News flash! King David: An undercover exposé

Tonight, a very playful script re-telling 2 Samuel 6:1-22 here.

We followed it with a more formal reflection, here.

Love, joy and conflict at Christmas

St Andrew's Fairfield had a donkey at its service last Sunday; Hillsong will have camels. The Christmas story is certainly very picturesque: animals, angels, shepherds, wise men, and, in the middle of the crowd, a baby. It's easy to forget that this baby's mother was a young girl, whose response to pregnancy out of wedlock was to praise the God who overthrows the powerful and sends the rich away empty. It's easy to forget that the first people to worship at his cradle were shepherds: impoverished social outcasts and not the right sort of people at all; and the second lot were religious outsiders, foreigners who practiced the abominations of numerology and reading the stars. It's easy to forget that the baby grew up in occupied territories, sought asylum in Egypt, and returned to a new town after being warned not to go home. It's easy to forget that the prophecies surrounding his birth triggered the slaughter of many other young boys; and that his preaching and ministry were violently opposed right up until the cross.

There should be more dancing

A friend threw a ceilidh for her birthday. She organised a band and a caller, and a big hall, and food and drink, and a heap of friends. The music started, the caller called, and many people danced. It took me a while to warm up. I had a few glasses of champagne, and chatted with a dozen people. But finally my daughter dragged me in and I danced, and I remembered. I remembered going to barn dances when I was a kid; clubbing in my early twenties; and dancing at school trivia nights in my thirties (sad, I know). I remembered a friend’s wedding, and dancing in red heels until it was well past time to carry sleepy children home. I love to dance around my kitchen, but I had forgotten how much fun it is to dance with other people.

We did the heel-and-toe polka, a square dance, and a reel or two. By the end of the night, adults were skipping and giggling and throwing each other around by the elbows as we shot up the reel, and the kids were almost getting good at it. On the way home, my daughters said, ‘We should do this every week,’ and I agreed. There should be more dancing.

Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet”. But I’m not convinced it’s like the stuffy middle class Anglo Christian wedding banquets I’ve had to attend, with lame speeches and bland food and dealcoholized wine. Jesus was Jewish, so I reckon that if heaven is like a wedding, it’s like a Jewish wedding. A friend once told me that one of the good things about being Jewish is that she had to learn to dance. At every wedding there is dancing, and absolutely everyone dances, young or old. Anyone who tries not to looks like an idiot. They are squashed against a wall as the party goes wild, until some old lady grabs them by the hand and drags them into the fray.

So, the kingdom of heaven is like a Jewish wedding. Or, perhaps, a ceilidh. At my friend’s party I watched balding men dance with their young daughters, and a two-year-old totter up the reel, and girls on the verge of puberty dancing with each other, and people in their sixties who couldn’t count to four and did every step wrong but kept dancing anyway. There were friends from other countries and friends with intellectual disabilities and straight people and gay people and country people and city people and Christians and atheists and a pagan priestess. Together these people laughed and danced and communicated across the boundaries of age and sex, culture and capability; and I saw the kingdom of heaven.

I look around the churches, so full of people who find it hard to dance. Like me at times, they sit against the wall and watch, but turn down invitations to participate. And I wonder whether we will enjoy the heavenly wedding banquet, and what we will say when Jesus puts out his hand and requests the pleasure of this dance.

Sometimes you forget to take off your dancing shoes

I wrote this in 2009. It was published in the Summer of 2009, in Zadok Perspectives #105. I went to a party a couple of weeks ago, and was reminded of it.

***

Sometimes you forget to take off your dancing shoes. At least, that’s what my three year old says. She has a pair of pink sparkly ballet shoes which I bought for a dollar fifty at a car boot sale. She calls them her dancing shoes, and she wears them whenever we’re home. When we go out, she wears black Mary Janes. Ballet shoes are no good for running or climbing or doing much other than spinning around the kitchen.

But the other day I found her pink shoes caked in mud. ‘Whoops,’ I said, ‘What happened here?’. She said she’d worn them to the park with Daddy by accident. ‘But,’ she said, ‘sometimes you forget to take off your dancing shoes.’ And I melted.

I desperately wanted gorgeous shoes when I was a kid, but my parents wouldn’t have a bar of it. No patent leather, no white, no pink, no sparkles. After all, such shoes are useless at the park. They get dirty in minutes, and wear out quick.

Of course they were right, and I inherited their values for me. My daughters may wear pink sparkles, but I have only sensible footwear. Of these, I admit, some are fun. One pair of Birkenstocks is printed with flowers; my Crocs are bright green. But they’re certainly not dancing shoes. No matter how funky, even my strappiest Birkies could never be described as fripperies.

How did this come about? Well, if you’re like me and try to apply your theology to every area of life, then footwear and clothing become incredibly difficult. Most are made by workers in terrible conditions, and buying them maintains the situation. Advertisements featuring emaciated fifteen year olds threaten many adult women’s self-esteem so that we become dissatisfied with how we look. Even so, we are manipulated to desire more and more. Shopping becomes a leisure activity rather than a response to necessity, and houses fill with unnecessary goods. So many of us have multiple wardrobes of clothing and piles of shoes, when just a few items would do. It’s abusive, it’s wasteful, it’s greedy, it’s vain.

But having identified these problems, I react. I buy clodhoppers which last for years; and I buy most of my clothes second hand or made at a local workshop. And I buy very little, too little. I live in other people’s cast off jeans and t-shirts, and when I absolutely have to dress up I slip on a pair of black designer pants, very worn and shiny now, and fret anxiously about which of my op shop tops I can get away with. I buckle up my very sensible shoes, and stomp on out.

Yet sometimes we are invited to weddings. I’ve just been invited to two. And I can’t bear to wear, yet again, my old black pants and an ill-fitting top. I can’t bear to wear, yet again, my black Birkenstock shoes, so reminiscent of Olive Oyl; or my ancient crumbling (but almost strappy) Birkenstock sandals.

I find myself thinking about Jesus at wedding feasts, and fetching out the Moet. He loved a good party, and he told parables about them. In one, a king was so disgusted with a guest who failed to dress for the feast that he threw the guest into outer darkness. Sure, the parable is a metaphor for the kingdom of God – and yet just as surely, if we are to celebrate important human festivals which are signs of the kingdom, then we are to dress the part.

Failing to dress well because I’m too worried about being ethical or modest or frugal is just vanity in a different form. It’s saying that my personal theological hang-ups are more important than the vitality of the party. Yet dressing for a wedding is not about me or for me. The clothing helps celebrate something special, a real occasion. We dress up for weddings to mark the solemnity and the joy of witnessing two people pledge to share their lives until death - something that I believe God takes great delight in.

Sitting in the corner looking drab isn’t going to mark the time as holy, or help the festivities along. Sensible garb may be good for parks, but it’s not so good for parties. One cannot dance in earthbound Birkenstocks. They’re just going to make me feel lumpy and grumpy.

So rather than obsess about the abusive aspects of the fashion industry, or the fact that I have no idea where to buy beautiful ethical footwear - issues which keep my wardrobe stiflingly sober and small - I should dispense with my rules here and hope for grace. I should ask myself instead, How can I help celebrate this party more fully, this gathering of God’s people to witness vows, this manifestation of the kingdom? And then do the best I can, accepting God’s forgiveness for what I can’t manage in our society.

So it’s time to head down to the local workshop and find something gorgeous; then hunt down some strappy sandals or pretty ballet shoes to match. Because when my daughter said to me that sometimes you forget to take off your dancing shoes, I realised with a pang that most of the time I forget to put them on.

(This daughter is now 9, and very fashionable indeed! And I now own a pair of red party heels, a pair of blue heeled boots, and a pair of brown heeled sandals. Wow! Change is possible!)

‘The nurture of adults by children in family settings’: Birthday cake

Someone we love is ill with depression. He also suffers from social anxiety and struggles to leave the house. When our kids ask why he doesn’t come to dinner anymore, we try to be matter-of-fact. We explain that he is not well. We explain that he has something called depression, which has various effects; among them, it is very hard for him to spend time with other people. But for all our matter-of-factness with the kids, we adults don’t feel matter-of-fact at all.

Because it’s been a long, long absence and I am beginning to realise just how much our relationship has changed. We used to invite him to things; but I realise that now we just invite his partner, and mention that he is invited too. We used to send him texts; but now, we rarely do. We used to ask him to do things, but now we are afraid of asking too much, and no longer make the requests. It’s been a gradual shift, never deliberate or intentional; but I am beginning to realise just how much we participate in and reinforce the social exclusion triggered by the illness.

And for all our tip-toeing, and wondering questions, and reading, and delicacy on his behalf, he is of course still ill. We never see him, and we miss him. We never talk, his burdens and gifts are never shared, and we still don’t know what, if anything, we can do to help.

Recently, it was my daughter’s eleventh birthday. A week before her birthday, she sought out this person’s partner and asked whether he could bake her birthday cake. When I found out, I went to my daughter and asked her about it. She hadn’t seen him for many months, and so I wondered why she had asked. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I thought it would be good for him to be included in my birthday. And maybe to know that he can give something to me, even if his illness means he can’t come to the party. Is that okay? Do you mind?’

Tears came to my eyes. I gave her a huge hug, and I told her that she was one of the wisest and most generous people I know, adult or child. She had stepped right across an invisible, toxic social line just by asking for a small, good thing; and I recalled the ancient text: ‘sometimes a little child shall lead them.’

Through his partner, our friend agreed to my daughter’s request. He found a recipe, his partner did the shopping, and he baked the cake. His partner brought the cake to the birthday party, and we all sang Happy Birthday. We missed our friend, and wished he could have been there to sing along with us – and yet, in some ways, he was. For in our midst, at the centre of our singing, sat the cake that he had made, that precious thing my daughter had both given and received: a blessing.

And it was delicious.

**

The title of this post comes from a study by Elise Boulding, who asked young people how they had nurtured adults in their families while they themselves were children. The article is not easy to find, but if you want to go hunting here are the details: Boulding, E. (1980). 'The nurture of adults by children in family settings'. In H. Z. Lopata (Ed.), Research in the Interweave of Social Roles: Women and Men (Vol. 1, pp. 167-189). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Ululating at the graduation ceremony

My little sister has just been awarded her PhD. At the graduation ceremony, most of the audience seemed glued to their smartphones. To my right, young women scrolled through clothes on eBay; in front of me, others updated their Facebook profiles and visited the websites of modelling agencies. I sighed, and settled in for the long haul.

But then, a few rows down, I saw some little kids in pretty polyester dresses and down-at-heel shoes. Grandma kept close watch as they played, gazed round the hall, and peered at the brightly-robed academics sitting on stage. Finally, mum’s name was called, Grandma nudged, and they cheered and clapped. Dad took photos of the stage, where mum stood beaming with her degree, and I was reminded of the powerful effects parental education has on children’s lives. I became a little teary.

The ceremony rolled on. Women in headscarves, men in traditional dress, girls in miniskirts, were all awarded their degrees one by one. An African man’s name was called, and the row behind me erupted. Women ululated, hooting and calling and cheering, while he beamed on stage. A few minutes later, another African was awarded his degree. In front of me, a curvy woman in skin-tight red sequins leapt up and began dancing. Her hips swung in slow, erotic circles; her arms reached out in joy; and her upturned face radiated delight as she swayed.

As an elegant woman of Middle Eastern descent received her degree, all the Facebooking, eBaying, tweeting young people around me looked up from their smartphones to whistle and cheer; her fan club was out in force. A Malay woman in a headscarf received her PhD; an ornate embroidered dress peeked out from under the academic gown. The proceedings rolled on, and children and adults pointed and cheered and took photos. It could have been a citizenship ceremony at Coburg Town Hall, only the people in the ceremony all wore matching gowns.

My sister was third last. For over a decade she has studied issues surrounding forced migration, resettlement, and asylum seeking. She has sought to understand the mechanisms which facilitate the settlement of Iraqi families in Shepparton and Dinka kids in Sunbury; she has interviewed Iranians and Afghanis and Kurds about their experiences in detention. She has investigated the alternatives to immigration detention offered by best practice countries, and has been invited to speak with policy-makers around the world. Her work has been used by the UN and, thanks to her presentations and reports, several countries have released children from detention. Who knows what the ripple effects of her work will be.

I am so, so proud of her. When her name was called, I glanced at the audience. Many may have hailed from groups she has worked with and advocated for, but because her work is in the background, at the invisible but crucial level of policy, and because it is anathema to this country’s current government, nobody knows her name. She walked on stage, and I wanted the whole audience to leap up, whoop, ululate, gyrate, whistle, and take her picture.

Instead, her husband, her father and I sat, grinning like loonies, and politely clapped.

This post, then, is my ululation, my swinging my hips in a tight red dress in ecstatic public celebration. Whoo-hoo! Well done, Rah!