Wondering Pilgrim

Culling Books

One of the most vexing things about this new season of life is the need to cull – especially my books. Two thirds of them went three years ago when I “retired.” These were the more technical and somewhat obsolete “old friends” that had served their time and achieved their metaphorical gold watch from me, their boss. A lot I kept, however, they are more like family than employees.

There’s my first ever complete set of Charles Dickens – begun from my 13 year old pocket money and a sound orientation to social justice sensibilities. My Lawson and Paterson bush poetry mingled with an expanding collection of indigenous literature. The Enneagram bibliography that never made it to an aborted academic thesis but still serves the occasional workshop I run. My fall back set of learned commentaries from the New Interpreter’s Bible series for the odd time I am asked to preach (I can never repeat a once delivered sermon!) My collection of contemplative works that undergird the spirituality of my second half of life.

I have attempted to cull these, but the box of books that actually makes it to the boot of my car somehow finds its way back to distribution on my shelves by the next day!

O bleak conundrum!
My wise tomes call out to me
Abandon us not!

Anger

Mild mannered retired cleric that I am, I have come to understand how much I am driven by anger. In my case it comes out in passive-aggressive stances that strive against thoughtless, disengaged or institutionalised incursions that thwart my altruistic efforts and directions. I have asked myself on more than one occasion whether my attraction to some of the more prophetic justice themes of ministry have been a kind of release valve for a personal pathology that reaches back into my early childhood. My resistance to more overt expressions of anger may be due to anxiety about the potency of its force. This I understand, for my base experience can best be described as anxiety, (the Enneagram’s head centre of “existential dissonance.”) The integrative journey for me is to the body centre where the gut stance of “carnal hunger” (often expressed as an orientation to anger) resides.

All of this in response to a sobering, yet resonating, quote from Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown:

Anger is a catalyst. Holding on to it will make us exhausted and sick. Internalizing anger will take away our joy and spirit; externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection. It’s an emotion that we need to transform into something life-giving: courage, love, change, compassion, justice.

Most of us are mixed bags full of mixed motives. This, naturally, calls for a haiku:

Let justice roll down
Anger cries out for right action
Mercy points the way.

Heyoka

Yesterday I fare-welled a man whom I described as often playing the role of a heyoka to myself and others. In ancient societies, the heyoka (or similar) held a prominent position. Their role was to oppose the norm. This was visually reinforced by various means, such as wearing summer clothes in winter and winter clothes in summer. Their true value was in their capacity to question common wisdom and put an alternative view. In tribal councils, this ensured that all points of view, including the extreme and bizarre, were considered before advancing a decision. Jesters in European medieval courts played a similar role and were close confidantes to the ruling nobles.

I have appreciated the various heyokas in my life. I don’t seek them out, they somehow find me. As a habitual devil’s advocate, I sometimes find myself playing this role. I remember a colleague lamenting the time a committee he was chairing took in coming to a decision.
I reminded him it was a matter that required careful discernment.
He replied “I like that.”
Next time we met, I asked, “How is it going?”
“Still discerning,” he replied.
“Nah, ” I said, “Now it’s procrastination!”

Some of my most effective heyokas have been neuro-diverse. They have often carried a society imposed stigma for “being different,” simply because they see the world through a different lens, or are not equipped with the social graces. I have lost count of the number of times over several decades of community work in ministry that they have afforded me a fresh way of looking at a problem and eventually finding a solution.

Welcome heyokas in your daily walk. They carry treasures untold!

Teamwork

This has sat on display in our china cabinet for more than thirty years. It was presented me on behalf of a colleague with whom I had shared in a team ministry (with two others, I might add). We were the junior partners and collaborated on some innovative projects amongst four churches in Canberra in the early eighties.

It was never stated who drove who. Maybe they swapped from time. They are both headed in the same direction, so that may be a positive thing. Teamwork will sometimes depend on a driver and a more compliant traveller, but more often a negotiated agreement about direction and how to get there.

This is what this knick-knack seems to suggest to me – agreement of a direction and decision to head there by dogged determination and encouragement that may or may not be necessary!

I am the sole remaining member of that past four-member experimental team ministry. I am ever grateful for what my colleagues taught me.

Wordle Warriors

433 years worth of daily 5-letter words left!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com –
Yes I know this is Scrabble, but there are enough Wordle images out there!

There are quite a few out there now. It’s the new chess. Get the word right in as few moves as possible and share the good news (or not) on your favorite social media platform. The spinoffs are well under way. The original idea was for one puzzle a day. Such is our conditioning, however, that one is never enough, so a number of spinoffs are offering unlimited opportunities to get a whole range of five-letter words out there.

This creates a problem for the dedicated Wordle purist. How does one compare the result of the stoic and disciplined one daily Wordle in a plethora of chaos? One must simply and doggedly use the original site at https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ and be blinkered to the rest.

Wordle Warriors rise to the cry!
Five letter words slipping us by.
Grit your teeth, stay with the plan –
Tease out those letters as best as you can.

Eschew the spinoffs, even for practice
Their many variations only distract us!
Four letter, six letter, random theme driven –
These abominations unforgiven!

Let’s stick with the method as long as we can
When we run out of words – then change the game plan
Could be a while as words are a plenty
433 years worth – give or take twenty!

158390* – freedictionary.com estimation of valid five-letter words at one per day = 433.95 years (not taking leap years into account).

Timeless Meditation: Viewing Vastness

The #Bloganuary prompts not only whetted one’s own appetite to hone some writing skills, but opened us up to a vast network of seasoned bloggers and their skills. Here is one who shares familiar contemplative thoughts to mine on “what do you feel when you look at the stars?”

wRighTing My Life

Worlds Away
Savoring outdoor time during my recent reprieve in the temperate Caribbean, I hoped the warmth would cradle me through another 72 icy winter days back home. Mother Nature’s wizardry transformed the oppressive grey I left behind into sparkling and vibrant blue, a welcome relief in this world that seemed worlds away.

Lounging on the balcony at night with vast stars washing over me, I felt an incredible sense of wonder. This feeling continued through daytime gazing on a tryst of blues from sea to sky, the all-embracing horizon suggesting I was worlds away. And in some aspects, I was.

The Andromeda galaxy at 2.6 million light-years from Earth is visible with the naked eye. With one light-year equaling nearly six trillion miles, I find this almost incomprehensible — that I could indeed be seeing a world trillions of miles away. Viewing the horizon at three to four-and-a-half miles —…

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#Bloganuary is over

Photo by Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels.com

#Bloganuary is over; the year has begun.
The muse has awoken, and feels he’s not done.
He looks for the prompt which just isn’t there.
The blank page awaits; he can only but stare.

He laments the prompts gone from his daily feed
He recalls their annoyance and his final concede
In spite of resistance they awakened deep thought
and set ways of thinking as they probably ought.

The carnival is over and we must say our goodbyes
Prose, verse or image? Or some sweet surprise?
The muse ponders what might be his next move;
Will the pilgrim still wonder – has he now found his groove?

Star-gazing

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: How do you feel when you look at the stars?

Feeling is not my “go to” language. But ask me how I “experience” looking at the night sky and I can speak, filtered by many years of wrestling with my theology and cosmology.

I experience total peace born of a sense of unity and an instinct that we are all born of the same stardust as those bright twinkling dots up there. We are in union with the One in whom it all has its source and which is apprehended in many great world faith traditions, epitomised in my own as the Christ, the One in whom all is dynamically complete. From early encounters with the writings of scientist-priest Teilhard de Chardin to the meditations on Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, such awareness is deeply engrained into every fibre of my being.

It is the antidote to the existential dissonance (anxiety) that might otherwise consume me. This is what happens when I look at the stars.

Tree!

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: Describe Yourself as a Tree

I think that I shall never see
A picture of me as a tree
A tree whose leafy boughs do sway
And drops its leaves along the way;

A tree that casts its honkey nuts
Safe trudging by it much disrupts

Harry Potter’s thrashing tree
Charlie Brown’s kite-eating mystery
It seems that trees are much too frisky
To dwell on them is therefore risky.

I think that I shall never see
A picture of me as a tree.

Apologies Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

World-changer!

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: How Are You Changing The World?

My old cartoon instincts are immediately kicking in, reminding me of my early days of fatherhood sharing the squawling, squirming infant-changing routine. Except no infant here, but a hard done by globe, polluted and sickly, lamenting the loss of dimly remembered pristine goodness.

The question for many is not how to change the world, but how to exploit it even more. I’m sure that if an audit of daily routine occurred with me, a conscientious objector, the scales would still come down heavy on me as an exploiter rather than a changer. My carbon footprint, though lighter than some, is heavier than many on this globe.

So how do I change this? By cultivating awareness. Nibbling the bit of the giant pizza that is nearest me. And maybe collecting cartoons and writing poetry.