Top End

Darwin. Such a beautiful city. Today I started the day with a walk and a swim at Grungle Downs - a B&B I wholeheartedly recommend. Then attended my aunt's funeral at the Thorak Regional cemetery. Already 32 degrees (Celsius) by 10 a.m. Picnic lunch in the park with cousins and their children and grandchildren plus close friends. Coffee in Darwin city. Great explore of an Aboriginal Art gallery. Two movies at the deckchair cinema. Now bedtime. One of those well-rounded complete days including the conclusion of a life wonderfully well lived. Rest in Peace.

Neglected tropical diseases

An excellent and relatively brief factsheet from the World Health Organization highlights the reality that one billion people, most poor and marginalised in rural parts of low income countries, are living with and dying too early from diseases such as buruli ulcers, chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis), dengue fever, dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease), leishmaniasis, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis (river blindness), schistosomiasis (bilharzia), trachoma and yaws.

To my shame I have not even heard of many of these diseases, have heard of some but really know nothing much about them, and can comment in a knowledgable way about only two. I guess that underpins how neglected these debilitating conditions are.

WHO notes that key challenges to addressing the incidence and impact of these diseases include:

• Limited visibility since the diseases are tied to specific geographical and environmental conditions and do not spread easily to industrialized countries;
• Not on the radar screen of most decision makers, mainstream research and funding agencies;
  
• Little market incentive to develop medicinesand vaccines as mainly poor people areaffected.
  

The authors note that "children and women are disproportionately affected by some neglected tropical diseases and may face additional barriers to seeking and receiving treatment. Women also tend to suffer more severely from social stigma. Dissemination of information is necessary for awareness-raising, and for impeding stigmatization, which is both a cause and consequence
of neglected tropical diseases."

I thought the 'cause and consequence' phrase was interesting. Stigma is so pervasive.

And as we in the 'West' manage to find billions and billions of dollars to bail out imprudent financiers and to deploy ineffective but highly visible thermal imaging devices in our airports - what proportion diverted to sanitation and safe drinking water, housing and education, information and community development would be needed to eliminate these conditions and to adequately provide for those already affected.

As Pete commented I need to start in my own backyard with this. And to advocate for those whose voices are seldom heard when the money is distributed.

What panics us

Cheryl pointed me to an excellent article in the Melbourne Age in relation to Influenza A H1 N1 (as we now know it). I hope that these snippets from the article may entice you to read the full account:

"We may be hard-wired to panic about minor threats such as swine flu and ignore real dangers, writes John Watson.

THINK of each "threat", be it terrorism, asylum seekers, SARS, bird flu and now swine flu: how many deaths in Australia has each of these caused? None. Smoking, cars, ordinary flu — these cause thousands of preventable deaths every year and we shrug them off. The disparity between the impacts of threats and the panic they cause is remarkable. Even globally, with the exception of terrorism or, rather, the conflicts it has triggered, the tolls are strikingly small by comparison to the threats that are most likely to kill us.

"... when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd talks about swine flu being a "serious international concern for public health" and vows to use all available resources to counter it, one has to wonder why the world's really big preventable killers barely register"

"Each panic about relatively minor or remote risks diverts attention and resources from tackling threats that we know will kill millions year after year.

• nearly 2 billion people — a third of the world's population — are infected with tuberculosis. About 5 to 10 per cent go on to develop full-blown TB, which kills about 2 million people a year.
  
• AIDS has infected more than 33 million people, including 2.5 million children, and killed about 2.1 million in 2007. In low to middle-income countries, fewer than one in three HIV-positive people receives antiviral therapy.
  
• Malaria causes about 250 million cases of fever and about 1 million deaths a year.
  
• Even the simple tragedy of diarrhoea as a result of poor sanitation and malnutrition kills about 1.8 million a year. Each day, about 25,000 children die of infectious disease and hunger.

These are not potential pandemics; they are happening now."

"The question, then, is why do the deaths of only some people from obscure diseases cause us to panic? And how can we be so unfeeling when we have the power to save the lives of millions by relatively simple, inexpensive precautions and treatments? The answer possibly lies in the profound hold that stereotypes have over our assessment of threats and our ability to empathise with others. Recent psychological research, including the mapping of brain activity, has established that stereotypes have a very powerful hold over us.

The world is a complex place, full of threats and opportunities. At its most primal level, we quickly need to make sense of these by sorting friend from foe. We are mentally wired to judge by appearances, to categorise on the basis of past experience or conditioning. On a very basic level, this means we almost instantly, automatically and unconsciously decide where people fit into our world. "

"The power of stereotypes would also explain the irrational difference in our attitudes to asylum seekers who arrive by boat and those who arrive by air. Fewer than 40 per cent of "aeroplane people", who vastly outnumber "boat people", succeed in their asylum claims, but their arrival causes no great public concern or resentment. More than 90 per cent of boat people have proven to be genuine refugees, yet the Howard government's claim that the "threat" amounted to a "national emergency" was readily accepted. Boat people fit the stereotype.

As for swine flu, bird flu and SARS, it seems that only when we perceive that infectious diseases threaten "people like us" do we respond with real urgency. The millions killed by TB, AIDS, malaria and other mass killers are doomed to fit the stereotype of people who live and die like that. We can accept it as the way of the world. Aboriginal Australians are just as much victims of the indifference that flows from such stereotyping. Stereotypes matter, but not everyone is prisoner to the irrationality they can inspire. Being conscious of the power of stereotypes to sway the responses of individuals and governments is the first step to reducing them to a useful mental tool, rather than succumbing to a dangerously distorting trap of the mind.

Cheryl links the article really well to Jesus conversing with the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7:24ff when she writes:

"- if we think there’s a chance Jesus got it very wrong at the beginning of the conversation, then the story becomes about something else - the broadening of the mission of God, perhaps; i like the idea that it was about Jesus beginning to recognise that he was tapped into something that could change the world… that this whole section of Mark is as much about Jesus working out who he was, as it was about the disciples doing likewise. And that was happening by being in conversations with ‘the other’… not by the conversations with those who agreed with him, or those who worshipped him.

"I also like the idea that the story fits into the whole Markan theme about humanising the de-humanised… that the systems of power that Mark wants to overthrow are those that suck the life out of people and the world; shattering preconceptions, generalisations and labels… always making us look behind our assumptions of each other, and our judgements that diminish another’s worth… i don’t think that Mark was on about people becoming Christians, he was on about people becoming human."

For myself, one of the challenges to living an authentic Christian life is to see within myself this "neural dehumanisation" that is evidenced by preparing for an influenza pandemic without doing anything much to address the real killers of our world. I need to find a place to start.

Creative response to censorship

Last Sunday in Fiji we purchased a newspaper which had several blank spaces - except for words along the lines of "this article could not be printed due to government printing restrictions". Another Fiji newspaper has taken a novel approach with a satirical jibe at stringent censorship imposed by Fiji's military Government: filling the space with some no news. Fiji's military ruler Frank Bainimarama has posted censors in the offices of newspapers and radio and television stations, ordered foreign journalists out of the country and shut down the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's radio transmitters.

Some no news examples:

Read all about it: man gets on bus

• April 16, 2009

In a satirical jibe at stringent censorship imposed by Fiji's military Government, the Daily Post newspaper has been filling the space with some no news.

Headlines in Wednesday's edition included "Man gets on bus" over an item reading: "In what is believed to be the first reported incident of its kind, a man got on a bus yesterday. 'It was easy,' he said. 'I just lifted one leg up and then the other and I was on.' "

Another headed "Breakfast as usual" began: "It was breakfast as usual for the staff of this newspaper. 'I had leftover roti from last night,' senior reporter Manueli told his colleague yesterday morning."

A third story began, "Paint has apparently dried on his old couch, Max reports. Given the job of painting the couch, Max was excited at the prospect of the paint drying. But when asked how it dried, he was nonplussed.

" 'It just went on wet, but after about four hours, it started to dry. That was when I realised, paint dries,' the young scholar observed.

For Fiji, ever Fiji,

Last weekend in Fiji I noted how regularly the national anthem played on television. At dinner last night we were discussing recent events in this beautiful island nation and someone wondered about life expectancy. So I've just looked it up - 68 years in 2007. Well below Australia and New Zealand.

Some of the other indicators are very concerning. While primary school enrollment is at 91 per cent, I learned last week that the growing economic climate has resulted in some children, especially from rural areas, being withdrawn from secondary education because the parent's cash crops were washed away in the January floods. Even in urban areas more than half the population are without improved drinking water facilities (maybe why a fellow traveller had to leave our aircraft on the way home due to apparent gastroenteritis).

In 2007 other indicators like vaccination rates were positive, equalling many developed countries in the Pacific. The challenge will be to maintain these rates in the face of serious cuts in government agency budgets.

From this far away perspective it is hard to know the best response to recent events. For us in the Uniting Church in Australia, we need to look to our partner church the Methodist church in Fiji and to support them in theior important role. And to keep watch with them.

Amen

Prayer for Easter 2

Life-giving, life-restoring, birthing and rebirthing Godde
You roll away the stones
that keep us from seeing who Jesus is
Your love stretches beyond the furtherest horizon we can imagine,
and extends to us on our fragile planet
We praise you

Gracious Godde of sea and sky
That love was most perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ
Who greets us and lovingly extends a hand
that recognises our deepest pain and loss
coming closer to us than we could ever imagine
sharing fully in our humanity
We praise you

We can so easily fret and worry
Thinking that we have gone beyond the limits
of your capacity to forgive and respond

Bond-breaking death-challenging spirit
Break into our hearts and minds
That we may know the great wonder of being loved
beyond anything we could have imagined
Empower and embolden us
To confront forces of destruction and love what brings life

Amen

Resurrection gift

The 33rd Poetry party is posted at Abbey of the Arts. There's a new way to link to this week’s theme of Practicing Resurrection so please visit the website to join the party. Christine's introduction (below) really resonated with me. I had a sense of being let down on Sunday when I realised suddenly that I was reading the final Lent Event prayer. I haven't settled on any Easter discipline as yet - but have been aware of the need for some way to mark the season of Easter. My reflection is also informed by a weekend spent in a tourist resort in Fiji while the country underwent massive political upheaval and by a rather heavy and very interesting book I am reading Can these bones live? in which Barry Harvey cites the work of Victoria Barnett on the contrast between the handful of ordinary citizens who took action to rescue the victims of the Nazi regime and those who continued to go about their daily lives unaffected by what was occurring all around them (echoes of Auden's Musee des beaux arts here too). Contrary to the stereotypes of my youth, "strongly held religious religious feelings and beliefs were not significant factors for distinguishing bystanders from most rescuers", rather the rescuers were distinguished by a vision of themselves as citizens of an alternative society, a vision that "compelled them to be attentive, to see that they had a personal stake in what was happening around them" (Harvey, p.93-94)

Christine writes:

A few years ago it occurred to me that we spend a lot of time in church talking about what practices to take on for Lent, but when Easter comes, this glorious season of resurrection, we often slip back into our ordinary lives and everyday prayer. Hopefully we arrive transformed by our Lenten journey, but the season of Easter is not just that amazing day when the tomb was discovered empty. We celebrate Easter for a full 50 days, days that slowly grow longer in the Northern hemisphere and more vibrant as the blossoming of the world unfolds around us.

As I pondered this topic, the image that immediately flashed into my mind is the one you see [below] — a little girl playing at the beach, giggling with delight. She is fully embodied in this moment, free of self-consciousness, fully herself, luminous.

I invite you to write a poem (or other form of reflection) about what your practices of resurrected life might look like. How would it feel to really embody resurrected life in your own being? If you made a commitment for the Easter season to complement your Lenten commitment, where is the invitation you discover?

You live

How do I now live
in this rich depleted place
information-filled and justice-empty?

Responding to an invitation
not fully understood
a poor recording of your voice

Undertaking to find out
what is going on around me
being attentive

Fifty days to connect
inextricably with context
holding a stake

What gift!