out and about with Rob

Spammers on my Blog site get up my nose!!

It’s about the right to be ourselves without the insipid interference of pathetic people whose computers troll the internet unbidden and think they can do what they want to without being challenged.  Well, like the challenge to the USA’s interferring pat-down processes for travellers, I’m over it.  Not that any Spammer will ever read this as they’re not real people!  But I feel a bit better that I can at least write and tell them they’re rubbish!!!

And while I’m at the complaint stage of my day – why does Coke think they can tell me that my Christmas happiness is in opening a bottle of their sugar-ridden product.  Wise up shoppers.  Let’s spend less this Christmas, and give more time to those around us instead of thinking presents come from our wallets in the form of consumer goods.

I met a guy in the mall yesterday. He was excited. And rightly so because his brand new business venture was under way. I stopped to talk to him. He started to tell me the story of his life – do I have one of those tell him all faces? Anyway, the gist was that he believes that God somehow moved little mountains to help his business get going. Against all the odds, somehow doors opened and unexpectedly the finance fell into place and his hard work and research had a chance to make fruit. Goos stuff. I was excited on his behalf. Until he told me how much God had done by opening the doors. I said nothing, but inwardly I was groaning. God gets attributed to all sorts of things – but usually only when it goes our way. God is apparently so concerned with my little finances that all sorts of things start to happen in my favour. I’m sorry, but that’s not my God. What would this guy have attributed the opposite response of the bank to? Is God a way of expressing that my best hopes and aspirations seem to be happening for me? I admit to real problems with that kind of God interpretation. It’s simply a reflection of our self-driven consumer/consumed society it seems to me. It’s a far distance from the biblical world view that so many fundamentalists espouse in theory, but actually don’t in fact. It’s about me, me, me. I don’t happen to have that idea as central to God. Another reason I cannot be a fundamentalist! Yet another one. I’m still excited for him, and wish his venture well. But God opening his financial doors. I think not.

I have lived through many experiences in my life, but the earthquake on Saturday morning was by far the most traumatic so far.  7.1 on the Richter Scale is huge.  The noise of the earth moving, the shaking, and the realisation after it didn’t stop that this was very serious.  We checked the 6 people in the house.  All well.  The cat went missing for 2 days, but came home and now resumes his seat on the chair in the lounge.  But he jumps, as do we all at the slightest unusual noise or tremor. The aftershocks continue to traumatise the city, and cause more damage.  Our pool is now a pile of muddy water slowly draining into the earth.  But we are all well, and our house was not one of those devastated. We still have a house to live in.  That can’t be said for lots in Christchurch.

Out of this shaky experience has come many realisations – we have friends and family all over the world who are concerned for us and made contact.  Some phoned, some emailed, some wrote on Facebook.  The media culture helped us to find a community to hold hands with very quickly.  Believe me, it helped.  We talked with our neighbours, shivering in the early morning cold air as we tried to see who had damage.  We found ourselves talking to strangers in the street, asking and being asked about our welfare.  The experience is only beginning.  Now we have a first hand sense of what happens after the TV cameras and reporters have gone home and there is still no power or water or the house is still uninhabitable.  It’s not fun!  But the contacts and the work and concern of others has been extraordinary and we appreciate it so much.  Thanks!

Yesterday.  Late afternoon.  Needing coffee and time to talk to my wife.  By now the usual coffee haunts are closed or not friendly as they clean up for the day so we end up at the Mall.  Our least favourite place, but at least coffee is available.  As we line up, the guy in front of us is dressed like a clown.  This is not usual!  He talks to us through his clown makeup.  Again, this is not usual.  We each give our coffee order and go sit down except the clown disappears off into the mall somewhere.  As we’re telling each other about our reasonably not very good day, the clown reappears asking how our day has been.  We tell him exactly how it has been.  He smiles (as clowns do), and says something like , well I’ll cheer you up.  Out of a pocket he produces a sponge rubber rabbit, puts it on Dawn’s head and says something about a grey hare (hair).  I point out that the hare is brown.  Oops.  But the clown redeems the situation with aplomb.  From anotyher pocket he finds a long balloon.  Purple.  He assures Dawn it’s her favourite colour.  The clown is psychic!  It is.  He probably only has one colour.  But I’m a believer!!  He twists and blows blows and twists the purple balloon, bows, and presents her with a little flower, stalk and all.  Magic.  And made the crap day a heap better.  We left smiling.  Thank God for a clown.

I’ve been wondering lately how come we end up thinking about life the way we do.  I am not a fundamentalist even though I am often asked to speak about the characteristics of fundamentalism.  I’m not even sure how to characterise where I am on a spectrum of theological pondering about God.  Free thinker maybe.  Influenced by my contacts with Japanese buddhism, certainly.  Part mystic, part silence freak, part nature lover.  I work every day with people who tell me their pain, and somehow expect me, not to solve it, but to receive it and keep it for them so they don’t have to carry it.  I’m paid to think, and to help the St Ninians congregation grapple with real-life things about God.  I am sometimes accused of having a good time!

So how come I’m wired the way I am?  I’m sure there are heaps of answers.  Genetics, life opportunities, relationships etc.  To be honest I don’t usually care about the question, except when I am asked how come by a fundamentalist who wants to proclaim to me that the literal interpretation of the Bible is crucial to my life.  It isn’t!  I trust the power of myth above the literalist reading of scared texts.  I often think it’s my celtic heritage at work in modern NZ.  I think of my nana who is such an important person in my life, still, even though she died in the 1960′s.  She would talk to me about big things.  She’d take me for walks and kick stones.  She taught me to be open about life.  She is my heritage in so many ways.  I once confessed to one of my cousins that I talked to nana.  There was silence for a time.  She then laughed and told me she did too.  So there it is.

Fundamentalism is not for me.  An open life is my commitment.  Myth is my lodestar.  I travel in weird places, and am delighted to work with a superb group of creative people who draw others to them by their life and liveliness.  How come I’m like I am?  No idea really!  But I’m not about to change.

I meet a friend every month for lunch. We have a meal but the most satisfying thing is the conversation. We go to the same place each time. We’re well known there now. Almost don’t have to order, because they know what we usually have. You see that little habit saves us thinking and wasting valuable talk time to make decisions as trivial as what to eat for one meal. We sit down and away we go. It’s a rolling maul of a conversation – starts in the middle and ends before it finishes. It’s in my diary as “the office.”
Yesterday was July office time. We talk about each others families, what’s happening work-wise, theology, politics – all the usual stuff of two blokes who know each other so well. Then we discovered crystal sets again. How this happened I can’t remember, but next minute we’re two kids again under the bedclothes trying to listen to wireless comedy when we’re supposed to be sleeping. We roll out the names – Life with Dexter, The Navy Lark, The Goons, Hancock’s Half Hour … Ron and Eff and Jimmy Edwards. Suddenly we were laughing and giggling like kids, remembering how we’d made a crystal set, and how terrible the reception was, but how much fun it was too. I remembered I’d had a Starfighter crystal set with a nose cone you pulled in and out to change the station. We had a great time at the office, being back in our connected past for a while. Then we looked at each other and said – well, let’s see if there are any others who could make a crystal set these days. Let’s make one. We might. Or might not. But it was brilliant.
Then, as we do, we got a little serious for a bit and wondered if the kids of today ever get the chance to make things like we did as kids. You know, get a hammer and nails and make a hut, or cardboard and sellotape and make a building (or a mess). I told my mate about a time in church recently where a 10 year old boy made a paper dart out of the bulletin. Great fun for him, but the best bit was some old blokes showing him after church how to make it fly even better. Chaos as the dart flew round the morning tea gathering. And laughter. Ah those are the days! And I intend to have more of them. Now, can I remember how to make a crystal set!

A strange day today.  It started well enough, and ended well enough, but in between!

Today I have been a repository of others’ pain – part of what I do.  First appointment was to help organise a funeral, but with a difference.  The person for whom the funeral will happen is still alive. She is part of the process of deciding how best to celebrate her life when she succumbs to her cancer.  It has been a privilege to walk a little of her journey and to sense how one can face the ultimate with dignity and courage, a sense of humour and inevitably to work through regrets.  All of us are being changed by this time of preparation.

An old folks home service – I always stop off at the hairdressers as she helps the residents look stunning.  Today though the hairdresser was less smiley.  No wonder.  As we exchanged our usual greeting she told me her marriage came to an end this week.  Like a bit has been ripped out of my guts, she said, trying to find something forward-looking to think about.  She smiled, but through the gritted teeth of pain.  Too soon to be cheery!

Then, after the short service, a new bloke in the room stopped to chat with me.  We discovered that we knew someone in common, from my Dunedin days, a neighbour of ours had been a workmate of his.  What a small 2 degree world we live in!  That was the opening of a door however.  He went on to tell me another tragic story of relationship breaking, after 52 years of marriage.  Again, close to tears, he tried to put a brave and positive face to a gut-wrenching time.

I left, worn out.  But somehow also profoundly moved by being the repository of so much pain in one morning.  But then again, I also realised that is what I’m paid to do too.  To listen but not solve.  It reminds me of the root meaning of comfort – to be strong with someone, not to smooth the time, but to lend strength when someone is at a weak place.  Sometimes a day is like that.  Whether I like it or not!

I wonder what tomorrow will be like.

I’ve just been reminded that I haven’t blogged for a while.  (Thanks Marg)

It’s not that I don’t have anything to blog about either so …

Right now my project is collecting stories of men at work.  Old men, young men.  Retired and starting out.  A fascinating exercise where I sit and listen, but often watch too.  The face gives it away as they talk about their jobs, ancient and modern.  Would they do it again I ask them.  Some say an immediate animated yes, others grimace and say no, they’d do it differently next time.  One man did the same thing for 26 years.  Others changed their careers.  A uni student shared his dreams with me, already he’s not sure he’s on the path he will stay on for long.  another talked about his now dead wife, and with tears said he’d do it again as long as he could have the same woman sharing his ups and downs.  It’s a humbling time for me, and I have all these stories on my computer, voice files that represent the ultimate in trust – telling someone else about our lives.  Next week I’m going into hiding to begin writing it all up, and then will come the editing, and the eventual launch with all those blokes hopefully there to celebrate the Sharpest Tool in the Shed.

A side line has been several recent conversations with both men and women about facing the next part of life and wanting to make some value-based changes.  Doing something not just for money, but for the love of it, and out of a sense of compassion for others.  Time and again, I hear similar things.  So, as I feel that way too, I’ve begun exploring what might be a next step in the ongoing saga of my life.  Not clear yet.  But living in a mist is not always a bad place to be sometimes!  Who knows, I might even go vist my long-lost cuzzie and have a good laugh again!

It’s a good  day in Christchurch to reflect – it’s cold and wet.  But the light is shining on puddles, and the maples are showing their wonderful autumn colours.  I’m inside, in the warm looking out.

The bible readings for this coming Sunday focus on Wisdom.  In the Bible that’s made into a creative person.  What’s surprising in the Proverbs passage is where one finds Wisdom.  There is a religious tradition that goes into the mountains or the desert, to be still and quiet.  To be on one’s own, or maybe with a few others and look inward for the meaning of life.  people have made and spent millions of dollars in this quest.  Every now and again a fad authour turns up and people buy gazzilions of their books.  In the Biblical Wisdom tradition, there’s another thing happening that speaks more to me than buying the latest book or trekking off into the estoeric quietness.  (Mind you, I am drawn to those places too so there’s a challenge in the Wisdom woman.)  Where is the Wisdom woman?  On the streets, in the market place.  Not quiet, but shouting her point of view, rather like the people I avoid with embarrassment in the Square who shout their fundamentalist stuff at me and anyone else walking past.

The idea that in the ordinary everyday place is a good place to find and express wisdom is very helpful.  I live in a city.  The people I spend my time with walk the streets, and are trodden down by them, and the cold comfort they often represent.  The streets are not always friendly places to be.  Yet they can be – I have some wonderful conversations with strangers on the streets.  I meet interesting people and all sorts of points of view.  The streets are public spaces, common-wealth.  We have fewer and fewer of those.  What we have is worth developing and celebrating.

So, back into the rain I go.  I wonder what interesting smiling encounters today will bring.

I live with words.  I write words, I read words, I deliver words.  I choose my words as carefully as I can.  Sometimes however, words are inadequate deliverers of reality.  Once a word is written or spoken it can’t be unwritten or unspoken.  People are free to interpret how they like.  And they do.  Often this isn’t a problem.  But for religion it has become the core of the problem.

I’ve been asked several times to give a “lecture” or “talk” or … on the issues bewteen conservative and liberal or progressive religious points of view.  I’m happy to engage with this.  I’m not conservative in any sense about religion, but I understand how extreme conservatism works.  I try not to play one off against the other.  But inevitably people seem to want to be conflictual.  Maybe the Press and our media works that way, but it is unhelpful in matters of religion.  It’s one reason I prefer the term ‘spirituality’ rather than religion when grappling with issues of deep meaning.

Imagine that there were no written books called Scripture. Then we would have to make sense of the inner life we lead in a different way.  No written words which we are told have to be normative and set in ink/stone for all time, without context or immediate access to meaning.  There’s the nub of the conservative/liberal-progressive issue.  How we understand the importance of words.  And the meaning of words.  And the authority of words.  And so it continues!

It matters when we encounter a traumatic event.  If we’ve been brought up to understand religious words in a particular way, the event can raise questions for us that are in the way of dealing with the trauma helpfully.  For example, if I’ve been brought up to understand that Death brings judgement and there’s a place we go to called either heaven of hell, and my son dies in a questionable way, I will be in a dilemma about how to deal with this event in my world view.  It’s happening to a friend of mine right now.  Brought up in a strict religious framework, but wanting to abandon it, but not really being able to, yet needing to.  It’s a messy business, religious words.

In the end, a good response is to abandon words and use our arms instead, to hug and to hold another weeping person close.  And resist any tendency to say or write anything.

So what’s this blog doing here then!