Tag Archive: time


 

This activity was a mash up of a few ideas for community members to check in with each other and themselves and be connected through that activity. How can we recognise that what’s going on for us might impact others in expressed and unexpressed ways? There is lots of change but not all change is necessarily bad? How can we hold where we are at as a community gently?

 

Activity: The People’s Mike

So the idea behind the People Mike is that folks shout out words, it’s a Wild Church tool, eg: what is holding us back from living the lives we’re called to? What are we afraid of? One person shouts it out and then we all shout it out together in chorus. This acknowledges what impacts one of us, impacts all of us, and is a way of “holding” those fears and feelings together. Each part, one body.

We were attempting this reflection by zoom which is not an easy medium to hold space for people speaking in chorus/at the same time. We asked folks to share something they miss or feel the lack of and something new they’ve discovered, enjoyed or had more time to appreciate and captured those words on pegs. 

To understand where the pegs come in you might like to read this short little story I’ve got you pegged from back to 2012, but the gist of it is that you can bring to mind, and hold gently, special time/people in ordinary and every-day ways. This is a way of acknowledging the strangeness of now with the juxtaposition of a number of things that go along as they always have – like hanging out the washing.  A way to hold the now and the not-yet.

i've got you pegged

What are you grieving right now? Or looking forward to having again soon?

What new things are you enjoying and discovering?

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Lent word: Ripe

Figs! Out of my reach though… what are you waiting for to ripen and come within reach? #ripe #pakare

We enter a new season

It’s getting darker in the mornings. It feels portentous. We are at the beginning of Iuk (Eel) Season, when the hot winds stop and the temperatures cool. The days are getting shorter – equal length with the night – but we know that will shift towards darkness.

This is the time to savour the harvest fruit, enjoy the last blooms, and store up what we can against colder and leaner times to come. The word Lent comes from the Old English lencten (lengthen) because it’s observed in spring, when the days begin to get longer but that is not so for us here. Time is running out. Can you feel it? Share the joy of a common table now… Share pancakes.

an abundant heaped pile of warm pancakes

The tradition of Shrove Tuesday arises out of using up fat and yummy things before the fasting of Lent, using up anything that might go off in the 40 days that you’re not allowed to have them. On this day, we are meant to confess and be forgiven (or shriven), starting Lent with a clean slate and I wonder…

I have sometimes been flippant about what we give up for Lent. As if the idea is to make us think more about God in the sense of: “Oh God, I’d kill for some chocolate right now”. But what if it can be a chance to re-set, a chance to work for that balance of day and night in equal parts in other areas of our life. I find looking at ‘What to give up for Lent’ lists a daunting read. From chocolate or social media to negative thinking or laziness.

The previous season to this was Biderap, the time of year when the rivers are most likely to run dry and the risk of bushfires was highest. What does it look like to drink your fill now the river runs again? What does it look like to think about investing in what safe space look like? Or rebuilding? The leaf litter and undergrowth have been cleared, the air is clear of smoke, maybe this the furthest you have been able to see in a long time. Maybe this season has clarified something about what matters most to you and invites you to commit to that. What will we let go of and what will grow anew in this season?

bright red shoots of regrowth starting to peep out of a charred and black tree trunk
Photo credit: Jacob Bolton

Advent word: Time

I overslept this morning and felt ‘out’ all day. Out of step. Out of time. Outside of time. Hurry up and slow down There’s time yet. #time #wā #adventwords2019

Nestling

tree with nest

Winter exposure…
The secret now in sunlight,
Some measure of growth
And the seasons moving
Inexorably forward.
Vacate that home too small for you
And fly.

 

Talitha Fraser

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An outsider would not have noticed any visible changes. The same skies, the same seas. The same faces… But they know that everything was different. Their banal everyday life which they knew with such familiarity had been transfigured,  They had been given new eyes and the solid objects and stone faces which filled their space became transparent. It was as if they saw invisible things which were visible only to those who had seen the angel troubling the waters of the pool – the dead man.

Normal mirrors reflect things which are present; but dreams show things which are absent… their stories about the dead man were stories about themselves. Stories not about what they were (that is what they saw when they looked in their mirrors…) but stories about what they desired to be: this is what they saw as they faced their dreams…

Inside our flesh, and mixed with the noises of Death, there is written an indelible story of beauty.  And even without knowing we know that we are destined to this happiness: the Prince must meet Sleeping Beauty.

The villagers remembered. Their stories were the return of a lost time: the past, desired, repressed, forgotten, dead, resurrected from the grave.

…How could I explain to her that the story was always happening in the present just because it had never happened in the past, in the far distant land?

…the beautiful wants to return… its time is sacred; it is reborn every morning; it is the time of resurrection.

…Once upon a time, in a far distant land…” : a cloud of mist covers the narrative to conceal its real time and space which are ‘now’ and ‘here’… the ‘once upon a time, in a far distant land’ is a metaphorical was of speaking about a present loss.

p.39-41, The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet

I wish, sometimes

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I wish, sometimes

those things, done – undone

those things, never attempted – tried

those things, dreamed – realised

I aspire to wholeness

in myself and all things

and I fail

I fail

I’m reminded of how little power

I have, how little control, how

little comprehension, how

little I am.

You are big.

You are big enough to hold me,

the done the dreamed and the

never-attempted.

I will never know wholeness

in myself

but I can know wholeness in You

and I am grateful for that.

I am grateful for You.

Amen

Talitha Fraser

010Some things… you try and catch a photo of, and you can’t.

You fiddle with the settings, try different angles, to flash or not to flash… and eventually you realise that the moment you are trying to capture, the feelings/sensations you want to remember cannot be caught by a digital imitation.

There is a sacred quiet here in the graveyard.

Birds calling to one another, the rhythmic hum of motorway traffic and constructive sounds of industry form a backdrop to the peace in this place.

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The headstones tilt at varying angles nestled in between trees and ferns, some messy and cracked, some maintained and others washed smoothly illegible by the rains of time.

I am somehow nestled in too here in the grass at the edge. I understand my place in the order of things and perhaps glimpse the rest that will one day be mine.

There is no striving in this place.
Striving is meaningless.
Here, for a moment, I am content to be.

Little black robins dart among the meadow daisies sun-blushed pink tips.

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