Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival #3

My contribution to Sunday Snippets for the week to Sunday February 28. Those who don't know what Sunday Snippets is, read this!

Read my personal testimony here!

My logo design was picked as the new masthead for the parish newsletter.

I talk about putting my ailments on the cross, quite appropriate for Lent!

Photos now up of the NEW Sacred Heart Wodonga, after renovations... (read about the renovations from December here)

Enjoy!

Sacred Heart Wodonga Photos

Photos of the old and new church.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Wodonga, Diocese of Sandhurst.

Put it on the CROSS

Addiction sure is one bitch to get over. "I'll just have two" you say to yourself, knowing that is fine. But it gives you that nice, slight tingle all over your body. No sooner have you finished the ritual, you either decide on two more straight after, or ten-minutes later. Either way, you have more, because you can always feel even better. Then it snowballs until you have none - then what do you do? Either hang out for a week - a week of cramps, physical and psychological pain and torment, nightmares, sweats, chills... just to name a few. Either that, or you go off sniffing about the black market, around unsavoury type of people, which also ends up costing you an arm and a leg.

It is time. Time to beat this affliction. Time to realise that I can't do this on my own. Time to put it on the cross. If I keep going on the way I have been, then basically, Jesus' death was in vain. The pain he went through in order to save ME was simply pointless - nails hammered through his hands and feet, thorns digging into his crown, the burning pain of whips across his back, the heavy weight of the cross he carried... "Why did I do this for you?" He would be saying.

This Lenten season, I am going to make the time - even if I have to go out of my way or go without doing certain other things - in order to spend some time with Jesus. Spend some time with Him in private at home. Some time with Him inside of me as I partake of His Body and Blood. Some time kneeling before His glorious Body in the form of Adoration. Then some more time with Him just inside my own head throughout the day.

If anyone can help me help myself, it is Jesus. I need to stop believing in myself that I can do it on my own, because I know I cannot. I need to start putting it on the cross - offering my pain and sufferings, also my pleasure and good works - up to Him on His cross as he looks down at me, arms spread to embrace me, head tilted down to kiss me and heart protruding full of love.

Heartbeat

The church that I regularly attend is Sacred Heart Parish, North Albury. I also go to St. Patrick's Parish Church sometimes on a Tuesday and/or Thursday - usually a Tuesday because shortly afterwards they have Benediction and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. I like St. Patrick's Church because it is one of the older style churches - the oldest in the Diocese of Wagga Wagga in fact - and the building itself has quite a rich history. Sacred Heart however is one of the newer types, not shaped like a cross when looking at an aerial-view, but I live across the road from which is why I have made it my most frequented parish.

Sacred Heart has a newsletter that is published once a month, or bi-monthly, maybe less frequently, I am not actually sure. The last issue for 2009, which was November, had a small advert in it notifying of a change to it, including a name change from "Our Special Heart" to "Heartbeat" and thus were seeking submissions from parishioners for a new logo/masthead design.

I jumped on board almost instantly, drawing up a few initial ideas in my sketch-pad, then transferring them into digital form using Adobe Illustrator. Once I had a few different designs up, I went to the parish offices to show Fran, the secretary. She was quite impressed with the designs I had drawn and the ones I showed her on my laptop, so I left the sketches with her an emailed the digital ones over so she could show Fr. Flanagan. This was back in December.

Yesterday, I received an email from Karen, the editor of the newsletter, saying that they had decided on one of my designs for the new-look publication "Heartbeat". I was surprised and instantly happy - I feel more a part of the parish family now that I have a piece of my work cemented in the life of the parish.

TESTIMONY of FAITH: Part Two

Continued from "TESTIMONY of FAITH: Part One".

After leaving hospital to go to Wodonga to be with my family, I decided to undertake my own research on different things to do with religion. I surfed the internet quite a bit, looking up information on different things, one of those being my Confirmation Saint.

Those of you who don't know much about Catholicism, Confirmation is one of the seven Sacraments in the Catholic Church. Most people do it as a primary school student, around the age of ten or eleven, also around the time when you receive the Sacrament of First Holy Communion. Basically, Confirmation is just that - Confirmed as a full member in the Catholic Church. In order to be confirmed, you have to work through some workbooks, all different from one another depending on the diocese you reside in, and one of the things you do is study a Saint of your choice, learn about their life, what they did, why they became a Saint et-cetera. You then take on that Saint's name, so my name for instance is David John Stanislaus Clarke, Stanislaus being my Confirmation Saint.

I already remembered a fair bit about St. Stanislaus Kosta - that he is "the boy Saint". He died when he was nineteen - ironically, I turned nineteen only days after the accident. Before he died, an angel appeared to him and gave him the Eucharist, so one of the things he is patron of is last sacraments. Seemed fitting given that Samantha had died. What struck me even harder however is that he is patron Saint of broken bones.

Never in my life had I broken a bone - never even been into hospital as a patient, believe it or not! I grew up without ever needing a plaster cast on my arm or having to learn how to use crutches et-cetera. Quite strange as most kids break an arm or a leg sometime while they grow up; falling from trees and what-have-you.

That, however, changed with the car accident where I broke the bone in your body you DON'T want broken - my spine. One of my vertebras was crushed by 50%, meaning that it was only half as big as it should've been, and a section of my spine was fractured. The vertebra had to be removed in surgery - quite a delicate operation I must say, trying to take out a bone that has the spinal cord enclosed within it. The tiniest knick the the spinal cord and there could have been some major damage done, but I had a great surgeon - one of the best in the country - so things were fine. So my Confirmation Saint is patron of broken bones, and here I was having never broken one EVER, then finally breaking one of the most dangerous ones in the human body!

I found all that quite interesting, that with it plus the dream I had (and a few other little things here and there) there was no doubt someone was looking after me from upstairs. Sure, it could have been a coincidence, but even skeptics would have to think that they are pretty damn big consequences. I prefer to call them miracles.

Without too long, I was reading up on heaps of different religious things on the internet. I looked into all different Christian religions - from my original one of Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism and Lutheran - through to Pentecostal and later on the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

One Sunday morning I was up pretty early and my mother asked me if I wanted to go to church with them. They had no reason to ask me as they had no idea of the research I was doing on my laptop via the internet. I decided to go along with them to the Catholic Church and it felt like I was at home.

Soon after that, I would visit the Catholic Book Center in Albury, looking for all different types of books for me to read up on. I then decided to go to a few other churches - Anglican, Pentecostal, Mormon, Jehovah's - just because I wanted to keep my options open in case God was calling me to a specific denomination.

While I enjoyed the services at some of these churches, such as the Pentecostal Church, Faith City, there was a hole in my heart - something didn't feel right. There were no crucifixes, but crosses instead, if that at all. No statues of Jesus or Mary, no "Stations of the Cross", no priest in the vestments reading from a set book. No splashing of Holy Water or burning of incense. I just didn't... fit.

So God drew me back to Catholicism, where I have been since, what I believe to be the one, true Church. At times I struggled with certain teachings, but as I researched them, I found they weren't there to control us, but to guide us.

Since returning to the church, I have loved it! I've since grown quite a collection of books - from dramatised Bibles you can use to act out Biblical stories to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is full of question and answers that one may ask. Books about different religious orders such as Opus Dei and the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits.

Many of the beliefs I had as an atheist or agnostic - I really don't know which I was - I had changed my thoughts on with the guidance of Catholic teaching. Abortion for instance, once seen by myself as the choice of the woman, it's her body, to now being staunchly opposed to abortion or any type of killing. Why? Because of the way it is taught to you - that human life starts at conception, not at birth.

The year of the car accident, 2005, World Youth Day was in Cologne, Germany, and Pope Benedict XVI announced that the next World Youth Day would be in 2008, in Sydney, Australia. I was absolutely stoked!!! I had my faith restored, and the biggest youth gathering in the world was coming to my country in a couple of years! Naturally, I attended and had an absolute blast!

Now I go to church every weekend, occasionally missing it here and there, and I also try and find the time to go at least once during the week. I enjoy going to church now. It's not a chore like it was when I was a child - it was interesting, hearing the Word, meditating on it, praying in a large congregation of people. I even undertook training in 2006 to be a Eucharistic Minister! I made an initial website for the Wodonga Parish and only in the last couple of months I have also offered my services to work on the website for Sacred Heart parish, North Albury - conveniently located 20 meters across the road from my house!

I am now involved in Catholicism and love it - not ashamed one bit. I am Christian - I am Catholic!

TESTIMONY of FAITH: Part One

"It strikes me as odd that I haven't written about my testimony of faith in the pages of this blog. I have written it many-a-time in previous versions of my website, but so far, not on this one with Google's Blogger! So here goes - I trust you will enjoy it! A tear-jerk here, a flame in the heart there - full of pain and misery, but also filled with joy and hope. I will be writing this over a few blog entries, so keep checking back to read the next part of my story... here goes part-one!!!"


I am the youngest of six children, two-years between each of us, and was bought up in a fairly conservative, middle-class Catholic family. We went to church pretty much every Sunday, had our own unofficial dedicated pew at the front of the church, and we all went to Catholic primary and secondary schools - St. Monica's Primary and Catholic College Wodonga.

By the time I started high school, just like my brothers and sisters before me, I chose not to continue going to church with my parents. Before high school, we had no choice, but once we hit high-school age, it was our own choice. After all, things get busy pretty quickly at high school with all the homework, essays and assignments.

By the time I was fourteen, I left God (but He never left me!). You see, I found out long ago that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Tooth-fairy were nothing but a farce - something to make you, as a child, be good. Thus, God entered the same arena of fictitious entities.

I grew from a good little boy into a rebel and no sooner had I discovered the Goth-scene, I turned into a full-blown one. The fashion, the music, the dark, macabre and sadistic, literature and artwork. I became an outcast because of this - not a species too thick on the ground in a small regional city with a population just over 90,000, and a school with almost 1,000. I was picked on, bullied, called names, had objects such as footballs flying through the air, with me as the target.

High school was no fun for me, so I turned to my creative talents of drawing and writing as an escape mechanism, also as a way to blaspheme God, Jesus and Mary. Soon enough, that didn't provide enough solace, and I slowly turned to cigarettes, which evolved into alcohol, finally into illicit drugs, namely marijuana.

How could there be a God when I have to suffer daily torment and abuse from my peers as school? Even more-so, how can there be a God when there are so many starving people in the third-world? If anyone has the absolute power to end world hunger and poverty, it is God. So either we have a pretty damn selfish and evil God laughing at our misfortune, or there simply is no such thing. I went for the latter.

I plodded along with school, switching from Catholic College (C.C.W) to a few other different schools by year ten. First was Wodonga High School which is where my best friend from school transferred to, though I only lasted one month, if that. The deputy principal simply had it in for me. I'd be caught skipping classes or smoking cigarettes during recess and lunch. "I don't think you would get away with that at C.C.W, and you're not getting away with it here... it's not simply an easy ride here compared to C.C.W" is basically, in a nutshell, what the evil dictator-of-a-deputy she was.

After being caught smoking and wagging classes one too many times, I was threatened with an expulsion, but I just got an exit form to leave the school instead. I then finished my year-ten studies at Wodonga TAFE then started year-eleven H.S.C at Albury TAFE. I was smoking far too much dope then, so I just quit, got straightened out during the year and started a casual job at one of the local Coles Supermarkets.

The following year I decided to go back to school - not TAFE but a real school - Xavier High School in Albury, another Catholic school. It was the closest to where I was living at the time and I preferred the Catholic Education system over the public schooling one. I soon found out that I had matured far too much to have anything to talk to my peers about, so I went back to Albury TAFE yet again, only for about one month, then made the move to Southbank in Melbourne - living it up!

I started year-eleven V.C.E at an adult institution called the C.A.E, and followed through to do year-twelve V.C.E. August came along and I was no longer living in Southbank as I had broken up with my partner of three-years, so off to the suburbs for me!

I partied and drank a fair bit for the two-weeks after leaving Southbank and hung around my friend Samantha basically everynight. One night however was to turn my whole world upside down - black would become white, day would become night...

Samantha and I drove into the city, this was a Tuesday night, trying to find some clubs that were open. We decided to settle on Odeon at Crown Casino, had a few drinks, a bit of a dance, then we both got talking to these other two guys. We went our own ways after a while - Sam and I walked to the food-court inside Crown to get something from McDonalds... and who was in front of us? None other than the two guys we had just been talking to! Sam and I ordered our food and the four of us all sat at the same table, talking and making plans to go out to another club in Hawthorn.

Sam and I were going to go to the atrium so we could grab a cab, but one of the guys, Mark, said he had his car and we could all go together. Sounded like a good idea, and he wasn't alcohol affected... or so we thought...

We had only been driving probably 400 meters, then SMASH. We had a bingle. Mark ran a red-light, and was speeding, then we were T-boned before slamming head-first into the brick wall of a bar. I lost consciousness then came to before the paramedics, police and fire-brigade. All the lights were off in the car, I couldn't see Sam sitting next to me, so I figured I must have passed out. I couldn't have though because I'd only had a couple of beers!

After about five-minutes I registered what had happened. I couldn't move very well at all, there was blood all over my clothes, and I heard faint whimpering noises coming from my right. I turned to look and saw Sam, on the floor of the car, wedged between the back seat and drivers seat. I looked out the shattered windscreen and saw nothing but a brick wall lit up by the cars headlights. Turning my head to my left I saw a hole in the window where my head obviously went through, and beyond that I saw the flashing of red and blue lights. Bang. Lost consciousness again, drifting in and out, finally regaining a decent amount of consciousness when I was in the Royal Melbourne Hospital emergency department.

The nurse standing over me told me not to move because the X-rays had shown that I had a broken spine. N-O W-A-Y. I'm NOT going to live the rest of my days in a wheelchair. That was all the turning point and how I came to find, know and love God once again.

After the emergency department, I was moved up to the orthopaedic ward. I had my own room with ensuite which was great, though I was bed-ridden and wasn't allowed to get up, nor could I physically get up.

One night I had a dream... I was lying in my hospital bed, in the exact same hospital room - window where it was in reality, pictures my two nieces drew for me and stuck on my wall to add a bit of colour, and a few other things that friends had bought in for me. The only different thing, was that Samantha was sitting on the chair next to me. In the dream I didn't flip out or anything over seeing her, we just had a good talk, Samantha telling me not to worry about her, that I need to focus on getting myself better once again, and all was good. I awoke the next morning feeling refreshed that I saw Samantha, even if it were only a dream.

I told our best friend about the dream the next day, she thought it was interesting, but quickly changed the topic. I didn't think much of it, until a few days later, our friend, Victoria, told me that the night of the dream, Samantha had passed away in the Alfred Hospital on the other side of Melbourne's CBD.

So that was a little freaky. Was the number-one thing that made me slowly peel my eyelids open to the fact that perhaps there is a God, and that He allowed me to say goodbye since I physically couldn't leave my bed and see her in the Alfred, nor attend her funeral. Still I wasn't convinced... it would have to take a few other things before I decided to become a Christian yet again.

To be continued...

Slackin' off

ABOVE: One of my most recent sketches. 1st February, 2010.

It's been quite some time since I've blogged. Sad, init? Pretty much haven't written two-hoots since the year began, but that will change. You see, I always go through stages with everything in life - blogging, writing, drawing - everything. I get the ball rolling and can't stop, writing a-million entries in one day, then - BANG - nothing for days, weeks, even months at time.

Yesterday I saw the doktor and got some new scripts for my Endone and Valium. Picked up a couple days worth of each as I didn't have the cash to buy them. Today I bit the bullet, decided to take my phone into the pawn-brokers to get some cash for my scripts and a pack of smokes... I just removed my sim-card and put it into another phone of mine. Easy. I only got $25, but it was enough for a 30-pack of Pall Mall, and the Endone and Valium.

Now I am happy, motivated, bright - the world is my oyster. Without Endone - or any Oxycodone for that matter - I live a hopeless, depressive, messy existence... and my GP wants me to come of the Endone. First she wanted to take me down to one 5mg tab, but I piped up saying I'd rather get off the Valium first, which will be another two months. When she finally decides to put the hard-word on me and take me down to 5mg, I'm just going to let it all out - tell her that it's the only way I get motivated to do things - from artwork, to reading, to cooking and cleaning. Screwy, especially given that 10mg is stuff-all.

My GP's theory is that if you get a euphoric high off Oxy, you're O.D'ing... also believes that pain lasts for six-weeks, anything after that is just "phantom" pain. A load of shit. She's no pain-doktor, so what would she know? Just a "new age" one into all the alternative therapies such as hypnosis and the likes, and quite anti-drugs... which makes me think - If one is so against drugs, why the hell become a GP? They just pull the wool over your eyes then. They say things such as "You're too young to be on this, you have the whole world ahead of you" - my thoughts are the exact opposite. Sure, I have my whole life ahead, but at least when I am under the influence of any Oxy-based drugs, then I have my whole life ahead.

Moving along from my little rant about the dok, which has been going on for the last week...

So I have had some Endone's today and feeling great - motivated to do some things. I've done some artwork over the days, and I am now getting ready to start sketching some of my favourite pieces of artwork into a large visual diary, hoping that they will turn out just as good as the small versions, then I will frame them to give my flat a little more personal, individual character.

First up is a re-sketch of St. Patrick's Cathedral (minor basilica) in Melbourne - one of my favourite, if not my favourite, church anywhere. I love it - so big, such beautiful architecture and gardens, not to mention the inside of it. I've already made two sketches of it - a greylead one in an A4 V.D, another done in black fine-liner in the smaller sized V.D - now onto the large, A3 size, either fineliner, or perhaps shaded to give it the black and white effect.

I'm just bracing myself for study - start next Wednesday - a week from today. Three full days - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 9am to 3 or 4pm. I'm studying Certificate III Visual Arts and Contemporary Craft. I can't wait to get back into the study side of things, it will be great, and no doubt I will eventually have a group of like-minded people to hang out with.

Now, it is time to have a coffee and cigarette before I settle down here on the couch, putting pencil-to-paper and sketching the magnificent building that is St. Patrick's Cathedral - the Mother Church of the Melbourne Archdiocese.

FROM THE VAULT: Locker Room Massacre

This is nothing new, just a piece of expressive writing written circa 2001.

He was tired; had enough of the daily abuse. The words flung at him, the footballs flying in the direction of his head, the parting of the sea of people in the locker room; guys lining up, backs to the wall covering their arseholes as if he were into them.

Casual clothes day, he came to school dressed in nothing but black – shoes, pants, shirt, dog collar – even his socks, hair and eyes were black. His cheeks were black from the streaked eyeliner and mascara, a result of the emotionless tears rolling from his eyes. The black trench coat dragged behind on the ground, keeping all the black inside.

For the last time, he entered the locker room, walking in a straight line made just for him, so he doesn’t infect the others with the fag-disease. People pointed, people laughed – but he smiled for the first time in that room. His mouth was a black rose; a smile of charcoal lipstick.

Straight through the walkway, entering the male toilets at the end. Standing there, looking in the mirror for the last time, leaning on the sink, a wide-spread muppet-like smile across his face. Splashed some water on his face and unbuttoned his coat, then walked back out to the ridicule of his peers in the locker room. This time he wasn’t sad. He was happy.

One big grin was given to the boys for the last time before turning straight-faced as he flung the trench coat to the ground, revealing the fishnet arm-warmers covering the scars on his arms.

With the blink of an eye, he pulled two semis from his pockets and opened fire. Everything went in slow motion – one bullet driven through the forehead of the lead jock, another ten through his face and body before collapsing lifeless to the ground in a pool of blood. No one was smiling now. No one was taunting or laughing, except he.

Ten minutes later, his job was done, standing there amongst a bloody mass of corpses – body atop of body, a bloody orgy. He turned and peered out the window, at first giving the police a glare, then a smile, before breaking out in laughter, finally putting the barrel deep in his throat, pulling the trigger, and it was over.