Wondering Pilgrim

Advent Reflection: Joy, anticipated and celebrated

Ever have some odd quirky thing from years ago that sticks in your mind that you can’t get rid of, no matter how hard you try?

One of mine is a segment from a Rem and Stimpy cartoon – inevitably triggered when I hear the word “joy”. Perhaps because I have been in so many circumstances where an MC has attempted to force-feed “joy” on a passive-aggressive audience. Here’s the clip for those who dare!

Joy that is artificially manufactured is like a stone being skipped across the surface of a pond. Joy that is deep and real often emerges out of a season of yearning and anticipation.

We live in a time where refugees and homeless seek a place to call safe, where many unemployed face an empty Christmas table, and the mentally ill seek a moment or two of sanity. Here there is yearning. When hope has not vanished entirely, there is anticipation and the possibility of joy. Such hope often rests on something good remembered and an entertainment of the possibility it may yet recur.

The Psalm for this third week of Advent reflects the dynamic. It is a song of ascent – meaning it was sung by pilgrims to Jerusalem as they approached the Temple.

Times are pressing, the latter verses of the psalm suggest hardship due to drought and poor harvest, maybe even a season of duress under tyranny. The opening lines, however, recall and virtually re-live an occasion of being “surprised by joy”. Their despairing ancestors, captive and exiled in Babylon for several generations, are released and allowed to go home in freedom when the Persian king Cyrus invades and subjugates Babylon. So great is their deep happiness that Isaiah speaks of their pagan deliverer as “God’s anointed.” Unexpected yet remembered in messianic terms. The psalm implores God to “do it again.”

Perhaps the temple pilgrims anticipated a reconnection with the grounding of their faith through the temple rites, something that would help them face an uncertain future with confidence and purpose. By remembering unexpected encounters with the divine celebrated by their ancestors, they could live out the anticipation of their own liberation.

If this kind of joy does that, it is a true gift.

Film Review: The Ides of March

Free spirit that I am, I took some time out for a cinema fix after a busy week. Mrs WP was otherwise occupied, so it was a lone choice, and it boiled down to either The Iron Lady or The Ides of March. What a dilemma! Both portray political dramas and the machinations behind the scenes – the first focused on the conservative Thatcher years in ’70s Britain and the second on a fictional but contemporary Democrat campaign in Ohio, apparently a benchmark state in the primaries for presidential election.

Because of the currency of the 2012 USA elections, I chose The Ides of March, hoping to gain some insight to the mysteries of the USA election system. I confess I remain as mystified as ever, and perhaps in Pollyannish naivety, wonder if the cynicism and duplicity in which the plot is soaked was used for dramatic effect or, reverting to my nay-saying shadow side, fighting the evidence that often shouts at us on a daily basis, “Yep, that’s the way it is.” Pragmatism usurps loyalty; expediency trumps ideals, political survival smothers ethics, both personal and public.

Will The Iron Lady convey something different? I sense another cinema event occurring soon.

Movie Review: Ides of March (socyberty.com)

Advent Reflection: Peace – not absence of conflict

It may strike one as absurd that a day given to reflecting on peace revolves around that fiery wild figure that stormed out of the Judaean desert preaching repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist seems an incongruous figure for what we imagine to be peace – serene narcosis wrapped in fluffy cotton wool where the daily grind can’t “get at us.”

Consider the elements of true peace however, based on the Semitic languages shalom (Hebrew) or salaam (Arabic and its derivatives), alluding to wholeness in relationship with self, others, the environment and the Divine. It seems to me that one has to navigate some conflict to achieve each of those summits.

Well known New Testament scholar Bill Loader, at the local Uniting Church commissioning service for their local minister, noted three surprises in Mark’s use of the John the Baptist episode to open his discussion of what the “good news” of Jesus was all about. I summarise and paraphrase, hopefully accurately, his points as I heard them. But go here for Bill’s online commentary on this passage.

First, there is the lack of apocalyptic judgement often associated with John the Baptist’s ministry. Change is in the wind, people are being called to change, but the use of Isaiah’s words are couched in the language and context of comfort and strength. The world is full of people bearing a heavy weight of oppression , poverty and injustice, but change is possible and imminent.

The second surprise is the universality of John the Baptist’s message. All are invited to the baptism he offers – poor and rich, sick and well, Jew and Greek, peasant and soldier. There is no particularity, the invitation to change is for all. It begins with “repentance”, literally “turning to face a new direction,” or we might think of starting again with a blank page. The word used by Mark is metanoia (Koine Greek) “renewing of the mind”.

The third surprise is the incompleteness of his ministry – forgiveness is a beginning, but completeness comes with one who baptises with the Holy Spirit and who demonstrates the presence of God’s reign amongst us through the ministry of the Spirit. Those who wear the name of Christ must get past acting as if it was only about forgiveness and get on with the Spirit ministry of teaching, reconciling, healing and helping build a world that is whole.

It sounded to me a little bit like shalom, salaam, peace.

Don’t Dis My Ability!

As International Day of People with Disability is marked today, this slogan resonated. Pretty well most of my life, folk with a “disabilty” have been part of my close circles – family, friends, community groups – ranging through developmental disorders, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, autism and many other labels that tend to isolate fellow human beings as “special.” Thankfully, society has moved a long way from hiding those who are markedly different from the mainstream and the shared value of integration is much more widely championed than before. But we still have a long way to go.

For a start, the word “normal” should be banned! I don’t know what it is.

I have been stunned at the number of occasions service providers have bandied this term around, because I’m sure they can’t define it either. The best have focused on the abilities the sufferers of various conditions have been able to manifest and built a way forward on those. They pay due attention to what is there, a major corrective to what is lacking. Any of us would realise the defeat in the constant remider of our deficiencies. Recognition of our efficiencies on the other hand, gives us a leg up in dealing with what we lack.

The people in my circles have contributed a great gift, the ability to see things from perspectives not available to the otherwise fully endowed. Forced by circumstance and prejudice to make their way through life, they have a wry “can-do” attitude that is prepared to exercise some pretty herculean tasks. Lateral thinking in meeting challenges is often second nature. Often the poverty induced capacity to enjoy simple pleasures is a lesson for all of us rampant consumers.

So when I see someone bearing a placard that says “Don’t dis my ability!”, I have a hunch I know where they’re coming from.

“How would gays get on in your church?”

It was a simple question.

I gave a simple answer – “The same as anybody else,” I replied.

There was a question behind the question, however. As the topic of same-sex marriage rises to be the star turn at this weekend’s Australian Labor Party conference, anxious attention from both the anti and pro camps tests the waters for support. I have continued to maintain a mugwump’s perspective, described a few months ago here. I might elaborate further, however, and say that anybody within the sphere of our congregation’s influence who experiences discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation is entitled to our advocacy. No mugwumpery in that regard.

The unasked question, though, is “What will you do when a gay couple asks you to officiate over their union ceremony (whatever nomenclature is granted or not)?”

I will do as I have often done with those who have shared the uniqueness of their journeys through a variety of circumstances that cover the range of life’s disappointments, hopes, fears, and possibilities. Listen carefully (with the ears of the crucified and risen One) and respond accordingly. As with hetero couples, the result may be “Wait.” It may equally be, “Let us design a rite that honours before God where you find yourself to be.” I have no idea where that might lead. I do know that our congregation is mature enough and confident enough to hold such couples and individuals in their journey with respect, love and compassion -and, as with anyone, make room for them to become full participating members of the church community.

How do I know? I’ve see it happen before.

PM under pressure over gay marriage push (news.smh.com.au)
ALP delegates accept gay marriage petition (news.smh.com.au)

Advent Reflection: Hope, not optimism

Pollyanna and friends — Image by linniekin via Flickr

Pollyanna gets a bit of stick these days. The name of the main character from Eleanor H Porter’s work of classical children’s fiction has become an epithet for anyone deemed to be unrealistically optimistic. In the novel made even more well known by Walt Disney’s cinema version in 1960, Pollyanna invents “the glad game.” No matter how bad the circumstances, there’s always something to be glad of. Pollyanna receives, as a gift, a pair of crutches instead of the anticipated doll – well, she’s glad she doesn’t need them. Her stern aunt punishes Pollyanna for being late to dinner by banishing her to bread and milk in the kitchen with the maid, and Pollyanna thanks her profusely because she loves bread and milk and can think of no better pastime than chatting with the maid.

I was ten years old when I saw Disney’s movie, and Pollyanna, I think, ingrained in me one of those life commandments – “look for the good in all things” – probably not a bad corrective to my default melancholy disposition.

It strikes me that the season of Advent seems to begin from a melancholic stance. The Isaiah passages emerge from the experience of a people exiled and abandoned, crying out for their loss of culture, connection and place. Their pain reflects the continuous experience of displaced peoples – whether it be the life-threatening journeys of the world’s refugees from hunger and violent conflict, the inheritance of generations of systemic neglect and abuse, or the intervention of sheer bad fortune on hitherto lucky lives. To suggest playing “the glad game” would be inadequate and insensitive. A person who is in dire distress cringes at light-hearted ‘cheer-me-ups’ from the village optimist. At least, allowing oneself to enter the fullness of despair is to engage the honest parlousness of the situation. Sometimes optimism is simply another word for denial.

Isaiah allows us to enter and meditate fully on the archetypal experience of feeling abandoned and adrift. However, he does not leave us there. His whole work is predicated on hope. Hope is different from optimism. It allows full expression and ventilation of that which is wrong; it scrabbles through the rubble to find something that is foundational upon which meaning can be built, and uses this as a means of planning and constructing a way forward.

This is a different process than the one used in Pollyanna’s “glad game.” It is radical surgery of the collective and individual soul. Yesterday my congregation presented the results of some fund raising to Fresh Start, a Perth based drug rehabilitation program pioneered by Dr George O’Neil. Thousands of clients from around the world have successfully found help and hope through the holistic approach of a program of physical relief, residential accommodation, community support, and spiritual conversation.

I point to Fresh Start as a living sign of hope in our midst. And I am sure Pollyanna would approve!

Stories from the Canning Stock Route

So runs the sub-title of a stunning Aboriginal Art exhibition that is now on tour from the National Museum of Australia. Of course, the Canning Stock Route has had its dominant “whitefella” story told many times. We claim it as the toughest, remotest and (at 1850km) longest historic stock route in the world. Around the 1900s, cattlemen in the East Kimberley ranges sought an effective and competitive means of getting their stock to market. A direct route through the desert to Wiluna was deemed to be both possible and desirable. Conveniently spaced water sources were all that were needed, and the desert Aborigines knew where these were. Cruel methods of manipulation and coercion of Aborigines from the various language groups enabled wells to be sunk alongside the soaks and watercourses along the otherwise arid way. The full story (from “whitefella” perspective) can be explored here.

The interactive art exhibition, Ngurra Kuju Walyja: One Country One People, allows us to hear the story as told by descendants of the Desert people, a diverse range of language groups that retain the custodianship of the pre stock route boundaries, stories, songs and culture that have helped them retain their identity and replicate it in art form. The stories are fascinating as the now disused stock route serves another purpose in binding these communities together while they continue to find and assert anew their place in 21st century Australia.

The exhibition is not a “black arm-band” approach to history (to coin a phrase introduced by a former prime minister), but a frank and open exercise in ensuring all voices are heard and that all perspectives are seen, thus affording a total picture rather than enabling us to continue to accept a partial telling as the whole. Apart from tragedy and loss, the stories include humour and appreciation stemming from encounters with the kartiya (n0n-Aborigines).

Such exhibitions go a long way to promoting mutual respect. If you get the chance, go and see!

Peace is possible

It’s one of those days of convergence again. I finalised an article for the local community paper – “200 words on what Christmas means to you as a local clergy person.” I rattled something off under the title that headlines this piece. Then I left to share lunch at Parliament House with about twenty folk, organised by Pace e Bene and hosted by Greens MLC, Giz Watson, the purpose being to meet and hear world renowned peace activist, Kathy Kelly and Afghan peace worker, Hakim.

My underlying reflection is on how far from peaceful the process of achieving peace (in its fullest sense) often proves to be. My local article touched briefly on a range of folk in conflicted circumstances who were nevertheless driven by the conviction that “peace is possible.” At lunch, Dr Hakim, outlined a movement amongst young people in Afghanistan who work for peace against tremendous odds, noting that “peace is hard work!” and Kathy Kelly responded to questions in a way that reinforced the costly nature of working for peace.

All things worthwhile have to be worked for, often against overwhelming odds. It is important to persevere, addressing the practical issues, not out of unrealistic optimism, but out of hope that is inspired by a vision of what can be.

Reconciliation Journey through Mooro Country

Mooro country is that part of the Noongar country that follows a string of lakes through the western and northern suburbs of Perth and beyond to the Moore River. This afternoon a group of us met with the Northern Suburbs Reconciliation Group and took a bus tour through some of this wetland area, visiting places of significance under the guidance of a local Elder. In pre-colonial times the area was alive with indigenous commerce. As well as bearing a plentiful supply of food and providing hospitable space for camping, corroboree and storytelling, these were meeting places where inland clans and tribal groups could trade commodities with the coastal people. Some of this function continued way past European settlement, and in spite of decimation experienced under attempts by colonisers to move Aborigines from nomadic to agricultural lifestyles.

To visit familiar landmarks, even a shopping centre carpark, and have pointed out to us the former culture’s significant places, a memorial stone here, a clump of scar bearing trees there, a main road where bitumen covered a thousands of years old walking track,was like twisting a kaleidoscope to see the layers of ancient folklore beneath the veneer of western suburbia.

Mooro country is not well known. It is only recently that its history has begun to be recorded in written form. The stories have been passed on orally – mouth to ear, mouth to ear, amongst the generations of those who are descendants of those who fished, hunted and traded along the waterways in this area. It was humbling and enlightening to hear some of those stories and visit some of those places today

Praising our one talent hero!

I like the contention that the servant who buried his one talent and got shafted by the boss might just be the hero of the story – not the goody two shoes (x2) who doubled their much more generous offerings. The proposition catches us on the back foot (like a good parable is supposed to do). The centuries old Protestant work ethic favours the traditional view that hard work and prudent application is duly rewarded. The lazy lay-about who did nothing with what he was entrusted got his just desserts – and you will too if you don’t get on with it!

Peel back the accretion of time and historical circumstance, however, and imagine the story as it was before this puritanical setting. Imagine it before Matthew got hold of it, and even Luke (who could be seen to be giving greater weight to the tradition that this post explores). It seems the parable was passed around orally before Luke and Matthew put it in the context of their own communities and set it down in writing. Matthew’s burden appears to be keeping the fledgling second and third generation church alert and disciplined, living out the teachings of Jesus rather than hanging around waiting for an imminent return. Hence “get on with it!”

Luke seems to use the story, with some interesting variations, to say, “This is the reality of how the world ticks.” It is unjust and unfair and if you are going to buck the system, be ready to meet the consequences. The third servant tosses in the towel and protests “I’m not playing this game any more!” knowing he will lose his position of privilege and be cast out among the tenant farmers who have been suffering the extortion of the landlords and their managers. He could stand for the disciple who is prepared to travel the way of Jesus, in the world of those who live on the margins of powerlessness, and not of the world of corrupt privilege.

Well, it’s at least worth a thought – yes? The strange outcome is that regardless of whether you run with Matthew’s call to diligence or Luke’s veiled urging to courageous discipleship, the result is the same – a more focused and active disciple. Neat!

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