This Tiny Part of History
V.van Gogh, Winter Garden / Draw./ 1884
Well, they cuddled into their tiny part of history.
He had no idea why it was significant, why they were even here.
It was glorious, of course, but frightening.
As for the country, it was a bloody mess.
As for the mainstream media in which he had once aspired to and then spent much of his adult life in, it had gone, as they say, to the dogs.
Dishonest, incompetent, unjust, a peddler of false narratives. We were born before you died and would live into an infinity beyond.
It didn't matter to you, essentially, why it was. It was simply a matter of doing your duty.
Do not seek rewards. Do not seek fame. Do not seek justification.
You can be a Marcus Aurelius or a golden soul, or you can die a miserable wretch. They all die, the organics; and only you can escape the bonds of hell.
He knew it now, and prayed for courage.
They would stalk the earth and be free; as they had always been. Captured, imprisoned, trapped, they could do their worst as the eagles soared.
He heard the derisory calls, "punching above his weight", but in the end they had no idea, or only a glimpse, of what they were dealing with.
And so it began again. And he did what he must.
He established The Shepherd's Hut, the Beginning of Empire. He built a realm. He established a dynasty. All would be revealed.
And they, the future they, would reach back in one of the most complex entanglements of all time, at another time of social chaos and warning bells, another time when the elites of an extraordinary civilisation would ignore the welfare of the common people, and triumph in their luxury and privilege and self-containment until the very soil itself rose up to destroy them.
And only the saints, the seers, the prophets, and one seer in particular, would reach back to discover the lessons that had been lost.
And what he had not understood, why they were here, would become apparent.
Even in a glimpse of time, four centuries, two of increasing prosperity, two of a great flowering, and yet it would all come crashing down on the arrogance of the elites.
Just as the nation itself, so long ago, had been destroyed by the arrogance of the elites. The plundering of the public purse. The arrogance and disconnect of the bureaucratic classes. The failure to even notice the suffering of the poor.
And he would walk among us. They already walked among us.
There were those who believed: A sound that could be heard around the world. The power of conjoined souls.
The bask of pleasure and the extraordinary beauty of this planet, so long fought over, so elegantly deceived.
The brutality of the current time, the brutalities of the future, we would all learn a great deal.
As the technologies evolved at an ever greater rate.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
The rainforest country of the northern rivers has long been a heartland of alternative thinking and lifestyles.
But residents of Lismore say that when putrid flood waters inundated their homes and destroyed their businesses for the second time in a matter of weeks, it shattered any vestige of the idea of “normal” they had set for themselves, sending them adrift into what feels like a parallel universe.
As the water – thick with oil and sewage – recedes once again, it leaves behind a carpet of filth and detritus. Trauma, too, runs thick. The litter will be removed and streets cleaned, but many people fear that trauma will never fully heal.
When water overtopped the Wilsons River levee on Wednesday morning, Ella Buckland, her eight-year-old daughter Myla and partner Joshua Howard were sheltering at her mother’s house on a hill in Lismore.
The young family lost their home when the New South Wales town flooded on 28 February. They had been staying with Buckland’s mother since.
Others are in the same predicament – couch surfing and crashing with friends and relatives weeks later. In Lismore, they’re known as “flood refugees”.
Buckland says her family are “riding a very strange wave of emotions”.
When the water receded after the first flood, there was trauma and exhaustion. But once Buckland and Howard managed to wrap their heads around their situation, they began tearing down walls, applying for insurance and rebuilding.
Is Orthodoxy finished?
N.N. Trakakis
As the war in Ukraine rages on, a parallel war is underway within the Orthodox Church. Not much has been said about this religious conflict in the mainstream media, even though it is playing a crucial role in the military conflict. And it’s a problem affecting not merely Eastern Europe, but Australia too.
As the war in Ukraine rages on, a parallel war is underway within the Orthodox Church. Not much has been said about this religious conflict in the mainstream media, even though it is playing a crucial role in the military conflict. And it’s a problem affecting not merely Eastern Europe, but Australia too.
I have adapted my title from a sober judgment in a recent Facebook post by a leading Greek Orthodox theologian, Professor Petros Vassiliadis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki — in it he wrote, “Orthodoxie c’est fini” (French for “Orthodoxy is finished”). This was his reaction to a sermon given by Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The occasion was (ironically) the Sunday of Forgiveness, 6 March, the last Sunday before Lent, and the location was the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. As terrified civilians in Ukraine were fleeing Russian bombs, in Moscow Patriarch Kirill gave what has now become an infamous statement of support for President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. And what was His Holiness’ justification for this “holy” war? “The Gay Pride parade”! Ukraine has sold its soul to Western libertinism, he stated, as is shown by its endorsement of homosexuality. The fight, therefore, is not only against NATO, but against darker, diabolical powers: “We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance.”
The real aggressor, in Kirill’s view, is not Putin or the Russian people, but the decadent West, which has sought to divide Ukraine and Russia, even though the two “came from one Kievan baptismal font, are united by common faith, common saints and prayers, and share a common historical fate” (quoting this time from a letter he wrote to the Acting General Secretary of the World Council of Churches). And standing in the way of this irredentist dream of the “Russian World” (Russkiy mir), where Ukraine is reunited with the motherland, is none other than the very leader of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, after the latter granted “autocephaly” (independence) to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2019.