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A widowed father on the life lessons learned by raising 3 girls

http://www.debriefdaily.com/inspiration/what-my-daughters-taught-me/

21 August 2015, Mamamia

A widowed father on the life lessons learned by raising 3 girls

When Joseph Wakim’s wife died of breast cancer in 2003, his three daughters were 11, 9 and 4 years old. Despite well-meaning friends, family and even strangers telling him he would need help to bring up his daughters, Joseph followed his heart and did the job his way, trusting that he – and the girls – would know what to do. In this exquisite extract from his memoir What My Daughters Taught Me he describes the precious life lessons they taught him along the way.

In my mind’s eye, I lifted the sledgehammer and swung it over my shoulder. It was time to smash the rusty shackles that had tied my feet for so long to prescribed gender roles. They held me back from the intuition mothers exuded when they entered a room. Without a word spoken, mothers effortlessly read a room, gauging its temperature, scanning their children’s faces and measuring their heartbeats.

They glanced at the gap between a child’s lips and realised that child was seething. They watched the chest rising and falling, how fast and how deeply, and realised that a sibling tiff had just finished. They noticed if there was no eye contact between the siblings and how slowly they blinked. They saw one vertical line on a brow and realised that a child was worried. They sensed discomfort by how the children crossed their legs.

This was the language of love, a language that should not be the monopoly of mothers. It is a language that we men can reclaim and relearn, as it lies dormant within us, waiting to be brought back to life. I was sure that whoever gave women this gift would not have bypassed fathers, in case they ended up like me.

My fellow man and I were not predestined to enter our family home as dopes. Our intuition antennas are inbuilt and just need to be raised. All we need is to learn how to turn on the switch.

This is not getting in touch with our feminine side. This is getting in touch with our inner self. We are not shackled to Banni Adam, but have always been part of Banni Hawa (the children of Eve). It is odd that we fathers see ourselves as men-tors to our daughters. I was so hardwired that I spent years thinking it was me doing the teaching, but in fact it was often the reverse, just as Michelle had intimated.

My daughters stretched my imagination to straddle not only traditional gender boundaries but also generational boundaries. They gave me permission not to act my age. They gave me permission to be childish and not to suppress our ageless yearning for play and story-telling. This is not getting in touch with our inner child, it is getting in touch with our inner self.

We men miss out on so much if we remain shackled in the prison of traditional gender roles. I have discovered all this by circumstance and by accident, but other men can discover it by choice and live a richer life. It does not mean becoming less complimentary to one’s spouse. It means sharing more and being more of a well-rounded role model for one’s children. Sure, I could have outsourced the traditional women’s work to a paid maid from the start, but this would have been skirting the real challenge. ‘In-sourcing’ within myself not only completed my family, but completed me. Freed from my shackles, I could now spread my wings and emancipate myself.

It was time for a mishwar to celebrate . . . everything. My three ladies fought over the mirror in their bathroom. Yes, even a trip to a restaurant was a special occasion. I grabbed the keys and yelled, ‘I thought you were “flawless”!’

As the chorus yelled back, I bolted out the door and waited on the front lawn.

When they emerged and strutted onto the ‘green carpet’, I asked, ‘Where am I driving you?’

‘Who said you’re driving?’ asked Michelle.

‘I’m driving,’ offered Joy.

‘You’re on your Ls!’ replied Grace.

‘So what, I need to learn, don’t I? That’s why they’re called Ls!’

While they were debating, I sat in the driver’s seat and started the car. They fought for the front passenger seat and Grace won. I crossed myself and reversed the car out of our driveway, looking in the rear-view mirror. I saw my past. I saw my children. I saw myself. Was the man in the mirror their driver, their mentor, their teacher? So I once thought, before my emancipation. Now I knew they were mine.

This is an extract from What My Daughters Taught Me by Joseph Wakim, published by Allen and Unwin, .

 

 

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On Raising Three Daughters Alone

http://www.culturestreet.com/post/joseph-wakim-on-raising-three-daughters-alone.htm?

http://bit.ly/1NZ4D7c

Culture Street

August 19, 2015

Joseph Wakim is a widowed father of three daughters. From psychologist to social worker, he founded the Streetwork Project in Adelaide, the Australian Arabic Council, produced TV documentary Zero to Zenith: Arab Contributions Down Under, wrote four satirical comedies that were staged in Melbourne, founded Australia’s first Arabic Festival (Mahrajan), was appointed Victoria’s youngest Multicultural Affairs Commissioner, and composed music for his band The Heartbeats. He was granted the Violence Prevention Award by Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1996 and the Order of Australia Medal for public campaigns to redress the roots of racism in 2001. He has had over 600 opinion pieces published in all major Australian newspapers and was finalist at the United Nations Australia Association – Media Award 2014 for creating a ‘voice for the voiceless’.

By Joseph Wakim

Without a word spoken, mothers effortlessly read a room, gauging its temperature, scanning their children’s faces and measuring their heartbeats.

This is the language of love, a language that should not be the monopoly of mothers. It is a language that lies dormant within men, waiting to be awoken. I was sure that whoever gave mothers this gift would not have bypassed fathers, in case they ended up like me. Twelve years ago, cancer claimed the life of my wife when we were both aged forty and our three daughters were all in primary school. As her candle flickered, a flame was ignited within me.

I grappled with grief and guilt: why was my life spared when my daughters surely needed their mother? Men suggested that I reach out for a new woman, for single parenting manuals, for beginner’s cookbooks, for dating websites, for hired help, even for sleeping tablets.

Women offered to baby-sit my children if ever I felt like flying away, but I felt instinctively protective and spread my wings over our precious brood who had already been robbed of their mum.

Instead of outsourcing, I searched for my in-tuition. If women have the capacity to raise well-adapted children alone, where is it written that men cannot do the same?

I began my emancipation by unblocking the valves of my heart which raised my antennas to read different wavelengths and rhythms. I used be minister of foreign affairs (garden, garbage, garage). Now my portfolio expanded to home affairs, ironically sometimes ‘foreign’ to me.

No, I did not find my feminine self or become ‘Mr Mum’ because this implied that the nurturer was intrinsically a woman’s domain. I had found my inner self and opened the flood gates to a wellspring within.

Once we unblock our valves, we discover that we are perfectly capable of telling bed-time stories, consoling them after nightmares, nursing them when they feel sick, helping with school assignments and reading their faces like a book.

In many cultures, the stereotype of a strong man is often associated with a clenched fist. Strength is equated with stubbornness, having the last word, never saying sorry and never having our word broken. But these are often the cracks of fear, not love and definitely not strength. They show insecurity about losing control over one’s ‘kingdom’ as the one who wears the pants.

True strength is the capacity to flex rather than break in the face of a cyclone like cancer. True strength is the capacity to speak and listen to the many languages of silence, of touch, of faces. True strength is the capacity to express emotions rather than suppress them in fear of being unmanly.

My book What my daughters taught me is a testimony that masculinity is not hard-wired by nature, but soft-wired by nurture. As men, we cannot hide behind these traditional excuses that we are incapable of being primary carers and nurturers. In my book, I swing a sledgehammer at these rusty shackles of gender stereotypes as I realise that they are a prison, not a prism.

My daughters not only taught me to write a story about the emancipation of my heart, but also taught me to read their language of the heart.

Joseph Wakim is the author of WHAT MY DAUGHTERS TAUGHT ME, published by Allen & Unwin,

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Stagnant NAPLAN results a symptom of teenagers becoming ‘screen-agers’

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/stagnant-naplan-results-a-symptom-of-teenagers-becoming-screenagers-20150808-gius5p.html

Stagnant NAPLAN results a symptom of teenagers becoming ‘screen-agers’

August 9, 2015

Is it any wonder that the NAPLAN literacy and numeracy results published last week show that the writing skills of years 7 and 9 students have gone backwards?

Before we play the blame game between teachers and parents, we need to look at the growing elephant in the room: screen time by “screen-agers”.

Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne saw the “lack of improvement” as a wake-up call to go “back to basics” in school education. For many of us parents, this means tangible basics, not virtual basics. We have seen the effects of our children surfing between education and entertainment on the slippery screens.

As parents, we are the first teachers in our children’s lives. We can block the applications, look over their shoulder, teach them self-discipline, apply time restrictions and ban screens in bedrooms.

But with so much school work becoming screen-centred, distractions abound. The temptation to discreetly flick between screens is at their fingertips and minimised when footsteps approach.

At least with textbooks, it is transparent that the student is focused on the “subject” matter and parents can see that no one has been snuck in through the “windows”.

As parents, we have seen our children’s learning curve flatten as tablets have replaced textbooks from year 7.

We have seen their handwriting deteriorate as the computer brain auto-corrects and spell-checks with no incentives for the students to learn from their lazy mistakes and phonetic habits.

We have seen their proofreading deteriorate as grammar-check stagnates any improvement in sentence construction.

We have seen their research skills deteriorate as students rely on the logic of Google’s search engine by feeding it key words.

We have seen their navigation skills deteriorate as a book’s index becomes obsolete and CTRL+F (find) renders that skill redundant.

We have seen their vocabulary deteriorate as online dictionaries and “right-click” synonyms replace autonomous thinking with automatic alternatives.

We have seen them regress from critical thinking to “mindless transcription” and copy-paste because they can. This has been borne out by 2014 Princeton University research of students, whereby the laptop note-takers showed shallower processing than the hand-writers.

Indeed, we have seen them struggle to hand-write anything more than a paragraph, yet their year 12 exams require them to hand-write many pages for many hours.

The transition by many schools away from textbooks does not prepare students for the real world, but the virtual world. It has fostered laziness and a minimalist approach.

My new book takes an honest look at modern parenting with a strong focus on the challenges of raising “screen-agers”. In my chapter “How to compete with a screen”, I refer to the screen as “his majesty” who has “invaded my kingdom” because it has become “more charismatic, more colourful, more charming”.

I have watched the pattern and the paradox in families too often: children gravitate towards their screens to play games because they’re bored.

They shoot zombies but don’t realise that their expressionless faces tragically look like zombies – motionless and unblinking. They handle the console as if they are in control of it. When they have saved the world, they finally look up at the real people who share their space, only to realise that the boredom creeps back, with an even greater intensity.

The itch for another fix is irresistible and the cycle continues until the parents intervene.

“I am not addicted!” they yell back at their parents.

“Then why are you having a tantrum?”

One brave teenager recently conceded that the computer console tricks him into thinking he is in control, but it is actually controlling him, sapping his imagination, perpetuating his boredom cycles.

Just as the dummy tricks babies into thinking they are drinking, he saw the console as the teenage dummy, and that it was time he and all teens spat this dummy to reclaim their brains.

While these technological tools were sold to us as enhancing our children’s learning curve, the NAPLAN results paint a much flatter picture.

The digital education revolution of 2007 was a great theory. In practice, it may be producing “dumbed-down” teenagers who are gaining digital dexterity but losing basic skills. The NAPLAN results are a wake-up call to regain balance between the rectangular world and the real world.

Joseph Wakim is the author What my daughters taught me (Allen & Unwin, August 2015).

 

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Faith During War

FAITH DURING WAR

Sunday Age, 6/8/06

 

It was like a scene out of Life is Beautiful – the 1997 movie that earned Roberto Benigni an Oscar for portraying a Jewish father buffering his child during the holocaust.

 

From the 1500 meter altitude above the clouds, just below the village of Ehden in North Lebanon, my child and I gazed down at Tripoli. When the clouds rolled into Ehden, the only visible landmark was the nearby antenna at the peak of Mount Aito.

 

The juxtaposition of the spectacular sunset over the Mediterranean Sea was an awesome sight to behold, conjuring up images of Creation. Indeed, Ehden was named after Eden, where Adam and Eve lived, according to Lebanon’s prospective next saint, 17th century Patriarch and historian Istfan Doueihi.

 

“Is that a thunderstorm in the clouds?” asked my child, pointing to sudden explosions and reflections of light near the Tripoli sunset. Keen to avoid conjuring the bloody scenes on television, I explained that the amazing lights were fireworks from celebrations such as weddings. But I could hear warplanes humming high overhead and knew exactly what they were doing.

 

When we went to farewell our relatives down the street, we were reassured by repeated claims that Ehden was immune from bombings, and that our relatives would remain safe. Within minutes of entering their house full of young children, the first missile had struck the nearby hilltop antenna and broadcast station at Mount Aito.

 

In the multi-storey building and throughout the street, only two words were louder than the deafening thunder of the explosions: faith and family. The origin, purpose, frequency, proximity and precision of the bombing were simply irrelevant to those around us. Indeed, the echo of the impact was disorienting and we had no idea which direction and which hilltop was hit.

 

Children’s faces became pale, mothers were hyperventilating, some startled from their summer siesta, some rushing out of showers dumb-founded, others running like ants from a destroyed molehill. Indeed, this is how it must appear to the boys with the toys above.

 

We saw young and old in neighbouring homes fleeing to lay hands and eyes on their family, as if this was the Last Book of the Bible.

 

When the second bomb hit, the families huddled together with terror filled eyes. All previous promises about safety and my tales about fireworks were now bombed like the landmark antenna. The sky that had been a source of inspiration and beauty was now the source of terror. It was now raining down not with life-giving water but life-taking fire. The place that was renown for Creation and the Beginning was now tainted with destruction and the end.

 

Those who could not reach their family members fell collectively to their knees and commenced the rosary. I had never seen children pray so intensely, clinging to whatever sacred relics, crucifixes or saint icons they could reach. Cell phones were now out of order so rosaries became the hotline to heaven.

 

Beyond the hills, the antennas, the planes and the skies, innocent families fled to their faith, as the only source that was higher, literally and figuratively. All the psychological skills I could muster to calm their spirits had paled into insignificance when I witnessed the power of prayer, and the visible effect on their faces.

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Father who raised his three young girls alone after their mother died of breast cancer shares the lessons he’s learned

DAILY MAIL, 29 July 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3175465/Father-raised-three-young-girls-mother-died-breast-cancer-shares-lessons-s-learned-in.html

From learning to cook, tying ponytails, and buying sanitary pads: Father who raised his three young girls alone after their mother died of breast cancer shares the lessons he’s learned

  • Joseph Wakim has raised three daughters after his wife died of cancer
  • Grace, Michelle and Joy were all under 11 when their mum died in 2003
  • Mr Wakim raised them solo despite pushes to get help to cook and clean
  • The three sisters taught Mr Wakim to be a mother and a father
  • He’s written a memoir of life lessons titled: What My Daughters Taught Me

By Emily Crane for Daily Mail Australia

From tying his daughter’s hair in a ponytail to buying the right brand of sanitary pads – Joseph Wakim has learned some valuable life lessons in the past 12 years.

Mr Wakim has been raising his three daughters on his own in their Sydney home since his beloved wife Nadia passed away from breast cancer back in 2003.

He was inundated with friends, family and strangers telling him he would need help to raise his daughters – aged 11, nine and four – but Mr Wakim says he decided to do the job single-handedly and trust he would know what to do.

Joseph Wakim has been raising his three daughters – (L-R) Grace, Joy and Michelle – on his own in their Sydney home since his beloved wife Nadia passed away from breast cancer back in 2003

What followed was years of emotional and hilarious events that helped Mr Wakim become both a mother and father to Grace, Michelle and Joy.

‘I’ve made every mistake you can think of,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘I’d pick up the phone and ask people how do you make rice or I’ve just ruined someone’s dress in the washing machine.

‘But I had to just trust my instincts.’

The family moved from Melbourne to Sydney before Nadia’s cancer took hold and there was little family nearby when she passed away.

‘People were suggesting to get help to cook, do the laundry, clean. I wanted to give it a go on my own. I was reluctant to have my children surrounded by strangers,’ he said.

Joseph Wakim’s wife Nadia died in 2003 from breast cancer when their daughters Grace, Michelle and Joy were aged just 11, nine and four respectively

Joseph and Nadia Wakim moved from Melbourne to Sydney with their children before her cancer took hold and there was little family nearby when she passed away

Mr was inundated with friends, family and strangers telling him he would need help to raise his daughters Grace, Joy and Michelle but says he decided to do the job single-handedly and trust he would know what to do

‘They already lost their mum, I didn’t want them to lose their dad.’

Mr Wakim, who has detailed his family’s journey in a memoir titled: What My Daughters Taught Me, has shared stories of how they learned to cope in Nadia’s absence.

‘Grace taught me how to tie Joy’s hair in a ponytail and secure if with a hair tie. In time, I also learnt that the ponytail looked smarter if I tied to high on her crown,’ he wrote.

On one occasion, Joy’s ponytail wasn’t straight and Mr Wakim used his instincts to fix it.

‘Rather than redo the entire routine from scratch, I tired to wriggle it to the middle by fiddling with the hair tie. How was I suppose to know that you cannot drag a ponytail like a desktop icon without torturing the child?’ he said.

Mr Wakim, who has detailed his family’s journey in a memoir titled: What My Daughters Taught Me, has shared stories of how he and his daughters learned to cope in Nadia’s absence

The past 12 years have been filled with emotional and hilarious events that helped Mr Wakim become both a mother and father to Michelle, Joy and Grace

He even opened up on having to step up when his three daughter’s eventually started menstruating.

‘As the Minister of Foreign Affairs it was my responsibility to bring home a sufficient supply of sanitary pads,’ Mr Wakim said.

‘If someone was in the pad section, I would park my trolley near the men’s toiletries and pretend to be browsing at the razors. When the coast was clear, I would pounce and exit.

‘Times have changed. Now I am a familiar face in the sanitary napkins aisle. I spin the pads into the trolley from a distance and wave to the security cameras in case anyone watching wants a laugh.’

What My Daughters Taught Me by Joseph Wakim is available on Wednesday, July 29.

 

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It took the death of my wife to realise how much I missed out on as a dad

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/29/it-took-the-death-of-my-wife-to-realise-how-much-i-missed-out-on-as-a-dad

Wednesday 29 July 2015

It took the death of my wife to realise how much I missed out on as a dad

When my wife died, men suggested I find a new wife, women offered to help. But in becoming a single parent to my three daughters, I found my best self

‘I took my hat off to so many women raising their children alone, many with admirable grace. Why can’t men do the same?’

When cancer claimed the life of my wife 12 years ago, leaving me staring into the eyes of our three young daughters, my gender prism had to change. Nurtured in a culture where boys’ and girls’ roles were clearly defined, I was grossly ill-prepared for my widowed fate.

I suffered survivor guilt, struggling to understand why bad things happen to good people, struggling to understand why my life was spared when my daughters surely needed their mother more than me.

Men suggested that I reach out for a new woman, for single parenting manuals, for cookbooks, for dating websites, for hired help, even for sleeping tablets and psychologists.

Women offered to “give me a break” and care for my children.

“Thank you, but no thank you. They’ve already been robbed of their mum. I can’t do this to them.”

Instead of outsourcing, I reached deep within. I took my hat off to so many women raising their children alone, adapting to their new reality, many with admirable grace. Their children seemed well adapted. Why can’t men do the same?

Whoever gave women the capacity to perform full parental roles must have given the same to men. This was a fork in the road. But there was no way I was going to avoid the painful path to get closer to my daughters, and inadvertently closer to myself.

So I began my emancipation. I used be minister of foreign affairs (garden, garbage, garage). Now my portfolio expanded to home affairs, ironically sometimes “foreign” to me. I burnt the wok, ruined “hand wash only” garments, and bought the wrong sanitary pads. I felt like I was now jogging on one leg, from home to car to shop and kept telling myself: “Just do it!”

Paradoxically, when I failed, when I felt weakest, I actually became my strongest. Something dormant within had awoken: the capacity to do anything and the plasticity of the brain to adapt.

Like Uncle Martin (from US sitcom My Favourite Martian), I raised my antenna to full length to tune in to the rhythms and language of my daughters. For every “but you don’t understand …,” I responded “then make me understand!”

Fast forward 12 years, and I realise that they made me understand my capacity to embrace full parenthood – not just fatherhood or motherhood.

I swung my metaphoric sledge hammer to the rusty shackles around my ankles that defined masculinity – shackles that were more than a gender prism. They were a gender prison.

Nine months ago, I penned a frivolous column on my emancipation, egging on my “fellow man” to embrace his inner self (not his feminine self). Today, my book What My Daughters Taught Me is born to tell the tale in all its gory glory.

Some women I know vow to pass this book to their husbands “in case anything should happen to me, and he needs to look after our children”. But why wait until a tragedy dictates a steep learning curve? Why not enjoy the full fruits of parenting today?

When we talk about the crisis of masculinity that defines many of our debates around domestic violence or marriage equality, we ought look beyond gender to the bigger picture: the crisis of personality.

Boys need to be raised in a culture that expands their social vocabulary, where emotions are expressed rather than suppressed.

In their book Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What it Means to be Male, Philip Zimbardo and Nikita D. Coulombe explore the “modern meltdown of manhood” which they attribute to absent fathers and the male addiction to screen gadgets. They argue that this trend towards “extreme escapism” has led to socially stunted males who glean fulfilment from the virtual world rather than the real one.

My children’s development wasn’t determined by the gender of their single parent, but by the quality of our love. Deep within, we’re soft-wired by nurture, not hard-wired by nature, to be affectionate, to tell bedtime stories, to help with school assignments, to hold our children’s hands when they are sleepless and sick.

Men need not be relegated to the one with the wallet and car keys. Their definition of manhood and strength need not be a stubborn word that will not be broken, and a similarly stubborn reluctance to say sorry.

On the contrary, such “strengths” are often the cracks of fear. True strength is the capacity to adapt, to flex rather than break in the face of a cyclone like cancer. True strength is the capacity to speak and listen to the many languages of silence, of touch, of facial expression.

When I was a social worker, many male clients would tell me, “I love my children, but it comes out all wrong!” Their fear and over-protectiveness comes out as anger and distrust.

Many females believe their father is a benchmark for their future partner, for better or worse. My daughters remind me of little things I have said or done that are etched in their memory but erased from mine. What they chose to internalise may be different to what we amplify or repeat.

While my choices resulted from circumstance, now I wish I’d made the choice to remove my shackles long before.

Joseph Wakim is the author of What My Daughters Taught Me, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now.

 

 

 

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Widowed dad Joseph Wakim opens up about raising three daughters on his own

 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/widowed-dad-joseph-wakim-opens-up-about-raising-three-daughters-on-his-own/story-fni0cx12-1227461356666

29 July 2015

 

Widowed dad Joseph Wakim opens up about raising three daughters on his own

  • The Sunday Telegraph
  • July 29, 20159:38AM

Men should be nurtured to be nurturers writes Joseph Wakim, author of the book What My Daughters Taught Me. Picture: Supplied Source: News Corp Australia

“WITHOUT a word spoken, mothers effortlessly read a room, gauging its temperature, scanning their children’s faces and measuring their heartbeats … This is the language of love, a language that should not be the monopoly of mothers. It is a language that we men can reclaim and relearn, as it lies dormant within us, waiting to be brought back to life. I was sure that whoever gave women this gift would not have bypassed fathers, in case they ended up like me.”

Joseph Wakim was left to raise his three young daughters Grace, Michelle, and Joy, after his wife Nadia died of cancer.

Widowed after his wife Nadia died of breast cancer 12 years ago, Joseph Wakim was left to raise his three young daughters, Grace, 11, Michelle, nine and Joy, four, on his own.

He has written a book called What My Daughters Taught Me — where he speaks candidly about ignoring the well-meaning advice from family, friends and strangers — to follow his own heart and instinct and do what is best for himself and more importantly his three girls.

Here he reflects on male stereotypes and why men need to be nurtured to be nurturers.

“What is required here is a change of heart by men”.

So said the PM when confronted with a survey that revealed that a quarter of the men thought some circumstances justified violence against women.

The PM has indeed hit the heart of the matter as the continuum from boys bottling up emotions to adult anger management to ugly violence is not new.

Too many males are socialised to act on their emotions, often with fists, rather than express their emotions through words or faces.

In my many years as a social worker, some males feared that “talking about how I feel” would be perceived as “what women do”.

Their hearts were heavy with fears and their valves were steaming. Add alcohol to the mix and you have a lethal cocktail.

These valves should never have been closed in the first place.

My own heart was forced to open up to dual parenting roles more than 10 years ago when I became widowed and had to raise my three young daughters alone.

I learned how they handled emotions, how they listened to each other, how they readily said “sorry”, how they talked about their fears, how they saw strength as adaptability, not as stubbornness, how they did not need to have the last word.

I was raised in a culture that had clear gender boundaries and we thought we were normal. Now I realise that boys need to nurtured to be nurturers, and that this notion that the genders are different by nature is greatly exaggerated. It closes the valves to the heart which are rusty to turn later in life.

* Joseph Wakim is author of What my daughters taught me (Allen & Unwin), out now.

 

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The Church Should Untangle Civil from Sacred ‘Marriage’

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/07/14/4273269.htm

ABC Religion and Ethics 14 Jul 2015

The church must distinguish what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God. If the church is no longer wedded to the word ‘marriage’, it will have nothing to lose if and when the civil law changes.

“Don’t mess with marriage” was in my face when I reached for the parish newsletter at last Sunday’s mass. Before I turned the page of this pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishops of Australia, there was already a problem: the mess predates this “same-sex marriage debate.”

Our church has never had a monopoly on the meaning of marriage – an institution that existed long before Christianity. Marriage was never ours to begin with and has been continually re-defined throughout history by many institutions, including the church itself.

If the “faithful” relinquish the word marriage and give it back to secular society, religious institutions could dust off and reinstate the holy sacrament of matrimony, with all the sacred implications.

When I was a child, Easter Sunday was used in church to mark the most definitive day on the Christian calendar. As we learned that Easter derives from the Saxon goddess of Spring, Eostre, one of many pagan notions adopted into church traditions, my parish now calls it Resurrection Sunday – and rightly so. Eostre was the goddess of fertility, hence the association with the bunny. This revolution away from borrowed names to reinstate the original event helps untangle history.

It was only 500 years ago, at the Council of Trent in 1563, when marriage was officially deemed as one of the seven sacraments. Long before marriage was adopted as a sacrament, it was a strategic alliance between families for economic reasons or class reasons, often arranged by parents. Love and offspring were secondary.

As I read the pastoral letter, I cringed at the timing of our faithful assuming the moral high ground and pontificating about sex while harrowing revelations continue in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. While the churches have a legitimate role to contribute to moral debates, why does the Catholic church appear to do most of the heavy lifting whenever this debate rages in Australia? After all, synagogues and mosques also profess the sanctity of a heterosexual marriage, but we do not see such public protests from rabbis and imams.

The pastoral letter defines marriage as a covenant that is “open to the procreation of children,” which is problematic for couples who choose not to have children. Last Sunday’s homily reminded me that family is a “holy” trinity between father, mother and child(ren).

The pastoral letter explains its central concerns about children, not because of the same-sex “parents” per se, but because of the church’s fundamental teachings on surrogacy, IVF and “the lure of the technology of artificial insemination.”

Australian census data attests that the institution and sanctity of marriage has been continually evolving and indeed eroding for decades. Popular culture and television programs have redefined marriage as a competition for of vanity, originality and fashion. The sacrament and “holy trinity” rarely enters into the equation when scoring points over wedding dresses, decor, catering and music to win the luxury honeymoon prize.

I was affronted by the pastoral letter asserting that “mothering and fathering are distinctly different” and that absence of a mother or father may “impede child development.” As a widowed father of three children, I can testify that it is the quality of parenting rather than the (in)equality of gender that most influences the child’s development.

Soon after my wife died, our parish priest gave me the classic Rembrandt painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, and pointed out that the father figure had both paternal and maternal features. This image has been displayed in many confession boxes (sacrament of reconciliation) and reminds us that we are all wired to fulfil dual roles. I think it is more nurture (culture) than nature that leads to these gender distinctions.

The most compelling arguments in the pastoral letter pertain to the rights of children, especially to know their right to know their biological parents. Although the “consequences of redefining marriage” examples in the pastoral letter may be perceived as scaremongering, Australia needs safeguards to prevent these anomalies and protect the religious institutions and private institutions.

Exclusion clauses need to be enshrined for ancillary services such as cake bakers, hotels, photographers and clergy who refuse to extend their services to same-sex couples, in “good faith.” Otherwise, we run the risk of replacing one form of discrimination against same-sex couples with another form of discrimination against those who refuse to recognise the couples as married.

If the opening slogan is “Don’t mess with marriage,” the closing slogan may as well read, “What next – polygamy?” And it is indeed these examples of state-sponsored punishment that need to be placated if the civil law changes are to retain a civil society.

Yes, the religious institutions cannot impose their sacred definition of marriage onto civil society, but in turn civil society cannot impose its redefinition onto religious institutions. That would be inequality.
We can discern what belongs to Caesar (civil society) from what belongs to God (sacred society). If we in the church faithful are no longer “wedded” to the word marriage, we have nothing to lose if and when the civil law changes.

 

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Mid-East policy ‘cooked up’ ISIS

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17505

Online Opinion, 14 July 2015

 

Once upon a time, there was the Arab Spring … and they lived unhappily ever after. On 18 March 2011, Syrian youth ignited a revolution with graffiti in Dar’aa – the regime must fall. The inferno has now killed over 200,000 people and displaced nearly four million.

It is easy to blame IS militants for the problem, but they are the symptom of foreign policies that resemble BBQ knobs. Power brokers are upgraded and degraded to achieve the desired temperature and power balance.

Three years ago, Mother Agnes Miriam visited Australia from Syria and warned about the emptying of Christians in the Middle East. She predicted that Christians would be the casualty of the Arab Spring. Enough beheading videos have been posted online to bring home this tragic truth.

She also warned that the “Arab Spring” had been “hijacked by foreign Islamist mercenaries, with strong support from Western countries.”

Indeed, the Syrian youth who started the revolution were hijacked by the Free Syrian Army who were in turn hijacked by the non-Syrian Salafists who were in turn hijacked by the foreign fighters of al Qaeda and their offshoot the ‘Islamic State.’ There is nothing civil about the war in Syria.

Arab strongmen and ‘flames’ are treated like burners of a BBQ, to be ignited then extinguished, armed then disarmed, elevated then bombed, allies then enemies.

The US backed coalition, including Australia, will keep adjusting the BBQ knobs to ensure their two main allies remain protected: Israel and Saudi Arabia. The same two countries that the US dares not criticise for their human rights violations.

So long as the Arabs are fighting each other, and their flames become weaker, they should not pose any threat to Israel’s military supremacy in the neighbourhood.

Why have al Qaeda and all its offshoots, jihadists and mercenaries flocked to fight alongside their Sunni brothers in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, and in the Levant, but they have never rushed to rescue their Sunni brothers in Palestine, especially in Gaza?

On the eve of Sept 11 last year, US President Barack Obama condemned ISIS and its “acts of barbarism”, referring to it as a “terrorist organisation, pure and simple.” So why vow to gradually degrade and ultimately destroy rather than immediately destroy?

The black box of the BBQ reveals the history of those playing with the temperature control knobs.

On 20 December 1983, when Iraq fought Iran after the Islamic revolution, US special envoy Donald Rumsfeld did a handshake deal with Saddam Hussein. Iraq was upgraded.

But on 2 August 1990 when Hussein flexed his muscles into Kuwait, he had to be degraded then ultimately extinguished.

Between 1986 and 1989, the CIA funneled $500 million in weapons into Afghanistan when Osama bin Laden fought with his Mujaheddin militants to expel the Communist Russian invasion during the Cold War. Let’s upgrade Afghanistan.

But on 11 September 2001 when Bin Laden’s militants morphed into al-Qaeda and flexed their muscles into the USA with terrorist attacks, they had to be degraded and this public enemy number was ultimately extinguished.

Since 2011, the US-Saudi-Qatar donors have aided and abetted the anti-Assad mercenaries. In 2014, the ISIS monster flaunted its US equipment that it has seized “in our pockets” and now needs to be degraded.

The control of the BBQ knobs was highlighted when Sunni Salafists took up arms in Iraq against the US-backed Malaki government and they were condemned as insurgents.

But if those same Salafists stepped across the border into Syria, they were suddenly praised as rebels fighting a dictator, fighting on the same side as the US.

Too often, the US and its allies speak of peace, diplomacy and democracy above the table, but they funnel aid and arms under the table. Then they wash their hands and call it civil war and sectarian war.

The US-Saudi-Qatar alliance intended their pipelines of weapons and funds to reach the Free Syrian Army in order to degrade Iran’s greatest ally in the region. But their ‘intelligence’ must have known what local Arabs already knew: these pipelines were leaking.

These dangerous toys would land in the hands of Al Nusra boys, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, and ultimately be confiscated by ISIS.

We fan their flames if we give them oxygen, and our media is their oxygen, inadvertently paying for their global recruitment and fear campaign.

Within Arab conversations, cynicism prevails about the cyclical and sickening pretext to war: “We in the West will save you from the monster (that we created)”.

Enough of the BBQ of Arab lands, enough of the incineration of Arab people. It is time to learn the lessons from the BBQ’s black box. Otherwise innocent Arab people will be condemned to live and die unhappily ever after as BBQ knobs turn around them.