Claiming a Aussie Christmas

It is only 7 weeks until Christmas and Christmas in Aus. is something very different from celebrations throughout the rest of the world. It was very early in my childhood that I noted this difference and it began with the arrival of the Christmas cards. I would wonder at those cards, glorious and inviting pictures of snowflakes and snowmen, frosted Christmas trees and reindeers pulling sleighs all things that I had never seen.

It seemed to me that it promised a world that was fanciful; a fantasy in dreams where magic could happen and things that never were possible could come to pass.

Lore or Religion – The Difference in Traditional Australian Culture

I chose this heading pic because it has to be said that if you stand too close to the serpent, you are bound to get burnt. So what has the serpent have to do with Religion, or even Lore?

That question always amazes me and it can be simply explained to many in pointing out that there were four people in the Garden of Eden, the place where it all began in many religions. There was Adam and Eve or Man and Woman by another name, these two characters or their progeny are the two entities that most religions are singularly focused on. There was God or he who was/is the ‘superhuman’ figure or the creator (generally of some human form) and who is generally considered to be largely unreachable unless through an intermediary ie a church or prophet (or sons of God) etc and then … there was the Serpent.

Is Religion a Man-Toy?

Sitting across the road after travelling for four hours down the central eastern coast of Aus. Highway 1, while on a ‘Revive and Survive’ coffee break today, I was watching the demolition of a mosque… a centre for religious faith. (We gauge travel by hours… not miles in Aus.)

I had watched this mosque at Woolgoolga NSW being built over the decades and now it was being torn down… to me it epitomized religion in general. It was the second Mosque that I knew of in this little country town, a town renown for the ‘Elephant Mosque’ (it and I have been around since pre-politically correct days btw). It was built within a spit of that other one that graces the township and today it is being torn down. Riddled with the deadly asbestos it has now seen its last days. It’s a lethal Rot!

On reflection I wondered what accommodation for prayer and worship this mosque had enjoyed for women… I have recently heard of the lack of accommodation women have in such places.