Category: Freedom

A Theology Of Freedom #1 Greece And Michelangelo

Michelangelo’s Last Judgement was first revealed 481 years ago on this date in 1541.

It shows saved souls ascending to heaven on the left and the damned descending to hell on the right. Jesus and Mother Mary are in the middle looking down, Mary looking right and Jesus looking left, with His hands turning in a way that suggests strong involvement and power on both sides.

Knowing where God’s gift of freedom will take us is never easy. Not enough freedom is tyranny and too much freedom is anarchy.

Yesterday after a mostly Greek ceremony remembering freedom, I told one of the Australian born leaders that I believe that combining the biblical ideas that the Truth will set you free and that God is Logos (word, discourse or reason) could lead to a theology of freedom.

The guy slimed warmly and said that he agreed.

As far as I was concerned he hade only agreed to the possibility of discussion of my line of argument. That was all I thought. I was wrong. I have received a cold, legalistic letter from one of his underlings demanding a partial retraction from me of what I published. Here is that partial retraction:

Is a better commitment to freedom through Logos what Christianity needs in a secularising age where lost frightened people are still in need of the moral foundations and consensus religions used to more easily provide?

Or are the Christians, who now sometimes receive favour and money from the secularists who attack their way of life, too scared to speak up for Logos and what that word really means?

With great sadness, but deep determination to honour the spirit of

A.the brave Greeks who condemned fascist demands in 1940,

B. of my father in 1945 when he faced Japanese bullets for freedom,

C. of his theologian father in the 1930’s who then spoke up against on the plight of the Jewish refugeees from Hitler’s persecution

D. and of my other theologian grandfather who spoke up in the 1940’sa for the united Nations where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) whose first signatories included Greece and Australia

I respect the guy’s right to be silent and anonymous and unknown but I don’t respect his rude failure to discuss an idea, the divine right to free speech, enshrined in both UDHR and the Bible.

“For the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4-12)

Geoff Fox, 31st October dan seterusnya, 2022

Dancing For Freedom #1 Zorba Dance

Tarian Kemerdekaan = Dancing For Freedom.

Greek Joy in Australia, lead by one of Freedom’s preeminent multi-cultural women in Melbourne, Anastacia Ntouni, and her fellow Freedom politician, Angelique Matias.

The four women are celebrating OXI Day when the Greek Prime Minister Metaxas and his people stood up to Mussolini.

Anastacia Ntouni, (second from the right) and Angelique Matias (on the left of the picture).

God Bless Freedom

Geoff Fox 30th October, 2022, Down Under

Remembrance – Peringatan # 10 Lest We Forget – Heart To Heart

Afrim of Heart To Heart

Afrim is a man deeply committed to bringing people together with the beauty of flowers in a spirit of love.

But I sense that he is deeply concerned about what he sees in some people in his immediate neighbourhood and across Victoria and Australia. He says: “We are at war with our own politicians. But my friends in the freedom movement are now standing up for the moral values which the Anzacs and all other diggers fought for.”

In Afrim’s eyes, I see the same quiete, kind, thoughtful, family-based determination which I have been privileged to honour in my own father’s eyes from the time when dad was involved in fighting fascism in the 1940’s.

God Bless Afrim.

God Bless Freedom.

Geoff Fox, 19th August, 2022, Australia

VICTORY FOR ALL #2 FLAGPIES

As I write this all three Australian Rules football teams representing the Collingwood Football Club, the Magpies, have a real chance to win a premiership this year. The two men’s teams are in the finals and the Women’s team has started a new season with a good victory last night and a number of talented players expected to return from injury.

The AFL mens team has played perhaps the most exciting brand of footy in the history of the sport this season to finish among the top four teams which is where the premier normally comes from.

In 2010, when Collingwood last won an AFL premiership, I invented the word “Flagpies” and proudly said over and over at one literary pub in Carlton that this word was the greatest poem ever written in Australian.

Today, Ash, the MC at a Magpie Nest function in Melbourne, enthusiastically joined me in shouting out this word.

Ash is a follower of all things good in Aussie footy, not a life-long one-eyed Collingwood supporter like me, but she recognizes that the Collingwood AFL team’s achievement in winning eleven games by less than two goals (easily eclipsing the previous best number of close finish victories of 8 by Melbourne in 1989) has made this year’s Collingwood team one of the most exciting teams to watch in the history of the game.

I am an old man on the skids trying to make a go of it with a midrange camera that doesnt always produce great results in some light conditions.

But I am very grateful to Ash and the Magpie Nest for giving me the chance today to celebrate in two of my chosen art forms my life-long loves of Collingwood, footy and freedom.

Thank you, my friends.

Geoff Fox, 26th August, 2022, Melbourne , Australia

Great Indonesians #1 Wiji Thukul – Indonesia’s Whitman Of The Kampung

Wiji Thukul was a Javanese freedom fighter poet, who reminds me of Walt Whitman because he sought to liberate people through poetry. Wiji’s left wing politics learnt from foreign cultural influences did not resonate broadly with his people but he was enormously influential in certain circles.

He wrote words like “Hanya Ada Satu Kata – Lawan” (There is only one word – Fight!) which are almost Shakespearean in the way they have traveled beyond their original use to enter into many people’s consciousness in Indonesia.

Like Whitman, Wiji wrote with and for freedom.

As I recall, esteemed writer Goenawan Mohamad praised Thukul in conversation with me for liberating the simple straight forward use of the Indonesian language like no other writer. Wiji achieved this because he insisted on using language which the people in his neighbourhood or kampung could understand.

“Api Hak Pemberontakan” (the fire of the right of rebellion) are words that Wiji and I crafted as an Indonesian transcreation of Walt Whitman’s words: “O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!”

Today I turn it into Word Art:

Thukul was a leftist but enthralled by Mel Gibson’s heroic shout of “Freedom” in Brave Heart.

God Bless Wiji Thukul wherever he may be.

God Bless Freedom.

Geoff Fox, 17th June, 2022, dreaming of being back home in Indonesia

Sustainable Development #16 Personal Survival in The Culture War

Cultural Warrior Philipp Zey travelled around the world on a bicycle with a trombone, a golf club and a German pasta shaper.

He shared music, his golf swing and pasta meals using locally available ingredients with hosts and new friends in the cause of peace, understanding and freedom across and up and down Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa.

It is unlikely that anyone in the world has ever played didgeridoo on a trombone down a drain in Australia better than Philipp Zey did for my camera just because I asked him to.

Aboriginal elder the late Aunty Dot Peeters said his playing was “excellent”.

Geoff Fox, February 1 , 2021, Terra Nullius

The Fundamentals #9 Managing Our Times

Amanda Woods of San Diego is young and smart.

I am older. But I learn from and with her.

Martin Luther King Jr, born on this date in 1929 taught that “…… the wealth of cultural and technological progress in America is a result of the commonwealth of inpouring contributions.”

This human commonwealth exists across races, times and places.

When it is shared in freedom and justice, it can grow.

When it become tyrannous, it dies.

Geoff Fox, 16th January, 2021, Terra Nullius