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