They can confront us with a bigger picture than we are used to, “God’s kingdom” that has the potential to “deconstruct” our false worldviews.

They can  then have the power to convert us to an alternative worldview by proclamation, grace and the sheer attraction of the good, the true and the beautiful (not by shame, guilt or fear which are low-level motivations).

They can then console us and bring deep healing as they “reconstruct” us in a new place with a new mind and heart.

And as I sat there, on the hard wooden pew, in the cold of midnight summer, I became aware of all these things,
the confrontation, the conversion and the consolation.
And as I sat there and watched a woman bowed down with age stand in her small choir and sing like a crumpled angel
I knew that Christ
was indeed
being born, over and over again, wherever these words were spoken and these few were gathered to listen in faith.

The journey of Mary and Joseph towards Bethlehem.

The journey of my 5 year old as she leaves kindergarten and prepares for school.

The journey of friends who have lost parents,

Who have now become orphaned as adult’s

the journey that we have traveled as a nation this year,

no star to guide us, no wise men to be seen

Thinking about journeys.

What’s your road looking like right now?

Is the path ahead clear and starlit?

Are there shadows in the dusk?

Last week we gathered at chalice for a wee, pre christmas service

And we sat, around an empty cradle and we waited for love to be born….

I have been thinking a lot about journeys.

Packing the few belongings.

Lifting the child to the hip.

Smiling, bravely, for the little ones.

The boat doesn’t look strong.

And there are so many of us and the wind is picking up.

It can be interesting to reflect on how we know ourselves as a people.

How we trace our becoming.

Sometimes dates can act as markers on a map.

We know about federation or Gallipolli or when our child was born

or where we were when Whitlam was sacked.

Or when we traveled overseas for the first time.

And now we have a new date on our collective and personal memory’s

another date to be added to the litany of dates which make up the Australian refugee tragedy calender

Wednesday 15 December.

At last count, 3 baby girls and a toddler boy

At last count 24 adults.

And we remember the  SIEV X catastrophe in 2001,

and the explosion on the boat in April last year.

And we remember.

And we sit, around an empty cradle waiting for love to be born,

for love is always born.

Such a simple story,

A story about a journey and about a family looking for a home.

Danger on the horizon.

In the desert and on the seas.

My sister once told me about a friend of hers.

A young woman, who had come to Australia as a refugee,

her name is Opaio.

This young woman had been journeying into the city on public transport without a ticket.

Being on a temporary protection visa she was not able to work or receive any real assistance

and she didn’t have enough money to buy the ticket.

And when she got to Flinders Street a beggar, a man a wrapped in blankets and brokenness asked her

if he could have her ticket, the one he assumed she had, now that her journey was over.

Opaio said to my sister:

‘The shame, I felt such shame, I could not help this man, I began to cry and could not stop’

And we sit here around an empty cradle

and we think about Christmas and of how she gave birth to her newborn son

and of how she laid him in the manger because there was no place for them at the inn.

Because there was no place for them at the inn.

Opaio journied to Australia from her homeland of Sudan,

her homeland of rape and murder, starvation, brutality…

Mary and Joseph journied to Bethlehem to fulfil the laws of a foreign ruler who had taken over their lands.

And the people on the boat that smashed into Christmas island journied from grief to grief.

In the story given to us in the first chapters of the gospel of Luke

We hear of another journey.

A journey of love into the body of a newborn babe,

a journey that begins lying in a feeding trough,

staring up at sad eyed donkey’s and scruffy shepherds

A journey into a life of scandal and storytelling, and justice

a journey of grace.

What will your journey be this Christmas?

How will you travel forward into the new year?

With rage?

With kindness?

With hope?

Will you say Yes to walking with the humble and the angel?

Will love be born in the cradle of your heart?

We climbed a transfiguration mountain….

Its such a simple story, four friends tramping up a hill when all of a sudden

one of them gets a little bit ahead and then bam, just like that

‘His face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.

What an image, what a vision, what a gift to see things as they truly are,

to see what Thomas Merton would call the thisness of a thing.

Many of us would, I imagine, assume that in order to see such a sight,

to witness a ‘Transfiguration’ we would have to be particularly noble,

or holy

or good.

Maybe, we imagine, that we would need to have sat in  deep meditation

for many years

or fasted for months on end

or lived a life seeking God,

but such imaginings do not match what is revealed to us

in the  transfiguration story

In actual fact, as theologian Pheme Perkins writes:

‘The three disciples who are singled out for this manifestation of Jesus identity

as

Son of God

do not demonstrate exceptional insight or fidelity.

Peter has already been castigated for rejecting the necessity of suffering.

James and John show themselves to be preoccupied with greatness

rather than service and all three will fail to watch with him

during the agony in the garden’

What this reveals to us

is that the possibility of being present to moments of

transfiguration

and revelation

is real

for every single one of us

no matter how confused or frightened or distracted we may be.

And these moments -

when the curtain of the temple is torn in two,

and the clouds clear on the mountain peak and we see

no longer thru a dark glassly but now

face to face,

these moments of seeing behind the tired frown of the checkout girl

or past the uptight smile of a neighbour

and of seeing them as who they truly are:

a child of God, vulnerable, blood and spirit and heart and hope,

these moments

are happening all around us.

My gran, who died a few years ago, spent a lot of time in her last few years

in and out of hospital.

And there was one particular time that stays with me

when she seemed to be teetering on some kind of edge and we,

the doctors and the family,

had begun to give up hope

and we feared that she would not live for much longer.

But then, slowly little by little, she began to recover.

Her heart began to pump clearly again, her lungs began to breathe unassisted

and her infections cleared.

But and but and but…

her mind was gone,

gone somewhere far away

and she sat slumped and bound,

strapped into a chair, her hands picking fretfully at the bonds

that kept her trapped.

The doctors wanted to know:

‘Was she like this before

and ‘has there been another stroke’

and ‘maybe there is a new infection’

but no and no and no

and so there we were

and here she was.

But then one day in the middle of this darkness

I went in to see her with Anushka

who was only a tiny girl at the time

and as we walked in,

one of my Aunties said ‘look mum its sweetpea’

(My gran used to call Anushka Sweetpea

because she thinks Anushka is a silly name)

‘Look mum here’s sweet pea’

and my gran

looked up

and held out her arms and anushka sat on her lap and was

kissed and kissed and kissed.

And her face shone like the sun and her clothes became dazzling white.

And the next day my mum went in and there was my aunty,

on her knees and weeping and my gran sitting up and saying:

‘Hello Margaret, where are my teeth,

what have they done to me I look like an old woman’

And her face shone like the sun and her clothes became dazzling white

And his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white

Transfiguration.

To change into a more elevated, spiritual or glorious a form.

Glorious: illustrious, beautiful, shining splendour.

Can you  reflect upon one of your own moments of transfiguration.

Can you let your mind wander?

Where were you when it happened?

Was there anyone with you?

How did it feel inside?

Did your world become charged with the grandeur of God?

Is it still?

If not…..why not?

What is getting in the way?

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.  (Gospel of Luke)

I have lived the last 5 years with the church lectionary as my road.

A road upon which I have trod, religiously, not always joyfully but a road,

which lead my thoughts and grounded my soul.

And now, this year, working as I am in a community of faith

which does not enter into god with a weekly conversation drawn from the lectionary texts,

I have found myself to be a little lost as I look out into the wild-ness of life.

Now 5 years is a long time to walk down a road

so the standing stones of the liturgical year have not left me completely,

the rhythm of the walker still beats softly in my soul,

(lent, easter, pentecost, ordinary time, all souls….)

but I do find myself thinking;

‘I wonder which story we are up to’

and

‘are we still in ordinary time?’

And so this Sunday, as I walked with my children past the Greek orthodox church

with its worshippers spilling out, domestically, onto the footpath,

their hands cupped with fresh baked bread,

I did wonder out loud which ‘day it was today’

and which saint was being celebrated.

The night before I had driven my mother into the emergency department

of the Royal Melbourne Hospital,

she was rushed through into a room of many machines

and she was attached to these,

so that she could breathe,

and she was bird like,

in a nest of wire and metal and light.

Fragility.

And so when I walked past the church, I said to my middle child,

the one who is feeling my mum’s illness the most deeply:

‘would you like to ask the priest for some special bread for grandma’

she nodded fervently and we went in.

The inside of the church, which sits in the dirt of the suburban coburg railway yard,

was a shining dark jewel.

Filled with icons and candles and the domesticity of post service busy- ness

and a sense of a

tangible god

in image and flame.

We asked the young bead priest for bread for our sick grandma

and Indigo (whose name means purple, the color of God)

clutched her slice like it was hope itself.

I found out later that this day was, of course, the day of Mary,

the mother of Jesus, the archetype of the maternal.

The bread sits in the hospital draw. Still wrapped in its silver foil.

I told Indy that grandma had eaten some and was now feeling much better. ‘

I did it’ she whispered. ‘I did it’.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.

What road are you walking on right now?

Do you have a meta narrative or are you a little lost in the wild-ness?

faceless men

or going forward

or great big new tax

or back on track

or action plan

or any of the other endless mantra’s being siren – sung into our psyches

over these last few weeks

then you would be conscious of the rising rage that burns

snake like

in the gut

and the sense deep within that a spell is being cast over you

and that if you are not vigilant

and you do not

‘stay awake’

then you will lose your sense of what is

real

and what is not

and find yourself drifting along into the voting ballot and ticking the box

of whoever managed to spin their web the thickest in your mind.

Last week the Uniting Church has called on politicians running for election

to share their vision for Australia and not to limit their discussions

to cheap populism and slogans.

President of the Uniting Church, Rev Alistair Macrae believes that

Australians are eager to hear messages of hope for the future

and has expressed his disappointment

at the tone and quality of political debate thus far.

“I’m hearing plenty of sound-bites but no real substance.

Australians are looking to our politicians to display real leadership

and talk honestly about their vision for our country.

Instead we’re seeing cheap political point-scoring that’s not connected

to any substantial vision for our future.’

We dismiss the power of language at our peril. We dismiss the power of words to inspire,

ensnare

and even devour

at our peril.

And we dismiss the insidious sound bites infiltrating our psyches at our peril

because by dismissing (or by mocking or by imagining that we are ignoring)

we allow mediocrity to become the status quo and all vision for transformation

to be lost.

So I have been thinking about all this

and about the power of words

and of naming

and remembering how in ancient Greece knowing the name of the deity

is one step along the way to altering the universe.

There is a story about Jesus and an unclean spirit.

An unclean spirit who knows Jesus name. Who says:

I know who you are

And when the unclean spirit names Jesus

his response is

so unexpected and so new that it is almost as if

he is filled with the power of the name that is given to him,

He is called Son of God and so Son of God is who he becomes.

In a sense we can see that Jesus stepping into himself

Into the wonder of who he was born to be.

There is a double naming which occurs within this story.

The demon, who is hidden inside the afflicted man

names Christ as God’s messenger and is, in turn, called out and silenced.

If Christ had rejected the truth of the name given to him by the demon

or if he had been unable to see the demon hiding in the man

then there would no homecoming for either Jesu or the man possessed.

It takes courage to step into your true name:

Who am I who am I to be the child of God?

Who am I to be sister or best friend?

We have all, I imagine, had the experience of being called by our true name,

a name that resonates, clear like a struck bell,

even if we did not know that such a name was ours before we heard it

For some the name may have come with a position,

a job or vocation, which feeds our soul.

Perhaps that name is teacher, or nurse; maybe it is gardener or politician.

For others the true name may be simpler, it may be mother or brother,

it may be beloved or son.

I wonder what it would be like if all of us,

even Julia and Tony,

took the time to be still for a moment and to listen deeply

to the call of our own true name

(their name, your name, my name, I have called you by your name, do not be afraid)

the call that is whispered by the still small voice within.

The call that says step into the best of who you can be,

step into who you were born to be.

Step now child of god.

because there is work to be done

and time

is running

out

Permanence and impermanence and two great traditions speak the same truth

in different forms.

From the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh we are reminded that

‘we can never bath twice in the same river’

and in Ecclesiastes we discover that  ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.

The water in the river is still water; the body is still getting wet….

Last night I dreamt that I was standing in a doorway of my mothers house.

Standing in the doorway looking into the kitchen.

Standing in the doorway with my sister and we were watching our 5 small children

running,

running in a filmic slow motion kind of way

round and around the old family table

and in the dream I was thinking that these children are not my children

(your children are not children)

they are  my mothers and that she has birthed them some 30 years on

and I felt a weird jealousy that they had taken our place,

my sister and mine.

for this table was our table, this joyous abandon, our game.

this mother- our mother.

‘A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever’

Yesterday two friends came over with baskets of flag iris bulbs.

They had dug these from the earth of our old home and had brought them over

to be replanted in my sisters yard

with the hope that one day

I may dig them up again and plant them in the home which is yet to be found

(the permanent, the dreamed of, there’s no place like home, home).

The flag iris’s belonged to my gran,

she of the bush track and the apple pies and the ten kids birthed in the Daylesford dark

and she had dug them up for me not long before she died

‘the people of long ago are not remembered,

nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them’

And now I carry them from house to house.

And dig up and replant.

All the while remembering

So

I am thinking about impermanance and generations of iris bulbs

and watching my own animal desire to hang on to this moment

and this

and this

and hoping that Thich Nhat Hanh is right when he says:

‘Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving and wise’

but fearing (as I sit with baskets of bulbs at my feet) that perhaps,

instead,

this awareness will cause me to

just hold on

just that little bit tighter

to the child in my lap,

breathing her in

and out

and in

and never,

ever,

wanting to let this moment to pass

Do you struggle to be in ‘this’ moment?

Do you feel part of generations of iris’s, of all that ever was and is?

Thich Nhat Hanh

Nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments.

Heraclitus said we can never bathe twice in the same river.

Confucius, while looking at a stream, said, “It is always flowing, day and night.”

The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into

reality and obtain liberating insight. We may be tempted to say that because things

are

impermanent, there is suffering.

But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without impermanence, life is not possible.

How can we transform our suffering if things are not impermanent?

We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.

If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent.

It is because you believe things are permanent.

When a flower dies, you don’t suffer much, because you understand that flowers are

impermanent.

But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one,

and you suffer deeply when she passes away.

If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now.

Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving and wise. Impermanence is good news.

Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence,

every door is open for change.

Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.

Ecclesiastes 1:1 – 2:2

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north;

round and round goes the wind,

and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full;

to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. ^..

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?

It has already been, in the ages before us.

The people of long ago are not remembered,

nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of the elder.

I have been thinking a lot about the gift

of the elder

and I have been thinking about gaps in air

gaps carved into oxygen where once women and men of times gone by

stood and sang and wept and prayed

I have been thinking

about

death

We have just recently said goodbye to Jean Parker

She was our elder (amongst many other things) and her ashes have been thrown

into the wild Kilkunda seas

and now we stand

back here in this old bluestone church

with an empty space

in the air.

The first time I heard the term elder I thought that it was something to do with

someone

very old

but then I discovered that it was more to do with someone called to be

spiritual companion,

a pastoral friend,

a wise one who maybe  took the time to smile

wryly

at you

over a cup of tea after a particularly torrid church council meeting,

or who would come to visit after the birth of a baby with warm things knitted

or who would be there when everyone else had trundled home,

locking the old wooden doors and sweeping the porch.

Who would tell me (as minister) that ‘so and so’ wasn’t doing so well and maybe now

would be a good time to

stop

and pray.

Here at Northcote, Jean was our only elder and so now we are,

in a way,

orphaned, spinning in space

(lo I will not leave you orphaned)

we are…………………………………………………………………………………………adrift.

Jean was not just our technical elder though, she was also a knitter

of people

(Psalm 96: I have known you in your mother’s womb, I have knit you)

she was one of the ones without which no family,

no community big or small can operate.

You know the ones. The connectors, the ones who gather the threads

and pull them together and weave them up and make

something warm

that we all feel held by.

The ones who remember birthdays and hold memories and who beat

like a living heart

at the center of your circle.

You know the ones.

And so we say goodbye

to Jean

And we look around into the empty air with its carved out spaces and we wait

for lo I will not leave you orphaned..

we wait for what will come.

Have you done any knitting lately?

Have you sorted any wool?

Are you feeling the cold?

What gets in the way of you gathering up the threads?

 UN High Commission for Refugees Geneva October 2001

I feel like Icarus

falling

Icarus after the moment of pride

I feel like Icarus because I am watching ‘our’ Julia make speeches about the

‘right kind of migrants’

and because I am hearing her blow her dog whistle so loud that even those

who wanted her to be her best cant fail to turn around in shock

I feel like Icarus

Falling

Because I was so proud of her for simply being

a woman

Look I said to my little girls:

‘look’

As her red head bobbed behind the dark flank of men

‘look

that’s our new prime minister’

‘What’s a prime minister’ asks the 5 year old

‘Its like the queen’

I tell her

‘except better’

And now I am falling

There is a story, in the Gospel of John about an unnamed woman

standing by a well

It is hot

midday

no one goes to the well at midday

everyone goes in the cool of early morning when the sky is pale gold with the faded green

of wasted night

if you go to the well at midday you are the outsider

the alien, the unclean, the wrong kind of immigrant,

know your place and stand in the sun

 and this woman, this unnamed woman standing at the well,

belongs to a race of people who are bitter enemies with the Hebrew tribes to which Jesus belongs.

And so when Jesus speaks with this woman he is involving himself in a scandalous conversation.

In many commentaries much is made of the fact that this young Jewish Rabbi is breaking down boundaries of race and gender and yet

what is often forgotten

is that our unnamed woman is also a taking a risk.

In fact her risk is potentially somewhat greater than the risk of Jesu for she

is a woman

speaking to a man, a man to whom she is not wed or even related to

we know historically that severe punishment could be meted out to women who appeared to be stepping outside their cultural conventions

But this woman is brave

and she’s thirsty,

thirsty for a new way to live, a way which is not about fighting and name calling and us and them.

There is a field of study called socio-biology which tells us that human beings seem to prefer small groups

(how many truly close friends do you have?)

Considerable data from many cultures and historical time periods

indicate that the small group with which most people

feel comfortable connecting

numbers approximately eleven people, this wee clan, usually consisting of folk from ones extended family or ethnic group becomes the

In Group

and almost everyone else becomes the

Out group

Australia has shown itself to be very good at declaring who is out and who is in.

Our Refugee Family Resettlement numbers are pitifully (o pity us as we wait here in the sun) small and so people get desperate. People buy passage. People seek the water to find new life.

So here I am

Falling

And my little girls say

Julia! Julia!

everytime they see her face blazoned across the papers

and they wonder

I think

why mummy,

is no longer cheering too

Apologies for a relatively pointless blog posting – we are doing a mini blog training exercise – Daryl going online requires Daryl learning how to go online!

Peace to all.

Eliza & Daryl.

from Pot’n Kettle

when they sang and played at our Music for the Soul service.

In perpartion for this I had a chat with Carl over the phone and found myself thinking

about lilies and presence

and truth….

And I also began thinking about how there are two phrases,

which appear over and over and over again

within the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian gospels.

The first, which appears in the Hebrew scriptures is ‘Do not be afraid’

which is not surprising when you consider that there were a lot of scary stories about

floods and wild winging angels

and angry old creator gods parting oceans for fleeing slaves.

And the second phrase that appears over and over is in the gospels and it is this

‘Stay Awake’

or Wake up!

Or in other words be present to this moment here and now.

When I spoke with Carl about the music that he and Penny create

he spoke of how it’s all about being in ‘the moment’

and about truth

and about presence

presence to whatever is inside us as individuals and as community

be it worry or fear or hope or joy…

In both the contemporary readings and the reading from the gospel of Matthew about

‘considering the lilies in the fields’

there is a theme of being awake

awake to the wonder of a window as yellow as butter

and awake to a child being scooped up into waiting arms

awake to the birds of the air

and awake to the whisper from the hills.

But being awake

As we all know

Is hard

And not worrying, as we are encouraged to do in the Matthew reading

Is hard

And no matter how much we tell ourselves that

worrying is not going to do us any good or change anything

its still part of our nature to do it..

because

we love

And to love is to also be frightened

No matter how much we may meditate upon the path of non-attachment

and no matter how much we might tell ourselves that

we are, as it says in the Margaret Attwood poem,

visitors on this earth

we still

in our simple animal way

long

to hold on

Carl and Penny’s music gives us permission to be in contact with all of this complex

human stuff

It gives us permission to be in contact with our souls

and to rest easy there

for just a short while

Considering the lilies

Watching stars arise and knowing we belong

not just to our own story

but to a story much deeper than us all.

Do you think today might be a day in which you could find just one moment to

consider a lilly?

Metaphorical or springing from clod? 

One moment, one lilly…

What could get in the way for you?

And how can you clear the path?