An invocation that starts with two words inspired by Cardinal George Pell’s wish that his tombstone declare “Vehementer amavit dominum et ecclessiam.” (He passionately loved the Lord and the Church):
Amor Domini/with child/not of this world/unfailing triumph/Emmanuel.
Amor Domini can mean either Love of God or Love for God.
All praise to Mother Mary, easily the greatest mum of all time.
Geoff Fox, former Registered Midwife, December 28, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
AN OPEN LETTER LIST OF IDEAS FOR DANIEL MADIGAN, TNC
Dear Innkeeper D. Madigan,
As an attender of masses on your premises, I am your congregant.
I send you this list as a Xmas present.
It names, and in some cases discusses, things that I think you and I and others on your premises should talk about more next year.
According to John 1:1, Logos is God.
According to me, that means that when people talk with each other, they are living in The Word, living in God.
This December, you have achieved a hat trick of three consecutive Advents during and in between which you have not been able to have a single decent discussion with me of even one of the numerous ideas I have put to you.
In recognition of your achievement, I both present you this list of ideas I want to talk about and declare you to be a Terra Nullius Christian, by which I mean a Christian who has the ability to ignore the legitimacy of the claims and/or ideas of a human being in his sphere of influence, in this case the Inn or accommodation establishment known as Newman College.
A. La ilaha IllAllah; la ikraha fiddin. This is an anti-terrorist formulation invented by me (as far as I know). I put it on top of the list, because I see a horrible Islamophobia in recent days in Australia. What could we do with these words at your Inn?
B. Being small-c Catholic. The church is declining. To slow down the decline it needs to broaden ways to participate.
C. Being an asmaulhusma poet. Kiai Mustofa Bsiri bestowed this compliment on me in his home in Rembang in the 1990’s. It is one of the proudest honours I have ever received.
D. What to do to respect the art display I created at Barak Obama’s first school, the Assisi Primary School in Jakarta.
E. Discussing the unfairness to women of the 12 game AFLw season. One of your female staff has avoided a hat trick like yours by showing strong support for discussion of this issue among your residents next year.
F. Helping single mums in Dili, and through to Indonesia, and in doing so, celebrate the the precepts of R A Kartini. I got support for the start of this idea from an important woman in Dili last year, but not a shred of positive acknowledgement from anyone else in your Inn.
G. http://www.the-crucified-cardinal.com When I was removed from a church service door and physically and sexually assaulted by police in 2022, your predecessor Fr Frank Brennan wrote a note to Melbourne Magistrates Court (for the subsequent legal proceeding where I was put on trial), drawing the court’s attention to aspects of the injustice committed against Cardinal Pell. The book in which Frank wrote that note could and should be a treasured possession in your Inn’s library. Could you show a really good capacity to discuss this website and my experiences with me?
H. http://www.motherhoodsmatter.com I was a Registered Midwife for thirty years. I prophesy that a good future wave of feminism will reduce misandry and increase respect for mothers. Do you want to help me try to make that happen?
Daniel, you do not get thirty grand a year from me for a room at Newman.
You get ideas.
That mostly get ignored.
No room at the inn.
Three Advents in a row.
As Ned is reputed to have said, ” Such Is Life.” ??????
Or can you and the hundreds or thousands strong community you lead get better at talking with me next year ???????
I hope you share a really positive New Years Resolution along those lines with me on January 1st.
What are my chances?
Would you prefer a double hat trick next Advent?
Geoff Fox, 11.00 a.m, Xmas Day, 2025, Newman College, Parkville, Australia
For me Cecil B Demille’s 1927 film, King Of Kings, is a visual feast, one of the most unremittingly great depictions of the story of Jesus I have ever seen.
In the above footage from the post Last Supper portion of DeMille’s film, Ave Maria is an obvious choice of melody for the relationship between Jesus and his mum.
Waltzing Matilda, which comes in at the half way mark of this clip, when the focus shifts to Peter, is less obvious.
Peter, an individual, betrayed Jesus, by denying knowing him three times, and thereby betrayed the group of individuals to which he belonged. His own conscience troubled Peter very deeply.
Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem, is also about betrayal. But it is the betrayal of the human rights of an individual denied his basic right to food by an unjust society.
The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built.
For me the fusion of these two different types of betrayal is very beautiful.
Perhaps a strange universality but it works for me.
But maybe in a world where there are so many more people than were alive 2 millennia ago, there was more individual freedom, and less betrayal of individuals by groups than happens now.
Something to think about.
And thinking is what living in The Word is all about for me.
Geoff Fox, Sunday, April 6, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
Devout Catholic Norris was born in San Francisco on the 16th July 1880.
When she was 19 years old, her parents died and she became the head of her family. She went on to become one of the highest paid female writers in America:
“I wonder if children don’t begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.”
“The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God …….. Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.”
“If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it’s because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.”
“Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.”
“For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn’t know we needed and take us places where we didn’t know we didn’t want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.”
“But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.”
God Bless Faith.
The Foundation Of Understanding.
Geoff Fox, 16th July, 2023, Down Under
This week, the week of The Ascension, I turn my attention down from the fatherly sky to the motherly earthly foundation of what we are.
A focus on Mary?
About four and three quarters of a year ago in Rembang, Java, the home of the Kartini Museum, I formulated this set of socio-philosophical principles about gender:
1. Men, women and children need to live with love.
This love is an indispensable foundation of human society.
2. Three fundamental mothering capacities differentiate women from men:
A The ability to carry and nurture life in the womb.
B The capacity to give birth to that life.
C The ability to give the best possible nutrition to new human beings by breast feeding.
3 These three qualitative differences give mothers and potential mothers some different human rights and responsibilities to the rights and responsibilities of other people.
4 The modern western demonisation of men and disempowerment of mothers are two sides of the same coin.
5 The cradle of human culture is maternal love.
6 True loving manliness empowers and protects mums.
7 When family life ceases to be a nation’s foundation, the nation’s death is inevitable.
On a very important day in a 175 year old church last year, I came up with the idea “Arma Virumque Me Cano” rewriting a line of war poetry by the Roman poet Vergil to make it more Catullan, less warlike.
In that spirit, I hope the above articulation of gender principles can evolve to become incantations of value to mums.
We need them.
And they need us.
Geoff Fox, 14th may, Australia’s Mother’s Day, 2023
(God Bless Andrea Mantegna of Mantua for creating the above image of Mother Mary to which I have added a few words.)
Ways Of Being Christian 