The gift of God's words in a world turned upside down

Over the last two years, our world has been turned upside down. We used to meet inside the building for church, but last week we were on Zoom; and this week here we, worshipping in the garden. We used to leave the house for school and work; but during the many months of lockdowns, most of us learned to work and study from home ... 

Read here or listen here.

Day 22: Saturday: Down deep in the sea

From the onset my minister … was elated at Oscar’s request. It was the minister then, who chose the day and hour, who seemed blessed with foreknowledge, because that Wednesday afternoon in early August seemed created for outdoor baptism—warm and windless, with last night’s shower rising damp and aromatic from the bunchgrass…

    I had a cheeseburger and french fries; Oscar opted for the hot beef sandwich. I sipped at my iced tea and helped Oscar with his coffee. We had barely finished when I saw the minister’s black Ford pull up to the curb. I pushed Oscar in his wheelchair outside and the preacher and I helped him into the car. Actually, Oscar could manage by himself, but with great effort; even then, he could not straighten himself, so he had to waddle close to the ground, using his arms like a skier uses poles for balance.

    The preacher… was a jolly obese man whose sermons were a lot like most Kansas waterways, neither deep nor wide. I don’t believe he cared. He preferred the song to the word; on Sunday nights, in fact, that’s all we did— sing. “Shall We Gather at the River?” “When the Roll is Called up Yonder.” “In the Garden.”  I still know all three verses to “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.” One of my favorites is “Down Deep in the Sea”:

My sins have been cast in the depths of the sea,

Down deep in the sea.

So deep they can never be brought against me,

Down deep in the sea.

Isn’t that a helluva concept…? You take all of your sins and secure them in a gunnysack, say, then affix a flatiron and toss the whole shebang into the sea, into water so deep they can never be brought against you. I try to imagine how deep that might be … but the mind boggles.

Anyway, it’s a song that the basso profundo loves to sing, because its last notes are maybe almost as low as the seabottom:

Down, down, down, down, down in the depths of the sea –

The sins of the past are all gone at last,

Down in the depths of the sea.

We sang this song as we rode south towards Shannon’s pasture and its meandering creek. Oscar strained to bring forth several grunts and a narrow assortment of gutturals, most of them uttered at the wrong times, but nobody, including the cattle near the barbed-wire fences at the roadside, seemed to mind. Before we had finished more than a couple of other hymns we were there.

What was sung at your baptism? Does it continue to have significance for you? Give thanks for the gift of song, and for the power of music to convey meaning.

♫ Extra: To listen to ‘Down in the depths of the sea,’ click here.

Reading from William Kloefkorn This Death by Drowning (Lincoln, NE/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 71-2.

Not domestic, not a goddess: Mary the prophet

The gospel doesn’t show us a domesticated Mary, nor are we shown a heavenly queen. Instead, we are shown a woman, a prophet, who is, quite literally, on the road. We see her walking into the Judean hills, visiting with cousins, or giving birth, not at home but in another town. We see her fleeing to Egypt, or on the road to Jerusalem, or outside a house where Jesus is. We see her at a wedding, at the cross, or visiting the tomb. What we don’t see is Mary at home, engaged in domestic duties.

To read more, click here.

Picture by Scott Griessel, found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-david-felten/oy-vey-maria-the-virgin-b_b_4476301.html?ir=Australia

‘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.

Is there a 'real' me waiting to be unmasked?

In my last post, I provided a link to a sermon I gave at Christmas. In it, I said “...one step on the journey is to start living as if we trusted because, like most things, if we practice long enough then eventually it will become second nature, and shape who we become.”

Someone wrote to me and asked:

You have said that in behaving like you already believe something, you eventually found you did believe in it. When I try to do that, part of me feels like I'm not being honest. Is it possible to be true to yourself, to the ‘real’, ‘unmasked’ person you are, and yet act out another persona totally? I really don't understand how one can. To me, it seems that in order to act the way one ‘should’, one is suppressing how one really feels, thinks and even believes - and so is not being the ‘real’, ‘unmasked’ person at all. I'd really like to know how you came to understand this as a way of changing, and maybe even ask if the questions I raise with myself are ones you have already raised and resolved.

Perhaps others have similar questions, so here is my response.

***

You raise some really good questions, fundamental to what we believe a human being is, because behind your questions is a big assumption that our culture makes: that there is a ‘real’ person underneath, waiting to be ‘unmasked’. There may have been some confusion in the sermon, as I suggested there are ways to unmask or reveal the light that is already shining within us, and you may have assumed this meant the ‘real’ person. However, I was calling for the continuing revelation of the divine spark within us, the gift from God. This spark is a part of us, but it is not some ‘real’ us.

As for some ‘real’ us, well, I don’t buy the myth that if we all did enough psychotherapy or drumming rituals then we’d know who we really are. How we live reveals exactly who we really are: our values, our histories, our wounds, our beliefs, our choices. How we choose to live, how we respond to what life dishes out, whether we value our wounds or our healing and so on makes it clear who we are, what we hold dear, and what values we prioritise.

Our society venerates ideas like ‘being true to oneself’ and ‘authentic ways of living’, but when I observe people who base their lives on these concepts, I often see very selfish and dishonest behaviours. For example, I think of people I know who have justified extra-marital affairs because they claim that by expressing the passion they feel for their lover they are being true to themselves. They cannot admit the dishonesty they engaged in when they allowed their heart to stray so far from someone to whom they have pledged faithfulness, nor the dishonesty they practiced when they met covertly with their lover.

More personally, I think that if I had lived in a way that was ‘true to myself’, you would have seen a wounded little girl who sought refuge and comfort in sex and alcohol, and who tried to feel powerful through hurting others. Those, at least, have been my instincts; but I never wanted to be that sort of person, so I haven’t had affairs or drunk way too much way too often; and I have practiced holding my tongue and learning some self-control and gentleness. After a decade or two of these disciplines, the little girl has grown up a lot and her wounds are healing; she no longer needs to be destructive to feel powerful.

Instead of being true to myself, then, I try to be true to my Christian calling. Sometimes the expression of this will look like being true to myself, or ‘finding’ myself; other times, it will look and feel like the very opposite, as I engage in the hard and painful drudgery of learning to be faithful. The times when it appears that I have found or recognised something essential about myself are often the result of years of patient, tedious, largely invisible practices which, through repetition, have altered my approach to other people and the world, shaping which values I live out and what sort of person I have become.

Being true to the Christian calling won’t ever require me to act out an entirely different persona; but it will require that I take a good hard look at my persona and work on the bits that aren’t Christian. Christianity – like any faith discipline – is like a rock tumbler: what goes in is a rock, what comes out is a rock; it’s the same thing, only all the rough edges have been knocked off and it is now something beautiful. And the rough edges are knocked off our persona by practicing the disciplines of faith.

Professional athletes and musicians and cooks practice their passion for hours every day. They learn to change a grip or a posture or a habit, and at first it feels unnatural; but then it becomes second nature and part of how they do what they do. Faith is the same. If it’s our passion, we practice it every day, yet there will always be habits that feel uncomfortable and ‘fake’ because faith is so countercultural. For example, when I decided to be Christian, I felt very fake going to church, singing, praying and talking to members of the congregation, but I identified these disciplines as part of the tradition that I wanted to belong to, I practiced them, and eventually they became second nature. So too with trust and all the other disciplines of faith. They feel fake, then they feel real because they have become part of the person we are becoming, part of the mix of choices and habits and practices and beliefs and attitudes that constitute our growing and maturing selves.

I hope this answers your questions – and maybe raises a few more!

Alison

Mortimer, Mohammed and Me

This piece appeared in Zadok Perspectives No. 111 (Winter 2011). The Spring edition is out now, with my reflection on praying into the night.

***

Mortimer, Mohammed and Me

Every Friday, I spend a few hours reading with kids at a local school. I listen to each child read their reader, and then I offer them a choice: they can go back to the classroom activity, or they can have a story read to them, which they choose from the books I bring in. Mostly, they want to listen to a story; and mostly, they choose a little book by Robert Munsch, called Mortimer.

Mortimer can’t sleep, so instead he sings loudly (‘Bang-bang, rattle-ding-bang, Gonna make my noise all day’) and drives his family crazy. Person after person comes upstairs to tell Mortimer to be quiet, but as soon as they reach the bottom of the stairs he starts singing again. Eventually, the family becomes so agitated that they start yelling at each other; and while Mortimer waits for someone else to come up, he falls fast asleep.

As you can imagine, it is a very loud book. I have to sing Mortimer’s song four times; and mimic the sound of lots of people coming upstairs and shouting at him; and evoke the noise of Mortimer’s mother and father and seventeen brothers and sisters and even the police yelling downstairs – this book is a riot.

Meanwhile the listening child sits, spellbound; sings Mortimer’s song along with me; and almost invariably gets the giggles.

I read Mortimer aloud fifteen to twenty times each week; and at times I find myself wanting to rush. They’ve all heard it before, many times. There are very few volunteers and lots of kids, and I would like to read with every child every week – but I can’t. I find myself thinking that if we hurry this story or read less of the reader or maybe even give up reading stories but focus on the readers instead, then I’ll get to one more, and one more, and one more, child.

Yet the whole point is to give these kids, mostly refugees with very few books at home, the opportunity to wallow in stories just as my own children have wallowed. We can’t do that in a rush.

So I work hard to breathe deep; to sit on the class list so it doesn’t catch my eye; to read fast when the story begs to be read fast; to read slow when the story begs to be drawn out; to make room for quiet spaces and expectant pauses; and to look at the face of each child and etch it onto my heart.

One Friday, I was reading Mortimer for perhaps the seventeenth time, as always achingly aware of the kids I wouldn’t get to and wrestling with the impulse to race. I glanced at Mohammed, listening with rapt attention, and I suddenly realised that we were on God’s time.

Between two words, I dropped into that great yawning space, that vast universe where there is more than enough time for love however long it takes; and in this spinning dizzying sense of the infinite I was surrounded by a great rumble of belly laughter, a deep chuckling, love wiping its eyes in hilarity at the story of Mortimer and at all the little boys and girls who drive their parents crazy, and at all the crazy adults who think that love can be scheduled or rushed.

And then I was back at school, where I found myself sitting on the carpet singing ‘Bang-bang, rattle-ding-bang, Gonna make my noise all day’ and beside me Mohammed was now singing, his face aglow, and I started to hoot and he got the giggles and a classmate joined in and another picked up the thread of song, and surrounding us all were the floating filaments, the echoes of heavenly laughter.

(The boy’s name has been changed. Robert Munsch has a fantastic website where you can look at his books and listen to stories; Mortimer is here.)

Small Acts of Courage

These are some of the things I am scared of: drawing, singing, meeting people, doing new things, talking on the telephone, making appointments, ladies in waxing salons, performing in public, nuclear power, global warming, and the zombie hand that might reach out of the toilet and drag me down when I’m sitting on it. It’s true: I am scared of most things. I always have been; I’ve been waiting for the axe to fall for as long as I can remember.

It’s easy to explain. My mother loved me, yet was highly critical of everything I did; I had some abusively bullying teachers in primary school; and between one thing and another I’ve never quite got over the combination. As a child, whenever I stuck my neck out and often when I didn’t, somebody shrieked at me.

Add to that three key caregivers, who looked after me from when I was a baby and who died when I was four, and this little girl learned that the world is not a safe place.

So I became a mouse. Every now and then the lion came roaring out but for the most part the mouse is with me, whispering that I should sit down, shut up, and not move a muscle lest the farmer’s wife come running, carving knife in hand.

Yet I don’t want to grow into a querulous and fearful old woman. But unless I practice being brave now, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. So, timid as I am, I’ve spent the last decade working on my fears, and addressing those voices which tell me that I’m no good at anything and that the world is fundamentally dangerous.

How?, you ask. Well, to begin with I found myself a nice pen, and at least once a week I’m doing a drawing in which no line can be erased. I’ll never be an artist, and that’s fine; the exercise has other purposes. It’s to remind me there’s nothing to be afraid of: I’m an adult now and no teacher is hanging over my shoulder and telling me what I can’t do. It also reminds me to observe closely and look, really look, at the world. I enjoy the feeling of my brain shifting into another gear and my hand cruising across the page; I enjoy laughing at the terrible drawings that result. It’s been a small exercise in bravery, and I think it’s making me bold.

Because the other day, as we were eating our lunch, my youngest daughter and I heard ‘fresh new potatoes!’ blaring through a megaphone. For years I’ve heard this call once or twice a month as a white ute cruises slowly through our suburb. I’ve been intrigued, but am too cowardly to flag it down. I worry that the veggies might be sprayed with pesticides, or the sellers rude or annoying... what if they hammer on my door every time they come into town?

How ridiculous. The worst that will happen is I spend a couple of dollars on some bad potatoes that can always be thrown to the chooks. But the other day, having done half a dozen drawings lately, I was feeling heady. I grabbed my daughter; we ran out and waved the truck down. We met a lovely couple, husband and wife, who run a small organic farm and trundle through the suburbs of Melbourne to sell their produce direct; and we bought the best apples and potatoes I have seen this year. We had eaten most of the apples by the end of the day.

The apples gave me such a burst of courage that I left the house on my Thursday ritual thinking about other fears. I can’t shave under my arms; I get terrible rashes. I don’t mind being hairy, but it does make me sweaty as I power walk to school and back. My lovely waxing lady, found in a previous burst of courage, moved to a small island off the coast of Scotland late last year and I’ve been shaggy ever since. But filled with good apples and knowing there were new potatoes on the kitchen bench, I strode straight into a convenient salon to make an appointment. It was quiet, and a woman could see me immediately. I’m pretty scary under there, I said; and the woman, taking a look, said ‘I’m not running away yet’ and started to giggle. Somehow our eyes met and the giggles turned to a shared belly laugh. I relaxed; she smeared on hot wax and ripped out the hair; and that was that. No big deal, after all.

While I was putting my clothes back on, my mobile rang and I felt compelled to answer it. As I chatted, I reflected that despite my fears I’ve been practising this telephone business for years now, and I feel like I’m starting to get good at it.

All this courage! I certainly need it. Although I am scared of singing anywhere other than at home, a few years ago I joined a choir full of strangers. Truth be told, I chose my children’s school not because of any recommendations but because of the parent’s choir. After my own primary school experience, where teachers were deliberately cruel and parents sidelined to the point that I seriously contemplated home schooling my own daughters, this seemed to be a healthy sign. And the choir, and the school, have been good.

Being in the choir’s scary enough, but we’re rehearsing more seriously than usual; our cheerful group, normally focussed on red wine and gossip, has been asked to perform at a public event and I feel sick at the thought. I was anxious about rehearsal; then again, I was full of new apples from the potato man; I was freshly exfoliated; I had chatted on the phone; and I’d just done a drawing. It was pretty bad, but one or two lines have signs of life that are slightly encouraging.

I may not be able to do much about my fears of nuclear power, global warming or the hand that lurks in the s-bend, but it’s about time I performed in public. So despite my anxiety, off I went to choir practice; and at some stage, as always, I began to enjoy it.

That’s the funny thing about small acts of courage: they almost always make me happy.

And look! I posted some drawings of mine... wildly imperfect, but another small act.