Skip navigation

Tag Archives: joy

What is that unholy racket?

I was downstairs in my storage area aka garage when this unholy racket started…..and I whirled around with a …here we go again its the neighbours having another party. Then I thought wait a minute, its Thursday night not Friday and then this huge crescendo was reached… glorious singing started and I thought of course its still Super Thursday!

Today is the day that Pope Benedict was officially welcomed to Australia by aboriginal elder Allen Madden of the Gadigal tribe and then aboriginal dancers  performed a ceremony of welcome at Rose Bay in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, this welcome included the use of gum leaves to sweep away past injustices therefore clearing the way for a new understanding. Just wonderful and could be applied to so much in this life….does not mean that the past is swept away…it is acknowledged…then moved onto from that point into the future.

The Pope and his entourage then boarded a tourist cruise ship, preceeded by the spectacular water spraying tug and accompanied by thirteen smaller ships full of pilgrims and untold police and security ships. They eventually passed thousands of Sydneysiders on the foreshore who had thankfully and somewhat typically ignored the State Government’s instructions to stay out of the city, then sailed past the Opera House, always a spectacular sight and then under the coathanger where some bridge climbers had the absolute best vantage point, on towards Barangaroo... the place of welcome. This is one of the few parcels of land left on the foreshore and it was well used today as all 150000 pilgrims gathered there to welcome the Pope and to share with each other their joy.

I watched all this on television from the comfort of my lounge room, snuggled under one of my quilts, although it was a blissful 19 degrees outside and warm and sunny. I was totally engrossed as the cruiser with its selected passengers and church officials journeyed towards the city. Pope Benedict inpressed me with his serene expression and his seemingly genuine aura of joy as he chatted with variously selected young people. After some periods of sitting inside the cruiser he then invited the young people back and they stayed there with him while the ship edged closer to its destination. They were chatting happily and he seemed to have an unwavering rapport with them…the sheer joy and familiarity they seemed to experience brought tears to my eyes.

What an amazing opportunity for this sophisticated city which prides itself on its ability to throw a party to see the sheer unadulterated joy which was present here today…there were no fireworks….no beer …no rock concerts ….just the delight in the company of each other and the expectation of the sheer joy and love which they anticipated he was going to bring. His message did not disappoint…he is obviously a superb teacher and really impressed me with his opening words thanking the traditional owners of this land for welcoming him, saying he “was deeply moved to stand on their land knowing the suffering and injustices it has borne, but aware too of the healing and hope that are now at work, rightly bringing pride to all Australian citizens”. The rest of his wonderful speech can be found here.

Today  I witnessed something that will stay with me forever, the youth of the world, along with a few hundred thousand people of other ages thrown in for good measure ….were high on joy and love and sheer delight in being here in this beautiful city, able to share the experience with so many like minded souls. And those souls were not all Catholic by any means, they were multi denominational and interfaith. Later as the Popemobile wandered through the city half a million people gathered up to fifty people deep to catch a glimpse of him as he was driven by.

As I wandered through our shopping centre  during late night shopping I thought how strange, I have worn my Peter Lang crucifix before yet tonight it seemed to be drawing a lot of attention …maybe it was just me but I would like to think that people saw it today as a religious symbol as it is meant to be ….not an item of jewellery as crucifixes have become of late. A symbol of love and compassion and a call to something beyond ourselves….well that is what it means to me anyway.

A sad loss

It has been a few days now since I heard about the death of Heath Ledger. If anything I am more sad now. He had so much life ahead of him, so much of life to explore with his daughter. Perhaps his death was just a desperate attempt to get some sleep and was therefore an accident, he had obviously been troubled for some time since filming the Joker. From personal experience sleep difficulties are just that, difficult, and can impact both your day and night. It can take a long time to re-establish a sleep pattern and is quite a painful process. Some people never get a normal pattern back and have to adjust to life in a new way. The hours though when everyone else is asleep can be very lonely ones at first and very trying.

I remember him so well from his role in Monster’s Ball, an incredibly moving performance of a tortured soul. Then A Knight’s Tale, almost the polar opposite of the other. I have seen several of his other films but those two stand out to me for some reason. Possibly because he seemed so beautiful in A Knight’s Tale, in appearance and in his sheer youth and vitality. Monster’s Ball was such a different Heath and I guess that is the whole point, he became his characters and if in becoming the character of the Joker he ended up sleepless and moody then it is certainly too high a price for our entertainment or even for the sake of art.

One’s health is far too precious a gift to squander on a public that is known for its voracious appetite for amusement. If the role did not cause the sleeplessness then it must have impacted on him. How else could he give us such an insight into despair and madness unless he searched the very depths of his being? How long does that darkness stay with a person? Who knows if his sleeplessness was a symptom of depression but was just ignored because well, he must suffer for his art?

This art that has been shared with a world that probably doesn’t deserve such a gift, if John Gibson of Fox News Channel is anything to go by. What kind of a world is this where people like Gibson are so intolerant of anything that they don’t believe in that they will crack jokes about Heath on the day of his death because he played a gay man so convincingly on screen? Forget the later apology it was about who he had upset not what he had said and probably ratings driven.

Cannot people anymore tell fantasy from reality? He was an actor playing a role, but he was also an incredibly brave young man who must have known what kind of vitriol the role would engender. But could he ever have imagined a world where spite and small mindedness would mean that some members of the Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas would boycott his future memorial service?

He may have publicly discussed and privately reflected on death, much to the disgust of Gibson who seems to equate thoughts of death as being unworthy of the young, as if it personally insulted him somehow, but Heath was not afraid to examine the subject because now that he was a parent he felt that he could die as he would go on in his daughter. It does not mean that he wanted to die. I expect that he thought it was a long way off and hopefully in a different time when people are not judged for their skin colour, the sex of their partner or in his case the roles they were brave enough to undertake when they were young.

Rest well Heath, you achieved much in your brief time here and I am so pleased you were able to know the joy of being a parent, you who obviously brought such pride to your own family and to a wider audience. May all of us consider the people in our lives who may be suffering in silence. Do not also be silent, speak the words that need to be heard.

I am here for you.

It will get better with time.

It is amazing what humans can endure.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.