Archive for the ‘Ponderings’ Category

Monet refuses the operation

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Monet Thames

I know absolutely nothing of Lisel Mueller or her poetry.  I came across this poem yesterday and immediately loved it for its premise, certainty of tone and wonderfully rich imagery.

Monet refuses the operation

Doctor, you say there are no halos
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end

Lisel Mueller was born in 1924 in Hamburg and moved to the US in her teens.  She is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Alive Together: New & Selected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1996. Other awards include the Lamont Poetry Prize (1975), the National Book Award (1981), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2002).

iCake™

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Another year on the planet, another cake but there’s a twist this year.

In previous years, She Who Must Be Obeyed has been the architect and builder of many a fine birthday cake for each member of the family.  However, this year, my birthday cake was created and decorated by my eight year old daughter.  The photo above shows the end result; the iCake™ is a fine representation of an Apple iBook – with innovative iDigestive™ mouse – detailed right down to the digital clock in the upper right corner and the Apple space image screen saver.

I love my family and am thankful everyday for the blessings and joy I know through them

A work in progress

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

As mentioned elsewhere, I have been reading Matthew Paul Turner’s blog and enjoying his tweets for a while but I have never got around to checking out his books. That all changed yesterday, when we went shopping for soccer kit for our resident goalkeeper and then dropped into a bookstore nearby.  There, I found the very last copy of Turner’s Churched on the shelf.

Taking this as a nudge and having read a great sample chapter online, I bought the book and returned home to enjoy an afternoon siesta with a cup of bush tea in one hand and the book in another.  The first few chapters of the book explore the impressions of a young Turner as his parents leave the Methodist church of his early years to help plant a fundamentalist Baptist church.  Whether he’s describing the pastor’s wife – a piano-playing, hymn-singing Farrah Fawcett double – or getting his first ‘Jesus’ haircut from the unbeliever Mr Harry, Turner neatly sketches the claustrophobic world of church, law and eternal damnation through the eyes of a boy looking for straight answers to his questions.

The similarity of his descriptions of early church attendance – right down to the clip-on tie and Sunday-best shoes – made me think back to my Sunday school days at the Quaker meeting for worship I attended.  I have the utmost respect for Quakers and their theology but for those with excitable butterfly minds and single-digit ages, the traditional hour-long silent meetings for worship seems like an eternity.  With a whole world of fun, adventure and Sunday morning television cartoons just beyond the walls, it was impossible for me to understand why we were all sitting in silence, looking for God and the Spirit inside each of us.

Turner’s early religious experiences and teaching left him with distinct impressions of a hellfire and brimstone God of dos and don’ts whose return was to be eagerly but fearfully anticipated.  Mine simply left me bemused and adrift, unable to join the dots between the Jesus of the Sunday school stories and the quiet inner journey of the Quakers sitting silently in meeting.

Each meeting I attended as a youngster seemed like some alternative reality where time stood still.  Not matter my good intentions at the start of meeting, all too soon I would be scuffing my sandals on the pew in front and looking around for distractions.  The slow ticking of the old wall clock, drifting dust motes in the sunlight and the radiant calm of the worshipping faces all provided momentary interest but inevitably I would end up staring at the clock, incredulous that we had only been seated for barely 10 minutes and not the 59 I had carefully judged to have passed.

This realisation would mean that there was at least another 35 minutes to go before one or more of the Friends might (though only might, mind you) feel moved by the Spirit to speak to those present about some matter of import.  Such sharing would often be concerned with issues of peace or social justice, both of which are central in the beliefs of Friends.  With some embarrassment now, I can almost see myself innocently rolling my eyes and mouthing the word ‘Bo-o-ring!’ whilst concerned Friends spoke to the acts of despots, the dispossession of indigenous peoples and any number of bloody sectarian wars.

The alternative to sitting through meeting was to trot across the small courtyard to the Sunday school class in the adjacent hall.  To the best of my recollection, these would invariably be presided over by well-meaning women in tweed suits and sensible shoes.  I can almost taste the musty tang of that hall, feel the splintery roughness of the tables and smell the industrial-grade disinfectant all over again.

The hall was so cold in winter that no amount of frantic scribbling on the colouring templates of Jesus healing the sick could make the wax crayons to give up any colour to the butcher’s paper.  During the short British summers, we’d occasionally play a game in the courtyard, doing so very quietly so as not to disturb those in meeting.  More often than not though, we’d simply sit and listen to the deadpan delivery of another parable or Bible story, read from a book as old as Gutenberg.  While the faithful listened intently, I would conduct clandestine raids into the steamy fug of the the adjoining kitchen in search of biscuits, keen to locate and consume any chocolate ones lurking amongst the plain ones on the chipped plates along the counter. Soon enough, I’d be found out, given a disappointed look and shooed back to the parting of the Red Sea or recounting of how our missionaries were doing in Africa.

That said, I am truly grateful for my Quaker upbringing and experience of meeting for they have worked on and in me for years, helping to form my values, mould my opinions and prick my conscience along the way.  Indeed, amid the flurry of the last week of the summer holidays and the frenetic back-to-school preparations of four daughters, I can at last begin to appreciate the wonder and wisdom of spending an hour in silent contemplation and communion in the company of like-minded folk.  As I have just discussed with a good friend over lunch, it often hard to see the learning close up and so it is only with the passage of time and the accumulation of experience that we begin to understand and start to develop wisdom.  I remain very much a work in progress.

John Key meets local leader

Friday, January 29th, 2010

John Key presenting trophy

At her recent junior school graduation, our daughter Robyn was awarded her school’s Leadership Cup for outstanding leadership throughout the school year.  Earlier today, she was presented with cup by its sponsor, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, at his electorate office near our home.  Cheerful and modest, Robyn lives her life to a high standard and is the model of a servant leader, never asking more than she herself is prepared to give.  I am humbled by her selflessness and I count myself as fortunate to be her Dad.

Donald Miller on knowledge

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Donald Miller

Donald Miller

Donald Miller has just posted a great piece about knowledge and how one might exercise it wisely and humbly.

If we acquire knowledge before we are emotionally healthy, that is if we are insecure, we are going to use it to boost our own ego and compare ourselves to others. The desire for knowledge will be like a need for a drug, then, pacifying a wounded spirit through comparative associations. Entire theological camps have been built and bolstered by this needy, angry, gluttonous desire for knowledge. But if we have confidence, if we are secure, knowledge humbles us. We realize that we did not invent truth, we simply stumbled upon it like food on a long journey.

If this resonates with you in any way or pricks your conscience as it did mine, you might like to read the full post entitled Knowledge Makes a Secure Man Humble.

P.S. @jonosands: if my half of our conversation earlier was anything like the story Don tells in his post, I need to be told!

The Barnyard Wall

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

This morning, I listened to an interesting Connection Point podcast on the subject of choice.  In the podcast, Reuben Munn refers to the following modern parable by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and suggests that it might be an accurate expression of how many of us live out our lives.

A certain flock of geese lived together in a barnyard with high walls around it.  Because the corn was good and the barnyard was secure, these geese would never take a risk. One day a philosopher goose came among them. He was a very good philosopher and every week they listened quietly and attentively to his learned discourses. ‘My fellow travellers on the way of life,’ he would say, ‘can  you seriously imagine that this barnyard, with great high walls around it, is all there is to existence?

‘I tell you, there is another and a greater world outside, a world of which we are only dimly aware. Our forefathers knew of this outside world. For did they not stretch their wings and fly across the trackless wastes of desert and ocean, of green valley and wooded hill? But alas, here we remain in this barnyard, our wings folded and tucked into our sides, as we are content to puddle in the mud, never lifting our eyes to the heavens which should be our home.

The geese thought this was very fine lecturing. ‘How poetical,’ they thought. ‘How profoundly existential. What a flawless summary of the mystery of existence.’ Often the philosopher spoke of the advantages of flight, calling on the geese to be what they were. After all, they had wings, he pointed out. What were wings for, but to fly with? Often he reflected on the beauty and the wonder of life outside the barnyard, and the freedom of the skies.

And every week the geese were uplifted, inspired, moved by the philosopher’s message. They hung on his every word. They devoted hours, weeks, months to a thoroughgoing analysis and critical evaluation of his doctrines. They produced learned treatises on the ethical and spiritual implications of flight. All this they did. But one thing they never did. They did not fly! For the corn was good, and the barnyard was secure!

An English translation as quoted by Athol Gill, The Fringes Of Freedom: Following Jesus, Living Together, Working For Justice.(Lancer, Homebush West, NSW) pp. 30f.

While Reuben speaks to a predominantly Christian audience in his sermon, I think there is plenty of food for thought in the parable for everyone.  Reuben encourages and challenges us on whether we desire to escape the barnyard and experience the freedom of the skies or instead are simply content to live the life of  ‘practical atheists’ or ‘Sunday morning Christians’.  Regardless of our philosophical or faith position, this parable invites us to question whether we have settled for the known, the predictable and the safe in our lives or are we daring to scale the wall to explore the mysterious.

For Christians, the parable perhaps prompts us to examine whether we are just passively speaking to our faith (quite literally paying lip service), rather than actively living the life and modeling the behaviour witnessed in scripture.   Just yesterday, I made observations and criticised behaviours in others that I later came to see as hypocritical, in light of my own similar behaviour a few days earlier. 

It would seem I have some way to go before I clear that barnyard wall.

Reuben Munn is the pastor of Shore Community Christian Church, a ‘come as you are’ church in Albany, on Auckland’s North Shore in New Zealand.

I have a dream – redux in Uganda

Monday, January 18th, 2010

I have been following the writer Matthew Paul Turner for a while and find that he often has a new angle on some of the challenges we all face in life and faith.  He is currently in Uganda with World Vision for Uganda Week (click the image above) and is covering his activities extensively in blog – Jesus Needs New PR – and via his numerous tweets.

In a post earlier today (which will be Martin Luther King Day in the US), he pondered on what King’s dream might look like from the dusty streets of Uganda in 2010.

“On the flight from Amsterdam to Entebbe, I watched This Is It, the documentary about the making of Michael Jackson’s final concert series. Toward the middle, the film showcased a clip of Jackson singing/practicing his song “They Don’t Really Care About Us” from the album HIStory. Most of the song’s lyrics involve Michael lamenting injustice and inequality… then, toward the end of the song, he sings:

“Some things in life they just don’t wanna see/But if Martin Luther was living, he wouldn’t let this be.”

I realize that’s a big statement to make about any human being. However, Dr. King was indeed a man whose strong words against injustice were followed (and often led) with action. Simply offering big speeches and making grandiose statements was not in his character. Dr. King acted on the words he spoke. His actions were bold and loud and often scraped against the social norms of his time.?  As I prepare for my first day walking among Uganda’s poorest of the poor, I’m wondering how Dr. King’s dream relates to the children I will meet tomorrow in the hot dusty sands of the Gulu District in Northern Uganda. In honor of Dr. King’s day, I borrow the finale of “his dream” and rewrite it in perspective of what’s currently on my mind…

It’s a brave man that rewrites one of the most famous speeches in modern history but there is no denying Turner’s passion and heart for his fellow man.  It certainly serves to remind me just how lucky I am and the vast catalogue of things I take for granted and should be continually thankful for.  Turner’s post also caused me to recall my own post five years ago about how our lives were fleetingly but indelibly touched as a result of the genocide in Uganda.

“A few years back, we befriended and worked to assist a single parent from Uganda in her challenge to make the enormous adjustment to settling in the UK after her escape. We helped her set up home and, when Christmas Eve arrived, we visited her with a few things like decorations and presents to give to her children. Satisfied that we had done what we could without patronising or embarrassing our new friend, we spent a happy Christmas Day morning opening the presents we had received from each other. Answering a knock at the door, we found our Ugandan friend standing outside with a large package wrapped in second-hand wrapping paper. Refusing to come in, she offered the package with a few words then turned and left. We opened the package to find a ‘Welcome’ door mat, the cheap woven kind that one would find in every pound-shop up and down the country. Knowing her weekly income was less than we would spend on a family meal out and that the pound she had spent on the mat was no small percentage, I was lost for words and stood there quietly with a lump in my throat. I am under no illusions whatsoever as to who received the greater gift.”*

I saw something of Jesus in our friend Mary that that day and I only have to close my eyes to see him again her blazing eyes and beaming smile. Once more, I am called to make a difference – will you answer the call too?

*Later edit: The echo of the parable of The Widow’s Offering in Mary’s gift has just struck me – perhaps that’s why her generosity causes me to catch my breath even now.

Automated prayer fulfilment

Monday, January 18th, 2010
Printer queue with 'Amen' document names

The Praying Printer

If this morning’s print queue screen is anything to go by, it would seem that my department’s print station is now connected to a higher network and accepting prayer requests via Microsoft Word documents.

Four eyes

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Let’s just say certain comments have been made and leave it at that.

Talofa Samoa

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

samoan beach

From tomorrow morning, this will be the view that will greet me and She Whom Must Be Obeyed each morning for the next week.  After a family meal of chicken piri piri with our girls and a friend who will live with them for a week, we’re heading off to Aggie Grey’s Lagoon Resort in Samoa – most recently, the location for Survivor Samoa – for our first holiday without kids for 18 years.  A bit of saving and a bit of a bonus and a bit of a travel agent discount have all been combined to make this happen so we’re planning to make the most of the break and really relax.  As we have met and worked with a few Samoan folk in New Zealand, we are looking forward to seeing something of their homeland.  Having booked this trip months back and collected the tickets on the morning of the recent tsunami, we were a little conflicted as to whether we should still take the holiday there with so many having lost so much on that day.  However, the advice we have been given is that because tourism is a mainstay of the economy, just spending our tourist dollars will be of benefit.  Be that as it may, we also hope to hook up with a local contact in Apia for a little mini-mission while we’re there.  With that, I’m off for a plate of chicken piri piri.