The Cosmos and the Highland Thing
by Ted Carr
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 60
Autumn 1998

Part 2

With something of a shock I realise again that what we have here is a microcosm of the world. Our culture (in Australia) has created a little bubble around us that permits us to think that we are different, not subject to the burgeoning threats that will surely engulf this 'primitive' land. Somehow, from the perspective of this mountain stream, the world suddenly shrinks to something I can encompass and grieve for.

I must declare up front that I am not confident that we are making progress in any actualisation of the 'Kingdom of God'. The clear evidence, by almost any measuring stick, is that we are on a collision course with far too many other actualities. The tocsins are already out, even though we studiously try to avoid them. Most of them have their roots in the most fundamental of 'necessities' with which we flesh out our everyday lives.

Greenhouse gasses are heating us up, aerosols are cooling us down. CFCs attack the ozone layer. Humans proliferate. Animals and plants vanish. DDT accumulates in the body tissues of Antarctic penguins. The clear mountain air I breath contains residues from Chernobyl.

All about me people are fighting battles that have no end. The fighting has no reference with the world outside other than the fact that the ammunition comes from out there somewhere. One could spend a lifetime trying to set right the wrongs in this place, without ever thinking of the larger world outside. That 'Kingdom' seems light years distant.

Why do we have to accept responsibility for the state of the world, or even the state of a province in PNG? Because the problems here and the problems at home are exactly the same. The overlay of our culture on the culture of the Highland people has created a state of things far worse than before. Only a few days ago, just a few kilometres from here, a house was burned along with its occupants. House-burning is a common form of pay-back here, but this is the first recorded instance of people dying in this particular circumstance. Traditional law demanded that the occupants of the house must be called out first. Rambo would not waste time doing that.

Our role here is peace-making. It has a grand sound to it, but it is grindingly wearying. We can see the goal, and we are working on it. But without help, without intervention, it will never happen. We just do not have the time, the knowledge, the wisdom, the skills or the resources to make a significant difference.

But this is a microcosm of the world. So many other places are orders of magnitude worse than this. We need to change, but - the changes require more of us than we - have to give.

Pessimistic? Maybe, but I make a clear distinction here between pessimism and realism. If one is sitting in the middle of the railway track and can see the train coming, why not yell Jump!

But where do we jump to? Certainly, we can begin to change our lifestyles, re-assess our needs, begin to re-learn the values and virtues that we have clearly forgotten. Things that just need so much time . . .

I do not believe in a sweeping divine change to the hearts of all people, if only because the cosmos doesn't work that way. People do not change like that, and if - they did, the agenda would have to be extremely suspect.

So I have given myself a massive problem of faith and belief . . .

I have difficulty with the idea of an intervening god-a god that has set his creation in motion but then dabbles in it as the occasion requires. Again, this is not the God of the cosmos that I know.
On the other hand, I realise too that the path from here to the Kingdom just has to be some kind of continuum. That's fine, but the world will not stand around waiting for us. History is rushing to its own conclusions.

So somewhere along that continuum there has to be an intervention. I just seem to be stuck with that, even if I don't like the idea of an interventionist God.

To: Part 3

Ted Carr Ted and his wife Dawn have recently returned from two years in the New Guinea highlands where they worked for the Catholic Diocese of Wabag.