Ten years on from yesterday’s post: June 2011

Five years ago, by which time I was very much back in Wollongong.

I am not a party, an institution, a guru or an oracle: just one old guy in Wollongong–that’s all

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Neil

Let’s get real about this blog and this whole blogging business. My opinions may not be worth a rat’s arse, or they may be just what you were thinking too. It doesn’t really matter, you know. Nice to see lately that Kevin from Louisiana thinks this way too. But here is who you are reading:

…Last week I spat the dummy on a thread. I don’t regret it. But it did lead to a nasty thread developing here on a later post, a thread I have since censored. That is something I rarely do – as even Kevin from Louisiana will testify despite my memorably asking him to piss off not all that long ago.

Anyway all I want to remind you of is this: you’re just reading the passing thoughts of one old man in a room in Wollongong. He uses a variety of genres and does not always have a serious academic approach. Take it or leave it. See also ABOUT.

Some entries on blogging from my archive

• Blogging the Noughties
• On comment threads and forums
• A counter-post: images, choices, human nature
• Tori Amos on blogging
• Why I blog — Andrew Sullivan

Yesterday was an emotional day

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Neil

Early train to arrive in Redfern by 9.30 am, then South Sydney Uniting Church. After that a nice time at the Trinity Bar in Surry Hills with Sirdan and B, followed by my first Oxford Street visit for ages – the Oxford and The Shift. Home by 6.30.

Redfern Park 9.30 am

South Sydney Uniting Church: Trevor Davies

‘Today is a day of mourning for us. Our brother and friend, Trevor, is not in his pew. Something’s not right. We feel it in our bodies and spirits. We feel the burden and the void because we have loved, and because we have experienced love. We feel the force of love. We have experienced a genuine, a divine love in our life together – the most humanising thing that can ever happen to us.

And so, in time, we will be all right. I say this with a keen awareness of grief, a personal, private and particular grief that to some extent wants to be alone and quiet. In time, we will be all right. We are being made fully human, and, as we have prayed, human destiny is eternally linked to the divine. Jesus says, “I am committing myself to you”.

Yesterday, I experienced a peace I hadn’t known since hearing of Trevor’s death. I started to believe (faith is always a beginning) that I/we will be all right. That God is love, and that love is inextinguishable. That humanity, that flesh-and-spirit human being, human loving … that Trevor Edward Davies participates in the inextinguishable love that is God, who is God … Language breaks down under the pressure of love – and yet continues to speak, to signify anew …

“And now, sisters and brothers, I must say goodbye. Mend your ways. Encourage one another. Live in harmony and peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the holy ones send greetings to you” (2 Corinthians 13:11-13)…”

The Oxford Hotel

Queen’s Birthday Sunday lunch

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Neil

Sirdan had planned to come down but it turned out too wet and cold – more so between here and Sydney than in The Gong itself, though we seem to be making up for it now.

So I went down to the Diggers Club and had Бефстроганов! Good day for it.

Last time I was at Diggers I took one of my better shots…