The Ornament

Santa chastises a wooden angel. He is held in one hand and the angel in the other. They tip and rock, back and forth in small hands, talking at each other. Who will stop and listen? Later, the pair are driven in a truck, right across the lounge room, parked next to the bookshelf. They lie awkwardly on their backs, staring at the ceiling.

The laden tree is a cast of characters for a three year old's imagined dramas. They migrate down from their perches, clutched in tiny fingers, and come to life.

It was hot the day we pulled Christmas out of hibernation and I was grumpy. Concentrating on untangling was an excuse to say little. A martyred attempt to stop myself from smothering the Christmas cheer. Twining tinsel round the bunk bed ladders was mindful, too, and I let myself get a little infected by the spirit. Just a little.

The children, the angels, the tiny gruff santa were Christmas. And I can resent Christmas. It's insistence, it's relentlessness, it's demands for peace and goodwill, and family and giving. I am selfish and ornamental and I hang from the tree of life with rigid thrust-out arms, a painted on halo and bizarre green hair. I am stubbornly stuck with the same smile on my face, year after year, as I am taken out of the box, dusted off and suspended by the string in my head.

The children, the angels, the tiny gruff santa are the today of a two thousand year old story. The flesh of a God who refused to leave us alone. The ornaments that remind us of a squalling child in a dirty barn, and the inconvenience of life. The ephemeral enticement of selfishness.

Christmas decorations at the shops are just window dressing, but these ornaments are part of the family, joining us again and again. They've been battered and broken by the laying out, the imaginary play and the packing up. They are family. They know last year's secrets and they've heard our prayers as we whisper them each evening in December. They witness to the miracle of Christmas. They've seen grace enter into my stubborn, grumpy heart. Year after year.

Amber has suggested writing on a concrete word - using it to flesh out the abstract. The Abstractions in December begin with The Ornament.

Sneaking up on Christmas



There's a whisper of advent, but somehow the shop decorations and the christmas music just drift past me this December. We are living out of suitcases for these two months and we'll drive home a couple of days before Christmas. The kids bring some hand made decorations home but the tree is packed in a box, in the garage, five hundred kilometres away. I don't tell them I'm relieved, but I am. I suspect that putting it up the day before Jesus' birthday will be joyous.

We drive along the broad river's edge and they beg me to listen to 'Mazing' and 'Holy Moly', so the car and my ears are full of praise songs. I even sneak a carol in but that's not on their list of favourites. I don't have any Christmas cards and I don't have any guilt about that, because "this year's different". I've permission to sneak up on Christmas and I wonder about making a habit of it.

In being away and in travelling home, in not having all the paraphenalia, there's a glimpse of Mary and Joseph's journey. In this year's novelty there is a freshness to Christmas. I'm not dragging myself to the finish-line, I'm stealing quietly in at the back of the celebration, and finding welcome there.





What is poverty?

I recently finished reading Life at the Bottom: the Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple. He's an English author and psychiatrist who has worked in Africa and in Birmingham. After returning from Africa, to work in England, he wrote these essays reflecting on the culture he encountered in the slums of Birmingham.

One reviewer wrote that "he found what he considered to be true barbarism—the cheerless, self-pitying hedonism and brutality of the dependency culture". I found this article which describes the life of a patient he treated in the slums. It has some similar reflections to 'Life at the Bottom', which is also peppered with vignettes of patients.

I had a few gut reactions to this book...

I was really confronted that I meet patients like this frequently. Crime, poverty, domestic violence, drug and alcohol use, dysfuntional relationships, abuse, mental illness, welfare dependence, homelessness and the failure of government services are all right here in south-west Sydney. We have an underclass like the one Dalrymple describes in Britain. And we have created the same cultural traps that bind people in poverty and powerlessness.

Dalrymple is extremely critical of the middle class and the way we have used welfare, social structures and liberal thinking to rob the poor of a way out of their dilemma. He believes that when someone can use their addiction or their history of deprivation and trauma (for example) to explain their criminal or abusive behaviour, they can then avoid examining their own role in creating their current predicament. Rather than empowering broken people to hope, and strive, for a better life, we are telling them there is actually no escape.

Not only that, we reward extreme dysfunction. The more chaotic a person is, the higher they climb the list for priority housing. So people who work hard but start with little, wait longer for any assistance because there is always someone who is having a more impressive emergency, perhaps even as a result of their own carelessness or refusal to participate in the system.

I can see the points that Dalrymple is making, but part of me longs for him to be wrong. I don't want us to be harsh, or punishing of brokenness. I don't want us to abandon grace and compassion. I want humans to be better than this - but we are so not. I felt sad as I read.

There's a saying - 'If you're not a leftie in your twenties, then you haven't got a heart. If you're not a conservative in your forties then you haven't got a brain.' I don't want to abandon my heart, even though my brain whispers quietly to do so. And we walk this tenuous balance of compassion and pragmatism. We need to struggle here, because there cannot be a solution without grace and transformation.

A tight fear grips my heart - I hear lives told, and they leave me incarcerated with no key. If I feel trapped by the tale, how must the one who tells feel. How can they see possibility or hope if I can't?

The step of faith I need to take is this - Insist there is hope. Talk about change and rescue and redemption even when I doubt the possibility.

This is Dalrymple's sobering reflection on true poverty, comparing Africa and Britain,

"Yet nothing I saw—neither the poverty nor the overt oppression—ever had the same devastating effect on the human personality as the undiscriminating welfare state. I never saw the loss of dignity, the self-centeredness, the spiritual and emotional vacuity, or the sheer ignorance of how to live, that I see daily in England. In a kind of pincer movement, therefore, I and the doctors from India and the Philippines have come to the same terrible conclusion: that the worst poverty is in England—and it is not material poverty but poverty of soul." from What is poverty? Dalrymple, 1999.

#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.

News from Japan

Bulletins throughout the day. My mouth is open as I watch the film of water washing a landscape away.

Cameras, a microphone in hand, he asks the questions to a woman lost and bereft. She's living in her car - a shiny red one, small Japanese made. She's living in a car because her home was dashed and murky water crashed. Her neighbours buried under rubble.

She's perplexed and uncertain. Shocked that she's here and breathing. Longing for the normality of casual hellos at the letterbox. Scooping rice into a bowl in the kitchen. Watching TV sprawled on the sofa after work. None of these can happen - she has no bowls, no kitchen, no TV, no sofa. Just an all-leather interior and a clutched handbag.

Was she good TV because she coud speak English? The street behind her is deserted, but the microphone is big and blue, catching her words. Utterly shaken and overwhelmed. But somehow saying that she will go on. What else can she do?

I watch pictures of destruction. Talk of nuclear reactors leaking contamination. And I am overwhelmed. Simply overwhelmed. People tweet #prayforjapan and I do, but will it help?

And I know that it will.
May the bereft people of Japan find refuge.

God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him.

We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom, courageous in seastorm and earthquake,

Before the rush and roar of oceans, the tremors that shift mountains.

Psalm 46:1-3 (The Message)

Trying to answer and delusions of grandeur

I wrote about floods in southern Queensland, no idea that it would just be one among many shattered places. Tonight I read of earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Christchurch is still shocked, last month far north Queensland was blown away by a cyclone. Bushfires, crops destroyed, homes flattened or burnt.

Cancer smothers people, marriages disintegrate, addictions rob friends of their dignity.

I notice two responses.

Some know a God who accompanies them in these desperate times. He comforts, strengthens and consoles. His presence salves wounds.

Some question the presence, the wisdom and the interest of a creator. 'How can there be a loving God if this cruelness is possible?' This shattering of life is proof of a dearth of purpose. Or we have been carelessly dropped into a grim, sarcastic, vengeful universe.

How can the God-followers, the comforted ones, reach into this deep, yawning-gulf question? These two persectives live such a long way apart. Are we even speaking the same dialect? Sometimes I wonder.

I know my words are paltry and half-hearted. Poorly thought out, surprised by the questions. Much of the contents of my heart and my mind never gets formed into syllables. Because I stumble and mumble to get it out. I need to think more about the questions we get asked. How can God transform this world-lostness, by his presence?

I would love to be like Peter. Impetuously outspoken. Faithfully fervent.

To those wondering how we can find comfort in God, I would answer. Boldly.

"Where else have I to go? His words are those of eternal life. Where else can I find the comfort, the challenge, the merciful forgiveness? Where else can I find freedom from this earth's tyranny and ruthless destruction? This world, these people, brings wounds, God alone is the salve."

And yet would they listen? I confess I long to do the spirit's work and touch ears to really hear. Shake someone so that they no longer ignore what is before them. Why can't I choose and they respond?

It takes faith to leave it to God, because my pride pictures me doing such a fine job of discerning and enabling. How deluded I am. I mess up simple answers to honest questions. Imagine the mess I would make of divine tasks.

Why sacrifice?

I have always puzzled about animal sacrifices in the Old Testament. There is a messy barbarism to slaughtered animals, and I've wondered what pleasure God gains from the process. I cannot ignore that Israel are told to do it.

Hebrews cleverly dissects the practice to reveal that it is ultimately preparation for the gift of Jesus. He is the once-for-all-time sacrifice that draws us back to God. I get that.

But why start it in the first place? Was it to fit in with current cultural practices in other early civilizations? Did we (humans) do it and then include it in the Law to legitimise and syncretise the practice into Jewish lore (and law)? Did God think it was a good idea, or was it like Israel having a king, a human preoccupation given into by a God trying to win the hearts of his people? *ALERT - ideas in this paragraph are highly speculative*

I think I have recoiled at the idea, as slightly unpleasant and another thing about God that is 'beyond my ken'.

Then I read this article by Jean, and remembered that just because I don't know or understand, yet, doesn't mean there isn't an answer.

And I read Psalm 50.

O my people, listen as I speak.

Here are my charges against you, O Israel:

I am God, your God!

I have no complaint about your sacrifices

or the burnt offerings you constantly offer.

But I do not need the bulls from your barns

or the goats from your pens.

For all the animals of the forest are mine,

and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know every bird on the mountains,

and all the animals of the field are mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for all the world is mine and everything in it.

Do I eat the meat of bulls?

Do I drink the blood of goats?

Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God,

and keep the vows you made to the Most High.

Then call on me when you are in trouble,

and I will rescue you,

and you will give me glory.

Psalm 50:7-15.

God 'has no complaint about sacrifice'. People doing it are fulfilling his commands. But God does not need the physical gift (v9), in fact it is his already (v10).

The physical sacrifice is for the people. It is an outward expression of the thankfulness God wants in their hearts. In fact without the thankfulness, the acknowledging of God's endless giving to us, the sacrifices are worthless. Thankfulness makes sacrifice beautiful and holy. Thankfulness directs glory to God.

I understand a little more of God's desire for his people. He wants us to have hearts that give thankfulness in everything, thankfulness that hurts us because it takes from what we have, to acknowledge who owns all. Thankfulness that hurts means gratitude for things I find uncomfortable, for life being what I need rather than being what I desire. Gratitude for life that refines me, for dying with Christ.

But giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors me.

If you keep to my path,

I will reveal to you the salvation of God.

Psalm 50:23

Thanks be to God for his word, that brings refreshment, wrestling and direction. Glory to him.

Family as Safe Harbour

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this - through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs or medication - we build these walls stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbour, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination towards brackishness.

(p214-5. An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison.)

Sea walls, slowly constructed to guide and protect. The image is starting thought-streams, since I read An Unquiet Mind, this week. It's a memoir of having bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder) written by a professor of psychiatry. (worth reading, too).

Guiding and protecting structures are part of shaping a family or community. As parents we face the same tension, that Jamison describes internally.

Building walls that provide a 'safe harbour' for our children, without stagnation or suffocation.

I want the walls to be high, the protection absolute. I fight my anxiety to allow the sea to flow with some freedom through our family. But I need to bite back my fear, because this flow brings growth and developing independence. It's ironic that an experiential learner like me, struggles to see our children learn through grazed knees, bruised hearts and mistaken ideas. I forget the triumph of succeeding in a new endeavour - pure gold to developing souls.

linked to reflections on parenting at holy experience

Home

Home is an emotional place. Not moody or flighty or riding the roller coaster. Just sights,sounds and smells tied to memories that catch me.

The place where I am welcomed just because I am me.

This final image, I have linked to a prompt for an image of home.

Because home is a place where I am comfortable and safe enough to rest.

To lie eyes-closed and dream.

Rain poem

RAIN

There are holes in the sky

Where the rain gets in

But they're ever so small,

That's why rain is thin.

Spike Milligan

I learnt this poem from my grandparents, who loved to read us Spike's poems. It reminds me of visiting at their place...
air filled with the smell of sawdust and varnish
sitting on paisley flannelette cushions
eating home crumbed fried flathead
bobbed haircuts courtesy of Emily
Hardy's laughter
goodbye dances in the middle of the road
treadle Singer sewing machine
all sitting in the fold-out sofa bed watching Charles marry Diana
they never smoked, but had an ashtray that spun the ash away

small, idiosyncratic, precious memories prompted by the rain today. Does that happen to you?

Farm Shots

Experimental shots taken down at my Dad's place.

I've just learnt about the rule of thirds from Claire.

A poem about summer?

Buttoned up, gloved
Summer is synaptic,
buried under brittle, white grass.
The other solstice just past,
slowly lengthening light.
Hidden, hibernating limbs
hold the burn of long-day, slow-passage sun,
lightly
fading.
Heat disappearing signals the promise of return.
Swathed skin waits.

 linked to Random acts of poetry at HighCallingBlogs

Sacrificial love

My mother-in-law has a close friend who shops with her. They are both retired and love to spend their time hunting for bargains. It is easy to think about my mother-in-law and her friend in a narrow way and forget that they are women who have led rich lives and were once 38 year old women like me. That they have seen life through the glasses that I now wear.

My mother-in-law's friend was a foster mother because she married later in life and never had any children. She and her husband raised 2 children for 10 years each, among a number of children placed with them for shorter times. When those children turned 16 they returned to see their biological parents. They never returned to live with their foster parents. One, they do not know where he is and the other lives interstate with some contact by telephone.

I do not know all the circumstances and can only guess at the lives those children have lived. But when I think of having a child live in my family for 10 years, loving them and caring for their needs, then no longer having close contact with them and not seeing their children. When I think of that I am struck by the sacrifice of that parental love. To give so freely and not be able to reap the benefits that so many parents take for granted as they grow older.

It is so easy to see a person with the narrow perspective of being a bit-player in the drama of my life. People can seem insignificant or unremarkable, but only because I am self-absorbed and preoccupied with me and mine. May I never forget the precious blessings I have in my life, but I pray that I will not be so transfixed that I ignore or underestimate the people around me.

Comfort Women WWII

War is a complicated, messy, tragic business. There doesn't appear to be any winners when we consider conflicts of the last 200 years (probably the last 2000, but I don't know enough to comment wisely). Even armies who have 'won' bear scars and lose people.

Amnesty International have a campaign running currently to try to raise awareness of the women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during world war 2.

It's simple to get on their website and create a butterfly like this one (I made this one tonight). The campaign is clear and specific and made me consider a group caused to suffer immensely by war, who are intended to remain silent and ashamed - forgotten. There must be millions of women and children around the world in just the same position in current and recent conflicts.

So go to www.amnesty.org.au/comfort and make a butterfly.