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Shedding new light on the ancient Southern Cross

Shedding new light on the ancient Southern Cross

Spotting celestial signs of Jesus’ scars in the Southern Cross
Published in Sunday Age / Sydney Morning Herald on 6 January 2019

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/faith-spotting-celestial-signs-of-jesus-scars-in-the-southern-cross-20190103-p50ph2.html

Why are the iconic five stars on our national flag named the Southern Cross rather than kite or diamond?

It was Italian explorer Andrea Corsali who first coined ‘this cross’ as ‘so fair and beautiful’ in 1515 while on a Portugese voyage to the Indian Ocean.

But why evoke the crucifixion and therefore Christ when observing configurations of constellations?

This question led me to ponder the significance of the five stars, especially the faintest fifth star Epsilon Crucis, at the ‘heart’ of the cross, which our indigenous Wardaman astronomers named Ginan. This is the same star that is excluded from the New Zealand flag.

The Southern Cross ‘asterism’ has legendary meaning in indigenous Australian cultures, representing a sting ray, an emu’s head and a possum. In colonial Australian cultures, it has been adopted on the national flag, in the Eureka Stockade, as a ‘badge of honour’ tattoo and as a symbol of resistance.

When viewed as the ‘crux’ (cross in Latin), these lights that pierce our night sky do indeed bear more than a resemblance to the lacerations that pierced the crucified Jesus. A nail for each hand, a nail driven into his feet, a crown of thorns on his head, and a lance through his side.

Chapter 19 in the gospel of John states that the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on crosses on the Sabbath, so the soldiers broke the legs of the crucified ones to hasten their deaths. ‘But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead … the soldiers pierced his side with a spear.’

Suddenly, the fifth star, and the word Cross, shed a different light.

The five stars match the five scars.

The enigma deepens when we consider that the estimated age of this constellation is between 10 and 20 million years. It is the smallest of the 88 known constellations, but perhaps the greatest in significance.

It now spells a searing reminder of the ‘big bang’ of love, long before the crucifixion was prophecised, long after we felt the ripples of this ‘supernova’. It heralds the new era (Anno Domini) that established our calendar years.

Due to the movement of the Earth’s axis, the Southern Cross has been invisible to the northern hemisphere since about 400 AD. Together with the two Pointers, it now navigates us to the South Celestial Pole. But together with the four gospels, it navigates us to the celestial sacrifice of the ‘lamb of God’.

If a star pointed the magis to the birth of Jesus, stars can point to the death.

Can we shrug off the scar-stars of the Southern Cross as a cosmic coincidence?

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Joseph Wakim’s emotional journey

https://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/emotional-journey-book-review/2754941/
Emotional journey: Widowed father tells his story
30th Aug 2015 12:00 PM

John Grey Guy who created couriermail.com.au. Editor, geek, actor, playwright

THIS is not a how-to book about raising daughters – though there is much to be learned here. What My Daughters Taught Me is a deeply-felt, emotional family journey told by a single father.

Author Joe Wakim’s soulmate Nadia was killed by cancer in 2003, leaving him with three girls to raise.
With honesty, courage, imagination, self-deprecation and humour, Wakim tells of his efforts to be mother and father to the girls, while remaining their friend and keeping their family culture strong.

Fighting against gender and cultural stereotypes all the way, he deals with grief, community expectations and guilt, while encountering a daily slew of challenges which will be familiar to many parents.

He deals with the tyranny of the television (which he dubs “His Majesty”), the distraction of devices (“serial text offenders”), the dance lessons, the sanitary pad shopping experience, the medical dramas, the parties, the fashions and the formals, the first jobs and the driving lessons.

Nadia’s memory is always there with him, manifesting several times in Wakim’s occasionally filmic storytelling to help him sort through issues. These are moving moments, as are those when he recalls her last days.

The wonderful friendship that Wakim engenders with his daughters reaches a timely and mutually frank maturity when the girls begin dating.

Dad expresses his fears about other drivers at night, and strangers trying to spike their drinks. His middle daughter archly responds: “You think we’re that naive? I’ve raised you better than that, Joe Wakim.”

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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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Give up something meaningful for Lent

Published in Sunday Age, 10 March 2013
http://bit.ly/14LDQkt

Fast and loose – give up something meaningful for Lent

”WHAT I have given up for Lent” has become a fashion statement in some social circles. The announcement has been trumpeted so loudly, it may as well be tattooed on foreheads with pride in place of the ashes of penance. Indeed, it is written on the wall of many Facebook pages for all the friends to see.

Some of my ”faithful” flock mope pathetically about how they have given up their favourite luxury – chips, pizza, chocolate or caffeine. They appear to have forgotten that it is not what goes into their mouth that defiles them, but what comes out of it: pride, profanities, gossip.

As a child raised with Lebanese Christian traditions, spirituality and culture intersected and fused. Meat was the prescribed sacrifice during Lent, which was meaningless to me as I detested meat.

I should have been denied dairy products instead. Ironically, I looked forward to Lent because I much preferred the lentil soups than the mandatory meat anyway.

Many Christian faithful who celebrate Lent may need to be reminded of its origins. It is meant to be a time to enhance the relationship with their maker through private prayer, with their ”neighbour” through private almsgiving, and with themselves through some private sacrifice.

But before the faithful sacrifice alcohol, there are some sobering biblical reminders against pride and hypocrisy because ”God sees the unseen”. When you fast, wash your face and comb your hair so that only God notices, rather than look miserable and moan so that people pity you. When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet. And in praying, do it in secret.

Looks like some social sins persist after two millenniums. Indeed, bragging on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram about what you gave up for Lent is merely a modern manifestation of hypocrisy and reward seeking.

Herein lies the biggest difference between fasting privately for spiritual reasons and fasting publicly for social reasons. The former is tougher because it involves long-term faith that ”God will reward you later”, while the latter is tempting because it involves fulfilment from ”friends” and ”followers”.

For the ”fashion” fasters, it prompts the question – why sacrifice your favourite edibles if you undermine it with conceit and complaint? Are you point-scoring for this life now, or the next life?

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Give up something meaningful for Lent

http://bit.ly/14LDQkt
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/fast-and-loose–give-up-something-meaningful-for-lent-20130311-2fvm8.html?skin=text-only

Fast and loose – give up something meaningful for Lent
Published in Sunday Age, 10 March 2013

”WHAT I have given up for Lent” has become a fashion statement in some social circles. The announcement has been trumpeted so loudly, it may as well be tattooed on foreheads with pride in place of the ashes of penance. Indeed, it is written on the wall of many Facebook pages for all the friends to see.

Some of my ”faithful” flock mope pathetically about how they have given up their favourite luxury – chips, pizza, chocolate or caffeine. They appear to have forgotten that it is not what goes into their mouth that defiles them, but what comes out of it: pride, profanities, gossip.
As a child raised with Lebanese Christian traditions, spirituality and culture intersected and fused. Meat was the prescribed sacrifice during Lent, which was meaningless to me as I detested meat.

I should have been denied dairy products instead. Ironically, I looked forward to Lent because I much preferred the lentil soups than the mandatory meat anyway.

Many Christian faithful who celebrate Lent may need to be reminded of its origins. It is meant to be a time to enhance the relationship with their maker through private prayer, with their ”neighbour” through private almsgiving, and with themselves through some private sacrifice.
But before the faithful sacrifice alcohol, there are some sobering biblical reminders against pride and hypocrisy because ”God sees the unseen”. When you fast, wash your face and comb your hair so that only God notices, rather than look miserable and moan so that people pity you. When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet. And in praying, do it in secret.

Looks like some social sins persist after two millenniums. Indeed, bragging on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram about what you gave up for Lent is merely a modern manifestation of hypocrisy and reward seeking.

Herein lies the biggest difference between fasting privately for spiritual reasons and fasting publicly for social reasons. The former is tougher because it involves long-term faith that ”God will reward you later”, while the latter is tempting because it involves fulfilment from ”friends” and ”followers”.

For the ”fashion” fasters, it prompts the question – why sacrifice your favourite edibles if you undermine it with conceit and complaint? Are you point-scoring for this life now, or the next life?

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Was KRudd dog whistling to faithful flock?

WAS RUDD ‘DOG WHISTLING’ TO FAITHFUL FLOCK?

One cannot serve two masters, otherwise one will receive devotion and the other will be despised.

This may be the take home message after the Labour leadership catharsis. Not so much for the Caucus members who voted between two leaders, but for KRudd himself.

As a professed Christian, KRudd had to choose between his messiah complex and his morality, but it appeared that the latter was temporarily suspended.

The ‘messiah’ mockery was of KRudd’s own making, when he announced that he would contest for leadership: ‘I want to finish the job the Australian people elected me to do when I was elected by them to become prime minister’. Not only was he exploiting the disconnect between popular opinion polls and his political colleagues, but also shunning the Christian principle of humility.

While his predecessor John Howard was often accused of playing the race card in his dog whistle politics, it appears that Rudd played the religion card throughout this ‘soap opera’.

In his recent speeches, the Honorable KRudd repeatedly referred to himself as honorable: ‘the only honorable thing and the only honorable course of action is for me to resign’. This was presumably intended to contrast him with the ‘dishonorable’ actions of Julia Gillard and her ‘faceless men’ when they deposed him from the ‘job the Australian people elected me to do’. The repeated references to honor may have been mischievous dog whistling to the faithful flock reminding them that an atheist and Godless leader who does not believe in marriage may not believe in honor or morality either.

During his resignation speech from Washington, the capital of the great bastion of presidential elections, Rudd positioned himself squarely in the camp of the morally right. He condemned those who were ‘party to a stealth attack on a sitting prime minister elected by the people…We all know what happened then was wrong and it must never happen again’.

This reads like a new covenant, evoking religious parallels that he was robbed of his rightful throne and we had been robbed of our elected leader in order to satisfy the hunger of the ‘thieves in the night’, all in the guise of ‘moving forward’. Ironically, KRudds’s own king-hit was launched after midnight, but we were not supposed to notice that hypocrisy.

His self-portrait evokes sacred images of the sacrificial lamb, and the one who had to personally pay for the sins of his faction-driven party. His dramatic departure from the prime minister role was like some passion play where he was betrayed by his own followers, reduced to tears, publicly humiliated, relegated to a foreign ministry and then awaiting his second coming.

On ABC TV’s QandA in April 2011, KRudd proclaimed that he never wanted to abandon his covenant for the emissions trading scheme but some wanted to ‘kill it for good’. And again pleading for forgiveness in martyr style: ‘It was a wrong call for which I was responsible’. Hence he fuelled the prophetic speculation that he would soon seek to right the wrongs: ‘I might have learnt a thing or two for the future’.

KRudd’s repeated references to ‘the truth is’ echoes of gospel readings from a pulpit. It exploits the Ju-liar smear campaign where he is juxtaposed as an honest man who is ‘plain speaking’.

When responding to the You-Tube video of the old Rudd, who appeared more like a bully than a wounded bull, he insisted that he had learned not to control every aspect in his office and to consult more broadly. Perhaps this was his act of contrition that he wanted his parliamentary colleagues to forgive him in a similar spirit to his ‘stolen generations’ apology.

KRudd prides himself as a passionate Christian who proudly integrates his faith into his politics. He conceded this when he resigned as prime minister: ‘It is probably not the occasion for high statements of theology, but I’m sure you’d be disappointed if I didn’t add something, given it’s been the subject of comment over the years in which I’ve led this party’.

It is a relief that his recent litany of religious dog whistling fell on deaf ears. There was a disturbing disconnect between the Christian preaching and KRudd’s practice. His faith, and indeed my faith, teaches us to love our enemy, never to exact revenge and to be humble: ‘he who humbles himself will be exalted (in heaven) and he who exalts himself will be humbled’.

His call for a phone referendum to reinstate the people’s popular choice of prime minister was not revolutionary, but delusional, and the antithesis of humility. This chapter saw KRudd not as serving God, but playing God and serving his own Messiah complex. Thank God most of us could see right through that.

In the 1994 Disney animated classic Lion King, we meet a baboon named Rafiki who is the king’s wise adviser. Rafiki nudges the main character Simba to return to the Pridelands ‘to challenge his uncle to take his place as king’. This begs the outstanding question: who was the baboon who nudged KRudd to challenge the prime minister?