Three New Year Symbols

Nativity Wesley Uniting Church Perth
Tree of Life

Scarcely had the New Year started to roll across the world’s last continent  than we on the first one were returning from a New Year’s Day service at Wesley Uniting, Perth. This is where we usually go when I have a Sunday off… it’s only a 15 minute drive, far enough away to feel we’ve gone somewhere different, we aren’t known well, and the service is contemplative and thoughtful while informally down to earth. It has a tradition of fine music and sponsors the visual arts (as seen by the two sculptures illustrated). It happened to be a communion service with a baptism. What better way to begin a new year?

Getting there was a struggle. I thought we’d try the Convention Centre car park – reasonably close with easy access and egress to the freeway. (My usual park was cut off by construction work). Parked the car, but the lifts were not working and the stairs were well hidden – nothing for it but to strive towards the light, emerging in an area that was verboten. A horrified security guard observed us floundering around for an exit and kindly obliged by finding a key to open a gate for us. (I hope I’m not being too obtuse with all this New Year symbolism). After the church service and its injection of New Year hope and optimism – we confidently strode back to the Convention Centre (tightly locked up) and began a new search for an entrance to the car park. We explored the full length of the complex, eventually collaring another security guard. He had no idea how to reach the car park and suggested we keep looking! Well at least we had let someone know that our intentions in skulking around that great big barn were honourable. Eventually we did find an opening under a stairwell and ducked in and found the car. Easy access and egress from the freeway! Beyond that, forget it!

So here’s three evocative symbols for the New Year.

The Tree of Life sculpture – presented as part of the Project 54 “Prayer for the Nations” programme coinciding with CHOGM 2012 in Perth. The Tree of Life has been a most enriching symbol in many cultures, finding a visionary culmination in Christian tradition that is described in Revelation 22 where the leaves of the tree “bear the healing of the nations”.

The Nativity sculpture depicting the refugee journey from darkness to hope.  Each white box bears a layered contemporary photograph that was revealed Advent calendar style one at a time until Christmas. Associations with Incarnation and the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt put some bite and relevance into the task of keeping our central story in focus.

And then the car park! Effort, exploration and application is needed to bring all these about.

Oh Yes … a New Year

TTT #2... 256365
Image by paloetic via Flickr

I am aroused from my holiday stupour to be reminded that a New Year is waiting in the wings.

One more country – Samoa – will see it first, having just yesterday moved itself to the left side of the International Date Line. So Samoa, used to being lucky last, now jumps to the head of the queue and leads the charge into 2012!

Resolutions – none from me this year. Postaday went well until about September then went the way of all good intentions. I am however, chuffed that I kept it going so long, made some great connections with fellow bloggers, and am more likely to keep blogging at least several times a week.

Philosophy as one year changes to the next? I can’t improve on all the bon mots appearing on my Face Book page today. So many good positive ones to choose from.
So here’s to 2011 and all that it brought to add to our experiences – good, indifferent, and demanding. And here’s to 2012 that stretches off into the unknown…

We bought a zoo – movie review

English: Portrait of a Plains zebra Equus quag...
Image via Wikipedia

Couple’s choice tonight – and we agreed on this one as ‘The Iron Lady’ was booked out.

It has something for everyone – animals for the kids, teenage angst for the tweeners, and romance with lots of silent, knowing exchanges between the star turns. I desperately looked for something deep and meaningful but in the end, I just sat back and enjoyed my wife’s enjoyment of it.

I wondered whether there was an attempt to redress recent bad press for private zoos in the United States. There were some strategically placed messages about animal conservation and welfare practices – and the end credits acknowledged the animal sanctuary upon which the story line was based.

My overall rating – enjoyable, light and somewhat schmaltzy – two and a half stars out of five!

Lazy, Hazy Days of In-Between Christmas and New Year

Hammock - Polynesia.
Image via Wikipedia

Languid, listless, lazy and deliciously so – without a hint of  WASP guilt!
The turkey and ham are almost all gone. The prawns are in the freezer awaiting New Year’s Day.
My car blew a water hose on Boxing Day while showing Grandma the local Christmas lights.
I was chuffed I could get a mechanic out at short notice today – not so chuffed when he declared major surgery and the tow truck took it away to some workshop to await machinists’ return in the New Year.
Ah well, back to delicious languor and a short sortie in my wife’s car to the local mall to spend some book vouchers.
Now I can make my soporific stupor productive with Christos Tsiolkas ‘The Slap’ and Geraldine Brooks ‘Caleb’s Crossing’.
Where’s that hammock?

Keeping the Startle in Christmas

Silverfish!

One of the biggest challenges for those of us charged with narrating the Nativity each year is to allow the essence of the story to emerge through the sentiment and tinsel and, yes, the celebratory drudgery that many deem it their annual obligation to tolerate.

A few Christmases ago, we ordered a heavy duty set of Nativity figures to display at the front of the church. They arrived, mere outlines cut out of marine plywood, blank and unadorned – white canvas upon which we amateur artists were invited to take acrylic paints and fill in appropriately. Being who we are, we saw this as an opportunity to make a statement beyond what might be expected of the traditional manger scene. We kept all the original players – Mary, Joseph, shepherds, magi and, of course, sheep, cattle and camels. Rather than paint the life-size figures, we dressed them in fabrics depicting ancient middle eastern dress, but used posed photographs of various members of the congregation who were quite happy to model Melchior, Joseph or a shepherd.

The effect was that the Christmas creche had a startling effect on those who saw it. The figures gathered around the Christ child were not exotic and foreign, but people they knew. “That’s us!” came the involuntary exclamation several times. “You know what – you’re right!” I replied. The traditional message of Immanuel – God with us – had snuck in at a different level and startled Christmas worshipers as surely as the messengers startled the shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

We aren’t putting the figures out this year. Silverfish have been feasting, and maybe the impact has softened anyway.

We are searching for another way to keep the startle in Christmas. We have two days left. We might just wait and see what happens!

After all, the unexpected usually emerges out of something going wrong.

Mice ate the organ bellows rendering the little Austrian church without a musical instrument one Christmas Eve. The pastor hurriedly wrote  a simple a capella carol. We sing it today as “Silent Night.”

Who knows what the silverfish will bring?

Advent Reflection – Love: action,not sentiment

Traffic Congestion
Image by freefotouk via Flickr

Last week was tetchy. People were tired and stressed. Meetings were terse and abrupt. Summer storms, both meteorological and emotional passed swiftly over. The combination of festive preparations and end-of-year wrap ups added to the testy cocktail.

Yet there were moments of pause and reflection – little oases of reality that emerged through the fluff and rush. A leisurely conversation with a colleague as we waited for those held up in rush-hour traffic, to arrive for a meeting. The catchy excitement of two people in two different scenarios about to launch out on a new venture. Quietly holding the hands of several who are bravely anticipating an empty place at the table for the first time this Christmas.

It is when we are truly present to one another that love actively expresses itself – not the automatically flung out seasonal phrases as we rush past each other.
Circumstances of the season increase the kind of activity that reduces our capacity to be present. There just isn’t time.

Awareness however, increases our alertness to the occasions to stop and simply “be” with another.

Vale Christopher

Christopher Hitchens
Image via Wikipedia

I am saddened at the death of Christopher Hitchens. I enjoyed his writing, even though I struggled to find the words and arguments to counter the blistering clarity and oh-so-reasonable logic of his wit.

We differed on much, but we also shared a few things.

  • A birth year. 1949 is a good vintage, and I think one generally feels some sort of affinity for those who begin their travels on planet Earth around the same time.
  • He was a dissident and stepped outside boundaries to argue his position on many issues contentious and otherwise.  He stridently destroyed the shibboleths he perceived.
    My dissidence has tended to happen within boundaries, but increasingly I have come to ride the perimeters, using the devil’s advocacy technique. In fact someone once asked if I saw myself as a boundary rider. I said my aim was to be a gate-opener.
  • He wrote a book – God is Not Great.  My life’s vocation has been arguing the opposite. Same topic, different perspective.
So yep, we differed in many ways, yet I have this felt affinity. And it seems funny attempting to align my pigmy reasonings with his gigantic intellect.  Maybe it’s simply our shared humanity – “Ask not for whom the bell tolls…”
I resonate with this reflection from John Shore:
Generally speaking, atheists have championed what we Christians too readily surrender: the sacredness of thought that’s uncompromisingly rational and unapologetically independent.