Rediscovering welcome and community

Being a welcoming community can sometimes challenge our understanding of 'our community'. Mental illness, dogs as companions, heavy drinkers, and 'my rights' don't always sit comfortably in the same space. But when we look into another's eyes for long enough, and when we listen to the stories, we discover a space of freedom, 'comfortably uncomfortable' - where we rediscover welcome and community.

Making Room.

A couple of thoughts about prayer ...

Prayer is not a matter of many words.
It is a matter of making room for God to live in us.
It is a habit of paying attention, of listening to our hearts, and to God’s heart.
It is a habit of bringing what we see in our world before God …
And making room for God to live in us.


Prayer, and the Lord's Prayer, invites us to pray in the reality of this world:
Where God’s will is and isn’t done
Where daily bread is abundant, and where it is scarce
Where forgiveness is offered, received … and refused
Where temptation is real, and where it is rejected
Where evil seems to loom larger than love
And where love delivers from evil.

history - remembered and made

remembrance day, 2014

i stood on the steps outside the house for a minute silence. 
cars and trucks carried on as normal on canterbury road;

... but the wind carried the sound of the Last Post on a bugle from somewhere. 

sometimes the wind carries memories to us like faint notes of a song - incomplete, but recognisable enough that it stirs a memory, a picture in our minds, an emotion in our hearts, a tear in our eye. 

then a deep breath - as if i inhale the memory - and i turn back to my everyday, hoping that what i do makes a difference to others, ... hoping that in my everyday i might make history rather than just repeat it

Finding Saints (From All Saints Day)

In April 1974, two missionary nurses were kidnapped in south Thailand. They had been working with people suffering leprosy - suffering both the skin disease and the social isolation. They worked with people whose hope was low, people who could not experience a loving touch from another human being, people who were told that they were outcasts and human trash.  These nurses bound their wounds, gave a gentle caring touch, and were able to restore some measure of hope and healing to those broken hearts. When they returned to New Zealand every few years, they would talk of what they had seen and done - how diseased people had been restored to families, how their eyes lit up when they were addressed directly, how their feet were bathed with gentle hands, and how they had expressed increasing desire to know more about this Jesus Christ about whom these nurses spoke - one who also had touched lepers and had spoken of a God who cared for the least - and had suffered and was killed - and was raised to life. 

But as I said, in April 1974 they were abducted at gunpoint.  One of these was Minka Hanskamp - my aunt.

Almost a year later, in March 1975, my father received news that the remains of his sister and her friend had been found in a shallow grave. They had both been shot through the back of the head.

Saints come in many forms, and for me these two women come to my mind.  For those of us who knew them, these women were saints before they died - people who touched the untouchable, and loved the unlovable, and opened the possibility of God’s love and hope to those who were loveless and hopeless.

Lawrence Stookey says this… “commemorating the saints is nothing other than a way of affirming that the transformative power of Christ is at work all about us in human lives…We are saints because God’s sanctity is at work in us, not because on our own we have come to great spiritual attainment.” 

Saints create a sense of expectation - of a future that is possible. It is probably best expressed in the song "When the Saints"

"Oh when the saints go marching in

When the saints go marching in

Oh Lord I want to be in that number

When the saints go marching in.

This was written by African Americans as a song of expectation and hope. While we may sing it as a ditty, for them it is a powerful reminder of their hope in God in the midst of their struggles, and more importantly, in their future. As with many of these songs, it is also a protest

Two of the verses include

“Oh when the rich go out and work,

Oh when the rich go out and work,

Oh Lord I want to be in that number

when the saints go marching in."  

“When our leaders learn to cry,

oh when our leaders learn to cry,

Oh Lord I want to be in that number

when the saints go marching in.

One can feel the hope, the expectation, the passionate desire and expectation for the world to be right and justice to be done.  This is a vision of comfort and hope and possibility.  It is the comfort expressed in "wanting to be part of that number”.

Saints - among us and going ahead. Exciting faith, acting for hope in our world; and inviting us to join them.

Liminality and voting

Liminality: “Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold."

This is a strange moment of identity crisis for me.

I’m a kiwi living in Australia. I still measure my current Aussie experience in months, not years; like a toddler - 20months old. I still call myself a New Zealander.  I am. Or … was. But I still am.

This weekend New Zealand is voting in its general election, and my friends and family are getting into a lather (albeit very different shades and colours) about policies, lies, smear campaigns, personal attacks - and getting out there and voting.

But not me.
 
I haven’t heard the daily media phaffle, or the statements from the politicians, contenders, community and business leaders.

I haven’t woken up to the bamboozling array of placards that threaten, cajole or plead. I am confused from afar by the strange characters I see joining the political fray - people who just don’t belong in politics - or don’t belong together in politics. I have not been part of this journey.

Aotearoa is in my blood, my DNA and my worldview. But its current politics is completely out of my field of view (It’s only been 20 months!). So this will be the first time since I turned 18 that I have not voted in a general election for Aotearoa.

Which is strange. I believe in this weird democratic system of ours, and am passionate about voting as a form of participation in it.  That’s what citizens do.

However I can’t vote. In all good conscience. Whether it is because I have not lived and breathed it in these few months past, or because I don’t believe it is about my (immediate) future. Maybe it is because our current political environment is short-sighted - only about a short term window of Campaign-ElectionDay-TermOfOffice. Or maybe it is because, at this moment, I don’t belong - enough.

Where do I belong?

An identity crisis in liminality - brought on by a voting paper.