The Cinnamon

I come from a line of aromatics.

My grandmother packed her shelves with tiny jars of dried fruit and nuts. She would lay out a plate of crisp, sliced vegetables with fresh molasses bread when I dropped in. She is here as I pull fresh loaves from my oven. She is next to me as I lather Pears transparent soap. Sawdust and enamel coat my childhood Saturday afternoons.

I watch my mother gradually develop the same papery skin and elegant jowls, the same slightly bowed shoulder set and the same row of tiny jars. Visiting is brushing past the gardenia near the gate and the welcome of a cool, dim hallway on a hot sun-bleached day. She can sense us coming and pours blackcurrant cordial for us all.

In the mirror, my hair has the same unruly corners. The same white streaks. The same droop to the edges of my green eyes. Something of each of us revisits in our daughters. And the sensory memories draw these women out as they course through my cortex.

The walk from my house to the top shops is two hundred metres up the hill. A gentle slope with a set of lights and too much litter. I walk past the fruit shop and the newsagent, skipping the chemist, too. I'm headed to Jacob's, where he and his wife line the walls with spices and huge bags of rice. Fresh made samosas are in the bain marie and Bengali DVDs are for hire. I'm almost out of ground coriander, and I turn the packet of star anise in my hand, wondering if I will brave that on our dinner table. The last packet I add to the pile is the cinnamon, atop the paprika and cummin, and I carry home a houseful of enticement.

The rolled cinnamon bark, like curls of decadent chocolate, waits in the darkness until I make something fit to bear its splendour. Cinnamon, the scent of waiting, the aroma of joy to come.

Linking with Amber's December Absractions.

Shame and Vulnerability

It's the moment when you think, "I'm not good enough," that it's got you.

I went to the interview with my resume clutched in my hand. I'd forgotten to send it, so brought it myself. I'd not thought much about it's inadequacy. Not until he said in passing - "This is your abbreviated CV?"

The smart-mouth me thought, "No, that's all of it. Entirely." But I didn't think that till much later. Don't the best answers arrive much too late to use? Between the offhand query and the answer were a few hours of shame.

Don't get me wrong, I still drove home, cooked dinner, chatted with my mum, laughed with the kids and kissed everyone good night. My husband, too. But there were moments peppered through the evening of shielding my face with the pressure of my hands, feeling exposed, and calling myself an idiot under my breath. I remembered every clumsy answer, replayed unbidden.

Shame re-imagined is vulnerability.

The interview was important to me. Being seen as competent mattered in that place, with people I do not know. Making myself available for judgement exposes me. And this judgement is always harsher in my imagination than anything that happens in the actual moment. No one could ever measure me as harshly as I do myself when I say "I'm not good enough".

At it's heart, shame is a fear of rejection and disconnection, and when things matter to us, when we expose our heart and our true selves, we are vulnerable to it. But Brene Brown would say, that if we avoid shame, we avoid wholehearted living.

You may have already seen this talk. But if not, listen here. It has some really useful things to say about how perfectionism and controlling our lives can be a way to avoid vulnerability, and hence miss out on real connection with people.



Listen, too, to her comment that we make the uncertain certain to avoid vulnerability. I would like to think about this more in relation to the truths of the gospel, and the way we try to make some areas certain that are actually uncertain - perhaps this is because we feel vulnerable - questions can make us doubt the ability of God to stand up amidst uncertainty.

I also ponder the idea of believing that we are worthy of love and belonging, believing we are enough. On it's own, this lacks a degree of substance - I cannot quite grasp it. But in the light of God's love, it falls into place. His love and grace to us mark us as worthy of love and belonging. I am enough because I rest in God who is enough.

Watch her second talk, too, if you have time...



It's paradoxical, isn't it? - that by protecting ourselves from shame or vulnerability, we actually limit our opportunities to really love, to really serve and to really experience God's work in our lives.

Climbing

Do you ever wish there was a simple answer?

 

If only we could stop doing the things that destroy us.

If only we could know how our efforts to connect can be so inappropriate and prey on the vulnerable.

If only we could know how to say what needs to be said, without offending.

If only we could decide to do something difficult, because we know it will yield a better life.

If only telling people they are loved were enough - that they would know it core-deep.

 

 

Remind me that I'm not trying to scale Mt Sinai.

 

I'm climbing Mt Zion.

Courage

There are words made specially for theology textbooks. People polish them and bring them out on silver platters for special occasions - when they want to look smart in a debate or prove they know lots of stuff.

Then there was the time someone talked about courage and introduced me to imputed.

I've read the story of David and Goliath before. I've taught it in Sunday School. I've heard other sermons on it. You probably know it, too.

Consider who you identify with in the story.

David arrives in the midst of frightened Israelites. No one wants to face the giant who never loses and so they all hang back. They discuss and ponder and plan and wait and in truth do nothing at all.

Young David doesn't understand the quandary. He just wants to get out there and finish it. They laugh at his innocent assertion that God is on their side. Of course it's not that simple. They know better than this naive young shepherd. This baby brother. Haven't we all thought better of our own opinion than our baby sibling's?

Alone he stands. Courageous. Trusting God to live up to his promise to rescue his people. Inflamed by the insults to his Protector God. Ready to kill the enemy.

Am I that little guy full of courage? Am I out there defeating giants in the power of the LORD? Is that the application?

No.

I am the cowering, fearful Israelites. I am sitting in a tent, offering David my polished, paraded, unused armour. The protection he couldn't wear because he was immobile within it.

Perhaps I'm putting a pillow over my head so I don't hear Goliath killing him. Me of little faith. Perhaps I'm sipping a cocktail as we watch him skip out to face the warrior. Observer of the real combat. Perhaps my armour has immobilised me.

I have to get them to repeat the news that he killed the giant because I think I've misheard. He what?

Then we're celebrating victory - won by a barely-armed shepherd boy, who delineates our lack of faith and bravery, by using his raw, unpolished courage. By trusting God.

I am suddenly being rewarded for his courage. If courage were a blanket, an entire Israelite army snores beneath it that night. One man has the courage, but a nation is blessed by the victory.

David's courage is imputed to the Israelites.

Here we go...

It's not just a shepherd boy and a giant and an embarrassingly cowering army. Here's where it all leads. It's the one righteous man whose purity is the blanket. There's no cover for any of us to shelter under but, miraculously, his righteousness blanket stretches out for us.

I'm crawling under and it's folds seem boundless. This imputing is good because finally I'm covered. I can rest in its warmth and my struggle to make a blanket of righteousness for myself is over.

I never was any good at conjuring thick warmth out of tattered, transparent threads. You?

Am I ready to finally trust in the efforts of the innocent? To stop obfuscating and prevaricating and pontificating? To accept the victory won by someone else's righteousness?

To let it become mine and finally change me.

31 Days - Being read by the Book                   and linked with Emily.

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.

Waiting

I was seven months pregnant when I realised it. The waiting wasn't just for bones to get long enough, a heart to beat reliably or lungs to blossom into countless sacs of diffusing membrane. I needed the waiting too.

The unsettled pregnancy sleep prepared me for waking to someone else's need. And the inability to be relaxed and comfortable in my skin for nine months made me appreciate returning to being me. Somehow, the waiting is how I gradually prepared myself to care for a tiny being. For the emotional reality of it.

Plenty of people are happy to remind me that change is hard. Sometimes marathon hard. Sometimes hit by a semi-trailer hard. And waiting is a way to build up for the struggle of change. A long slow drink before we walk out onto an unknown path.

I have been waiting.

And waiting is not a passive time. I wait with my family amidst the squabbles and raucous laughter, the scrapes and the home reader books. I stopped blogging for a few weeks and didn't miss it. Waiting was busy and absorbing. I am getting ready. Unsure for what.

Caught in that moment of knowing preparation is necessary, but bewildered about how to get ready.

I started to think about the group of faithful waiting in Jerusalem. They didn't really know what for. Just told to wait for the gift. They had no idea what would happen to them.

“Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 1:4-5.

They could not have anticipated seeing the flames of God, hearing the wind of his presence and the flurry of talk amongst them. How could they have understood what Jesus meant about a counsellor coming to be with them? That God himself would come amongst them in a new way. A reinvention of the tabernacle.

The pastor reminds me that this is the one festival that the early church celebrated - Pentecost.

 As I wait, I am sharing in that mysterious expectation. I am preparing myself to see God flaming in the world, to hear him blowing past my ears, to witness him bring understanding.

Waiting is the time to pray for eyes to really see and ears to truly hear.

Are you waiting for something?

Linking with Emily at Imperfect Prose

Brushing up on a classical education

I read a great letter last week. It was written by a specialist, when he saw a patient again after many years. The patient had a particularly bad injury but it had healed with resulting eye problems.

The specialist commented on his difficulty remembering the details where once he would have remembered every 'slice of the scalpel'. He was self-deprecating in reflecting on his increasing age. And then he said...

Tempus fugit.

I wish I could see Latin (or French, or Greek etc.) phrases and know what they mean. Oh, for a classical education, and the chance to go up or come down at Oxford (yes, I've read too much Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh in my time).

Praise the Lord for Google, I did a little wiki-research, and I discovered that tempus fugit means 'time flies' (or flees - which I like a little better).

It is from a poem by Virgil,
"Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore"

which means,
"But meanwhile it flees,
time flees irretrievably,
while we wander around,
prisoners of our love of detail."

Wow. How does he know us so well?

Feasting on truth

It still surprises me when time speeds up. I swear it accelerates. I've got one thing I need to do tonight, and I'm sitting here perusing what the webosphere has to offer. Was that just an hour? It felt like ten minutes.

We had spaghetti for dinner tonight, and I just can't leave any in the pot. Seconds is not very elegant, but don't tell them that I had thirds over the sink. Don't even mention the white shirt I've spattered with bolognaise.
I lose myself in things I enjoy. You too?

Interests and ideas flicker and evolve. Today's thoughts give way to tomorrow's inspirations, and I drop truth amongst thousands of other pretty, glittering concepts under my feet. Perhaps I disguise it when it doesn't suit and ignore it when it accuses me. It's hard to cling to truth when it's not politically correct or when it's dowdy.

But can you furnish a heart without truth? Can your heart function if the truth is buried under all the unnecessary clutter?

Truth allows a heart to have purity and clarity.

A vexed concept, truth, when we look with human eyes that want to prove our points of view and justify our own behaviour. Who can we trust to vouch for truth?

The popular answer is to say that each one of us needs to discover our own truth.

But the bible points to one truth. Jesus, who proclaimed himself God. Jesus, who is our window to see the truth of God. Jesus, who said truth was the road to freedom.

Paul wrote to tell his friends, "And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise" in Philippians 4:8.

What is more lovely, true, pure and right, than the story of God in our lives? Jesus and his words, on paper between us, sharing bread between us, sparking our memories of him, seeing the grace of Jesus echoed as people live his truth.

I picture feasting on truth. I see myself engaging so deeply in the truth, in reading it and listening to it, seeing it, that the hours seem just like minutes. It drips from the tip of my chin because I am savouring it so deliciously. It spatters on my shirt as I suck it between my lips like spaghetti. Messy but so satisfyingly good.

It makes me regret the snacks I make of truth. Like accepting a couple of crackers and a piece of cheese rather than a steaming platter of my favourite spaghetti.

Purifying my heart, getting rid of the clutter, means feasting on the good stuff and leaving the non-delicious fillers.

Declutter (part 3)

I started to write a series about decluttering my heart. I wish the ideas would roll out comfortably, into a clear, neatly spaced list (perhaps in a cool font).

But my heart is much more complicated than I planned. The phrase "pure in heart" weaves in my thoughts, conscious at times. Sometimes it is the inconvenient heaviness at the back of my head as life crams out contemplation. Is purity possible?

So much of my life is all about maintaining. Making sure the need-tos happen each day - food, clean clothes, and, let's face it, TVs don't watch themselves. Conversations get caught in details and I run out of time to share dreams.

I read bits in wide-ranging places and respond to the beauty of phrases that make pictures. I see glimpses of others drinking in the intimacy of living the grunge of life side-by-side. It is liquid down a dry throat. It clicks that I had ignored my thirst, perhaps so I would not be overwhelmed by it.

My heart is buried deep beneath skin, muscles, ribs and lungs. Absorbed in its task of relentless beating. Much of the clutter is actually around it rather than in it. Briars grew over many years around a sleeping princess's castle and this is what we do to our hearts. It's protection - so that we hurt and bleed less. An unbriared heart can be cut and bruised by debris.

I cannot have a pure heart, until I begin to dismantle the fences I've built around it. My heart cannot do it's task properly until it can connect more directly with pain and joy. Because when my heart is engaged, then I listen, then I pray, then I puzzle out how best to love.

Declutter (part 2)

It's a late night question. We ask it in the moonlight, when the talk is meandering. Regrets, longings, and the barely spoken plans. 'Can people really change?'
Doubt and hope line my answer. I waver, through the years of asking that question. I love the mornings when the answer rings out 'yes'. Someone said, last Sunday, that he used to think he knew it all but now he hungers to learn the truth. Is that change?

The first step to clearing out my crowded, fickle heart is to see the breadth of what I do not know.

• I discard the pride of having to be right or knowledgeable in everything.
• I open vessels ready to be filled with wisdom from another.
• I let go of anxiety. The anxiety of relying only on myself.
• I open the door to someone bigger than myself.

I don't have tips for decorating or simplifying your house. But I'm searching for ways to spiritually declutter.

Step #1 - stop needing to be right.

#wpp

Lunchtime conversation at work can be interesting. Depending who's at the table. Today I ate with the psychologists. Always thoughtful, slightly kooky and very welcoming. They have a fantastic food co-op in the staff room fridge.

Today I jumped in with a comment about #whitepeoplesproblems, ie. comfortable people talking about life's little unfairnesses. It delivered a bit of a laugh and agreement. I acknowledge that most of the whinges in my life come right down to this ... #wpp. And it fit right in with the mood of the moment.

Later I had a rerun in my head. Yes, I replay conversations later and regret being outspoken. Doesn't everyone do that?

What if they thought I would say that to one of my patients? I wanted to go back and explain - 'you know I'm only harsh with my friends, not with patients of this service.' Wait, that has problems, too. So I let it go. Well, until I sat down here anyway...

Where is that balance between being compassionate and being clear-sighted? Not mutually exclusive, I know. How can I listen attentively and give consolation for minor irritations while having the perspective to see that they are minor? How can I hear heartbreaking loss and not become blase about skinned knees?

I want to be wise as a snake and innocent as a dove. But I don't want to be naive. Sometimes complaining does need to be gently corrected. Sometimes it just needs a patient ear. And suffering is a broken-ness of heart that happens all over the place - comfortable middle-class people meet tragedy, too. Listening is harder when it is tempered with discernment and wisdom. There is not a response that works everywhere, instead I need to carve each one fresh. Shaped by the unique story that draws it out of me.

I struggle to find my balance.

Tracks and Habits

image from here

The picture is the story. Sheep running along worn paths. Wending through grass, flattened under their feet. My shoes tread the grass down, too. Following daily planted footsteps, crossing the road at just that odd angle. The angle I walked yesterday. Do you step in the worn patches of dirt? Or let the smoothed, worn stone cradle your feet?

Habits form us. Form me. We construct our lives in repetitive, well-worn blocks. Follow grooved, gouged tracks.

It's tempting to concentrate on the bad habits. The paths we trip thoughtlessly along, forgetting their destination. Trapped on exit-less freeways, addictions, weaknesses, sins overwhelm us. "I can't stop." "I didn't want to end up here..."

But every maze has a way out. Don't forget we are the ones who've made the paths, and they can be changed. The first time you deviate is exhausting, time-consuming and messy. The old path calls you insistently back. It resists an overgrown, unused future. The whispered, lingering reminders in your ears are final pleas for existence. But deviating for the first time is exhilarating. Making a new, better, wise path brings possibility and hope.

Habits can also breathe life. Good ones open our existence so that grace can get in. I wish I could find the list of helpful habits I read last week, because it illustrates the sensible simplicity of good habits. The ones that have stuck are - getting 8 hours sleep a night, sitting down to eat breakfast. Alas, google cannot find the rest tonight :)

A wise life is one with well-crafted habits. A network of paths that lead to healthy destinations. Paths painstakingly carved and carefully re-routed when necessary. I long for a life like that.

What about you?

Here is a trustworthy saying...

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.

Proverbs 4:26

Declutter (part 1)

Contrary wishes clutter my heart. It beats and pumps and I waver in the wind.

My mind is a cupboard filled with hoarded bits and pieces. I long to unpack the piles that have collected on the shelves, but I can't do more than move them from one to another.

A preoccupation with what I want and need, crowds inside me. I witness dramas and imagine myself in the starring role. I long for significance and to be noticed. I want to be the one who gets it done. In the nightclub that is my soul, the crowd on the dancefloor are all me just trying to catch someone's eye.

I look around the house, discouraged by the similarites of outward and inward life. Stacks of books. Collected toys and games. Mount Washington just in, off the line. No space to spare.

No one is surprised, that decluttering and simplifying are national pastimes. We talk about them, anyway. We pay to hear the secret of making them reality. Maybe if I buy the book, order, rationality, simplicity, will be possible.

But I need to ask the real question.

How do I declutter my heart? Simplify my mind? How do we purify our lives?

Any suggestions?

Five books that changed who I am

There's been a few people blogging about books that have changed who they are. Soph at Storms Dressed as Stars, shared and gave an open invite to join in. I can't resist an open invite, when memes can be kinda exclusive.

I have puzzled and thought. There must be five transformative books in my collection. I can think of books that I've loved, books that I've cried over, books that I've waded through. I have a pile of books that I would like to read, but haven't yet. But books that have changed me?

A Bridge to Teribithia. This is the first book that really moved me emotionally. I lay on my bed and cried as I read (not the whole book, but the sad part). It awakened in me a sense of the power of stories. I read it when I was about ten or eleven. The other book that stands out as deeply moving, like this, was Of A Boy by Sonya Hartnett.

When I was studying medicine, I read The Audacity to Believe by Sheila Cassidy. She tells the story of going to Chile and working as a doctor. She was a Catholic follower of Jesus and she tried to live out her faith. I found this really challenging and it influenced how I wanted to work in the future.

The Bible itself has changed me, but I want to highlight the effect of the Psalms on me. I did a course about the Psalms once and read it through a few times. I always found that reading a book and talking about it (eg. in high-school English) gave me a deeper love of it. This happened with the Psalms. Suddenly the words were passionate and spoke to me face-to-face. I began to understand why the word of God had been described as being sweeter than honey and purer than gold, through reading the Psalms.

The Art of Pastoring. I found this book in the (Morling College) library once and read it because I liked the blurb. Reading it made me see ministry differently. It emphasises loving people and serving them with your life. It was one of the first books that challenged me to listen to people and their stories. That ministry is about building real and genuine relationships and living a life of faith together as family. Challenging.

The final book I've included represents choosing to work in psychiatry/mental health. It wasn't just because of this book, but this book was the starting point for me to see the possibility of healing for disease or trauma through therapeutic/transformative relationships. This book helped me learn but also helped me keep thinking and reading about the mind, how it works and the resilience that helps people recover from all sorts of pain or abuse.



Things I am thinking about...

1. The difference between being innocent and naive.
2. Wondering when being demonstrative or open becomes boasting.
3. That people who say things that make me uncomfortable are not necessarily wrong.
4. How my hands can be different temperatures on a cold night.
5. Whether I write too much about internal/thought life and not enough about details and events.
6. That suffering can lead to deep loneliness.
7. That brains are immensely mysterious and interesting.

What about you?

Allowing Possibility

"But in God's kingdom we operate by grace, which is an inverted logic that is both rational and paradoxical." Dan Allender, Leading With A Limp (p.92)

Leaders like to have the answer. I like to have a plan that I know how to follow.

But sometimes things get complicated. Sometimes we don't know what to do. Those are the times it's easy to stick to what we do know. And become rigid. Because ambiguity is scary. An unknown future is scary.

I love to stick to the rules the most, when my children are asking for me to do something differently. When they want something new to happen. But I can't just keep saying, "No you can't walk home from school by yourselves." One day I will need to say "Yes." To surrender my need to control (in one little area).

The situations can be more complex - Whether to make a person stay in hospital because they are at risk of deliberately hurting themselves? The answer can be simple. Make everyone stay, then they will all be safe and we will rest easy that the job is done. But each situation is different; each person is unique; each risk is subtly shaped. Creatively finding solutions means sometimes diverting from the rule. It means listening much harder to the problem to make a better informed decision. It means surrendering some control, giving some choice to the vulnerable one. And it opens the possibility of being wrong. But that ambiguity also allows the possibility of hope.

"A leader blesses complexity because she knows it will humble the team, expose their idols of control, and invite them both to listen with greater depth and to open their hearts to the inverted, odd, paradoxical ways of God." Leading With A Limp (p.93)

Leadership and Pride

I'm reading Leading With A Limp by Dan Allender. I really like his approach. This is not a book review but I'm thinking about some interesting things as a result of the book.

I am reminded of the times when I have felt overwhelmed in a position of leadership. It usually happens when I am too busy. When the scope for action before me is so wide that I feel confused where to start, or what to choose to do. I think about people who have had ideas for action but I have tried to hinder them, rather than enable them. Not because I want to stop them, rather it's because their action makes me feel inadequate, that I'm not leading properly.

In that situation, my ego has become more important to me than the task we are trying to get done. It is hard to surrender myself and my pride when people are watching what I am doing. But leadership benefits from being humble enough to see beyond my own needs. I learn this lesson again and again when I realise that I am listening to my need to be in control or my need to be right. At that point I have to sacrifice those needs because they distract me.

When my needs consume me I am not available to the group. If a crisis hits I am too busy protecting my ego to listen to revolutionary solutions. But if I am not clinging to being right, then I can accept change or loss and not see it as an attack on myself.

I am struck by the fragility in all of us. Sometimes strong, powerful  leaders are actually protecting broken spirits, the best way they know how. Sometimes we are ruthlessly unforgiving of our leaders. Perhaps we would be more gracious if they could be more vulnerable about their human-ness.

Perhaps true strength is expressed in transparent honesty and rejection of the need to be in control.

"A broken leader is a sweet paradox of confidence and openness. If those I lead have already found out the worst there is to know about me - that I am a sinner - then the log in my eye is continually being removed in the midst of every crisis. The result is better vision and greater wisdom due to the freedom I feel to both live and die." Dan Allender, Leading With a Limp, p75.

My angst (humour me)

There is a gap between thinking something silently and making it verbal. Sometimes it surprises me that people who know me are not aware of what I have been ruminating about. My unuttered intentions and deep concerns should somehow be obvious to those around me.

I realise that a lot of my living goes on inside my head.

This does not make it less real.

For me, saying it out loud is actually a commitment. The existence of a plan or idea outside my head makes me fearful of failing in the endeavour. Best not to commit until I'm entirely sure. But when can I be entirely sure?

Writing these words feels like squeezing the last scraps of toothpaste out of the tube.

I am afraid that I am blogging, but don't really have anything to say. I am afraid that I am leading, but I'm not really sure where I'm going. I am afraid that I'm listening, but I've forgotten to take my fingers out of my ears. I am afraid that I'm loving but I've completely misunderstood how to do it. I am afraid that I'm living but all that I do will disappear in a puff of smoke. Insubstantial.

I am afraid that if I speak my deepest desires or my deep-core dreams, you will laugh. Or worse still, you won't notice.

So I deny this self obsession and I laugh to myself about white people problems. I'm caught in the paradox of desperately wanting to be understood but knowing my insignificance. I am deeply loved and I am ordinary. We struggle to believe that both can be true.

Nurturing Fruit

wild plum

I found them unexpectedly. Three among newly planted daisies, one in the shadow of an overblown rose. One hardy, with a gnarled stem, defiantly at attention in the chook scratched yard. I remembered that chooks hate nightshade plants.

I walked back down the concrete steps, reached up to unhook a trowel, and I rescued them. Rehabilitated them in the vegetable patch. The best tomatoes I've ever grown, and eaten, have begun as upstart orphans. The perfect marriage of persistent stock and neglectful gardening (my art form).

So I find the fruit I want in unexpected places. Perseverence has sprung up next to laziness, and I am determined in my efforts at avoidance and my ability to ignore. I search out my spade and fork, and I dig perseverence clear. I gently lift it over the fence. Cradle it in a shallow hole between patience and faithfulness, and heap the soil around it. I try to remember to water and feed it. I pray. I need to pray it will grow.

I notice a yearning for growth is in the shade of a particularly bitter crop of words. Gaudy flowers of criticism that I pick and use to decorate my table. It's small but I hollow it out, too. A tiny yearning, desire to be more. Transplanted, it may lend a touch of inspiration to my wilting goodness.

There's a long way to go to make a fruitful garden. A lot of rain and sunshine need to fall. Garden with me please.

linked with emily




 

and ann 

Advent

It's time to get ready!

The web is buzzing with Advent ideas and resources (and competitions). I am inspired that we can find all sorts of creative ways to remember and celebrate the story of God's love for us. (It's a birth story that's never been trumped at any playgroup or mothers' group I've been to).

We made advent calendars in our family church service yesterday. In my mind, they looked much more orderly, but I am growing to love their cluttered chaos. Each numbered shape has a short passage to build up the Christmas Story over the 25 days. This is craft for amateurs (ie. me).

The shapes were prepared before-hand and the kids worked together to collect them and tie them all together. And everyone took home a calendar to use this advent!

number 25

And I am keen to join the Advent Conspiracy... Here is the 2009 promo.



And a place to shop online...