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I will tell you something that has been a secret; that we are not all going to die, but we shall be changed.
1 Cor 15
I am hungry. I am full. I am empty. I am all these things in You.
These words from Corinthians bear hope for me. They give me a sense of space and flexibility where I have felt rigid and tight. This is the gift of Your grace and I am grateful for it.
We draw lines in the sand and then are constricted by the confines of the smallness of our own imaginations. This is why we require You and cannot trust to our own abilities. Let me confess I am slow to seek You, You speak but I do not hear, I look but do not see what You would show because I imagine I know. Give me the grace to know all I do not know, humble me to be dependent on You always and in all things.
Is our destination to You outside of ourselves or inwards? Both at the same time? It was clever for cities of old to be built as a maze with the church at the centre. You would always have a sense that you could not get lost because you’d have some understanding of where you stood in relation to God at all times. Sometimes near. Sometimes far. Even a deadend is useful in that we have learned the way not to go. Perhaps we find a place along the Way that is comfortable and we do not wish to go any further? Perhaps if we go too far we will not be able to find our way back? …but that is a fallacy – there is only ever forwards. Our commitment to God needs to be this, that ‘I will keep on moving forwards’. This page, limited to two dimensions, the image could seem to ascend or descend but it would be better to imagine some sort of Cubist mobile suspended in space and time in constant motion.
This is our God.
This is why I – and you – can be made new
in every moment, made anew, renewed
in every moment.
This discipleship, or growing up, or whatever you want to call it is the process of discovering and defining our own ecocosm. Each book of spirituality invites me to visit other peoples’ ecocosms and this is useful in as much as it assists with the awareness and structuring of my own. This is where churches suit or not, where communities thrive or not… space needs to be allowed/created for the expression and fuelling of our individual ecocosms. In knowing others better I know myself and this is the strongest recommendation I can make for living in community. In clarifying all the ways that I can understand 1-am-not-you, I can be affirmed in all the ways-I-can-be-my-best-self. We are each of us individually knitted in the womb, the hairs on our head counted, each of us made by God, each of us co-creators with God. Walk the path set before you to walk. God is with you exactly where you are right now. God has put people around you who need you, God has put people around you who can help you, inspire you, teach you… Ask always “What is the next step?” What is your leading edge? Our God moves and invites us to walk along the Way. Pray “Here I am send me” and take a copy of Dr Seuss’s ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go’ because it’s the closest thing to a handbook there is. I’m a Type 2 in the Enneagram, I am INFJ in Myers-Briggs, my top 5 in Strengths Finder are: Belief, Restoration, Responsibility, Individualisation and Strategy, I am single in a world where marriage is the dominant culture, I am a woman in a male-dominated culture, I am mad in several specific but (hopefully) endearing ways and a product of my family of origin and the sum of all my life experiences to date. I am my own ecocosm. I need to own my own ecocosm. No one else will tend it for me. I need to consciously tend my ecocosm – who can I meet up with? what can I read? where can I travel? how can I see anew, with new eyes, those familiar things that are so easy to take for granted or become complacent about the vital life breath of why-I-am? This might be right within the four walls of exactly, specifically, particularly where I am right now. There is a story of an American Indian elder speaking with his grandson:
“…there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, and resentment. The other is good. It is joy, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and bravery.”
The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”
The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed.”
i tell you arise
Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing. Hildegard, Scivas [intro]
Hildegard’s profound self-doubting was, however, the very root of her vibrancy, because it was matched with an equally acute certainty in God the merciful and mysterious. The English Romantic poet John Keats called this tendency “Negative Capability”, when a person “is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” [p.7]
Humans are heavenly and earthly. We’re heavenly beacuse our rbight souls think rationally, and we’re weak earth-based because we also know dark lusts. The more a person notices and accepts the good in themselves, the more they love God.
I walked beside the sea today
the sea, the sea
Seeing out but looking in today
looking in, looking in
Doubt, fear, responsibility I exhaled today
I exhaled, I exhaled
I picked up a broken yet beautiful shell today
broken yet… broken yet…
and held it to my ear to listen today
to listen, to listen
and today, today I heard You
Talitha Fraser
in the face of unwelcome
love makes a way
against powers politic
love makes a way
counter to public feeling
love makes a way
to closed fist, reach open hand
love makes a way
traveller greeting fellow traveller
love makes a way
love makes a way
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression in unique.
And if you block it, it will never exists through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is: nor how valuable it is: nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.
Keep the channel open…
No artist is pleased…
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
~ Martha Graham
This beautiful artwork is used with permission of the talented artist Liz Braid www.lizbraid.com
As of April 2014 there are 1138 children in detention in Australia’s detention centres. It has been hard to know how to respond in the face of Australia’s inhospitable and inhumane policies/treatment of refugees seeking asylum.
Our God is Undocumented, a book by Ched Myers, offers a biblical exegesis for the American context and is drawn on below to consider the Australian context through the use of reflective prayer stations.
map of 
the world – how can we identify with the journey of refugees, pin where we are from, our parents, our grandparents… use different coloured pins {Our God is Undocumented, p.10 “We should never forget that the first immigration “crisis” on this continent came as a result of European colonisation of the Americas. This resulted in three great disasters: the obliteration of First Nations sovereignty and cultures, the violent removal of millions of Africans to the Americas in the slave trade, and the impoverishment of countless people due to relentless resource and labor extraction… poor immigrants today are simply following the trail of wealth stolen from their land centuries ago.}
Australian has its own unreconciled history with its First Nations Koori people. Koori people have lived on this land for 50,000 years, us white folk less than 250 years. There is a bit of a “We outnumber you and ours is the dominant culture, why don’t you just assimilate/get with the programme” Where do we belong? What right did our ancestors have to arrive by boat for resources such as land and gold or to avoid famine? How can we use our own personal stories/history to develop a sense of compassion for those still arriving today? As can been seen at the Melbourne Immigration museum there have been waves of refugees from Vietnam, Philippines, Africa (Ethiopian, Eritrean, Sudanese…), Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon…) – what is the role of Australia in conflict/securing resources in these areas?
Say (or hear) Lords Prayer together in different languages. Spirit of Pentecost Acts 2.6,8,11 …in their own tongue. Didn’t all understand Latin/Greek but heard scripture in their own language. {Our God is Undocumented p.28 “Perhaps it recognises that language is one of the fundamental things that makes us human and that linguistic distinctiveness characterised the original forms of human organisation before the rise of imperial monocultures. The ancient wisdom preserved in this story reminds us that cultural heterogeneity is as essential to human social ecology as species diversity is to a healthy biosystem… more than 95% of the world’s spoken languages have fewer than 1 million native speakers. Half of all the languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers. A quarter of the world’s spoken languages and most of the sign languages have fewer that 1,000 users… It has been estimated that 20-50% of the world’s languages are already moribund, and that 90% (possibly even more) may be moribund or will have disappeared by 2100.”}
Does your congregating community have members from other cultures who attend? If not, why not? What are some ways to acknowledge, celebrate and affirm the cultural differences within our community? Language/stories/songs, festivals, wisdom of prophets/spiritual leaders, colours/fabrics/flags, food at morning tea, clothing… we all of us are made in God’s image – male/female, brown/yellow/black/white, no matter where we’re born. How can we draw on the richness of diversity in the God we worship?
share communion together {Our God Is Undocumented p. 200 “Remember what has been dismembered. This exhortation lies at the heart of the church’s eucharistic ritual, repeated with each element for emphasis. It reiterates and sums up the deep wisdom of biblical faith, the product of a people all too familiar with distress, displacements and near disappearance. Whenever you ingest this memory, said Jesus on the eve of his execution, you join yourselves to our historic struggle to make the broken body whole. It was, and is, both invitation and imperative, equally personal and political. If we refuse to heed it, we are doomed to drift forever on or be drowned by the tides of empire, refugees all.”}
This is one loaf of bread. One body.
It’s broken.
As Jesus’ body was broken on the cross for us.
this bit might be me…
this bit might be Jarra…
this bit might be Ahmed…this bit might be Rajesh…
this bit might be Sam, or Maya, or Bob, or Shirley…
When we eat this bread it is a reminder that we are all part of one whole – we might be a different colour, we might be a different size of a different shape – but we are all part of the same body… connected. And we are all of us broken. In each taking a piece, and eating it at the same time, we are invited back into wholeness with God and
with each other.
Angels – paper cut out? Something we can take away with us/put somewhere prominant to remind us to welcome the other {Our God Is Undocumented p.67 “…account of the angel travellers similarly attacked in Sodom, a violation that also ended in that city’s destruction (Jgs 19:15-25-Gn 19:1-11). …cautionary tale… “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing this some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).
#LoveMakesAWay is a movement of Christians seeking an end to Australia’s inhumane asylum seeker policies through prayer and nonviolent love in action, you can see their Facebook page here. This is high-level commitment advocacy but there are less “extreme” places to start…
There is an initiative in Switzerland that suggests putting stickers on your mailbox to let your neighbours know what is available to borrow – we used to be able to knock on our neighbours door but nowadays spend more time online than in realtime…
Communities like Urban Seed in Melbourne offer a free meal to those marginalised by homelessness in Melbourne – but here’s the thing, they don’t only offer food to people who are homeless, they offer food to anyone that shows up for lunch as they explore what it means to be good neighbours in a busy city of commuters and extend us the invitation/challenge to do the same through their Strangers Are Fiction campaign.
Who are your neighbours? Do you know their names? What might be one thing you could do that might lead you into connecting with them? [fruit or flowers from the garden you want to share, or baking, maybe you take the initiative to borrow something next time you realise you’re low on milk or the grass is getting tall…] …who knows where this might lead?
Dolls house – have sample forms and invite people to write their own and take them home as a way of symbolically creating space for the other in your home {Our God Is Undocumented p.107 In my fathers house there is lots of room (Jn 14:2)
I went to an art exhibition last week with some art works around the theme of showing welcome to refugees such as that by Liz Braid above – they had some mock forms on the wall that said things like:
ASYLUM SEEKER
PROCESSING FORM
Please come in. What a
terrible journey you’ve had!
I’m so glad you have arrived
safely and to imagine, once
you’re healed, how much you
have to offer us. Let me help
you with your bags, we’ll have
you unpacked in no time…
You are welcome here. APPROVED
Invite people to write their own words of welcome, take them home and put them in a room of our own house with some intentionality and deliberation – symbolically creating space for the other is a good place to start and this can create some mindfulness to extending hospitality/welcome when an opportunity presents itself.
Anne Lamott has said, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”
Let us hope. Let us try and do the right thing.
itellyouarise 