If I Ever Feel Better

A week ago I got an invitation in the mail to my high school’s 10 year reunion.  Yes, it’s been a decade since 1998, the year that I made that awkward transition from a schoolkid to…something else, I suppose.  Ten years sounds a lot longer than it feels.  In some ways, I still feel like a teenager playing at some kind of grown-up life.  It’s getting less like that, especially at work, but those years mark you a lot more than any of the subsequents ones.

I’ve had a sneak preview of the reunion, courtesy of Facebook.  I can already tell you several marriages and a few births.  Most people seem to look a lot like they did back in the day, although they could be just using old photos.  Some of the class are living overseas or interstate, but most seem to still be in Victoria.

I also went to my five-year reunion in 2003, which means I know how it will play out in some ways.  I’ll talk to just about everyone and with a few exceptions, we’ll ask the same question: “So, what have you been doing with yourself?”

Is it silly to want to prepare an answer?  An account for the last ten years of my life?

In a lot of way, the framework of my decade will be pretty much like everyone else’s.  I went to uni for a few years, got a couple of degrees.  I took a job that didn’t work out so well, but that put me on the right track to better things.  I’ve travelled - seen Europe and Asia and North America.  I’ve lived in three cities since high school.  I didn’t keep in touch with many people from school.  I still don’t quite know what I want to do with my life.

There are things that mark me out as distinctive, but do I mention them in a five minute conversation with a long-lost study partner?  With the guy who told me I didn’t deserve to be on the soccer team?

I own several hundred CDs and I can name half the indie rock bands of the last two decades.   I once entered in a stand-up comedy competition and I made people laugh.  I’ve danced to “YMCA” on stage in front of the Prime Minister.  I cook amazing lamb shanks.  I review books for a hobby and lobby government for a living.

I may not own a house, or have a wife and kids (although I at least have a pretty awesome girlfriend) and I haven’t cured cancer or AIDS.  But I’ve had ten years of becoming more definitely me and for once maybe the self-help CDs are right.

Last year was not a good year for my health - not one bit. The problem seems to have started in late 2006 when my job began sending me interstate regularly and spending all that time breathing the recycled air of sick passengers really knocked my tonsils around. The eighteen months since saw three bacterial infections and a host of sore throats where the doctor tells you to go home and get some rest.

After all that (I’m hoping it’s all in the past), I can safely say that the bout of tonsilitis I had back in October was one of the worst experiences of my life. Which is why Charlie Brooker’s post for the Guardian yesterday was so priceless to me. Here’s a sample:

A kiddywink illness? Bit of a sore throat? Pah. That’s how people who’ve never had tonsillitis tend to think about it. I certainly did. Whereas now, I can confidently report that it’s worse - far worse - than international terrorism and child abuse combined.

I would like to say that I agree 100%.  And I would also like to apologise to my long-suffering girlfriend who knows exactly what tonsilitis feels like and it’s entirely my fault.

Seeing thousands of happy young Catholics on the streets of Sydney this week has really impressed me.  For someone whose impression of Catholicism has been dominated by old guys and long, boring services (no, wait, that’s Anglicans, right?) the youth and enthusiasm has changed my perspective.

Shame then, that the public reporting of the Pope and Cardinal Pell’s messages has mostly focused on them decrying the ills of the modern world - sex, violent entertainment, not breeding enough.  It’s one of those things where the medium and the message get a bit confused.  Apart from the robes and Stations of the Cross and so on, it’s been a highly contemporary event - live music, text message alerts to the pilgrims, a social networking site to keep in touch with friends.  Cultural trappings have been adopted but then the overall culture is condemned.

Maybe the message has been lost in communication via the media - it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.  But it’s a question all Christians face when looking at a culture that has so much good and so much bad.  Do we pick and choose the bits we like and use them to make our message and our church culture funkier?  Do we retreat into some kind of anti-cultural seclusion? Is there another option?

Making church culture “relevant” works sometimes.  Occasionally a kid will come for the band, stay for the faith.  But culture is more than technology and music and visual flair.  If you’re sharing a message that conflicts with the conventional wisdom, you have to realise that the people you’re speaking to are part of that culture and shaped by that culture - what they hear isn’t always what you intend.  So when you stand up and criticise that culture outright, sometimes you sound like an old man in red shoes having a whinge.

They’ve got Stuff White People Like on Facebook now.  As it happens, I could be a whole lot whiter.  I should get a mac maybe?

I’m not a fan of major public events and this city is full of the suckers.  Last year my sleeping and waking hours were cut through by the sound of the choppers protecting George Bush from (presumably) air-to-surface missiles during APEC.  This year my walk to work is being disrupted by a big fence around where part of World Youth Day will be held.

But they’re minor annoyances, in truth, and the amount of vitriol that is being spewed around about World Youth Day clearly has nothing to do with traffic and pedestrian movements.  It’s much more to do with the Catholic Church and how it’s viewed in sections of Australian society.  You’d think we’d moved on from old fashioned Protestant hatred of “Micks”, but it’s just been replaced by secular, liberal bile.  I’m not sure it’s any better.

The excuses are all around condoms and AIDS and kiddy-fiddling priests.  I’m pro-condom and (yes, amazing this) anti-pedophile like most folks, but do my fellow caring, sharing lefties realise that, gosh, there are actually REAL people in the Catholic Church?  That it’s not a big self-flagellating, mediaevalist mass of religious maniacs hell-bent on making every last African die of AIDS?  There’s something profoundly anti-humanist about the way humanists demonise and belittle religious believers - something I’ve discussed regarding Richard Dawkins et al.  And it makes my blood boil.

I admit, I’m biased.  I’m a Christian, a right-wing nutjob, a pre-modern, ignorant, gay-hating, sexually repressed ball of irresponsible, dangerous beliefs I’ve blindly accepted.  Actually, most people wouldn’t call me those things to my face.  Even some anti-religious people might choose to qualify it with a “Christians are like that but you’re different.”  Maybe I am, but maybe I’m not.  That’s the problem with demonising an entire section of the population - you’re going to accidentally include a hell of a lot of well-intentioned, good people.  I guess the question is whether you care.

I’m a nomadic kind of guy.  My parents trained me well, moving towns four times in my first fifteen years of life.  Since then I’ve clocked up another two of my own and then returned to the city of my birth, Sydney.  It’s not a life that equips you for staying put and laying down roots.

Readers of this blog and its predecessor will know how much of my time in Canberra was spent thinking about leaving.  And there were plenty of ex-Canberrans ensconced in other cities that were encouraging me in that.  That made sense.  There were also Canberra residents doing their bit to persuade me to stick around.  That also made sense and was really kind of nice.

Now I’ve got a girlfriend on the other side of the world who’s making it her mission to get me to join her.  Funnily enough, I’ve had a couple of Sydney friends tell me recently that I should do just that.  Maybe they want to get rid of me.  More likely (I hope!) they’re just big fans of Young Love and want to see me happy.

Right now there are reasons to go and to stay, as is always the case.  I just know that running for the next thing has always been too easy for me.