Teacher phones ape

MONKEYS WITH GUNS: PRICELESS

Part One: The Ape phones

Had the delightful experience of confronting a lunatic today. At the end of the school day one of the female students had received a phone call from the aforementioned lunatic and, in a spirit of ‘older brother’ protectiveness a couple of the male students took the call on her behalf. A crowd rapidly gathered and I was once again caught in a situation that I dearly wished I wasn't. One of them, a Maori kid, listened briefly before he responded with “Who you calling nigga?!” it went downhill from there and off the ravine with another student’s yelled retort “you have gay sex with your gay dad.” Clearly not enough as this individual was harassing 16 year old girls.

Upon asking the girls what was going on one of them explained that this guy had rung them constantly all day long, like 20 times. He chocked up number 21 as I was standing there. The girl articulated clearly that she was not desiring to continue having anything to do with him etcetera etcetera… we could all hear his response. She hung up. After discovering that the girl had in no way solicited the call in any way, I pointed out to her that it was really a matter she could hand on to the police and if she wanted me to I could call this guy and gentle point out that his advances had to stop. Look, whether or not she had given the number out, the guy was still threatening her, just in case you're about to lynch me for suggesting that "the 'ho' asked for it." And just in case you think I'm suggesting that the girl was a 'ho', I was being...forget it.... She's a nice kid, didn't ask for trouble, I have been watching The Godfather and she showed me respect. Anyway, she was more than happy for me to intervene.

Part Two: I phone the ape

So I got the number and approached the appropriate authorities within the school. The person responsible for the particular year group advocated my course of action. So I phoned the individual with great trepidation, rolling over and over in my head the phrase ”Hi, I believe you have been calling a couple of students, aaaaaaaand I’m their teacher and… um…. Yeah, please don’t ring them anymore…please…. Because I’m their teacher… and they feel threatened because you’re not saying things that are nice… “ and wondering how it was going to come out over the phone. The only saving grace is the guy would have no way of really contacting me as he would have to ring the school and then get the call directed through. I wasn't about to give any names.

The phone rang and he answered.

“Yo nigga”

Beat…

“Hi…” I said in an overly chirpy voiced “um… look, this is awkward but I believe you phoned a couple of students at my school and as their teacher I’m just politely warning you that if you don’t stop, this will have to become a police matter.”

“WHO THA F******? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO????? YOU F******ING C**** I didn’t ring no girls”

At this point I started getting cross.

“Judging by your response, I think you did. Look, if you don’t change the way you're speaking to me I am going to make this a police matter.” I felt like a Wiggle. I wish I felt like Tony Soprano.

“F*** YOU! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO?!!!…. WHAT THE F**** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU F***** YOU CAN'T RING ME AND TELL ME WHO I CAN AND CAN'T TALK TO!”

“Look, all I’m asking you is to not ring my girls.” Even as I said this I realized that the whole objectivity of my position had just gone out the window… I winced.

“So they’re YOUR girls, you’re a f******ing pedophile F**** YOU I’ve got your number so why don’t I…”

Now I got angry.

“…. NO EINSTEIN YOU DO NOT HAVE MY NUMBER, and this is your last chance to listen to what I am saying.”

“I''m a nineteen year old guy, why would I be ringing school kids. You don’t know whether or not I’ve been ringing anyone.”

“Yeah,” I said “I do know, we’ve all been listening to you when you rang before.” I wanted to add 'pedophile but I felt that would have been inflammatory.

Strangely enough his tone completely changed, I don’t really remember what he said then, but he hung up on me shortly after that. So then I phoned the police, then the girl’s parents who then have the option of going to the police with the guy’s phone number. Failing that, I have some ‘friends’ I could call.

My belief shakes it's tin

Want to stem the tide of children on liquor and drugs - ply them with the cautionary tale of Latawnya, the naughty horse.

The fact this book even exists... humans... they leave me speechless.

Children of Men & Elf Sex

Blown away by this very moving film the other night. I have avoided it for a long time because I really didn’t want to subject myself to an apocalyptic jaunt in hopelessness. Yes, it was apocalyptic. Yes it was something of a road movie. Yes, there was a sense of hopelessness. But what moved me was that in the depth of loss, when all things appeared to reach their end and destruction consumed all, the awe and humility of the human race reached out. I can’t give anything away because I want you to see this film, but in light of trying to assess what this film is all about, I think the most clarity was in the beautiful portrayal of hope that is constructed in this film. The human response to innocence and frailty came across as natural and innate. And then as suddenly as it appear it vanished as War exhaled.

Philip French in his review of the film published in the Guardian (Sunday September 24, 2006), made this great observation;

“In his great essay 'The Crack-Up', written at a personal low ebb in 1936, Scott Fitzgerald said: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/screen/story/0,,1879569,00.html

I need to also point out that Alfonso Cuaron, the director of this film has received accolades for a couple of set pieces that are breathtaking in their realisation. I’m referring to a couple of lengthy sequence that are shot without any cut, creating fluidity and beauty – (nothing like Russian Ark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark of course but then I think Russian Ark suffers because the director goes to extremes with that feature, something like 90minutes all shot in one take, but I do realise that it is an amazing feat and needs to be seen on account of this – so please watch this film as well)

If you will forgive me for taking another tangential turn this idea reminds me of a quote referring to the creator of Lord of the Rings J.R.R Tolkien who spoke of giving up hope as a sin. I can’t remember which doco this was in – I suspect it was in the Two Towers special features because it examined the battle at Helm’s Deep where Legolas despairs of surviving the Battle and then gets a bitch slappin’ from Aragorn. Tolkien, through Aragorn, regarded the loss of hope as a sin because we cannot presume to know the future, giving up supposes we know the outcome, and none of us knows how things will turn out. By the way in trying to remember the name of Legolas I stumbled upon this article on Elf sex…. There’s Nerds, Geeks and then something so extreme that I don’t think they see the light of day.

I think there is freedom in being free from death. I am not talking about embracing death, or giving up on life, but having faith in something beyond yourself that doesn’t require that things necessarily work out in your way or in your favor. A message out of favor in the contemporary media (except, perhaps in the work of Alfonso Cuaron – incidentally I think it is the reason why a lot of people didn’t like the film) but present in some of the greatest teachings throughout history. It is a hope that calls us to deny ourselves and set our eyes on a road that isn’t all about us.

The mother load

I am hesitant to write at this point because my head is so full and I can’t quite discern all the strands in my thinking. Some of these ideas, thoughts and beliefs intersect with each other, some have reached conclusions but overall I am not satisfied that I have found the conclusion that I am reaching for. That is why it has been some time since I wrote anything in the Blog. I have become mentally constipated. So here comes the big one.

It’s about the desire to see the crisis we face in the Western World turned around. I’m looking for answers. I don’t think the breakdown of the family, the rise of depression, suicide and all the rest is the beginning of a new stage in humanity. I don’t think disintegration is the brave new future. I’m afraid I tend to agree with the Evolutionary Psychologists about that one.

In the earlier half of April I had the privilege of traveling to a conference in Brisbane. The conference was entitled “A crisis of meaning, challenges facing science and religion in the 21^st century”. It was deeply encouraging to hear people speak of the caliber of Dr Peter Vardy from London, Reverend Dr. Eamonn Conway from Ireland, Dr Bernadette Tobin from Sydney and Reverend Dr Mark Worthing from Adelaide. Googling any of these names will reveal the depth and commitment each of these individuals have to each of their fields. The audience comprised of largely religious educators from around Australia who listened to the overall message – we alienate the public when we oversimplify or force scripture to fit our own agendas when it comes to science. Each speaker was an expert in their field and duly had a deep knowledge of scripture and also of science and maintained their faith by looking at the essential message of scripture – not in the certainty of a scientific position, but rather in the openness to a huge universe that we haven’t at this point entirely understood. The fact is, it would seem the deeper we look the more we discover that it’s a little more incomprehensible than we initially thought.

In the same way this could be said of religion.

What is clear in scripture is that there is a loving God who calls us into community with Himself and with each other. This seemed to be the uniting aspect of all presenters in the conference. There were many aspects to the conference that delved outside this front and that needs to be said and hoped that it is understood that you will gather there is much left unsaid.

The other message that I believed was communicated in the conference was that we live in a society undergoing a crisis of meaning. It is not so much science or religion that is in crisis, as the society that is a recipient of both, and that is perhaps what the title of the conference was implying. Science or religion does not make the meaning, but the participant. They are not some monolithic unchanging institution but the sum total of the practitioner and the participant – in many cases the same person. When people believe that it is the impersonal religion or science that is the meaning maker they fail to recognize that either institution is transient and always changing.

When we make our beliefs about either institution our bedrock we find we are sliding down the slope of doubt and subsequently, insecurity, soon to be taken down into the sea where we are tossed about by the waves of many doctrines. When we exchanged knowledge for wisdom we fell.

Now I have to make a point here where it will appear that I am going to to contradict myself by saying that I believe the scriptures in where they say that God is unchanging. (Please note: the scriptures are not the religion – the interface between the human race, God and the guidance of scripture, that expression I think is religion) If you examine His dealings with us from generation to generation you will see that it is us who change. His love never changes. Even those figures who are leader amongst us, look at their lives. Look at each figure who has emerged over the two thousand years since Christ and find me one who has consistently been faultless. You can love and treat as a hero any number of these figures only to find that there is always someone who has a dislike for a certain aspect of their character, from Augustine to Bonhoeffer. No one person has ever had all the answers. They were part of the process.

Science and religion are not fixed. So you will not find the best expression of science and religion. Some I suspect are more accurate to the truth than others, but oft times it is only later that we find out which is which. Many of Einstein’s theories were proved well outside his life time. There are times we look back at decisions made by the church that seemed right at the time, only to cringe at how far off we were. So in our attempt to find security in the institution of science or religion we are on no rock of security, because it is always changing.

Knowledge is the quest for certainty, wisdom is the quest for relationship. We live in a time of crisis because we have turned to our own devices. Certain that God is not there on the basis of the certainty of science, or perhaps the hope He wasn’t there because - we pulled back the curtains to find the place where God should have been, empty. The Romans made that very mistake. Upon sacking Jerusalem and looting the temples the Romans thought the Jews piteous because they had no god. He was not present. They were quite right, He wasn’t there, but in their arrogance they made the fatal error of thinking the absence of what they were looking for was nowhere to be found, it simply was not in existence. We do this every day. We decide and outline for God His parameters for existence because we’ve worked it all out, and because He won’t be a good God and stay where told Him He should, He therefore is not there. We need to be very careful about where our certainties lie.

Don’t get me wrong though. There are certainties. And where there are not, I fall back on Occam’s razor. Google it. I believe that Jesus is an historical figure. I mean what I say. I take the New Testament at face value. I treat it like any document, I do my best to read as much as I can in it and about it and I am satisfied that it is a meticulous document. I trust what is written there. There are many reasons for this, archeology and theology being the main ones. But there is another. It stands the test of everyday living. I am yet to find one instruction by Jesus to be faulty. Reading carefully what He says, when applied, it works. And here’s the thing. It is applied only in practice. It is not an intellectual exercise. It works itself out in my daily living. As I apply it I realize the depth of it’s truth. The teaching of Christ are absolutely rock solid. Seriously, read them. Forget everything you think you know about Christians and read what He says. Put it into practice. Look at what He does, and when you do you will find it difficult to criticize Him. Find fault with what He does, go ahead and try.

Now my point. Christ does not call us to a set of ideals. You will notice they are surprisingly hard to find and follow when you decide to write a list of do’s and don’t. He calls us to Himself. If He is dead, then fine, make up your own rules. If He did resurrect then His call to follow Him is quite literally that. A call to follow Him.

There is a crisis in contemporary society, I suspect, because we put our faith in institutions and ideals. The latest and greatest that will save us, save our society and save our world. The call is to follow Him and allow Him to direct us to what needs doing. We like to choose because we have become like God, knowing good and evil. This is knowledge. We should put this aside and choose to follow Him, to rest with Him to choose His way, the way of obedience. This is wisdom. Putting anything before this as an answer is to turn it into idol. I suspect this is why religion and science have let us down.