Satisfying the Hunger Within

What are you hungry for? What are you craving? Food? Friendship? The dulling of the pain? An end to loneliness? The lighting up of the darkness? The warm embrace of love? To be hungry is to be human. To feed ourselves is to be human. And we live in a ravenous age. We are all barraged daily with advertising for things which promise to sate our hunger, to quench our thirst, to satisfy our desires, to heal the pain, to end the craving, to fill the emptiness within.

Read here, or listen here.

Ishmael, Isaac, and the Shared Inheritance

God’s blessing is granted across human boundaries; God listens to ‘us’, yes, but also attends to the cry of every Muslim in detention who has limited access to water on a hot day; God hears the cry of every migrant to the South West who is culturally isolated, and lonely, and a very long way from their father’s house...

Tonight's reflection on Genesis 21:8-21 is now available to listen here, or to read here. Image shows a detail from Hagar in the Wilderness (Camille Corot, 1796-1875, here).

Do Not Worry: Stepping through an ethical minefield with Jesus

Do not worry about your food! Payment in kind.
It may not buy school uniforms, but it does feed the family.

Before we moved to Warrnambool, we lived in an area of Melbourne which was a hive of ethical activity. Our clothes were locally made or from the op shop. We rode our bikes to buy direct trade coffee, then ducked into organic wholefoods for some ethical groceries. What we couldn’t buy there, we’d get at the IGA, after checking each company against our sustainable supermarket guide. We grew our greens and herbs; experimented with Community Supported Agriculture, but got sick of all those potatoes; so opted into a local veggie box instead. Our honey came from local hives; our socks were made in Brunswick; we purchased gifts from local artisans; our furniture was second hand. Even our house renovation appeared in a green architecture magazine. There were times when we were so ethical, it makes me sick. Of course, we lived this way because we were trying to be followers of Jesus—and because we were surrounded by people also seeking to live more sustainably, the critical mass made it easy. But every now and then, or maybe quite a lot, I’d feel someone, probably me, rolling her eyes because a coffee wasn’t fair, or a chair was from IKEA, or the eggs were from battery hens—and I’d wonder if I’d missed the point.

Fishing for People: The Medium is the Message

Memorial to fishermen lost at sea, Newlyn, Cornwall.
Sculpture by Tom Leaper. Photo my own.

No matter how scary I try to look, what with my short hair, frown lines, and black clothes, I’m the person in the street everyone seems to approach. Sometimes, I’m asked for directions; sometimes, they want money or cigarettes; sometimes, I’m told a story. And sometimes, I’m asked if I’m saved. I used to answer, “it’s complicated”, but that opened up a whole conversation I didn’t want to have. Then I began saying “yes”—but I discovered that meant further questions to find out if I’m saved in the right way. I won’t tell you what I say now; but, it seems that, whatever I say, it’s almost impossible to shake such a questioner off.

So when I hear Jesus saying that he will make his disciples fish for people, I feel a bit queasy. It’s right up there with ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ when it comes to smelling fishy, because words like evangelism, proselytising, and making disciples are, for me, associated with feeling manipulated, coerced, bullied, and guilty. Worse, in the international sphere, mission is bound up with the violence of colonialism. Yet Jesus tells his disciples to spread the good news, so am I just being a cynic when I view mission this way? And if not, then where’s the problem?

Hate mail or a love letter?

From a medieval manuscript. Reproduced at www.orthodoxportlandmaine.org

Lots of my friends don’t go to church. Some never had any experience of it; but many of them have sat through countless services at school or with their families. Yet they have, at some stage, rejected it. There are lots of reasons for this, but one I often hear is ‘hell’. Perhaps my friends could not affirm or even understand justification by grace through faith; perhaps they found it a bit medieval and abstract to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour; perhaps they were same-sex attracted or feminist or having sex without marriage—whatever the sticking point, many of my friends were given to understand that a fiery hell awaits them if they cannot conform to the teachings of some Christians on these and similar things. And having been taught this, the Bible reads to them like hate mail from God.

Possessions, Possession, and the Kingdom of God

Marie Kondo in joy pose. Picture from the New York Times.

A reflection on Luke 12:13-21

Alison Sampson, Sanctuary, 31 July 2016

We just all heard a great story from Jesus, in which a rich man hoards a heap of stuff and congratulates himself on it. But did you hear what God said to the rich man? “You nincompoop! On this night all your things are possessing your soul! You don’t own them; they own you. And all this stuff you have piled up, whose is it, anyway?”

Someone like me needs to hear these words again and again, because I love stuff. I love old plates and pretty bowls and my grandmother’s piano. I love vintage chairs and crochet rugs; and I like to own lots of them. And so tonight’s words made me wonder, am I an idiot, too?

A Gift Far Too Small

A friend of ours had been sick for a long, long time. He had multiple health problems; he had dementia; and he had been in a slow decline for years. After many dips and rallyings and further crises, it looked like the end. His wife called some very dear friends to let them know. They lived on the other side of the country, but they jumped on a plane and flew over to see him one last time. When they arrived, it was time to eat. Nobody felt like cooking, so they ordered Chinese takeaway.

To read more, click here.

Image from donaldkrause.com.

(From Sunday) Satisfying the Hunger Within

What are you hungry for? What are you craving? Food? Wine? Friendship? An end to this loneliness? The lighting up of the darkness? The excited buzz of fellowship? The warm embrace of love? To be hungry is to be human. To feed that hunger is to be human. And we live in a hungry, deeply hungry, age. We are all of us barraged daily with promises to feed our hunger, to quench our thirst, to satisfy our desires, to bring an end to the infinite craving, to fill the emptiness deep within.

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To read more, click here.

A future alive with hope

When I was a girl, I imagined Simon and his mates to be lovely Cornish fishermen. I thought of them as stocky men with hands like shovels, and twinkly blue eyes. They probably wore wellies and smocks. I loved the idea of being out on a boat at night, sailing under the stars, and of puttering back into a safe stone harbour at dawn. I imagined holds full of pilchards, and scrawny cats who kept an eye on everything...

To read more, click here.

Gifts for the Common Good

How many times have you been told to make something of yourself? To do something significant in this world? To stand on your own two feet? All through school and, for some of us, university and beyond, we are told that if we work hard and make good choices, we will achieve success. If we’re struggling to work out how best to use our gifts, no worries: hundreds of books and podcasts and websites and careers counsellors are devoted to helping us achieve personal fulfilment and success.

To read more, click here.

Apocalypse Now?

Have you ever been to Venice? Such a beautiful city… But the combination of heavy buildings and rising sea levels mean that this beautiful city is regularly inundated by acqua alta. The waters rise, the sirens sound, and out come the duckboards so the people of the city can walk around. Maps of the projected effects of rising sea levels make the long-term future of Venice look very bleak, indeed.

To read more, click here.

(Picture from http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/duckboards,water/Recent)

When children push the limits of our generosity

A couple of years ago, we wanted to encourage our kids in the spirit of giving. We had had a number of conversations with them about comparative wealth (yes, we don’t have many electronic devices, or two cars, or the biggest house in the suburb, but compared to most people in the world we are insanely wealthy); and we wanted them to identify other people’s need, and give something back. So my husband pulled out a TEAR Catalogue and invited each of them to choose something that we, as a family, would buy in their name

To read more, click here.

Manna Matters: Investing in Homes and People

Our financial planner is interested in chooks, gardens, and pizza; he’s a Christian and a solid, dependable member of his church. A couple of years ago, my husband and I met with him to talk about backyard fruit trees, home-grown eggs and how to extract our superannuation from the stock market. We had serious qualms about how the market operates and how our money was being invested. Therefore, we wanted to set up a self-managed super fund...

To read more, click here.

And don't forget to check out the rest of the December 2014 issue of Manna Matters, with articles on the real estate market, household covenants and establishing a health retreat for Yolngu women.

The gorgeous illustration is by Shelley Knoll-Miller.

Love your neighbour with dollies and eggs

I was in the backyard with my youngest daughter, pegging out the socks, when my neighbour’s head suddenly popped up over the fence. Her eyes were just visible as she told me that she had been given two dolls, dust collectors, and she wondered if my girls would like them.

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You can read more when you subscribe to Mindful Parenting Magazine - the Winter issue is out now!

Childcare and takeaway are not enough for me

You know, I have this illusion that I’m the normal one around here. But every now and then I have a conversation which makes me realise that I dance to the beat of a different drum. Maybe you also dance to its beat; maybe you struggle to hear it amid the chaos of life – but if it’s not your drumbeat at all, you probably don’t read this blog!

Anyway, six months ago, we moved house. We didn’t move far; two miles, to be exact. But we moved from an unfriendly street to a friendly street; and, in particular, we moved to be a few doors up from some special people. Other friends, who hear our drumbeat, cheered us on; but many couldn’t understand it. And at the old school, which we attended for the last few weeks of term after moving, I was standing with a group of mums at pick up time when one of them asked me about the new house. ‘It’s great,’ I said, ‘we’ve been there a month and already we’re sharing a meal or two a week. The kids go back and forth a bit between the houses and so they’re more engaged and asking less of me.’ I was ready to say more – about Friday movie nights (for the kids) and wine (for the adults), say, or about sharing the lawnmower or the rice cooker or babysitting – when a woman interrupted. ‘What’s so great about that?’ she asked, slightly contemptuously. ‘Childcare and takeaway, that’s what you need; why would you want to get involved?’ And half the women in the group nodded, and looked at me as if I were the strange one.

And that, folks, is the moment I realised that we dance to different drums; and the drums are so different that I couldn’t answer her. While I stumbled for words, another woman cut in. ‘I can’t stand the idea of neighbours,’ she said, ‘I ignore mine, and always keep my big gates shut and locked.’

Thank goodness the school bell rang and the kids poured out, because I was flabbergasted. I just can’t imagine not sharing my life, especially as a parent. I feel suffocated at the idea of living with just partner and kids; the nuclear family is not enough for me. And when I think back to how important so many adults – friends and neighbours – were to my childhood, I can’t imagine raising my own kids without the same crowd of people in their lives.

Even more, I can’t see that purchased supports are any substitute for the shared life. While I’m not against either childcare or takeaway, and use them from time to time, they’re not enough for me. I also want old friends and new acquaintances and neighbours who hand food over the fence; I want to eat with many different people, and often.

Many Friday afternoons, the kids all play here while my friend-now-neighbour works from home and I cook up a pot of something; then the kids run down the street and flop in front of a movie at the other house. I follow a bit later carrying my big pot, and my friend and I tell stories of the week over a glass of wine while dinner cooks and we wait for our partners to come home. Together, then, we all eat and talk about work and writing and ideas and politics, and remind the kids of their table manners; then my partner and I whisk our kids home to bed.

Childcare and takeaway vs a glass of wine with a friend, an interesting conversation, and a two-household mutual admiration society? They don’t even begin to compare!

Learning to live with enough

 

Studying, school holidays, blah blah blah: sadly, I have nothing new for the blog. Instead, here's a piece I wrote for Zadok Perspectives No. 117. It was first published in the summer of 2013. The picture shows a selection of this week's gleaned fruit: persimmons, grapefruit, lemons, and cumquats. Another two kilos of grapefruit are in the veggie crisper. More than enough, even for grapefruit-loving me!

***

As a teenager I lived in the US, and I never became accustomed to the waste so many North Americans took for granted. It was epitomised by my youth group breakfasts. A boy would pick up a donut, take a bite, and throw the rest in the trash. A minute later, he'd pick up a second donut, a different flavour perhaps, take another bite, then throw that donut out, too. It never occurred to him that there was a cost involved in the donut, bigger perhaps that the dollar someone else had paid for it; or that there was a moral duty to eat it up; and when I, an awkwardly self-righteous Australian and newcomer in their midst, raised the issue, everyone looked at me askance.

He was, of course, only mimicking a wider society where restaurant servings were often double or triple what I considered enough, and where food – and everything – was thrown out with impunity. I recently read that 40% of all food produced in the United States is discarded, and that certainly tallies with my informal observations.

Before we become too smug, however, FoodWise estimates that Australians also chuck out a great deal: 180 kilograms of food waste per person per year. And it's not just food. How often do we send clothes to the op shop because we are, quite simply, sick of them? How often do we update our technology, our furniture or our cars, for no real reason? How rarely do we use things up, or wear things out?

And how much is enough? The population issues that place so much pressure on our planet circulate around this question. How much food, and what type? Is clean drinking water enough or must we drink filtered water from plastic bottles? How many cars, computers or lounge rooms do we really need? I know many women with forty or fifty pairs of trousers; could two or three pairs suffice?

At least until recently, there has been more than enough in the world to go around as long as the rich – and anyone reading this is rich – are willing to live with less. If we learned to live with enough, rather than the gross extravagance we take as the norm, then perhaps population wouldn't be such a pressing issue.

The Christian tradition offers a challenging perspective. The early church lived out a radical fellowship in which people lived from a common purse and learned to be content with enough. To each according to their needs, from each according to their gifts: this didn't originate with Marx but with the Acts of the Apostles. Yet most of us in the Christian church, let alone our society as a whole, have moved so far from this way of life that it is seen as deeply suspect.

Perhaps, though, it is time to revisit it. I am not advocating a radical communism instituted through violence from on high; but perhaps there are ways that we can practice sharing, and practice acknowledging that we have enough. Let me give you some examples from my family's small efforts.

My family eats many gleaned foods, and little meat. We are called to stewardship which implies a careful management of that which has been entrusted to our care. Thus I prioritise 'gift' foods – grapefruit overhanging a laneway, greens found on the roadside, a box of plums from a friend's tree – over bought foods; and when I am shopping, I prioritise local, sustainable or fair foods over others. We also grow what we can in our garden: leaves, nuts, fruits, herbs and, of course, eggs.

Our clothes are mostly second hand or made from organic or recycled fibres. As for how many, I am trying to find the point of 'enough', that is, where I still need to launder very regularly but do not have an underpants crisis!

We use bikes and public transport to get around. We do have a car, which we use as little as possible; over the years, we have been involved in informal car share networks so that other friends feel less pressure to purchase cars of their own.

Most of us own big possessions that are rarely used. Years ago, I belonged to a church with a resource directory. The family-sized tent, the trailer, the food dehydrator, the holiday house – whatever people were willing to share was placed on a list for others to borrow. It not only reduced the amount of stuff everyone owned; it also raised questions. Did neighbours need a deep freeze each or could they share one? Could they share a clothes dryer? Our society's wealth means that many of us have never had to learn how to share anything much more significant that the last slice of cake, but perhaps we could look back to the early church and teach ourselves again.

It's certainly easier to share when possessions are held lightly. For example, we have dozens of wine glasses: they are an annual gift from my husband's workplace and very useful. Friends feel they can borrow them when they have a party, and if some are smashed, then so be it. We also have many books, and years ago I realised that it was better to give them away, and be delighted if they came back, than to be hung up over their return.

These are just a few simple ways we can experiment with 'enough'. Few of us are ready for, or even called to, a radical discipleship where we sell all our possessions and give what we have to the poor; but we may as well practice sharing, right now, just in case the call comes.

And I'll let you in on a secret. Once we realise we have enough, something strange happens. A life which may have seemed short of just one or two things – always one or two things – is suddenly overflowing with riches. We may own fewer items, perhaps, but we learn to be grateful for them; and we become linked into a new community by engaging in the difficult and countercultural practice of sharing. Gratitude and friendship: what more could we ask? The truth of the matter is indeed counterintuitive: 'enough' is the real pathway to abundance.