From Fear to Faith

Moving from one place to another is much more about emotion than about packing up the things of life that hold a spot in the house.  The emotional aspect of transition is much more difficult to unpack.  After the call, then there is a process by which each person must accept the move.  In many ways, it’s like the process of dying.  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross promotes these five stages of dying which I think are the same five stages of transitional moving: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.  No one goes through these stages at the same pace; sometimes we even go back and forth between them.  But after what I perceived to be the call to the Australian Lutheran Church, I found that the transition was very much like a dying process for me.  In order for new life to occur, something old had to die.

And it was a part of me that I really wanted to keep alive.

After months of agonizing over the decision, of trying to keep it secret from the congregation that I was serving, and after hiding it from even my own consciousness, I began to get angry with my wife, my kids, the congregation, God, it didn’t matter.  The United States was where I had grown up and I needed the comfort of the American accent and the (mostly) accepted understanding that God is real and relatively well liked.  My anger at my wife was nothing that she did, but simply the uncontrollable fact that she was Australian.  It’s not like I just woke up one morning after twelve years of marriage and said to myself, “Jeez, I just realized that my wife doesn’t have the same accent as I do and maybe she would like to live near her home for a while.”  When we are asked to step away from ourselves, our first instinct, unfortunately, is to strike out at those closest to us rather than to face head-on our instinctive difficulty to trust.

I knew that it was coming and yet I resented her background because it made me dis-comfortable at that time.  For nights, she would be unable to fall asleep, eyes searching the dark ceiling until 2:12 a.m. wondering if we had made the right choice.  Then, she would succumb to sleep praying for her husband.  At 2:13 I would wake up, startled from sleep by the rampaging thoughts that we were making a mistake.  And, if we were making a mistake, certainly it was Christine’s fault because there was no way we’d be moving to Plainland if she wasn’t Australian.

At least that’s what I thought.

But I was mad at God, too.  I liked being comfortable.  When we find ourselves in dis-comfort, life becomes a black hole of self-pity and all of our energy is used trying to figure out how to escape the malaise of the inevitability of change.  I spent an inordinate amount of time saying stupid things to God like…

All right, I’ll do this for you, but you better make life even more comfortable for me when we get to Plainland. 

Or

All right, God, I’ll be the martyr, I’ll pick up the cross for my wife and move all the way to the other side of the planet, but you better change my wife so that she constantly praises me for the awesomeness that I embody for her, because I did this for her (never mind the fact that she had uprooted fifteen years before to live in my country) and you’d better send some people to the church that really appreciate me as the awesome pastor that I am and have them feel like they need to stroke my ego by telling me so.  That’s what you’d better do if I do this.

And then, God ignores my complaints, ignores my ignorance of the bigger picture, ignores my foolishness and simply says, “Go in whatever strength that you have and I will be with you.”  “In your weakness, I am made strong; we’ll do this together.”

I was weak.. 

It’s not like I recognized God’s words to be uplifting or even harbingers of joy.  It’s not as if understanding brings about happiness.  When we hear God’s call, that’s when transition begins.  My emotional detachment was moving past anger, past the stupidity of bargaining with God and into the stress of depression.  I sank deeper and deeper into myself the more photos I saw packaged and placed into large cardboard boxes.  I knew that I wouldn’t see them for four months (that’s how long it takes to transport belongings across the Pacific), but I wasn’t prepared not to see them for fourteen months (that’s how long it took us to unpack all the boxes).  I didn’t get to see the visible representations of who I was, where I’d been and what comfortable life was like (at least my fallible recollection of it).

When we finally did open the remaining boxes of our belongings, the ones with the photos in them, the amount of time to hammer nails into the walls took quite a bit longer than it should have.  It wasn’t the hardship of actually finding a stud in a wall, which never happens for me.  I usually end up frustrated by the fact that I’ve made the wall look like a Lite Brite[1]. 

With each photo that we lovingly placed on the wall or on top of a cabinet, a flood of memories washes over us and we were reminded of where we came from and what life was like.  Spending time remembering is one of the most important parts of transition.  In our contemporary Western culture, we are constantly in a rush to get to new information, fast information – forget about the actual details of the story, just let me know what I need to know in order to operate.

But the ancients didn’t have that fascination with speed.  Half of the importance of telling a story was setting the scene – remembering what that time was like, who the people were, how they behaved under pressure.  The snapshots from the Bible give us a collection of pictures of how God interacted with his people.  And with each portrait, we are given a new understanding of how God changed it all in the person of Jesus.  In studying the Bible, we begin to recognize not how much is lost in translation (although that happens) but how much is lost in transition.  What we notice in the book of Mark, where I’ll focus, is the way Jesus shapes the world view of the Jews, the gentiles, the disciples and future believers.  The greatest transition of all.

From fear to faith.

---

[1] A Lite Brite is basically a plastic box with a Christmas light in the back.  Covering the front is a hard plastic mesh where a template with a picture is placed.  After pushing colored plastic pieces through the template and the through the holes of the mesh, the light is turned on to reveal the picture in glowing form.  I got one for Christmasoncet.

Signs

When we moved to Australia from the United States, there was a large cloud of trepidation surrounding us.  It goes without saying that it was a big move, but this move was much more than a physical move – much more than just shifting our belongings from one garage to the next.

Movement is just one more part of life that we’ve grown used to.  It’s like our favorite song on the radio: we know when it starts; we know the progression of the lyrics; we know when the bridge is coming and then, of course, the final chorus.  Most of us can feel when it is time to pack up and start the next adventure.  It feels like a little fish nibbling on the edges of our souls, that the moment of transition is about to begin again and, with something akin to excited resignation,; the cardboard boxes are brought in, the wrapping tape begins to scream around the house, riiiiiiiip, the crinkling of newspapers around breakables bounces between walls and we stand wondering…

How is this ever going to work?  Were we crazy to even think about this?

            September of 2009, I asked God for clarity.  That’s my particularly pious way of saying that I asked God to be very obvious in letting me know whether a move to Australia at that moment in time was beneficial for his plan.  And when I say I wanted God to be very obvious, I mean that I wanted God to drop an atlas from the sky, a map of Australia if possible, with the page opened to the Lockyer Valley that would have a smudge of something across Plainland, Queensland.

It’s biblical, kind of.

Gideon was doing what his dad asked, no questions asked, threshing wheat and  probably daydreaming about what his friends were doing, maybe what was going to happen at the dance that weekend.  Just another workday in a long list of workdays.  His father, Joash asked him to thresh the wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites, who were the local personification of power in the area.

Then, this stranger comes and sits down under the tree and greets young Gideon.  “The LORD is with you mighty warrior.”

If I have come to know anything about the biblical narrative, two things carry great significance: location and labeling.  Especially in the Old Testament, location is always particularly important because the land is important, the placement of people says something about them.  If Egypt is mentioned, we think of oppressions, slavery and intolerance; wilderness – trials, tribulations, law; Jerusalem – holy place, God’s name resides there… you get the pictures.  Whenever angels arrive on the scene, it has been important for me to recognize exactly where that is.  The heavenly messengers often show up around trees, away from the busyness of life, somewhere in the wild parts of life.  Whether Abraham and the three angels who tell him how life will transition to fatherhood or Moses and his own superheated shrubbery, location near trees is important.  Whenever a tree is mentioned in the Bible, my spiritual ears perk up and I listen to what I know will be an important change.  An uprooting, usually from one place of comfort to a place of total dis-comfort.

Under this tree Gideon hears from the man (he doesn’t know it’s an angel at this point: in fact, the author ceases to call the man and angel, but the LORD himself – but we’ll stick to ‘man’) and greets him with distrust. 

“If (my emphasis) the LORD is with us, then why has all this happened?” Gideon asks.  If I were the LORD in this situation, I would have already disqualified Gideon for duty.  It’s apparent that he lacks the correct depth of faith to be called to do something.  “If?”  Are you joking?  The Lord should just move on to one of Gideon’s older brothers.  Please. 

           But Gideon’s question is one that we all bring forth from the deepest places of our hearts.  Gideon actually has the courage to verbalize it, to speak it out loud.  His courage is evident even in doubting that God’s strength is defeated by theodicy (how God could be all powerful and let bad things happen).  Gideon’s worldview is one of disappointment in a God powerful enough to bring the Israelites out of Egypt but, in his perception, not caring enough to deliver them from the current crisis of the Midianites. Think – What have you done for me lately?  Those words, ‘If the LORD is with us…” speak loudly to this generation.  “If the LORD is with us, if the LORD is Immanuel, then why did my parents die in a car accident on the way to churcht?  If the LORD is with us, why are children being abused, physically, verbally, emotionally by adults who have no concept of the treasure that resides within each young person?  If the LORD is with us, why is their disease, famine, tsunamis, mosquitos… you name it.  Our anger is against the presumption of an omnipotent God who withholds his power for an unknown human reason.

But Gideon is talking to the LORD.  The angel does not even bother with the question because it is a moot point.  There is no ‘if the LORD is with us’ because, literally, the LORD is sitting right in front of Gideon, underneath the tree, calling him to transition from that place of comfort, a place where he and the whole clan has accepted to second best – to be present day slaves in Midian, not Egypt.

Notice the words in Judges 6, “The LORD turned to him…”  The man/angel/LORD must have been staring into the distance as Gideon was questioning him, waiting until all the vitriol that had been boiling up under the surface, that questioning attitude of the whole community of Israel, broke like a blister.  Then, the LORD turned to him, his full attention placed upon that one person who would be a chosen one. 

“Go.”

Man, I hate that word sometimes.  Go.  Move.  Don’t stay where you are doing what you’ve always done.  Go, mighty warrior.  That’s not who you are right now, but if I call you that, it is what I see within you.  You have the qualities of the person that I want.  Even though you see yourself as the least worthy, that’s what I want.  Because when you are not full of yourself, you can be full of me, and when you are full of me, you are my strength.  It doesn’t matter if you are the youngest son in the weakest clan in the poorest part of Israel. 

            I call you. 

Now, get going.

The LORD had already noticed the strength of Gideon’s hands and the might of his heart.  His call is to actually do something now – not just complain about the current situation, but to do something about it.  How often are we caught in that place, that location, like the tree, its roots pushed down so far into the soil that there is no thought of relocation even if the stream has dried up long ago. We know that something has to be done in order for joy to be restored.  And even though we know that something has to be done we find all sorts of excuses not to be the one to do something about it.  Someone else is better qualified.  I’m too old.  I’m too young.  I don’t have enough faith.  The problem is too big to be solved.  We’ve never done it this way before. 

For many Christians, complaining is a way of life, a methodology that they’ve learned from previous entitled generations.  If we don’t like the way something is being done church, we’ll make our complaints heard, stir up trouble, then move to another church and start the process all over again.  This is the contemporary Christian way of shunning commitment.  If a church, a group or a family requires movement in another direction, it’s very easy for the 21st century human to just move physically, rather than remain emotionally to change the circumstances where they are.  Imagine if Gideon had said to the LORD, ‘You know what, you’re right, I will go – not to what you’ve called me to, but to some other greener pastures.  That will be a lot easier.’

But the LORD cared not for Gideon’s complaints.  “I will be with you, and you will strike down the Midianites.”  The promise.  I am Immanuel.  With you.  Together we will do this; we will erase this thing that is causing your slavery.  Together.

So Gideon asks for signs – three times.  Just because he is not quite sure, not quite convinced that the LORD would ask someone like him, someone with no qualifications in the eyes of most people, he asks time and time and time again.  From the fear of the first sign, the man touched the food that Gideon brought to him and set it on fire, to the gradual acceptance that God, indeed, was calling him to change from wheat-thresher to warrior-extraordinaire. 

I wanted only one of those signs.  But I wanted to pick the sign.  I wanted to tell God how he should communicate the message to me.  It was 2009 and I wanted God to speak to me, especially in a time of great turmoil, in the language of Gideon’s time.  I wanted fire coming from rock; I wanted dew and fleece; I wanted miracles.

But God doesn’t move that way as much anymore.  The calling of individuals isn’t done through the miraculous because we are now a generation resigned to skepticism.  We can rationalize anything that smacks of the incredulous.  God doesn’t speak through burning bushes or pillars of fire.  He’s become more subtle.  When we ask for a sign, it’s not usually a stop sign, but more like a street sign.  We only notice it if we are looking for it.

On the way to a funeral, Christine called me to say that her dad had e-mailed.  Not twenty minutes after I had prayed for a sign, the e-mail said that the president of the Lutheran Church of Australia had talked with Robert (my father-in-law) about perhaps moving to Australia to be a pastor. 

Can I have another sign please? 

 

Chap. 1 part deux - The Ball Player

I used to enjoy playing softball.  I enjoyed it immensely, actually; the seeming lack of athleticism required to play slow pitch softball makes it available for all ages.

Once, after watching the pitcher lift the hardball ten feet in the air which then arced down over the plate, I crushed the ball to centerfield.  Because it was a rarity for me to actually get on base, I lumbered down the first base line as fast as I could.  Thinking that I could turn this seeing-eye single into a double, I attempted to round first base. 

If I was a commentator, I would struggle to describe how anyone, in the vigorous sport of slow-pitch softball, could actually trip over the square white bag and literally slide from first base across an acre of gravel, into the outfield.  I did not receive a graceful award and as the centerfielder threw the ball to the first basemen to tag me out, he did so with forced neutrality. 

“You’d better get that looked at,” he said pointing down to my leg with the ball in the glove.

“Doesn’t hurt,” I said, but, in reality, it felt like someone had just shaved my leg with a chain saw.  I made the mistake of looking at it.  There were pieces of gravel sticking up at various intervals from my shin.

“Whatever,” the first basemen said as he threw the ball back to the ‘athlete’ that some would call the ‘pitcher.’ 

That night as I staggered into home hoping that Christine would take great pity on me, I walked past her grunting a little bit.  As she was on the computer, she didn’t pay attention to me at first.  Not wanting to be a baby about it, but realistically wanting to be treated like a baby, I stood near her, looking over her shoulder, not really caring what she was typing, but hoping that she’d notice me in my pitiful condition. 

She didn’t.  So, I moved in closer, lightly touched my leg to the desk and audibly winced.  You know, when you scrunch up your eyes, suck the air through your teeth, make a little moaning noise in the back of the throat like a cat that’s about ready to toss a furball – that’s what I did.  Finally, she noticed my immense misery.

“I knew you’d do that.  You just can’t play sports without hurting yourself.  You’re getting too old for this tomfoolery.”  It was not the response I was expecting.  I wanted that woman who, when we were first married, actually went to the softball games to cheer her hero on; I wanted that woman who, when her hero was hurt, looked horrified that her Prince Charming was in pain, and, frankly, she was shocked that her superhero could actually bleed.  I wanted that woman, who, when we were first married, encased me in her arms to make me feel better.

Not that woman whose first words were, “I told you so.”.

I backed away from her.  She took one last look at the computer screen, saved her work, shut down the computer, yawned loudly into her hand, walked into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, switched off the light and then said, “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Dang.  I knew what that meant and I shouldn’t have brought to her attention that I had been wounded in the true coliseum of middle aged athleticism.  I knew what was coming; she took one look at my leg and thought,

Yes, that’s going to seep all over our sheets tonight.

Into the bathroom she led me where she began to draw a bath.  She rolled up my pant leg to take a look at the wound.  Let’s just say she wasn’t gentle.

“Ouch,” I complained. 

“Don’t be such a baby.  Get into the bath.”  I stripped down the rest of the way making sure the rest of my clothes made no contact with the wound. 

Putting my good leg into the hot water, I gave a real wince this time.  “Does it have to be this hot?”

“Just sit down,” she said while organizing her tools.  Like a surgeon’s assistant, she had placed a towel on the floor beside her lined with the instruments of my torture.  Washcloth. Abrasive pad.  Tweezers. Antibiotic cream.  Wrap.

“Can’t we just soak it in the water a little bit?  Won’t the gravel naturally just loosen and float to the bottom of the tub?”

She gave me one of those looks that said, please- get real.  You know, the one where she tilts her head to the side, scrunches up that little place between her eyes, fake little smile playing across her face as if to say ‘I can think of a thousand other things that I’d rather be doing than playing nurse to my past-his-athletic-prime husband.’

Just as she was about to start scrubbing, I said the worst thing possible.

“You don’t want to get your clothes wet.  Don’t you think you should get in too?”

Christine wet the washcloth and threw it on my roadrashed leg.  Pain shot through me like I’d received an electric shock.  “You can do this yourself.”  So, my wife of multiple years, who had transitioned to adulthood many years before, walked out on me, her husband, who had yet to fully embrace maturity.

Sitting in the hot tub of water, staring down at the menagerie of medicinal tools, I decided to just let the water take hold.  Surely, the gravel would be ejected naturally by God’s own universal solvent.

It hurt too much to rub the cloth over it fully, so I picked out the biggest pieces of dirt, ran moving water over the rest and called it good.  I could hear Christine in the other room typing furiously away, probably editing her Facebook page to read, “Infantile husband cleaning up his leg after losing a skirmish with his age.” 

Lots of thumbs up for that one, I would guess.

 After air drying as best I could, I left the tweezers where they lay.  There was too much pus oozing from the eight inch scrape on the right side of my calf so I couldn’t see the gravel anyway.  Leaving all the other tools that Christine would have used, I went straight for the bandage.  I just needed to get that thing wrapped. 

I don’t know why I have a fascination with bandages.  They’re stretchy and so much fun to roll up.  I was actually looking forward to wrapping my leg.  Placing one end directly in the middle of the wound, I held it lightly with my left hand while pulling it tight with the right.  Then, circling the leg almost a dozen times up and down my calf, I tucked the trailing end into the bottom on the back side of my leg (I would have used the little sharp, clippy things but I’d lost them in a previous accident.)

The handiwork was well done.  The compression on the road rash felt much better and I almost whistled as I prepared for bed.

“Did you use the lubricating ointment?” Christine queried from the other room.  “If you don’t use that, the bandage is going to stick.”

“Yup,” I said.  My own body’s lubricating ointment of pus would work just fine.  What did she know anyway?

It was uncomfortable that night, but eventually sleep found me.  The next morning, I pulled back the covers and noticed that my wound had indeed seeped all the way through twelve layers of bandage and left some beautiful smudges on the sheets and quilt.  Quickly I pulled the covers back over the bed hoping that Christine would not notice the necessity for washing sheets, but, that would definitely be an alternate universe when Christine does not notice something.

I padded across the wooden floor down the hallway to the bathroom where I turned on the light.  I sat down on the toilet and began to unwrap.  What had been done ten hours earlier in relative ease became forty-five minutes of agony.  Each layer of wrap had stuck to the next and as I pulled one back after another, I literally had to bite back the scream.  Then, the last layer, almost there.  But then I remember I had put the end piece right in the middle of the wound. 

Idiot.

I looked around for a wooden stick to put between my teeth, like they do in the movies, but all that I could find was the discarded cardboard center from a toilet paper roll.  Couldn’t be choosy.  I bit down on the cardboard feeling my teeth make imprints preparing for the worst.

With a quick motion (like you are supposed to do with bandages, right?) I ripped back the final layer and with great agony I bounced around the bathroom, hopping around like a fox post-trap, mouthing the words that I desperately wanted to shout out loud.  They rang inside my head – a gong – nothing can describe pain like that. 

And then I saw Christine standing at the door, arms crossed, hair recently mussed by her pillow.  “You didn’t put on the lubricating cream, did you?”

See, that’s what it’s like to move to fifteen different houses in fifteen years and keep packing and unpacking, garage sailing and garage selling, hawking treasures that you haven’t used for years but each one of them has a memory so indelibly attached that the pain of actually seeing it walk away is greater than the pain of packing it one more time.  But when we do cull the things that we have, it is like peeling back a bandage quickly.  The moments must be lubricated by reflection and good old fashioned mourning. 

But it’s still painful. 

Especially when you have to move from comfortable to dis-comfortable.  I don’t say ‘uncomfortable’ because that carries with it this idea of the Princess and the Pea, that something small has caused a rough night of sleep.  That’s ‘uncomfortable.’  On the other hand ‘dis-comfortable,’ is not just about physical pain, but emotional, spiritual and psychological also. 

Transition causes dis-comfort because it requires we give something up, not just location, but perspective and ignorance.  This book is about life and its transitions and the things that get lost in the between.  Hopefully you will find yourself in the spaces between words as I have found balm for the memories of transition.

Lost in Transition

It's been a journey; I would guess that all people would say it and even as I begin to put metaphorical ink to paper (because that doesn't really happen anymore) it feels like the middle of a journey rather than the end.

I've been putting thoughts down for a few years on this blog, in the Lutheran magazine for bits and pieces of newspapers in small towns here and there, but this is the first really coordinated attempt to organize my headspace when it comes to how the Bible impacts my journey and how it helps me to reflect on where I've been.  So, for a while, I'll put a few excerpts in to see if some of these things should be published.

I suppose doing this is like introducing a freshly baptized baby to the church.  As Australians say:

It's all good.

 

 

Lost in Transition

 

Chapter 1.

Looking Back

 

 

It was obvious, even to the casual observer, that the man was caught somewhere in the past.  His eyes stared into an empty space somewhere on the horizon as his hand ran across the rusty object in from of him.  I’d been watching him for a while, not specifically spying, but interested in what I interpreted as his pensive thought process.  As I circled the track, headphones in my ears, listening to the newest sounds of emotional anxiety from today’s music culture, I focused on him for a quarter of a lap each time.

He didn’t make much progress.  For minutes at a time, the man would lovingly, if you could call it that, allow the object in front of him to transport him to a few decades past.  Most assuredly, he had been a farmer because each of the rusted objects in front of him bespoke of an era of agriculture age.  The last object in front of which he stopped was an old chisel plow.  He picked at the flaking brown and red rust encasing iron.  Time seems to do that to everything:  well, time, air and water.  They change everything.

As he picked at the plow, the inner conflict was like a battlefield.  His heart fought for the memories that brought him so much contentedness while his body feinted and thrust against the inevitability of the reality that is encroaching age.  Oh, to be young again.  To feel the wind in my hair as I sat on the tractor that pulled this plow.  To smell the earth turned once again offering a fragrance of the inevitability of new life.  To see with sharp eyes my wife and children working alongside me, to hear their laughter, their cries, the simplicity of life that seems to be squashed by each successive year.  How I wish to be back there again.  How I wish…

As I watched the man, his whole demeanor was encased in recapturing something lost in the transition from youth to adulthood to old age.  He moved to the next farm implement, his green collared shirt billowing over his o-so-short-shorts.  Even his wardrobe told me that his best years were in the 1980’s.  He wore thongs and a well-worn hat that had seen a thousand days in the baking Australia sun.  He was every man or every woman who has ever reached the subjective identity of old age.  His transition is the same journey that all people long to have and yet with each transition, each movement to something new, each growth area, there is a sense of loss that settles like a layer of dust over the soul. 

It is something we all deal with in our search for happiness and contentedness.  How do we deal with the next step of life? How do we cope with all that seems to be lost in transition?

 

In our fifteen years of marriage, Christine and I have moved houses fifteen times.  Like most of the gen Xers or those born later, a constancy in change becomes part of our existence.  We revel in the fact that this year is not like the last; the space we previously occupied retains memories, but the current location is preferable in its presentness.  Before each one of the moves, we have tended to minimalize our domestic footprint:  We hold garage sales so that we won’t have to cart all thirty-three thousand cartons of goods (or bads depending on what we’re carting) that we’ve collected over the years to shift to the next garage.  With each successive move and corresponding garage sale, it has been interesting to watch which things we keep and how we decide what is important for retaining.

Christine is hesitant to throw out anything that has memories attached to it (which is pretty normal) but the older it is, the more it has attached itself to our collective married soul.  And, if we were to even think about setting it out on the cracked pavement of the driveway, it would be painful – very painful. 



Turklets

Last weekend I was asked to present at a conference in South Australia called Emerge.  My topic was about how to move kids, youth and adults from the kiddie pool of faith all the way to the deep end full of difficult questions and murky bottoms.  As I looked around at the room, I was pleased to see that there were fifty-five teens and twenty-somethings.  I was the only one even close to being bald.  What a great feeling.  The fact that all those young leaders had gathered together to invest in the future of Church was invigorating, but I was left with the fact that most people were interested in how to use technology to enhance faith - my own presentation, laced with ideas and opportunities for children's and youth ministry, was not as popular.  I guess it's not surprising because most people would like to see how we can use computers, youtube, Twitter, and all sorts of digital expressions of our inmost desires to encapsulate the future of the church.

So for two of my sessions, I watched both people enter the room.  Fortunately, they were wonderful expressions of the church, both seeking rejuvenations for youth ministry and ideas for overcoming the stagnancy of the contemporary church mired in mid-20th century paradigms for youth ministry.  I asked them why they were in my group when a the digital magnificence was right down the hall.  Their answers fed right into my talk:  they were tired of leading children's and youth ministry programs using the same tired programs.

Emerge - It's an emergency.

Our church is on the verge of flatlining.  The bleeps and blips of a beating heart are fewer and farther between and the church is floating somewhere between this world in the next hoping for the next shock that will wake it up but not ready for the pain of the jolt.  What is that jolt, you might ask?  It's the Sunday morning 7:30 a.m. service that hasn't seen a child in eleven months.  It's the 9:30 service that hasn't had a baptism in six; it's the 11:00 service that has exchanged reverence for relevance.  It's the understanding that most church buildings, in the next twenty years will be museums and mausoleums because our ecclesiastical myopia is greater than any LASIK surgery can fix.  In short, we've got not kids and when we've got no kids, we've got no future.

Perhaps I'm looking at the darker spectrum and probably many who read this will say "We can't give up our traditions for the sake of being contemporary.  Why can't we go back to the way we used to be?  Why don't people come to Christ in the same way they did forty years ago?  Why can't God bring us back to the way we used to be?"

It's a lot like the book of Lamentations - yeah, that book that no one ever reads but probably should.  Notice the author's beginning sentence:  "How deserted lies the city once so full of people... (verse 1)  In the days of her affliction and wandering Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers of old (verse 7)... All her people groan as they search for bread; they barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive... (verse 11)"  The author is looking out over Jerusalem after the destruction of the nation and wishes, wishes beyond all hopes, that we could return to the way things used to be.  It sounds a lot like the contemporary church - wishing with the greatest of prayers that somehow we could return to full houses, the treasures of the church held tightly to the chest and the Bread of Life fed all people in the church building each and every week.

Oh, if that were only possible.  But then I looked in the very last verses of the book of Lamentations and I was shocked to find the author's deepest prayer:  "Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old."  It's not that we go back to those days, but that we are returned to God - we are renewed in His life and His love in one of His places.  Restore us to new life, including youth in the arms of the Church.

It all comes down to the gospel, doesn't it?  That we couldn't be returned to God until he came and got us himself.  He literally had to force feed us the good news so that we could take our medicine and learn to eat again.

When I was younger, my parents raised a lot of poultry, a lot of chickens, a flock of ducks (or whatever you call that) and a gaggle of turkeys.  Every year, the young chicks, ducklings and turklets - or that's what I called them last weekend because I didn't know what a little turkey was called (I looked it up, though.  A baby turkey is called a 'poult.') - would arrive through the mail and with squeakings and twirpings we would unwrap the box to see, and smell, the new arrivals.  By and large, poultry were pretty stupid.  Without their grown ups teaching, they had no idea what they should have been doing when they arrived at our house.  So, my dad would traipse his children out to the old garage where the poultry feeders were and one by one we were allowed to take individual turklets in our hands and cram their faces in the medicated feed and the water pans.  It may seem like turklet abuse, but unless we actually force fed them, they would die for lack of knowledge of how to eat.

I smile now when I hear students at school say to me, "I hate religion and I hate religion at this school.  It seems like they are always trying to cram it down our throats."

Yup.  I nod silently.  We are.  We have to.  If we don't, these young pullets will have no idea how to survive in this spiritless world.  Even if they are mad and they spit it out, or they sputter coming back with the Water of Life, we've done our job by showing them where the medicated food is - the stuff that will heal them and bring them newness of life.

Peter, the disciple, had this experience most closely.  After the resurrection, Peter encountered Christ three times in rapid succession, and perhaps because of his denial, Peter had a guilty conscience.  We aren't told specifically in the scriptures, but Jesus asks him a pointed, pertinent question in John 21: 15.  Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these.  I can imagine Jesus waving his hand to the other six disciples munching on their feast of fish.  But Jesus' question carries much more weight in the original language - Simon, son of John, do you truly (agape) unconditionally love me, no bars held, more than these. 

Peter's answer is revealing.  Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I love you.  But Peter does not answer with the same kind of love.  His response is that of (philos) brotherly love, or fondness.  Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I am very fond of you.  What a difference there is in those two statements if we don't look at the original texts.  Jesus asks for an affirmation of the unconditional, Peter can only respond with the ersatz version of Jesus' love. 

Thankfully, though, Jesus does not deny Peter for the three times he asks that question.  Perhaps fondness (philos) is the extent of the love we humans can achieve.  Perhaps unconditionally loving Jesus is a pipe dream which is why the unconditional love had to be offered by God as a substitute for our fondness.

But somewhere in the midst of Peter's confession of fondness and our own cultural understanding of a Buddy Jesus, we find the call from Jesus to follow him.  And his first call to mission is...

Feed my lambs.

Jesus doesn't first say, "Feed my sheep, or take care of the older ovines first.  Make sure that they are fed and watered and have nice soft bedding."  His first priority is to feed the lambs - the little ones - lead them to the feed, hand feed them the life giving food that will carry them into the future.  He leads them beside whatever stream might be available before they thirst to death. 

Feed my lambs.

There is no greater mission for our contemporary Church than to feed the lambs, the littlest ones, the ones that Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." 

Bring us back to yourself, Lord and help us to feed your turklets.

An Age Old Question

Strangely, as I look at the blog and the statistics that come with it, I find that this is the one hundredth post that I've written.  I would guess that those who post things every day on their blog, or who are perpetually infatuated with posting something on Facebook would say, 'whoopee for you' but I feel strangely in the mood for reminiscence - not just over my life; but over the blog.  I've posted about the Dukes of Hazard, a bull in a China Shop, a fishing trip and many more things and each one has certain feelings attached to it.  But feelings seems to only go so far as you can hold on to them: they never seem to last.  Like holding your hands underneath a waterfall, you can only grasp the water for an instant before it is gone.

So, apropos to the Mother's Day celebration, which strangely enough has to actually have attention called to it by giving it a 'day', I thought I attempt to answer one of the great mysteries of the world.  Why do the English (and many of their commonwealth nations) call their mother's 'mum,' or incredibly, 'mummy?'  The first part of the word is 'mum' which in turn means silent or unwilling to talk - which is not always the case...

A few weeks ago our family decided to watch one of the movies in the series The Mummy.  The series is built on the wide shoulders of Brendan Fraser who many women find mildly friendly to the eyes.  The real star of the movie is, though, the man who plays the Mummy, Arnold Vosloo.  That's a really scary name, isn't it?  Anyway, Vosloo's character finds himself mummified alive and when he is raised to life he can transform himself into many different things - an intense desert storm, stinging with heat; a torrent of water; an ailurophobe (one who has an irrational fear of cats).  Mr. Vosloo is so multidimentional that he can be in two different places at once.

Kind of like mothers.  Maybe this is why English mother's are called mummies?  Even when they are seemingly wrapped in details of daily life, trying to gather everything that they need to keep life going for the family, they still seem to be able to see everything before it occurs.  That's why 'mummies' always say, "I knew that would happen."  In common speak, "I told you so." 

Infuriating it is, at times, that mothers always seem to be right.  Father knows best?  Rubbish.  Mummy only lets father get his way so she can say "I told you so."  There are few things more pleasing in life for mummies than to tell their husbands that they have strayed a little off course and are now suffering for their decisions. 

Mummy's also have the ability to bring life out of death.  Not just gardening, either.  Mother's seem to resurrect relationships that have crumbled; they still reach out in the midst of a the sword stroke between parent and child - they are always the first to extend the hand.  They have limitless places in their hearts for their children even when those children break out of their childhood to become adults often capsizing the family ship in the process.  But mummies throw the life ring overboard, and if that fails, they send the life raft, enter it themselves and row out to the drowning child sacrificing life and limb for the one who struggles.  That's a Mum.

Why call them mother's?  Well, I guess it comes down to spelling.  The word is 'MOther' not 'MUther' but nobody really pays attention to spelling nowadays.  So, I guess that MOm is about being Mo - more than a woman - Wonderwoman, I guess.  Almost thirty years ago, the television show occurred that rocked the airways and brought serious drama to seven o'clock hour on Friday nights .  Lynda (yes, that's spelled correctly) Carter brought her character, Diana Prince, to our eyes, dressed skimpily in a faux tube top, the tiniest of shorts, gold crown and red knee high boots.  As accessories she sported a nice set of golden wristbands.  She too was friendly to the eyes.

When I was growing up, my mom was similar to Wonderwoman apart from the getup.  I think my mother would probably die from embarrassment if asked to wear Diana Prince's shorts and the crown?  Not likely.  My mother has shied from the spotlight all of her life, but what she does hold in common with Wonderwoman is a magic lasso and an invisible jet.  It's no joke that my mother (and probably all mothers out there) can tell at a moments notice when their children are lying to them.  They slowly wind up the golden cord keeping one eye on the children:  Who tracked the dog poo onto the carpet?  Was it you, Reid? and she'd slowly circle the lasso of truth around my shoulders - no escape.  An invisible jet, you ask?  My Mom could arrive unannounced, anywhere in the house, surreptitiously casting an upraised eyebrow on the current state of the bedroom, or find towels on the floor of the bathroom because she was silent as an owl on Halloween.  My mother also seemed to have those Wonderwoman bracelets.  You know, the ones that can deflect bullets and stuff.  I don't know if my mother really let us see that she was down:  sure there were times when she struggled, especially as she battled through cancer, fighting the battle and defeating the enemy - but she didn't really let us know.  She was always hopeful, always faithful, always pleasant even in the midst of adversity.

She was Mo.  Wonderwoman.

She still is. 

Last night Christine and I were asked to perform for Relay for Life which is a fundraising event to make headway in the fight against cancer.  As we climbed the stage (which was the back end of an open semi trailer - it is the country after all) our eyes were pointed towards the grandstand where the event coordinators had strung a group of lights that were supposed to spell Hope but because the bottom part of the 'P' was out it spelled 'Hooe'.  Hooey.  That's what most people think of hope - it's just a few burnt out lights from Hooey.  When the going gets tough, hope takes the getaway train.  But mother's thrive on hope.  Their hopes and dreams are surrounded by a halo of faith that their children will take what they've learned from their parents and implement it in their lives to become the future of goodness in a world sorely lacking in hope.

The Bible is threaded with faithful mums and moms; I can't think of a bad one in the midst.  There are a few fathers that leave a little to be desired.  Rachel, Naomi, Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah, and, of course, Mary.  Any woman described as a mother has certain characteristics of giving, sacrifice, hope and faithfulness.  If only we would read the scriptural witness and find in it the beauty of the mother I think we would again find ourselves in great wonder at the women of faith.

So, is it 'mum' or 'mom?' 

Who cares.  They are both wonderful.

The Paddlewheel

About ten years ago, when I was in seminary, my parents-in-law came to visit us.  We lived in Dubuque, Iowa, not known for much except being the 'Jewel of the Mississippi' and a riverboat casino or two nestled in the port area.  Dubuque is settled at the confluence of three states: Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois - all of which are regularly passed over by travelers flying through the air.  During Robert and Judith's trip, we did what tourists do...

We went on the paddleboat.

A paddleboat is an amazing piece of engineering.  Ensconced in the stern of the boat is a large wooden wheel which, when idle, looks a lot like a hamster exercise apparatus, but when in motion, it thwump thumps as the steam engine turns the wheel propelling the large, ungainly ship forward.  The day we boarded was a beautiful early autumn afternoon, or at least that's what my recollection is.  The Spirit, the steamboat on which we would cruise up and down the river, glistened like a white diamond in the Port of Dubuque.  One could almost feel the vibration of the steamer as it lay tethered to the port like a stallion ready to break from the gates.

We paid our money for the boarding pass to a bemused salesperson enjoying the accents floating in front of her glass window and headed down the walkway ticket in hand.  The Spirit rocked slightly in the waves and as we boarded, there was a sense of entering a piece of living history.  Certainly, if anyone wanted to get anywhere fast, one would not choose the Spirit.  We were not in the mood to go fast only to take a gander at one of the world's biggest rivers.  With 29 locks and dams on the 2,320 miles (or 3,784 kilometers), a full length cruise of the river would take weeks, but ours sounded suspiciously like a famous comedic television show... "For a three hour tour.  A three hour tour."

There was no Gilligan, no actress, millionaires or professors (as far as I know), only a dozen or so slow adventurers walking quickly to the front of the boat to prepare for the launch. 

As we pushed off from the dock, the steamboat made its gradual way into the current.  Flowing north to south, the Mississippi is so large it doesn't even appear as if it's moving.  At it's widest point, near Lake Winnibigoshish in Minnesota - almost eleven miles across - the Mississippi is seemingly just one large mosquito factory, but near Dubuque on the southern side of Lock and Dam number 11, the River is about two miles wide (3.2 kilometers).  Two bridges span the Mississippi here carrying automobiles from Iowa to both Wisconsin and Illinois.

The Spirit began its way upstream northward toward the lock.  Moving slowly, we tried to see new things, but the paddle steamer is not really a stallion, more of a thirty-year-old sway back horse with bunions.  The girls were excited to feel the wind on their face; my in-laws were enjoying the river, but I wanted to see the wheel.  I mean, that's what differentiates a steamboat from an outboard, right?  So, I went to the stern, aft, if you will, as if I were any kind of mariner at all, and stood in touching distance of the paddle.  It's noisy - really noisy - the water sloshing between the slats, the engine echoing and rumbling beneath the water.  If I looked at the water long enough, it seemed as if the water was just turning in the same place; it appeared as if it were a treadmill.  It was only when I looked backwards that I could tell we were moving at all.  It was then that I could see that indeed time was rolling on and where I used to be is no longer where I am.

That paddlewheel reminds me of the time we just spent with my parents.  Just before the school holidays, my mother and father, Victor and Diane of Rake, Iowa (about three and a half hours from Dubuque) flew across the Pacific Ocean to visit us here in Australia.  As we were growing up, it would have been inconceivable for me to think that my parents in their mid 60's would ever travel the world, much less fly on an airplane for 27 hours.  The farthest we traveled when we were younger was Disney World (a requisite for most families, I think) which turned into a two week affair of camping in the hottest sun in the world which, back then, seemed like one of Dante's circles in the inferno, but now seems to be a place where a lot of laughter resides.

So they arrived at Brisbane International Airport bags in hand and bags under the eyes.  They were very excited to see our daughters as they haven't seen them for over three years except on the two dimensions of a Skype filled computer screen.  I think they knew that our girls would be taller, but I think they were surprised how much they had changed.  When we left the United States, they were little girls and now they were very much the title of Louisa May Alcott's book - Little Women.  Taking their bags from their hands, Greta and Josephine led them out the door to our car in the parking lot.  The warm sun that greeted Mom and Dad seemed to be a fine change from the frigid winter that had frozen their limbs for four months.  As we drove down the highway to the Gold Coast where we would be vacationing on the beach for a few days, I snuck glances at them, trying to see if they had changed physically.  For the most part, kids always remember their parents as they were when they were younger, or at least I do, or they remember their parents at the age they currently are.  It seems like yesterday that my dad had a full head of blond hair and my mother's dark brown hair had no streaks of gray in it. 

In three years they had not changed that much: my dad has a little less hair than I do but the smile that pushes his cheeks up is still there.  Although there are creases around their eyes, crows feet where there used to be soft skin, they have the appearance of church elders now rather than young parents trying to drag their pre-teens to worship on a Sunday morning. 

They look wise and yet they sound the same.  They arose early in the mornings struggling desperately with jetlag.  Like a tug o' war competition, they were losing against the Sandman.  But there were benefits to getting up before dawn.  Making their cups of instant coffee, they would sit out on the veranda overlooking the ocean waiting for Helios to pull the sun up over the Pacific Ocean - in the east.  My parents had difficulties turning their minds to the fact that the Pacific is the east coast. 

As the first rays penetrated the ripples of the ocean, you can almost hear the earth sigh with wonder at God's magnificent idea of dawn.  They sipped and slurped, chatted in low voices trying not to wake the rest of us, watching a sight they rarely get to see - the majesty of the ocean.  Dawn is a time of low voices rumbling in wonder, isn't it?

When I awoke one of those first mornings, I watched them from the inner recesses of the apartment unit.  It was quite apparent that they still enjoy time together, sharing moment of miracles that off pass the busy by.  I was proud of them.  That sounds weird, doesn't it? to be proud of your parents, but when you are young, it's far too easy to be wrapped in your own egotistical blanket to think how wonderful it is to have parents who care to spend time together, who are trying to teach you how to be a married adult.  They've been married almost forty-three years.  That baby boomer generation will be one of the last to experience the golden wedding anniversary, I think.  It's becoming extinct the more our current generation dismisses the concept of commitment.

After our time at the Gold Coast, we moved home to Gatton for a few days preparing for the physical part of their journey.  We traveled by car nine hours to Carnarvon Gorge where we would be camping for a few days. 

Well, camping and hiking.  We didn't mean to do it, but I think we almost killed them the first day of hiking.  As we started out in a light mist, waterpacks fastened to our backs and backpacks full of munchies, Mom and Dad were excited for the opportunity to hike.  Even though they struggled up the first hill (and later my mother would say that she didn't think she was going to make it to the end - or even survive it for that fact), their voices were flushed with joy to be outdoors.  After stopping at various photographic opportunities and making the U-turn at six miles, their voices became strangely silent; their backs a little hunched over and for some reason my mother kept taking off her shoes to rub her feet.

We all get older and even as I feel my own forty-one-year-old body not recover quite as quickly, I really don't know what it's like to be twenty-five years older.  I don't know what they feel but I could guess what they were thinking.

What in the world have we done?  We are six miles away from camp crossing slippery rocks and streams, wet shoes and feet?  I will be happy with just breathing by the time we are done.

But they didn't complain - they don't complain, really, ever.  Not once did they say, "Ooh, my back hurts," or "Can we please stop?  I think my spleen is about to splinter."  They just plodded along step after step, mile after mile and it was only when we looked back, that we could honestly see that we were moving.  Kind of like that paddlewheel.

That night, even in the midst of extreme exhaustion, which probably added to the hilarity of the moment, my parents laughed until they cried telling stories of yesteryear, when their own children were growing up.  It was dark.  I couldn't see well,  but it almost made a pseudo home movie generated only by the spoken voices of my parents.  All those memories passing swiftly in the river of time pushed back in swirly memories bubbling here and there.  I think this is what I relished most about their time with us.  All the memories shared in their own voices.

We spent a great two weeks together, but the day came too quickly; we looked up and saw that we had already made it to the end of this journey and I drove with them to the airport.  Their bags were packed, lighter than when they arrived, souvenirs placed in bags and on heads.  They were a little quieter unsure what the future would hold, as were we.  After pulling up to the curb at the airport, I unloaded their bags while they hugged the girls goodbye.  My mother kissed me on the cheek and told me that she loved me; my father hugged me - hard - or that's how I remember it now, slapping my back a few times like men do - and then we drove away.  It was that fast.

There are many traumatic moments in life that we always remember - the first time we stay overnight at someone else's house when we are children, shuffling through the fear of separation, sleeping little but enjoying the time.  The last time we stay at our parents' house as children - leaving for college with the bags full of stuff that we accumulated by our parents' goodwill.  The last time our parents' see me as an individual - on my wedding day - when I became someone else's. 

Then, when our parents leave.

It's traumatic when it feels as if they are not near.  Some parents leave slowly, holding on to their kids sometimes disrupting the flow into adulthood; some parents leave too soon or even suffer the incredible agony of leaving the memories behind when the worst of diseases, Alzheimer's hijacks the mind.  Parents leave when they pass on; there is a vacant space where the vortex of youth and adulthood converge. 

But the trauma remains.  The departure is difficult whether slow or fast, but to have them share their memories, even if they fade slowly into the present, is one of the greatest gifts given to any son or daughter.  When the paddlewheel slows down and it seemed that life stands still, reflect, if you can, on the gift that parents are.  Then, when they leave, you are left with the swirling, bubbling, visceral reminder that life is short, and time is forever.

Enjoy your parents and your kids.

Commiseration

Two weeks ago, after our morning worship service at school, I was helping reset our worship area back to classrooms.  As we have concertina sliding doors that slide from the walls to the middle in our creative arts block, they need to be locked into position so that noise is kept to a minimum and the doors don't swing creating distractions in the three classrooms. 

It had been a frustrating Friday morning already and my mind really wasn't on what I was doing, but as we were closing the last set of doors I began sliding them in the bent position toward the middle.  Unfortunately, the young boy on the other side of the door didn't see my fingers in the metal caps on the edges of the door and he pushed.

Whammo.  As I wasn't even aware until that moment that my fingers were in the crease, the pain was exquisite.  Think of the time when you were doing carpentry and you hit your finger instead.  Can you feel that?  Now, on that same finger, jam a toothpick under the nail as far as you can go...

That's what it felt like to lose the end of it.  I'm not sure how many nerve endings actually have their terminus in the tip of one's finger, but it must be in the billions.  I pulled my finger from the crack and unfortunately found that the tip of it was still in the doors, but I had to get out of there because, well, my stumpy finger was bleeding everywhere. 

People do strange things when they are in shock, I think.  My brain was overloaded with input, my nerve endings were shouting at me, "YOU IDIOT!"; my finger was throbbing already and leaking on my shirt and all that I could think of was...

Where's my bag?  I've got all my books in it.  I don't want to leave that behind. 

Weird, huh?  I wasn't concerned at that point about my tipless index finger, only the fact that I didn't want my school bag to go missing.  My friend Nikki, who is a teacher at Faith, noticed the gore and said, "Maybe you should go to the nurse."  She's smart like that. 

So I dragged myself across campus, satchel hung over my shoulder (I found it) and headed to the nurse's office like a hunchbacked Igor.  Some kids tried to stop me a few questions, but evangelism takes a back seat, I think, during amputations. 

Here I sound like a big baby, and this whole thing is really just a case of 'manpain', because as I write this (without using my left index finger) the skin has begun to grow back over the piece of my finger that was unceremoniously removed.  Eventually, it may not look any different than it used to but on that day, I felt the pain and that was just okay.

What I've found, though, over the last two weeks is that it really isn't a rarity for one to lose a section of one's finger.  In fact, almost every person I've met either has trimmed a digit or knows someone who has lost a section of their hand and they've told me about it.  Whether cases of hunting, carving, squishing, cutting - it doesn't matter - everyone has a story about 'I remember the day when my hand  used to look normal.'

Last Sunday I went to a different church way out in the middle of the country.  The first person to greet me extended his hand.  Sure enough, two finger swallowed by a story of pain.  When I tell people that I caught my finger in a door, they wince for a second, but in some ways, it would be a better story like my friend Skippy.  His real name is Nigel but no one calls him that  Skippy took off the top of his finger the night before his wedding, he found the piece, just like I did, but they put his back on.  He told the story with all the gruesome details and I felt like we new each other's pain.  Every person who has lost a finger is now part of the club - the Stump Club, I guess.  And whenever we get together, we commiserate in the pain of not having the same kind of grasping abilities as we used to.  That's what commiseration really is, isn't it?  Sharing a common story of pain.

I see it all the time, and unless you're part of the club, you can't really understand.  Women who have had children talk about their birthing experiences seemingly every single time they meet and usually, they, just like the boys, try to outdo each other with the painful bits.  They look at us over the bridges of their nose, disdainfully shaking their heads and roll their eyes.  Even a lady at the office, after seeing my finger misery said, "Try having a baby."

No thanks. 

You have to be part of the club to understand.  In order to be part of the healing process, you really have to be there.  So each person that shakes hands with me with parts missing, I can nod in some kind of conspiratorial manner, wink and say, "I'm part of the club too."

But the whole idea of commisery got me thinking the other day - We always talk about how God doesn't understand the pain that we go through, or at least we think about it, and sometimes we speak in platitudes about how God knows our pain because Jesus suffered on the cross, but that's the most difficult thing I struggle with sometimes:  I know that Christ suffered pain on the cross and God knows what it's like to lose life, but where is God in my suffering now?  Where is God in the pain of knowing that even trivial loss for me, like not being able to play guitar for a few months, is like losing a big part of my joyful life.

Fortunately, I think it's this very fact that God sends people to commiserate with us, those that have suffered in similar ways, is how we heal quicker.  It's the reason we have Alcoholics Anonymous, cancer survivor groups, loss of a child groups - hundreds of gathering that occur everywhere for the purpose of commiseration.  Because when loss is shared by those who have gone through it before, new life is found. 

Shared grief equals common healing. 

I thank God for the people who have commiserated with me the last two weeks.  I know that I am not alone.

Maybe you could find someone with whom you share a common grief?  Maybe you'll find new life in commiseration.

Joy

On the day of the service, Carl texted me at 8:00 a.m.

Make sure you watch out for ‘roos. 

There are lots of things I'm more afraid of on Australian roads than kangaroos.  Although they can cause quite a bit of damage, kangaroos are easier to avoid then the potholes the size of Chicxulub crater which appear almost overnight.  (Chicxulub is just off the Yucutan Peninsula.  It is thought that an asteroid impacted there millions of years ago almost causing the extinction of all life on earth.  We have those appear in the roads every time it rains.)

With eyes peeled I drove the speed limit while thinking about Carl Thiele’s regularization service.  Deciphering the nuances of having a regular pastor could lead in all sorts of non-necessary directions, but I thought about Carl and his own journey, of living with and through God’s call; how we all have different sensory organs with regards to God’s voice, how we experience joy and lament along the way.

I arrived at the church a little early and took in the surroundings.  Surrounded by a vast openness, a blankness in the landscape if you will, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Rosevale looked bleak against the dripping sky.  Various mud-spattered cars and pickups were parked in the ankle deep mud outside the fence of the church.  I reached in for my umbrella and immediately left it where it was.  What difference did it make if my shirt was wet when my socks were full of mud?

Greeted by Pastor Carl and the Bishop of Queensland, Noel Noack, I settled in for the service.  Blanketed in silence, at first I was uncomfortable: my life is so full of sound that silence is unnerving.  But after a few minutes, I settled back into the painful pews and awaited the words to flow over me. 

Quiet.  Silence.  Calm.

And then they came in during the first hymn – a grandmother, three daughters (I assumed) and five granddaughters all in beautiful dresses. 

I smiled as the service progressed; the confession, the readings, the Psalm, each designed to heighten the intensity of God’s interaction with us, but what I noticed was that the length of the service also turned the dial on the little girls’ decibel levels.  They were fantastic.  Then, as Bishop Noel stood to give his address on the specificity of pastor’s calls, one of the girls stood up by the baptismal font and began to dance her little heart out.  With hands in the air, she jigged and jived, singing whatever tune was available and as her mother did the inevitable fingers to the mouth…

Shhhhhhhh!!!!

The little girl responded in words that topped them all.  “It’s okay, Mommy, I’m wearing my knickers!”

Most were intent on the sermon, but I was captured by the joy exhibited by the font, the selfless abandon of a little one done with silence, maybe even tired of incomprehensible words, and she couldn’t help but lift her hands by the Font of Life and sing… “Life is beautiful and it doesn’t even matter what I’m wearing.” 

Or not wearing for that fact.

I could use a good dance by the font remembering the saving grace in word and water of baptism.  A little more joy in life would do me good even as I dodged cows, ‘roos, peacocks(?!) and cane toads on the way home. 

Have you found the joy of the Lord lately?