Kookaburras scream with laughter as dawn breaks. The hoots and hollers are so raucous that it’s easy to picture them holding their bellies, barely able to hold onto their perch, high in the branches of a nearby tree.
I feel blessed and my spirit lightens whenever I hear them. Their voices are so unique that they briefly rip the fabric of reality.
My neighbour and I sang ‘Yma o hyd’ at a family gathering the other day. Perfect weather, wonderful setting in a park and we’re able to put aside the apprehensions, the dark clouds of the ongoing war and just be in the moment, love and affection prevailing.
‘Yma o hyd’ is a bittersweet song by a Welsh national treasure in which Dafydd Iwan tells us that we’ve forgotten our history, it was all so long ago but – ‘here we are, despite everyone and everything we’re still here.’ There’s more to the song than that of course.
It applies to and is embraced by the Welsh but also strikes a deep chord across the world and so it should as its clarity speaks to Aboriginal Australia, to the Palestinians and to all who know dispossession and loss yet still prevail. It’s both a personal and national song. Joyous and perfect for the occasion.
The Old Testament meant little to me, Christ being the Messiah and rejected by the Jews, while the New Testament gives me the ‘Good news’ which has been sufficient for me. I accepted the idea, without thinking about it, that the God of the Old Testament was the same as the Father of whom Christ speaks.
That understanding changed by finding in Deuteronomy that the land being given was already occupied. Yahweh commands his followers to slaughter the inhabitants, man, woman and child if they resist the invasion.
The actions of Yahweh are horrendous. If Yahweh were human, he’d be considered psychotic.
A great and subtle lie is propagated because three religions worship ‘The One God’ and this is taken to mean that this ‘One God’ entity is the same being for Jew, Christian and Muslim alike.
‘The Good News’ that Christ brings to the world is contained within two commandments – ‘Love your neighbour’ and ‘Do unto others as you’d have done to yourself. There are no qualifiers, these are to be universally practiced.
‘The kingdom of God lies within’ suggests no priesthood is needed as an intermediary with God.
The Old Testament is ruled by ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ This is not what Christ preaches.
Christ was born a Jew and the ‘Christ saves’ aspect surely relates to the Jews, enslaved as they were and are to Yahweh who is, at best, an alien entity with enough power to enforce his will.
Fifty or sixty million Christians Zionists cheer on and support the Zionist State of Israel in the somewhat blasphemous belief that the return of Christ can be hastened by turning a blind eye to the ongoing evil genocide of the Palestinians.
Briefly ripping the fabric of reality.
Antisemitism would find no fertile ground if the nonsense of a ‘Chosen people’ were revealed to be the twin of Nazi Germany’s idea of a ‘Master Race.’
The whole world groans and suffers under the dead weight of a few thousand years of delusion.
Meanwhile the Chinese have the ‘I Ching’, predates the Bible, to guide a spiritual life, Aboriginal Australia has thousands of generations, before the arrival of the white man, in which to create a spiritual culture – the Abrahamic religions are not the ‘be all and end all ’ although Christ's message is both timeless and universal.
Kookaburras laugh at the break of day.