"... Billy Graham laid the groundwork all those years ago. The evangelist arrived in Sydney on February 12, 1959, for a 15-week crusade. Australia was still in the grip of british understatement and had never seen anything like Graham's theatricality. Much of the country was swept up in the kind of feverish excitmenet that greeted the Beatles five years later. The Billy Graham crusade built and built...
"By the time Graham left Australia, 130,000 people, nearly 2 per cent of the population, had reputedly answered his call to come to the stage and make a committment to Jesus Christ."
Damien Murphy on the antecedents of World Youth Day.
We remember to this day, that day when Lionel went up and was taken by the Lord. It was just meant to be a night out, a bit of a lark. Something to do when there was nothing to do, there where we came from in the twisting dark streets and the brooding eucalypts, the screaching of the cicadas and the passing, always passing, into another realm. Our parents were whipped by faith, but confused, and sent us off to a different Sunday school each week, Methodists, Presbyterians, somehow the Catholics were a bit exotic.
Then my mother went through a phase of Herbert W Armstrong and his son Garner Ted Armstrong, thundering about the World Tomorrow in their American accents, and we were caught up in their vision of these the final days, with decadence all around us. You only had to look at The Beetles to know the end was nigh. He too had sinned, looking out that car window at King's Cross, Sydney's only red light district.
How exciting the signs looked. But here we were, feverish in our youth and the ly heats of the day, the dreadful formation, the budgerigar feathers foating in the slanted sunlight after they escaped from their cage and the kookaburras pounced, of the day he stood bare foot on a funnel web, so pressed into the clay was it that it couldn't move. Consternation from all s, as he took his troubled dues.
And Lionel said let's go and see Billy Graham on Saturday night, and so we did, travelling all that way into town on the bus and funnelling into the biggest auditorium we had ever seen, the enormous stage, the profound lights, the unbelievable crowds. Their eyes all glowed with the fervour of belief and ruddy good health and an astonishing enthusiasm for life. How could they be right, when he knew God lowered in the dark rustling of the wind whipped gums, when decadence was lapping at our very borders.
It was meant to be a lark, and we were taken on a journey that was profound, because we were watching for the very first time someone truly famous. Someone who was in the news and talked to Presidents and radiated light, or was it power, whatever it was we had never seen anyone in the flesh who was also in the newspapers. We were a bunch of skinny, awkward, gawky boys form the suburbs, and we watched, as if it was a giant circus, while people went up and gave themselves to God.
And then Lionel stood up and said, I'm going too, are you coming, and we looked startled, caught in our own cynicims, and shook our heads. Don't, are you sure? How will we find you after? Come with me, he said again, and we shook our heads, again. And so he went up on to that enormous white stage, and our friend joined the throngs of people moving towards the stage, going forward to give themselves to God.
And so for days, weeks afterwards Lionel wasn't the same. It wasn't something to rib him about, he went very quiet if we started and our jousts fell on flat air. Malcolm was sick again, with the brain tumour, and was missing school. When we saw him he was pale and thin. There was a huge scandal that one of us had given him dope to smoke, and that had helped send him loopy, but we hadn't. Not then. Not yet. He didn't need us; and we all span off on our troubled paths; and he approached the Principal's office with appalling dread.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24027833-5016937,00.html
MORE than 150,000 pilgrims joined an extraordinary celebration to mark the official opening of World Youth Day, with pop songs and fireworks turning the mass into a "Catholic Woodstock".
Wild cheers erupted when the biggest youth Mass in Australian history got under way in Sydney's dockside Barangaroo yesterday afternoon.
But it will be a quiter day for pilgrims today, with more than 300 religious services planned across the city.
The morning services include a "time for silence for reflection" - according to the pilgrims' official WYD handbook - and pilgrims have been allocated sites where they will attend the catechesis services close to their accommodation.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/16/2305232.htm?section=australia
The Federal Government has announced its preferred structure for Australia's emissions trading scheme.
The Government says it is committed to returning all the funds raised to help families and businesses adjust to its drastic restructure of the country's economy.
Today's green paper outlines the Government's vision of what it now calls a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which it says represents a whole of economy approach and Australia's international response to climate change.
The paper also confirms that some of the hardest-hit industries, such as aluminium and cement, will receive a specified amount of free permits.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/16/asia/15afghan.php
KABUL, Afghanistan: The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.
The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and they appeared to suffer scores of and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation was under way.
With nine Americans and at least 15 injured, that means that one in five of the American defenders was killed and nearly half the remainder were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.
American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base just last week, and its defenses were not fully in place, one of the senior allied officials said. In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.
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