MICHAEL MULLINS’ TINY LETTER

I've just returned from the Three Capes Track in south east Tasmania. I was with a group of ten bush walkers that included adult and teenage family members and friends. We were part of a larger group of 48 bushwalkers completing the four day 46 kilometre experience.

It's an activity of Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service that is only a year old. It seemed that little expense was spared in the use of public funds to construct the upgraded track and state of the art huts for basic overnight accommodation. But since it opened on 23 December last year, they've taken more than 10,000 bookings, far exceeding the projected 3000. One member of my group was the 9000th walker.

It's no ordinary track through the bush, and it's regarded by some as elitist. That's easy to understand, with the $500 price tag and the easy walking nature of the path, much of which is constructed as a boardwalk. Less than 50 years ago, the pioneer bushwalkers could only get through with the aid of axes. Our experience began with a boat cruise from Port Arthur to the Denmans Cove commencement point, and included three overnight stays at the huts.

These beautifully built structures have a designer feel about them, but the reality is almost as rustic as the traditional bush hut. That is because you still need bring your food and sleeping bag and leave carrying out your rubbish. There is no staff to serve the 'guests', just a resident ranger to answer questions and do basic coordination and maintenance.

One of the boat crew members made a particular impression upon us. He'd grown up in a lighthouse keeper's family in isolation on nearby Tasman Island. It is likely that locals like him might have a few misgivings that their domain was being invaded by scores of well to do outsiders who did not have to contend with much of the adversity of the terrain that he'd had to.

But he was welcoming and generous in sharing his experiences and perspectives. Likewise there was nothing pretentious about the larger group of 48 walkers who appeared to be coming to the experience with an open mind and ready appreciation of the ecosystem they are getting close to.

It's arguable that there was some pretentiousness in the use of semi-poetic phrases such as 'Eye See Bright' and 'Converging on the Shelf' to name particular points or characteristics of the walk. But I would strongly dispute this and very much appreciated the artful way in which the walk was conceived and presented to us.

That applies to both the conceptual and physical aspects of the experience. The words and phrases were consistent with the artistic flourishes in the craftsmanship of the furniture at the resting points, which was developed in collaboration with University of Tasmania design students and the Arts Tasmania public art project.

For the most part, it was a gentle experience. There was nothing of the extreme sport. A friend who did it in October suggested as much but said she found it 'magnificent and occasionally challenging'. That is about right, although I was quite proud that it turned out to be a measure my current higher than ever before level of fitness, and I rarely felt stretched physically. I was the only adult in my group who did not feel some degree of soreness in their bones, though it was the kind of soreness that was more an aftertaste of a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

My photos are here.

There was media coverage this week of a Queensland move to repeal the ‘unwanted homosexual advances’ defence for murder, commonly known as the 'gay panic defence'.

What I think is most remarkable about this development is that it was a Catholic priest - Father Paul Kelly - who heroically spearheaded the campaign that has been instrumental in getting the law reform to this stage.

Traditionally, and up to the present time, many Catholic priests have seen it as their duty to stand in the way of of justice for LGBTQI people. Some have even positively encouraged homophobic bullying or acts of violence.

Last year The Age revealed that the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart had buried a 2007 report aimed at protecting LGBTQI students in Catholic schools from homophobic bullying. It was titled Not So Straight and written by then Jesuit priest Father Peter Norden.

The archbishop said that use of the report in schools would 'either blur the clear position of the Church or by the use of terms such as "natural behaviour" imply a suggestion that alternative sexuality should be accepted.' He expressed the long held view that it was important to draw a line between behaviour regarded as normative and what the Church teaches is 'disordered'.

It was, and largely still is, regarded as important for church personnel to actively maintain this distinction, though The Age report does indicate that Archbishop Hart has softened his stance since 2007.

I have a clear personal recollection from the mid 80s of a retired Jesuit preparatory school principal boasting of 'sending out' his students to bully peers who were homosexual. The context was the AIDS crisis which, in his commonly held view at the time, had made it more urgent that homosexuals remain marginalised.

This priest had obviously become more candid and eccentric as he aged, but that only makes his boast more credible. He'd made it clear that he'd considered it his duty to promote homophobic bullying. Other priests would be more discrete or possibly repentant.

I think that this kind of blatant church denial of human rights for LGBTQI people has now given way to a culture of widespread and insidious self-censorship, which I was part of until a year ago.

As editor of Eureka Street, I would refer upwards editorial content that promoted a view of the acceptance of homosexuality as normative. A California based Jesuit had written an excellent and potentially groundbreaking article offering a theological basis for affirming transgender identity (eventually published elsewhere). I weakened the article in an initial edit, then received suggestions for further softening after the upward referral. Subsequently it was my self-censoring decision not to proceed with publication.

That's why I'm pleased to see that my successors appear less bound by self-censorship, as is evident with the publication of today's lead. Titled Queering the airwaves for TV diversity, it is an affirmation of the currently screening LGBTQI themed ABC comedy drama Please Like Me (pictured). Today's article strikes a much overdue Catholic Church initiated blow against homophobic bullying and violence.

In recent months our backyard garden has been attacked by a rat and denuded of much of its vegetation. She or he selected several trees to ringbark, and the trees subsequently died as expected. There were three citrus trees in large pots. The Tahitian lime tree was left alone but the lemon and kaffir trees are dead.

I was particularly sad to see the kaffir lime tree lose its life. I remember going all the way out to Cabramatta to purchase it at the huge Asian market there. It was around 1994. I was doing a Thai cooking course at the Sydney Community College and kaffir lime leaves were a staple.

The tree survived numerous challenges over more than 20 years. At the beginning of 1997, I cleared my house for renting when I left Sydney to live and work in Rome for two years. The tree went to Albury in the removal van with my furniture and whitegoods to a house that was being rented to accommodate a succession medical locums from out of town. It returned to Sydney to my original house in 1999, and then in 2001 it moved with me 12 doors down the street when I bought my current residence.

I admit with a certain amount of shame that I have neglected its welfare. It's not my fault that the daily appearance of the sun in my backyard is fleeting, but I've always refused to buy plant food or fertilisers of any kind, even though it was obvious that the kaffir lime tree and my other plants were being constantly attacked by bugs.

The citrus trees were supposed to save me money, not cost me. I didn't understand that they needed love, and that it could involve some financial investment, which would then encourage them to respond in kind.

Despite my lack of care, the tree did bear fruit for two years around the middle of its life. I was surprised to see the fruit and did not realise the limes were edible or useful for cooking, so they went in the bin. In fact they are prized. The tree seemed to respond to my ingratitude by never again bearing fruit.

Yesterday I told the story of the tree to my South African immigrant friend. She kindly offered to give me a cutting of hers and told me of her particular burden of shame in owning a kaffir lime tree, which was rather different to my own shame.

She said: 'We didn’t get kaffir lime trees in South Africa and I was appalled when I encountered them here. That word - kaffir - was used as a slur against black South Africans. I’d never said it in my life before I bought one such tree; I use a different pronunciation - kaf-eer – so as not to be loaded with guilt.'

It seems my friend has found an effective way to deal with her shame. For mine, I'm hoping that I will discover how to nurture the plant and love it into a long and productive life.

A friend said yesterday that she admired my discipline in writing every day. It's true that I have written a blog every day except Sunday since 14 November - my birthday - and posted it at michaelmullins.org and sent it as a TinyLetter email.

If I decide to do something, I do it. If I can. There will be times when I can't. Like in the coming days when I travel to Tasmania from Saturday until next Thursday to walk the Three Capes Track with members of my family and their friends. I will be out of my routine, dancing to a different, more communal, tune that probably won't include the space and the technology that makes daily writing as easy as sleeping and eating.

I woke up this morning with a slight headache. I thought about not writing, in the way that you think about not eating when you're not feeling well. But I opened my computer and started to write. I just did it.

I keep reassuring myself that I am not creating expectations of the quality of my daily writing. It is about what is on my mind, the stream of my consciousness. Regularity rather than the literary or intellectual merit.

Writing in this way is a centering and mind clearing exercise that takes its cue from the Morning Pages exercise that I was introduced to this year at a personal development workshop.

The person who created the Morning Pages prescribed three pages in longhand, and it wasn't designed as a piece of writing to be shared. Those aspects of the exercise are not relevant to me in the way that writing to start to day is.

It's a practice that I am making my own, to still the mind and collect and organise thoughts and present them as an offering to family and friends and anybody else who is interested, in the manner and form of a traditional blog.

This morning I reached for my radio's off button when I heard the beginning of a news story on ABC NewsRadio. It was that Queensland scientists have confirmed that this year's mass coral bleaching event has resulted in the largest die-off of corals ever recorded on the Great Barrier Reef.

It has become a habit of mine to tune out when the news is bad. When it's good news I will consume it repeatedly.

Of course I'm not alone in wanting to know only good news. It's human. There would be something wrong with me if I had a taste for bad news.

Different people react to particular news stories in their own way. For me, it's specifically the destruction or decay of cultural or natural heritage, the harming of cultural minorities such as the genocide of the Yazidis, and particularly egregious stories of the exercise of policy cruelty to asylum seekers to drive home a political point. I get emotionally distressed.

I was first conscious of my feelings about the news in 2001, when the Bamiyan Buddhas were blown up and destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. I was upset and found myself resenting that there was so much coverage of this event on the BBC World News TV channel. I wished they would give content warnings before broadcasting stories on the Bamiyan Buddhas. I was resentful that they didn't, almost as if they were playing with my emotions.

My avoidance of bad news includes events that will impact on what upsets me, such as the coverage of election counts. On Wednesday 9 November, I found myself feeling very grateful that my attention from US election counting news coverage was diverted by an appointment I had that afternoon, for nearly 90 minutes.

That was the most decisive and painful part of the coverage. When I switched off my smartphone, everything was going as expected for a HIllary Clinton victory. But when I turned my phone on after the appointment, my eyes fixed in disbelief on what was by that stage the hopeful headline in the New York Times app that Hillary still had a narrow path to victory.

So much had happened in 90 minutes, so much that would have been very painful for me to follow blow by blow. It was as if I'd been having surgery and been under general anaesthetic for the duration of the turning point in the vote counting. I was certainly disappointed and distressed at the now almost certain result. But in a way that was quite bizarre, the feeling of desolation was almost eclipsed by the consolation of being spared the slow drawn out pain of learning that Clinton had fallen short.

It's tempting to digress into thoughts about Trump and all the post-truth politics we've been exposed to this year. But my point about how we feel about what we hear in the news is in some ways more important though related. It reflects my own myopia and my own post-truth world. It's not reality but it's something to be acknowledged rather than dismissed. Because feelings about anything, including the news, are real.

Yesterday I visited the Tatsuo Miyajima exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney. Miyajima is a Japanese contemporary artist who uses LED counters in the Buddhist inspired sculptures that have evolved from his early performance art.

I was instantly drawn to take selfies with my phone, and from watching the video and reading the notes on his website, it seems that kind of interactivity with the viewer is exactly what the artist intended. Indeed the MCA exhibition is titled 'Connect with Everything'. Conversely a lack of such connection would, in his words, 'terminate art eventually'.

He told the Saturday Paper that 'the whole point of art is to reach an audience, so hopefully it will go out into the world and meet someone and they will respond'.

That's why I was amused to see one of the attendants dutifully chastise another visitor for touching one of the artworks. The visitor was obviously drawn to touch the artwork in the way Miyajima's sculptures had me taking selfies.

I'm certain the artist would have given his blessing to the touch, as the wear and tear of public touch is part of art existing in the 'real world' rather than the isolation of the 'art world' that the performance artist sculptor shuns.

Those who had a traumatic relationship with maths during their childhood could find the exhibition distressing. That may have been the case with the friends of a friend who reported that they did not like the exhibition. Perhaps they kept their distance from the works and did not feel moved to interact in the way that I - or the chastised toucher - did.

I too had a troubled relationship with maths when I was young, but I feel that I experienced a degree of healing at the MCA yesterday, as if the artist was reaching out to me with Buddhist compassion. Miyajima said in the Saturday Paper interview that he traces his interest in art to childhood illnesses that left him hospitalised for months. The LED numbers represent human beings - it is 'playful technology and big, bright lights [that] are accessible to everyone'.

If I was dead I would roll in my grave. Current cowboy President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has allowed the remains of the country's former reviled corrupt dictator President Ferdinand Marcos to be reburied in the Heroes' Cemetery within Fort Bonifacio in Metro Manila.

This has occurred 27 years after his death and 23 years after his remains were flown to the Philippines from Guam. He died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, three years after public outrage had led to the snap elections of 1986 and the People Power Revolution in February 1986, which removed him from power.

The turning point had been public reaction to the assassination of his rival Senator Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino in August 1983, just a couple of months before I travelled overseas for the first time, to the Philippines for three months, when I had just turned 24.

It was an 'exposure' experience that was part of my Jesuit training, and certainly a formative experience at a time when I was impressionable. I visited the Australian priest Brian Gore, who had been jailed for advocating for the rights of sugar workers. I spent time living with a destitute family in a squatter area in makeshift housing in a swamp in the southern Mindanao city of Davao.

But for the most part, I lived in comfort in the Jesuit Ateneo de Davao University while I did a kind of internship at the Mindanao Development Centre, which was a Jesuit work devoted to social action on behalf of the poor.

I was very happily and fervently caught up in the people's power movement that was prompted by the Aquino assassination believed to have been ordered by Marcos. I participated in events such as the 'yellow power' march through the main street of Davao every Friday. I am pictured in one of the marches, second from the left.

These days I follow developments in the Philippines through the excellent writings of Fatima Measham in Eureka Street. She migrated to Australia about ten years ago after completing her degree at the Ateneo de Manila Jesuit university.

After the reburial of the anti-hero Marcos in the Heroes' Cemetery, she wrote this week that 'young Filipinos, observing recent political disorder, had begun wondering whether Marcos was really that bad'. But predominantly 'the mood that prevailed throughout Philippine social media that day was one of intense disgust'.

The presence of millennials in the protests also demonstrates that protecting the truth matters... There had been real concern over the past few years that the distance of time, the lack of a definitive account in textbooks, the fact that Marcos' children hold political office, that not enough people were punished for embezzlement and human rights abuse — that these would lead to distortions and erosions of memory.

I am interested to explore possible parallels with protest in the United States following the election of Donald Trump as President. In a blog two weeks ago I castigated the protestors there for undermining democracy by refusing to accept the result. They were calling the election rigged in the way that Trump himself was expected to had he lost as was almost universally anticipated. A Jesuit I know in California reacted to my opinion, insisting that it does not represent the full story. I am interested in the full story and intend to write about it within the next few days.

This morning I went to a gathering of an unnamed group of around ten retired Australian diplomats at the Glover Cottages meeting place of the Australian Institute of International Affairs at Millers Point in the Sydney CBD (pictured).

There were presentations and discussion over three hours around the topic of what should happen to Australian foreign policy during the Trump presidency. The focus was on whether the ANZUS alliance does and should have a future.

The convenor is a friend of mine and I think he asked me along to help make up the numbers. I was more than happy to attend, even though I knew I would be the only participant without foreign policy expertise. Fortunately they made me feel very welcome and I did not feel out of place.

He self-deprecatingly referred to the group as the Doddery Daiquiri Diplomats. In fact it included a lot of sharp minded individuals with energy and determination and a strategy to play a part in the shaping of Australian foreign policy at a time when it is at the crossroads.

The consensus was that it is time to let Australia's 'insurance policy' ANZUS alliance fade into obscurity. It was suggested that the costs of the insurance 'premium' - including Australia's commitment to the conflict in the Middle East - are not worth the questionable benefit.

In other words, there is little certainty that the US would come to Australia's aid at a time of crisis, and indeed the alliance with the US could well draw Australia into a nuclear crisis. Specifically, America's heavily reliance on the Pine Gap defence intelligence facility in central Australia is such that it would probably be an early target in the event of a nuclear conflict involving the US. The nuclear fallout would impact Sydney and Melbourne.

In considering whether politicians would be willing to listen to the Doddery Diplomats, it struck me that the group was too principled to play its strongest card in its lobbying for exiting the alliance with the US. That is the fear card.

We've seen how politically effective it has been for party leaders to cultivate and exploit people's fear of asylum seekers arriving by boat. It's easy to imagine politicians acting to end our reliance on the US if it is brought into the minds of ordinary Australians that a cost of this alliance is the very real prospect of a nuclear attack on Pine Gap.

I hardly think the Doddery Diplomats are going to propose some kind of Grim Reaper fear campaign. They are not politicians. They favour education and cultivating strong and effective diplomatic relationships over playing with the insecurities of the Australian people. The unfortunate reality is that it has been demonstrated that fear is more likely to get results.

I'm writing this early Thursday in Australia. In Portland, Oregon, it's Wednesday, and about now, legendary writer Brian Doyle is having surgery for brain cancer. That was the very sad news that spread around my former colleagues at Eureka Street magazine yesterday.

At least it was sad for us, and certainly for his wife Mary and their three children. As for Brian, he's very concerned for them, but not so much for himself. Characteristically he's very matter of fact.

'If all goes well, I could get a year or maybe even two. They can’t delete it or fix it or cure it. The doctor thinks that if he can reduce it and shoot chemo at it, then it may be suppressed for long enough for a few more years of reading and writing and being with my wife and kids.'

You always know what's on his mind because that's about all there is to his writing. He doesn't care what people think. His writing lacks style, and for the most part he doesn't even use paragraphs. His articles are full of untidy lists, and he rants.

He's an editor's nightmare, but a reader's joy. It shows in the web statistics and in the reader comments at the bottom of his articles. And such a fine mind that mixes authenticity with humour and imagination and religious faith and kindness and a social conscience and a disdain for the many shady characters in the Catholic Church. There's a list worthy of Brian himself!

I don't know whether they have larrikins in the US. Perhaps they don't and that part of him feels out of place over there. That could be why he's developed such a bond over the years with Australia and his Australian readers and friends.

In the article they wrote about his diagnosis in his university newspaper The Beacon, he tells his friends that he values their laughter as much as, or even more than, the hundreds of supportive emails and phone calls. 'You want to help me? Be tender and laugh.' If that's not enough, you can contribute to the Doyle Family Support Fund at gofundme.

Yesterday I watched last week's Four Corners episode 'Broken Homes' on the child protection system for children in residential care. The moment that stayed with me, and no doubt many others, was former Victorian children's commissioner Bernie Geary talking about the case that affected him the most - 'the child who said "I'm not special in the eyes of anyone"'.

The program was about vulnerable children who need to be removed from their parental homes for their protection. But Bernie Geary's words in particular were also relevant to children from loving homes whose care is entrusted to institutions, such as Catholic and other boarding schools.

In effect it established this as a criterion for determining whether a child is or was receiving adequate care in the institution, or whether he or she the victims of abuse. I believe that abuse does not have to be active interference with a vulnerable individual. To fail to make a child feel special is neglect and abuse.

This is relevant to yesterday's announcement of the establishment of Catholic Professional Standards, an agency set up to monitor and report on child and vulnerable adult protection standards.

The media release suggests that the new body's responsibilities are broad - 'the protection of children and vulnerable adults across Church entities particularly in areas where there are no current relevant standards'.

It does not indicate that Catholic Professional Standards will have a remit for redressing past non-compliance. But it is very encouraging that it acknowledges that the body will give particular attention to areas where standards are lacking. The lack of standards is effectively lawlessness and a significant source of vulnerability and abuse for many young people in the way that civilian populations are subject to the whims of warlords in Somalia, Yemen, and other failed states.

What I like most about the announcement is that the body's attention is not confined to sexual abuse because much, or most, of the abuse in Catholic and other institutions was not specifically sexual. Last week I wrote about my own experience of what I called the 'culture of disrespect'. I think that Bernie Geary's criterion of a child being made to feel special - or not - is the obvious gold standard that should underscore everything else in the new body's standards checklist.

My fear was that Catholic Professional Standards would have a remit to focus on sexual abuse exclusively. But it's much broader. However there's not enough in the announcement to reassure me that it is interested in institutional reform rather than merely eliminating the 'bad eggs'. In other words scapegoating pedophile priests who, in many cases, are just as vulnerable as the children they abuse. I've often felt that putting them in prison is akin to jailing those suffering from mental illness. A convenient distraction from having to take responsibility for the source of the problem.

Relevant to this is a post on the Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission at John Menadue's blog. Catholics for Renewal Chair Peter Johnstone gets it right when he insists that 'the Church’s institutional leadership must publicly acknowledge that its dysfunctional governance was at the heart of its immoral response to the abuse of children in its care'. He compellingly spells out the nature of this dysfunctional governance and suggests that any attempt to address abuse in the Catholic Church will be a waste of time unless its dysfunctional governance is corrected.

The claim in the media release about the new Catholic Professional Standards body is that it is an 'independent' agency, operating at arm's length from the Catholic Church and its hierarchy. If that is really the case, we can expect that Catholic Professional Standards will comprehensively address the Church's dysfunctional governance, and do all in whatever power it has to correct this. Anything less than this and it will be plain for all to see that Catholic Professional Standards is about no more than window-dressing and the Church is not serious about ending abuse.