“I see you”

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“I see you.” This meme from the movie Avatar did the rounds for a few months. It seemed to be nourishment for a collective hunger in a world which had descended into anonymity and a penchant for the kind of efficiency that codes citizens by number rather than name.

It was a kind of epiphany – an understanding of something deeply significant in order to be fully human.

The Gospel passage by the Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday (John 1:43-51) has two key “I see you” moments.

Philip is first “seen” by Jesus as he begins to gather his close disciples. Philip knows he is “seen” as he immediately goes with Jesus and soon after recruits Nathanael, who is apparently reluctant to acknowledge that “anything good can come out of Nazareth.” Jesus acknowledges and praises his scepticism and “sees” his potential.

Nathanael typifies our natural human response. We fear gullibility within ourselves and develop a protective mask that is only removed when trust is established. The mutual  “I see you” epiphany that then takes place between Nathanael and Jesus reveals a trust for which the world starves.

Troubled times … fresh resources.

“Crisis always comes with opportunity,” suggests the Chinese pictogram. How this relates to the current ascension of the greed of the few and the corresponding upward spiral of cost to the many is elegantly demonstrated in this video clip:

Human history seems to reveal a default trend of societies devolving from the most altruistic ideals to the rule of a powerful elite. There will always be a counterforce of opportunity to redress the balance.

This was no less true in the biblical accounts of the development of Israel as she sought to move from tribal confederacy to monarchy so that they could be “like other nations.” The move to monarchy and its attendant dangers was inevitable. What was also inevitable was a “holy subversion” to keep such dangers in check. The call of Samuel as the first in a long line of prophets related to Israel’s monarchy begin a tradition of strong interface between the natural human inclination to power and control and the bigger picture for the common good.

The nuances of the latter are pointed out in the involvement of “the least” elite. Commenting on the call of Samuel while still a young boy, the Rev’d Dr Keith Rowe (With Love To The World) says:

An easily overlooked group become vehicles of newness – an elderly mother, a near blind priest troubled by the anti social behaviour of his sons, and a fragile child with acute spiritual sensitivity.

When despairing over the latest revelation of greed and abuse of power in high places, look for the Samuels and Hannahs in our midst. There are the opportunities. There lies our hope

Wooing the one who jilted you …

door of hopeWho would want to?

The Hebrew prophet Hosea – that’s who! Initially, he nurses the pain of anger when Gomer leaves him for a polyamorous dalliance with others. The patriarchal law of his time and place would have allowed his claim on her life. Instead, we see a tender wooing back, prompted by an insight into YHWH’s yearning for his wayward people,

In a tender love poem, Hosea once again courts Gomer. (Hosea 2:14-23) 

The Rev’d Dr Keith Rowe contrasts the harsh history of the valley of Achor and “a door of hope” (v15).

As much as I baulk at the uncompromising retribution in the face of the greed of Achan described in the above link, I cannot ignore the parallel suffering of the vulnerable caused by today’s uncompromising focus on greed. The “door of hope” that Hosea so eloquently espouses matches much of our yearning for the cessation of violence, comprehensive care for others and nurture of the natural environment.

The contemporary gift of Hosea is a reframing of the context for the frustration and powerlessness experienced by many who seek to act for change against uncompromising commercial and political forces – our valley of Achor. A shift of perspective that focuses on our love (God’s love) for uncomprehending and fickle game-changers will unlock the “door of hope.”

Marriage in the air…

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CC0 Public Domain – https://pixabay.com/en/wedding-rings-before-rings-wedding-949106/

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!

 

That strange in between time when Epiphany bursts forth

suspension bridgeSome 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.

Here is the call of great things to come – both for those we must leave behind and for us as we move into uncharted territory.  And the season of Epiphany has burst upon us.  Between now and mid-February we are reflecting and responding to the explosion of understanding that the self-revealing of God through the Christ thrusts upon us.

Yet it is an understanding that opens up just how much more territory there is to explore!

Psalm 63:1-8 catches the sense of an awakened thirst seeking satisfaction. These January days are pregnant with expectancy seeking fulfilment because of what is known and what is understood.

… increased in human favour..

continuing transition to retirement

christmas-party-2008_2008-12-07_0057_edited-1Seeking 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!

Yet Luke’s gospel speaks approvingly of Jesus increasing in human favour.

As an Enneagram Six, I am naturally inclined to seeking human favour. In my earlier unaware state, this did me little favour indeed! Compliant, secretive, anxious, afraid of criticism – I was the company “yes” man! While serving my instincts for survival in the human jungle, I quickly discovered this didn’t work in the areas that really mattered – deep relationships with others. Worthwhile ministry quickly plunges one into this territory.

Integrity and transparency were the traits to which I had access to cultivate. They served as antidotes to my unconscious self-preservation strategies. The motive of currying favour to serve myself began to transform into genuine service of others. I don’t see this dynamic receding during retirement.

Reflection on this four-fold increase in Jesus’ development as described in Luke 2:52 suggests that wisdom, stature and divine and human favour are inextricably linked.

In retirement, they can be expressed as goals against which one may establish measures (I refuse to call them KPIs!)

Wisdom – maintain a reading, workshop, lecture program
Stature – work to physical, health and collegial regimes
Divine favour – set regular times for contemplation and continuing spiritual formation
Human favour – continue to seek out opportunities and avenues for service and socialisation.

This is why retirement is looking more like refirement!

 

… increased in favour with God…

… continuing transition into retirement thoughts …

stellar-jetEveryone 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.
To borrow from D T Niles’ aphorism, I have always seen ministry as “one poor beggar sharing with another where one can find an abundance to eat.”

Having said that, I am careful not to fall into the Western trap of striving to find favour with God, as if I have to earn points for good behaviour. The text from Luke 2:52 suggests a journey of awareness into the favour that God already bestows, as indicated in the eastern orthodox emphasis on “theosis” referred to in my previous post. Growth of awareness in itself stimulates the cultivation of the hidden fruits of divinity emanating from the image of God in our being, and fully revealed in the God-human, Jesus the Christ. When Jesus was baptised by his cousin John, the voice he hears, “This is my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased,” is available to be heard by us all.

While western consciousness dwells on humanity’s sin and fallen-ness, though real and devastating and evoking rightful humility, neglect of the perspective of theosis warps our understanding of being in favour with God. There are, however, helpful streams of Western Christian spirituality that, seen through the lens of theosis, build unspoiled awareness of God’s favour (sometimes described as grace – the benevolent disposition of God towards God’s creation – including us!)

The holiness tradition of the revivalists, the contemplative practices of the monastics, the charismatic expressions of the renewalists, the sacramental and liturgical movements – all have contributions to awakening and deepening awareness of God’s favour.

In ministry, it has been my task to respond to and foster all  – as every expression can be found even in one small church community. I don’t see this journey coming to completion, even past full-blown retirement.

… increased in stature…

… continuing transition into retirement thoughts …

barbellsStature – 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.

There are other ways of attending to stature, however.   There is financial stature, and I am grateful that I was pointed early to a healthy and generous superannuation scheme presided, over at that time, by our national body of churches. It will cover accommodation and a modest income for us both, perhaps eventually augmented by a pension.

There is the reputational stature painstakingly built over decades of ministry and interaction collegially and ecumenically. It will be important to continue to nurture those connections.

Robert Louis Stevenson reminds me that even these are not the sum of the stature to which we are called:

 We must accept life for what it actually is – a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

Sober words with which we are invited to not only assess and accept the nature of our limits – but transcend them!

Theosis – a truer perspective

Discussions with Eastern Orthodox folk awoke me some time ago to the core Christian perspective of theosis, however – and this is how I would now measure stature. We in the West have inherited an unhealthy preoccupation with the Fall, becoming somewhat obsessed with an Augustinian awareness of a deep plummet from grace. A lot of our Christology and soteriology is focused on dealing with humanity’s flaws. Such a focus has given legs to powerplays and abusive policy at the highest levels of church and state. Theosis simply reasserts the presence of the Divine Spark in humanity, and the call through the Christ to grow into the image of the Creator of all things – a call to grow into the stature of divinity – a never-ending journey that goes far beyond what we artificially call retirement.

“The glory of God is [us] fully alive” – pronounced, Irenaeus, a second-century Father of the Church. Far more can be said about this.

But for now, this call to keep increasing in stature excites me!

…increased in wisdom…

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… continuing thoughts on transition from full-time work to retirement.

Even as I downsize the library I have collected and maintained over several decades of ministry, I contemplate how I will maintain an inquisitive and searching mind that is keen, not only to store information, but apply an accumulation of knowledge and experience in that unique formulation that approximates wisdom.

It’s not only the books, some of which today I snuck back having disposed of, but the memories, conversations and transformations to which they contribute, that make the continuing journey towards wisdom enticing.

It will be important to keep this going when I hang up my boots in June. I’m in three book groups now. I’ll keep going to two. I’ll keep abreast of reading in my focus area of spirituality, with an emphasis on the Christian tradition. I’ll sign up for an online course for something I’ve never done before.  I’ll maintain my practice as a Spiritual Director where I continue to learn so much from those I accompany. I’ll be open to speaking and workshop engagements should they fall my way. Indeed I’ll maintain an open stance to any possibility that arises.

In fact, perhaps the basis of wisdom is simply paying attention! May curiosity continue to be a sharp and active trait.

 

2018 – a time of transition begins

 

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By Pollinator at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110683

Yes, this is the year that will see me cease earning and have Jenny and I living off savings for the rest of our natural life.

 

My life as an earner began as a skinny bespectacled 13 year old selling iced finger buns door to door in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. I would arise early Saturday mornings, ride my creaking bike 10 km to the mum and pop bakery and there, with other eager youths, among the flour and fly traps, pack the freshly baked and iced buns into trays ready for delivery. We would pile into the back of the boss’s ute, ready for a wild ride to be spotted strategically around the suburban streets. By early afternoon we would be collected, paid according to our sales, and then the weary 45-minute bike ride home. Since then I have clerked, retailed, packed, stored, painted, gardened, demolished, swept, and then, for the bulk of my working life, served as a Churches of Christ minister in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

In June, a new chapter begins. Retired or Refired? Employment under a contract may cease, but vocation will continue.

On this first day of a year of transition for Jenny and myself, my mind recalls the mantra drummed into my growing years of maintaining a balanced life based on a text repeated in yesterday’s service commemorating Jesus’ Presentation at the Temple.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. (Luke 2:52)

So, over the next few entries, I will consider what the transition may look like vocationally. How will our minds be engaged? How will we continue to maintain and develop our physical resources? How will we nurture spiritual growth? What will continued social and human service look like?

And, importantly, how will we and our current faith community at Wembley Downs, where our identities are so intertwined,  navigate the changes ahead?