A Manly Venture: Sydney has two iconic beaches: Bondi Beach and Manly Beach. I have been to Bondi, so this morning a chose to spend a sunny Sunday at Manly. That required a ferry ride (an addition to my list!) from Circular Quay. The views of Sydney’s skyline, opera house, bridge, and harbor were spectacular. Manly seems to be more upscale that Bondi. You disembark at a wharf on the Port Jackson side and follow the Corso about 100 meters across the spit to the beach. The Corso is their “main street.” It has lots of space for gathering and lots of stores for shopping. Under the palms, a high school band was playing this morning. An old hotel was being refurbished.; since the 1850s, there has been one at each end of the Corso. A church was letting out. The beach beckoned, announced by a row of colorful pole banners waving in the breeze. At Manly, there is lots of public space landward of the sand. In fact, the whole gestalt made me feel bad about my home beach, Virginia Beach, which has done nothing more than make room for more hotels and condos over the past 25 years. At Manly, a nature trail wends through a small National Park to Shelly Beach and out to the headland of the peninsula. There was a lot going on in the water and on the sand. It’s the middle of winter, but a few were swimming and there were lots of wet suits teaching the waves a thing or two. If you ever plan to be in Sydney, reserve a Sunday for Manly Beach. It’s the place to be.
A Seat at the Cathedral: A cathedral church is where a bishop has his chair. In fact, the word comes from the Latin for chair, cathedra. At St. Andrew’s Cathedral (Anglican, by the way), there was a chair for the bishop and, on this Sunday evening, a chair for me. Unfortunately, the bishop was under the weather and a senior pastor delivered the sermon. Right next to me was a chair for Richard and his wife. I was lucky because he was chatty: before and after the service. He loved to travel and had returned from a trip to the US about six months ago. He and two others had driven from San Diego to Key West, then flew to New York and Washington. I told him few Americans took that kind of vacation anymore (too bad, don’t you think?). Richard told me how cheap petrol was, how inexpensive the rental was (plus, no per mile charges), and how the drop-off fee was only $500. What’s that all about? The strength of the Australian dollar and the weakness of the US dollar. Actually, this would be the perfect time for Australians to vacation in the US. If we had any entrepreneurial spirit, we would go after them. In fact, that could be a little micro-industry: a company that watched where the American dollar was weak and then tried to sell American vacations in those places. It’s probably also a good time for universities to be recruiting internationally.
The circa 5 pm service now seems to be an embedded urban tradition in Australia. Here is the conceptual difference, though. When American churches have multiple services, they seem to think of those served, no matter the meeting time, as members of the same church. When Australians have multiple services, they think of the separate congregations as separate churches meeting in the same structure albeit at separate times. There seems to be no attempt to unite people who attend different services. Of course, churches this big have multiple ministers: a senior pastor, plus assistant ministers, and student ministers. And, they seem to have done a good job in building the vespers service. It wasn’t as if the entire cathedral was full (huge!), but the area they had set off at the front was full and I would say there were 150 in attendance. Like many of the other churches I have attended, they are also using technology. A data projector was flashing the words of the hymns, and Bible verses were projected as they were read in the sermon. Plus, the service was transmitted to two video screens in the wings of the cathedral. Music was provided by the flute, saxophone, guitar and several vocalists. (If I had a church like this, though, I would incorporate a light show into the evening service!) Despite all the modernity, though, the sermon was very traditional. Judging from my words with Richard, sticking close to the Scriptures was much appreciated. The first Saturday of every month, they invite individuals from the streets of Sydney to have lunch in the cathedral. The program is called Damascus 12.
Four Continents, Four Haircuts: North America: New Orleans in March. Europe: London in May. Asia: Chiang Mai in June. Australia: Sydney in July. Not likely the stars will align like this ever again, but it has been fun. Of the four I like this do the best. I dropped into a little shop on Railroad Square: $10 haircuts, the only bargain I have seen here. Following my pattern, I told my young barber that I wanted to look Australian. He seemed to understand. “Like me?” “Spikey?” he asked. “Why not?” said I. And he went to work. The only thing surprising is that he wasn’t Australian. He was an Iraqi, an immigrant from Baghdad. He harbored some desire to return to Iraq in the future, but that’s not going to happen. He has been acculturated into Australian life, probably remembers little of Baghdad, is skilled as a barber, and could easily pass for a native of this country. He had no reservations about telling me how much he liked watching the girls out the window as he worked. He could be a keystone in re-building Iraq, but many of the most talented Iraqis are now gone, and few will return.
Geographically yours,
D.J.Z.
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