Padraig O Tuama is in town as resident poet for 3 months with the Uniting Church, I believe his greatest gift to me has been sharing his whole truth and the space that he creates that invites me to share my own – and the shared healing that is found through that.
These are snippets from tonight “poetry, prayer, promise & protest speaking to humanity’s hidden yearning for decency, goodness, survival and companionship” which may not make sense out of context but might be enough to inspire you to look further (books on Amazon) or ask me about it someday…
Trinity in me: hopeful theist, agnostic and someone in pain
In Irish no words for yes or no. Will answer “I will”, “I can”, “Tis”, “May be so”
God of watching * God of silence * God of darkness
Why do we have to dehumanise to delineate?
Once I was blind, now I’m blinder still
The people stood in darkness and in it became their light.
Appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM)
“You never liked me much did you..”
“No. No, I didn’t”
“That’s ok”
Moments of consolation in the midst of desolation
God is the crack where the story starts and we are the crack where the story gets interesting.
“It is in the shelter of each other that people live”
For anyone who has been to stay with Ched & Elaine in Oak View, you may know of their little system for napkin individualisation which is that you write your name on a peg, attach your peg to your napkin and it’s yours for the duration of your stay (or at least until it gets dirty!). Once they have written a name on each side, these pegs graduate to the clothes line and every time they hang out the laundry they see the names of all the different people who have come to stay – “a great cloud of witnesses” in the sacred ordinary things.
Last night I ran prayers before our open community meal and we all wrote names of people we’ve journeyed with that we want to remember and pray for. I’ve never been great at ‘prayers of others’ but I’m pretty good at keeping up with the laundry; although I will acknowledge laundry can be one of those jobs that feels never ending. Brother Lawrence was a monk in the 17th century who believed in practising the presence of God “…we ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” I’m going to do my laundry with love and mindful prayers for others.
While I was away Ched had me reading Maori prayers everynight from the English-Maori NZ Liturgy 1970 – thought I’d have a play reading one of our favs aloud, pic is from a spot along the Wellington City to Sea walk, and the background is a recording of birds singing from silver beech trees in Abel Tasman National Park (thank you to the Dept of Conservation).
A staff member shared this reflection at prayers a few months ago:
A person kneels to contemplate a tree and to reflect the troubles and joys of life. It is difficult to accept that life is difficult; that love is not easy and that doubt and struggle, suffering and failure, are inevitable for each and every one of us. We seek life’s ease. We yearn for joy and release, for flowers and the sun. And although we may find these in abundance we also find ourselves lying awake at night possessed by the terrible fear that life is impossible. Sometimes when we least expect it we wake up overwhelmed by a massive sense of loneliness, misery, chaos and death: appalled by the agony and futility of existence. It is difficult indeed to accept that this darkness belongs naturally and importantly to our human condition and that we must live with it and bear it. It seems so unbearable. Nature, however, requires that we have the darkness of our painful feelings and that we respect it and make a bold place for it in our lives. Without its recognition and acceptance there can be no true sense of life’s great depth, wherein lies our capacity to love, to create and to make meaning. A person kneels to contemplate a tree and to reflect upon the troubles and joys of life. The person imagines mornings and evenings in a great forest of prayers, swarming and teeming with life… The person is learning how to pray.
Prayer Tree – Leunig
Jean Varnier in “Community & Growth” says:
I am more and more struck by people in community who are dissatisfied. When they live in small communities, they want to be in larger ones, where there is more nourishment, where there are more community activities, or where the liturgy is more beautifully prepared. And when they are in large communities, they dream of ideal small ones. Those who have a lot to do dream of having plenty of time for prayer; those who do have a lot of time for themselves seem to get bored and search distractedly for some sort of activity which will give a sense to their lives. And don’t we all dream of the perfect community, where we will be at peace and in complete harmony, with a perfect balance between the exterior and the interior, where everything will be joyful?
It is difficult to make people understand that the ideal doesn’t exist, that the personal equilibrium and they harmony they dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and that even then they come only as flashes of grace and peace. If we are always looking for our own equilbrium, I’d say even if we are looking too much for our own peace, we will never find it, because peace is the fruit of love and service to others… look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Be close to those God has given you in community today… everything will resolve itself through love.
More and more I am coming to understand that it is our brokenness that binds us rather than our perfection. In a consumer society where it always feel like the grass is greener somewhere else it is important to buy-in somewhere and commit to growth in your own patch of the neighbourhood. In owning the brokenness and needs I bring to community I am humbled to extend to others the welcome I myself receive. Those plants I want to see the fruit of? I have to help them grow… I pray that you will know a flash of grace and peace this week.
A few months ago, I had someone ask me once what my perfect day was, and I felt a bit uncomfortable with the question and didn’t really know how to answer and so I turned the question back to them. But it kept coming back to me afterwards… I’ve done a bit of thinking about happiness, what it takes to feel “happy”, how much happiness is in my own control and what it would take for when someone asks me the question “How are you?” for my answer to be “I’m happy today!”
As it turns out, my perfect day isn’t strolling the Champs de Mars under the Eiffel Tower in Paris eating pain au chocolat; or even walking along the beach with my headphones in, then sitting out on the rocks and eating ice cream while the waves roll in round me; if that were a perfect day for me then I would only be happy very rarely! Although that is the kind of answer I felt ‘supposed’ to give – it didn’t feel honest.
On reflection, my perfect day contains a mix of a few things:
– crossing a good number of things off on my list of “things to do”
– a social engagement with someone I’m close to over a coffee or similar that makes a good connection between us, and
– having what I call a “kingdom moment” which is where I have one of those interactions with someone, anyone, whether you know them or not, but at some point in the conversation you know you are changed for having known the other person because you saw something of God in them and it transforms you
When I get that mix right – I have a really profound sense of the work I do and the vocation or work I’m called to being the same thing, an alignment between who I am called to be and who I am, I understand, just for a moment, why God made me and why I am here.
That moment is what makes me happy, that moment of knowing is what makes me glad to be alive.
On any given day, I may only get one or even none of those things. And it is easy to feel dissatisfied. It’s a precarious thing to find happiness – a whole lot hangs in the balance and we just have to take life one day at a time. It helps to remember at those times I’m most frustrated that its God’s purpose not mine that matters and that those things which come up may have a value for Him that I will ever know.
I have secretly loved the person tagging Melbourne “happy” – it makes me smile everytime I see it (which is not usual of most words tagged) and it makes me think someone else is pursuing happiness too and hopefully leaving a trail where they’ve found it…
In a song Michael Franti’s written called “Gloria”: one of the lines talks about how “I know each day in life with you gets better than the last, so today I’m just glad to be alive”
I thought we could frame our prayers today in the sentiment of that grace. Even though we have things in our day that might feel bad or worrying or frustrating or overwhelming, and the end of the day, in balance, we’re glad to be alive and to have experienced those things as well as the ones which bring us joy.
itellyouarise 