Rev Rob MacPherson | Public figure

Rev Rob MacPherson

Phone: +61 419 550 543

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25.01.2022 As part of my chaplain's role, a little something we're currently working on... https://www.facebook.com/357829951465231/posts/706499116598311/

25.01.2022 Mary Oliver earned a place in the pantheon of world poets. But the wildflowers and wild geese for which she's famous weren’t the only subjects that drew her att...ention. She also turned her keen eye, open heart, brilliant mind, and writerly courage toward our political life. When you come to trust a voice over a long period of time, you have to take what it says seriously, even if it shakes you to the core. You can’t say, Speak to me sweetly, or don’t speak at all. You may decide that you don’t agree with the words that shake you, but you have to reckon with them. MO’s prose poem, Of the Empire, is the most compelling brief description I’ve seen of America as it's been revealed under #45. It shakes me to the core because it’s true. It’s not the whole picture of American, not by a long shot. But it’s the part of the picture we haven’t wanted to talk about: now we must. The mess we’re in did not originate with #45. But because he and his crew embody all these American pathologies so shamelessly, he has shoved them in our faces and given us a clear choice: do we choose new life or more death? May we choose new lifeand may we ask everyone we know to do the same. To complement the above with something more hopeful, please see the piece my friend Maria Popova posted on her Brain Pickings site about Healing the Heart of Democracy. https://tinyurl.com/zmx553z

19.01.2022 Dag nabbit! There goes my business model...

18.01.2022 Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

17.01.2022 From the article: "We are as a culture moving on to a future with more people and more voices and more possibilities. Some people are being left behind, not because the future is intolerant of them but because they are intolerant of this future...This country has room for everybody who believes that there’s room for everybody. For those who don’twell, that’s partly a battle about who controls the narrative and who it’s about."--Rebecca Solnit

14.01.2022 The first principle here at Buddhist Boot Camp is that the opposite of what you know is also true (to somebody else, somewhere else, depending on their time, pl...ace, or circumstance). We can either live our truth while accepting that other people's perspective on reality is as valid as our own (even if it goes against everything we believe), and honor the fact that someone else's truth is as real to them as ours is to us, or we can live in constant war, struggle, and conflict with the world outside of us, which is exhausting, stressful, and destructive. Remember, disagreements aren't conflicts unless pride and ego get in the way. Compassion is the only thing that can break down political, dogmatic, ideological, and religious boundaries. May we all harmoniously live in peace. Develop the ability to listen to ANYTHING without losing your temper.

13.01.2022 "We always keep the dearest things to ourselves." --James Joyce, writing to Ibsen, on his admiration for him

13.01.2022 In case you need to hear this...

13.01.2022 Love this. #pluralism

12.01.2022 Before we leap to judgement of the person whose lie caused this lockdown, just pause a damn moment... Why this lie, from this person? Under what personal conditions and pressures was this person, such that they would expect to benefit (or avoid harm) from telling it? ... I'm not excusing what they did, but the folks who do the work at our medihospitals and those who work a second job in a pizza bar are THE SAME FOLKS. And if you're reading this (or writing it), you're probably NOT one of them. I know Steven Marshall is fuming about the lie and looks nothing so much like a headmaster itching to use the cane in righteous anger. But there are social and economic conditions that made the lie expedient, conditions he presides over--to a point. Let him fume at those. #judgenot

12.01.2022 The Universalism of the Buddha: "Every day in meditation Gotama (the Buddha) would deliberately evoke the emotion of love -- that huge, expansive and immeasurable feeling that knows no hatred -- and direct it to each of the four corners of the world. He did not omit a single living thing -- plant, animal, demon, friend, or foe -- from this radius of benevolence. He cultivated a feeling of friendship for everybody and everything. "The Buddha had no time for doctrines or creeds.... He had no theology to impart, no theory about the root cause of suffering, no tales of original sin, and no definition of the ultimate reality. He saw no point in such speculations. Buddhism is disconcerting to those who equate faith with belief in certain religious opinions. A person's theology was a matter of total indifference to the Buddha." ~Excerpted from "Buddha" by Karen Armstrong (Penguin Books, 2004)

11.01.2022 "The unceasing propaganda in our time for 'the individual' seems to me deeply suspect, as 'individuality' itself becomes more and more a synonym for selfishness. A capitalist society comes to have a vested interest in praising 'individuality' and 'freedom' which may mean little more than the right to the perpetual aggrandizement of the self, and the freedom to shop, to acquire, to use up, to consume, to render obsolete. "I don’t believe there is any inherent value in the c...ultivation of the self. And I think there is no culture (using the term normatively) without a standard of altruism, of regard for others. I do believe there is an inherent value in extending our sense of what a human life can be. If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader and then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other words, other territories of concern." --Susan Sontag

08.01.2022 Howard Zinn said, To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the en...ergy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." See more

06.01.2022 Armistice Day. (Content warning)

06.01.2022 Possibly the most important article I've read on why we can no longer bear to speak civilly with those we disagree with.

04.01.2022 "Culture is a plot against the expansion of consciousness. And this plot prosecutes its goals through a limiting of language. Language is the battleground over which the fight will take place. Because what we cannot say, we cannot communicate. And, by "say", I mean dance, paint, sing, meme. What we cannot say, we cannot communicate, and what motivates me to talk to groups like this is the belief that we do not have centuries of gently unfolding time ahead of us in which to gently tease apart the threads of the human endeavor and create a bright new world. That’s not our circumstance. This is a fire in a madhouse. We want to catalyze consciousness." - Terence McKenna

04.01.2022 The latest after a long dry spell...

04.01.2022 "The hardest thing is facing yourself. It's easier to shout 'Revolution!' and 'Power to the People!' than it is to look at yourself and try and find what's real inside you and what isn't; when you pull the wool over your own eyes and your own hypocrisy - that's the hardest thing." -- John Lennon

03.01.2022 Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it, Ursula K. Le Guin

02.01.2022 The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions. Noam Chomsky