Still Thinking -Peace in Jerusalem

In 2007 I had a three month sabbatically with one month spent in Israel. In Jerusalem I stayed at St George’s College in East Jerusalem.  On the afternoon when I arrived I was given a tour of the campus by the College Chaplain.  After the tour I asked him about walking around the old city.  Was it safe?  Could I do it by myself?  Are there any places I should, or more importantly, should not go?  His answer was simple, “Walk out the front gate of the college, turn right and about three hundred metres down Salahadeen Street you will see Herod’s Gate.  Walk through the gate and then just get lost in the city!”  While to a newcomer that was a bit frightening nevertheless, I took his advice and got lost in the Old City.

In fact, it would be difficult to get lost in the Old City of Jerusalem.  Walled on all sides it has eight entrance gates (one is bricked up for theological reasons) and is an area of about a square kilometre.  I don’t think you really can get lost – as distinct from not knowing where you are – because the old city is a maze of never ending streets, lanes, stairways and footpaths.  And if you show any sign of not knowing where you are there is always a helpful local willing to take to one of the sacred sites - at a price of course.

Many will know that the old city is divided into four quarters – Christian, Armenian, Jewish and Moslem.  One can wander freely between the quarters and while there are not clear boundaries between the quarters they are each distinct in their own way.   Now while it maybe difficult get lost physically in Jerusalem, it is certainly possible to get lost in the sheer diversity and complexity of the place.  To the outsider everyone seems to get along well together, but as our lecturer and guide Rev Dr Kamal Farah said, “In Jerusalem we do not live together we merely co-exist.” I suppose this is the technical meaning of the word tolerate.  The three dominant religious faiths in Jerusalem presently tolerate each other.

Now while the old city is about many things the two that strike the tourist or pilgrim are commerce and sacred religious places.  From the stalls that line the narrow streets traders will sell you anything if you can haggle with them to arrive at the right price – a skill I discovered I didn’t have.  But it doesn’t take long in this city to get lost in the profundity of its religious significance.  Much has been written about the importance of Jerusalem to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Each religion claims a sacred connection to Jerusalem.  Each faith feels a God give right to be here, in Jerusalem.  It was a remarkable experience to in one day, visit the Western (Wailing) Wall; the Dome of the Rock; and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Each of these places sacred to its tradition and yet each has at some time in its history been occupied by at least one of the other faiths.  While the city is central to religious faith and pilgrimage, war and conflict over these sacred places has always been present in Jerusalem.

Two of our guest speakers during the course, one a Palestinian Christian, the other a Jewish educator used the same illustration about visiting Jerusalem. They both said, “After someone has been in Jerusalem for a couple of days they feel they could write a book; after a week perhaps a chapter; after a month a sentence and after a year they struggle to find a word.”  And I know what that is word.   I suspect we all know what that word is.  It is Al-Salaam, in Arabic Shalom, in Hebrew, Pax in Christian Latin and Peace is English.  All traditions see peace as more than the absence of conflict, more than mere tolerance and co-existence.  Peace in Christianity, Islam and Judaism is the restoration to wholeness - completeness.  The very experience of prosperity both physically and spiritually, but most importantly not just for me or for my tribe but for all people.

It was the Catholic theologian Hans Küng who said, “There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions."  This Christmas 2011, let us prayer for the peace of Jerusalem, peace between religions and peace in our world.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Christmas in Australia

I had ten Christmases in Canada and only one was a white Christmas. We lived in Hamilton Ontario which is at the southern tip of Lake Ontario and the area doesn’t get as much snow as parts further north. On average the snow would arrive in our neighbourhood in late November, then melt by early December and not return until early January.  So white Christmases were few and far between.

Coming from the southern hemisphere I was often asked is we celebrated Christmas in our winter, in July.  Canadians found it difficult to imagine Christmas lights, decorations and roast turkeys happening in the summer.  When I told them that our shopping centres (malls) were decorated with fake snow (cotton wool) reindeers and overweight and overdressed Santas and that even the tree we decorate was not native to Australia but imported from north climes, they were bemused –as some us are today.  I tried to redeem our southern hemisphere summer Christmas celebration by telling them that we do have “shrimp on the barbie” (prawns) cold meats and salads often served outside on Christmas Day and that sometimes Santa even arrives on a surfboard!

When I have thought about our Christmas traditions, I realize that almost of them come from the northern hemisphere and perhaps the only local Christmas custom we have is Carol’s by Candlelight which has to be outside, on a warm summer evening to be successful.  Christmas traditions generally are a melting pot of historical-cultural-religious, symbols, customs and traditions that are transported one culture and one country to another and that’s probably a good thing.

Christmas celebrations imported from elsewhere are part of a larger question about Christianity in Australia.  In the 1970s, when I was a theological student it was popular to talk about an emerging “Gumleaf Theology” which was an attempt to indigenize the unique expression of Christian faith in this corner of our world.  It has never really succeeded.  Our love firstly, of all things British and European and more recently all things American, has seen the flow of traditions, customs and ideas move in one direction.  Nevertheless, I suspect the key to having meaningful sacred customs and traditions is to not just adopt them, but rather we adapt them to the local needs and conditions.  The playwright William Somerset Maugham said, “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer,” and even a religious traditionalist like T.S.Eliot wrote “A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.”

Of course what’s most important is to revisit the original story of the nativity and draw from it those meanings, images and symbols that resinate with our experience of Christian faith on our continent.  Remember the environment surrounding Jesus’ birth in Palestine was closer to Australia conditions than it was to northern Europe or Scandinavia.  And we Australians should know something about sheep and shepherds albeit a little less romanticised than most Christmas scenes. However, what is significant is to remind ourselves and our culture that this baby was born in a humble state, attended by those who loved and honoured him and that he grew to be a man beyond measure, whose life and teaching transformed the ancient world and can transform both our culture and the human heart.  But for that to happen we must take seriously this Holy and sacred story of God with us, revealed in this small human life and celebrated every year at Christmastime.

Christopher

Still Thinking -The Logistics of Santa's Delivery Service

Two scientists, Joel Potischman and Bruce Handy have computed a speed and payload performance criteria for Santa's sleigh. In case you think I am just making this up the “official” website is listed below.* Their calculations are as follows:

The Number of Destinations

• ·       Humans in the world: 6 billion. (this was computed some years ago.)
• ·       Children, under 18 years of age: 2 billion.
• ·       Children whose parents are Christian: 33%.
• ·       Maximum number of children who might receive gifts: 667 million.
• ·       Average number of children per household: 3.5.
• ·       Number of destinations where Santa might deliver presents: 189 million.  However, there are 33 million Eastern Orthodox children which Santa would handle on his second trip on January 5^th. The Eastern Orthodox Church doesn’t follow the Gregorian calendar; the current gap between the calendars is 12 days.

Total number of destinations where Santa delivers gifts: 156 million.

The Time it Takes

Santa cannot arrive until the children are asleep. Suggesting that he starts to distribute gifts in each time zone at 9pm local time and as long as the entire job is finished before the children wake up in the last zone, assuming that the children sleep for 7 hours, he has 31 hours to finish his deliveries.

This means he has to visit 1,398 homes per second. Which gives him 715 microseconds in which to decelerate the sleigh, land on the roof, walk to the chimney, slide down the chimney, distribute the presents and retrace his steps. However, there are some adjustments if one considers that:

·       Santa's competitor Befana distributes gifts in Italy.

·       Santa distributes some gifts on Boxing Day to poor children in some countries.

·       Santa distributes some gifts in bulk quantities, children's hospitals etc. before Christmas.

·       Sinter Klass distributes some gifts on December 5 to children in Belgium, Germany and Holland.

Which reduces the number to 1,000 households per second.

The Distance Travelled:

Assuming that Antarctica is uninhabited and ignoring inland lakes, the total inhabited land on earth is about 79.3 million square miles.  If the destinations are evenly distributed over the available land, the average distance between destinations is 0.71 miles. So the total distance travelled is 111 million miles – a little further than the distance from the earth to the sun!

Potischman and Handy estimated that at a speed of 650 miles a second, air resistance would cause the lead reindeer to absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. We are not familiar with the effects of such a high energy loading. However, most probably the reindeer would be turned into charcoal in seconds, without magical protection that is.

So visiting 1,000 homes per second at the average speed of 3.6 million miles an hour he could reach the moon in 4 minutes. In terms of payload the sleigh would carry about 500,000 tons of cargo, many times the weight of the Queen Mary, which is about 100 million cubic feet of cargo, equivalent to 4,500 homes.

There are two logical explanations for these incredible figures. First, Santa Claus does not exist. Some adults believe this, but most young children don’t. Or Santa Claus has magical powers, which is obvious because he can see from his location at the North Pole, when children are sleeping and when they are awake and whether they are bad or good.  Also it is reported he can travel up a chimney simply by rubbing the side of his nose.

*Adapted from Joel Potischman & Bruce Handy, "Is there a Santa Claus," at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk

 Christopher

Still Thinking – The Reason for the Season

In the ancient world it was not common to celebrate a person’s birthday.  It was more common to celebrate the death of famous or significant people.  It may seem strange to us but early Christians did not celebrate the birth of Jesus.  They had the narrative of his birth, particular from the Gospel Luke written around 85AD, but the early church fathers Origen (d.255), St. Irenaeus (d. 202), and Tertullian (d. 220) do not include Christmas or its date on their lists of feasts and celebrations.

While there was interest in the early church about the date of Jesus’ birth there was no celebration of it.  The  church father, Clement of Alexandria (150-215) tells us that certain theologians had claimed to have determined not only the year of the Jesus' birth but also the day; that it took place in the 28^th year of Augustus and on the 25^th day of Pachon (May 20^th) . He also added that others said that he was born on the 24^th or 25^th of Pharmuthi (April 19^th or 20^th)

Some modern scholars, using the details given in the Bible, suggest that Jesus' birthday was likely before October or after March.  So, although we don't know when Jesus was born, it seems quite unlikely that it was on December 25^th.  So how did December 25^th? The most likely explanation is that as the Rome Empire became Christian there was a movement by the Bishops of the church to “Christianize” the pagan celebrations.  So, in order to eclipse the winter solstice celebration of the sun god Mithras in the middle of the 4^th Century after Jesus' death, the newly converted Emperor Constantine declared December 25^th to be the official birthday of Jesus.

Within a few years, the altars of the temples of Mithra had been destroyed and the temples were quickly rededicated to the activities of the Church of Rome. So the winter solstice, which was perhaps the greatest celebration known to the ancient world, was transformed into a celebration of Jesus as the light of world and the one who overcame the darkness.

Over the centuries the celebration of Christmas has waxed and waned depending on the theologies and doctrines of the different wings of the Christian Church.  In the 17^th Century the emerging Free Church which included Separatists, Baptists, Congregationalists and Puritans, condemned the celebration of Christmas because its cultural pagan origins overshadowed the true biblical meaning of Jesus’ birth.  During this period, the English Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas entirely, replacing it with a day of fasting and considering it, "a popish festival with no biblical justification", and a time of wasteful and immoral behaviour.  The army were even sent to raid homes and confiscate any cooked meat.  I wonder what they would think of our Christmas Celebrations today.

There has been a move in the modern church to emphasise the true meaning of Christmas.  I think the recent recovery of the celebration of Advent is a healthy corrective to some of our consumerist aspects of Christmas, while not retreating into pietism or “Scroogeism.”  It is interesting that one of the great social reformers of the 19^th Century, Charles Dickens highlighted Christmas as both a time of festivities with a reflection on the moral and social values in his book A Christmas Carol. 

Advent, with its focus on our commitment to hope, love, peace and joy, woven from the stories of John the Baptizers, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, give us a clearer sense of the “reason for the season.”  It is also a time of personal and collective reflection on faith and how a commitment to the one born in a stable is lived out in my life and within the world around me.

Christopher

Still Thinking – the Gift of Opportunity

Two weeks ago I attended the St Catherine’s School Valedictory Ceremony in my capacity as the board member representing Toorak Uniting Church. It was a bright and inspiring event.  The graduating girls received prizes for their achievements in academic, social and community activities.  The speaker for the night was Tamara Cannon who was an old girl of St Cath’s and had ten years ago established the Lille Fro Foundation* to sponsor Tibetan children and give them the opportunity to go to school. Tamara up to that point had been a corporate lawyer having graduated from St Cath’s in 1991. In promoting Tamara’s visit, the school’s newsletter gave some background:

Up to this point, Tamara’s career had been very successful, but mostly conventional, until she was sent on assignment in Asia. Tamara took a side trip to climb to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, and when travelling through Himalayan, Ladakh India, she met a little girl living in destitute circumstances. Like many children in her village, this child had never been to school. Tamara decided to pay for her education, board and expenses.

On the night of the ceremony, Tamara spoke to the girls and their parents, about her conviction of how important it is to demonstrate care and compassion to those in need and the difference that a relatively small amount of money can make in the lives of these children, their families and the villages they live in.  The foundation sponsors over 100 children and has also built five green houses in remote areas of Tibet, helping to feed whole villages.  As part of our Toorak OP Shop Distribution for 2011, TUC will give $5,000 to Tamara’s Lille Fro Foundation and St John’s Anglican will also give $5,000.

It was Albert Einstein who said, “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.”  I don’t think we can ever underestimate the gift of an opportunity and its impact on a person.  In my life I can think of at least six people who didn’t give me money or advice, but gave me an opportunity to learn and even to fail; to lead or share something of myself with others and that made all the difference in my life. 

I don’t think it is true that opportunity only knocks once. What the saying means of course is that we should take advantage of the opportunities that come to us and not be too timid or cowardly about embracing new opportunities.  However, they do keep coming and while we may regret missing a good opportunity, a positive and open outlook on life means we will recognize the next possibility that comes into our lives.

Opportunity Shops are places where people can find a bargain.  They are important places where clothing and other items are recycled and reused and where the price of purchases can be kept low through generous donations and the hard work of volunteers.  TUC makes a strong contribution to our Op Shop in Toorak and can be proud of the fact that the money raised is providing opportunities for people with needs in Melbourne and in the world beyond. 

*http://www.lillefro.com.au/home

Christopher

Still Thinking –Self Love

When I was in grade seven at the Upper Mt Gravatt primary school I ran for the position of Class Captain. If I remember correctly there were at least two others in the class who were competing for the top job. I recall a conversation I had with our teacher just before the election.  Somehow we got to talking about who I would vote for, “I’m voting for Marjorie Fleming, “I said.  “So why Christopher,” said the teacher, “would anyone want to vote for you, if you are not willing to vote for yourself?”  It was an early lesson in the dangers of false humility and the courage to value and trust one’s self.

I think we in the Christian tradition have had an uneasy relationship with the notion of self-love or even self-esteem.  I recall someone saying that they were taught in Sunday School that you could remember what the word JOY meant by memorizing; Jesus first, Others second and You last.  While the intent was to develop respect for God and humility towards others, it can create in many people a devaluing of themselves and the inability to really embrace the gift of their life which is precious and unique.

Jesus is asked by a religious lawyer, reported in Matthew 22:36-39, “Teacher which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  His answer moved them away from the legalism of the Ten Commandments and the religious and ceremonial laws, to the heart of faith and life.  He replied, “You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”  Much has been made of this passage and what it says about loving one’s self.  It’s clear from the context that it is not about egoism, arrogance or self-aggrandizement.  In fact, it is quite the opposite. The passage reminds us that the measure of how we treat our neighbour is drawn for the way we see and treat ourselves.

It is more about having a right perspective on my life and using that as the base from which I relate to others.  The love of self in this passage and generally throughout the ministry of Jesus is not about self-pandering or indulgence, it is as we often have heard, a commitment to treasure and value the other person, the presence of God and the gift of life within us.  You don’t need to be a psychologist to see that when you devalue your own life, you treat with less value the lives of those around you. I have found the writings of Donald Winnicot the paediatrician and psychoanalyst who developed the Object Relation Theory helpful is this context.  He wrote:

Only the true self can be creative and only the true self can feel real….the true self is a sense of being alive and real in one's mind and body, having feelings that are spontaneous and unforced. This experience of aliveness is what allows people to be genuinely close to others, and to be creative.

It‘s why it is so important for each of us to be on a journey toward wholeness because it is out of our own lives, out of our true selves, that we act toward God and others. It is not selfish to nurture the gift of life God has given us it is in fact, the most important thing we do each day.

Christopher

Still Thinking – God and Grapes

Last week I spent a few days at Tarrawarra Abbey in the Yarra Valley.  I can’t remember exactly how long I have been going to the Abbey, I think for about 16 years ever since I returned from Canada in the nineties. I was introduced to the monastery by Rev Peter Wiltshire the Chaplain at Wesley College.  He had been attending Tarrawarra for some time and invited me to come with him on a three day retreat. I fell in love with the place almost instantly.  

The monks who run the monastery are Cistercians sometimes called Trappists.  They have owned the property since the 1950s when the house (now the guest house for retreants like me) and the land were bought by the Catholic Church.  Presently, the thousand acres is used to run 400 head of Charolais and Red Angus cattle, their main financial support.  But running cattle is not the main game.

The brothers follow a practice of the daily office which means that they pray together using chanted psalms, readings, prayers and hymns seven times a day from 4am until 8pm in the evening, seven days a week. In between these times they do the many jobs associated with running a farm and living a communal life.

Over the years I have got to know several of the brothers. While as a guest I don’t eat or share in the brother’s lives, nevertheless, the guest master often spends the evening meal with the retreatants and shares with us his views of life, faith and topics of interest.  The monastery is in the centre of the Yarra Valley wine growing region and next to Tarrawarra Winery and Museum of Contemporary Art – there is no connection between the winery and the monastery.  However, when I mention to friends that I am going to Tarrawarra for a spiritual retreat there is often the response, “Oh yeah, that’s a place I would like to go for a retreat!” Perhaps we all feel that spiritual retreats should be in austere places and not among the vineyards.

Tarrawarra Abbey offers people a place where the “memory of God” is kept alive. I am often comforted by the idea that while I am about my work back in Melbourne, the brothers of Tarrawarra carry on their daily prayer without my help or my presence. Theirs is a commitment to a particular form of the Christian faith that while it may not be mine, I can appreciate its value and am grateful for the opportunity to drop into that life from time to time.

I am sure there are many different places that can draw us into deeper and more reflective ways of living our lives.  And while just getting away for a few days can be restorative, I think it is important for all of us to find a place where we are intentional about nurturing our inner life. I know that it is not popular to talk about disciplines in the modern world.  That’s not quite true we are obsessed with physical disciplines, but spiritual disciples seem to be too restrictive for our contemporary lifestyles. Perhaps it is preferable to talk of spiritual practices rather than disciplines.  Regardless of what we call it, I need the beauty and agony of life to be shaped, formed and reformed around the practices of the Christian faith.  Practicing celebration, communal prayer, meditation, study, reflection, silence contemplation, compassion and action provides us with a structure and purpose to our lives.

There is an old Buddhist story that goes like this:

A novice asks, “Master why must I mediate every day when you have told us that enlightenment does not come through our effort or hard work?” “Ah” says the Master, “We meditate so that we will be awake when enlightenment comes.”

For me the practice of a spiritual retreat is a way of staying awake so that I will recognize the true values in life and so that in the “everyday” world I am not lulled into sleep by the seductive voices of the crowd.

Christopher

Evolution: Armstrong vs Dawkins

Karen Armstrong is a prolific writer of history, religion, and theology.  Her books include; The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2000); Faith After September 11 (2002); The Spiral Staircase (2004); Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time (2006); The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006); The Bible: A Biography (2007); The Case for God (2009) just to name a few.

In the Australia Newspaper several months ago, there were two articles addressing the question, “where does evolution leave God?”  The first was written by Karen Armstrong and second by Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins is a celebrated atheist whose book the God Delusion has become a bestseller.  Dawkins has also written several books on human biology the most noted being, The Selfish Gene, where he concluded that the genes that survive in human evolution are those that have the capacity to copy themselves, hence selfish.

 

The two articles are written from very different perspectives.  And in this context Dawkins is no match for Armstrong.  To put it simply Dawkins says that evolution has made God redundant.  God is out of a job, with nothing to do.  While Armstrong argues that what we call God is not simply a supernatural being that single-handedly created the world – what we name god is in fact that which is beyond naming.  And while that maybe not be satisfying for the scientists in Dawkins, it is what has moved poets, story-tellers, musicians and a myriad of other artists to insight and inspiration over the centuries.   

As you probably assumed I come down on Armstrong’s side of the argument but I hope because of the eloquence and content of her evidence.  Armstrong incorporates into her discussion both the history and the world of religion.   She doesn’t collapse her argument into the proofs for the existence of God popular with some religious writers.  Instead, she tells the story of the history of human descriptions of the encounter with the sacred with what we have named God while rejecting the 18^th and 19^th century views of God as the great architect and designer of the cosmos as  not relevant for the 21^st century.  For Armstrong the heart of religion is the heart.  She writes:

The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry.  Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words.  At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps not unlike the awe that Dawkins experiences – and has helped me to appreciate – when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection.

We can be grateful to Richard Dawkins for putting religion and Darwinian evolution back onto the theological landscape.  The more I read about the process of evolution and particularly the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness, the more my notion of a God as a remote being, recedes, and is replaced with the God of wonder, awe, surprise, amazement and mystery.  And most importantly, the sense that I am in God and God is in me; that God is present in every moment and no longer needs to be beckoned to come. 

Perhaps that was the thing that frightened the religious people of Jesus’ day.  Jesus’ God was beyond the codifying and controlling methods of institutional religion.  Jesus also saw “religion” as dynamic and not static.  I think that fits well with modern evolutionary views.  Evolution shows us that nothing is static, everything is dynamic and changing.  Our bodies, our minds, our culture, our universe and what we call God, all is pulsating with life and new life.

Christopher

The Beauty of Imperfection

While I was studying at the University of Toronto in the late 1980’s there was a Professor of Philosophy who was fond of saying, “If something is worth doing, than it is worth doing poorly.”  He wanted to unshackle his students from the tyranny of perfection.  In his view the aphorism, “If some is worth doing, it is worth doing well,” meant that many never tried to do it at all; they were oppressed by either the fear of failure or the burden of the task.  The quest for perfection can mutate into perfectionism which robs a person not only of the joy and pleasure in what they do but can even stop them from making an attempt at it.

Instead it is often better if the quest is to discover the beauty in imperfection. The commentator Linda Johnson said:

We are bombarded daily with images of 'perfection' - the perfect body, the perfect relationship, the perfect car, house, job, health, bank balance, family and so on. We are led to believe that once we reach these ideals we will be fulfilled, so we aspire to things outside of ourselves to make us happy.

And yet when we look inside ourselves we are often confronted and taunted by our imperfections.  Our failure to rise to even our own best intentions can cause us to lose hope and stop trying.  Beauty is a very difficult concept to define.  In the same sentence I can say that my grand-daughter, my daughter and my wife are beautiful and yet I know that the beauty I find in each of them is experienced differently.

I mentioned recently that some years ago I was on a five day retreat at the Anglican retreat house in Cheltenham (which no longer exists).  Through the window of the dining room I could see an enormous oak tree in the courtyard.  The tree was gnarled and scared from a hundred years of pruning.  I remarked to one of the other people on retreat what a beautiful tree it was; that the scars seemed to be a thing of beauty showing the long and fruitful life this tree had lived.  The other retreatant looked at the tree and said, “Um, pretty old thing, maybe they should cut it down.”  The response surprised me but it reinforced in me the notion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

The Song of Songs is a book that introduces the reader to an intimate relationship between two people.  It speaks of the physical beauty of both the Bride and the Bridegroom.  Chapter 4:1 states:

How beautiful you are, my dearest, how beautiful!

Your eyes are like doves behind your veil,

your hair like  a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead.

Your teeth like a flock of ewes newly shorn,

freshly come up from dipping; all of them have twins and

none has lost a lamb.

Now these are not the images that we might choose to speak of a woman’s beauty, but in the nomadic culture of ancient Israel, doves, flocks of goats, ewes and lambs were the most valuable things they had and so they are pressed into service to describe this woman’s beauty. For all we know she may have been a very average person, but through the eyes of her beloved she is transformed into the essence of beauty.

Beauty is not an absolute, nor is there such a thing as perfection.  The love of beauty teaches us that beauty is something we appreciate with the heart, rather than the eye and the heart is always accepting of life’s imperfections.

Christopher

My Grandmother’s Wisdom

My grandmother died twenty years ago last week. As a small boy, it always seemed to me that my grandmother was wiser than my parents.  I had no objective facts to prove that, but intuitively I believed it.  I knew that my grandmother wasn’t as educated as my parents.  She had finished her formal schooling at grade four.  But that didn’t matter there was something in the way she treated me that seemed to communicate that she was a very wise woman.

My sister and I spent school holidays with my grandmother, while my mother cared for my three younger brothers at home.  I never realized at the time what a privilege it was to have the undivided attention of my grandmother for six weeks each year.  She would do the usual things one does with school aged children - trips to the pictures, visits to the Myer toy department and my favourite, dinner in the Myer cafeteria.  As a child I couldn’t imagine a more mouth watering meal than a meat pie with sauce, mashed potatoes and peas served on a plate with the Myer emblem at the top and accompanied by a strawberry milkshake with double ice cream.

My grandmother would walk everywhere.  She never owned a car and buses were only for long distances.  When my parents insisted that I walk to the local shops rather than being driven, I would complain.  But strangely, walking with my grandmother was not an imposition, but rather an adventure.  Her wisdom was what I would call “kitchen table wisdom.”  She had little time for the sophisticated discussions that happened between my mother and her children.  For my grandmother, the centre of life was care for and service to those she loved. And she was a woman of routine.  The washing was done on Monday, Thursday and Saturday; the carpets vacuumed no more than once a week for fear of wearing them out; Breakfast at seven, lunch at twelve and dinner on the table at five-thirty. 

Meals were times for conversation and stories.  Her stories, as she emptied her second pot of tea, told us who we were and where we had come from.  They were liberally spiced with family faults and failures, but equally they recounted the triumphs and small victories of our forebears and relatives.  Through my grandmother’s stories I heard the deeper voice of identity and integrity.  She never preached, moralized or criticized and yet I knew what she regarded as important in life and what she valued for her grandchildren. I am sure that it was from her that I gained my appreciation of stories, not primarily as entertainment, but as access into the real world - the world of hope and despair and the world of courage and failure.

My grandmother probably wasn’t that much wiser than my parents.  It just seemed to me as a small boy that her simple love for me and her uncomplicated view or the world was a goal that I wanted for my life.  From my innocent perspective she never seemed to be unhappy, angry or sad.  But the truth is she probably was, but she never showed it to me.  Perhaps all of us can seem wise to other people when we only have a little knowledge them.

The wonderful thing about my grandmother was that even in her last years she never tired of telling family stories.  And remarkably she could tell the same story over and over again and never change a word.  We sat, listened and treasured those moments with her - waiting with glee for the often heard punch line and the glorious laughter that followed.

Christopher

The Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

I had very sad news this week.  A good friend told me that her daughter had delivered a still-born baby boy at 26 weeks.  The tears welled up in my eyes as she told me. The words to say at such times never come easily to me and any words that do come seem so ineffectual and inadequate and seem that only the inner and outward sigh is in anyway authentic.  After a time I finished the conversation saying to my friend that in my morning prayer and meditation I would draw her daughter and husband and all the family into my prayer where my longing for them would be comfort and support and that I might be present and aware of their great suffering of which I can be only a friend or perhaps a companion.

For some time now I have found morning meditation an important part of my day.  For years I struggled with forms of personal prayer that I found unhelpful and dare I say, inadequate and inane.  The notion that prayer is about me talking to God was formative in my Christian development, but over the years the words increasingly got in the way of my deepest longings.  Then a couple of years ago I discovered meditation.  Through the careful instruction of a meditation teacher and a monthly gathering with a rather secular Buddhist meditation group, I found a deep stillness and openness with in me.  The simple practice of lighting a candle, breathing slowly and attentively, being aware of my body and the life within, has become a liberating experience.  Nowhere to go, nothing to do and most importantly, nothing to say has become for me the door way to true prayer.

Meditation has brought me back to prayer, but a prayer of the heart, prayer that listens, and practices stillness and wonder, much more the prayer the Apostle Paul speaks of in his letter to the Church at Rome, “we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” It’s strange that groans and sighs can be more articulate in prayer than a litany of words; words and words and more words.

I think we’ve got prayer wrong in the Christian church today and it is imperative that we start to get to right. This may not be the view of many Christians, but I’d suggest that the deepest longings of the human soul are not expressed in theology, philosophy or doctrines and beliefs; they are expressed in the inarticulate speech of the heart, in sighs and groans too deep for words and in awe-filled silence.

Perhaps the first posture of prayer must always be humility.  Again from the letter to the Roman’s Chapter 8, “those who search their hearts know the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for others in accordance with God’s will.”  When I am confronted with someone’s pain and suffering it is not for me to assume I know what is best for them.  It is presence, my presence and attentiveness that is most needed.  Yes some simple words can be helpful.  But being truly present and opening my soul to the other is the essence of true prayer.  And I believe it’s in this place that we encounter the real presence of the living God.

The next morning after the conversation with my friend, I light a candle, slowly breathed in and out, became aware of my body and my place in this world and I imagine a circle, at its centre was the loving presence God and there in God’s presence I named my friends daughter and her husband and the little one they had lost.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Soulfulness

This week the Age Newspaper had an article on Docklands, one of the newest of our planned precincts in Melbourne. The article suggested that in eight years the population has grown from almost nothing to over 50,000 people who, “walk, exercise, eat and socialize – or try to” but in an environment with, “no trees, no birds, no grass, a lack of community but a plethora of structures.”  The view of some is that this suburb only 2km from the central business district lacks soul.  I suppose it is the difference between a house and a home, a house provides physical shelter, whereas, “home is where the heart is.”

In the last few years the word soul has popped up in unexpected places.  It is common to talk of the soul of an organization and it doesn’t mean the part of the corporation that lives on after death.  Soul and soulfulness is a way of describing the innate force or energy of life that is a part of every human being and even corporations. So, being soulful means living one's life according to a deeper meaning that brings a commitment to self-reflection and exploration.

The Bengali poet Sri Chinmoy, suggests that the stance you should adopt toward the Holy is one of soulfulness.  He writes, “Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness.” Of course our minds are always involved in our approach to God, nevertheless to draw deeply for the well of the sacred means our emotions and feelings must be engaged and that is the work of the soul.

In contemporary thought the soul is not a part of us that is primarily associated with religion or the spirit.  The Jungian psychologist, James Hillman suggests that “by soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. . . .Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment - and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.” Perhaps it is better to speak of soulfulness rather than “the soul.”

Allison Moir-Smith a Canadian psychotherapist says that to live with soul is:

•   to live reflectively, deeply, and imaginatively,
•   to come into relationship with your deepest self and to live in connection with it,  
• to live courageously in the present moment, with respect for the past and with your eyes firmly focused on who you are becoming.

Perhaps that’s what is missing from Docklands.  The buildings are all there (well no quite, the article also notes that there were at least 8 cranes working on various structures in Docklands) but something is still missing. A town, a suburb needs a history, a community, and a degree of messiness and that’s were soulfulness comes in.  Like creativity the work of the soul does not happen in straight lines. Too much tidiness gets in the way of a soulful life and a soulful suburb.  The soul needs to wander, dream and to engage the imagination and the emotions.  Soul always wants to feel and that can be feelings of sorrow, sadness, joy, melancholy or exuberance.  And the soulful life honours all this emotions as pathways to the full and rich life – and suburb.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Brokenness

About three years ago Anne, my wife and I went to a concert in the Yarra Valley to hear the musician/poet /songwriter Leonard Cohen.  Cohen’s music is difficult to define.  He could be called an existential poet or perhaps a soulful folk singer.  The concert was fantastic. Cohen is over seventy years old and yet on that night he sang with the energy of a young man.  Among the many songs he performed was one titled The Anthem.  I have heard it many times before but the chorus never fails to move me.  The words go like this:

Ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything that's how the light gets in. 

The two images in the song are deeply spiritual.  First, the need to let go of religious perfectionism and the notion that God is waiting for the perfect offering.  And secondly, the recognition that it is when we are broken; when our lives are cracked open, that that is when the light and truth gets in.

It is an uncomfortable truth that most often the Spirit of God finds its way into our lives through our weakness, vulnerability, sadness and brokenness.  The ego in all of us is as Carl Jung suggested, “a little god that resists the life changing presence of God’s spirit.”  So the light of God’s truth finds the cracks in our lives and in our weakness begins to show us a new vision of wholeness.

Jacob Needleman, professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University draws this story of the power of brokenness from the Jewish Hasidic tradition.  He writes:

A disciple asks his Rabbi, “Rebbe, why does the Torah tell us to place these words upon our hearts?  Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?  The Rabbi answers, “it is because as we are, we are closed and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts.  So we place them on top of our hearts.  And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks open and the words fall in.”

Our life journey will pass through experiences of “heartbreak”.  The Christian story is clear that Jesus embraced the suffering visited upon him, so that the cross becomes a symbol of God’s love poured out for all humanity.  It is a sign to the followers of Jesus that the heart/the centre of our lives, must be large enough to hold both joy and suffering; despair and ecstasy, but only when it is open to the presence of God’s light and love.  And that is the difficult part for us.  This is not just a doctrine that must be believed, it is instead a painful experience that must be lived.

The Quaker scholar, Parker Palmer in a recent article draws us to this uncomfortable conclusion that we must allow ourselves to feel the pain of life fully lived.  Rather than numbing it with anaesthetics, fleeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off with blame and attack, we open our lives to the experience, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge so that the God within us can help us find our way through.[i]

Many know that a “heartbreak” can be a “breakthrough.”  Without the heart, the core of ourselves, being broken open, we will never know the largeness of life and the wonderful capacity within us to hold both joy and sorrow together in our lives.

Christopher

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[i] Palmer, Parker. “The Broken-Open Heart: Living with Faith and Hope in the Tragic Gap.” Weavings, March/April 2009 http://www.upperroom.org/weavings/pdf/PalmerReprint.Weavings.pdf

Still Thinking – Garden of the Soul

In spring I get excited about the garden. I would love to be a better gardener that I am.  Of course that is easily solved by just doing it with more commitment and enthusiasm.  Nevertheless, I do enjoy the digging, clearing, planting, watering and watching the garden grow.  Even though digging is the most demanding and physical part of the process, it is for me the most rewarding.  Perhaps it’s because the nature of my work from week to week involves sitting in front of a computer screen, or having conversations with people or delivering a sermon, and that means I long for a simple physical experience of “groundedness.” And that comes when digging in the garden.  

I am sure that it is not lost on most gardeners that the word “humus” means of the earth and that the compost we spread when garden is “humus” which brings us close to the earth, in fact you could say, makes “humble.”  To be humble is to stay close to the earth or to be grounded. And of course “humus” is also found in the word humiliation which means to be pushed down to the ground.

There is such a vital connection between gardening and the spiritual life that many say that they are closer to God in nature – in the garden, then in a church building.  Perhaps it’s because they are a part of the rhythm of the seasons, or the process of composting and planting and then the act of contemplation as one watches the garden grow.  But also, while gardening brings us closer to new growth there is always the wonderful experience of pulling out the weeds.  It doesn’t take must imagination to see the parallels between gardening and the spiritual life.

The greatest of modern day Pontiffs, Pope John XXIII, once said, “We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.” We all know that if we think of our lives as say, a building with walls and windows, doors and roofs, then we construct an edifice that may be strong, but does it grow?  It’s the garden in which the house is set that often gives the home both its fragrance and its garland of beauty.

Paul Coelho is the author the famous book The Alchemist, published in 1988 and soon to be made into a film. But a more recent book of Coelho’s titled Brida draws an imaginative parallel between buildings and gardens as metaphors of life.  He writes:

In his or her life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant.  Builders may take years over their tasks, but one day they will finish what they are doing.  Then they will stop, hemmed in by their own walls.  Life becomes meaningless once the building is finished.  Those who plant suffer the storms and the seasons and rarely rest.  Unlike a building, a garden never stops growing.  And by its constant demands on the gardener’s attention, it makes the gardener’s life a great adventure.

I love that quote not because it diminishes the houses in which we live, homes are fundamental to human life, but because it pictures the spiritual life as an organic process in which growth and sustainability is its goal.  Our inner lives crave to be nurtured and nourished. We are healthy in our faith and our spiritual journey when we are adventurous – dig in the hard soil and add a good load of compost, pull out a few weeds and plant an exotic scrub that has never been planted there before.  Sometimes that takes a bit of effort both spiritually and physically, but the reward of gardening is well worth it.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Forgiveness

Several years ago the celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins wrote an important book titled The Selfish Gene. In fact, Dawkins coined the term, “the selfish gene” no such idea existed before the book was published in 1976.  The book made a significant impact in the fields of both evolutionary biology and cultural development.  Naming a particular gene selfish was problematic because as Dawkins and others explained, genes have no will or moral motivation, rather they are “selfish” in the sense that the genes that replicate and are passed on are those that serve the best interest of the organism to which they belong – hence selfish.

Self-interest or selfishness has not had a good press in the Christian tradition.  Most of us were taught that to put one’s self before others was wrong, even sinful.  From a young age children are taught to share and to put others first and that selfishness should be punished or at least corrected.  And yet there is also the opposite view that the child must learn to be assertive and stand up to bullies and those who would exploit them.  And we know that our society relishes competition and glorifies winners and barely tolerates a looser.

There is no denying that Dawkins’ “selfish gene” is essential to the survival of the human species and active in the healthy human being and that even acts of bravery and altruism can be in fact, self-serving, perhaps not observable in the immediate context but later in a larger vision of life.  A healthy Christian view of life finds nothing wrong with that.  The central tenant of the Christian faith is to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbour as yourself.”  I think it is fair to say that loving my neighbour is often in my and the neighbours, best interest.

An example of this reciprocity comes from the considerable research done in recent years on the therapeutic value of forgiveness.   If one was to choose the opposite emotions to forgiveness they would be anger, hate, revenge or resentment.  It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize the damage these emotions do to ourselves and to those around us. It could be suggested that to forgive is an act of selfishness because I may get more benefit from it than the person I am forgiving.  Letting go of grudges and bitterness can open the way for experiences of compassion, kindness and peacefulness and it takes me out of the role of victim and empowers me to act with courage and assertiveness.

Katherine Piderman, Ph.D., staff chaplain at Mayo Clinic in the USA recognizes that forgiveness can lead to:

• Healthier relationships
• Greater spiritual and psychological well-being
• Less stress and hostility
• Lower blood pressure
• Fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety and chronic pain
• Lower risk of alcohol and substance abuse

But it is important to note that forgiveness is a process rather than merely an event.  We have all heard someone say, “just forgive and forget!” We also know that that is not so simple.  Cheap or easy forgiveness neither helps the victim nor the villain.  It may be just a way of avoiding conflict or burying a deep hurt.  True forgiveness takes time.  When we have been wounded or we have wounded another, it is legitimate to wait until that wound has begun to heal and we are less vulnerable.  Nevertheless, there is a time to forgive.  The Catholic priest Henri Nouwen said it this way:

Finally, it demands of me that I step over that wounded part of my heart that feels hurt and wronged and that wants to stay in control and put a few conditions between me and the one whom I am asked to forgive and forgive them.

Christopher