It’s Christmas time again – how it comes around so quickly – sneaking up on us benignly and full of niceness. Family, babies, furry animals, rotund ho ho’ing Santa Clauses and reindeers with red noses. What a sweet image Christmas has become for us and the marketing gurus.
Cute, Christmas has become cute and saleable, a hedonistic binge with the credit card hangover, and almost irrelevant in terms of meaning.
Yet the event we celebrate as the first Christmas was anything but cute and it was, indeed, full of meaning. There was no hint of the Hallmark Christmas card about it.
It had all the pathos and tragedy of the persecuted and the occupied, of the refugee and the downtrodden, of the forgotten and ostracised, about it.
☺ Take Mary and Joseph.
Here was a couple, one of which Mary, was in her mid-to - late teens caught up in, not only the demands of occupation and bureaucratic name taking and counting, but in the emotional minefield of pregnancy outside a formal marriage, a strange story of an angel announcing the baby was the offspring of the God of Israel and then stuck in an unknown city without accommodation or support.
Joseph had made the very difficult decision to take Mary with him to Bethlehem him because of the problems she would face if left at home and had the baby. The response from the community would have been less than favourable for a mother with a child out of wedlock.
So, even though there was no legal reason for her to be there, Joseph took her with him to safeguard her and the baby from local persecution. They stayed on in Bethlehem after the birth for the same reason but found themselves in a year or so, at odds with the local despot Herod, and fleeing for their lives.
☺ Take the innkeeper.
Compassion mixed with the desire to make a quid may have lead the innkeeper to utilise every square inch of his establishment, even the ground floor space in the inn where he kept his and his customers, animals. Or Mary and Joseph may have found a similar downstairs space in some distant relatives home, there is no clear evidence that it was the shed out the back of the Bethlehem Hilton.
It was, though, a place that smelt anything like the birthplace of a king. Yet it was compassion on the behalf of an unknown individual which made it possible for Jesus to be born undercover and in the midst of representatives of God’s creation. Not a great place but better than a refugee camp, a leaky boat or hiding from those who want to kill you.
☺ Take The Shepherds.
Now these blokes came into town because their sheep had all headed for the hills when the angels arrived and started singing. They came down to get their story straight and to have a gander, a sticky beak, a look, just in case what the angels told them was right. What they made of it, we are not sure, but they are moved enough to show their respects and be present. Whether it changed their lives or not, we will never know. But at least they went and had a look for themselves.
☺ Take The Three Wise Men.
Arriving later than the actual birth, possibly almost 2 years later, the wise men had a profound mixture of intelligence and innocence. They had divined through the stars a king would be born and quite rightly wanted to come and confirm that they were correct. They travelled, depending on where they came from, many thousands of miles to be there. Despite their obvious intellectual abilities they seem not to have been politically savvy and let the cat out of the bag to the tyrant ruler Herod.
Their arrival unleashes further carnage on the people in the area, “Herod slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" (Matt. 2:16). As a result, Joseph and Mary become refugees in a foreign land just so Jesus survives.
As I said before, the story is not cute, it is real. Jesus, God Incarnate, God amongst us, did not avoid the nasty reality of humanity at its worst. He came right in the centre of it. God, being God, could have ordained an entirely different scenario, which was his prerogative. But he didn’t.
He came in the person of a vulnerable baby, to two lost and alone people, estranged from their families, in the midst of violence and powerlessness, and became a refugee fleeing with his family to safety in Egypt.
This is a modern story and it is the modern story we need to embrace. Is our world, the world we live in any different to that in which Jesus found himself? Have we addressed the issues that impacted on Jesus, his family and his people?
I fear not.
A quick glance across the newspapers, the tv news and the internet will confirm those issues are alive and well in the world today.
☺ More than 74,000 Africans, fleeing civil war, political instability, poverty, famine and drought in the Horn of Africa, crossed the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea on smugglers' boats and reached the shores of Yemen this year. This figure represents a staggering 50 per cent increase over last year's 50,000 arrivals, itself a record.
☺ Livestock farmer flees deadly drought and insecurity in Ethiopia and Somalia only to face climate change-linked flooding in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps. The climate change which destroyed his livelihood through drought is now destroying his future through flood, alongside the violence of vigilantes and terrorists.
☺ Zimbabwean teenage asylum-seeker learns the high cost of freedom. All 17-year-old Tsitsi wanted to do was go to school and earn a living – but the men transporting her to a better life had other plans for her, they raped her and she now finds herself the mother of an unwanted child, no job and no place to go home to, ostracized by her own family and the society she finds herself in.
Sound familiar? What went wrong? Wasn’t that why Jesus came into the world, to bring peace to all, to make peace possible, to bring about the kingdom of God?
Yes but……..
But it’s a shared kingdom. We have a role in this kingdom as well. Remember the words of the angel, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present.
Ian Cutmore, my Salvation Army Training College principal once said, ‘If it’s not happening where you are, it’s not happening’.
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present!
Jesus makes it possible by his birth, his example as found in the New Testament, by his death on the Cross and by his resurrection.
We make it present by our acceptance of that birth, life, death and resurrection in a way that radically changes how we live and how we relate to others; in how we celebrate Christmas; how we respond to those who are less well placed than ourselves, how we respond to refugees, the poor – how we respond to the other.
It is not about being guilty about how we are, who we are or where we are in this world. Guilt does not lead to the kingdom of God. What leads to the kingdom of God is the honest reflection on how we live on earth as peacemakers, as bringers of hope to others, and ourselves, as people who take seriously our place in this world.
If life was about individuals, if it was all about us, there was no need for Jesus to be born. There was no need for God to come into the world. We could just go on the way we always had.
Yet it is not about you or me as individuals. It is not about us. It is about what we do and become together. It is about how we respond to the carnage of global warming, the violence of the fundamentalist, the appealing lure of possessions and stuff we seek for ourselves – it’s about what we value and what gives us value.
Jesus was born an unlikely revolutionary, a vulnerable baby who survived because others, mostly unknown others, took great risks to ensure that he did.
The measure of our world, and of each of us, is whether we are prepared to take such risks everyday. It’s the only way the Kingdom of God will come.
Saturday 26 December 2009
Thursday 10 December 2009
RedShoes Ordination
Last Saturday was and is, to some degree, a blur. After waiting many years, ploughing through exhausting study and jumping through a myriad of hoops "O" (ordination) day arrived - Saturday 5th December 2009.
It had been a traumatic lead-up over the week prior to going on retreat as a young friend of many years died tragically and I flew to Brisbane to assist at his funeral. It was emotional and very trying and, yes I cried a lot for Brendan. He had died so young but had achieved so much. As I said at the funeral "Brendan wasn't a saint, just an ordinary boy growing into an extraordinary young man."
I came back on the Saturday, one week out from "O" day and tried to set myself for the biggest day of my life. The retreat helped and I noted the juxtaposition of Brendan's death, the fact that at the funeral a whole range of young, and not so young, people whom I had worked with were present was significant. Particularly so as I was about to be ordained and embark on work in a school environment.
In my conversation with Brendan 3 days before his death, his last words when I challenged him about his seeking work in a fine dining restaurant was, "I'm up for it." It seemed his challenge to me was the same, "Are you up for it?"
The weeks retreat and then "O" day itself reaffirmed for me that I could answer as confidently as he did, "I'm up for it."
Most of the 2 and a half hour service is slowly being unlocked as I receive more and more photos. It all felt more real the next day when I celebrated the Eucharist and is slowly revealing itself. It was great to have the support of people from the full gamut of my life - from St Jude's Randwick, St Clements Brisbane, my mother and my aunt and uncle and from my Golden Oldie Rugby Days. To have the Bishop Keith Slater officiate was a thrill as Keith was instrumental in my return to the church and a sober and useful life. To have Rev'd Lee Gauld preach at my first Eucharist was wonderful for we worked together at Brendan's funeral a week before.
I need to mention my wife, Gaye, without whose help I simply wouldn't not have got sober and wound my way to this day.
Yes and to God who has never failed me and has remained faithful and hopeful that I might, just might, get there one day, thank you.
It had been a traumatic lead-up over the week prior to going on retreat as a young friend of many years died tragically and I flew to Brisbane to assist at his funeral. It was emotional and very trying and, yes I cried a lot for Brendan. He had died so young but had achieved so much. As I said at the funeral "Brendan wasn't a saint, just an ordinary boy growing into an extraordinary young man."
I came back on the Saturday, one week out from "O" day and tried to set myself for the biggest day of my life. The retreat helped and I noted the juxtaposition of Brendan's death, the fact that at the funeral a whole range of young, and not so young, people whom I had worked with were present was significant. Particularly so as I was about to be ordained and embark on work in a school environment.
In my conversation with Brendan 3 days before his death, his last words when I challenged him about his seeking work in a fine dining restaurant was, "I'm up for it." It seemed his challenge to me was the same, "Are you up for it?"
The weeks retreat and then "O" day itself reaffirmed for me that I could answer as confidently as he did, "I'm up for it."
Most of the 2 and a half hour service is slowly being unlocked as I receive more and more photos. It all felt more real the next day when I celebrated the Eucharist and is slowly revealing itself. It was great to have the support of people from the full gamut of my life - from St Jude's Randwick, St Clements Brisbane, my mother and my aunt and uncle and from my Golden Oldie Rugby Days. To have the Bishop Keith Slater officiate was a thrill as Keith was instrumental in my return to the church and a sober and useful life. To have Rev'd Lee Gauld preach at my first Eucharist was wonderful for we worked together at Brendan's funeral a week before.
I need to mention my wife, Gaye, without whose help I simply wouldn't not have got sober and wound my way to this day.
Yes and to God who has never failed me and has remained faithful and hopeful that I might, just might, get there one day, thank you.
Thursday 26 November 2009
School Chaplaincy
Maralyn Parker in the Telegraph (261109) raise some valid issues regarding chaplaincy in public schools and the funding of such by the taxpayer.
See Mrarlyn's comments at:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/maralynparker/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/public_schools_do_not_need_christian_chaplains/
Here is what I had to say in response in my email to her:
Maralyn
Thanks for charging up the debate. Looking at this thread and reading your comments I am aware that we view the world through our own biases and bring that too any debate particularly on issues such as religion.
As someone who has worked with young people for 30 years, and for much of that time in very difficult public schools, I suggest that a range of options are required if we are to safely navigate our children into adulthood. What we don’t need are zealots at play in the education system, and by zealots I mean those of all philosophical biases (including religion) who deem that there is only one solution to the situation at hand. There is not and to believe so is dangerous.
I have worked with chaplains, social workers, counsellors and youth workers who have been balanced, accepting and effective and I have worked with some in all those roles who were, to put it mildly, simply pushing their own particular biased ideologies.
I myself am a Christian but that does not limit me in whom I work with, whom I accept or how I work with others. As a Christian I am committed to life affirming acceptance of all regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and social status. I am not into proselytising. When I worked in schools (not as a paid chaplain by any organisation or government funding – voluntarily), I worked with one express purpose, to help young people to grow and become the person they discovered themselves to be. Not who I or any ideology or faith deemed them to be.
I also know that many chaplains have little or no education qualifications, but I also know many who do. I, for example, am completing my Masters this year and I would be advocating that all who work with young people have qualifications and extensive life experience to support through practice what they have learnt through study.
Philosophically I would not accept this grant money to work as a chaplain in a public school or for a chaplaincy organisation because both limit me to a set of outcomes which are not always in the best interest of the children, their parents, the staff and the schools. I have always negotiated my own arrangements with public schools through heads of school, staff rooms and P&C’s, and always to a positive outcome for all.
My negative comment to your comments is that you may be guilty of generalisation in terms of Christian chaplains and, perhaps, a blind spot to the biases of other disciplines, but as I said early, we all view the world through our biases.
So my comment is, if school chaplaincy in public schools is undertaken by people for the purpose of enhancing the life experience of others without a proselytising agenda, then it can add to the life of the school. But if it, and the other disciplines in the school are skewed by ulterior motives, then there is some danger afoot.
See Mrarlyn's comments at:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/maralynparker/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/public_schools_do_not_need_christian_chaplains/
Here is what I had to say in response in my email to her:
Maralyn
Thanks for charging up the debate. Looking at this thread and reading your comments I am aware that we view the world through our own biases and bring that too any debate particularly on issues such as religion.
As someone who has worked with young people for 30 years, and for much of that time in very difficult public schools, I suggest that a range of options are required if we are to safely navigate our children into adulthood. What we don’t need are zealots at play in the education system, and by zealots I mean those of all philosophical biases (including religion) who deem that there is only one solution to the situation at hand. There is not and to believe so is dangerous.
I have worked with chaplains, social workers, counsellors and youth workers who have been balanced, accepting and effective and I have worked with some in all those roles who were, to put it mildly, simply pushing their own particular biased ideologies.
I myself am a Christian but that does not limit me in whom I work with, whom I accept or how I work with others. As a Christian I am committed to life affirming acceptance of all regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and social status. I am not into proselytising. When I worked in schools (not as a paid chaplain by any organisation or government funding – voluntarily), I worked with one express purpose, to help young people to grow and become the person they discovered themselves to be. Not who I or any ideology or faith deemed them to be.
I also know that many chaplains have little or no education qualifications, but I also know many who do. I, for example, am completing my Masters this year and I would be advocating that all who work with young people have qualifications and extensive life experience to support through practice what they have learnt through study.
Philosophically I would not accept this grant money to work as a chaplain in a public school or for a chaplaincy organisation because both limit me to a set of outcomes which are not always in the best interest of the children, their parents, the staff and the schools. I have always negotiated my own arrangements with public schools through heads of school, staff rooms and P&C’s, and always to a positive outcome for all.
My negative comment to your comments is that you may be guilty of generalisation in terms of Christian chaplains and, perhaps, a blind spot to the biases of other disciplines, but as I said early, we all view the world through our biases.
So my comment is, if school chaplaincy in public schools is undertaken by people for the purpose of enhancing the life experience of others without a proselytising agenda, then it can add to the life of the school. But if it, and the other disciplines in the school are skewed by ulterior motives, then there is some danger afoot.
Wednesday 25 November 2009
The King with Scars
If any of you are searching for job security, don't become a king or a queen. Although Queen Elizabeth of England is paid millions of dollars a year and has been a monarch for more than 50 years, she is an exception. Looking back over history, some historians estimate that the average length of a reign for a queen or a king is only 3½ to 4 years. And for the most part, royalty has had a violent, murderous history throughout the centuries. A little flick through the Old Testament for one will make it plain, being a King is no guarantee of a long life!
King’s rule by power and violence. They brook no opposition. They have others killed for simply being different. They conquer and kill for their own ends and have little compulsion in sending others to die on their behalf. And while kings in a royal sense are few and far between these days, the kings and queens of secular society, those we raise up through the democratic process differ little from their predecessors. They follow the type despite all their efforts to look different. The emperor indeed has no clothes.
Ironically, from the earliest days of the infant, persecuted church, the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth was given the title "King of Kings." In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is pictured as a king even before he was born. When the angel Gabriel informs Mary that she will bear a son named Jesus, he adds, "…the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Luke 1:32-33)
Later, the three Magi ask, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2)
In Mark's Gospel Jesus begins his public ministry by stating that "the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near." (1:15) The very core of Jesus' message is the coming of the kingdom of God.
As Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time, the people gather in the streets and see him as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah: "Behold your king is coming." (Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:5, John 12:15) The crowds shout with reckless abandon, "Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Luke 19:38) Jesus purposely enters the city signaling a different kind of kingship. He insists on entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, a sign of reconciliation and peace.
And then as the events unfold in Jerusalem, leading up to Jesus' horrific and torturous crucifixion, He is either hailed or mocked as a king. In the final hours of Jesus' life on earth, we witness his famous interrogation by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. The interrogation is a classic:
"Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asks Jesus.
Jesus answers with a counter question, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
In John's Gospel, Pilate seems to be the one being interrogated and on trial.
Pilate pushes:
"What have you done?"
Jesus:
"My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
Pilate must have been both confused and infuriated! True, Jesus and his followers did not seem a threat to the Roman Empire. But who is in control here?
Again, Pilate pushes his questioning, probably thinking that he has Jesus trapped in his words:
"So, you are a king?"
Jesus answered:
"You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
It must have been obvious to Pilate that either Jesus of Nazareth was crazy, or He, Jesus, was unlike any king he had ever known. The truth is that Jesus was and is to this day a unique king, who reigns over a unique kingdom.
First, Jesus is the servant king. Jesus was not and is not a king who rules through raw power, greed and manipulation at the expense of others. He did not conscript any army to dominate the minds and hearts of people by force. He lived and modeled a far different style of leadership in life among His people.
In Luke 4 Jesus himself says: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus' reign as king is revealed in humility, self-emptying and service to others. According to the world's standards, Jesus is a very strange king, one who serves, heals, and uplifts His followers.
Second, and amazingly, Jesus is the servant king with scars. Charles Colson, says it like this: "All the kings and queens I have known in history sent their people out to die for them. I only know one king who decided to die for his people."
In a reading from the Celtic Daily Prayer, we have this simple but profound question and answer:
"Question: What are the only human-made things in heaven?
Answer: The wounds in the hands, feet and side of Christ."
One of the most fascinating facts about the New Testament story of Jesus is that after his resurrection he is revealed with his scars. When his disciples doubt who he is, he shows them the scars in his hands, feet, and side. Those scars are five signs of the most compelling love the world has ever known-complete, self-emptying, utter love for all of us. In other words, God the Father chooses to reveal Jesus in a perfect, resurrected body with the healed, gruesome wounds from the crucifixion. To this day, we still know Jesus by his scars.
For the stunned and frightened disciples and now for us, we remember how his wounds and sacrifice have forever transformed that hideous and torturous method of capital punishment, the cross. As Christians, every time we witness a baptism, receive the Lord's Supper, wear a cross, celebrate the resurrection of a dear one at a funeral service, we remember his scars and the hope that they bring us.
St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "We always carry in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."
Jesus is the servant king with scars, and He is alive, scars and all!
(John 18:33-37 Christ the King)
(Apologies to: Bishop Ronald Warren, Day 1, 2006.)
King’s rule by power and violence. They brook no opposition. They have others killed for simply being different. They conquer and kill for their own ends and have little compulsion in sending others to die on their behalf. And while kings in a royal sense are few and far between these days, the kings and queens of secular society, those we raise up through the democratic process differ little from their predecessors. They follow the type despite all their efforts to look different. The emperor indeed has no clothes.
Ironically, from the earliest days of the infant, persecuted church, the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth was given the title "King of Kings." In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is pictured as a king even before he was born. When the angel Gabriel informs Mary that she will bear a son named Jesus, he adds, "…the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Luke 1:32-33)
Later, the three Magi ask, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2)
In Mark's Gospel Jesus begins his public ministry by stating that "the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near." (1:15) The very core of Jesus' message is the coming of the kingdom of God.
As Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time, the people gather in the streets and see him as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah: "Behold your king is coming." (Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:5, John 12:15) The crowds shout with reckless abandon, "Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Luke 19:38) Jesus purposely enters the city signaling a different kind of kingship. He insists on entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, a sign of reconciliation and peace.
And then as the events unfold in Jerusalem, leading up to Jesus' horrific and torturous crucifixion, He is either hailed or mocked as a king. In the final hours of Jesus' life on earth, we witness his famous interrogation by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. The interrogation is a classic:
"Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asks Jesus.
Jesus answers with a counter question, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
In John's Gospel, Pilate seems to be the one being interrogated and on trial.
Pilate pushes:
"What have you done?"
Jesus:
"My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
Pilate must have been both confused and infuriated! True, Jesus and his followers did not seem a threat to the Roman Empire. But who is in control here?
Again, Pilate pushes his questioning, probably thinking that he has Jesus trapped in his words:
"So, you are a king?"
Jesus answered:
"You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
It must have been obvious to Pilate that either Jesus of Nazareth was crazy, or He, Jesus, was unlike any king he had ever known. The truth is that Jesus was and is to this day a unique king, who reigns over a unique kingdom.
First, Jesus is the servant king. Jesus was not and is not a king who rules through raw power, greed and manipulation at the expense of others. He did not conscript any army to dominate the minds and hearts of people by force. He lived and modeled a far different style of leadership in life among His people.
In Luke 4 Jesus himself says: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus' reign as king is revealed in humility, self-emptying and service to others. According to the world's standards, Jesus is a very strange king, one who serves, heals, and uplifts His followers.
Second, and amazingly, Jesus is the servant king with scars. Charles Colson, says it like this: "All the kings and queens I have known in history sent their people out to die for them. I only know one king who decided to die for his people."
In a reading from the Celtic Daily Prayer, we have this simple but profound question and answer:
"Question: What are the only human-made things in heaven?
Answer: The wounds in the hands, feet and side of Christ."
One of the most fascinating facts about the New Testament story of Jesus is that after his resurrection he is revealed with his scars. When his disciples doubt who he is, he shows them the scars in his hands, feet, and side. Those scars are five signs of the most compelling love the world has ever known-complete, self-emptying, utter love for all of us. In other words, God the Father chooses to reveal Jesus in a perfect, resurrected body with the healed, gruesome wounds from the crucifixion. To this day, we still know Jesus by his scars.
For the stunned and frightened disciples and now for us, we remember how his wounds and sacrifice have forever transformed that hideous and torturous method of capital punishment, the cross. As Christians, every time we witness a baptism, receive the Lord's Supper, wear a cross, celebrate the resurrection of a dear one at a funeral service, we remember his scars and the hope that they bring us.
St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "We always carry in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."
Jesus is the servant king with scars, and He is alive, scars and all!
(John 18:33-37 Christ the King)
(Apologies to: Bishop Ronald Warren, Day 1, 2006.)
Thursday 19 November 2009
St Judes Randwick
Jude 1-3, 17-25 – Sunday 25th October 2009 St Jude’s Randwick – Gods Space
Today is our patronal festival – St Jude’s Day. Actually St Jude’s day is the 28th but I’m sure he isn’t quibbling abut us being a couple of days early, after many years of being the ‘Forgotten Saint’, I am sure he is just happy to be remembered.
It must have been a difficult time for Jude Thaddeus, what with having the same name as Judas Iscariot and all. People got confused about whether he was the same person or not so didn‘t venerate him for many centuries. It was only if you were really desperate did you actually pray in his name. It was like; when all else fails go to St Jude. He was the Saint of last resort – the last chance saint.
In his letter St Jude implores Christians to hang on in the face of apostasy, heretical teachings and immoral practices. While he had wanted to write about salvation, he in fact was forced, by the prevailing attitude of some believers, to write about the breakdown of belief as he saw it and its impact on believers. It was desperate times. If Christians were to maintain their faith they were going to face great opposition. It was desperate times and often looked like a lost cause. Hence St Jude being called the ‘Saint of Lost or Hopeless Causes.”
Hopeless causes, hopeless cases. How easy it is to use the label hopeless, perhaps for your self, for some situation in your life; perhaps about someone else, perhaps about some situation. What does it feel like to feel hopeless, to be perceived as hopeless, to live in that dark space of recognition where you are only seen for not being seen and forgotten?
In the late 1920’s St Jude was seen as the Saint of choice for second-generation immigrant women in America. They had come to the land of opportunity with their parents, received an education and looked out on what appeared as an endless feast of opportunities. Yet they were caught between the possibilities education and economic freedom had brought them and the strict cultural and patriarchal traditions of their aging immigrant parents. Many were trapped in the space-in-between, just like many women of that era here in Australia were. St Jude, via a shrine to him in Chicago, allowed them to come together through letter writing and newsletters to share their sense of hopelessness and to help redefine their future. The saint of lost causes was their gathering point as they sought to create a better future for women.
While hopelessness is not a description of something but a space or a place in which we live and have our being, so is hope. Either one can become the space which contains us, while at the very same time, we contain it within us. It is what it signifies.
In a sense it says something about this church of St Jude here in Randwick Sydney. This church began its worship only 60 short years after the first free settlers came to our shores. Australia was a hostile environment populated by people with great courage and hope but also with, a similar level of trepidation. Building a church, any church would have been daunting but to build this church with its symbolic and metaphorical implications could have been deemed a hopeless cause, yet one full of hope.
Over the last few weeks, as I have contemplated my time here at St Jude’s, I have spent time sitting outside and inside the church building, walking the grounds, wandering the graveyard. In doing so I have thought a lot about the importance of space and place in medieval spirituality, the actual birth place of this building and its design.
19th century Victorian Gothic church architecture had its roots in, and mimicked, medieval church design, particularly that of the 13th century onwards.
Instead of the previous dark and dim churches, we begin to see churches rising high above the ground incorporating great space and inviting light in through spacious windows, often full of stain glass which provided a kaleidoscope of colours across the floors and walls of the building. It seemed to defy the experience of events such as the Black Plague and a desire to fill the space between hell and heaven, which was, in medieval cosmology, the space between what was beneath and what was above, with light and hope.
The medieval church building signified the transcendent presence of a God who contained the world and, at the same time, the church contained or confined that very same God within its walls. The building towered across the skyline speaking of the nature and presence of God in its boldness, its strength and its audacity. It was visible and heard. Bells spoke out of the presence of God amongst them and there was no doubt where he was. He was in the Church.
Across the road from here is boxing gym to which I go 2 or 3 times a week. Inside people punch and kick bags, sometimes they punch and kick each other. The lady who is one of the owners tho, can’t wait for Tuesday nights. Why? Because amongst the mayhem of her gym she listens to the bells being played here, at St Jude’s. It signifies for her the presence of God in Randwick and reminds her of who she is and who he is.
Within the walls of that medieval church you could encounter the transcendent God for he was immanent, present therein. The space inside formed by the high roofs, exposed beams and the progression of west to east spoke of the space that was the cosmos outside, a space which could overwhelm you with its sheer dimensions and mystery. Within the walls of the Church the design spoke of that same distance and closeness of God, that he is both contained by and contains us. That space became the place and the place, the space in which God dwelt.
It seems to me that as I have met in worship here, watched people who have lived in the shade of this church come after many years of absence for a funeral or a baptism, who have walked across the precinct or through the graveyard, that St Jude’s is God’s habitation in Randwick.
I regularly watch a middle aged couple push the lady’s elderly mother past this church, sometimes, if the church is open, they come in; other times they just sit outside as she looks at the church or touches the sandstone walls. For her this is a place of healing and hope, a place where God says I will be with you always and she takes that feeling with her as she faces another week relying on the care of others.
May I suggest, for each of us, that St Jude’s is the place that gathers God and we his people, bringing us into alignment and awareness of each other, and is the place where each holds the other in their soul.
We may look around from where we stand and wish many more of those who live in the vicinity were worshipping with us each day, yet there is a sense that they do. St Jude’s is the signifier of God, the representational space for those who walk past or live near, and in that sense becomes the place of faith for them. It is not just a heritage building or precinct or graveyard; it is not just a traditional worship space or liturgical practice, it’s not just an Anglican church; it is much more than that.
It is the presence of God within our lives, all our lives, even when those lives may seem hopeless or outside our walls. May it always be so and in the words of St Jude himself:
24Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, 25to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Today is our patronal festival – St Jude’s Day. Actually St Jude’s day is the 28th but I’m sure he isn’t quibbling abut us being a couple of days early, after many years of being the ‘Forgotten Saint’, I am sure he is just happy to be remembered.
It must have been a difficult time for Jude Thaddeus, what with having the same name as Judas Iscariot and all. People got confused about whether he was the same person or not so didn‘t venerate him for many centuries. It was only if you were really desperate did you actually pray in his name. It was like; when all else fails go to St Jude. He was the Saint of last resort – the last chance saint.
In his letter St Jude implores Christians to hang on in the face of apostasy, heretical teachings and immoral practices. While he had wanted to write about salvation, he in fact was forced, by the prevailing attitude of some believers, to write about the breakdown of belief as he saw it and its impact on believers. It was desperate times. If Christians were to maintain their faith they were going to face great opposition. It was desperate times and often looked like a lost cause. Hence St Jude being called the ‘Saint of Lost or Hopeless Causes.”
Hopeless causes, hopeless cases. How easy it is to use the label hopeless, perhaps for your self, for some situation in your life; perhaps about someone else, perhaps about some situation. What does it feel like to feel hopeless, to be perceived as hopeless, to live in that dark space of recognition where you are only seen for not being seen and forgotten?
In the late 1920’s St Jude was seen as the Saint of choice for second-generation immigrant women in America. They had come to the land of opportunity with their parents, received an education and looked out on what appeared as an endless feast of opportunities. Yet they were caught between the possibilities education and economic freedom had brought them and the strict cultural and patriarchal traditions of their aging immigrant parents. Many were trapped in the space-in-between, just like many women of that era here in Australia were. St Jude, via a shrine to him in Chicago, allowed them to come together through letter writing and newsletters to share their sense of hopelessness and to help redefine their future. The saint of lost causes was their gathering point as they sought to create a better future for women.
While hopelessness is not a description of something but a space or a place in which we live and have our being, so is hope. Either one can become the space which contains us, while at the very same time, we contain it within us. It is what it signifies.
In a sense it says something about this church of St Jude here in Randwick Sydney. This church began its worship only 60 short years after the first free settlers came to our shores. Australia was a hostile environment populated by people with great courage and hope but also with, a similar level of trepidation. Building a church, any church would have been daunting but to build this church with its symbolic and metaphorical implications could have been deemed a hopeless cause, yet one full of hope.
Over the last few weeks, as I have contemplated my time here at St Jude’s, I have spent time sitting outside and inside the church building, walking the grounds, wandering the graveyard. In doing so I have thought a lot about the importance of space and place in medieval spirituality, the actual birth place of this building and its design.
19th century Victorian Gothic church architecture had its roots in, and mimicked, medieval church design, particularly that of the 13th century onwards.
Instead of the previous dark and dim churches, we begin to see churches rising high above the ground incorporating great space and inviting light in through spacious windows, often full of stain glass which provided a kaleidoscope of colours across the floors and walls of the building. It seemed to defy the experience of events such as the Black Plague and a desire to fill the space between hell and heaven, which was, in medieval cosmology, the space between what was beneath and what was above, with light and hope.
The medieval church building signified the transcendent presence of a God who contained the world and, at the same time, the church contained or confined that very same God within its walls. The building towered across the skyline speaking of the nature and presence of God in its boldness, its strength and its audacity. It was visible and heard. Bells spoke out of the presence of God amongst them and there was no doubt where he was. He was in the Church.
Across the road from here is boxing gym to which I go 2 or 3 times a week. Inside people punch and kick bags, sometimes they punch and kick each other. The lady who is one of the owners tho, can’t wait for Tuesday nights. Why? Because amongst the mayhem of her gym she listens to the bells being played here, at St Jude’s. It signifies for her the presence of God in Randwick and reminds her of who she is and who he is.
Within the walls of that medieval church you could encounter the transcendent God for he was immanent, present therein. The space inside formed by the high roofs, exposed beams and the progression of west to east spoke of the space that was the cosmos outside, a space which could overwhelm you with its sheer dimensions and mystery. Within the walls of the Church the design spoke of that same distance and closeness of God, that he is both contained by and contains us. That space became the place and the place, the space in which God dwelt.
It seems to me that as I have met in worship here, watched people who have lived in the shade of this church come after many years of absence for a funeral or a baptism, who have walked across the precinct or through the graveyard, that St Jude’s is God’s habitation in Randwick.
I regularly watch a middle aged couple push the lady’s elderly mother past this church, sometimes, if the church is open, they come in; other times they just sit outside as she looks at the church or touches the sandstone walls. For her this is a place of healing and hope, a place where God says I will be with you always and she takes that feeling with her as she faces another week relying on the care of others.
May I suggest, for each of us, that St Jude’s is the place that gathers God and we his people, bringing us into alignment and awareness of each other, and is the place where each holds the other in their soul.
We may look around from where we stand and wish many more of those who live in the vicinity were worshipping with us each day, yet there is a sense that they do. St Jude’s is the signifier of God, the representational space for those who walk past or live near, and in that sense becomes the place of faith for them. It is not just a heritage building or precinct or graveyard; it is not just a traditional worship space or liturgical practice, it’s not just an Anglican church; it is much more than that.
It is the presence of God within our lives, all our lives, even when those lives may seem hopeless or outside our walls. May it always be so and in the words of St Jude himself:
24Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, 25to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Typical Man
Is the following story typically male or what?
CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.
Steward, who did not know where he was, eventually approached a policeman at a petrol station and asked for help late Wednesday.
"This little old man came up to me saying he was lost. He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife," said Victorian Police Senior Constable Clayton Smith.
Steward, who was reunited with his family on Wednesday, said he took the wrong turn and just kept on going.
"I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive," he told reporters, adding he did not need a satellite navigation device as he'd only been lost once.
Doesn't everybody take 9 hours to get the paper?
No need for a GPS when all you want is a nice quiet drive!
CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.
Steward, who did not know where he was, eventually approached a policeman at a petrol station and asked for help late Wednesday.
"This little old man came up to me saying he was lost. He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife," said Victorian Police Senior Constable Clayton Smith.
Steward, who was reunited with his family on Wednesday, said he took the wrong turn and just kept on going.
"I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive," he told reporters, adding he did not need a satellite navigation device as he'd only been lost once.
Doesn't everybody take 9 hours to get the paper?
No need for a GPS when all you want is a nice quiet drive!
Monday 12 October 2009
Hebrews 4:15-16 – The Voice From Offstage
Anthropologist James C. Scott says that there’s a difference between the way poor people talk “onstage” and “offstage.” Studying forms of everyday resistance among peasants in a small Malaysian village, he noticed how the poor and weak were good at acting like they recognized the authority of the ruling elite in public. “Onstage” they almost always gave the impression of complying with a social order in which they suffered injustice. “Offstage,” however, when no one in authority was around, peasants mocked the system through gossip, slander, stealing, dragging their feet, and sabotaging their masters’ plans.
Being offstage, out of the limelight allows us the freedom to speak the unspeakable, to tell the story as it really is to us and to distance ourselves from the authoritarian position of those who hold the power in our lives. Being offstage allows us to say what we really think about church structures, government leaders and policies and restrictive laws which dictate our behaviour in public even when they are in fact censuring who are and what we say to the detriment of sensible debate and discussion.
That is why we need to keep alive the tradition of comedy and humour in our society. Recent reactions to various comedians on radio, TV and the big screen smacks of those “onstage” wanting to dumb down debate and stifle anything that challenges stereotypes, political correct sacred cows and more. Comedy and humour is society speaking offstage, saying the things that need to be said, and highlighting issues that we have attempted to paper over, or simply recognizing a reality those onstage avoid. The problem with modern day humour is that so much is now deemed off limits that it is stuck in the gutter because there they can safely offend everybody not just individual groups sensibilities or political correct doctrines. If we aren’t careful we will lose all the opportunities to speak in a way that takes the debate offstage. This has probably already occurred through the development of experts and self-interest groups who control the debate on key issues such as global change, human rights, parenting and gender issues for example. There is little or no room for the voice offstage.
A group of people working to deal with poverty in a community were sitting around the table discussing the way forward when one of the group suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea to ask the people in the community themselves (something I have found to be the only thing to do); there was a lengthy silence as the group of experts looked uncomfortably at each other before the facilitator said, No that would only slow us down. AN opportunity was missed in our world of experts to hear what some of the answers were from the people who know and live and experience the questions.
In a society where the High priest held all the power, had great position and was the representative of all those onstage, the writer to the Hebrews suggests that not only was Jesus the high priest, but that he was also like us yet without sin. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
A Jewish priest was a direct male descendant of the Aaron, brother of Moses. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, they performed specific duties in relation to the daily and festival sacrificial offerings. The high priest, selected from the group, sometimes held considerable political influence and also supervised during the key service of Yom Kippur. In the Second Temple period various high priests were appointed by both Jewish and non-Jewish political governors, becoming an issue of considerable controversy. Also in this period, the high priest sometimes served as the president of the ruling legislative council, the Sanhedrin.
The high priest was onstage – he was in the public eye and, along with all those who surrounded him, represented a part of society those offstage had to negotiate in their relationship with God. Often the high priests were corrupt and such power ensured that any relationship with them was an unfair one..
So when the writer to the Hebrews uses these words in relation to Jesus, he does as Jesus often did and speaks offstage, he turns them upside down and gives them a whole new meaning.
Jesus through his relationship with his Father, the God of Israel, was the one who came to intercede on our behalf, a truly priestly role. Not only did he intercede in his earthly life through his teaching and his actions, his example, but his unbroken obedience to his Fathers will took him all the way to the cross himself.
As a human being he came to experience what it was like to be among those who are offstage, out of the position of privilege, unable to be apart of the righteous because of their social position, their gender, their infirmities, hurt and shame. He took on our humanity in such a way that he became that humanity for himself.
Unlike those in power who speak through advisers and leaders about the needs and circumstances of the poor, the disabled, the troubled and the difficult, Jesus became human to experience that for himself, to place himself in the way of sin and to stare it down so that we too could do the same.
It is interesting that throughout Jesus earthly life his greatest recorded wisdom comes not from official debates with the keepers of knowledge, the experts, (with some exceptions) but with those who were offstage. He had the audacity to ask people what they wanted and gave it to them, he empowered people with words that spoke to their place in this world such as in the sermon on the mount, he stood with people who were about to be stoned for their actions by the self-righteous; it was what Jesus spoke to those off-stage which got under the nose of those in power, and what ultimately brought about his death.
Not only did he engage with humanity, he had the opportunity to sin and didn’t. He was one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. What a wonderful verse. He battled the temptation to sin as recorded in the desert after his baptism and then throughout his life for Luke comments that devil departed from him until an opportune time. Jesus knew what it was like to be tempted but he is an example to us that through relationship with him and his father sin is no longer our challenge.
There is much discussion theologically over the meaning of this verse. Some see it to mean that Jesus was impeccable, that is, unable to sin because of his divine nature. And for many years I found this understanding a stumbling block to faith. If Jesus was incapable of sin, he wasn’t like us at all, he only looked and acted like us, and I felt I was set up. How could someone who was incapable of sinning understand how I felt as a sinner and when I sinned? Was this some kind of cosmic joke?
Yet the power comes when I understand that Jesus was ‘peccable’, able to sin but because of his nature and his relationship with God chose obedience as the better way. Jesus became human and lived and died as the example of humanity living life to the fullest so that we too could become fully human.
Yes we do have a great high priest who intercedes for us and we have a great high priest who has lived the experiences of being ordinary and doing so with out sin.
And here is the possibility that Jesus life, death and resurrection brings to us, the possibility of knowing that we are not alone, unable to deal with those things which plague us, because Jesus is here, offstage with us and says in a clear loud voice within with authority, ‘I know what you are feeling and I know all is not lost, come to me and all will be well.’
14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Being offstage, out of the limelight allows us the freedom to speak the unspeakable, to tell the story as it really is to us and to distance ourselves from the authoritarian position of those who hold the power in our lives. Being offstage allows us to say what we really think about church structures, government leaders and policies and restrictive laws which dictate our behaviour in public even when they are in fact censuring who are and what we say to the detriment of sensible debate and discussion.
That is why we need to keep alive the tradition of comedy and humour in our society. Recent reactions to various comedians on radio, TV and the big screen smacks of those “onstage” wanting to dumb down debate and stifle anything that challenges stereotypes, political correct sacred cows and more. Comedy and humour is society speaking offstage, saying the things that need to be said, and highlighting issues that we have attempted to paper over, or simply recognizing a reality those onstage avoid. The problem with modern day humour is that so much is now deemed off limits that it is stuck in the gutter because there they can safely offend everybody not just individual groups sensibilities or political correct doctrines. If we aren’t careful we will lose all the opportunities to speak in a way that takes the debate offstage. This has probably already occurred through the development of experts and self-interest groups who control the debate on key issues such as global change, human rights, parenting and gender issues for example. There is little or no room for the voice offstage.
A group of people working to deal with poverty in a community were sitting around the table discussing the way forward when one of the group suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea to ask the people in the community themselves (something I have found to be the only thing to do); there was a lengthy silence as the group of experts looked uncomfortably at each other before the facilitator said, No that would only slow us down. AN opportunity was missed in our world of experts to hear what some of the answers were from the people who know and live and experience the questions.
In a society where the High priest held all the power, had great position and was the representative of all those onstage, the writer to the Hebrews suggests that not only was Jesus the high priest, but that he was also like us yet without sin. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
A Jewish priest was a direct male descendant of the Aaron, brother of Moses. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, they performed specific duties in relation to the daily and festival sacrificial offerings. The high priest, selected from the group, sometimes held considerable political influence and also supervised during the key service of Yom Kippur. In the Second Temple period various high priests were appointed by both Jewish and non-Jewish political governors, becoming an issue of considerable controversy. Also in this period, the high priest sometimes served as the president of the ruling legislative council, the Sanhedrin.
The high priest was onstage – he was in the public eye and, along with all those who surrounded him, represented a part of society those offstage had to negotiate in their relationship with God. Often the high priests were corrupt and such power ensured that any relationship with them was an unfair one..
So when the writer to the Hebrews uses these words in relation to Jesus, he does as Jesus often did and speaks offstage, he turns them upside down and gives them a whole new meaning.
Jesus through his relationship with his Father, the God of Israel, was the one who came to intercede on our behalf, a truly priestly role. Not only did he intercede in his earthly life through his teaching and his actions, his example, but his unbroken obedience to his Fathers will took him all the way to the cross himself.
As a human being he came to experience what it was like to be among those who are offstage, out of the position of privilege, unable to be apart of the righteous because of their social position, their gender, their infirmities, hurt and shame. He took on our humanity in such a way that he became that humanity for himself.
Unlike those in power who speak through advisers and leaders about the needs and circumstances of the poor, the disabled, the troubled and the difficult, Jesus became human to experience that for himself, to place himself in the way of sin and to stare it down so that we too could do the same.
It is interesting that throughout Jesus earthly life his greatest recorded wisdom comes not from official debates with the keepers of knowledge, the experts, (with some exceptions) but with those who were offstage. He had the audacity to ask people what they wanted and gave it to them, he empowered people with words that spoke to their place in this world such as in the sermon on the mount, he stood with people who were about to be stoned for their actions by the self-righteous; it was what Jesus spoke to those off-stage which got under the nose of those in power, and what ultimately brought about his death.
Not only did he engage with humanity, he had the opportunity to sin and didn’t. He was one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. What a wonderful verse. He battled the temptation to sin as recorded in the desert after his baptism and then throughout his life for Luke comments that devil departed from him until an opportune time. Jesus knew what it was like to be tempted but he is an example to us that through relationship with him and his father sin is no longer our challenge.
There is much discussion theologically over the meaning of this verse. Some see it to mean that Jesus was impeccable, that is, unable to sin because of his divine nature. And for many years I found this understanding a stumbling block to faith. If Jesus was incapable of sin, he wasn’t like us at all, he only looked and acted like us, and I felt I was set up. How could someone who was incapable of sinning understand how I felt as a sinner and when I sinned? Was this some kind of cosmic joke?
Yet the power comes when I understand that Jesus was ‘peccable’, able to sin but because of his nature and his relationship with God chose obedience as the better way. Jesus became human and lived and died as the example of humanity living life to the fullest so that we too could become fully human.
Yes we do have a great high priest who intercedes for us and we have a great high priest who has lived the experiences of being ordinary and doing so with out sin.
And here is the possibility that Jesus life, death and resurrection brings to us, the possibility of knowing that we are not alone, unable to deal with those things which plague us, because Jesus is here, offstage with us and says in a clear loud voice within with authority, ‘I know what you are feeling and I know all is not lost, come to me and all will be well.’
14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Saturday 19 September 2009
RedShoes to Be Ordained A Priest
Hi to every body out there.
I just want to share the exciting news – RedShoes (aka Glenn Loughrey) is going to be ordained as a priest; yes that’s right, after all the drama of the last 5 years it’s finally going to happen.
The Bishop of Grafton has agreed to ordain me as a priest in the Grafton Cathedral on Saturday 5th December at 10am. All are invited to be there to share this auspicious occasion with Gaye and I.
Over the last 6 weeks I have had to struggle with leaving the wonderful people of St Jude’s @ Randwick who have allowed me the space to be myself, with uprooting Gaye one more time (19 moves in 30 years!) and taking her away from the Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus and her beloved Opera House and much more.
Yet I could not continue to put God off seeing I was called to be a priest when I was 12, I think his patience was running out and he made an offer I couldn’t refuse. We both feel at peace with the decision to be priested and to move out of the Big Smoke.
I thank everybody for their support and prayers over the years and look forward to having it continue as I take on this new challenge.
I just want to share the exciting news – RedShoes (aka Glenn Loughrey) is going to be ordained as a priest; yes that’s right, after all the drama of the last 5 years it’s finally going to happen.
The Bishop of Grafton has agreed to ordain me as a priest in the Grafton Cathedral on Saturday 5th December at 10am. All are invited to be there to share this auspicious occasion with Gaye and I.
Over the last 6 weeks I have had to struggle with leaving the wonderful people of St Jude’s @ Randwick who have allowed me the space to be myself, with uprooting Gaye one more time (19 moves in 30 years!) and taking her away from the Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus and her beloved Opera House and much more.
Yet I could not continue to put God off seeing I was called to be a priest when I was 12, I think his patience was running out and he made an offer I couldn’t refuse. We both feel at peace with the decision to be priested and to move out of the Big Smoke.
I thank everybody for their support and prayers over the years and look forward to having it continue as I take on this new challenge.
Thursday 17 September 2009
Celia Lashlie @ South Sydney High
On Tuesday evening I went to hear Celia Lashlie, author of 'He'll Be Ok: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men' speak. I had read the book and wanted to hear her in person as I wondered how she would speak the truths regarding mums she rights about publicly. Would she revert to a politically correct position or would she really say out loud what she says in her book?
What a speaker and what honesty. I wonder if I spoke the same way to a room full predominantly of mothers would I have been listened to or lynched? I fear the second. She spoke about the role mothers play in the lives of their boys, the need to understand the communication differences between men an women and particularly teen boys, teen boys pragmatism (only doing what affects them personally), the physiological changes and their impacts and the modeling of relationships between fathers and mothers.
She talked about the need for mothers to step back out of the lives of their boys and fathers to step up, the importance of being a parent and not a friend and that much later in life they will be your friend but now you are a parent, about not doing for them what they can do for themselves and so much more.
She also highlighted the traits we men bring to the relationship with our wives which are similarly to the behaviour of our boys and how that infuriates our wives but also the way women communicate infuriates us the way it does our children.
There was a lot of laughter but laughter sourced in the identification with the story, with the way we are and the way we experience life within our family. If you haven't read the book read it or purchase the cd of her talk off her website http://www.celialashlie.co.nz/live.html. I will have copies of the CD available next month.
And if you ever hear she is speaking in Sydney or wherever you are, do yourself a favour go and see her. You won't regret it.
What a speaker and what honesty. I wonder if I spoke the same way to a room full predominantly of mothers would I have been listened to or lynched? I fear the second. She spoke about the role mothers play in the lives of their boys, the need to understand the communication differences between men an women and particularly teen boys, teen boys pragmatism (only doing what affects them personally), the physiological changes and their impacts and the modeling of relationships between fathers and mothers.
She talked about the need for mothers to step back out of the lives of their boys and fathers to step up, the importance of being a parent and not a friend and that much later in life they will be your friend but now you are a parent, about not doing for them what they can do for themselves and so much more.
She also highlighted the traits we men bring to the relationship with our wives which are similarly to the behaviour of our boys and how that infuriates our wives but also the way women communicate infuriates us the way it does our children.
There was a lot of laughter but laughter sourced in the identification with the story, with the way we are and the way we experience life within our family. If you haven't read the book read it or purchase the cd of her talk off her website http://www.celialashlie.co.nz/live.html. I will have copies of the CD available next month.
And if you ever hear she is speaking in Sydney or wherever you are, do yourself a favour go and see her. You won't regret it.
Tuesday 1 September 2009
Violence - The Biff Goes On.
In the Melbourne age today Dr Jerry Rosenfield, frustrated by the consequences of violence he sees in his patients 'comments' on street violence ''Is it a problem with education? A lack of respect … Are they divorced from spiritual connections, are they not getting adequate education about how to behave in school and from their parents?'' (''Young men's mindlessness starts at home: surgeon'', The Age, 31/8).
http://www.theage.com.au/national/young-mens-mindlessness-starts-at-home-surgeon-20090830-f3ye.html.
If we add it to the responses from those involved in the Mullimbinby incident we begin to get a picture of a generation who externalises and not internalises the reasons for bad things happening. A young man involved in the Mullimbimby incident says words to the effect, it's no-ones fault it just happened. And the parents blame the school for not dealing with it.
Houston we have a problem and we need more than ground control to fix it.These are the things I talk about at Bloke's breakfast and in the parenting seminars I run at St Jude's Randwick. I have being doing this stuff for some 20+ years and the problem hasn't changed, what has changed is how we parent (noticed on Sunshine Channel 7 this morning a section on how to negotiate your 2 year old to eat vegetables for example), parents want to be friends to their children (they need to be liked by their children), parents encourage the externalisation, discipline is an old fashioned word and parents, in seeking their kids to be friends, help them to grow up way before their heads are ready for it and much more.
Jerry Rosenfield is on the money and asks the questions we are afraid to answer, and while I agree with Dr Carr-Greg that how we deal with alcohol needs review we are only masking the problem if we stay at that level (the same with law enforcement and court responses). It is to be noted that the other recent violent situation in a NSW school did not involve alcohol.
Michael goes on to say that the ‘risk factors for violence also reside within the individual, their peers and the community’. I agree. Individual sin (old fashioned word for thinking I am the centre of the world) is grown in the fertile ground of community that focuses on individualisation, blame and instant gratification.
It is not what goes in that is the problem, although it may make the problem worse, but what resides with in us and is expressed that is the problem. Its seems to me after some 30 years of working with young men in particular, that the issue has to do with anger, frustration and lack of mentoring in how to handle a range of issues impacting on men, and young men in particular in ways that work for men. It has to do with how we parent, how we fail to allow young men to take risk in positive ways, how we offer or do not offer them opportunities to be valued and valuable in society, how we as parents try and make life safe and protect them from the consequences of their actions and much more.
A debate is needed as to what constitutes common sense parenting, what are the roles of experts and statistics, what is my responsibility in life,what is the role of parents – friends or those with the responsibility to train their children how to live in society with respect for themselves and for others. It is a debate we need but won’t get as those of us old enough to take part are part of the problem – we drive too fast, drink too much, give the finger to the car which cuts us off and more – all in the presence of our children, and then wonder why we get what we get.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/young-mens-mindlessness-starts-at-home-surgeon-20090830-f3ye.html.
If we add it to the responses from those involved in the Mullimbinby incident we begin to get a picture of a generation who externalises and not internalises the reasons for bad things happening. A young man involved in the Mullimbimby incident says words to the effect, it's no-ones fault it just happened. And the parents blame the school for not dealing with it.
Houston we have a problem and we need more than ground control to fix it.These are the things I talk about at Bloke's breakfast and in the parenting seminars I run at St Jude's Randwick. I have being doing this stuff for some 20+ years and the problem hasn't changed, what has changed is how we parent (noticed on Sunshine Channel 7 this morning a section on how to negotiate your 2 year old to eat vegetables for example), parents want to be friends to their children (they need to be liked by their children), parents encourage the externalisation, discipline is an old fashioned word and parents, in seeking their kids to be friends, help them to grow up way before their heads are ready for it and much more.
Jerry Rosenfield is on the money and asks the questions we are afraid to answer, and while I agree with Dr Carr-Greg that how we deal with alcohol needs review we are only masking the problem if we stay at that level (the same with law enforcement and court responses). It is to be noted that the other recent violent situation in a NSW school did not involve alcohol.
Michael goes on to say that the ‘risk factors for violence also reside within the individual, their peers and the community’. I agree. Individual sin (old fashioned word for thinking I am the centre of the world) is grown in the fertile ground of community that focuses on individualisation, blame and instant gratification.
It is not what goes in that is the problem, although it may make the problem worse, but what resides with in us and is expressed that is the problem. Its seems to me after some 30 years of working with young men in particular, that the issue has to do with anger, frustration and lack of mentoring in how to handle a range of issues impacting on men, and young men in particular in ways that work for men. It has to do with how we parent, how we fail to allow young men to take risk in positive ways, how we offer or do not offer them opportunities to be valued and valuable in society, how we as parents try and make life safe and protect them from the consequences of their actions and much more.
A debate is needed as to what constitutes common sense parenting, what are the roles of experts and statistics, what is my responsibility in life,what is the role of parents – friends or those with the responsibility to train their children how to live in society with respect for themselves and for others. It is a debate we need but won’t get as those of us old enough to take part are part of the problem – we drive too fast, drink too much, give the finger to the car which cuts us off and more – all in the presence of our children, and then wonder why we get what we get.
Monday 24 August 2009
The Whole Armour of God
Today is an important day as I feel compelled to share with you what well-dressed Christian children wear to bed. Inspired by today’s Ephesians reading, a mother has designed the “Armour of God Pyjamas”, complemented by the whole armour of God blanket and either a Anna or Samuel doll with matching headband and beanie. The pj’s consist of a helmet of salvation, a night shirt of righteousness and belt of truth as well as a pillo of faith for the little angel to put his or her head on. All this is ensures God will protect the child as she or he sleeps.
Bizarre - I never cease to be amazed at how far people will go to justify their actions. Perhaps a cleric who wears red shoes has no right to comment!! The mother says she doesn’t want her child to feel lonely, to remember God is with her, even when she dreams.
While I wonder at the effectiveness of the Armour of God pyjamas, isn’t this the truth for which we are all searching, to find the cure for loneliness.
Patch Adams, whose taste in everyday wear is way more exaggerated than either my redshoes or the aforementioned pyjamas, says; ‘The medical professionals are a lot more comfortable calling it 'depression' than calling it 'loneliness.' And he should know.
As a young man of 17 or 18 years he had his mother commit him to a mental hospital because of his reaction to an uncle’s suicide not long after his father’s death. In the hospital he recognized two things, both the same, not only was he lonely, most of the people were in that hospital not because of their mental illness but because of loneliness. It was their unattached presence in the world which placed them in these places and resulted in them being diagnosed with medical categories.
For Patch Adams: ‘All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be.’
On leaving the hospital he committed himself to eradicating loneliness, if not eradicating it, at least making people laugh. He says ‘in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. ...85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming."
He takes seriously the admonition of Paul in Ephesisans when Paul says, “Put on the whole armour of God’ for everyday of his life he wears his clown outfit from the time he gets up until the time he goes to bed, he sees patients, runs workshops, lobbies big business and governments in full clobber – the whole armour of the clown.
He knows who he is and he is that person all the time – there is no wavering from the truth about himself. While he admits to no religion, ‘he calls a friend his "god" and the love of other people, God's spirit.’ He fully understands the truth Paul is giving to the Ephesians, you cannot live in this world and flourish unless you clothe yourself with yourself in all your glory. And if you do so you are not alone.
For Paul that glory is found in the Word of God, Jesus, who came into the world leaving behind his glory in heaven to take on the whole shape and form of humanity. It is in the truth about this living word of God who spoke God’s love into the world and who’s righteousness and obedience sets us free and whose resurrection stands us firmly in the world as the beacons of hope, that we have been welcomed into the family of God and made one with him who is one with God.
We are home.
We can complicate this passage by stripping down each part of the amour as described and providing prescriptions for each in such away it becomes all too hard. We can theologize on the meaning of each point Paul makes and set ourselves up with a conundrum which trips us up, not sets us free.
Yet, for Paul it really is as easy as getting out of bed and getting dressed. Now for one of the people who live in our house this not as easy as it sounds – we need to look at what we are doing, where we are going, what the weather is going to be like, what shoes go with what handbag which goes with what lipstick – it can take some time to get dressed!
But for me, every morning I get out of bed and my major decision is not what colour shoes I put on but which pair of red-shoes best fits the day. The shoes are always red (except for most funerals). There is no question. Paul says each day put on the armour of God which is Christ, the resurrected life of hope and fulfillment of all Gods promises, with Him as your day wear you will stand firm.
Paul says it is all there for you, simply put on Christ and you have in yourself the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity. You have communion – communion with the trinity and communion with humanity. You belong to all but yet you are still yourself. You share in all yet remain truly yourself. You share in the joys and tragedies, the success and failures, the health and ill health of all but remain free to be who you are. You are the image of Jesus who put on the humility of man to remain always the glory of God.
You do not succumb to those Michael Leunig calls the awfulisers, or Paul calls the principalities and the powers, the people around you who have allowed themselves to become victims of the world. People who put on the whole armour of God are over-comers and find a path through life which not only lights up their own lives but the lives of all they encounter.
This is the answer for loneliness, for it is in relation to others we discover who we are and that we are not alone. For Christians this begins with our relationship with God through Christ and continues in our relationship with others proceeding from our relationship with Christ. As Patch Adams models it, it is in our engagement with the world that we discover we are not alone and we have all we need to survive its horrors and its joys.
Home for Patch Adams, ‘is both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.’
For us that unlikely place is in the shape of an ordinary man with an extraordinary purpose, to speak us into our home where we belong. ‘Put on the whole armour of God’ which is Jesus the living word of God and step out in to the world firm in your faith and the knowledge that you belong in it and the world to come.
Bizarre - I never cease to be amazed at how far people will go to justify their actions. Perhaps a cleric who wears red shoes has no right to comment!! The mother says she doesn’t want her child to feel lonely, to remember God is with her, even when she dreams.
While I wonder at the effectiveness of the Armour of God pyjamas, isn’t this the truth for which we are all searching, to find the cure for loneliness.
Patch Adams, whose taste in everyday wear is way more exaggerated than either my redshoes or the aforementioned pyjamas, says; ‘The medical professionals are a lot more comfortable calling it 'depression' than calling it 'loneliness.' And he should know.
As a young man of 17 or 18 years he had his mother commit him to a mental hospital because of his reaction to an uncle’s suicide not long after his father’s death. In the hospital he recognized two things, both the same, not only was he lonely, most of the people were in that hospital not because of their mental illness but because of loneliness. It was their unattached presence in the world which placed them in these places and resulted in them being diagnosed with medical categories.
For Patch Adams: ‘All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be.’
On leaving the hospital he committed himself to eradicating loneliness, if not eradicating it, at least making people laugh. He says ‘in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. ...85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming."
He takes seriously the admonition of Paul in Ephesisans when Paul says, “Put on the whole armour of God’ for everyday of his life he wears his clown outfit from the time he gets up until the time he goes to bed, he sees patients, runs workshops, lobbies big business and governments in full clobber – the whole armour of the clown.
He knows who he is and he is that person all the time – there is no wavering from the truth about himself. While he admits to no religion, ‘he calls a friend his "god" and the love of other people, God's spirit.’ He fully understands the truth Paul is giving to the Ephesians, you cannot live in this world and flourish unless you clothe yourself with yourself in all your glory. And if you do so you are not alone.
For Paul that glory is found in the Word of God, Jesus, who came into the world leaving behind his glory in heaven to take on the whole shape and form of humanity. It is in the truth about this living word of God who spoke God’s love into the world and who’s righteousness and obedience sets us free and whose resurrection stands us firmly in the world as the beacons of hope, that we have been welcomed into the family of God and made one with him who is one with God.
We are home.
We can complicate this passage by stripping down each part of the amour as described and providing prescriptions for each in such away it becomes all too hard. We can theologize on the meaning of each point Paul makes and set ourselves up with a conundrum which trips us up, not sets us free.
Yet, for Paul it really is as easy as getting out of bed and getting dressed. Now for one of the people who live in our house this not as easy as it sounds – we need to look at what we are doing, where we are going, what the weather is going to be like, what shoes go with what handbag which goes with what lipstick – it can take some time to get dressed!
But for me, every morning I get out of bed and my major decision is not what colour shoes I put on but which pair of red-shoes best fits the day. The shoes are always red (except for most funerals). There is no question. Paul says each day put on the armour of God which is Christ, the resurrected life of hope and fulfillment of all Gods promises, with Him as your day wear you will stand firm.
Paul says it is all there for you, simply put on Christ and you have in yourself the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity. You have communion – communion with the trinity and communion with humanity. You belong to all but yet you are still yourself. You share in all yet remain truly yourself. You share in the joys and tragedies, the success and failures, the health and ill health of all but remain free to be who you are. You are the image of Jesus who put on the humility of man to remain always the glory of God.
You do not succumb to those Michael Leunig calls the awfulisers, or Paul calls the principalities and the powers, the people around you who have allowed themselves to become victims of the world. People who put on the whole armour of God are over-comers and find a path through life which not only lights up their own lives but the lives of all they encounter.
This is the answer for loneliness, for it is in relation to others we discover who we are and that we are not alone. For Christians this begins with our relationship with God through Christ and continues in our relationship with others proceeding from our relationship with Christ. As Patch Adams models it, it is in our engagement with the world that we discover we are not alone and we have all we need to survive its horrors and its joys.
Home for Patch Adams, ‘is both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.’
For us that unlikely place is in the shape of an ordinary man with an extraordinary purpose, to speak us into our home where we belong. ‘Put on the whole armour of God’ which is Jesus the living word of God and step out in to the world firm in your faith and the knowledge that you belong in it and the world to come.
Sunday 16 August 2009
Resiliency
There is much discussion on what keeps people safe, particularly in relation to bouncing back from difficult times or the simple grind of doing life.
Much discussion about self-esteem which has seen people often unwilling to set boundaries or highlight when people especially children behave badly or do poor work - it has been reduced to only saying good things and never the critical, always saying yes and never no, and has seen any reasonable concept of discipline being avoided.
Resiliency on the other hand is that component of one's personality which allows you to engage fully with life, take the knocks, recognize your limits and accept limits and direction given by others and to process all ths in a manner which affirms your place in the world especially when that world is hostile to you.
Resiliency refers to the capacity of human beings to survive and thrive in the face of adversity.
• Three Sources of Resiliency
I HAVE
People around me I trust and who love me no matter what
People who set limits for me so I know when to stop before there is danger or trouble
People who show me how to do things right by the way they do things
People who want me to learn to do things on my own
People who help me when I am sick, in danger or need to learn
I AM
A person people can like or love
Glad to do nice things for others and show my concern
Respectful of myself and others
Willing to be responsible for what I do
Sure things will be all right
I CAN
Talk to others about things that frighten or bother me
Find ways to solve problems I face
Control myself when I feel like doing something not right or dangerous
Figure out when it is a good time to talk to someone or to take action
Find someone to help me when I need it
Grotberg, E, (1995)
Much discussion about self-esteem which has seen people often unwilling to set boundaries or highlight when people especially children behave badly or do poor work - it has been reduced to only saying good things and never the critical, always saying yes and never no, and has seen any reasonable concept of discipline being avoided.
Resiliency on the other hand is that component of one's personality which allows you to engage fully with life, take the knocks, recognize your limits and accept limits and direction given by others and to process all ths in a manner which affirms your place in the world especially when that world is hostile to you.
Resiliency refers to the capacity of human beings to survive and thrive in the face of adversity.
• Three Sources of Resiliency
I HAVE
People around me I trust and who love me no matter what
People who set limits for me so I know when to stop before there is danger or trouble
People who show me how to do things right by the way they do things
People who want me to learn to do things on my own
People who help me when I am sick, in danger or need to learn
I AM
A person people can like or love
Glad to do nice things for others and show my concern
Respectful of myself and others
Willing to be responsible for what I do
Sure things will be all right
I CAN
Talk to others about things that frighten or bother me
Find ways to solve problems I face
Control myself when I feel like doing something not right or dangerous
Figure out when it is a good time to talk to someone or to take action
Find someone to help me when I need it
Grotberg, E, (1995)
Monday 10 August 2009
Addiction - A Word not A Sentence.
I noticed in the paper on sunday a story on a former world champion boxer and his battle with alcohol, and I got thinking about the issue of addiction. Not a foreigner to alcohol and its hold it has over people i am very aware personally of the issue of addiction. It is interesting that many of the people who suffer from addictions of all sorts from alcohol, drugs, risky behaviours, internet, gaming, sex, porn and more are often those who are high achievers in other areas of their lives.
They demonstrate focus, determination, perseverance, risk taking, discipline and all that it takes to succeed, yet at some point in their lives they find themselves powerless over some form of addiction. Despite all their efforts they are unable to break free and live, what they believe to be, a normal life free of their particular 'drug'.
Yet there is another side of their success in life which plays a large part in their being captured by addiction. The thrill of the chase, the adrenalin rush which comes from being out there taking risks. When that is no longer there and is not being satisfied in positive ways, this need finds a way of being met. It often starts off innocently and appears harmless, yet a theme of addiction is that it is progressive, i.e. it always moves forward and becomes something bigger, requiring more to satisfy the need.
And it never goes away fully. When you step off the train, the next time you get back on you start from there, not at the beginning. So it only gets worse and can get to that point where, after many efforts to change behaviour, it becomes all too hard and you simply give up and immerse yourself in your addiction.
How do we deal with this addiction. It is simple but not easy. It is about building up our resiliency day by day so that we no longer see ourselves as victims. Victimhood plays are large role in addictive behaviours, so does boredom, inaction and loneliness.
We develop our resiliency and ability to cope by:
developing connections with significant others in our lives, focussing on building relationships that are more than casual and passing;
ensuring that we are involved in positive activities which feed our need for recognition, success and value and sometimes push us beyond our limits;
taking back control of our lives from those people who blame for our situation no matter how much we may love them.
We also need to be aware of what places us in the at risk space where, before we know it we are indulging in our own particular addiction. HALT is a suitable acronym : Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired, on their own each one increases the risk of 'reoffending' but in combinations of two or more, it spells trouble.
When faced by any of the above take positive steps to deal with it - get something to eat, eat regularly; talk to someone about your anger, go for a run or do some exercise, weed the garden; find someone to talk to, make a phone call or just go and get a coffee and talk to a stranger in the coffee lounge; get some sleep, develop a regular sleep pattern, turn off all electronic devices in your bedroom. There are many more.
The last thing is to remember that addictions are common and there are many people suffering the same addiction or set of addictions as you are. You are not alone and as you begin to confront your addictions you will begin to meet and come in contact with others, and together support one another.
Thus you become resilient, able to celebrate your successes and not be bowed down by your failures, able to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and move forward. Life is a journey and it is not how many times you fall down that counts, but how many times you get up.
They demonstrate focus, determination, perseverance, risk taking, discipline and all that it takes to succeed, yet at some point in their lives they find themselves powerless over some form of addiction. Despite all their efforts they are unable to break free and live, what they believe to be, a normal life free of their particular 'drug'.
Yet there is another side of their success in life which plays a large part in their being captured by addiction. The thrill of the chase, the adrenalin rush which comes from being out there taking risks. When that is no longer there and is not being satisfied in positive ways, this need finds a way of being met. It often starts off innocently and appears harmless, yet a theme of addiction is that it is progressive, i.e. it always moves forward and becomes something bigger, requiring more to satisfy the need.
And it never goes away fully. When you step off the train, the next time you get back on you start from there, not at the beginning. So it only gets worse and can get to that point where, after many efforts to change behaviour, it becomes all too hard and you simply give up and immerse yourself in your addiction.
How do we deal with this addiction. It is simple but not easy. It is about building up our resiliency day by day so that we no longer see ourselves as victims. Victimhood plays are large role in addictive behaviours, so does boredom, inaction and loneliness.
We develop our resiliency and ability to cope by:
developing connections with significant others in our lives, focussing on building relationships that are more than casual and passing;
ensuring that we are involved in positive activities which feed our need for recognition, success and value and sometimes push us beyond our limits;
taking back control of our lives from those people who blame for our situation no matter how much we may love them.
We also need to be aware of what places us in the at risk space where, before we know it we are indulging in our own particular addiction. HALT is a suitable acronym : Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired, on their own each one increases the risk of 'reoffending' but in combinations of two or more, it spells trouble.
When faced by any of the above take positive steps to deal with it - get something to eat, eat regularly; talk to someone about your anger, go for a run or do some exercise, weed the garden; find someone to talk to, make a phone call or just go and get a coffee and talk to a stranger in the coffee lounge; get some sleep, develop a regular sleep pattern, turn off all electronic devices in your bedroom. There are many more.
The last thing is to remember that addictions are common and there are many people suffering the same addiction or set of addictions as you are. You are not alone and as you begin to confront your addictions you will begin to meet and come in contact with others, and together support one another.
Thus you become resilient, able to celebrate your successes and not be bowed down by your failures, able to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and move forward. Life is a journey and it is not how many times you fall down that counts, but how many times you get up.
Wednesday 29 July 2009
RedShoes & Thomas Merton
At the recent 11th International Thomas Merton Society Conference in Rochester USA a pair of Red Shoes from Down Under made a lot of noise and played, as all clowns do when they get the chance. And the conference was an ideal place to do that.
When the Red Shoes returned home they are often asked where they went and, when told ‘A conference on Thomas Merton’, the usual response is a blank look and, "Who?"
Red Shoes could say he was an American Trappist Monk who was born in Prades France in 1915 to Owen (a Kiwi artist) and Ruth (an American) Merton, that he entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1941 and died in Bangkok in 1968. I could, but that would be of little use to the reader who would still ask, "so who is he?"
It’s a question I would have asked up until about 7 years ago al. I had just returned from the wilderness of alcoholism and begun working at St Clements Stafford. Somewhere somebody suggested I ought to read Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton. Coming from an evangelical background I had no idea who either were. I discovered Nouwen first.
I had some difficulty finding something of Mertons, and when I did, the array of titles was so enormous with over 100 publications and some 4,500 letters, probably qualifying him as the noisiest monk in history, I was unsure of where to start. I picked up the first of his journals (7 volumes) 'Run to the Mountain" covering the years 1939-41. And I was hooked. I devoured all seven volumes and the man I encountered was one whose faith and human experience I identified with.
Here was the clown, the Holy Fool I was looking for, someone who embodied in my lifetime the radical revolution who was Christ. This was no safe Gospel, no easy ride, no simple steps to salvation. This was life in the raw, lived and experienced by a man who endured the century into which I was born and lived in for some 13 years of my life. Not only was Merton real to me, he was real to the world in which I lived.
Because Merton lived in my lifetime and people who knew him are still alive, he has been spared the ignominy of being portrayed as asaint. He wasn’t. He was cheeky, cantankerous, compassionate, playful, petulant and so much more. He was human. He could be deeply insightful and sometimes superficial, full of charity towards the human spirit and frustrated by it, obedient to the Trappist and Catholic leadership and angry at it, he could be both optimistic and pessimistic, he could be dogmatic and, almost at the same time, change his mind. Yet he was obviously deeply in touch with Christ and the task of metanoia in both his own life and the life of the word.
His humanity attracted me. His spiritual journey began with him diving enthusiastically (a Merton trait) into the Trappist life, followed by a period in which his own personal awareness deepened through contemplation and solitude. In the 1950's, and continuing until his death, he engaged with the world outside the monastery walls on issues such as social justice, anti-war, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue.
His forays into writing, becoming a cloistered best selling author with his autobiography Seven Storey Mountain, his passion for solitude and contemplation that saw him spend the last 3 years of his life as a hermit, and his dialogue with Eastern and other religions at a time when ecumenism and interfaith dialogue was rare could be seen, and was, as foolishness.
So ‘who was Thomas Merton”? He was and is a Twentieth Century clown, a Holy Fool, someone who steps into the space-in-between and connects the extremes we all experience in life. Like Charlie Chaplin he exposes the absurdity in our sane and reasonable world, making nonsense out of our sense, showing us clearly that what divides us is not real, it is simply an illusion.
Merton challenges us to find the space-in-between where we can inhabit our own absurdity.
‘If there is hope anywhere, it lies somewhere in the middle between the two extremes (which in reality meet). The extremes are closer together than the “middle” which seems to be between them.”
When the Red Shoes returned home they are often asked where they went and, when told ‘A conference on Thomas Merton’, the usual response is a blank look and, "Who?"
Red Shoes could say he was an American Trappist Monk who was born in Prades France in 1915 to Owen (a Kiwi artist) and Ruth (an American) Merton, that he entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1941 and died in Bangkok in 1968. I could, but that would be of little use to the reader who would still ask, "so who is he?"
It’s a question I would have asked up until about 7 years ago al. I had just returned from the wilderness of alcoholism and begun working at St Clements Stafford. Somewhere somebody suggested I ought to read Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton. Coming from an evangelical background I had no idea who either were. I discovered Nouwen first.
I had some difficulty finding something of Mertons, and when I did, the array of titles was so enormous with over 100 publications and some 4,500 letters, probably qualifying him as the noisiest monk in history, I was unsure of where to start. I picked up the first of his journals (7 volumes) 'Run to the Mountain" covering the years 1939-41. And I was hooked. I devoured all seven volumes and the man I encountered was one whose faith and human experience I identified with.
Here was the clown, the Holy Fool I was looking for, someone who embodied in my lifetime the radical revolution who was Christ. This was no safe Gospel, no easy ride, no simple steps to salvation. This was life in the raw, lived and experienced by a man who endured the century into which I was born and lived in for some 13 years of my life. Not only was Merton real to me, he was real to the world in which I lived.
Because Merton lived in my lifetime and people who knew him are still alive, he has been spared the ignominy of being portrayed as asaint. He wasn’t. He was cheeky, cantankerous, compassionate, playful, petulant and so much more. He was human. He could be deeply insightful and sometimes superficial, full of charity towards the human spirit and frustrated by it, obedient to the Trappist and Catholic leadership and angry at it, he could be both optimistic and pessimistic, he could be dogmatic and, almost at the same time, change his mind. Yet he was obviously deeply in touch with Christ and the task of metanoia in both his own life and the life of the word.
His humanity attracted me. His spiritual journey began with him diving enthusiastically (a Merton trait) into the Trappist life, followed by a period in which his own personal awareness deepened through contemplation and solitude. In the 1950's, and continuing until his death, he engaged with the world outside the monastery walls on issues such as social justice, anti-war, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue.
His forays into writing, becoming a cloistered best selling author with his autobiography Seven Storey Mountain, his passion for solitude and contemplation that saw him spend the last 3 years of his life as a hermit, and his dialogue with Eastern and other religions at a time when ecumenism and interfaith dialogue was rare could be seen, and was, as foolishness.
So ‘who was Thomas Merton”? He was and is a Twentieth Century clown, a Holy Fool, someone who steps into the space-in-between and connects the extremes we all experience in life. Like Charlie Chaplin he exposes the absurdity in our sane and reasonable world, making nonsense out of our sense, showing us clearly that what divides us is not real, it is simply an illusion.
Merton challenges us to find the space-in-between where we can inhabit our own absurdity.
‘If there is hope anywhere, it lies somewhere in the middle between the two extremes (which in reality meet). The extremes are closer together than the “middle” which seems to be between them.”
Monday 27 July 2009
Time Out to Tune Up!
When Jesus Realised that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, he with drew again to the mountain by himself – John 6:15
Sometime ago somebody said to me, ‘The good things you do can stop you from doing the best thing you should be doing.” At the time I smiled and thought little about it. Over the years though, the truth of that statement has begun to become clearer for me.
The danger in our lives is that we can get so involved in the stuff of life, the stuff we enjoy doing and the stuff we think we have to do that we lose sight of the thing we ought to be doing. We are busy, fully engaged with others, providing solutions, achieving stuff, finishing our studies, getting married, raising kids and so forth, that we forget what we set out to do in life. Like the old adage ‘ we are so busy fighting off the crocodiles we forgot all we went out to do was drain the pool!
The even bigger danger is that we become so engrossed in what’s coming at us from all sides, we have little or no space to reflect on any of this and after a while don’t even bother to bother about making the space to look at our lives from a different angle. We give up and spend the rest of our life distracted from our original purpose and only realise it when it is almost too late.
Jesus faced this dilemma every day. Every where he went people were coming at him, people who needed help, people for healing, people who wanted answers; religious leaders and politicians who were asking the hard questions and those slow learning disciples who had to be taught the basics about the spiritual life. If he went to get a drink at the village well people asked hard questions, if he went to a wedding he was put in charge of the wine, if he went to dinner the more eccentric guests did things like anoint his feet with oil and more. Just going across the lake gathered a large and needy crowd.
And it wasn’t that people came to him, he Jesus the incarnated Christ felt for them. He had compassion – a deep desire to do something for them – and he often acted on that compassion. He healed people, drove out demons, challenged social injustices and simply was available 24/7 to others out of this sense of identification, of being human just like those who came to him. Something had to be done, and often, he did something.
Yet he knew that his humanness, his humanity, was not all there was to his identity. He was the Christ, the Messiah, and there was more to his life than solving people’s material need for healing, belonging and security. He knew that innately to some degree, to what degree we do not know exactly, but we do know he spent much time exploring and defining his place in the world and his Fathers kingdom.
The first part of John 6:15 “When Jesus realised that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king’, speaks of that human pressure to do what is expected of you by others. To be responsible and step up to the mark that those around you deem important. Jesus faces here again the type of temptation he did in the desert after his baptism. The temptation to be seen as the king of the world, the one who is being lauded as the saviour of others, if he goes with them now he will grab his 15 minutes of fame and become a popular icon. But is that the best thing?
Each of us struggles daily with this temptation at some level. We are manipulated by how it feels when we find a sense of belonging in a group or in a family, by the kind words others say about us, the way others come to us to unburden their problems and seek our counsel, or simply by success at work, school or play. We can suddenly find ourselves caught up and off on the wrong track doing the good stuff but not the best.
At the same time we can be rocked off our feet by the negative that comes and takes us away from the best. In the last week we have seen the death of a 14 year old girl, the 4th in one Victorian high school, who has committed suicide because of bullying, the negative input from those around her. This extreme example of how easy and devastating it is to soak in how the world sees us and to allow that to define our identity highlights the importance of maintaining space to reaffirm our place in this world.
Jesus sees the crowd coming or perhaps, not so much sees them coming but discerns the mood, the intention, the desire of the crowd and withdraws. The last 8 words of John 6:15, ‘He withdrew again to the mountains by himself’ provide us with some clues.
He withdrew so he could draw breath, to breathe in the truth about his identity and breathe out the overwhelming temptation to be a superstar, leading the people to victory as their king. Jesus, the man, found space to reflect on Christ the messiah, the Son of God, and redefine for himself his whole reason for being.
And this was not a knee jerk reaction to this situation, it was his discipline, for there are over 16 references in the four Gospels to Jesus taking time out.
It was his delight – he delighted in this time alone for quiet reflection and fought to have it even if, on many occasions as this passage attests to, it was fleeting and interrupted by others.
It was dialogue with himself and with his father and it allowed him to define and redefine who he really was. It was prayer and contemplation which reinforced his fidelity to the mission of God. This includes those moments when we find him wrestling and arguing with God in the last two times his prayer is recorded, in the Garden before his betrayal and on the Cross before his death.
It was this discipline of dialogue with himself, working through what he thought and believed, what he desired and needed and how he saw himself at his centre which allows him to stay the course, even when the option to avoid the messy outcome is available to him, it is his decision, he remains faithful to his and his fathers mission.
It was his discipline of dialoguing with his father, working through the relational dimension with the kingdom in the midst of the world, which allowed him to say no to what may very well have been good things so that he could focus on God’s plan, the best thing.
Jesus discipline gave him the freedom to cut through the good stuff he did, and could have spent the rest of his life in to old age doing, to do the best thing even though that best thing cost him his life.
The challenge for us as his brothers and sisters, God’s Children and co-heirs of the kingdom, is to find that discipline for ourselves and in dialogue with God and ourselves to discern the best from the good and stay with it, regardless of the cost.
Sometime ago somebody said to me, ‘The good things you do can stop you from doing the best thing you should be doing.” At the time I smiled and thought little about it. Over the years though, the truth of that statement has begun to become clearer for me.
The danger in our lives is that we can get so involved in the stuff of life, the stuff we enjoy doing and the stuff we think we have to do that we lose sight of the thing we ought to be doing. We are busy, fully engaged with others, providing solutions, achieving stuff, finishing our studies, getting married, raising kids and so forth, that we forget what we set out to do in life. Like the old adage ‘ we are so busy fighting off the crocodiles we forgot all we went out to do was drain the pool!
The even bigger danger is that we become so engrossed in what’s coming at us from all sides, we have little or no space to reflect on any of this and after a while don’t even bother to bother about making the space to look at our lives from a different angle. We give up and spend the rest of our life distracted from our original purpose and only realise it when it is almost too late.
Jesus faced this dilemma every day. Every where he went people were coming at him, people who needed help, people for healing, people who wanted answers; religious leaders and politicians who were asking the hard questions and those slow learning disciples who had to be taught the basics about the spiritual life. If he went to get a drink at the village well people asked hard questions, if he went to a wedding he was put in charge of the wine, if he went to dinner the more eccentric guests did things like anoint his feet with oil and more. Just going across the lake gathered a large and needy crowd.
And it wasn’t that people came to him, he Jesus the incarnated Christ felt for them. He had compassion – a deep desire to do something for them – and he often acted on that compassion. He healed people, drove out demons, challenged social injustices and simply was available 24/7 to others out of this sense of identification, of being human just like those who came to him. Something had to be done, and often, he did something.
Yet he knew that his humanness, his humanity, was not all there was to his identity. He was the Christ, the Messiah, and there was more to his life than solving people’s material need for healing, belonging and security. He knew that innately to some degree, to what degree we do not know exactly, but we do know he spent much time exploring and defining his place in the world and his Fathers kingdom.
The first part of John 6:15 “When Jesus realised that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king’, speaks of that human pressure to do what is expected of you by others. To be responsible and step up to the mark that those around you deem important. Jesus faces here again the type of temptation he did in the desert after his baptism. The temptation to be seen as the king of the world, the one who is being lauded as the saviour of others, if he goes with them now he will grab his 15 minutes of fame and become a popular icon. But is that the best thing?
Each of us struggles daily with this temptation at some level. We are manipulated by how it feels when we find a sense of belonging in a group or in a family, by the kind words others say about us, the way others come to us to unburden their problems and seek our counsel, or simply by success at work, school or play. We can suddenly find ourselves caught up and off on the wrong track doing the good stuff but not the best.
At the same time we can be rocked off our feet by the negative that comes and takes us away from the best. In the last week we have seen the death of a 14 year old girl, the 4th in one Victorian high school, who has committed suicide because of bullying, the negative input from those around her. This extreme example of how easy and devastating it is to soak in how the world sees us and to allow that to define our identity highlights the importance of maintaining space to reaffirm our place in this world.
Jesus sees the crowd coming or perhaps, not so much sees them coming but discerns the mood, the intention, the desire of the crowd and withdraws. The last 8 words of John 6:15, ‘He withdrew again to the mountains by himself’ provide us with some clues.
He withdrew so he could draw breath, to breathe in the truth about his identity and breathe out the overwhelming temptation to be a superstar, leading the people to victory as their king. Jesus, the man, found space to reflect on Christ the messiah, the Son of God, and redefine for himself his whole reason for being.
And this was not a knee jerk reaction to this situation, it was his discipline, for there are over 16 references in the four Gospels to Jesus taking time out.
It was his delight – he delighted in this time alone for quiet reflection and fought to have it even if, on many occasions as this passage attests to, it was fleeting and interrupted by others.
It was dialogue with himself and with his father and it allowed him to define and redefine who he really was. It was prayer and contemplation which reinforced his fidelity to the mission of God. This includes those moments when we find him wrestling and arguing with God in the last two times his prayer is recorded, in the Garden before his betrayal and on the Cross before his death.
It was this discipline of dialogue with himself, working through what he thought and believed, what he desired and needed and how he saw himself at his centre which allows him to stay the course, even when the option to avoid the messy outcome is available to him, it is his decision, he remains faithful to his and his fathers mission.
It was his discipline of dialoguing with his father, working through the relational dimension with the kingdom in the midst of the world, which allowed him to say no to what may very well have been good things so that he could focus on God’s plan, the best thing.
Jesus discipline gave him the freedom to cut through the good stuff he did, and could have spent the rest of his life in to old age doing, to do the best thing even though that best thing cost him his life.
The challenge for us as his brothers and sisters, God’s Children and co-heirs of the kingdom, is to find that discipline for ourselves and in dialogue with God and ourselves to discern the best from the good and stay with it, regardless of the cost.
Wednesday 22 July 2009
Ethics, Medicine & Scarcity - Who Makes The Big Decisions?
Saw an interesting article this morning and it got me thinking. The headline was 'Binge-drinker Gary Reinbach dies aged 22'. Caught your attention too? (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25816364-401,00.html)
Apparently Gary had a history of heavy drinking since he was 13 and had cirrhosis of the liver. He was in hospital awaiting a kidney transplant but was refused because 'doctors....fear(ed) he would not stay sober for six months after the operations.'
The NHS Blood and Transport service said the case 'highlighted the dilemma faced by doctors because of the shortage of donated organs.' SO it seems the problem is ours, the general public who simply don't donate enough organs? Really? The facts are simple, organs are scarce and they are to be given to those who are the best possible scientific match without recourse to subjective judgements re behaviour or life style.
It is not an 'economic' (supply and demand) decision but an ethical/moral decision. It is about the power of life and death and who makes that decision. It is about the criteria for making that decision for there is no guarantee that a 'binge drinker' will care less for their new kidney than a teenager with a life ahead of them on whom we have no history or pattern of behaviour, or anybody else for that matter. How do we make a decision now about future behaviour that is ethical and accurate? Isn't the primary criteria for a kidney the best scientific match?
If we were serious about these subjective criteria, very few people would meet them because lifestyle plays a prominent role in people needing organ transplants in many cases. Such things as diet, fluid intake, exercise, medication use etc all impact. These are often long term habitual behaviours that we have no gaurrantee will change.
My personal challenge is that to make the decision a young man of 22 is not worth a life saving operation is not only a life denying decision for him but an indictment on our society. What value do we place on life and who are we to play God?
There are a number of other questions which need to be addressed as well including: the failure of medical science to deliver on its promises to deliver positive health outcomes for all regardless of who you are, the failure of society (us) to demand that equality and the result that medical people are placed in the unenviable position of having to choose.
This is a question which has been facing the medical fraternity and hospital administrators since the mid-70's and is now being faced daily due not only to the scarcity of organs but the scarcity of funds for the high cost 'miracle' treatments which keep us alive long past our previous use by date. Perhaps there are no answers, but perhaps we need to remember all patients are made in the image of God and any decision to allow someone to die is more than just a scarcity question.
Apparently Gary had a history of heavy drinking since he was 13 and had cirrhosis of the liver. He was in hospital awaiting a kidney transplant but was refused because 'doctors....fear(ed) he would not stay sober for six months after the operations.'
The NHS Blood and Transport service said the case 'highlighted the dilemma faced by doctors because of the shortage of donated organs.' SO it seems the problem is ours, the general public who simply don't donate enough organs? Really? The facts are simple, organs are scarce and they are to be given to those who are the best possible scientific match without recourse to subjective judgements re behaviour or life style.
It is not an 'economic' (supply and demand) decision but an ethical/moral decision. It is about the power of life and death and who makes that decision. It is about the criteria for making that decision for there is no guarantee that a 'binge drinker' will care less for their new kidney than a teenager with a life ahead of them on whom we have no history or pattern of behaviour, or anybody else for that matter. How do we make a decision now about future behaviour that is ethical and accurate? Isn't the primary criteria for a kidney the best scientific match?
If we were serious about these subjective criteria, very few people would meet them because lifestyle plays a prominent role in people needing organ transplants in many cases. Such things as diet, fluid intake, exercise, medication use etc all impact. These are often long term habitual behaviours that we have no gaurrantee will change.
My personal challenge is that to make the decision a young man of 22 is not worth a life saving operation is not only a life denying decision for him but an indictment on our society. What value do we place on life and who are we to play God?
There are a number of other questions which need to be addressed as well including: the failure of medical science to deliver on its promises to deliver positive health outcomes for all regardless of who you are, the failure of society (us) to demand that equality and the result that medical people are placed in the unenviable position of having to choose.
This is a question which has been facing the medical fraternity and hospital administrators since the mid-70's and is now being faced daily due not only to the scarcity of organs but the scarcity of funds for the high cost 'miracle' treatments which keep us alive long past our previous use by date. Perhaps there are no answers, but perhaps we need to remember all patients are made in the image of God and any decision to allow someone to die is more than just a scarcity question.
Wednesday 8 July 2009
The World Needs More Holy Fools.
The world needs more holy fools - people who seem to be out of step with the rest of the world, eccentric and a little odd. Without them our world would just slide off into oblivion, unaware that the daly grind is just grinding it into nothingness. Holy Fools are the rocks that chip away at the 'biegeness' of life and call us back to reality, a reality that says that much of what I am doing is of little or no value. That in fact I take myself way to serious and actually think that what I do in my work a day grind matters. Yet Holy Fools know something else, they have an intuitive understanding about what truly matters.
Holy Fools say things like "Don't sweat the small stuff, it's all small stuff", "First things first", "Calendars are moral documents", "Irrelevance is a gift", "Smile and they will wonder what you're up to", "Play with others and great things will happen", "Be still, very very still, and above all else, don't wobble", "Love your neighbors as yourself", "Turn the other cheek" and loads more.
Holy Fools miss meetings to watch their kids play footy, recite poetry and act in the school play.
Holy Fools take time out to have coffee with their partners, buy some flowers to take home and to secretly order a subscription to their favorite magazine.
Holy Fools go home to sit with their parents, visit a sick mum or dad in hospital or just take them out of the nursing home for a day when responsible people would be at work.
Holy Fools find ways to combine work with their passion, practice non-violence wherever they are and know that the words "Federal budget" and "government policy" refer to a moral document that expresses the true nature of democracy as it is practiced by those elected to govern.
Holy Fools speak out for peace, ethical behavior and social justice even if it means looking like a fool.
Holy Fools know that it doesn't matter what others think about them, just what the man in the mirror thinks, what that moral compass at their core knows and what God, however they see the ground of the being, sees them.
I recently met a man who is a minder to many of the great superstars of music and movies who was asked to write a tell-all book. The contract was worth more than $1 million dollars. He said "No". Why? Because he said he would have to look his 11 year old son in the face and know that he had failed him for he would no longer be a man of integrity, and being a man of integrity was what he wanted his son to be and how could he if his father wasn't? Being a millionaire may have bought his son security but not integrity!
That's a Holy Fool!
Holy Fools say things like "Don't sweat the small stuff, it's all small stuff", "First things first", "Calendars are moral documents", "Irrelevance is a gift", "Smile and they will wonder what you're up to", "Play with others and great things will happen", "Be still, very very still, and above all else, don't wobble", "Love your neighbors as yourself", "Turn the other cheek" and loads more.
Holy Fools miss meetings to watch their kids play footy, recite poetry and act in the school play.
Holy Fools take time out to have coffee with their partners, buy some flowers to take home and to secretly order a subscription to their favorite magazine.
Holy Fools go home to sit with their parents, visit a sick mum or dad in hospital or just take them out of the nursing home for a day when responsible people would be at work.
Holy Fools find ways to combine work with their passion, practice non-violence wherever they are and know that the words "Federal budget" and "government policy" refer to a moral document that expresses the true nature of democracy as it is practiced by those elected to govern.
Holy Fools speak out for peace, ethical behavior and social justice even if it means looking like a fool.
Holy Fools know that it doesn't matter what others think about them, just what the man in the mirror thinks, what that moral compass at their core knows and what God, however they see the ground of the being, sees them.
I recently met a man who is a minder to many of the great superstars of music and movies who was asked to write a tell-all book. The contract was worth more than $1 million dollars. He said "No". Why? Because he said he would have to look his 11 year old son in the face and know that he had failed him for he would no longer be a man of integrity, and being a man of integrity was what he wanted his son to be and how could he if his father wasn't? Being a millionaire may have bought his son security but not integrity!
That's a Holy Fool!
Friday 3 July 2009
Thomas Merton - Who Was He?
As some of you know I just returned from the 11th International Thomas Merton Society Conference in Rochester USA and the usual response when I say this is a blank look translated as "Who?"
I could say that he was an American Trappist Monk who was born in Prades France in 1915 to Owen (a Kiwi artist) and Ruth (an American) Merton, that he entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1941 and died in Bangkok in 1968. I could, but that would be of little use to the reader who would still ask "so, who is he?"
It’s a question I would have asked up until about 7 years ago, before I was introduced to him. I had just returned from the wilderness of alcoholism and began working at St Clements Anglican Church Stafford in Brisbane Australia. Somewhere in a conversation somebody suggested I might be interested in reading Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton. Coming from an evangelical background I had no idea who either were. I found Nouwen first and found him easy to read and very accessible.
I had some difficulty finding something on Thomas Merton, and when I did, the array of titles was so enormous as there are over 100 publications and some 4,500 letters, which probably qualifies him as the noisiest monk in history, I was unsure of where to start.
I picked up the first of his journals (there are 7 volumes) 'Run to the Mountain" covering the years 1939-41. And I was hooked. I devoured all seven volumes and the man I found in there was one whose faith and human experience I identified with.
Here was the clown, the Holy Fool I was looking for, someone who embodied in my lifetime the radical revolution who was Christ. This was no safe Gospel, no easy ride, no simple steps to salvation. This was real life in the raw, lived and experienced by a man who endured the century in which I was born and lived in for some 45 years of my life. Not only was Merton real to me, he was real to the world in which I lived.
Because Merton lived in my lifetime and people who knew him are still alive (met several at the conference who were previously just names in Merton’s books), he has been spared the ignominy of being written as a perfect saint. He wasn’t. He was cheeky, cantankerous, compassionate, playful, petulant and so much more. He was human. He could be deeply insightful and sometimes superficial, full of charity towards the human spirit and frustrated by it, obedient to the Trappist and Catholic leadership and angry with it, he could be both optimistic and pessimistic, he could be dogmatic and, almost at the same time, change his mind. He was very human yet obviously deeply in touch with Christ and the task of metanoia in both his own life and the life of the word.
It is his humanity and his spiritual journey that appealed to me. His spiritual journey began with him diving enthusiastically (a Merton trait it seems) into the Trappist life, which was followed by a period of a deepening of his own personal awareness through contemplation and solitude and then, beginning in the 1950's and continuing until his death, a period of engagement with the world outside the monastery walls including social justice, anti-war, ecumenism, interfaith dialogue and his enthusiasm for Zen (much of his letter writing occurred in this period and included his dialogue with leaders and influential writers across a range of causes, religions and spiritualities).
William H Shannon, in his excellent publication An Introduction – Thomas Merton, recognises the qualities I discovered (and it seems many others do everyday as his popularity in both secular and religious bookshops, reading lists and universities has not decreased) and denotes them as ‘Merton’s themes’. While they are overt themes Merton dealt with in his writing they also identify the underlying quality of Thomas the person reflected in his writing, focus and appeal. Those themes are: his humanness, his ability to articulate the human condition, reverence for people, bursting the bonds of cultural limitation and spiritual director for the masses
For me these themes are the marks of the clown, the essence of the Holy Fool in Christian tradition and Merton, in all that he did and said, is situated within that tradition. The simple act of leaving a promising writing and academic career and the ‘good life’ (Conjectures of the Guilty Bystander 279) to disappear into the desert of the Monastic life follows in the steps of the Desert Fathers, the Russian yurodive and other Christian mystics who’s foolishness challenged the society they left behind.
His forays into writing and becoming a cloistered best selling author with his autobiography Seven Storey Mountain, his passion for solitude and contemplation that see him spend the last 3 years of his life as a hermit, and his dialogue with other religions at a time when ecumenism was not even a word of currency could be seen, and was by some at the time, as foolishness. His dialogue with Eastern and other religions and spiritualities was completely unconventional, particularly for a Trappist monk and hermit, and his involvement in the civil rights, peace and anti-war movements and his passion for non-violence set him apart. He reports that "I am told by a higher superior: 'It is not your place to write about nuclear war:that is for the bishops'". (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 296)
So how do we answer the question, ‘Who is Thomas Merton”? He is a Twentieth Century clown, a Holy Fool, someone who steps into the space-in-between and connects the extremes we all experience in life. Like Charlie Chaplin he exposes the absurdity in our sane and reasonable world, making nonsense out of our sense and showing us clearly that what divides us is not real, it is simply an illusion we have inhabited to fit in.
Merton never fitted in and challenges us to find the space-in-between where we can inhabit our own absurdity.
‘If there is hope anywhere, it lies somewhere in the middle between the two extremes (which in reality meet). The extremes are closer together than the “middle” which seems to be between them.” Thomas Merton (Echoing Silence 183)
I could say that he was an American Trappist Monk who was born in Prades France in 1915 to Owen (a Kiwi artist) and Ruth (an American) Merton, that he entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1941 and died in Bangkok in 1968. I could, but that would be of little use to the reader who would still ask "so, who is he?"
It’s a question I would have asked up until about 7 years ago, before I was introduced to him. I had just returned from the wilderness of alcoholism and began working at St Clements Anglican Church Stafford in Brisbane Australia. Somewhere in a conversation somebody suggested I might be interested in reading Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton. Coming from an evangelical background I had no idea who either were. I found Nouwen first and found him easy to read and very accessible.
I had some difficulty finding something on Thomas Merton, and when I did, the array of titles was so enormous as there are over 100 publications and some 4,500 letters, which probably qualifies him as the noisiest monk in history, I was unsure of where to start.
I picked up the first of his journals (there are 7 volumes) 'Run to the Mountain" covering the years 1939-41. And I was hooked. I devoured all seven volumes and the man I found in there was one whose faith and human experience I identified with.
Here was the clown, the Holy Fool I was looking for, someone who embodied in my lifetime the radical revolution who was Christ. This was no safe Gospel, no easy ride, no simple steps to salvation. This was real life in the raw, lived and experienced by a man who endured the century in which I was born and lived in for some 45 years of my life. Not only was Merton real to me, he was real to the world in which I lived.
Because Merton lived in my lifetime and people who knew him are still alive (met several at the conference who were previously just names in Merton’s books), he has been spared the ignominy of being written as a perfect saint. He wasn’t. He was cheeky, cantankerous, compassionate, playful, petulant and so much more. He was human. He could be deeply insightful and sometimes superficial, full of charity towards the human spirit and frustrated by it, obedient to the Trappist and Catholic leadership and angry with it, he could be both optimistic and pessimistic, he could be dogmatic and, almost at the same time, change his mind. He was very human yet obviously deeply in touch with Christ and the task of metanoia in both his own life and the life of the word.
It is his humanity and his spiritual journey that appealed to me. His spiritual journey began with him diving enthusiastically (a Merton trait it seems) into the Trappist life, which was followed by a period of a deepening of his own personal awareness through contemplation and solitude and then, beginning in the 1950's and continuing until his death, a period of engagement with the world outside the monastery walls including social justice, anti-war, ecumenism, interfaith dialogue and his enthusiasm for Zen (much of his letter writing occurred in this period and included his dialogue with leaders and influential writers across a range of causes, religions and spiritualities).
William H Shannon, in his excellent publication An Introduction – Thomas Merton, recognises the qualities I discovered (and it seems many others do everyday as his popularity in both secular and religious bookshops, reading lists and universities has not decreased) and denotes them as ‘Merton’s themes’. While they are overt themes Merton dealt with in his writing they also identify the underlying quality of Thomas the person reflected in his writing, focus and appeal. Those themes are: his humanness, his ability to articulate the human condition, reverence for people, bursting the bonds of cultural limitation and spiritual director for the masses
For me these themes are the marks of the clown, the essence of the Holy Fool in Christian tradition and Merton, in all that he did and said, is situated within that tradition. The simple act of leaving a promising writing and academic career and the ‘good life’ (Conjectures of the Guilty Bystander 279) to disappear into the desert of the Monastic life follows in the steps of the Desert Fathers, the Russian yurodive and other Christian mystics who’s foolishness challenged the society they left behind.
His forays into writing and becoming a cloistered best selling author with his autobiography Seven Storey Mountain, his passion for solitude and contemplation that see him spend the last 3 years of his life as a hermit, and his dialogue with other religions at a time when ecumenism was not even a word of currency could be seen, and was by some at the time, as foolishness. His dialogue with Eastern and other religions and spiritualities was completely unconventional, particularly for a Trappist monk and hermit, and his involvement in the civil rights, peace and anti-war movements and his passion for non-violence set him apart. He reports that "I am told by a higher superior: 'It is not your place to write about nuclear war:that is for the bishops'". (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 296)
So how do we answer the question, ‘Who is Thomas Merton”? He is a Twentieth Century clown, a Holy Fool, someone who steps into the space-in-between and connects the extremes we all experience in life. Like Charlie Chaplin he exposes the absurdity in our sane and reasonable world, making nonsense out of our sense and showing us clearly that what divides us is not real, it is simply an illusion we have inhabited to fit in.
Merton never fitted in and challenges us to find the space-in-between where we can inhabit our own absurdity.
‘If there is hope anywhere, it lies somewhere in the middle between the two extremes (which in reality meet). The extremes are closer together than the “middle” which seems to be between them.” Thomas Merton (Echoing Silence 183)
Tuesday 30 June 2009
Community turns 146
St Jude's has always been committed to community and to being open and welcoming to all. And it shows in the ministries operating within the church and the variety of people who attend. Often people ask why I am at St Jude's. My answer is simple, 'it's a good place to be, there is no rush to get anywhere in terms of numbers, achievements or activities'. Yet the numbers are stable, each day great things are achieved within the ministries of the church and the variety and number of activities and their attendances blossom.
To be is the hardest thing to do for it asks us to trust our experience, our knowledge of who we are and of what we have to offer. Avoiding the mad scramble to be relevant is vital for the faith of any community. The Christian church, from its inception has been, on the whole irrelevant. It's message of unconditional love, doing unto others, putting others before self and loving your enemies ,of which the life and death of Jesus is the radical summation, is still irrelevant.
Yet it is what is most attractive in the church as Christ body here on earth. It is still what brings and keeps people, not the latest music, the newest gimmicks or the best marketing campaigns. It is still the irrelevancy of its reason for being - love - which attracts people to it.
St Jude's is a community which maintains that truth. To quote Thomas Merton on community – “… we should not be too anxious about “getting anywhere” with community, except that community itself should “be” and celebrate itself in love.” (Thomas Merton - A Life In Letters 55)
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Daily Prayer
Finding it hard to have a daily routine of prayer? Well I have found an excellent resource developed by the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane. It contains the daily readings, a reflection and other information, all on the web and accessible anytime you fire up your computer.
The web address is: http://www.cdatoday.ministryeducation.org.au/
Just a thought.
Monday 22 June 2009
Fear v's Faith - Mark 3: 45 -51
Franklin D Roosevelt is famous for the saying, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”[1] This is the fourth sentence of his inauguration speech, the speech against which all such speeches are judged.
It was a speech out of character with his campaign speeches, which were buoyant, optimistic and spiced with humour. Yet here he takes on an unusually solemn, religious air. It was 1933 and the Great Depression was making inroads at levels never seen before. The economy was devastated, unemployment was rising uncontrollably and all that had previously seemed impregnable lay shattered at the feet of what was, by its own peculiar character, an optimistic society.
It was no more.
FDR went on in that speech to reiterate the truth that materialism is fleeting and only a true religious focus lasts; he set directions and sought to turn society around to face their fear, a fear that was both real and unreal, logical and illogical, powerful but weak.
He knew the truth – once we allow fear to generate a life of its own, we have given it a power it has no right to have. We have abdicated our senses and sensibilities, have ceased to think, and retreated into reaction as the only course of action available to us.
In reflection on our own life times, how often has fear been at the roots of all major concerns and conflicts in our society? Often the fears are unsaid and unspoken. In the recent swine flu panic it seems its more to do with the old adage, it’s not that you do everything you can, but you must be seen to do so, otherwise someone will sue you. There is only one pig in Afghanistan, a predominantly Moslem country, and he is in the zoo. Yet that one solitary pig who was simply minding his own business and doing piggy stuff was quarantined to lessen the spread of swine flu in that country!! Bizarre. That is not to lessen the seriousness of the situation and we all need to take precautions but to understand that fear often hides within much of what we do.
It is interesting in our gospel reading today that the disciples, and those in the other boats around them, were more interested in waking Jesus and castigating him in the tone of the Old Testament Lamentations – “How long will you forget us?” – than sailing the boat. They were fishermen. This would not have been the first catastrophic storm they had encountered. The area where they were sailing was well known for them. They had survived before because they took actions appropriate to the situations they found themselves in. They hadn’t drowned then and, if they had looked at the situation logically, probably wouldn’t now.
Yet we are told nothing about what they were doing just where they were looking, where they were going to sheet home the blame if the storm didn’t stop. It wasn’t just the half-dozen in Jesus’ boat, it was the whole flotilla, standing on the rails of their vessels and pleading to Jesus to fix it. Admirable faith but…… faith without works is not worth a crumpet.
When Jesus is woken he is angry, his tone is one of, why have you woken me for this? He dismisses the storm and turns toward them, sleep still in his eyes, and glares “Why are you afraid?” why did you wake me up?, “Have you no faith?”
They would have probably answered, ‘We do have faith, that’s why we woke you! We knew you would fix it!’ And this way of thinking is not illogical and in a sense is true, but Jesus was pointing at something else. He was pointing at:
· Faith in ourselves to deal with the situation. There is no faith unless it increases our capabilities to live. If all our faith is, is a constant begging for Jesus to solve our problems then our faith has some way to go. Jesus, by his death and resurrection, his presence, provides the inspiration to be more, to cope with more, to overcome more than we could ever do on our own.
· Faith that we are never abandoned, even tho it sometimes feels like it. Right there in the middle of the storm they felt abandoned by Jesus, he was asleep for goodness sake, what was he thinking? His response was he was a sleep for goodness sake and what were they thinking? He was with them so he was in the storm as well as they were, and he had faith in their ability to negotiate the storm. He was asleep because he had so much faith in them, yet they perceived that as disinterest and were overcome with fear.
A great lesson for me was to understand just how much faith God had/has in me, he trusted me to accept the life and death of Jesus just for me, he trusted me to make the step toward him and then with him toward the world, he trusted me with the daunting task of living and doing it everyday; to put it bluntly he trusted me with a depth and a freedom I definitely do not trust myself with, and only rarely do I trust Him in the same way.
Jesus believed in those in the flotilla of boats around him in a way they simply could not see at the time. There was indeed nothing to fear but fear itself for they had all they needed to survive that passing storm.
· If you take a short moment later to reflect on the path you have journeyed with Jesus you will find this to be true, and like the Psalmist can say,
“But I put my trust in your steadfast love;
my heart will rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
for he has dealt so bountifully with me.[2]
And these are lessons for us, Jesus is not a magician who rescues us from the life as a human being, he asks us to find the faith to grow through the never-ending list of daily difficulties that seem to line up at our door waiting their turn to annoy us. Our faith in Jesus is only real when it becomes a faith in ourselves. Jesus is not an out there deity who shoots bolts of lightening to destroy our enemies, he is not Superman who flies in and beats back the baddies, Jesus lives and resides in us and it is within us we find what is necessary to persevere, to overcome, to keep on keeping on when it would be fair easier if we could just wake the Jesus asleep in the bottom of our boat.
He is already awake and living in us through his Holy Spirit and we simply have to accept that reality and wade into life confident that we are not alone. This confidence is not a proud self-confidence but a humble sense of the righteousness God gives us through Jesus, it is a rightful understanding of in whose power we stand and whose presence we live.
Jesus may have been asleep but he was present and in his presence there is not final harm to be had. The final harm for the Hebraic mind was death, but the fear of death no longer is real, for Jesus has dealt with that for us and now lives within us to continue our journey without any sense of final harm.
Yes we will encounter great difficulties, awful tragedies, enduring suffering but not alone, and not without the capabilities to ride them out.
It is interesting that the words Jesus spoke are noted as being to the sea, ‘“Peace! Be still!”
I wonder if they were meant equally for those listening, and for us today. Be still, have faith and you will find peace where once there was fear.
I just wonder.
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