Vasilios Theodorakis – An Online Author

It never ceases to amaze me as to how much noise people make regarding the environmental impact of humanity, yet, how little they’re prepared to modify their lifestyles.

For example, after thirty years of intensive research (carried out by agricultural departments in universities across the globe) there are now commonly available facts regarding meat and dairy production and the consumption of natural resources during meat and dairy production. It takes approximately 100000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of beef while it only takes 4000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of lentils – i.e. a saving of 96% of the earth’s resources. Despite the negligible differences in nutrition between beef and lentils, you wouldn’t know there was such an alternative and such a saving gained by simply switching to legumes. And why? Because people don’t want to know – it makes them uncomfortable to think where their food comes from and what impact it has on the planet. Most of us are just too lazy to make a change to our lifestyles. The fact that the meat industry is such a powerful lobby group and promotes its product so well, doesn’t help matters either.

So if you really want to make a change on your environmental impact, switching off your lights for one hour per year,  just isn’t going to cut it! To quote what we’ve printed on our VVOC T-Shirts  – “Want To Save The Planet?” – “Stop Eating Meat!” A simple mantra, that would have a dramatic impact on the environment if all humanity followed it!

Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2010

I’ve never quite mastered the art of compromise and have paid for this dearly, missing out on financial gain, credibility and peace of mind.

Years ago I had the opportunity to become a priest – it’s a long story, but lets just say I knew people who were prepared to make it happen, as long as I was prepared to turn a blind eye to the nationalistic heresy (phyletism) that’s rife in the Orthodox Church. Going down that path might have guaranteed me a life of security, credibility and a warm fuzzy feeling that I was helping the Faith. At the time though, I had lived by my wits and by the grace of God for so long that I could not discern whether I’d be taking on the role because of the benefits or because of a genuine desire for spiritual service. The benefits on offer, for someone who had been as deprived as I had been, were just a little too tempting and I could not risk following through on such a decision. If I did, there would always be some doubt (in my mind) as to my motivations. And so, my work for “The Big Guy” continued to occur on the fringe, with no financial gain or personal benefit.

Even though passing up the offer was extremely difficult on me and a slap in the face for those who were supporting me, I felt it was the right decision. In making it, I had (as a minimum) not compromised a promise I made to myself, which was, to lay down one’s life in service to Christ – not language, not culture and definitely not country. With this as my bottom line, I’ve subsequently inched forward and worked towards teaching others as much as I can about the Faith. As happens on a regular basis however, my local church yet again made a mockery of everything I’ve fought for since 1983.

This evening, my wife and I tried to attend the Orthodox Christian service of “Matins of the Lamentations” which is about paying one’s respect to Christ in the tomb. This happens before the resurrection service tomorrow night. Instead of Roman soldiers guarding the tomb however, we were presented with children dressed in their great grandparent’s national dress. In addition to this, not a word of English was spoken or chanted during the service – English, by the way, is the only language these children understand. I’m sure I wouldn’t have reacted so badly, if the language being spoken was still understood by more than a handful of the congregation, but the language (in use) is as foreign to these people, as Latin was to the Roman Catholics in the 20th century.

Before going on, I should also point out that one of my own failings is that I haven’t learnt how to stomach the ignorance these people display for the Faith or the way they discriminate against outsiders. Let’s put aside for a moment, that every time someone like me walks into a church we get looked up and down for not dressing in the “right” clothes, or for having long hair and a pony tail – this pretentiousness and discrimination is far too entrenched to change in a hurry. What I can’t put aside however, is that in 2010, they’re still unable to differentiate between their own religion and their ancestors’ nationalism! As far as they are concerned the Faith is just another ritualistic part of their 1950s time-capsuled culture (which was perpetuated in the suburbs of Australia). I wonder what the Fathers and Mothers of the Church would have thought of this situation – Orthodoxy that doesn’t include a relationship with God!

These children, who were dressed up in someone else’s national costume were easily 4th or 5th generation Australians. One has to wonder whether their parents will ever realise that establishing a sense of identity is difficult enough for a child, let alone when it’s not allowed to plant both feet firmly in one country. Rolling nationalism into religion is a particularly desperate attempt to keep alive an ethnicity (across generations), and unfortunately is being done at the expense of the Faith. Orthodox Christianity was never about Hellenistic culture and country it was about the universal worship of God! Anything that got in the way of that worship (being universal) was always modified, especially language that became incomprehensible and foreign nationalism that overruled theology! The Faith is also about accurate history, if you want to depict the soldiers at the tomb, they were Roman, not 19th century Evzones. And if you want to depict Christ – Christ was a Jew not some Hellenistic national! What “line” are we running here – that “God was, is and always will be Hellenic”!

I honestly fear for the future of my Church in this country, and I’m gravely concerned as to why the clergy continue to allow people to convert to this Faith when converts are not welcomed and do not have a place to call home for themselves.

My message to both the Orthodox Church in Australia and its priests is make up your minds – decide whether you want the Faith to be part of this country and if so, make appropriate changes that allow it to be accessible to all Australians (like separate missionary churches) – or – take these congregations, aka the glorious diaspora which seems to pine/long for the homeland, encourage them to sell off all their Australian assets and move to where there is no conflict of interest between nationalism and religion. After more than 60 years of this nonsense, it’s time to make a choice and either put down roots for both the descendants and converts of the Faith or pack it up and leave!

I, on the other hand will continue to live in Australia and continue to operate as an Orthodox Christian, even if I have nowhere to practice my Faith. To this day I do not have a single local church where I can attend all services in the language in which I think and write – and that language is and will always be English. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against running services in multiple languages – but please – start offering appropriate liturgies in the language of the land – after all, what country do we think this is!

Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2010

Each year on “Australia Day”, my wife and I visit the location of local Aboriginal midden grounds and pay our respects to the original people who lived on the land that we now live on. In 2009 I wrote the following piece for us to read each and every year until this country acknowledges and begins to respect its Aboriginal people and its Aboriginal past. Health permitting I intend to keep reading this out loud under the figs, next to the mangroves (in the park) every 26th of January, or at least until a more appropriate date for Australia Day is chosen.

“Paying Our Respects – 26th January 2010″

Today we remember our Indigenous brothers and sisters who have been murdered, beaten, raped, diseased, displaced, ignored and forgotten for 222 years.

We remember that they met here peacefully on this midden mound whose name we no longer know.

We remember that here they rested, discussed and resolved problems that the different clans of Quandamooka (Moreton Bay) encountered for thousands of years.

We remember that we are standing on land which they believed could not be owned by any one person but only looked after by the clan / their people – i.e. entrusted in guardianship for all time.

We remember that people belonged to the land but that the land did not belong to all people.

We remember that as a many Nationed peoples, they were invaded and that the land was never lawfully settled by the non-Indigenous peoples, as no treaties were ever signed with the original inhabitants, as no attempts were made to protect the original languages and culture, and that the original people’s presence was never acknowledged in any meaningful way.

Today we remember that choosing this day as the national day of the country is an insult to the surviving Indigenous Australians and disrespects the Indigenous people who died and suffered over the last 222 years. We look forward to a time when this county’s national day is inclusive of all Australians, when its flag represents all Australians and its Head Of State is answerable only to Australians.

Yet again we had the whole park to ourselves as we read this out loud and reflected on the day. None of the locals care to remember that the park is the burial ground of the indigenous people’s shell middens.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – January 2010

Since I was very young, I’ve given people the benefit of the doubt in spite of their horrid treatment of each other, other creatures and me – no more however – enough is enough! I do not believe that those around us (my wife and I) are really interested in other people’s well being – not unless, they are forced (by law) to be interested in other people’s well being!

Social behaviour is getting more extreme and concern for one’s fellow human being is reaching an all time low – especially in our locality. In the past, I encountered malicious intent in only a few people around us. Now I find a large number of individuals are using it as an acceptable form of human interaction.

This really upsets me and I’ve often thought that our species doesn’t deserve its place in the biosphere. Even so, I doubt that our presence will be eradicated anytime soon. Its going to take some time for the planet to wipe us out and correct the mess we have made.

That being the case, and because I no longer trust our neighbourhood, we have decided to put up the strongest, highest fence we can afford. Our aim is to create an island sanctuary amongst this suburban insanity. Whether this action is enough to hold back the barbarian assault is anyone’s guess.

Moving elsewhere is unfortunately not an option.

Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

A few years ago, a couple of my nieces decided to put on a “utility play” as a Christmas presentation for all the relatives. Even though the girls came from a family that didn’t follow any formal religion, they were still aware of the basic Christmas story (through media and friends) and went about trying to recreate it by themselves. The term “nativity” was unfamiliar to them so they came up with a word that sounded similar i.e. “utility”. In spite of their parent’s best efforts, these children sought to participate in some level of religious ritual even if it meant making it up from scratch.

What I find interesting, is that I’ve seen other children raised in families with no formal ritual or religion, do a very similar thing. In all instances they try to re-enact stories associated with local beliefs, which they’ve heard about through members of their community. For example, a friend of mine whose people were traditionally Buddhist has raised his kids without any reference to religion; yet, these kids know of the Budda story (through other friends) and try to make up plays about him.

This may of course be about child conformity, but I believe the innate tendency of children to gravitate towards religion is about humanity having a built in need for ritual and spirituality. In its absence, we will always substitute something in its place – just look at how sport is followed and worshiped in secular countries like Australia. The bottom line is we are animals, born on a planet with physical cycles and we have always been tied into these cycles – its hardwired into our genetic make-up. When we progressively removed ourselves from those cycles, that is, by developing sedentary lifestyles, our internal clocks did not suddenly abandon our need for routine or ritual even though we had cut close ties with the environment. In fact, the further we removed ourselves from the cycles of the earth the more dependent we became on ritual in order to “feel ok and normal”. Millions of years of evolution couldn’t be left behind by our genome, just because culturally/socially we had stopped paying attention to the seasons and acknowledging the sun’s rising and the moon’s setting, etc. The simple answer to the good atheist’s question of “Why do we need religion?” is that we need routine and ritual to feel complete and religion is still the best fulfiller of this need.

Built on top of this psychosocial fact is the metaphysics of the situation. Anyone who has ever gone camping and watched the planet come to life in the mornings, or watched pets in captivity when the sun reappears, knows that all sentient creatures turn to the sun and welcome another day of existence with gratitude. So much so, that I swear you can almost hear them thanking existence/their Maker/their Source for their lives. I’ve often thought that the places of worship we build can never match the living cathedral of the planet, where all creatures are allowed to witness the sun breaking over the horizon, are allowed to stand side by side (both friend and foe) and offer up their gratitude in their own way – even if that “survival of the fittest ceasefire” only lasts for a moment of each morning. In this cathedral, this daily event (which inadvertently sanctifies everything that participates) is the right of all life, not just Homo sapiens. The associated tragedy of our settled lifestyles is that many creatures in captivity often can’t see the sun to fulfil our most prehistoric of all biological rituals.

We may therefore have created formal worship (for ourselves) because it completes us in the absence of standing alongside our planet’s brethren as the sun re-appears each morning. In addition to this explanation of formal religion, many religious texts (written by people of insight) have described how non-corporeal beings in the invisible world also hold elaborate liturgies in praise of their Source. e.g. With Christianity, there are many instances in the Bible that describe how the Seraphim and Cherubim have always held formal worship before God. Combine all these physical and metaphysical theories together and it’s not hard to see why we feel most at home when we have something to look up to and thank – whether it be the sun, God or a sporting team.

A thousand years from now, I have no doubt that my nieces’ contemporaries will construct other religious plays that pay homage to existence, God and the meaning of life. Even if no adults are left who believe in anything other than themselves, children will know what to do. I believe our young will continue to hear the call of the sun (or is that the Son?), which is hardwired into our genome, until it is beaten out of them by non-believing adults. It is only the adults who have forgotten to stand beside the Pelicans and be grateful for the fresh air that fills their lungs, the sun that warms their skin and the light that illuminates their eyes. In every era, a few of our children take this instinctive insight into adulthood. Those who do will always be our seers and guides in life.

Addendum For Orthodox Christians: Nature And Christ?

As a species, the more we moved away from the natural world and into the artificial world of societies and cities, the more important formal ritual became. Our internal body clocks which had built in memories for cycles, seem to have happily accepted the replacement of routine (like work) and ritual (like religion) to make up for being taken out of the planet’s normal patterns.

For good Christians, Christ inadvertently had to show up in order to remind us of what we had once known instinctively but had forgotten. Knowing us better than we knew ourselves, he had to re-educate us in regards to His presence, which had existed prior to the creation of the universe, and continued to exist as a conduit to God even though we had forgotten about the conduit and had forgotten about Him. He even had to become one of us and walk among us, for we had become so fixated on our own species, that we were incapable of understanding a connection with the Source other than through our own constructs and through one of our own kind. Living away from nature for so long, we couldn’t see what all the other creatures could still see naturally. Christ’s visit was to primarily restore us to our natural state.

Ironically, some groups of people – especially the nomads, still had a sense of the Source and the connections to the Source through the planet’s natural cycles. Colonial Christian missionaries however, spent hundreds of years prying nomadic peoples away from their lifestyles and unbroken connections with the earth, only to settle them in towns and offer them religion to replace the ritual they lost through settlement. This type of social engineering was not only discriminatory and stupid but also spiritually wasteful! It was analogous to having access to a meal but then throwing the meal into the bin and giving the restaurant’s patrons exactly the same meal (only this time arranged differently on the plate). In addition to this, the restaurateurs (i.e. missionaries) went on to claim that the patrons (i.e. nomadic peoples) never had any food in the first place. Their final strategy was of course to indoctrinate all survivors that this was always the case.

If these people had been left alone, their separation from the Source would never have occurred. Our history is unfortunately riddled with examples of how colonialists “had” to save those that did not need saving, “had” to offer them a connection/communion with God when it was already there and “had” to force them out of Eden as the colonialist’s ancestors had been forced out of Eden thousands of years earlier. How dare someone continue to exist within Eden, when everyone else had inadvertently thrown themselves out in search of bigger and better things than the earth could provide naturally! Ah… the notion of greed – civilisation’s finest friend and first ever catalyst is unfortunately still with us.

Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

OK, OK – why, might you ask, am I now getting into technology predictions? Very simple really, my wife continues to point out how I have this uncanny ability to predict what companies like Apple are about to release. She thinks I should be sharing these predictions with people other than herself – partially because it bores her to death, and partially because it may be of more interest to other technophiles. :)

Contrary to what she has come to believe, there is nothing psychic about my predictions of new gadgets. It’s all about reading widely in the tech industry (which I have to do for my web work), and extrapolating product lines. Most companies develop their products on the basis of what they want the customer to “believe” they need. Their PR gurus then go to work on convincing the customer that they “have to have” the item. There are lots of strategies for doing this, especially with today’s hi-tech marketing and advanced industrial design. In this way, tech companies often groom their customers for a new product through incremental technological changes. It’s very rare for businesses to randomly dump a new type of device on the market without preparing the commercial environment for the introduction of the product. In instances where they do dump a new category of device on an unsuspecting public, it almost always fails. Just look at the Apple Newton – a great device, but no one knew what to do with it on a day to day basis. In addition to this, companies inadvertently leave behind a trail of clues that outline the new product’s purpose, especially when they begin modifying related technology to work with the new product.

So far, I’ve successfully predicted that if Steve Jobs ever returned to Apple, Inc. he would simplify it’s product line and reintroduce an all in one Mac. Everyone made fun of me at the time, but this of course did occur when the iMac was introduced in 1998. I also predicted that Apple would create a commercial and legal ecosystem for music downloads and come up with a “useful” MP3 player when I realised they had converted the SoundJam MP program into iTunes 1 (in early 2001). The only thing I didn’t get right was just how intuitive and user friendly the iPod’s interface was going to be.

So what’s my latest prediction? The Apple Multi-touch Tablet of course, but not in the way that all the tech sites are describing. I predict that Apple will attempt a paradigm shift in the way we interact with our personal computers and access data wirelessly. The interesting thing about the shift is that all the components for it are already in place – touch screens, small footprint operating systems, cutback keyboards, wireless networks in homes and offices. So many of the components are in place, that the device should fit into most people’s lives without its introduction being a surprise at all. Even so, it will be a paradigm shift away from what we’ve grown accustomed to i.e. using a mouse as a pointing device.

So this is my prediction, as we move towards our computer desktops actually becoming our physical table’s desktop, we’ll need medium sized multi-touch surfaces to get used to the idea of the computer disappearing all together. I believe that Apple and other computer companies are slowly moving in this direction, but the hardware change they’re pursuing won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, people need to get used to touch screens and what better way to do this than by replacing the mouse (and mouse-pad) with a touch screen device. Let’s call the device an “iPad” in recognition of track-pads already on notebooks. After all, laptop owners have been using track-pads instead of mice for years now. What Apple probably wants us to do, is start using desktop PCs that are made up of a small keyboard, screen and small multi-touch device – no mouse. If this wasn’t the case, why did Steve Jobs finally allow the mouse to become multi-button based? Anyone who’s followed how obsessed he was with single button devices, knows he wouldn’t have let go of the single button mouse, unless he was absolutely sure the mouse was already on its way out! Initially when purchasing such computers online, I expect that you’ll be able to choose between a mouse and a multi-touch tablet (iPad?). Because the tablet will be so expensive on release, only the die-hard Mac-Heads will choose this sort of computer bundle.

I’m guessing that while such a device is connected to a desktop machine, its touch pad app, numeric keyboard app or desktop screen duplication app would link its iPhone OS to the main machine’s Mac or Windows OS. While working as a touch pad, the screen would probably go blank in order to conserve battery power and not distract the user from using it as a touch pad.

In addition to the tablet doubling up as a mouse (numeric keypad, mirror or extended screen, etc.), the consumer would be able to disconnect the tablet from the desktop machine and move around a house outfitted with a wi-fi network for general emailing, web browsing, tv streaming etc, just like other iPhone OS devices. They’d only reconnect the device to the desktop machine in order to carry out computing tasks that are too cumbersome to do on a tablet.

The beauty of this paradigm shift is that Apple gets rid of the mouse, annihilates the netbook market and monopolises the touch screen industry in one go. It also gets people ready for the day when the computer is the desktop and the desktop is the computer – no keyboard, no mouse, no screen – just the flat surface of the desk. (The flat surface preparation has already began with Apple’s introduction of low profile keyboards.) When looking at the current iMacs and their keyboards, its not hard to image how these machines could first evolve into drafting board devices and then finally into completely flat digital desktop surfaces that cover a normal table.

How did I come up with this prediction? “Elementary my dear Watson!” I collated the following tech facts and made a deduction. The facts include:

1. Reports of Chinese manufactures dropping the use of mice and adding track pads to standard keyboards i.e. one device instead of two. Some Chinese tech companies are notorious for stealing concepts before they get released. i.e. In this case the idea of getting rid of the mouse.
2. Common knowledge that Apple has been working on a tablet for a long time.
3. Apple already has an optimised OS i.e. iPhone OS for multitouch screens. It doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, and this OS finally does everything a micro OS needs to do, like cut, copy and paste.
4. Apple is now bundling keyboards without numeric keypads so a different device can finally slot in next to the keyboard. This also means that if the device was touch screen based, it could have customised programs that simulate a numeric keypad as well as do the job of the mouse.
5. The Mac OS Finder now uses “Cover Flow”. i.e. one wouldn’t start building this into their OS unless one intended all their computers to use some form of touch screen to scroll from side to side.
6. Making upright touch screens, as Acer and HP have done are impractical and non ergonomic – they need to lie flat. Anyone who has used these screens for more than a few minutes ends up with instant RSI.
7. Apple likes to shake up markets – as it did with personal computers, MP3 players and smart phones. It’s been tracking the netbook market for sometime and is really the only company currently able to reinvent these devices as something that “everyone” will need.
8. Apple has tried the idea of a portable device docking into a desktop workstation a number of times. For example the Powerbook Duo and Duo Dock. Unfortunately, the concept never caught on even though the equipment was very robust. In addition to the dock’s commercial failure, a multi-touch tablet would effectively waste or under utilise its touch screen, especially if a docking mechanism swallowed it up. To highlight this point please see macbooktouch.com’s suggested picture of an Apple Tablet Dock.

I therefore believe Apple’s Multi-touch Tablet will be a stand alone device which doubles as a peripheral device. It will probably continue as such, until it becomes as ubiquitous as the mouse and is bundled with every computer. This prediction could be completely wrong, but I’d be very surprised if Apple didn’t do something along these lines. Too many things in the tech industry are currently pointing towards just such a development.

Post Update: 29/08/2009
There are now numerous rumors circulating that support my theory that the Apple Tablet will be a replacement for the mouse. Both are currently on the macrumors.com site i.e.
A – http://www.macrumors.com/2009/08/28/apple-working-on-10-13-and-15-inch-tablets/
which talks about the tablet being made of aluminium just like the keyboard and thus complimenting the keyboard’s design.
B – http://www.macrumors.com/2009/08/15/questionable-tablet-images-from-unreliable-source/
which shows a picture of a tablet made out of aluminium just like the keyboard, and again complimenting the keyboard’s design when positioned alongside the keyboard.

An additional point I’d like to make is that the tablet will be able to go both ways, act as a mouse and have a keyboard plugged in to it in order to do more serious typing.

Post Update: 08/09/2009
I’ve just discovered further circumstantial evidence to support my theory.
Please read: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-653679.html

I didn’t realise that Apple had purchased FingerWorks in 2005. I believe almost all of the functionality that existed in FingerWorks products is about to appear in the yet to be released Apple Multi-touch Tablet. Its interesting to note, that I came up with my prediction independent of any knowledge of FingerWorks existence, its products and its purchase by Apple, Inc.

Post Update: 18/09/2009
An additional thought – now that Mac OS X has Grand Central Dispatch, a desktop setup which included a desktop machine and a tablet could make use of the tablet’s chip-set to increase the processing power of the desktop machine. This would occur when the tablet was being used as a multi-touch interface for the desktop machine and the chips were able to share the workload wirelessly etc. If Apple implemented this, they would be a whole generation ahead of the competition as all Apple’s machines would be made up of multiple computers that could combine their processing power.

Post Update: 20/01/2010
Since I first wrote this piece and posted the updates, a series of things has happened which I still think point towards the Apple Tablet being a paradigm shift away from using the mouse.

Firstly, Apple brought out the magic mouse which has a touch sensitive surface and is acting as an excellent bridge between the era of the mouse and the era of the tablet.

Secondly, Apple began buying up all sorts of trademarks like magic slate and ipad. To me, this points towards the idea that they want the product identified as a stand alone touch pad – as opposed to the built in touch pads on laptops.

Thirdly, after leaving fingerworks.com running since Apple bought the company, the fingerworks.com site was finally pulled on the 11/01/2010. Reason for this – they obviously don’t want the FingerWorks multitouch peripheral interfaces being compared with the multitouch tablet as a peripheral interface.

So am I right or am I wrong? According to almost everyone the Tablet and its launch is scheduled for the 27th January – just over a week away. If I am right that will give me a “hat trick” in terms of Apple predictions and force all the rumors sites to eat humble pie – I should point out, that not one of them has linked to this article. Alternatively, if I’m wrong then my track record will be ruined and I of course will be the one eating humble pie!

Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009, 2010

If you happened to walk into our house, you would be assaulted by a myriad of books – sci-fi, poetry, sociology, psychology, political science, teaching and extremely uncool encyclopedias.

Then there’s the vintage board games, toys and manual typewriters; the music collection with a who’s who of the 60s, 70s and 80s; DVDs galore – now that all the retailers sell popular titles and TV series for under $10.

There’s 30 years of PCs, Macs and software; furniture that spans 7 decades; a stucco house that was built in the 1950s and has barely changed; the Hills Hoist cloths line; a mixture of native trees, veggies and lawn; the second love of my life – my kayak – the first of course being my wife, Helen.

Finally, we both have long hair, wear daggy cloths, love architecture and good design but have never felt the need to possess flashy things ourselves – or maybe that’s because we’ve never had a lot of money!

We critique all things political within the Australian and Pacific context; love cartoons, sitcoms from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as well as British comedy; refuse to support the use, abuse and slaughter of other sentient beings and only consume nutritional food that has a minimal impact on the planet.

All in all, our culture is that of popular culture, yet there are those who look at my name and still presume my culture to be something altogether different. My identity is based on a mainstream (politically green) Australian footing and my moral/ethical boundaries defined by my Orthodox Christian religion.

At the age of 42, I am very comfortable with this combination. The amalgam of influences that has gone in to make the “me” is rich – a complex weave with many happy memories – especially from the 1980s and the last ten years of my marriage. I am under no illusions however that my culture is anything but popular culture, especially popular English speaking culture. I was born in Australia and bar three months of my life, have lived that entire time upon her shores. For better or worse I live the English language, think in it and revel in playing with its vocabulary and structure.

There is only one thing that is missing – my religion refuses to put down roots in this country and refuses to recognise the legitimacy of people like me. The Orthodox Christian Church treats us as though we are invisible.

All my life I have fought this attitude – it is dysfunctional and has a destructive effect on any well balanced human being. It asks one to denounce one’s actual experience and culture and adopt a culture that has no relevance to one’s everyday life. Needless to say, this has resulted in the bulk of my family and peers walking away from Orthodox Christianity all together.

Lets put aside the obvious hinderence for a moment, i.e. that its current liturgies are not accessible to English speaking mainstream Australians. The other major obstacle to participation is its ethnic based Churches and the bulk of it’s ethnic based people who are down right unwelcoming. The Church in Australia has become a closed club rather than the universal Church that Christ established – what an institutional mess!

(There are many reasons as to why this happened but the biggest contributor is that the Orthodox Faith did not establish itself in this country the way it traditionally established itself in other countries – i.e. through missionary churches.)

Unlike Bishop Kallistos Ware, who as an Anglican (in the UK) walked into an Orthodox Church and felt at home, if the average spiritually interested Australian walks into any of these ethnic based churches, at best they’ll get dirty looks, at worst they’ll be confronted and ushered out. So much for following Christ’s example of welcoming all! What is even more perplexing, is that this structure continues to baptise mainstream Australians into itself, even though there are very few places across the continent where English speakers can worship and even fewer places where they can experience a sense of belonging!

The only thing I take comfort from is that the current situation is a heresy according to Orthodoxy’s own dictum – Phyletism – which says that any church established in a new land should be operated in the language of that land – this principal has always been in our canons. The hope therefore continues to be, that in addition to these ethnic based parishes, missionary (English speaking) parishes will one day be built in this country. In a nation based on democracy and choice, one should be able to worship in the language in which they think – Indigenous, Slavic, European or English.

In the meantime, I am happy with who I am, love that I’m a product of popular culture drawn from more than five decades and that my first language is English. I have no intention of changing any of this to accommodate the short sightedness of the current administration controlling my religion.

Thus, were you to walk into our humble abode – you’ll find ABC’s Radio National blaring in the background not SBS; reruns of Seinfield and The Simpsons on TV not Inspector Rex and guitar based rock (from the 80s) streaming out of our CD player not suicidal Aegean music. You’ll also find numerous icons of the great martyrs and saints of the Church, crosses from holy places like Mount Athos and a sanctuary with an oil candle and incensor.

This is how my kind live – we do not live as Europeans, Brits or Asians, we live as Australians whose religion goes back 2000 years and is known as Orthodox Christianity – so get used to it, we’re not about to disappear anytime soon!

Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2010

Every generation’s accumulated wisdom has been lost in Western cultures since the 1950s. Why? Because, our over emphasis of youth culture has built into it, the notion of “re-inventing the wheel” or should we say, “re-discovering the wheel” every time there’s a coming of age. This ensures that culture regresses to an infantile and stunted state on a regular basis. By the time one generation has grasped what’s really important in life, the next generation is making all the same mistakes, and refusing to acknowledge that those older than themselves, already know what counts. There’s no passing on of insight from one generation to the next and no learning from past mistakes as we find in other cultures.

A society that doesn’t listen to the wisdom of age and instead looks to its youth for guidance is not sustainable. Its operational basis is that of experiential waste – just look at what happens when it’s taken to extremes like the killing fields in Cambodia. Unfortunately, we are at risk of never becoming a mature society, and if we continue to also taunt nature with our jibes that the planet is our offspring’s to do with as they please – our eradication by the Earth is all but guaranteed. The planet will eventually scratch us off its surface, like a dog scratches off fleas – indiscriminately.

It’s a shame that this is what we’ve become, because this wasn’t always the case in Western countries like Australia. There was a time when we did advance our culture, adding to our civility as gentlemen and ladies, and passing that onto our children – but that was prior to the baby boomers taking over the world, and setting up the current youth orientated standard for all subsequent generations to follow. One can only hope that we’ll eventually produce a generation that challenges the current status quo and begins respecting the insight of its elderly.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

There’s a Sci-Fi short story called “Lets Go To Golgotha” by Gary Kilworth which explores the idea that time travelling tourists were present at Christ’s death, got coached to do what the locals where doing and participated in His condemnation. The reader eventually discovers that the locals of Christ’s time had nothing to do with the event, and that the crucifixion only occurred because those who travelled back in time, participated in the spectacle.

The tale is quite haunting and I’ve often thought about its implications in regards to how much of a public figure Christ was in his own time. The thing that’s most intriguing, is that reading between the lines of scripture and what the traditional Church teaches, one can’t help but notice that Christ himself did not seek the limelight or even like it. The best supporting evidence we have of this is how He implemented numerous techniques that emphasised his own words and works but not Himself. One of these techniques was of course never writing anything down. In spite of this, His story has been passed down from generation to generation, and it’s often retold as though His presence brought Jerusalem to a stand still – on more than one occasion. I fear this is inconsistent with the nature of the God-Man, who we are told was quietly spoken and “did not even break the bent reed” (1 Ki 14:15; Isa 42:3; Mt 12:20).

Like many of the greatest figures in history, what he said and how he lived his life was so inspirational that people couldn’t help but place him on a pedestal for others to worship – our species has done this from the very beginning – idolising those who have something new to offer. I expect that He Himself was quite invisible outside of those who knew him. The message he left behind was so amazing however, that it changed the course of human history (and spread exponentially).

At the core of the oldest forms of Christianity, this humility is still acknowledged and followed. We who fall under the Orthodox Christian umbrella are taught to live our lives well, follow His example and not make a big deal out of our way of life. In the East, this approach is understood to be the best way of encouraging others to do the same. The original Christians, the Orthodox, still don’t proselytize as many of today’s Protestants do. Sincere Orthodox Christians offer up their lives as an example of the Faith – and in so doing, hope that people who choose to join the religion, do so because they like what they see in regards to the Orthodox lifestyle and worship.

Unfortunately our media driven world has led many people, even within Orthodox Christianity, to choose the opposite road to anonymity. The need to be the centre of attention is a very seductive thing – just like the rest of our Western lifestyles.

For better or for worse, I have tried to live my life the way I believe Christ did, though not always successfully. Rather than stand at the front and postulate, demanding that people look at me, I stand at the back and hope that what I have learnt and how I have lived is a helpful guide to others. My philosophy is therefore – “stay invisible”, for in so doing, you may in fact have a personal impact on those around you and you will in fact be following in Christ’s footsteps.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

What I find hopeful is grass growing out of crevices on a concrete wall or weeds appearing through a crack in the pavement.

These defiant acts of nature remind us that life is waiting in the wings for humanity to stumble. And were we to trip and fall, the Earth’s ecosystem would take over and run things the way they should have been run in the first place.

It’s heartening to discover, that life will out last our destructive presence even if we don’t.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009