Chapter 40 : A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven

Since pandemic restrictions hit the Australian music industry, we’ve been locked in to home bunkers, learning to Zoom and posting online.

Faced with lockdown challenges and live singing bans, the words of the folk song “Turn, Turn, Turn”, made familiar by Peter Seeger, ring true. Right now we live in a time of weeping, that will change and develop, because we exist in emplaced temporal spirals that never stand still. Since we live in different places, but are globally networked, multiple influences can sway our behaviour. Managing these online influences wisely, and maintaining healthy daily routines and relstionships, can shape our lives and actions for the better. Human lives are rich palettes of joy and sorrow, creation and destruction; this is the ultimate lot of every divinely created, but fallible, human being. How we react to this living maze, and where we choose to go within it, takes us in different directions. The “Turn, Turn, Turn” song lists conflicting opposites, that seem to have nothing in common, but in fact they hold a mirror up to the full spectrum of human experience. Invoking divine blessings is not an easy way out of facing these paradoxes, but if we look for the pathways that grace offers, they can lead us to what various cultures have named salvation, dadirri, heaven, nirvana, and enlightenment. If we get lost, we can retrace our steps and find the right track. What the world sees as uncompetitive weakness, may incorporate hidden, lasting strengths. Every humane culture has teachings that communicate this truth.

Institutional Church ministry, that is publicly defined, enigmatically codified, strictly regulated, and is lived, paradoxically, as humble servanthood within an elite ministerial class, has often been illegitimately used to mask malignant worldly power structures. This is clearly the case in Australia, where predominantly non-Aboriginal church ministry hierarchies overwhelmingly endorse racist geographical segregation from Australia’s ghettoised Aboriginal First Nations churches. 

People who are elevated to privilege and power, including that of church ministry, choose to exercise their power over others with varying degrees of responsibility. Some have no conscience at all, and never consider what effect their actions may have. Others may be fully aware of potential effects, but either dismiss them, or readily pass the blame on to hapless colleagues. In Australian Church ministry circles it is rare to encounter anyone prepared to admit that they have done wrong, or sincerely makes amends. But Australia’s churches still favour self righteous elites. So does Australia still have churches, or just ghostly, lost remnants of the community founded by Jesus Christ?

Perhaps the Australian church is going through a dormant period, like the three day Easter Triduum that precedes the Resurrection. We need a Reveille, a clear trumpet call, to wake us from the dead. A remedy has been offered to Australia, in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, but I have yet to see any Australian Church leaders and musicians endorse and promote the Uluru Statement wholeheartedly, using powerful church media strategies that are readily available. Australia urgently needs to face the truth of its colonial history, accept the strong Aboriginal Voice of the Uluru Statement, and forge a lasting Treaty. But Australia’s divided churches are still promoting factional doctrines, blindly acting as if Australia’s First Nations don’t exist or need “protection”, and busily maintaining racist segregation. And all this, in a networked world where virtual intercultural worship and friendships can and should be flourishing. After weeping, comes laughter. Australia has had enough of weeping.