Vale Michael Spencer

In the not-yet we wait, on the nearer shore,
In this place on broken flesh and flaccid dreams,
Missing you already, who have barely gone,
Knowing this river is the great abyss
We cannot cross alone.

It is not enough
Right now, to know that our God waits us there,
We need Him here, right now, right here, to hold us,
To tell us loss is not the final word.
The last foe prowls
Cruel on the crumbling edges, and his icy breath
Crumples us tight with fear we barely name,
For us, for you, for all we dare to love.
It is hard to be a human in this place,
Or speak of grace within the monster’s grip ..
And yet we know he is an empty thing.

Oh Easter God!
Meet with us here in the place of desolation,
Tell us again the price is fully paid
Show us again how momentary is death,
How short the path of darkness we must tread
Until we reach that sun which goes not down.
Hold us in promise
Through mystery and fear, until we reach,
That certain place where life abundant springs,
And Death, the great impostor, is no more;
And all Creation, caught in one embrace,
Dances with joy before our Father’s face.

The Invitation

Challenge for the week: a piece of writing inspired by this picture



Follow me. I know you are afraid. You do not think you are seaworthy. You do not know where I am taking you. You do not know why you must make this journey at all. It is so much easier to stay on the shore, that’s where everyone else is. But you know that it is not enough, your very soul is hungry. The sand rubs your inmost being raw, its grit distresses you; you look around at the others who are so happy on the sand and think it is your own fault, your own oversensitivity, that you are bleeding when others are playing. But it is because I have called you, and I will not cease from calling until you come.

This is not your home, not anymore. The anguish you are feeling is not craziness, it is a divine discontent. I am your home, I am your safety, and I am the only way you will ever reach that home and safety. Follow me.

You look at your ship, and you can count off its inadequacies. You are convinced it will sink, and you are so afraid of drowning. Did you not know that at my command your very feet could skim the waves? Did you not know that I am the one who commands the tempests and can still the storms? And did you not know that you are safer out on the deep ocean in my care than you could ever be in the shallows on your own?

I am your heart’s desire. I am the currents that move you and the wind that fills your sails. I am your harbour, your destination, and the glory that waits for you on the further shore. I am the wild music of the seabirds’ cries that pulses a strange new rhythm through you. You fear the storm on the ocean’s deeps, but there will never be peace for you anywhere else. This sand that you trickle through reluctant fingers – is it worth so much more to you than to sail forth in my fellowship? Follow me.

You cling to so much that cannot last anyway. You mistake familiarity for safety. You are numb to your own pain, you have carried it for so long, and you do not even know that you are crippled. But I see and I know. Where you cannot go, I will take you, and the very waters which you dread will be the waters that bear the weight you cannot carry yourself, and bring you home.

Come deeper, deeper; there is a whole world beyond the horizon, a world I created for the sheer joy of knowing I would one day share it with you. I want to see the wonder in your eyes when the morning breaks upon the waves, I want to feel you lean close into me when the winds rise strong and fierce; I want to see you gain your sea legs and learn to navigate with my glory as your only star. Set sail, cast off into the deep, and see where I will take you. Let me be your courage where your own falls short. Follow me.

On Seeing Van Gogh's Starry Night

The heavens sing: this is their blazing joy
Break forth! Break forth! In wonder uncontained
Sing with the beauty only artists see
Even our soiled world speaks of the unstained.

Here our fragility, our broken toil
Scarce dares to raise its eyes, for once it knew
Beauty and glory will not be denied
Splendor, in white-hot wonder, slicing through

All the dark hiding places of the soul.
This will not let self-pity weave its web
Of darkness, to entrap us in ourselves,
Let go the old defences, let them ebb.

Only the brave man, with his soul undone
Paints with a frenzy of the joy that’s seen
But not yet tasted. This can drive men mad:
The desperate hunger for what could have been.

Yes, there is resolution, but not here,
And not too soon, we first must drink our need,
And own there is a light no night can dim
And it is placed beyond our grasping greed.

Yes! Let the stars be symphonies of light,
Let midnight glow and burn with radiance,
Heaven’s hilarity must overflow
And called the burned and broken ones to dance.

Patriarchy?

Most of you who know me already know that I am a Christian egalitarian. I respect my complementarian brothers and sisters, but disagree with their interpretation of scripture. However, when it comes to hyper patriarchy, I actually believe that it's something different from a variant nuance of interpretation.Excuse the strength of my language, but I really believe that "religion" that relegates women to being mere appendages of men, something less than fully human in their own right, is ultimately evil. This is what I wrote as a comment on another blog:

Y’know, re:#299, I actually believe that patriarchy is a religion, a false religion that goes right back to the fall and is demonic in origin. “Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you” — it’s a prediction of the grief which is to come. God created woman to be not just man’s ezer (help) but his ezer kenegedo — one who is an exact counterpart, standing side by side with him to build a kingdom of love and light. But it didn’t last

She who was to be by his side is now put under his thumb, and the richness they could give to one another is despised and disparaged. Power and control is worshipped, and man makes gods in his own image, instead of conforming to the image of God. He no longer wants a strong partner, he wants a child-wife, and every perversion follows, as lust becomes conjoined with the lust for power. He no longer trusts woman, so he has to defeat her. Wives and children are pawns in this game of power and dominion. Love grows cold and is replaced by the rage of the chronically insecure.

I actually believe that when Christians embrace patriarchy it is just as much syncretism as when Israel of old tried to worship both Baal and Yahweh. The Kingdom of God is not about who is the greatest, but about who is willing to serve.And it isn’t one morality for males and a different one for females. There aren’t pink and blue fruit of the Spirit.

This false religion is pernicious, and has tempted the human race right through history. The old religions worshipped phallic symbols as the ultimate expressions of god-like power — has anything changed?
“And I will set enmity between you (Satan) and the woman ..”

education and learning

Learning and education

Well, I’m 1 ½ weeks into my masters course, and, not surprising, feeling slightly overwhelmed. I expected this, I knew that I was breaking into a whole new subject area, since my previous degree was in theology, the half-a-degree I dropped out of in 1975 was in Social Work (covering a little sociology, anthropology, psychology, and, thrown into the mix, a year of Italian, which I did as a general arts subject because someone told me that no one ever failed it). At school, back in the dark ages, I did high level maths and physics because I had to (that was my father) but my joy was in English. And here I am studying Adult Education .. (No wonder I keep asking God what he’s up to in my life – I can’t see the pattern).

But you see, I expected most of the overwhelm to be purely intellectual – learning the jargon and thinking and methodology of an entire new discipline. And, of course, dealing with that little voice inside me that now has to acknowledge that I got through my undergrad degree, but seriously questions whether I’m capable of doing a Masters. Mostly I try to ignore it! What I was not prepared for was the personal impact of some of this stuff – already! I think back over myriad bible studies etc and question the relative agency of “teacher” and “learner” – who sets the agenda? I immediately see that this is why my husband and I have never been able to co-lead – our natural styles fall at very different points along the continuum.

I read about a guy called Freire and his educational philosophy, kind of the educational equivalent of liberation theology, and realise that this process (labelled by some as “insurrectionary”) was exactly the process of self-education I was unconsciously using as a child to distance myself from the “dominant culture” of a dysfunctional family. I’m still processing that one. Then I find myself reading about the next guy’s approach and find myself saying, “Ah! An admixture of Skinner and Piaget!” I haven’t studied either of those guys since 1975 – what vault of memory was that locked away in?

And of course, since one of my conscious goals in doing this course was to work out better teaching methods in the church, I already find myself critiquing the approaches of various people and institutions that I know (since a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). I don’t think we’ve done very well (and I’m thinking denominationally here) in working out how to teach absolute truth in a way that empowers the learner, instead of leaving them with a sheep-ish undiscriminating dependence on the “experts”? How do Jesus’ teaching methods compare in this respect? When did we lose that incredible balance?

Hmm .. I’d better go read some more ..

The Weather and me

It's that sort of day .. yes, THAT sort! Cold, winter cold in mid-spring, wet, windy grey, the sort of weather when I start seriously pondering the merits of hibernation! Miserable weather, though why we call the weather miserable when the weather, as far as I know, is probably perfectly happy, and we are the ones feeling miserable .. Could it be we humans are sometimes a touch ego-centric?

I look out on this inhospitable day, and words form in my head, stream of consciousness really:

Rain, cold and sharp as sleet,
Fall on my hands and feet,
Consecrate me anew,
Sanctify all I do.

Well, for the literal minded, :-) obviously the rain isn't falling falling on my hands and feet, I'm indoors, dry if not quite cosy (my inner puritan can't quite grasp the idea of turning on the heater in October, even if it is only 11C outside), but perhaps, bear with my fancy for a moment, there is a sense in which I can surrender to coldness, bleakness, uncertainty and loneliness, acknowledge them, acknowledge that loss and dying and need are simply realities of the human condition, and that dying, in small things and large is a necessary precondition to living in Christ.

Then, accepting these things would become as much an act of consecration as accepting the richness of the Spirit's anointing and the warnth of the Father's embrace. I am not an ascetic by temperament, my natural bent is to see God most easily through loveliness and wonder, but I recognise the reality of the discipline of simplicity, and the fact that we cannot wholeheartedly live to one thing without dying to something else. (An analogy would be marriage -- in committing myself to life with one man, I die to the possibility of having the same kind of relationship with any other man, if I did not do that, I would be something less than wholly given to my marriage.)

Likewise, as much as God showers good gifts on His children, and cares for our human needs and pains, I am less than wholly given to Him if I look for my ultimate comfort anywhere else. He has promised us more love than we can conceive or imagine, He never promised to give it on our terms. And, day by day, I must surrender afresh to the discipline of receiving life on His terms, not my own, and acknowledging the reality of His presence in absence as well as richness.

And the cold rain, that falls alike on the just and the unjust, is still His mercy to a parched and weary earth ..

Thoughts on "The Inklings"

I have just finished reading “The Inklings” by Humphrey Carpenter, a biographical account of the group of Oxford Christian friends that met together, centred on Tolkien, Lewis and Charles Williams. I am, as anyone who knows me well knows, a long-time lover of the works of Tolkien and Lewis: I fell in love with Narnia as a child, and fell in love with Jesus as represented by Aslan, connecting to Him in a way I could never connect to the rather boring figure in my Sunday School lessons. Later I read, and loved the space trilogy, and as a brand new Christian in my teens I devoured his theological works, starting with Mere Christianity. Although there are issues where I definitely part company with Lewis (purgatory, the role of women, his position on creation/evolution etc – on the last I am more conservative than this man of my grandparents generation) he shaped my foundational thinking in many ways, making me very much an Anglican, albeit a different type in some particulars. And then Tolkien – I enjoyed the Hobbit, but it was just another book for the most part (and I read everything I could get my hands on) – it was LOTR that won my heart and captured my imagination with its imagery of absolute courage and humility and devotionlived out in the context of things that truly were high and wonderful. Charles Williams? I tried reading one of his books once, but I didn’t really get it, it was like reading a poem whose imagery compels your attention, but you don’t have a clue what it’s about, or why it matters so much.

Lewis is the centre of the book, and rightly so, for he was the centre of the group, the one whose enormous gift for friendship held the whole thing together. I have read other biographies of Lewis, but this was different because it was less interested in the isolated facts of his life and more in seeing him through the lens of his relationships with others. Fascinating, but left me pondering a couple of things:

1. The misogyny of these people. Oh, they weren’t anti-women in any nasty patriarchalist sense, and much can be explained simply in terms of their being the products of their particular time and culture, where academia was still very much a boys’ club, but still .. They took for granted that intellectually stimulating rich and fulfilling world of male conversation was precisely where females didn’t belong. Ok, that’s going to get up my personal bristles, because my best friends (mainly male, I must confess) have always been precisely the sort of people with whom I can talk for hours in exactly that way, and the men I have had the most trouble relating to are those who feel awkward with a woman whose conversation isn’t all domestic and girly. To be fair, I have no idea that anyone at the time felt excluded in that sort of way, but it conjured up memories for me of all the times I have felt brushed aside and excluded from what interested me most precisely because I was a woman. So maybe it’s more my issue than theirs ..
2. The apologetics are dated, the works of imagination don’t date. Not that Lewis isn’t still worth reading, and his continuing sales attest to that, but the parts of his writing that are most defensive and argumentative have worn the poorest, whereas, even in his non-fiction, the parts where the poet breaks through stay undimmed, for instance that beautiful sermon, “The Weight of Glory”, whose last part still moves me incredibly every time I read it and helps me treat my fellow human beings with a little more reverence. But then, I have a theory (based on the not-so-weighty evidence of my personal reactions!!) that head-stuff, valuable and important though it is, (and I’m not knocking or demoting it) needs to be constantly refreshed not to grow stale and same-old, whereas heart stuff keeps its freshness from a deeper spring.

What do you think ..

Consider the Lilies ..

Did you ever realise (I hadn't thought of it) that "Consider the lilies" is actually a command?

Consider these petals,
So easily bruised,
So fragile and tentative in their beauty ..

Yet their perfume would adorn the palaces of kings
With promises of heaven,
And trampled they will Spring again
Each succeeding season,
And who can deny their renewal?

Watered by the rain from heaven,
Under rich blessing,
They struggle through the soil, seeking light that they might flourish.
Shall I find my parable there?

I have never sighted Solomon, in all his rumoured glory
But I know the cult of celebrities, in all their brittle beauty,
Polished to a paradigm
Before their star debunks.
I know the perpetual effort,
To catch the moment’s magic,
The flurry and the fury
Like chasing after wind.

Give me the lilies.
I would learn of their humility
To fear no season’s turning.
To drink of this day’s blessing, not hoarding up the manna,
Seeking to become,
Only,
The beauty of my Christ.

Instrument of Thy Peace

Kansas Bob this morning has reminded me of the prayer attributed to St Francis (I read recently that it wasn’t, in fact from him, but much more modern) which I have always loved, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace ..” When I was a uni student (long ago, in another century) the last section of that prayer was one of the things stuck on the inside of my folder:

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life

I don’t pretend to have lived up to it, but, despite the criticism I have heard of it in some quarters, it is still my goal. To me it is Jesus’ words “take up your cross and follow me” made personal to my situation. “Bearing your cross” has been a horribly misused phrase among Christians, used to apply to everything that causes pain and discomfort in life, as if pain and discomfort weren’t everybody’s experience in this fallen world. Pain in itself doesn’t make anyone holy, there are plenty of people who use their pain to justify every kind of self-centredness. For instance, most abusive parents are mistreating their children because they aren’t coping with their own pain and take it out on someone smaller and weaker. But pain, of course, can be the plough, that tears up the soil for the fruit of the Spirit to grow.

Much more relevant is the calling to die to self-centredness. Here my own pain becomes, not a demand for your pity, but a doorway to understanding your pain so that I can offer you my pity. It does not diminish my need to be loved (if only ….) but it actually becomes a faith act to entrust my neediness to God while I comfort your neediness. Of course, to broken human beings that can easily turn into a twisted demandingness: now that I have ministered to your need, you are obligated to minister to mine. That, too, is the failure of love. I don’t pretend to have worked out the balance of how our own essential needs are met while we learn to give ourselves away. If all our core relationships are healthy it’s not much of an issue, because people will meet love with love, generosity with generosity. And if the core people in our lives are doing that, it is easier to give ourselves away in free kindness to the rest of the world. Where core relationships are unbalanced, it is a much harder road. But I still believe it is Jesus’ road: not to be a self-righteous martyr in an unjust relationship, but to find a way through to God, from where you can both protect yourself as appropriate and yet give with no thought of return.

We can only become the instruments of His peace, the agents of His kingdom, when we have laid aside the expectation of building a kingdom of our own. We cannot do it ourselves, trite moralism achieves nothing that builds love or hope into people’s lives; it must be a burial of the self into Christ, allowing Him to love through us. Sometimes, in difficult situations, when I have long since run out of any love of my own, I try to see myself as a pipeline through which Jesus’ love can reach that person. Please don’t misunderstand, I am nowhere near success with all of this, I only know what goal I aspire to.
So what does this look like in daily life? On one pragmatic level it can be like the other verse I used to carry inside my uni folder;

I would be true, for there are those who trust me;
I would be pure, for there are those who are;
I would be strong, for there is much to suffer;
I would be brave, for there is much to dare.
I would be friend of all—the foe—the friendless;
I would be giving and forget the gift;
I would be humble, for I know my weakness;
I would look up and laugh—and love—and lift.

This made sense

Found on the blog of PTC Sydney(the Presbyterian college where I did my Hebrew)was this comment on the issue of the emergent church:

McKnight's take is that lots of the questions are post-fundamentalist. In Australia where fundamentalism has not been the same phenomenon the emerging issues are not the same.

This makes so much sense, and explains why a lot of the conversations on American theoblogs don't sound like they're happening on the same planet I'm on. It actually is the same planet, but a different continent!

Femininity

I am a woman. I am not a woman because I wear certain clothes or take up certain social roles, I am a woman because I am a woman. This is biological, God-given fact. I have two X chromosomes, and all the normal physical consequences. I have borne children. I do not have to do some particular things to become feminine, I am feminine by definition, because I am a woman. When I read particular complementarian (or worse, patriarchal) blogs and articles, I am bemused and confused by their definitions of femininity. They seem to me to have a lot more to do with a particular, idealised cultural image (was it ever REALLY like that?) than with anything explicitly biblical.

I am a woman, but first I am a person: a redeemed sinner, a blood-bought child of God. His calling on my life is to pursue godliness: to honour Christ in every way. Godliness is not one thing for men and another thing for women, we are all called to be obedient, to be prayerful, to walk in step with the Spirit and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience etc are not divided up, with some of them for men and some of them for women. Nowhere do I see a command to pursue femininity, but many to pursue Christ.

Some of my characteristics and behaviours fit certain definitions of “femininity”, some do not. So what? I was a stay at home mum to be there for my kids, but I think I missed out on the “nesting” gene .. I would rather read a book or write a poem than have the neatest house around. I wear skirts in summer and trousers in winter (comfort and convenience come first). I wear make up. I like to keep my hair between chin and shoulder length, I don’t feel like me if it’s any shorter. I NEVER wear high heels (they hurt my back) and I detest pantyhose. But I like to wear pretty colours (especially purples). I enjoy wearing jewellery. I hate expensive designer fashion, and most of it doesn’t suit me or my personal style anyway.
I can cook reasonably well. I can’t sew if my life depended on it, and ditto for handcrafts. I’ve yet to work out why people even WANT to do handcrafts. I missed out on that gene too. I can enjoy a morning of girl-shopping with my daughter, and I got tremendous satisfaction out of my Greek and Hebrew classes, in both of which I was the only female. I have a good sense of colour, my spatial sense is abysmal. I hate action movies, screen violence repels me, I have almost as little time for formulaic Hollywood romance, probably because I don’t believe it. I’m a verbal person, but I’m not afraid of silence. I am calm and laid back, and never believed I had to micro-manage my children’s lives. (Incidentally, my two kids have grown up to be very organised people – I claim no credit, and they’d laugh at me if I did) I never bother with diaries or to do lists, but I’m punctual to a fault. I can’t open jars but I can kill cockroaches. I have male friends and female friends. I have never had the least desire to be a guy (I LIKE being a girl) but I have been deeply hurt by misogyny and gender injustice.

Am I feminine? Do you know, I don’t really care. I am a person who happens to be a woman. Because I am a woman, what I do is feminine by definition. I don’t care for a gender separated world, with a male sphere of existence and a female sphere of existence. That has always seemed to me a form of apartheid. Every aspect of life is richer if male and female can work in harmony together. The gender wars are a product of the fall. Hierarchical relationships are a product of the fall. The Kingdom of God is about serving and blessing one another, with whatever gifts we have. Our maleness or femaleness is just one aspect of that.

Wisdom for life

Over on codepoke's blog he's been talking about the discovery that the Bible doesn't actually have the answers for every little detail of life. I couldn't agree more. this is what I wrote:

I believe the Bible is the Word of God,I believe it is true and contains everything necessary to salvation, and a lot of clues on how to live godly lives, but it is NOT a magic answer book. And (sticking my neck out a bit further) I think that's the way God wants it. He isn't playing some power game with little robots who live by a set of legalistic rules, He wants sons and daughters who honour Him by wrestling with the hard questions of life, trying to work out how to live with love and integrity in their own unique circumstances, and sometimes even wrestling with Him. He never said it would be easy, but I think there are some hints that it might just turn out to be glorious ..

It's painful, it turns your heart and soul inside out and leaves the hard questions dangling in the air, but in the process He teaches you real wisdom, the sort you can't get out of any book, including His.

I guess I'm not a fundamentalist, and never have been. (Hey, I'm an Anglican!) The Bible is authoritative because it is the word of the One to Whom all authority belongs, it is not the final word on every subject. When people try to turn it into a science textbook, or a medical book, or a dietary guide, or a manual on negotiating all aspects of modern western culture etc etc. it is the revelation of God, the history of His saving work in the world and His dealings with a particular subset of humanity. Above all, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ and how to walk in His salvation. Get that right, then pray for wisdom and seek to walk in and with the Holy Spirit and even inour brokenness and confusion, there is fellowship there with the Living god Himself.

Something on prayer

I have just joined a new forum for Aussie Christians, and I was asked to post something on prayer. This is what came to mind:

I was asked to write something about prayer, which is a huge topic (and I don’t know what sort of thing you had in mind!)

So what came to mind was the simplicity of prayer. I have a growing conviction that we make prayer a lot more complicated than the bible does. When I look at some significant answers to prayer in my own life, none of those prayers had anything ‘magic’ about it, Ever noticed how, when you’re seriously engaged on some issue, techniques and other people’s systems tend to get thrown overboard?

I think it is significant that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray they didn’t get a lecture on developing more impressive faith or get shown some deep doctrinal secret, they got given a model prayer whose most outstanding characteristic is its .. simplicity! What do we find here?

# an acknowledgement that we come in prayer to a father who loves us
# He is holy, and He is about the business of His kingdom, and expects us to want that too – our values in prayer should be kingdom values
# We can bring Him all our human needs (daily bread) we don’t have deny our humanity or spiritualise everything. He knows what we are and he knows how needy we are (do we?)
# we always need forgiveness (and we are never so messed up that we can’t ask for it)
# we need His protection

I think the heart of prayer is nakedness – to seek God in that way is to take off all our pretenses and simply be our needy selves before him.
If there’s a second principle it is to let our prayer be Spirit-led. Half the time we don’t even know how to pray for the things that are most important to us .. so why not acknowledge that as part of our neediness and let Him teach us that too?

You do all things well

These lyrics are on my mind tonight, they express something very dear to me. I have always found the beauty of creation a very direct path to worship, to me, ever since I was a small child, the loveliness of clouds and stars and flowers and waters shouts aloud the glory of its maker. I remember as a young teenager struggling to write a poem of which I can now remember only a fragment: 'I believe there is a God / Because the grass looks greener in the rain.' OK, it made sense to me (and still does!) So these chris Tomlin lyrics are speaking my language:



You do All Things Well - by Chris Tomlin
Mountain maker
Ocean tamer
Glimpses of You
Burn in my eyes
The worship of heaven
Fills up the skies

You made it all
Said, "let there be"
And there was
All that we see
The sound of Your voice
The works of Your hands
You do all things well
You do all things well
You do all things well

Star creator
Wind breather
The strokes of Your beauty
Brushed through the clouds
Light from the heavens
Touching the ground

Imagination runs wild
And breathes the breath of life
Across the fields
Across the miles

What kind of evangelical are you?

Well, considering I'm an Anglican, I think they got it right. Not that i'm high church by Anglican standards, but compared to fundamentalist evangelicals i'm probably off their page!

What Kind of Evangelical Are You created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as High Church Nomad You were raised as some kind of evangelical, but you've started to appreciate other forms of Christian piety. Specifically, you're starting to think that Roman Catholics aren't as crazy as you once thought they were. You probably won't end up going home to Rome, but Canterbury has piqued your interest. High Church Nomad 80% Moderate Evangelical 65% Evangelical Presbyterian 65% Fightin' Fundy 50% Baptist 45% Reformed Baptist 30% Conservative Evangelical 25% Presby - Old School 20%

Christmas thought

Maybe everyone else already knew this, and I'm just the last to catch on, but it occurred to me the other day that all those people we place in our Nativity scenes would have been ineligible to go to the temple and worship God. The shepherds as a profession were considered ritually iunclean and were banned from temple and synagogue. Mary would never have got further than the Court of Women at the best of times and now, having just given birth to a male child, she was ritually unclean for 40 days. Joseph presumably had helped her through her labour (if they couldn't find a room, I don't like their chances of finding a midwife) and so, having been in physical contact with her, he was unclean as well. And yes, we know the wise men (of indeterminate number) didn't turn up till some time after the event, but they're part of the story. And they were Gentiles. They would never have got past the outermost court of the temple.

But unto those who could not come to God, a child was born and a Son was given. And His name was Immanuel, God with us.

Choir of hard knocks

My daughter gave me the DVD of this for my birthday, and now I've finished college I have time to start watching it. incredibly moving.

To recap: Opera singer and choirmaster Jonathon Welch had the idea to form a choir from the down and outs of melbourne. No singing auditions were required, the only qualification was to be homeless or disadvantaged in some way. Hence most of the choir members have serious problems with drugs, alcohol etc. But here, in this choir they are given value. Jonathon is a natural with these people; he doesn't condescend or patronise them. He insists on a few basic rules, like treating each other with respect, then he simply loves them and responds to them as they are. We see him crying at some of their auditions for solo parts (ok, I was crying too), hugging them and encouraging them. There was a special on Channel 2 the other night showing them being brought to perform at the Sydney Opera House. I defy any normal person to have dry eyes when a young woman gets up and sings a solo about "the two of us" with her young daughter, and then announce to the crowd that she's been clean for 3 days and this is the first time in her life she's ever sung sober!

And then you see those faces, across which life has written things that you and I can only imagine in our nightmares, and there is light and hope there, and they are singing the words of Leonard Cohen's hallelujah:

And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

That's grace. Beyond our theological differences and quibbles, that's the heart of it for everyone of us. Dare we imagine that, because our lives are more comfortable and our sins are more genteel, we are any less broken than they? We will not be singing our Hallelujahs one day because we got it more right than anyone else, but because God in His mercy has come among us, as Jesus, and lifted us out of the gutter and set a new song upon our lips. May we, too, have tears of wonder in our eyes.

White Ribbon Day

I was asked to do a blog post in response to white ribbon day www.whiteribbonday.org.au. which is taking a stand against violence against women. This is a cause i am delighted to support, and I invite anyone else who is interested to also blog on the subject. This is what I wrote:

SHE WALKS IN FEAR
She walks in fear. He has cast a long shadow over her life, and she can see no prospect of light. The light went out the first time he hurt her, when the hands that had caressed and held her first turned into slamming fists. She learned, with acid pain, how swiftly fear and pain can destroy the fantasy she had mistaken for love. She carries her heart like a crushing stone inside her, confused and guilty, and finds it hard to keep hold of the reality that it is he, not she, who violated and destroyed love.

He does not hit her often. This confuses her too. If he were wildly, frequently violent, she thinks she would know what to do. Her physical survival would be at stake, she would have clear reason to leave him and the terrible ambivalence would be over. Yet even to say that it would be simpler if it were worse sounds like some perverted heresy. After all, whatever she has heard some people say, she doesn’t want to be hit. She doesn’t ask for it, and finds no security in his macho control. She is a woman, not a child, she never asked for anyone to do her thinking for her, or supply external discipline to help her to conform.

Yet self-doubt lingers. What if, in some unfathomable way, she is provoking him? What if she really is the failure, impossible to live with and impossible to please, that he has told her she is? Who can she turn to? She has internalised his condemnation for so long, she believes the whole world would condemn her: a woman who exasperates her own husband to the point of lashing out. On the bad days she suspects that even God condemns her; on the good days she remembers that He is supposed to be on the side of the hurting and oppressed. Her shame runs deep, deeper and more permanent than any bruise, it has stained the very colour of her soul.

She walks in fear. She has been taught it is her duty to submit, and she has really tried. But she cannot turn her brain off, or deny her own principles, and this is what has got her into trouble. Nothing enrages him like being questioned, but how can she not question when his orders make no sense? How is she supposed to conform when the demands keep changing, the goalposts keep shifting? How can she be the ‘perfect Christian wife’ when she is a human being with a desire to understand, not a pre-programmed robot? She has lost all confidence in her own judgement and doubts her social abilities (and all their friends are his choice anyway, she doesn’t feel close to anyone). Sometimes she almost hates him, so smug, so self-righteous, while she carries all the pain, but that just makes her feel guiltier. What sort of wife doesn’t love a husband who is faithful, a ‘good provider’ and well-liked by the rest of the world?

She walks her days as an automaton, afraid to think, afraid to truly be. She withdraws from life, she does not have the emotional energy to engage with risk, laughter or tears. She swallows her dreams with the same dull terror with which she has learned to swallow the retorts that would upset him. At night she lies alone in bed, two inches from his warm body, alone, cold and desperate, and tries to remember a reason, other than fear, for getting up the next day ... and the next … and the next …

And she wonders if that overused word “love” is just another terrible lie ..

The Critic (via Ratatouille)

Went and watched Ratatouille with my daughter this afternoon. It was the usual dose of good Pixar fun, but one thing that was said in the movie really caught my attention. I went hunting on the net, and managed to find the proper quote:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

How often do we take on the "easy" role of being the critic of someone else's work, theology or service, rather than doing the hard yards of actually getting out there and doing what we really believe?

Wisdom after my hiatus

Ok, perhaps a mis;leading title, but all shall be made clear (I hope!)

Firstly, the hiatus. No particular dramatic reason for the break in blogging, I just needed a break. Sometimes you just run dry for a while, and it's good to step back from a particular activity and live life (which is a full time effort in itself) until one feels replenished. Today I do, so I'm back!

second, wisdom. Not mine (only the hiatus, which is beginning to sound like some exotic pet is mine), but apocryphal wisdom. Literally. from Ecclesiasticus, in the Apocrypha. I am not very familiar with the Apocrypha (something I must remedy) but I came across this quote from chapter 4, which really struck me personally. How often have I been led to believe that "being a doormat to a fool" was the path of virtue, even holiness?

20 WATCH YOUR CHANCE and defend yourself against wrong, and do not be over- modest in your own cause; 21 for there is a modesty that leads to sin, as well as a modesty that brings honour and favour. 22 Do not be untrue to yourself in deference to another, or so diffident that you fail in your duty. 24 Never remain silent when a word might put things right, for wisdom shows itself by speech, and a man's education must find expression in words. 25 Do not argue against the truth, but have a proper sense of your own ignorance. 26 Never be ashamed to admit your mistakes, nor try to swim against the current. 27 Do not let yourself be a doormat to a fool or curry favour with the powerful. 28 Fight to the death for truth, and the Lord God will fight on your side.