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Rev. David B. Smith is
a Parish priest, community worker, martial arts
master, pro boxer, author of Sex,
the Ring & the Eucharist: Reflections on
life, ministry & fighting in the
inner-city and a father of
three. Get a free preview copy of Father Dave, the
'Fighting Father's book when you sign up for his
free newsletter at www.fatherdave.org
A
Cheap Holiday in Other People's Misery (catching up
with Mordechai Vanunu in
Israel)
Boys
will be Boys or 'why men love to
Fight'
The
real problem with today's teenagers (and why most
parents just don't get
it!)
There's
nothing quite so Glorious as a Good Fight with your
Fists!
Why
more priests need to train as fighters (and why we
don't see many boxers in
church)
Why
more priests need to train as fighters (and why we
don't see many boxers in church)
II
Why
Ray Williams is still my hero
A Cheap Holiday in Other
People's Misery (catching up with Mordechai Vanunu
in Israel)
One of my favourite pieces of music is the Sex
Pistols' classic 'Holidays in the Sun' - a song
that begins with the line, 'a cheap holiday in
other people's misery'. This would have made a
fitting epitaph for my holiday in Israel, except
that the $3000 air ticket meant that it wasn't
exactly cheap.
I went to Israel full of apprehension. Just
knowing what we all know of the backdrop of
paranoia and pain that hangs over that land is
enough to make anybody apprehensive, but I also
went carrying a dark secret - that I was a friend
of Mordechai Vanunu's, and I was nervous about the
reaction I'd get should this truth suddenly become
public.
My friend Morde was completing an 18-year prison
sentence for doing something that most people in
this country consider heroic. Morde told the world
about a secret stash of WMD's ('weapons of mass
destruction') that are being developed in an
underground factory in the Negev desert. Most
people I know think he did the world an enormous
favour, but most people in his own country wish
Morde had kept his mouth shut. Indeed, most
Israelis regard him as a traitor!
In order to try to understand this attitude
towards my friend, I tried talking to local people
about their attitude to nuclear weapons. The
response I received was alarming! "They're only
there as our last resort" one articulate young
journalist said to me. "Just in case we get
completely overrun." "Well ... what happens then?"
I asked. "Well", he said, "then we destroy
everybody!"
Tragically, this was not an isolated example.
Almost every time I sought an opinion from
taxi-drivers, cafe workers or hostel staff
concerning Israel's nuclear capacity, the word
'Armageddon' would come up. And these apologists
seemed quite accepting of the fact that in order to
strike this decisive blow against their neighbours,
they might indeed need to take the rest of the
planet with them!
Thankfully not every Israeli took this position.
Indeed, the 'Free Vanunu' campaign itself had a
strong local contingent of active peace
campaigners.
These local activists were some of the most
impressive people I met during my stay in Israel.
Even in Australia they would have been impressive -
mainly young, idealistic University students, with
a commitment to world peace and global disarmament
- impressive but not extraordinary in our context.
In this context though, growing up in an
environment so overshadowed by violence and fear,
these brave young souls stood out like shining
lights.
The violent side of Israeli culture was never
more tangible to me than it was on the day of
Morde's release. I had traveled many thousands of
miles to be reunited with my friend on the day that
he walked free. In my dreams I had imagined our
reunion countless times. Morde would walk through
those gates with his belongings in one hand, and me
and a few friends and family would be there to
embrace him and lead him away. I didn't really
realise until I reached the prison just how far
from reality my imaginary depiction of that scene
would prove to be.
There were hundreds of us at the prison, and the
vast majority were not Morde's friends. As the time
of his release drew near, I tried to move towards
the prison gate where I had always imagined myself
standing as Morde walked out. I soon found myself
squeezed into the middle of an angry mob.
It was certainly one of the nastiest experiences
of my life. The whole mass of men seemed to seethe
with aggression, and each individual was competing
to claw his way to the front, for what exact
purpose was not entirely clear. Thankfully I could
not understand the chants that were being sung to
the tune of 'here we go, here we go, here we go',
but I was told later that the words for 'death' and
'traitor' had been central to all the mantras that
were chanted that day.
On reflection I now think that it was a good
thing that by the time Morde came through those
prison gates the police had packed us together so
tightly that I wasn't able to move a limb. What
prevented me from running out to embrace Morde also
prevented my neighbours from reaching him with more
sinister intent.
Thankfully the car with my friend in it got away
with no more than a dented panel and a shower of
eggs. One antagonist did manage to mount his
motorbike in time to catch the car, but after
slamming into the side of the vehicle he lost his
mount, and the 'free man' was able to proceed in
peace.
Back at the gaol things then started to unravel.
With their anger unresolved, the mob started to
vent their aggression on other targets. I found
myself swept up in this like a wave breaking over
my head. One second I was walking towards my bus.
The next moment I was surrounded by a mob led by an
angry rabbi, screaming at the top of his voice. 'Go
home' was the only phrase I could understand.
Equally unambiguous though were the rough hands
that were being placed on my body, the kicks that
were landing on my legs, and the spittle that was
accumulating on my face.
I didn't see any path of escape in this
situation, so I placed my hands together in a
position of prayer and bowed my head, working on
the hitherto successful strategy that if you refuse
to fight back, guys are generally very reluctant to
beat you up. It worked. A man grabbed me from
behind with both hands and hauled me out of the
centre of the mob. I made it back to my bus without
further incident.
All of this would have been water off a duck's
back had Morde and I then been able to board a
plane and fly back to Australia. Unfortunately the
authorities had ruled that this 'free' man should
not be allowed to leave the country, nor go
anywhere near a border or a foreign embassy, nor
have any contact with 'foreigners'. The 'foreigner'
restriction was aimed at the foreign press. Even
so, technically, I wasn't allowed to spend
extensive time with my old friend without risking
seeing him re-arrested!
We were reunited briefly on the evening of that
same day of his release. Unfortunately I cried so
much that I really didn't get the chance to tell
him all of the things that I had prepared for that
moment. All I can hope for now is that one-day we
will catch up properly - perhaps over a few beers
back here in the land of Oz. I know that Morde
would like that.
Getting Morde out of Israel is indeed the next
big challenge for the Vanunu campaign. I don't know
how hard this will prove to be. I do know that I
had a bloody hard time getting out myself. In my
case it wasn't that they didn't want me out (they
held off the departure of the plane until I got on
board). They just seemed determined to let me know
that they didn't want me back.
I had been warned by the other peace activists
of intimidation tactics employed by airport staff.
Ironically, I initially made it through all four
security checkpoints without being stopped. It was
only as I proceeded to the final gate that a young
man in a suit caught up with me and said, "Excuse
me sir, but can I see your passport." He then told
me that there had been a 'problem' and that he
would need to retain my passport until the
'problem' had been resolved. I was then shuffled
into a small room to begin a three-hour process of
interrogation, body searching and luggage
examination.
In the end the verdict was that I was free to go
and that there was nothing suspect about the
contents of my bags, but that the bags themselves
were suspect and that none of them could be taken
on board as hand luggage. This meant that I could
carry with me my camera, but not in my camera case,
my laptop, but not my laptop case, my video camera,
but not the bag with the shoulder strap that I
lugged it around in, my toothbrush and paste, but
not my toiletries bag, and even my Palm-pilot
portable keyboard, but not the little vinyl
dust-jacket that I kept it in. I could take what I
liked, so long as I carried it in my arms.
It was just a game, though they managed to keep
straight faces throughout the whole ordeal. For my
part I refused to get on board without the bulk of
my carry-on items. In the end they agreed to give
me a large cardboard box to put them in.
And so my cheap holiday in other people's misery
came to an end. But now the real work begins. For I
returned home, but I left my friend inside the
confines of St George's Cathedral in Jerusalem,
where the good bishop has offered him
sanctuary.
Morde can't leave the Cathedral grounds. He has
at least two reporters on every exit, taking shifts
to cover his movements 24-hours per day. If Morde
tries to walk out into the street, he'll be
immediately surrounded and identified, and given
the number of locals that would count it as a point
of pride to be responsible for his death, Morde's
life in the open probably wouldn't last more than a
few minutes.
I'd like to see my friend back here in
Australia. I wonder if the Australian government
has the courage to offer him citizenship?
Why Ray Williams is
still my hero
We wouldn’t be able to do any of the stuff we
do with kids if it wasn’t for the support we
get from local business people in our community.
This is not a shameless plug for our sponsors, just
recognition of the fact that whatever we’ve
been able to achieve in Dulwich Hill has been a
team effort between church and community.
People often ask me, “I suppose the church
pays for all this, do they”. I tell them
straight, that our little church in Dulwich Hill
has never been able to properly afford even the
minimum wage for their priest, and that the Church
with a capital ‘C’ (ie. the Anglican
Diocese of Sydney) has contributed next to nothing.
No. Almost all our support comes from the three
local pubs – the Gladstone, the Royal
Exchange, and the Henson Park Hotel – and from
the local RSL club (Petersham). The rest of it we
pick up through the Christians vs. Lions fight
nights we put on, and through other community
events (eg. the Mayor’s golf day, the annual
community Street Fair, etc.).
It wasn’t always this easy. In the early
years we really struggled to keep the Youth Centre
open. Then we caught the attention of one corporate
benefactor, who was able to keep us going long
enough for us to put the other support in place.
That benefactor was Ray Williams, former chief
executive of HIH insurance – one of the most
gentle, caring, and humble men I have ever met, and
currently one of the least popular men in the
country.
It amazes me when I think about it. Some of the
best people I have ever met are people with
terrible reputations. In each case of course their
reputations have been largely media-generated.
When my mate Jim got shot, one of the major
Sydney newspapers ran story entitled “Evil
Villain Gunned Down”. It featured a picture of
Jim carrying an automatic weapon. The picture had
been taken many years earlier during Jim’s
time with the Australian Army. I thought ‘You
bastards! That’s not the man I know.’
When Morde was on trail in Israel I read a
variety of articles that spoke about him as being a
sophisticated spy - working for the Arabs and out
to destroy his country. I thought ‘You
bastards! You have no idea who you are talking
about.’
Now I read stories about Ray – about how he
manipulated the market to line his own pockets and
how he deliberately defrauded millions of people,
and I think again ‘You bastards’.
Ray was sent by God to help us. I have no doubt
about that. I first met him through a fight I took,
though Ray himself was no fan of boxing.
The story of that fight was in itself quite
bizarre.
I had been sitting with the Archdeacon in my
office one afternoon. He was wagging his finger at
me and telling me that I’d have to close down
the Youth Centre. “You just don’t have
enough money to keep it going” he said. And he
was right. We were exactly $1000 short of being
able to pay our youth worker’s wage for the
next month. I was feeling rather nonchalant about
it all and was telling him to have more faith. At
exactly that moment Kon, my trainer, came to the
door.
“Dave, do you want to take a pro
fight?” he asked. “No” was my
knee-jerk reaction. I’d just completed my
fight career (I’d thought) with a shot at the
NSW super-welterweight title in kickboxing. The law
in this state at the time was that you had to hang
up your gloves when you turned 35. I was 34 and
nine months at that stage. “How much are they
offering?” I asked Kon. “$1000” he
said. I told him I’d take it. We raised close
to $50,000 for the Youth Centre through that fight.
More than half of that money came through Ray.
A guy by the name of Jeff Wells wrote an article
about my fight that was published in the Sydney
Morning Herald one Saturday. After that, cheques
for as much as $1000 started arriving in the mail!
Then one morning a courier turned up with two
cheques – one for $10,000 in the name of HIH
insurance, and another for $15,000 in the name of a
Mr R. Williams. I remember trembling when I
received these cheques. I’d never seen that
much money before in my life.
I had never heard of Ray Williams, but his
business card was attached, so I rang the number
and got one of those classic receptionist voices,
saying “Mr Williams is busy at the moment. Can
I take a message?” Then I mentioned my name
and all of a sudden I was speaking to Ray.
“Ah … hi … do I know you?” I
started. “No. I don’t think so,” he
said. “You’ve just sent me cheques for
$25,000” I said. “Yes” he said.
“Um … are you a local from around here?
Have you been watching our work?” I asked.
“No” he said. “Well … are you
connected with the church or with youth work around
here?” “No” he said. “Well
… are you a fight fan?” I asked,
scratching for some point of connection. “Not
at all” he said. “I read an article about
you in the Herald and it looked like you needed
some help.” “Yeah, I do” I said.
“Well, will that help?” he asked.
“Oh yeah” I said, “that’ll
help.”
That’s how our relationship began. Over the
years that followed Ray took a keen interest in our
work. As things at HIH became tighter, we
didn’t receive any further support from the
company, but Ray himself would generally turn up to
our fundraiser fight nights, and he wouldn’t
leave before slipping us a cheque from out of his
own funds. It’s what kept us going while we
searched for more stable sponsorship from the local
community. We owe a lot to Ray.
And it wasn’t just the money. It was the
man too. He was inspiring in his humility.
At the time of the first donation we had a guy
in our church who worked as one of the chief
accountants in the public hospital system. “Oh
yeah” he said to me one Sunday. “If it
wasn’t for Ray Williams, half the hospitals in
Sydney might be closed.” And then he added
“but he never likes to have his name
mentioned. He hates the limelight”
We found this to be entirely true. We managed to
get him on stage once to present a trophy to one of
our fighters, but it was a tough job. He really
hated being at the centre of attention. It’s
one of the things that makes this Royal Commission
so odious to him.
I still can’t believe the way the media
have gone after him – vigorously attacking him
for his generosity to hospitals and charities.
It’s not as if he was giving away money that
should have gone to insurance claimants. If he
hadn’t given it away, I guess it would have
slightly increased the dividend paid to the
shareholders, and he himself must have been one of
the largest shareholders. I still find it
preposterous to think that the media should have
acted so self-righteously indignant about the fact
that the poor shareholders were losing potential
income because it had gone to the children’s
hospital. It’s just ridiculous.
But it wasn’t only the media that crucified
Ray. Once the news about HIH’s collapse became
public knowledge, former colleagues deserted him,
old friends and associates turned their backs on
him, and charities that he’d been supporting
for years all of a sudden didn’t want to know
him. Ray had been on the board of the
Children’s Hospital for as long as anybody
could remember. They sent him a letter saying
‘thank you but your services are no longer
required’. Nobody waited for the results of
the Royal Commission. Nobody waited to see if
perhaps he wasn’t the real villain in the
piece. Everyone distanced themselves, not wanting
their own reputations to be tarnished.
I seriously can’t understand that attitude.
I know I’m capable of doing some stupid and
selfish things, but deserting a mate in his time of
need is not one of them. When I think about all the
people that Ray must have helped over the years, I
just can’t believe that none of them thought
to ring him up and say ‘How are you going,
Ray. Perhaps it’s my turn to give you some
support?’
Anyway, my point here is not to spit my dummy.
And I’ll be the first to admit that I
don’t have a clue about big business,
insurance laws, or anything of the sort. But I know
a good man when I meet one, and Ray Williams is a
good man and someone whom I’m proud to call my
friend. And I’ll be buggered if I’m going
stand by and listen to people pouring crap out on a
mate of mine without saying anything.
To be truthful, I don’t expect that Ray
will ever fully regain his former reputation or
standing. I know too much about how the media works
and about how our court system works to ever expect
real justice. As with my friends Jim and Morde,
I’m not holding my breath waiting for the
truth to come out. No. I’ll look to the day
when the kingdom of this world will become the
kingdom of our Lord and Christ. When that day
comes, all the crap will be sorted out.
There's nothing quite so
Glorious as a Good Fight with your Fists!
“Blessed be the LORD my strength,
-which teacheth my hands to war,
-and my fingers to fight.
-My goodness, and my fortress;
-my high tower, and my deliverer;
-my shield, and he in whom I trust;
-who subdueth my people under me.”
Psalm 144
‘Do you do sparring here’ he asked.
‘Yes’ I said, wishing I had another
answer to give him.
Normally I’m mad keen when new guys wander
into the gym looking to do some training, but this
was different. Normally guys wander in by
themselves or with a mate. This was a group of
four, and only three of them were teenagers. The
guy talking to me was an older guy, probably in his
fifties.
The first time I met a group like this I assumed
that the older guy was the father or uncle of the
younger boys - scouting around for a good gym for
his kids. This time I knew better. Teenagers always
scout out their own gym and then tell dad about it
later. The old guy who leads kids into a fight gym
can only ever be a trainer, and a trainer who turns
up unannounced at somebody else’s gym is
generally a trainer who’s got something to
prove.
“Mohammed here needs some sparring
practice” the old guy continued. “Can he
spar with you?”
Mohammed was tall and dark, about 18 years old,
and had attitude written all over his face. He was
standing about two metres away from me, arms
folded, eyeing me out. It occurred to me that the
trainer might not have been the only one in that
group with something to prove.
“Well, we’re just about finished up
for tonight” I said, “but if you’d
like to come back on Sunday afternoon, I might be
able to do a couple of rounds with your boy
then.”
Sunday was three days away, and I anticipated
that this wholly unsatisfactory response would
result in the pack simply moving on in search of
more ready prey, but the old guy said “That
will be just fine. What time do we get
here?”
I responded with some feeble dialogue about how
we only spar for fun at our gym and about how we
all try to take care of each other, but it was too
late. The match was set in stone.
When the group showed up on the Sunday I was
still busy chairing the monthly Parish Council
meeting. I had forgotten about my church management
duties when I made the date with the old guy, but
the meetings are scheduled to finish before the
kids arrive for training anyway, so it
shouldn’t have made any difference.
I deliberately hold the meetings in the room
adjacent to the gym, so that if the meeting does
run late I can zip across and open up the gym and
keep out a listening ear while I finish the
meeting. I can’t remember whether we were
running late that day or whether the boys arrived
early. What I do remember was that the last half
hour of the meeting was dominated by a rhythmical
‘thwack’ penetrating the walls of the
meeting room - the sound of my prospective opponent
belting into a punching bag in preparation for the
big event. Needless to say, it made it difficult
for me to concentrate on the concluding details of
the meeting.
When the meeting finally finished, I hurried
over apologetically to where the challenger was
warming up. I deliberately went over still wearing
my clerical collar, hoping that the sight of the
venerable old rector of Dulwich Hill might have a
calming effect on the challenger, who by this time
had worked himself into quite a lather of sweat. A
little focused reflection should have told me that
neither Mohammed, nor his brothers Mustaffer and
Achmed (whom he introduced me to) were likely to be
impressed by the priestly garb. Perhaps the meeting
had drained my brain. It had seemed like a good
idea at the time.
Meeting the brothers made me aware of something
else. Mohammed had brought quite a sizable
entourage with him. In addition to the brothers
there were cousins and friends, guys and girls -
quite an audience. I did not get introduced to all
of them, but I got the picture. One of them had
brought a video camera, hoping to capture vivid
images of the great shellacking on tape. I made a
few more feeble utterances about ‘all taking
care of each other’ but all words were, by
that stage, just more unwanted delays to the great
showdown. I got into my gear and fronted up to the
ring.
I think I was still muttering niceties when the
bell rang and Mohammed started for me. He was
young, fast and strong, and he came at me like a
wild animal - panting hard, eyes ablaze, fists
flying. I had been in this position before and I
knew what to do. The boy was fit and fast, but he
was still a teenager, and this was the Achilles
heel that I had to aim for.
It’s all about ego when you’re a
teenager. It’s all about showing how tough you
are - showing that you can beat your chest more
loudly than the gorilla next to you. If you can
frustrate the young Achilles - make him miss and
ideally make him look a bit foolish - then you can
take control. So I did what I do best - I ducked
and weaved and used my footwork to stay away from
him, let him swing at the air for a while and then
tied him up when he cornered me. And in the clinch
I continued my friendly dialogue - “Let’s
settle down a bit, eh? No need to hurt anybody
today, is there?” I kept up this pattern for
the best part of two rounds before accepting that
the friendly dialogue was having no positive effect
whatsoever.
Normally a young buck like Mohammed can keep
this sort of pace up for about half a round. The
more they swing and miss, the more frustrated and
tense they get, and the more frustrated and tense
they get, the more energy they throw into each
successive punch. Other young kids I’ve had
like this have been all punched out in about a
minute, but Mohammed was fit.
Given that this guy had not only his friends but
his family watching, the potential for
embarrassment was enormous. Every now and then he
would swing so powerfully but so wildly that he
would almost trip over himself – a move that
drew giggles from the female members of his
entourage and which must have made his blood boil.
The constant streaming of videotape could not have
been helping him maintain his equilibrium either.
Every indicator suggested that this guy had to
punch himself out soon, but by the end of the
second round he seemed to be showing no signs of
tiring whatsoever!
At the beginning of round three I clinched him
again and tried to talk him down again, but he just
wrestled me off again and continued swinging. And
it seemed that no matter how many times he would
swing at the air, he would launch the succeeding
punch with the same level of energy, convinced that
he was going to floor me forever with the next
hit.
Now there’s only so much of this that any
human being can be expected to take, and I’m
no exception. I pride myself on being as calm as a
cucumber in the ring, but after two and a half
rounds with this guy I was starting to get really
pissed off. After all, there’s only so long
you can keep ducking and avoiding before your
opponent does land a lucky punch, and this guy was
punching hard and continuously.
Half way through round three he got me onto the
ropes and started working my body and throwing
uppercuts. It was when the third right uppercut
whizzed past and singed my nose hairs that I
remember something within me saying ‘stuff
this’ and I spun off the ropes and started to
give him a few back.
Perhaps it was the sheer shock of receiving some
shots from me after two rounds of almost complete
passivity, but he wasn’t prepared for my
comeback at all. I don’t think I’ve ever
landed a three-punch combination quite so squarely
on anybody as I did on Mohammed on that fateful
Sunday afternoon. I threw a right hook, a left
hook, and a right uppercut, and the great beast
just dropped like a sack of potatoes at my feet -
‘boom’.
I knelt down and picked him up. I embraced him
and whispered in his ear “You’ve got your
friends watching. You’ve got your family
watching. You’re on tape. You don’t want
to look like a complete fucking idiot do you?”
The guy who replied seemed to be a different
character altogether from the one that had hit the
floor - “Let’s just have a bit of fun, eh
Father? No need for anybody to get hurt here, is
there?”
After that Mohammed and me were best mates. We
did a few more fun and respectful rounds together,
after which one of his brothers (I can’t
remember which one) did a couple of rounds with me.
The brother was completely respectful from start to
finish and not a shot was thrown in anger. We had a
lovely time.
When it was all over I stepped through the ropes
and down the steps, and Mohammed’s entire
entourage formed a silent guard of honour as I
exited the ring.
I had just watched the movie
‘Gladiator’ the week before, and the
memory of that scene where Maximus passes between
his fellow gladiators and they all rise to their
feet to salute their hero came flashing back to me.
I think it was the greatest moment of glory I have
ever experienced.
There I was - towel over my shoulder and gloves
under one arm - emerging from the gladiatorial ring
to the silent adoration of the assembled crowd, who
stood and parted before me as I made my way from
the stadium.
I can think of two other moments of glory in my
life. Fighting Dave Guleyan over five rounds back
in 1991 was the first. It wasn’t that the
fight was anything spectacular, but the event was
televised on one of the big TV current affairs
programmes. And I won!
The second point of glory came when I caught
Anthony ‘the Man’ Mundine with a left
hook, and I heard the roar of support come from the
very partisan home crowd at Dulwich High School. It
had nothing to do with me thinking that I could
beat the man, but to catch him with a single solid
shot, and to know that all my mates saw me do it
– that was glorious!
But the incident with Mohammed was the
gold-medal moment for me. Perhaps it was because it
was so unexpected. I had been concentrating on
survival. I think it was only as the spontaneous
honor guard formed that I realised that Mohammed
hadn’t been the only one ‘on
show’.
I saw Mohammed about twice more after that
Sunday. I was sorry to loose touch with him, but
there’s no way his trainer would have allowed
him to maintain the contact. The event lies well in
the past now, but the sense of glory lingers. It
still feels good when I think about it.
“Blessed be the LORD my strength,
which teacheth my hands to war,
and my fingers to fight.”
Why more priests need to
train as fighters (and why we don't see many boxers
in church) II
The forgotten secret of the Ancient Greeks that
shows us how to keep our teenagers out of trouble
by teaching them to fight!
To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which
is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-3)--
Four of the boys at training tonight are
preparing themselves for their first fight at our
forthcoming Christians vs. Lions promotion,
scheduled for only three weeks hence. All of these
lads are boxers.
Three of those four – Joel, Daniel and
young Dave – are friends, finishing their last
year of school together. They are a great example
of how guys from different ethnic backgrounds
(Australian, Latin American, and Lebanese
respectively) can still be the best of mates. The
fourth guy, Louis, is an enormous Islander man.
I’m not sure whether he’s Tongan or from
the Cook Islands, but he’s a gentle giant
really. He reminds me of Mahendar – a regular
here at the Youth Centre. They’re both big,
black and burly, but with gentle hearts. Louis has
a few years on the other boys who were there
tonight. He’s a natural in the ring, and plays
the role of the older brother very well indeed.
These four boys are the cream of our crop in the
fight club at the moment. They are all capable
pugilists, but more than that, they are each a good
embodiment of what our club is on about –
courage, integrity, self-discipline and teamwork.
This isn’t to say that none of them have ever
been troublemakers. Indeed, I’ve got a court
appearance coming up with one of the boys,
scheduled for shortly after his fight, and
he’s on quite serious charges. Even so,
I’ve seen nothing but positive growth since he
joined the club, and I’m hoping for positive
results both in his fight and in his court
case.
What is it that makes fight training such a
powerful tool in the molding of young lives? There
was a time when I thought of fighting as just
another form of sport. I have come to believe
though that fight training taps into something deep
in the male psyche, in a way that no other sport
does.
When I used to talk to my old girls in the
church about the problems we had with our young
people, they often used to say ‘what we need
is another war’. I always thought that that
was a terrible thing to say – that a war was
the last thing that anybody wanted. And of course
the girls didn’t really want a war. They had
just experienced the benefit of being part of a
community that had learnt to pull together through
difficult times. And they had seen the positive
effect that soldiering could have on the lives of
young men.
I believe that men were made to fight. It’s
part of our genetic makeup. We may have managed to
emerge from the jungle, but there’s still a
bit of the jungle in each of us, and pugilistic
activity keys right in to those ancient impulses
– releasing the wild man within.
This theory isn’t original to me of course.
It’s part of the fabric of the Bible –
there behind every great warrior-king who showed
himself to be a ‘mighty man of God’ in
battle, and behind Jacob, who went toe to toe with
God Himself and yet lived to talk about it (Genesis
32)! These were men who knew how to fight and pray
and bleed and serve.
For a more philosophical exposition on the
significance of fighting, we need look no further
than Plato’s Republic.
For those who haven’t read it, in the
Republic Socrates explores the concept of justice
through examining both the just society and the
just individual, and then he goes on to delineate
their common elements. On the societal level he
notes that a just community is made up of a number
of vital components parts: rulers who govern,
workers who labour, and an army that functions to
protect them both. In the individual he finds a
similar configuration – the mind that governs
the body, the limbs that do the work, and the
‘themos’ (which is often translated as
‘temper’ or ‘aggression’) that
plays a parallel role in protecting the individual.
Justice in the Republic consists in having all of
the component parts (in either individual or
society) being present and working together
properly.
In the wisdom of the ancient Greeks then, the
‘themos’ is the vital third component in
the human constitution, along with the mind and the
body. Without the ‘themos’, no individual
is complete, and at a social level, no society will
ever achieve a true state of justice.
It is my opinion that one of the negative
legacies of feminism in Western culture has been an
attempt to deny the ‘themos’, which seems
to be more strongly present in men than in women.
This has been for the most understandable of
reasons – because of the excesses of male
violence. But perhaps it’s time that we
realised that trying to eliminate
‘themos’ from society altogether is like
trying to eliminate spiders and snakes because we
find them distasteful. We soon discover that the
created order needs all of its creatures –
even those that some of us find ugly – if it
is to function properly.
My experience with a vast number of men is that
they tend to be either functioning as doormats to
their wives and girlfriends, or they’re
beating up on them. This is a reflection of the
same crisis in dealing with the ‘themos’.
When we attempt to repress the themos’, it
often spurts out in the most horrible and
destructive of forms. When we successfully repress
it, we emasculate our men, so that they’re no
longer able to stand up for anything. Ironically,
of course, such modern day men are not only unable
to offer any strength to society. They’re no
longer even attractive to the women they sought to
please.
The only constructive alternative is for us to
reharness the ‘themos’ and channel it
creatively. We need to get in touch with that
distinctive male energy – recognise it, affirm
it, and then learn to bring it under control so
that it can be put to good use. Perhaps when we are
able to do this, then we will see this country
produce leaders of the calibre of Martin Luther
King Jr., Mother Theresa, or Mahatma Ghandi –
strong people of principle who stand up powerfully
for what they believe in. As it is, our leaders
always seem to come across as being either
‘wooses’ or criminals or both. God knows
we need some real men in this country who know what
it means to love their women, to be fathers to
their children, and to serve God and their
community with their strength!
Fight training, I do believe, is a means to
getting at that ‘themos’ and learning to
bring it under control. When done in the right way,
fight training can help a young person to discover
who they are and can help them to bring their
futures into focus. They can then come to see their
role as warriors in this society who will stand up
and use their energy to build a better community
and to fight for things worth fighting for.
What about these boys who I watched training
with me tonight? Will they go on to become
‘mighty men of God'? I don’t know. But
they’re on the right track, and they’re
further ahead now than when they first started
their training.
Why more priests need to
train as fighters (and why we don't see many boxers
in church)
"Therefore I do not run like a man running
aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the
air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so
that after I have preached to others, I myself will
not be disqualified for the prize." --
(1cCorinthiansc9:26-27)
St Paul was a fighter. I don’t think he
ever competed in the ring, but that wasn’t
because he lacked the discipline or was afraid of
the pain.
I always say that to be a fighter you need to
have two things going for you. Firstly you need to
have a lot of energy inside that needs release.
Secondly, you need to be not too concerned about
your own health. This fits the profile of most of
our young men perfectly - on the edge of the drug
culture, full of testosterone, and with no thought
for the future. It also fits perfectly the profile
of another group - single fathers, struggling to
gain access to their children.
That was how I got into the fight game. I
hadn’t taken it up as a teenager, and I
certainly hadn’t been born into it. My dad was
a priest for God’s sake, and an academic.
Fighting had not been my birthright. I came in
through the back door of pain and loneliness and
bitter struggle.
Separated, and struggling for the right to see
my daughter, I had made one half-hearted attempt at
suicide already by that stage. And I had met with
my bishop the following day and he had told me not
to ‘trade off’ my situation (in other
words, not to get too comfortable). I appeared to
be losing my family, my vocation, and most of my
friends at the same time. Full of emotional energy,
obsessed with thoughts of self-destruction, and
drinking way too much, I managed to find my way to
the Mundine gym. It was my decision not to go
under, but to fight back.
Mundine’s is situated in the middle of
Everleigh Street, Redfern - the roughest street in
one of the roughest neighborhoods in our city.
Redfern is a largely Aboriginal suburb on the
outskirts of central Sydney. In recent years the
government has come through and ‘cleaned it
up’ somewhat, which meant pushing a lot of the
local residents further out west. Even so, it is
still a rough area.
I had grown up in the vicinity of Everleigh
Street. My dad had been a lecturer at the Anglican
seminary located only a few blocks from this dark
heart of Aboriginal Sydney. It was always an odd
location for the seminary. The ecclesiastical
community never had anything to do with the
adjoining aboriginal enclave. On the contrary, most
persons associated with the religious community
dealt with their black neighbours by practising the
same sort of avoidance strategy that I’d
learnt as a kid – scurrying quickly past the
end of Everleigh Street and its environs whenever
circumstances put us unavoidably within its
reach.
Ironically this strategy had to be invoked every
time you got off a train from Redfern station. The
platforms seemed to be designed to feed directly
into Everleigh Street! Of course I never made the
mistake of straying down that way myself, and as a
youngster, I had heard many a nasty story about the
price paid by some of the less wary.
None of this is to suggest that the reputation
of Everleigh was based on hearsay. I had seen
plenty with my own eyes.
Countless times I had seen young toddlers and
their slightly older siblings wandering the streets
at night while their parents got drunk at the
local. One night I watched as a stupid woman
stopped her car after these kids had thrown rocks
at it. She got out and tried to confront the kids
about what they had done. The result of course was
that they found some bigger rocks and a couple of
bricks. They made quite a mess of that car.
My brother told me that he had witnessed a roll
take place from the top of the street in broad
daylight. Some boys had pulled a knife on a
university student who had handed them his wallet.
The student had then located a nearby policeman and
had pointed out the boys to him, but the copper did
nothing about it. He said he didn’t want to
start a riot!
I had seen the bonfires that would be lit when
the new phone books or Yellow Pages directories
were delivered. I had seen the shells of burnt out
cars in the street. I had seen plenty, and had
plenty of good reasons to never deliberately
venture down that street, which is why my first
walk to the Mundine gym was like wading through
water – every step being a slow and deliberate
effort. But I was determined to become a fighter,
and I’d just as soon lose my life in Everleigh
Street than give up on my dream to have my day in
the ring.
The exterior of Mundine’s Gym is not
designed to draw attention to itself. You’d
walk right past it if you didn’t know it was
there. It’s missing entirely that glittering
windowed street frontage with the sleek bodies of
well-groomed athletes on display for passers-by
– the type that we associate with the sorts of
gyms where you pay a costly membership fee.
Mundine’s has no membership fee. I don’t
remember there even being a sign out the front.
Mundine’s looks like just another
housing-commission block, with its inglorious
entrance at the bottom of a stairwell. But you pick
up that it’s a gym long before you reach the
top of those stairs. The smell of liniment hits you
half way up – that manly smell that mingles so
harmoniously with the melodic whir of the skipping
rope tap, tap, tapping its way through another
round.
This is what makes a real gym – the smell
of liniment, the sound of the rope, the less
rhythmical thwacking of glove to bag, and of course
the fighting. When you step inside Mundine’s,
you know you’re in a real gym. No pretty boys.
No glamour workouts. No white-collar boxercise
sessions for indulgent professionals. Just bodies,
sweat, testosterone and blood.
They play hard at Mundine’s. That’s
governed by the sort of guys that show up there of
course, but it’s also embedded in the
architecture of the gym to some extent. The ring
stands in the centre of the building and it’s
a small ring, made for brawlers. There is a small
assortment of bags strung around the sides, but no
fancy speedballs or floor-to-ceiling bags, such
that you could justify turning up just to have a
workout on the bags. There are a few pieces of
weights equipment too, but again not enough to
allow them to become a serious point of focus. No.
The whole structure is designed to channel you into
the ring. Everything else is just padding.
That’s the way it should be in a real gym.
I wore my clerical shirt and collar the first
time I went there. Even now I don’t think it
was an entirely stupid thing to have done. I wanted
to be up-front about who I was and where I was
coming from. Even so, I hadn’t really thought
through the effect that this was going to have on
the other boys at the gym, most of whom were,
initially, very reluctant to hit me. They got over
it though, particularly after they realised that I
had no qualms about hitting them. Within a couple
of weeks I was coming home each night bruised and
bleeding from head to toe, and I knew I was one of
the lads.
Is it just me, or does every man need to go
through something like this at some time in his
life – to know the joy of falling into your
bed aching with the wounds that your sparring
partner has inflicted on you that evening, and
sleeping soundly in the knowledge that your ring
brother is likewise doing his best to sleep off the
impression that you made on him? I had many a
glorious sparring session during those first weeks
and months at Mundine’s. They weren’t
pretty to watch I suppose, but they were epic
struggles of the human spirit so far as I was
concerned.
There are few things in life more deeply
satisfying than a good fight. A hard night in the
ring is an enormous catharsis for a man who is
struggling with life, but it’s more than that
too. When you step into a ring you’re making a
decision to take control of your own destiny. The
forces that oppose you are no longer vague powers
that threaten to overwhelm you from a distance -
the law, the courts, the system. No. Your
opposition takes on a clear material form in the
shape of the other man advancing on you from the
other corner. To get into that ring and to stay in
that ring is to make a decision to give it a go
– to put your body on the line and to stand up
to the punishment like a man. Fighting is more than
a sport. It’s a way of life. It is the defiant
decision to confront your pain directly and not to
be overcome by it. Mundine’s gym taught me
that, or at least it played a significant role.
There was another vital lesson I learnt at
Mundine’s - perhaps even more important than
what I learned about fighting. I learnt to respect
the fight community.
The fight community is a culture all of its own,
and was certainly spawned on an entirely different
planet to the church community. I’m sure that
some Anglican church-goers must have wondered why
there are so many doctors and accountants in their
congregations and so few fighters. The truth is
that most church people just don’t speak the
same language as fighters.
The converse is also true. The fight community,
as far as I can see, has very little idea of what
the church is on about. I don’t mean that
fighters aren’t spiritual guys. On the
contrary, some of the most godly and inspirational
men I have met have been fighters. And yet they
have no point of contact with the established
church. The two groups just don’t understand
each other at all. Never was this made clearer to
me than on my fourth visit to Mundine’s
gym.
I had turned up quietly in my tracksuit and was
wandering over to the bench at the side of the ring
where we tended to leave our gear while we were
training. A group of guys were huddled there
talking, and there was nothing particularly private
about the volume of their conversation. I think
they were discussing relationship problems, though
I didn’t overhear everything. What I
couldn’t help hearing was one guy say very
clearly ‘So I grabbed her, and I punched her
in the fuckin’ head’. He said it loudly
and enacted a downwards punching motion as he said
it.
Then he noticed me standing nearby and suddenly
felt very self-conscious. ‘Oh, sorry
Father’ he said. And then he corrected
himself. ‘I punched her ... (and he said it
very slowly and deliberately) ... in the
head’.
If I’d had my wits about me that night I
would have said something clever like ‘I
don’t think the Lord really gives a fuck about
your language brother, but I think He does care
about your wife.’ As it was, I didn’t say
anything. I think I responded with a feeble smile.
At the time, I just couldn’t work out how this
guy had ever got it into his head that, as a
priest, I would be more concerned about the fact
that he swore than I would be about the fact that
he beat his wife? Nowadays I take that sort of
perception for granted.
I think it’s the church that has to bear
the responsibility for the communication breakdown.
So much of the church nowadays reeks of a sort of
insipid middle-class moralism that really does care
more about smoking and swearing than it does about
domestic violence or world hunger. I don’t
think the Lord Jesus or St Paul ever intended to
spawn any of these Christianized golf clubs that
call themselves churches. Personally, I suspect
that Jesus and the apostles would feel more at home
in the average boxing gym today than they would in
the average church. Of course they wouldn’t
like the threats and the violence, but they would
love the honesty. Fighters are very honest
people.
One guy, again from the Mundine gym, summed it
up for me. ‘Around here nobody stabs anybody
in the back’, he said to me. Then he pointed
to his heart and added emphatically: ‘You stab
here!’ That’s why I have so much respect
for the fight culture. I know I can trust fighters.
I know they won’t stuff me round –
smiling to my face but stabbing me in the back when
I turn around. I wish the same could be said for
all church people.
St Paul was a fighter. ‘I do not fight like
a man beating the air’ he says. They had the
ancient Pankration fighting in his day – a
vicious form of no rules combat that was concluding
event in the original Olympics. Those guys
certainly didn’t ‘beat the air’.
When Ulysses came home from the Trojan War, legend
has it that his own mother didn’t recognise
him. According to my friend and former trainer Kon,
legend has it that when the Pankration champion
came home from the Olympic Games, his own dog
couldn’t recognise him! Those guys knew what
real fighting is about.
St Paul would have made one tough bugger as a
fighter. What I wouldn't give to be able to jump
into the old Pankration ring with him to go a
couple of rounds! You’d never knock him down
though. I suspect most of the apostles would have
been like that – warm big-hearted men, but as
hard as nails in the ring.
I have a secret hope that when I get to heaven
I’ll be able to take on some of those boys and
try my luck. I guess it’s not everyone’s
idea of heaven, but it is mine.
The real problem with
today's teenagers (and why most parents just don't
get it!)
"The inspiration of a noble cause involving human
interests wide and far, enables men to do things
they did not dream themselves capable of before,
and which they were not capable of alone. The
consciousness of belonging, vitally, to something
beyond individuality; of being part of a
personality that reaches we know not where, in
space and time, greatens the heart to the limit of
the soul's ideal, and builds out the supreme of
character." (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, October
3, 1889)
Who was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain I might ask.
No, not the one-time British Prime Minister. That
was a different Chamberlain. J.L. Chamberlain was a
general in the American Civil War, who fought for
the North. Why mention him today? It will remain a
secret at this stage.
My name is Dave. I generally function under the
persona of 'Father Dave'. That's because I am a
priest -an Anglican priest. Apart from being a
priest I am also a boxer and all-round martial arts
master. I am also a 'youth worker' of sorts.
In some places in the world I would be granted
an enormous amount of respect because I am a
priest. In this community, I find I receive more
respect that I deserve on account of my reputation
for hitting people. I personally believe that the
only role in that list that really demands respect
is the one of 'Youth Worker'
Working with young people is hard. I used to be
a young person. I was a hard young person to work
with. I was a difficult student at school. I went
on to be an argumentative University student and
then a troublesome seminary student. I've left
behind me a whole string of academic institutions
that have been somewhat glad to see the back of
me.
Now I've been working with hard and difficult
young people in Dulwich Hill for the last twelve
years (which may be God's way of paying me back).
Some of the young people I've worked with have
really got their lives together and gone on to
bigger and better things. Quite a number of them
have died - mainly from overdoses but also from car
accidents (often in stolen cars) and from suicide.
Others I'm still working with. They're just not
quite as young as they used to be.
People ask me all the time 'Dave, what do you
think is the biggest problem facing young people
today'. Most people think I am going to answer
'drugs'.
I do not consider drugs to be the biggest
problem young people are facing today. That's not
because I don't think drugs are a big problem. I've
worked with a lot of drug-addicted young people
over the years. I have been robbed and manipulated
by them, and I have watched many of them. Even so,
I do not consider drugs to be the biggest problem
plaguing our young people.
Some people think 'violence' is the biggest
problem facing young people, and I am conscious of
the fact that for young guys (in particular)
problems of violence can still be a major issue.
Violence is not nearly so big a problem in my area
as it was five years ago, but we still managed to
finish up one of our most recent blue-light discos
with an all-in brawl in the streets. Problems of
violence are alive and well in Dulwich Hill. Even
so, I do not consider violence to the biggest
problem facing young people.
Some people think in terms of lack of employment
opportunities as the major issue. Others would
speak in terms of family breakdown or problems of
prejudice - all real issues. Personally though, I
believe that the biggest problem facing our young
people today is something a little less tangible.
Personally I think the biggest problem I see with
our young people is that most of them don't feel
themselves to be a part of anything that is bigger
than themselves.
Most young people I meet have tragically small
horizons, very little ambition, and hence live in
very tiny worlds. When I ask teenagers about what
they would really like to do with their lives if
they could do anything at all, most others speak in
terms of getting something, whether that something
be a horse or a car or a girl or just 'a lot of
money'.
No one I speak to says 'If I could do anything I
wanted I'd find a cure for cancer' or 'I'd
negotiate a peace deal in the Middle East'. And
this reflects, I believe, the fact that most young
people I know have very narrow horizons. Indeed,
most young persons I know seem to live in worlds
that are not much bigger than themselves.
Go back a couple of generations and most
European Australians were ready to lay down their
lives for King and country. You wouldn't find many
young people today willing to sacrifice themselves
for Queen and country. You won't find many young
people who have any real sense of loyalty to the
Queen or to the country. Indeed, if you ask most
young people what it means to be Australian, you
won't generally get a reply that contains any
ideals.
There are positives as well as negatives in this
equation of course. Strong patriotism often goes
hand in hand with strong prejudice against people
of other nationalities. And our Australian cynicism
towards our governing bodies at least means that
we're not easily fooled by political propaganda.
Even so, the downside of our 'loss of national
identity' means that we've been thrust back upon
ourselves and upon our peers to find some sense of
personal identity.
Now if you're following me here at all you may
well be thinking 'Yeah, Dave thinks that because
he's working with a group of no good loser drug
addicts. Hell, I don't know what happened to him
since he left Fort Street, but that guy has been on
a one-way downwardly mobile trip. Over here we've
really got it all together.' Yeah? I don't
know.
One of the most depressing groups of young
people I've encountered in the past few years has
been at my oldest daughter's school. She attends a
different government run selective high school. I
won't say which one. NOT THIS ONE! When she fist
started school there they asked her whole class
'what did they want to be when they finished
school?', and almost every other person there,
apart from her, said 'a lawyer'.
Now people, maybe I've been prejudiced over the
years by the enormous amount of time I've spent in
juvenile courts and in the prison system, but it
seems to me that if we're really on about building
a better Australia, the last thing we need is more
lawyers!
Now I know I shouldn't be black and white about
this, but my daughter went around and asked her
peers 'why do you want to be a lawyer?' Some of
them answered 'because my dad is a lawyer' or
something like that, but MOST of them said that it
was because being a lawyer was a 'good job', by
which they mean what ….? A job that can help a
lot of people? NO! When people say a 'good job'
they mean a job that makes a lot of money.
There was a time when we used to speak of the
'idealism of youth'. What's happened to that? When
did youthful idealism get replaced by this 'I want
to make a lot of money' mentality? Why do people
who should know better want to make a 'lot of
money'? Is it because you think you need a lot of
money in order to survive? You don't! Is it because
you think 'if I have a lot of money I will be
really important and people will look up to me?'
GET A LIFE!
Friends, I do not think that there is any
greater tragedy in this community than a highly
trained intelligent young person who has all the
gifts and abilities necessary to really make a
difference in this society, but who has no idea
where to direct those gifts and abilities. It's
like having a powerful loaded weapon and not caring
where it's aiming when it goes off.
This is the tragedy: that most of our young
people, I fear, drug-addicted and not
drug-addicted, well educated as well as less well
educated, winners as well as losers, live a life
wherein 'my life is basically about me'. That's a
tragedy.
One of my good friends is a guy called Mordechai
Vanunu, who is still in prison in Israel for
telling the world about all the nuclear bombs that
his country has stockpiled. Morde has been in
prison there now for 17 years. The worst thing
about his prison term though was that he spent the
first 11 and a half years in solitary confinement,
which is one of the most torturous forms of human
punishment - living in a world inhabited by
one!
I see a similar tragedy taking place in the
lives of so many of our young people who really
have no hopes, dreams or ambitions in this life
that go beyond themselves. What a small life to
live! It's like trying to beautify the wallpaper in
your own solitary cell!
It's this loss of idealism that I see as the
greatest scourge afflicting our young people today,
and my response to this situation is to teach these
young people to fight, which might not seem like
the most obvious solution to the dilemma to
everybody.
The relevance of fighting to an individual's
value system might not be immediately obvious to
everyone, but I do seriously believe that pugilism
and idealism are intricately linked. The bottom
line is that I know that it all works.
I know that I've had an almost 100% success rate
when it comes to taking in guys who have serious
drug problems or violence problems, that by the
time I get them to the side of the ring for a
serious fight, they are no longer having problems
with drugs or violence or any of those things, but
have actually developed a real sense of who they
are and what they are on about.
I know it works. I'm not sure I fully understand
why it works, but I would note that if you go back
to Plato's Republic, to the wisdom of the Ancient
Greeks, you'll find that Socrates assigned a very
high place to the value of 'themos', which we
translate as 'aggression' or 'fighting spirit'.
According to Socrates, no individual and no
society is complete without properly developed
'themos'. Individuals and societies need to know
how to fight if they are going to know real harmony
and real justice.
The other authority I would appeal to today is
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain:
" The consciousness of belonging, vitally, to
something beyond individuality … greatens the
heart to the limit of the soul's ideal, and builds
out the supreme of character."
Chamberlain writes this out of his experience in
the American Civil War - one of the most terrible
wars in history.
Chamberlain was, ironically, a contemporary and
a colleague of William Tecumseh Sherman who coined
the phrase 'war is hell' and I don't think
Chamberlain would have necessarily disagreed with
Sherman. But Chamberlain also found that, for all
its horror, war had one very positive side effect -
it gave people a sense of belonging to something
that was greater than themselves and so it could
bring out the best in people.
Of course Chamberlain isn't the only person
whose seen this. My old dears at the church used to
say it all the time. "What these young people need
is a good war" they used to say. Now they weren't
stupid, and they knew as well as anyone else that
the last thing we really need is a 'good war', but
their point was that they felt young people needed
some experience like they'd had in their youth,
where they were forced to work together with a
broad range of people across the community and to
make sacrifices together as they committed
themselves to a cause which was something far
bigger than any of them as individuals.
Fighting has worked for me (and it's less costly
all round than starting a war). Maybe it will work
for you too. Find out! Come down and touch gloves
with me. Do a few rounds. See how the experience
affects you. (just don't all come at once)
Perhaps fighting is not your thing. That's OK.
Find another way to get in touch with your ideals
and values. Spend more time in church. Head up on a
mountain by yourself for a couple of months and
just think and pray about it. That works for some
people. Just don't be content with a life that has
no greater horizon than your own wealth and
self-importance.
We live in an extraordinary society in an
extraordinary period in human history. Think about
it. At how many other points in history, and in how
many other places in the world, have any group of
people ever had the degree of choice about the
future that we have today.
Think about it. The rest of your life lies
before you and you can really choose to do with it
just about anything you want to! Your options are
really only limited by your imagination and your
genetic potential. At how many times and places in
human history has that been true?
If you were born a few generations back in a
village you wouldn't have had these sorts of
choices. Your dad was the village Smithy, so that's
what you were going to be. If you were born on a
farm you were probably going to stay on that farm
until you died. If you were a teenage girl you
probably already had a couple of kids by now and
your path was fully set.
We're at the opposite end of the spectrum now.
If you decide to spend the rest of your life
entirely devoted to playing your guitar you can do
it. You may become a great rock star, but even if
you don't you won't starve. The government safety
net will still support you in the end so that you
can keep doing nothing but guitar playing if that's
what you really want.
If you decide to devote the rest of your life to
scientific research you can do that. If that's your
vision and you're determined, nobody is going to
stop you from giving your life to that.
If you want to devote your life to feeding the
hungry and healing the sick you can do that, or if
you just want to sit around on your bum all day
too, you can do that too! The choice is yours.
But this is our dilemma. Never before in human
history have we had such a wonderful variety of
choices before us, and never before, I fear, have
we had so little idea of what we should choose.
One final illustration from a Peace March: I
trust that plenty of you guys made it to the recent
Peace March, and good on you. Let me mention to you
one placard that I heard about at a march. I didn't
see it but was told about it. It said "nothing is
worth dying for". I thought that this was very
clever at first, but then it occurred to me if
nothing is worth dying for, is anything worth
living for?
Friends, I believe that there are things worth
living and dying for. Find out what they are and
live them! Live your life to the full. Fight the
good fight. Keep the faith. And the blessing of God
Almighty - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
- be amongst you and remain with you always.
Amen!
Boys will be Boys or 'why
men love to Fight'
I had twenty-five boys at the fight club tonight -
twenty-five boys and one girl, and she certainly
did stand out.
It's amazing how starkly obvious the gender
differences are in a ring environment. In the
general flow of life in an industrialised society
men and women are mixed and merged together in
their daily routines, doing the same sorts of work,
taking on the same sorts of responsibilities, etc.
- barely distinguishable. But in the environment of
the ring something different is going on. Here men
are taking off their shirts, flexing their muscles,
and getting physical with each other in a very
primitive and very heterosexual way. Here we play
roughly with each other, in a way that inevitably
excludes most women and children.
There is something very basic but very beautiful
about the ring. The cries of the combatants echo
back to a time when women and men knew who they
were and what was expected of them as members of
their gender. The fight club is a sort of physical
probe into the collective subconscious - giving
embodiment to that repressed memory of a culture
where women fed and nurtured the community while
men fought to defend it.
That is why fighting is such a natural form of
initiation rite for young men. We modern
Australians are in desperate need of an initiation
rite for our young people. Our nation continues to
be swept by waves of adolescent boys who never
become men. They develop adult male bodies, but
they are bodies that have never been nourished with
the ideals of a mature community - ideals that are
needed if those bodies are to be put to good
use.
I do seriously believe that our community would
be greatly served if every teenage boy, when he
reached the age of say 16 or 17 was obliged to
train for a fight.
That fight training would then be conducted by
the boy's father and by the older males in the
family as well as by other selected men in the
community. When the day of the fight came, the men
would gather together with all the boys who had
been in training and tell them stories - stories of
the great Australian men that have gone before
them; the men who stormed the beaches at Gallipoli,
the men who opened up the land for agriculture and
industry, the great Aboriginal warriors who fought
and died resisting the white invasion. Then the
boys would be dressed in their fight gear and led
to the side of the ring where the adult men would
push the lads out into the centre. There they would
be forced to rely upon their own resources for
three rounds, after which they would be welcomed
back as men, and then perhaps taken to the tattoo
parlor to have etched into their skin the date of
their fight and perhaps some emblem of courage and
integrity that had been chosen for them.
It's all a dream of course, but it's a great
one. We come close to it every time I lead a boy to
the ring for the first time, with his dad at my
side working his corner. We?ve had some wonderful
moments like that - great fights fought by great
boys who show all the signs of going on to become
great men.
I claim that we've had a 100% success rate in
terms of guys whom I've got involved in amateur
contests getting out of the trouble they've been
in. By the time we get them to the side of the ring
they've stopped using drugs, they're no longer in
trouble with the law, they're not causing trouble
at school, etc. Of course the difficulty is in
getting them that far, and that's where we could do
with more support from friends and family and less
interference from the politically correct.
I am conscious of the fact that the focus of my
work here is with boys rather than with girls, but
I do believe that the crisis we are experiencing in
our community is with boys. It is mostly boys who
are doing drugs. It is boys who are doing the break
and enters and rolls. It is boys who are getting
into trouble with the law, and boys who are
committing suicide. Of course none of this though
should undermine the significance of initiation
rites for girls, nor the significant effect that
ring fighting can have in a girl's life.
We do indeed have the occasional fighting woman
join us, but she is a special kind of woman - one
who is able to go toe to toe with the men, who can
take as well as give a solid punch in the nose, and
who can thus demand the respect of the men.
In my time as a fight trainer I've had the
privilege of training up one of my girls, Wendy, to
win the Australian lightweight title in kickboxing.
She was a special sort of girl though. You don't
get many like Wendy. For the most part, the girls
just come and sit near the side of the ring and
look on wide-eyed while their men beat their chests
and flail away at each other.
What about this girl who's joined us for the
first time tonight. Could she be another Wendy? Not
likely. She doesn't look the part at all. She's a
slender Vietnamese girl, with a sassy hairstyle and
a T-shirt that prominently displays the words 'Too
busy to Fuck?"
I told her that if she wanted to train with us
at all that she'd have to change into a different
shirt. I offered her one of our club T-shirts - the
ones with "Christianity with Punch" displayed on
the back. She was predictably reluctant to wear it,
but she put it on eventually. Once we had her in a
different T-shirt she faded from view as the centre
of everybody's attention. Even so, I suspect that
the fine performance the boys put on tonight was in
part inspired by a desire to impress our visitor.
You can?t escape the sexual dynamics in this
game.
A friend of mine in the army told me that,
despite all the talk about equality of the sexes in
the forces, the Australian army was still refusing
to allow women into the front line, and with good
reason. He said that the Israeli experience had
been well documented (Israel being one of the only
countries to put women in the front line) and that
they were experiencing enormous problems. He said
that for one thing, the statistics showed that men
would always go back for a woman who had been shot,
even if she was dead, and even if it put the rest
of the squad in serious danger. He also said that
the effect on morale of the death of a woman in the
front line was far more serious than the effect of
the deaths of any number of men (and morale is
considered to be a third of any army's fighting
strength)! Gender differences just do not seem to
be able to be ignored in a war zone.
I'm a great supporter of women in the fighting
arts, and indeed I've been in trouble with our
state government on more than one occasion because
of my role in promoting, training, and officiating
in fight contests between females (which is still
illegal in NSW). But I don't do this because I
think that there's no difference between men and
women in the ring. In the office there might not be
any relevant difference, and in the pulpit I can't
see or hear any, but in the ring - in that most
fundamental and most primitive arena of human
encounter - women are women, and men better bloody
not be.
©2009, Rev. David B.
Smith
* * *
Never contend with a man who has nothing to
lose. - Baltasar Gracian
Rev. David B. Smith is
a Parish priest, community worker, martial arts
master, pro boxer, author of Sex,
the Ring & the Eucharist: Reflections on
life, ministry & fighting in the
inner-city and a father of
three. Get a free preview copy of Father Dave, the
'Fighting Father's book when you sign up for his
free newsletter at www.fatherdave.org
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