Colin Hay

Colin Hay is a very funny man. He's a musician, who plays guitar, writes spare, honest lyrics and peppers his time at the microphone with hilarious anecdotes. We've been to his shows twice and he has a way of drawing you into his stories.

He's obviously a talented musician, because he has three guitars on stage and swaps between them. They all looked the same to me, but he's good because he knows which one for each song. I think one was a twelve string guitar, but let's face it, we were at least five metres from the stage and well who can tell that stuff anyway?

He talked about sailing to Australia, from Scotland when he was fourteen years old, and that's a little of the reason my husband is a fan because he did the same thing when he was six. He told a story about having Paul McCartney over for dinner and Paul doing the dishes. Badly. And I'm sitting at the table, too, listening to Paul McCartney rinsing the crockery under the streaming tap.

He talked about becoming an alcoholic, and trying to stop drinking. He found it hard to stop here in Australia, because no one wanted to agree that he was drinking too much. Perhaps it was too confronting to their own alcohol intake. So he moved to California, and stopped drinking there. He talked about getting up and having breakfast one day, and thinking "Well. What now?" His question  embodied the deep lostness and grief of giving up what is most habitual to you. Even (perhaps especially) destructive things.

And the experience of loss and change and discovery evolved into this beautiful song.



I love that the simple act of swimming or drinking tea becomes a way to acknowledge the beauty of the world.

When I lie awake in the darkness and listen to the rain falling on the grass and the road, I can be worrying about not being asleep or anxious about tomorrow. Or I can just hear the water falling and feel the coolness of the air through the flyscreen and the slow breath in and out beside me. I can be here and awake and know the beauty of this world in the stillness of the moment. That is when prayer and miracles are possible.

PS. Linking with Emily...

Give it away

image from here on flickr

I walked up from underground last Friday, emerging onto the city street. I'd arrived on a train the minute before and joined the crowd of tunnel-visioned commuters, through the Central ticket gates and up the stairs to sunlight. We marched sharing purpose and pace.

I have my morning habits so while I filed away my weekly ticket, I got out some change for a coffee.

Near the coffee stand, by the fence, three men were playing funk music and the crowd stopped rushing. We hesitated. The music changed the context and I stood to listen.

Strangely, I'd noticed another busker only two days before. I suspect I've passed many more without registering. It had sparked a thought about the generosity of playing music in public. Playing without a guaranteed return.

Perhaps it needs to be music you appreciate. Most of us only give attention to buskers who are good, ... or under the age of eight. It's like karaoke - we ignore it or block it out if it's average. But occasionally someone who can really sing gets up and I focus because I don't want to miss it.

So I stood at the kerb, turned back to the band and let the music enter my morning. My coffee money ended up in a stranger's guitar case and the exchange was complete. I walked up the hill, stopped to buy my coffee, the music carried with me for the day.

I love that they were there playing. That their abandon and fun touched a crowd of morning commuters. That the keyboard player's hair bounced with the music. That strangers can share connections, and that creativity is generously given.

What if we could all seek moments to give what we make or who we are to people? What if we could find opportunities to step into people's everyday rhythms and give them some fun? Be a blessing just because we can.

That moment of music has got me thinking. Got me looking for ways to deliver unexpected blessings.

 

image from here

 

Sharing with Emily at Imperfect Prose.

This moment

The magnolias are expectant hands. Fleeting cupped promise.

Midday warmth drips honey slow and enormous petals extend out, somersaulting down.

Silken soft. 

White heart brave. 

 

Longing to live with such blatant abandon.

To pour my everything into rampant, gorgeous crowns of life

that fall effortlessly to the ground,

becoming humus for next season.



 

Is this how we bear fruit in keeping with repentance?

Blangst, navel-gazing, call it what you will.

In blogging, I'd rather be artless, than artful. I'm not a writer and I struggle with self-revelation. I'm naturally a listener and the contents of my heart stick in my throat.

I spent a weekend with kind, comfort friends, sisters of many years standing and it was a gentle massage to my soul. Susan asked me about this blog, and I nodded that I'd been a little quiet. I'd like to ask more of her opinions and thoughts, but its hard to let anyone know that I worry what they think. That I know I struggle in relatability and funny stories. And I lack focus.

Here's her opinion. That people would be interested in hearing more about the life of a doctor, who works with people who have psychiatric problems and addiction problems, who has four children, is a baptist pastor's wife and lives in Macquarie Fields (yes, there was a riot). In hearing more about my life.

Maybe.

There's a few difficult spots.

I don't do advice - I find it hard to look at my life and tell you what you should do with yours.

I don't do contentious issues - I am not spilling my partisan beans about women's roles, Calvinism, creationism, same-sex marriage, schooling choices, denominational issues - yadda yadda yadda... Call it my concession to fence-sitting.

I don't do design or fantastic images or cool stuff. I am extremely un-hip. I am everything Frankie magazine is not. I dream about having a funky blog design. But I'm sure just as I get totally white/pastel/multi-image and have interesting fonts, hip blog design will have moved on anyway.

I do write about the following - emotions, anxiety, failure, grace.

I plan to write more about - listening, complexity and paradox ('nuance' as Tim Keller would say), not having all the answers, faith, and my work.

I am also open to suggestions or opinions or pointers from you. What are you interested in here?

Finally, some self-revelation - to engage you ;)

I love to skim gossip magazines, but I hate to buy them. Perhaps this reveals my tight fist and the messiness of my heart. Or that I like my vices surreptitious and almost acceptable.

I never put money in shopping mall rides. Never. Even when you have put money in for your child and let my kids ride too, I won't reciprocate. Thanks for your grace to me and mine.

I am not a good person. Even if you think my job sounds altruistic or hard, or wonder how I listen to people. Stop. I bet I couldn't do your job, or cope with your kids.

I love being alive. I revel in cheek laid on cheek, full-blown magnolia blossoms, beer-battered fish, passionfruit pulp, striding uphill in the city, patterned tights in boots, short-legged dogs running to keep up and footballs kicked hard past the goalkeeper.

I enjoy my 3 year-old's story, told in his bunk, about Simon the purple apple and Jude the green apple. My stories for him are lame in comparison.

Just saying.

Light glancing off a blossom

Because some things exist purely to delight the eye.

Now

“The present is the point at which time touches eternity.” C S Lewis.

Less-than-simple answers

I went out last night with my mum. She had bought tickets to see Tim Minchin, and invited me to come, too.

I've been fascinated by his performances for a while. He is incredibly gifted musically and has clever, satirical, self-concious lyrics. And last night was a great show. I wanted to dance and sing and laugh and clap all at once. And then the next song would be so profound and funny at the same time that the audience was silenced. We didn't know whether to clap or gasp in awe.

He is an avowed empiricist who mocks organised religion and new age spiritualism. And he is able to delight in ordinary human relationships, in a quirky and poignant way.

In the middle of the show, he sang a song about sitting on the fence and ambivalence. I searched on You Tube but wasn't able to find it. But I'm still thinking about it.

It is so easy to seek simple answers to the things that puzzle us or frustrate us in the world. If something is 'wrong' then I can denounce it or ignore it or laugh at it. It is a way to distance myself from the confusing things I see.

It is harder to accept that some questions do not have clear and simple answers. And Minchin seems convinced that Christians love simple, black and white answers. That we are unsophisticated in our thinking and that we delight in an "us and them" mentality about the world.

He told the story of a woman who was healed of a sight problem after her church praying for her. But then used the story to question the idea of God granting miracles to middle-class women in Australia while people in third-world countries die of starvation or suffer devastating oppression.

And I do not think there is an easy answer to this question. I do not know why some people are healed and some people never have a chance. Why I have so much, while some people have so little. Maybe the only meaningful answer is to acknowledge the paradox. To see the ugly unfairness of it and realise that only God can redress this gross injustice. To see the responsibility in my richness.

My richness is obscene, beside real poverty, and meaningless, beside true wealth. Wealth of spirit and truth, I mean. And this can leave me paralysed.

Somehow I need to hold these two extremes together and be motivated to give out of my riches - in a purposeful and practical way. To let it go rather than cling to it.

And miracles have a similar paradox - they can bring new life or extend a life. They can completely transform possiblity. But on the other hand, they happen in bodies and communities that are headed for death. They cannot halt the inevitable. The biggest miracle actually reaches fulfillment in death - resurrection. After years of avoiding death, perhaps praying for a dispensation to put it off, or miraculously escaping it, we must enter into it, to get the ultimate miracle.

When Jesus was alive, not everyone was healed. And I think he wanted us to realise that those healings were exciting, but peripheral. A by-product. They all pointed to the real miracle - the accessible to everybody miracle.

That we can know him ... be loved by him ... live with him. Now and Forever.

I like...

I like a life that is not too flashy, but where there is space to sit and read and enjoy the breeze on the back of my neck.

I like to laugh and sometimes to get to the laughter that can't be stopped. It leaves me weak and clean.

I like to hear the stories of life. How you got to be you. What made you, what taught you, what comforted you and angered you.

I like soft skin against my cheek.

I like the everyday things that happen.

Getting it done

I started this year as the year to Commit. Here is my first go at it.

Sparing you the gory details, I need to finish some tasks this year to complete my specialty training. So for more than a month I haven't blogged. (Perhaps you didn't notice - that's OK) I noticed. And I have a few faithful friends who emailed me to see if I was OK. Praise God for those who care for me. You lovely people know who you are.

I am OK. I've just been writing reports for work. This morning I got up went to the Post Office and mailed them Express Post to Melbourne. Then I bought myself a fresh croissant (and a loaf of bread for school lunches) and strolled home. I have this sense that I just might be dancing in the kitchen this evening!

Now and Not Yet.

I turned from teens to twenties looking forward to later. The later of being confident. The later of being competent. And the later of being known, cherished. Perhaps I wished for a later me - a more defined and comfortable self. I reached and softly yearned but it lay beyond grasping.

Sitting on a bus, one day, I realised that I could do whatever I wanted to do. I watched the streets tick past that I could explore, if I wanted to. My chest was filled with the cliff-edge realisation that I, alone, chose and lived it out. The flooding of exhilaration and trepidation, and my life crystallised, in that moment.

We hang in a tension between the surrounding now and what's to come.

'Enjoy the moment.' Awareness of current experience and mindfulness anchor us in reality. Future dreams and aspirations draw us on. But how to ration myself to both? To be content with now, but also look for more to come?

I resist investing time in future gain, because it steals 'now' moments and sensations. Am I as gloriously free  as I felt that day, or am I a slave to the present?

Illusionary freedom is doing whatever I want. True freedom blends now and then, and I live each one in the reflection of the other.

A longing for future gain, or heaven, does not dull the taste of now. Instead, it enriches today with purpose and direction.

Saturday

Luxury is milkshakes for everyone, with muffins and raisin toast.

Saturday morning coffee, enjoying the moment.

Joy and a Holiday...

Sunlight and shadow flicker on my eyelids, head back on the rest. The train glides down the track, descending back to the city. Bliss curls up through me, swelling to fill my chest. That I am at this moment. That today has allowed me to wander slowly through it. To sit and let it seep through my cells and my soul. To stand and shout my joy to an attentive God-with-me. That paradoxical straight-righteous God who bent himself to breaking, so he could iron me out. Me, all excuses, defensiveness and pretensions. Jesus, none of these.

Now, to see a flash of blinding joy, a glory beckoning almost undoes me.
Yes. Possibility is here. We can, with this spirit coursing in our vessels, do what feels impossible and turns our hearts to lead. This cross and resurrection tears down strongholds, implants new hearts. It can transform the unchangeable, intractible. I am lifted from a shroud and planted fresh to flourish.

It's not rocket science, she says. The rightness of it hits me. The daily, the patience, the serving, the participating as I am renewed. It's not complicated, or secret. Just humbling.

I was encouraged by spending Friday night and Saturday at wkc (Women's Katoomba Convention)

Going on a family holiday for 2 weeks, so I'll be blogging again in October.

See you then. :)

Happiness - is it too much hard work?

I get an email in my inbox at work every Monday from Dr Happy. I am impressed by him - he writes positively, encourages people to take care of themselves and lead balanced lives. He has tips for being happy and stories about appreciating life and what we have.

But I have started deleting it without reading it. I can't handle any more positive psychology!

I do want to be happy - let me explain that further - I want to be contented with my life and enjoy the people and happenings around me. I want to be optimistic and encouraging and find joy in the everyday.

But I don't want a list of 27 things that I need to complete (or avoid) in order to be able to tick off 'happy' in my 'achieved for today' box.

Pursuing happiness, as a goal, is the one thing guaranteed to make it unachievable. This is my theory, and I admit the hypothesis is probably unprovable. Happiness is actually the product of pursuing something else. Pursuing happiness is self-focussed, and shifting focus from self is a key step to becoming happy.

John Piper, talks about Christian hedonism. That we should pursue pleasure (happiness), but in God rather than in ourselves. And this will lead to happiness based on a trustworthy, faithful God who loves us and made us to find joy in glorifying him.

Happiness as a list of 'to-do's just weighs me down.

Happiness as a meeting with the god of grace, where he touches my life, all its minutiae and ordinariness, and tints it heaven-like. Now that is the happiness I seek.

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.

Ecclesiastes 3:11-13.

Time in the garden

I am planted on the thick sleeper-edge, arms outstretched. My fingers gather slender stems, digging down to pull-up by the roots. I am clearing space around pea stems as they reach to grasp on and stretch up. My flowered gloves are on the garage shelf, rather than my hands. Nails and fingertip whorls embedded with dirt, again.

Behind me there are slender celery stalks, standing at attention. Leggy, waving rocket flower-laden and infant silverbeet. Red veined beetroot leaves lend colour as I look across towards the paling fence. The fence just up last year, not yet silvered by the sun.

Thursday afternoon, I am here. Early week responsibilities over, and I slow down. I pull up weeds, feed young plants, sit, watch. Slightly grey today, but sheets spin on the line, behind the gate.

The chookhouse runs along the garden edge, and it's occupied by spiders. The hens have traded up into a movable pen. I suspect it just spreads the destruction of their scratching further.

My scratching and garden-scrabbling has become a weekly comfort. My mind wanders, in the way of a pleasant sunlit stroll, and I draw breath as the sun pours last minute brightness along receptive clouds. To find my solace here is unexpected.

I have linked to L.L. Barkat's In, On and Around Mondays (Thursday is in the same week as Monday), and  to the photo prompt 'Solace" at 3 from here and there.
  

Notice It.

"Can we go to Grandad's place in the holidays?"

Last night. The car is packed ... clothes - check, sleeping bags - check, gumboots - check, children - check, dog in a travel box... etc. The kids and I wave back at Dad as we leave, drive out the driveway ... then back in to pick up forgotten essentials. The trip was smooth other than the reappearance of a dinner unexpectedly. Thank goodness for the spare pyjamas I had carried absently to the car, (not quite sure why).

Today my father has driven kids around in the trailer with a load of lucerne, then on the back of the tractor to go down to the dam. He has carried baby boy to soothe his crying. He has made us lunch and dinner and distributed kind and gentle words throughout. He mowed the lawn and sat with me to enjoy a quiet winter-sun cuppa.

I have talked with my step-mum (who welcomes conversation and drinks it in), and she made me an espresso coffe and offered me a glass of wine with dinner. I have stepped into an oasis. A quiet place where the demands of home and life seem slower and less insistent.

I read part of the weekend paper. Somehow that seems an enormous achievement.

Today I give thanks for...

922.  grandparents
923.  2 days in the country
924.  kids on the back of a tractor
925.  feeding the animals
926.  ibuprofen and paracetamol
927.  a father's love
928.  meals prepared with a desire to serve
929.  dogs playing and racing
930.  holidays
931.  playing in the shed
932.  long afternoon baby naps
933.  my father's quietness and gentleness
934.  reading Spectrum and Good Weekend
935.  savouring the moment.

Stop. Sit. Soak in the slanted rays of sun on my skin, on the dark denim cloth as it rests on my legs. See the dapples of light on the freshly mown grass. The bare branched trees with their bumps of pre-leaves, hinting at shade that will be. Breathe in the shorn lawn smell. Notice the memories that drift in my mind of these smells, these sights, sounds and tastes. Notice the feel of a dog on my lap, leaping up as the baby slides down to wander a little. Safe and settled. This moment is a gift from God to refresh me.
Notice it.

A restless night

Last night I paced the floors with a restless, febrile(? - temp measured by mum's hand on brow rather than use of a thermometer) six week old. At this moment I expect I should be cuddled up in bed sleeping, but I have finally meandered back into the vicinity of blogspot. Gestating is over and I have some space to sit and think (and pontificate?)

My wish for the next 3 months is that I can enjoy the pleasures of a little baby - the tiny silky limbs, the gaping, gooing smiles, the quietness of 3am streetlight in the loungeroom window, DJ with a tiny body perched along his arm. The last time for the first times. This gift - yearned for, undeserved, just a fraction out of my league. Some days I think I cannot be enough or do enough and must rely on the touch or hand of someone else.

Keep me thankful, with an eye for the joy and pleasure. I have fear I will not savour it. Different from the piercing dread that his distress last night might have been serious illness, more a nagging sense that I might be distracted by busyness and not lay down strong enough memories of this moment.

Going to visit the nuns...

My friend Silvia took me on an adventure last week. We packed little boy into the back of the Mazda 121 and headed off to rural outer Sydney. A brief stop at the village, but the water was turned off at the local cafe so we couldn't get a coffee - leave that until later.

Down a quiet tree-lined road, horse-studs round each corner, and finally we reached our destination. Canaan of God's Comfort - the home of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. http://www.marysisters.org.au/

Wearing old fashioned linen dresses and stout shoes, the nuns welcomed us quietly. They took time to smile and talk with us. We wandered along the prayer walk, through the stations of the cross, and sat for a while in the sun-dappled chapel. (Little boy made to preach his first sermon, the first time I had ever considered that one of our children may have their father's gifting.)

What a place to retreat and listen for God's voice. It made me wonder whether that is an important thing for me to do, spiritually. Some people would say we should always be busy as there's so much work to be done. Maybe I am one of them, because I've been part of churches where I felt like I just wasn't doing enough. I wonder if I encouraged other people to think that way, too?

In the middle of parenting, working, having time for people, I find it hard to take time to retreat, to listen. In theory, I know that Jesus took time to pray and left the crowds to do so. In practice, what does it mean for me? I feel a little like I am fumbling around at the moment, and the trip to the nuns has given me a glimpse of clarity. Their life of retreat and service is admirable, and I can see its value, while just wanting a brief taste of it from time to time.

The more I think about it, one thing stands out as having the movement of the spirit and the work of the Lord about it. My friend Silvia was God's message to me, her prayers for me, her desire to widen my spiritual view, to give me a space to see and hear God move. Praise God for friends, especially the ones that are an unexpected gift.