ON THE BANALITY OF URGING THE NATION TO PRAY FOR RAIN

"I don't hold a hose"

 

This post resembles an email thread. The issue that kicked it off is at the bottom. But don’t go there yet. What started as a flippant comment on the banality of urging people to pray for rain, became the opportunity to ponder the level of maturity required to thus exhort the nation; and then to suggest the response of a mature spirituality to the nation’s distress; and finally to get serious about the question that is begged by the ill-conceived assurances of the half-baked - nay, the processed and packaged  - prosperity franchise of Christendom. You could scroll to the end and read your way up, but I don’t recommend it, because the effect of reading the material in reverse order is like being hit by a sledge hammer before tapping the funny bone. It’s, like, bootcamp first, the better to see the funny side of fool’s gold.


ACQUIRED HUMAN INFANTILISM IN PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD-AS-MAGICIAN

YES           DON’T KNOW           NO
    Belief                 Faith                  Belief
   


15/2/2019
FURTHER TO my post of 13/2/2019 in which I said that Scott Morrison’s exhortation to pray for rain to end the drought was a cheap shot in response to actual existential threat, I need to dispel an impression I may have given: that I am a godless atheist.

Let’s not beat about the bush. Does God exist or not?

YES. DON’T KNOW. NO. As far as I can tell, they’re the only options.

No, actually, there’s a fourth: WTF cares? If that’s your feeling, you should probably stop reading now.

The great virtue of DON’T KNOW is that it is irrefutable and constrains YES and NO to peaceful coexistence, except when good will is lacking in the agents of either or both Y&N, and conflict, even war, breaks out and uncritical observers blame it on religion instead of the absence of good will.

Of far greater significance, however, DON’T KNOW opens a space for faith.
YES and NO are forms of belief. Faith is a way of knowing. Knowing requires humility. Knowledge changes when new evidence comes to light. Belief proscribes change and precludes humility.

Humility in relation to the existence or otherwise of God achieves two outcomes simultaneously. It admits the existence of any god that can exist without presuming to define that god as God; and it lays bare the necessary (and sufficient?) role of human agency.

Any god that can exist coexists with human agency. Hence, the previously given definition of spirituality - the quality of one’s relationship with the whole of what exists - implies a relationship with any god that can exist. By definition the mark of that relationship cannot be belief because belief, by definition, defines. The mark of a relationship with any god that can exist is, paradoxically, knowledge, because, if I can’t say that God exists, and I can’t say that God does not exist, what I cannot deny is that any god that can exist, exists - is, perhaps, existence itself, which, having given rise to human agency coexists with it in partnership. The mark of partnership is mutual trust: faith.

There is much to be said about the F word - too much to fit comfortably into this post. So I will come back to it in another post. But to bring this post back to where it started: Scott Morrison urging us to pray for rain. This is a parody of faith. It is acquired human infantilism in partnership with God-as-magician.

I will end this post with a poem - the very first I ever wrote; in 1971 during my first year at university. At the time I was reading Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man. The trajectory of that book imagines existence towards what Teilhard calls the Omega Point

Alpha Omega
You know me by my work: my name is Alpha –
cosmic love in which primordial matter
flung about the blackness was conceived
in groans of joy, evolving as I speak.
Fixed, my thoughts stir life and presently
You know I Am. You offer sacrifice
Supposing I’ll suspend the span that nurtures
Nature: stuff of me; source of you.
My sign, the science we share, effects its purpose.
Search and know me. Valid inference leads
beyond empiric fact to knowledge –vast
definity – too singular except
in tragic human suffering and love.
You find me in your work: We are Omega.


A CHEAP SHOT IN RESPONSE TO AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT


13/2/2019
FOLLOWING UP on Monday’s (11/2/2019) post in which I illustrated the absurdity of praying for rain to end the drought as Scott Morrison urged us to do, I want to dispel any impression I may have given that I think there’s no role for the S word in our response to issues large and small.

The S word? Yes, now please DON’T HANG UP ON ME when I add the remaining letters - pirituality, because I don’t mean what I think is usually meant when someone says: “I’m not religious but I am spiritual.”

So what do I mean? Let’s start with a definition (my definition).

Spirituality is the quality of one’s relationship to the whole of what exists.

In practical terms spirituality kicks in when we wake up, get out of bed and approach the day with commitment and responsibility - or not; when we shrink a little inside at the latest news about our country’s treatment of refugees; when we weep on hearing of the suffering of livestock being exported to markets in countries that have never heard of human rights let alone sheep rights; when we turn to making art or fighting fires, sometimes both, because they are ways we can give to others; when we sign petitions seeking redress from thoughtless and or self-serving policies and procedures; when we meet up with friends and strangers and get drunk (literally and or metaphorically) on the joy of being with them. That is spirituality in action.

By the same token, when we shrug at the treatment of refugees; CGAF about the suffering of animals; resent anything we have to do that doesn’t grow our egos; use other people as plinths for those egos; sneer at do-gooders and so on. That too is spirituality in action.


Everything anyone does resonates with or disrupts the fabric of being. Everything we do is driven by the quality of our relationships. We do not get to choose spirituality as an optional extra. What we do get to choose is to bless or to curse.

What sort of spirituality is implicated in praying for rain? What relationships are involved? How do I define my own existence when I ask a being, said to be the creator of the universe, to intervene in a situation not to my liking? Firstly, I think of myself as so special, that this being, which comprehends the enormity of pain and suffering in the world but does nothing about it, will do for me what is not done for anyone else. I thereby fail to recognise my own agency and imagine others as less than equal in value to me.


What response to drought would resonate with rather than disrupt the fabric of existence?


Using the opportunities available to, and the authority of, the Prime Ministership, to wonder out aloud about, and to urge a widespread understanding of, how, for tens of thousands of years, people responded and adapted to scarcity and hardship on the one hand and superabundance on the other; driving a conversation about how national resources might be redeployed to ensure that all sectors of the society are assisted through hard times and to adapt to changing circumstances; encouraging the reimagining of rural industries as drivers of sustainable prosperity rather than means of gouging wealth; advocating for healthy rivers and reefs as a necessary precondition for sustainable prosperity, not just for the human population but all living things that depend on healthy soils, clean water and fresh air, thereby recognising and critically exercising human agency to benefit all and dismantling the mental and economic infrastructure of privilege.

If that sounds like a lot of effort, it is. And no one who has not been asleep under a rock can be unaware of exactly where such effort is constantly being made in our society - where focus on equitable relationships takes priority over self-serving obsession with “the market”; where exercising human agency is preferred to deferring to authority.

Compared with that effort, urging people to pray for rain is a cheap shot in response to actual existential threat.


THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE MASQUERADING AS AN ADULT


11/2/2019
UNPACKING my post of 9/2/19 - the one with the photograph of drowned cattle...

The backstory is that there has been a severe drought. Farmers and graziers are struggling to maintain their crops and herds. The Murray Darling river system is in danger of collapse. Towns are running out of water. Southern states are burning.

Scott Morrison, whose government’s policies exacerbate climate change and betray people on the land, says “Pray for rain.”

It rains. Hundreds of thousands of livestock drown. Scott Morrison fails to claim the credit. Why?
He would have done so if the rain had simply broken the drought. He’d say, “See! What did I tell you? There is a God and He answers our prayers.”

Now, let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that there really is a God who really does answer our prayers. Why are some prayers answered and others not?

Could it be something to do with the quality of the connection between some people and God? Fundamentalist Christians, like Scott Morrison, certainly say so.

So if that is the case, is Scott Morrison’s connection to God so acute that God rains His abundance at Scott’s request? And if so, what does drowning up to 500,000 cattle say about a God who would do that?

Or is it simply that, like Brian, who is not the Messiah but just a naughty boy, Scott is the sorcerer’s apprentice masquerading as an adult?

So come on Scott! You told us to pray for rain. Why aren’t you taking credit for what happened next? Hell! You've even said you don't hold a hose. Yeah, right! Given your track record, we all know what that means.


“PRAY FOR RAIN” HE SAID


9/2/2019
Not just a Boy Scout but a Christian too, and a Born Again one at that is our Prime Monster who said, to end the drought, pray for rain... and look what happened. Lucky! We're with Scottie! [sung to the tune of the AAMI jingle]







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