, George Carey, on behalf of gays in the clergy. Ten years later, as Primate of All England—under threats of "impaired Communion" from conservative African bishops and conservative priests at home—he stunned those liberals by asking Jeffrey John, who was set to become England's first gay bishop, to renounce the appointment. John did.

It may be that Williams's ideas have changed, but in all likelihood it is simply that his job has changed. The women urging him on now are really trying to remind him that, however broad his concern and compassion necessarily are, he is also the Primate of a Western country where women priests—as well as a good number of openly gay priests—have played an impressive role in revitalizing Christian practice and, one would have to say, the Christian imagination. When he talks to them about restraint and patience—about the fullness of time and the "positive side to Anglican diffuseness and slowness of decision-making" and his own anguish "trying to counsel patience to people who are suffering more than you are"—they say, as many of them did to me: The fullness of time is fine, but it's God's time. We are living now.

There's been some celebration that our new Prime Minister is a woman. A woman as prime minister may have been remarkable a generation ago, but not now. If it is possible for a man to be a feminist, I suspect I am a feminist. Yet, to me, Ms Gillard's being a woman is one of the least remarkable things about her.

Perhaps I react this way simply because female leadership is something I'm entirely used to and comfortable with. For at least three quarters of my working life I've been supervised by women and had women under my leadership. Right now, every one my work superiors is a woman ... all the way to the top (director, branch head, division head, deputy secretary, secretary, minister, prime minister ... and governor-general and monarch as well, for that matter.) Every other member of my work section is a woman, and over half my branch. Their ideas and performance are much more important than their gender.

The rector of my local church, both deacons and about half the other leaders are women. The Rotary club of which I was a member for some years had one the highest proportions of women members among local clubs — about half. Other community organisations I support have women in leadership — and so on.

There is more to do to bring equality for women in Australia. But, thankfully, leadership by women is not extraordinary.

Under Kevin Rudd, the Labor government achieved a great deal and also made some large failures. In the process, a previously hugely popular prime minister became widely unpopular. He was too wedded to the 24-hr news cycle. He micro-managed everything, was often angry, was hideously discourteous to those advising him, expected long nights of work on short deadlines with no notice and mismanaged the results. He disrespected the processes of democratic Cabinet government. I had high hopes for him and was disappointed. He achieved much and failed much. If only had had allowed himself to sleep more.

WHERE ALL THE WOMEN ARE MEN AND ALL THE MEN ARE WOMEN

Do you like music theatre, opera or having a good giggle? Then this concert is for you!

Thursday 24 June and Saturday 26 June 7.30pm at St Philip's Church, cnr Moorhouse & Macpherson Sts, O'Connor.

Tickets at the door: $25 adults / $15 concessions and CAMRA VIPs / $10 under 18.
Lucky door prize!

Following its performance against Australia in the 2006 World Cup, the commentators agree that Italy is made a strong bid for the 2010 diving championship in its World Cup match against New Zealand yesterday:
Dive, dive: a sinking superpower's 'pathetic' performance. NPR (21 Jun 10)
Tony Smith. Italian theatrics cost New Zealand famous win over defending champions Italy, SMH (21 Jun 10).
Rob Hughes finds the Italian's penalty against New Zealand "dubious" — As Europe's best crumble, the cracks are showing, NYT (20 Jun 10).

It's a long and sorry story, which FINA has failed to prevent; read Jeffrey Marcus. When a soccer star falls, it may be great acting, NYT (20 Jun 10).

Recognizing that error is an inevitable part of our lives frees us from despising ourselves — and forbids us from looking down on others — for getting things wrong. Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy. We can respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity. We can demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. In short, a better relationship with wrongness can lead to better relationships in general — whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations.

Embracing fallibility to prevent catastrophic error, embracing fallibility to prevent conflict: These are two hugely worthy goals. But learning to do either one consistently is close to impossible as long as we insist that mistakes are made only by morons, and that an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind is the only backup we need. This is the deep meaning behind the pat cliché "to err is human." Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.

By Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (Ecco, 2010); read the full article in the Boston Globe (13 Jun 10).

Despite losing to Brazil at the World Cup, the North Korean team acquitted itself with determination, defensive skill and courtesy. Not so its country's government. The Star is one of number of papers to report that hired non-Koreans fans are behind those red banners waving in the stands in support of North Korea. Among the 1,000 Chinese fans given tickets by North Korea for the World Cup in South Africa are actors and musicians who have cheered for China in previous World Cups, according to the Xinhua news agency run by the Chinese government. . . . Many others are Chinese tourists who paid for a tour package that included a game, a safari and a trip to a casino. The Beijing office of the North Korean Sports Committee distributed the tickets to Chinese fans since almost no one in North Korea could have afforded the trip, Xinhua reported. (HT to Dan Sloan)

Koreans? "All together now!"

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it. In a statement released on Monday, the organisation called the blockade "collective punishment", a crime under international law. It described Gaza as a territory plagued by frequent power cuts, a ruined economy, and a collapsed health care system.

"The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real possibility of economic development," the ICRC said. "Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza's health care system has reached an all-time low."

Israeli officials insist that they provide enough "humanitarian aid" to cover Gaza's basic needs. But the ICRC — a neutral organisation — said the meagre list of goods allowed into Gaza doesn't meet the needs of the territory's 1.5 million inhabitants.

The shortages are particularly dire in Gaza's health care system, where the ICRC said more than 100 essential medicines — including chemotherapy and hemophilia drugs — are unavailable. Many basic medical supplies, like colonoscopy bags, are also barred from Gaza and routine blackouts cause damage to medical equipment.

"The state of the health-care system in Gaza has never been worse," Eileen Daly, the ICRC's health co-ordinator in Gaza, said. "Thousands of patients could go without treatment, and the long-term outlook will be increasingly worrisome."

The ICRC has some criticism of Hamas, but the bulk of the its criticism is against the blockade.

From the front page of yesterday's The Australian.

The most likely candidate to ruin the World Cup experience for the entire planet is this, the vuvuzela, a plastic version of an allegedly traditional instrument with, according to Wikipedia, a constant single note of B flat. A small curse on the South African Football Association which, in a community-building project, helped manufacture the coloured plastic trumpet and also persuaded FIFA that vuvuzelas were essential for an authentic South African football experience. The result is a constant steady loud buzz that makes it nearly impossible for players to hear each other and for TV viewers to hear the commentators.

At 127 decibels up close, a vuvuzela is loud. OH & S regulations typically limit exposure to continuous noise to 85 dBA, for an 8 hour shift. For each 3 dB increase, the allowed exposure is halved. So, if you work in a nightclub where amplified music produces 100 dBA near your ears, the allowed exposure is 15 minutes. Allowed exposure at 127 decibels is effectively nil; ear protection must be worn.

The Chief Executive Officer of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Dr Danny Jordaan, idiotically proclaimed that 2010 "will be the loudest World Cup ever".

Local culture? So it seems. Hospitable? Not at all.

Blech.

CAMRA's Month of Sundays has been a delightful success — a series of Sunday afternoon concerts by Canberra singers, accompanied by Colin Forbes.
It was a small relief to discover that "A Charm", no. 4 from A Charm of Lullabies Op. 41, by Benjamin Britten, which was sung by Rosemary Lohmann, was indeed intended as comical by the poet Thomas Randolph (1605-1635).

Quiet!
Sleep! or I will make
Erinnys whip thee with a snake,
And cruel Rhadamanthus take
Thy body to the boiling lake,
Where fire and brimstones never slake;
Thy heart shall burn, thy head shall ache,
And ev'ry joint about thee quake;
And therefor dare not yet to wake!
Quiet, sleep!
Quiet, sleep!
Quiet!

Quiet!
Sleep! or thou shalt see
The horrid hags of Tartary,
Whose tresses ugly serpants be,
And Cerberus shall bark at thee,
And all the Furies that are three
The worst is called Tisiphone,
Shall lash thee to eternity;
And therefor sleep thou peacefully
Quiet, sleep!
Quiet, sleep!
Quiet!

Picture: William Blake. Cerberus. Pen, ink and watercolour over pencil and black chalk, National Gallery of Victoria.

The South Korean team is off to a good start in the World Cup, defeating Greece 2-0 and reminding me of my visit to Korea at the time of the 2002 World Cup, when the streets were full of people wearing red tee shirts and chanting "Dae Han Min Guk" in support of the Korean national team, the fans of which are called the "Red Devils". James and I were glued to the TV as the Koreans played. We arrived in Seoul for a holiday on the same day that the grand final was to be played in Japan. Korea was not in the grand final. But the were still fans a-plenty sporting red and white T-shirts. Millions turned out to cheer the players and chant "Dae-han Min-guk!" (대한민국 the name of the republic in the Korean language).

A fascination in South Korea's 2004 World Cup campaign was the depth and breadth of support Korea's people. Enthused by their country's successes in the 2002 Cup, huge crowds were out in Korea's main cities to watch the match between Korea and Switzerland on giant video screens including 350,000 around Gwanghwamun in downtown Seoul, 150,000 in front of Seoul Plaza and 100,000 in the Busan Asiad Stadium.

Vast apartment complexes and residential streets were lit up all night as people waited for the match and watched other matches. But in the end Korea was crushed 2-0 by Switzerland. Dae Han Min Guk rang through the Hanover stadium and the 'Red Devils' sang. The Koreans had several chances to score but none of them went in. Inability to convert opportunities cost Korea the match.

James and I support Australia, but would be a little torn if Korea met Australia in a final.

The spectacle and skill of world-class football is undeniable and exciting. But I find it a frustrating game to watch. The outcome often seems arbitrary to me. A single lucky goal, refereeing error or mistake by a player can make or break the result of an entire tournament. "That's football" they say. Hmm? The last World Cup was marred by poor referees and bad sportsmanship. In Australia's 2-2 draw with Croatia, which saw Australian advance to the round of 16 with a goal by Harry Kewell (pictured). The referee lost the plot more than once and booked Croatian Josip Siminic three times before red-carding him after the final whistle.

Then there was the the ridiculous nonsense that occurred in the Holland v. Portugal match, with 16 yellow and 4 red cards issued! France advanced to the 2004 final after defeating Portugal 1-0, not in the run of play, but by yet another arbitrary match-deciding penalty. Zidane skilfully converted the penalty after Uruguayan referee Larrionda adjudged that Carvalho had fouled Henry. Carvalho had slipped as he tried to win the ball and Henry took advantage of his flailing leg, by going over after contact. One report declared that "The dark arts of diving, play-acting and intimidating the officials were all on display."

Nobody's fooled by diving (except the referee); thus Michelle Kauffman in the Miami Herald 27 Jun. 2006, writing about the Australia v. Italy match. What happened in Kaiserslautern on Monday . . . was disgusting. That film clip, which is very real, clearly shows Italian player Fabio Grosso taking a dive Greg Louganis would be proud of, tumbling over the prostrate Australian defender Lucas Neill in the penalty box, just as time is about to expire at 0-0. Grosso crumpled into the fetal position, and peeked out to see if referee Luis Medina Cantalejo bit. He did. A few seconds later, Francisco Totti lined up a penalty kick, scored, and Italy advanced to the quarterfinals. Australia got a long plane ride home, and four years to wonder what would have happened had they played extra time. It was the latest — and perhaps most blatant — example of unpunished cheating going on at this World Cup. For, what else is diving if not cheating? A player who is barely touched launches himself at the ground, feigns injury, and tries to con the referee into a penalty kick or free kick. Often times, he is carried off on a stretcher, at which point he takes a swig of water, brushes off his shorts, and rejoins the game at full speed. It has been going on for decades now, and it is still just as wrong. Thus CW Nevius in the San Francisio Chronicle, 1 Jul 06 Millions of Americans are watching World Cup soccer this year. But what are they seeing from some of the best players in the world? Flopping, diving and yelling at the referee. Is this really what we wanted our young soccer players to learn? . . . On Monday, Italy and Australia battled through a thrilling match for some 95 minutes. Just as the game was about to go to overtime, an Italian player stumbled in the box — the area around the goal — and executed a world-class flop, going down as if he'd stepped on a high-voltage wire. A penalty kick was awarded, Italy converted the shot, and the Australians lost 1-0. Michael Cockerill, as always, gave an interesting summary in the SMH. Franz Beckenbauer president of the German organising committee for the World Cup, called for a summit meeting of players, coaches and referees in an attempt to put an end to the "play-acting" which had blighted the tournament." he said that he had had enough of players and coaches trying to cheat their way to victory by trying to con officials. Hopefully the 2010 tournament will avoid this plague.

Reviewing Doug Lansky's book, The Titanic Awards: Celebrating the Worst of Travel (Perigee Trade), Joe Lansky says (NYT 17 May 2010) that "If you're like most seasoned business travelers, you appreciate the joys of travel, but what you really want to talk about when you trade stories with fellow travelers is the misery.

Doug Lansky, a travel writer who has been a correspondent for National Public Radio, agrees. "I’ve been going around the world full time for nine years and met with loads of experienced travelers, and I’ve never once gotten into swapping bar stories with someone who talks about how white the beach was, or about, 'Oh, boy, was that hotel bed cushy,' " he said.

"Every time you start telling travel stories over a beer, it's always about the stuff that went wrong," Mr. Lansky added. "O.K., sometimes there will be that one-upmanship on who got the best deal on an Ecuadorian sweater. But more often than not, it's about the adventures when things go wrong, and the lighthearted rants we have. These are great nuggets of the travel narrative."

Lansky's book is dedicated "to all the travelers who overcame annoyances and obstacles to make it to their destinations, and then willingly decided to set out traveling again." While researching the book Lansky to ask about their worst trips. "My object was to honor and celebrate the bad things in travel," Mr. Lansky said. "The point being, if you suffered through it, you should at least get a good bar story out of it."

This in an open invitation to tell of my own worst/most dramatic travel experiences.

• Getting from London for my first (and only) visit to Paris when my Air France flight was cancelled by a strike. I made it eventually—after 20 hours—via Brussels courtesy of Sabena.
• Fourteen hours delay in Bangkok en route to Europe, when the 'plane broke dow—with no sleep for nearly three days.
• No sleep from Paris to Sydney, because of a baby that cried almost ceaselessly for 20 hours.
• The hijacking on 4 December 1977 of Malaysia Airlines Flight 653 from Penang to Kuala Lumpur. The Boeing 737 aircraft descended to a few thousand feet before leveling off and apparently continuing on autopilot. It eventually plunged into a swamp, with all on board killed. Investigations later found that both pilots had been shot. I would have been on that flight but for a last minute decision to go by road and rail, so that I could see the sights on the way.
• Christmas on Yass Junction station in the summer heat when a derailment further up the line delayed my train by 12 hours.
• It was quite exciting driving over steep and rocky mountain roads across the Crocker Range in Borneo in the middle of a tropical storm at night—but not really dangerous as the going was so rough that it was impossible to go more than 10 m.p.h.
• Flying through a tropical storm at night, also in Sabah, was also fairly interesting.

For me, one the small pleasures of holidaying in SE Asia is to read the International Herald Tribune daily. It's not widely available in Australia although, of course, there's a good website. I even got to do some ethical/religious thinking while pondering some of the IHT columns.

Reflecting on the speed with which the Greek financial collapse has an impact on much of the world, Thomas L. Friedman observed IHT 14 May 10) that we live in "an increasingly integrated world where we'll all need to be guided by the simple credo of the global nature-preservation group Conservation International, and that is: "Lost there, felt here."

Conservation International coined that phrase to remind us that our natural world and climate constitute a tightly integrated system, and when species, forests and ocean life are depleted in one region, their loss will eventually be felt in another. And what is true for Mother Nature is true for markets and societies. When Greeks binge and rack up billions of euros of debt, Germans have to dig into their mattresses and bail them out because they are all connected in the European Union. Lost in Athens, felt in Berlin. Lost on Wall Street, felt in Iceland.

Yes, such linkages have been around for years. But today so many more of us are just so much more deeply intertwined with each other and with the natural world. That is why Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and author of the book How, argues that we are now in the 'Era of Behavior.'

Of course, behavior always mattered. But today, notes Seidman, how each of us behaves, consumes, does business, builds or doesn't build trust with others matters more than ever. Because each of us, each of our banks, each of our companies, now has the power to impact, for good or ill, so many more people's lives through so many more channels " from day-trading to mortgage-lending to Twitter to Internet-enabled terrorism.

"As technology has made us more interconnected with others around the world, it has also made us more ethically interdependent with others around the world," argues Seidman.

[. . .] our values and ethical systems eventually have to be harmonized as much as our markets. To put it differently, as it becomes harder to shield yourself from the other guy's irresponsibility, both he and you had better become more responsible.

But that hasn't been the trend. We've become absorbed by shorter and shorter-term thinking—from Wall Street quarterly thinking to politician-24-hour-cable-news-cycle thinking. We're all day-traders now. We have day-thinking politicians trying to regulate day-trading bankers, all covered by people tweeting on Twitter.

So more and more of us are behaving by, what Seidman calls, "situational values": I do whatever the situation allows. Think Goldman Sachs or BP. The opposite of situational values, argues Seidman, are "sustainable values": values that inspire in us behaviors that literally sustain our relationships with one another, with our communities, with our institutions, and with our forests, oceans and climate. Of course, to counter this epidemic of situational thinking, we need more and better regulations, but we also need more people behaving better. Regulations only tell you what you can or can't do in certain situations. Sustainable values inspire you to do what you should do in every situation.

On 17 May, well into our beach holiday, I read Boston Globe columnist James Carroll in the IHT on "Our secular crisis of faith."

Religion is in crisis, or so its critics say. . . . Faith traditions seem thrown on the defensive just when theology as an intellectual discipline has lost its vitality. . . . One reason religion comes in for such a trouncing is that religious impulses are readily identified, and easily debunked " even by those who share them. A prophetic tradition " most obviously represented by, but not limited to, the Bible that gave prophets both their good name and their bad standing " forms a core of all the great religions. Self-criticism, confession, repentance, and the purpose of amendment are standard spiritual values. Trashing religion, in fact, begins with religion (see, for example, Pope Benedict XVI's stirring acknowledgement last week of "sin within the church itself"). But the problems humans face go far deeper than what goes on in churches, temples, and mosques—never more so than today. A focus on religious failures can let the broader culture off the hook.

We are living through the simultaneous breakdowns of the two great secular myths that have defined Western civilization for 200 years—the socialist ideal of equality, and the organizing ethos of nationalism. These pillars of the modern idea are, respectively, broken and shaken. Take the ideal of equality. During the age of revolutions, from America and France in the 18th century to Russia and China in the 20th, a new vision affirmed the dignity and rights of every individual.

. . . That revolution has been reversed, both globally, with vast numbers falling back into abject destitution, and within developed countries, where a new elitism is imposing brutal inequalities. The once-noble ideology of socialism is dead. The word itself is a political curse.

In the secular age, as religion was marginalized, its role as a source of meaning, purpose, and transcendence was largely taken over by the myth of nationalism. The nation-state became a main source of identity, prompting sufficient devotion in citizens to die or to kill. Where religious wars were always primitive and immoral, national wars were patriotic and just. Today, the tie between citizens and the state is tattered, even in America, which, in its democratic liberalism, was nationalism's greatest success. . . . Meanwhile, patriotism has become an exercise in hatred.

Wherever one looks, there are collapsed structures of meaning. Biology is obliterating ancient definitions of sexuality, reproduction, and mortality. Computer technology is transforming the very way humans think. Moral categories crumble. So why shouldn't religions be in crisis? And if some people use devotion as a means of escape, who can blame them? But in truth, the old divide between secular and sacred has itself lost significance. The human race is at sea, cut loose from all moorings. Yet this condition can mark the end of hubris. Indeed, this condition— Genesis calls it "darkness upon the face of the deep"—is the one in which real religion had its start.

Returned to work this week after two months break. I enjoy my colleagues and many of the work tasks.

In his recent Quarterly Essay, David Marr put his finger on the reason why many public servants, including me, find their work less satisfactory than it could be.

Information is a great prerogative of power. Rudd has at his disposal a vast, highly skilled machine for gathering facts. . . . Hours aren't the issue. Bureaucrats don't mind working hard, long days. They object to feeding material in when nothing much comes out; demands made at midnight that might be made at midday; wild flurries of activity driven by petty media squalls; calls for detailed briefing on fourth-rank issues that need never go near a prime minister; and urgent requests for material they know to be sitting in Rudd's office already. They mind wasting their time. And they worry that not much good policy can come from a strange mix of rush and delay. The new government was always pressing forward while leaving unfinished business in its wake.
— David Marr. Power trip: the political journey fog Kevin Rudd. Quarterly Essay, no. 38, 2010, p. 72

The centralisation of decision making seems even greater under Labor than under Howard—which is problem for a reformist Government that is trying to do many things on many fronts at once. To me it is a scandal that Environment Minister Peter Garrett was first made aware of the government's decision to jettison the emissions trading scheme when it was leaked to the press. "That was an announcement and a decision that was leaked and I found out about it when it was leaked," he said recently. In fact it wasn't the Government's decision; rather it was a decision by a few ministers. The decision to dump the ETS — a massively important proposal on which the Government had expended mush political capital — didn't go to Cabinet, with the decision made by the Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee of Cabinet: Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner. Reports suggest that Mr Tanner was outvoted by other three.

It has never been harder for Labor ministers to stare down a prime minister. Nor have Labor Cabinets ever been so circumscribed. From the time Rudd's government faced its first crises, more and more big decisions were made by four key ministers alone — Rudd, Gillard, the treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the finance minister, Lindsay Tanner — sitting as the Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee. In early 2010 Laura Tingle reported:

When ministers arrive for federal cabinet meetings, they find a folder waiting in their spots which they can look at but not take out of the room. Inside are decisions already taken by cabinet's expenditure review committee and the ultimate power within the Rudd government — the Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee (SPBC). Ministers are expected to endorse the decisions without discussion, and usually do.

Two other Cabinet systems have broken down. Submissions once circulated ten days before Cabinet meetings began to turn up in ministers' offices only the night before. And scrutiny of submissions by inter-departmental committees has largely given way to scrutiny by the prime minister's office and department alone. Rudd is the choke point again.

Not good.

I do like the work of Australian landscape artist, Philip Wolfhagen. This is his Autumn equinox: the loss of the sun, 2009 (200 x 160 cm), recently added to the collections of the National Gallery of Australia. There is an article about it by Miriam Kelly in the Gallery's artonview, 61, autumn 2010.

Philip Wolfhagen is widely regarded as one of Australia's most significant contemporary landscape painters. He won the prestigious Wynne Prize in 2007 and is part of a new generation of painters who are presenting fresh visions of the Australian landscape and rethinking the traditions of this age-old genre. His works, inspired by the atmospheric landscape of northern Tasmania, explore the representation of time and natural phenomena.

[. . . ] Wolfhagen draws inspiration from the regions surrounding his home in northern Tasmania, many of which he has known since childhood. [. . .] Across the darkened paddock depicted in Autumn equinox; the loss of the sun, our eyes are drawn to the glimmer of a fire and wisps of smoke—a suggestion of distant human activity. In his 2005 monograph on the artist, Peter Timms states that Wolfhagen is one of few contemporary Australian painters to explore ideas of the picturesque within the cultivated landscape, despite there being little romance left in rural toil. Wolfhagen's atmospheric explorations of this subject are underpinned by a love of both the wild and changed landscape and, most significantly, a strong sense of our responsibilities towards the natural world.

This work is on a scale just large enough to envelope our vision and provokes an immediate reaction from the senses. We are momentarily transported from the gallery by the illusion of realism. Yet, the sense of profound mystery this work also possesses gives us the impression that Wolfhagen is seeking to draw us further beyond the realm of the physical world. On close inspection, the initial illusion is dissolved and abstracted by the exquisite painterly quality of Wolfhagen’s mark making.