News programs highlight that yesterday, the first Monday after New Year’s Day, is the day that typically peaks for relationship breakdown and in particular marriage separation and demands for divorce.
Today is the first day that same-sex couples are able to legally tie the knot under Australian law.
Synchronistically, today’s set text is from the Hebrew prophet Hosea, whose love for his estranged wife, Gomer, becomes a model describing God’s yearning for God’s people. Writing for “With Love to the World,” the Rev’d Keith Rowe claims Hosea’s insights are valued
because they provide a language for later believers wanting to think and speak about human fragility and divine compassion.
Whether it’s in the fraught area of vulnerable human relationships or wider public policy, we need to learn how to speak more of this language. Within our own household circles is a good place to start. Many will find social media to be a good place for practice. Who knows where the ripples going out may reach?
Life and marriages will still be messy, but more caring and compassionate. Ask Hosea!
Some call it the silly season. Its those first few weeks of a southern hemisphere January. The office is quiet. I’m at work making use of the downtime from the regular weekly program to engage in some tidying up and planning for what must take place in my final six months here – and beyond. There is a kind of relaxed urgency about all this.
Seeking human favour always carried amber warning lights in my ministerial formation. We’ve seen too many examples of fall from grace in the political arena – and church leadership ain’t far from politics!
Everyone thinks clergy have some secret hotline to God. How does a retiring one increase a state that is already deemed to be “perfect?” Let’s lay that myth to rest.
Stature – now there’s a giggle. The transition has been lifelong – from the skinny, gawky unco-ordinated youth to what I overheard someone describing as that “round little man.” It seems my stature increase has been outward in all the wrong places rather than upward. Daily moderate exercise and lean eating have done little to modify such a transition, yet I continue to attend to both. Sometimes one just has to flow into one’s genes.
At its best, tradition is like a tall sailing ship, navigating the uncharted narrow shoals of postmodern times. Its cargo is the virtues and values that create civilisation. From time to time, its crew has found it necessary to discard outdated, redundant and no longer serviceable jetsam. To navigate unknown shallow waters, the art of “kedging” or “warping” is applied. A dinghy rows forward a small anchor attached to a hawser while simultaneously sounding the depths. The mother ship then hauls itself forward. Rinse and repeat. In this way, the good ship “Tradition” makes its way forward through brave new worlds. When done well, such tall ships are feted and celebrated. (I am indebted to Leonard Sweet and his book, Aquachurch (Group Publishing, 1999) for this helpful concept.)
Across the spectrum of Christian spiritual tradition, from the sacramental to the puritan, fragrance has described the beauty and intimacy of connection with the Divine.
Wondering Pilgrim 