Light looked down and saw the darkness.
“I will go there” said Light.
Peace looked down and saw war.
“I will go there” said Peace.
Love looked down and saw hatred.
“I will go there” said Love
So he
the Lord of Light
the Prince of Peace
the King of Love
came down and crept in beside us.

John Bell Scottish poet and musician and Church of Scotland clergyman

Quote by Richard Leonard S.J. in his book Why Bother Praying.

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News and Views

Whilst there may be many laws in a country run by a democratically elected government, which any one individual or group might wish to see changed or repealed. I don’t think that breaking them is a sensible option particularly when you announce an intention to continue doing it.
Everyone should be grateful that we are free to criticize what we disagree with. However to challenge laws by breaking them, seldom has any effect other than to hit the headlines briefly. In this case of Derryn Hinch’s prosecution there are many better places to spend $100,000 even if Mr Hinch by using media power, prefers not ”to render unto Caesar” who probably cares little whether he gets the cash or supports who is seen as a criminal with 50 days board and lodging.

UNBELIEVABLE!

BUT WHERE,WHEN AND HOW WAS IT TAKEN? E=MC²!

LESS AND LESS FOR MORE AND MORE

GENEROSITY IN THE HUMAN HEART IS SELDOM MORE APPARENT THAN AT THIS SEASON. WHILE THAT IS TRUE IT DOES NOT REPLACE THE ONGOING NEED OF THOSE INCREASING NUMBERS OF “THE EXCLUDED”. A NATION’S GOVERNMENT HAS THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR INCLUSION. IN AUSTRALIA, ALL THE PEOPLE MUST FILL THE TANK OUT OF WHICH THE POOR MAY TAP TO LIGHTEN THEIR BURDEN .
IN EUREKASTREET.COM TODAY JOHN FALZON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE ST. VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY WRITES STRONGLY ON HEARING THE UNHEARD. THIS COINCIDES WITH TODAY’S GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENT OF A DWINDLING SURPLUS AND AT A TIME WHEN THE ‘BURDEN’ IS TO BE MADE HEAVIER ON THOSE LEAST DESERVING OF FURTHER AUSTERITY.

ASYLUM SEEKING

It is regrettable that the national press won’t publish in full the latest article today 19th dec. by Fr frank Brennan on eurekastreet.com.
It is entitled “Border Protection Word Games” and is highly illustrative of the shallow arguments placed before the Australian people on this difficult problem.
The information in the article is there for all to read and who want to add to their understanding.

Am I or am I not?

I have noted a Post from IdoLanuel the author of 2Baware who is also a Blogger.
He runs workshops on Self Awareness.
This interested me enough to write to him.
I told him that in my vanity I believe myself to be self aware and asked him what single question I could pose myself to counter it.
He replied ask “Who believes that I am self aware?”
I replied to this “Does it matter?”
He replied “Nothing else matters”
Any other advice might be welcome but it must be a single question please!

Rosemary & Donald a short story by Tony Knight

Rosemary lived with her mother. At twenty nine she was always meeting new men yet her relationships had a sorry record. Her mother told her often when yet another friend left her life, that her problem was that she had a smile for everyone and was too ready to chat when a man talked to her. She was one of those women who have no idea how attractively pretty they are.

Take Donald for example. He had been  married to Daphne for eleven years.They had no children. He had a good job and income to match. His journey to and from work took an hour and thirty minutes on the train and so he did the daily crossword to pass the time. So did Rosemary. Sooner or later inevitably they found themselves sitting beside each other on a journey home. “Would you mind my asking whether you have 24 across,” Donald said. It was too good an opportunity to miss and he got the friendly response he hoped for. Rosemary who had noticed Donald it has to be said, never saw the chat line coming and so their acquaintance began. When they reached their station they bade each other a friendly goodnight. Donald went home feeling just a little thrill running through him.

When he arrived home his wife was out as she often was, either at a church meeting or her bridge club or just with friends. His dinner, a lamb casserole, not one of his favourite dishes, was in the microwave.

Donald sank into an armchair switched the television to a sports channel and allowed his thoughts to turn to Rosemary. He hoped to find a seat beside her on the train the next day.

He fell asleep but woke up when Daphne arrived home at about eleven. He was quite glad when she simply kissed him briefly on his head saying she was very tired, and was going straight to bed as she had a busy morning tomorrow with the church parish council. After he had turned off everything and checked the locks Donald followed.

In their house the same routines occurred every morning at six. The alarm went off, Daphne gave a half groan before turning over and going back to sleep and Donald got up promptly. He made himself a cup of tea, shaved, showered and dressed. Then he helped himself to a juice and two pieces of toast. On leaving for the station in time to catch the seven thirty train he called out a goodbye up the stairs but as usual got no reply.

There already along on the station platform he saw Rosemary and again felt the thrill of the evening before. He noticed how very pretty she looked in her office attire, a neat grey two piece costume with a pale blue blouse. She hadn’t noticed his arrival until he strolled up beside her with a breezy hello. She turned smiled at him and returned his greeting.

She found his presence interesting.

They got on the train found two empty seats and started a conversation which this morning no crossword interrupted.The time and countryside rushed by until they arrived in town.

Before going their separate ways to work, Donald asked Rosemary whether she would like to meet for a drink before returning home that evening. She accepted the invitation and their affair was up and running. They met as arranged and had a few drinks after which neither of them wanted the evening to end when they would have to return to their real life. They each made a call home. As Daphne wasn’t at home, Donald left a message on the answer phone saying he had to meet a client or some such. Rosemary told her mother the truth and smiled to herself at her mother’s standard advice which she had every intention of ignoring yet again. The couple then went to a small Italian restaurant Donald knew, where they exchanged confidences and in Donald’s case a lie or two over some pasta and a bottle of Frascati. It had been a long time since Rosemary had enjoyed herself as much.

It was dark when they walked back to the station through the small park. Each felt the exciting closeness of the other as their hands met in an eager clasp. Instinctively they half turned to face each other. Donald gently pulled Rosemary close with a caressing kiss which resolved into a passionate embrace and Rosemary happily responded. They caught the last train home and Donald accompanied Rosemary to her front door where they said an affectionate goodnight before he turned to make his own way home.

As Donald approached his house he was shocked to see a police car and ambulance parked outside. He broke into a run for the last fifty yards.

A police officer, once he was satisfied with Donald’s identity, broke the news that Daphne had apparently taken her own life. She had been found by a friend who called when she failed to turn up at the parish council meeting. She had left a note the officer said and although it was evidence that the coroner would want preserved, he allowed Donald to read it.

His hands trembled while he read:

Dearest ones I have such a huge problem which I cannot resolve without hurting one of the two people I love. You Donald who have been a good and faithful husband for eleven years and another whose name you do not need to know, who has been my wonderful lover for the past eight. Please forgive me both of you.

It was signed ‘Daphne’.

In his state of shock Donald hardly heard the officer ask him to come to the station to make a statement of his movements that day.

It is just to tidy up the paper work the police officer said.

 

The Taxi

The Taxi  A short story by Tony Knight

My home for sixty five years is a cottage set on about an acre in a country road about a mile from a small village which has its own village store, a post office and a public house, The Red Lion. As a widower for almost eleven years, I live a fairly lonely but busy life keeping my smallholding going. I’ve a couple of goats, about a dozen chickens, a cockerel, and some ducks which inhabit a small pond shared with a neighbouring farm. By profession I am a retired physicist and my evenings when my day’s work is complete, are filled by a continuing enthusiasm for the development of quantum theory, physics and cosmology. I have an excellent library on these subjects with books by most of the experts in those fields.

But I now have a very big problem arising out of an extraordinary event.

How will I get anyone to believe the story I have to tell? This is a question I ask myself.

Another is how if I tell it, will I cope with being thought a fantasist, idiot, liar, or plain barmy, for I alone know the absolute truth of what I am now to disclose.

No matter how I prepare you for what I am about to say, I am sure that whilst you may listening carefully and may even be prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt, you will nevertheless find yourself thinking those adverse  and hurtful things I mention.

However I must tell of the event which was to set me above my fellow men and yet would leave me without any credibility.

On a Monday night I slept soundly and woke early to the dawn chorus which on reflection seemed a few decibels higher than usual. The morning was calm and dry, the sky was clearing and the moon in its last quarter was setting in the west.

I intended to get stuck in to some vegetable gardening after breakfast, so I showered, put on my gardening clothes, had a light breakfast and got ready for   work.

I went out of the front door into the garden. I noted the time which was exactly half past seven and I heard the sound of an approaching car. When it came into view I was surprised to see that it was a black cab like one of those on the streets of London. It slowed down and stopped at my front gate so I went to see what the driver wanted. He seemed to me to have a slight speech impediment, but I understood him to say that there was a body on the side of the road about five hundred yards back. He asked me if I would come back with him to render some assistance. I readily agreed and climbed into the cab which he turned around and we set off.

From this point in my story I crave your understanding that I am a truthful man telling everything as it was.

As soon as I took a seat in the back, the windows of the cab blacked out, hiding the outside from my view. A strong blue-white light filled the cab interior. The partition disappeared, there was no driver and I felt no motion. The best I can do to describe my surroundings is to ask you to imagine being inside a giant juke box with twice the number of flickering coloured lights. If I say I wasn’t frightened it was because indeed although I felt excited, I was calmed by the exquisitely flavoured air I found myself breathing. I felt strangely reassured of my safety and got up and walked around the large room which had no doors or windows as far as I could make out and no evidence of any technology other than the lighting. I had no concept at all of the passage of time which I recall gave me a wonderful feeling of what I can best describe as an eternal ‘now.’

A presence appeared. It was an utterly streamlined being of such physical beauty as I will never see again, two limbs, apparently hands, were held out clearly inviting me to take them in my own which I did. I was immediately aware that we were on a journey. I knew also that my mind had been filled with the content of every one of my books on subjects such as the speed of light, anti-matter, teleportation, the first and last three minutes of the universe, parallel universes, uncertainty, inter dimensional travel and about fifty others of high technical content. The being indicated that I should return to my seat which I did. The interior instantly returned to normal and now I could see that the cab had stopped at my garden gate but although that is what it appeared to be, I knew that it was not my cottage but a perfect replica set on unknown land. I went inside and was met by a trio of beings of exactly the same delightful appearance as the one in the cab. I said politely, that I would like to know what was happening. They didn’t, actually talk, yet I knew what they were saying. It was an indescribable sensation.

They made me aware that they were part of a team of cosmic archaeologists. I learned that their technology although superior by several billion light years to anything on earth, left them in the same difficult situation as our own archaeologists who work to interpret long extinct ancient writings and scripts.

They were I realised, seeking the inter stellar equivalent of the Rosetta stone to enable them to understand our levels of scientific knowledge which to them is primordial and lost in the mist of their time. They had come back this far in time to pursue an ongoing quest and I had been singled out to solve their problem which I did gladly. I felt really privileged to see their great joy at the success of their mission and to enjoy the gratitude offered to me with their generous apology for the way they had hijacked me.

In return I asked them how they managed to travel the distance they had and how long had it taken them. I explained my questions by relating it to our own space exploration whereby even to reach the outer solar system takes us many years in unmanned capsules. I learned that they travelled by highly developed teleportation based upon their super advanced capability to vary the speed of light and link it to molecular entanglement by up to ten million times the limit in our Milky Way which they easily override. The replica of my cottage would they said remain to be exhibited in their leading museum.

I was then taken out again to the cab which behaved as it did at the beginning of my adventure and I was transported back to Earth and deposited at my front gate. I was handed a small gift wrapped in a most unusual marbled covering. I heard the cab departing along the road for no more than three seconds then silence. I went indoors and noted the time. It was still morning and half past seven exactly.

I opened the package which had been given to me and found a small model of a cab in pure gold with sapphire windows and diamond headlights on full beam.

It is here for you to see if you don’t believe me.

Billy’s Boss

BILLY’S BOSS a short story by Tony Knight

Billy’s boss had a habit which really annoyed Billy. Whenever he wanted Billy to come into his office to talk over work, he would tap on the glass division separating their offices and beckon to Billy. That was not in itself annoying but Billy knew that as soon as he went into the boss’s office, the file would be flipped across the ever polished shiny desk and would invariably fall on the floor resulting in disconnected papers all over the place. This would always be accompanied with the same words “Give me a run down on this Billy.” Billy of course, always had to put the file of papers together before he could respond with the advice he always had ready for these meetings.

Of course Billy’s boss had himself a boss who had a boss  who had shareholders to answer to eventually.

Billy’s boss always dealt with the Company’s more important customers and in the normal course of business from time to time, he entertained their representatives to lunch in the city.

When Billy’s boss went out to lunch with customers he usually wasn’t seen again that afternoon, and that day was no exception. In the morning a day or two later, His boss looked in on Billy and said he had been called to see the CEO.

 

At about three in the afternoon when his boss hadn’t returned to his office, Billy was surprised  to be called up himself and went straight away. When he got there he was told to go straight in.

Jennifer McKenzie greeted Billy and asked him to take a seat. Without any further explanation, she told him that his boss would no longer occupy that position as he had been dismissed and was at that moment clearing his desk and would be out of the building before Billy returned to his office. She said that she was satisfied that Billy would be capable of taking over the job, wouldn’t he? Billy agreed and was told that an announcement would be made when terms for his promotion had been agreed.

 

Billy went back down in the lift somewhat stunned by this unexpected turn of events and wondered what could have led to the instant dismissal.

A day or two later it emerged as these things do, that Billy’s ex-boss and the rep he was entertaining in the restaurant had a heated argument. The Company had received a complaint that their rep had been subjected to insulting behavior. The customer demanded strong action if they were to continue doing business together.

From his knowledge of his former boss, Billy thought this unlikely. There must have been more to it.

About a week or two later Billy finding that train services were disrupted, stopped for a drink at a local pub on his way home, only to see his ex boss sitting there alone . He went across with his drink and Billy learned the whole story.

Billy’s ex boss was, as Billy knew, a keen and extremely good Bridge player. Apparently he played at the same club as the rep he was entertaining so that their conversation after a drink or two, soon switched from business to an argument about a bridge hand they had once played against each other. The rep it turned out was not only a very attractive woman but also the partner of the customer’s proprietor and she did not take kindly to the suggestion that she had played the hand badly. As their argument worsened Billy’s ex boss said that in the heat of the moment he had suggested that with her looks, she would make a better hooker than a bridge player. Furious, she slapped his face in front of everyone in the restaurant and left.

So that was why Billy’s boss’s employment ended.

Billy thought that with his former boss’s uncertain temper, it was always on the cards.

 

 

Lisa’s Daughter a short story by Tony Knight

Lisa was a very busy woman and let everybody know it. Her husband George was a very busy man as well, she said. He works shifts on the Sydneyferries so it is important that his meals are ready on time and that he always has clean clothes, particularly his white shirts with the gold bars on the shoulder. Lisa was very proud of her husband. She kept their home spotless.

They had been married for thirty one years. Now at last their youngest daughter was to be married next month.

Lisa and George were not pleased with their daughter’s choice. The boy was eight years older than her. He had a job as a barista in a café just offGeorge Street. An only child he had been brought up by his mother because his father died when he was a baby. Lisa thought the boy was quite unsuitable as a soul mate for her youngest daughter. She had hoped the girl would settle down like her sisters. They had husbands who she and George liked a lot. The girls were well settled with their own home and a child apiece.. Lisa was a really good Nana to the little ones and gave them as much time as she could in her busy week, until the prospect of this wedding crashed into their lives.

Lisa’s problem with the boy was that she found his manner and demeanour insulting because he made his dislike of her so obvious. Whenever he came to the house the chippy remarks he made usually brought a smile and occasionally a giggle from her daughter which added fuel to Lisa’s dislike of him. When she told George about her feelings instead of reassuring her he was content to suggest that things would be better after the wedding, when she wouldn’t be so wound up. Lisa knew that would not be the case.

The couple had no place to live yet which seemed not to worry them at all. Her daughter resisted all Lisa’s attempts to teach her cookery. The girl had none of her sisters’ dress sense. Most of the time when he was in the house, she upset Lisa in unseemly and lustful embraces with him. George if he was home simply ignored them while he watched some sport or other on the television.

The matter came to a head about a week later. Lisa had forgotten a cake she had in the oven which burned to a frazzle. George wasn’t going to be home until very late being at a mate’s retirement party and she had forgotten to bring the washing off the line. Now it was raining.

Lisa would have put it down to the menopause had she not been well over that, but the blood rushed to her head when, with her daughter on his arm, the boy said pointedly that it was time the three of them sat down to talk about the wedding plans that they wanted, not those she was always going on about. Lisa gave him such a smack across his face that he reeled, fell over a chair and hit his head on a corner of the sink unit. He fell to the ground unconscious. A trickle of blood seeped from his head. Her daughter screamed, knelt down, and took the boy’s head in her lap. In a panic Lisa tried to revive him with a cold wet dishcloth. She was unsuccessful. Her daughter screamed at her to call an ambulance which she did. About ten minutes later when the ambulance arrived he recovered consciousness.

He didn’t know where he was or who he was and didn’t recognise either of them. They told the paramedics that he had fallen and hit his head. He was taken to casualty and the pair of them went with him.

They called his mother who arrived at the hospital a short while later. Lisa and her daughter talked over what they were going to say to her about the incident. When his mother arrived and asked what had happened Lisa told her the truth.

To Lisa’s and her daughter’s surprise, his mother said she was sure he deserved everything he got. Only that morning she said, he had left the house after screaming at her and hitting her. She said it was now almost a daily event. Nothing she ever did pleased him. She even showed them some new bruises on her neck and arms and asked Lisa to leave him to her. She said she had had enough of his bullying and had asked the police for help for the first time today after this morning’s attack. They were going to interview him later that day. Things had never been the same she said since he came out of prison eight months ago.

Lisa and her daughter in shock went home holding on to each other.

Lisa felt sure that her daughter would get over it. After all Lisa thought to herself, she would never be too busy to give her daughter as much time and love as she would need.