out and about with Rob

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!

I haven’t blogged in ages.  But I’ve just returned from a fantastic 2 weeks in Spring in southern Japan.  It’s always a great time when I go to Japan.  I go to see family there, but also I take small groups to share something of the spirituality of Japan.  We vist temples in the mountains, and come into dialogue with a living buddhist tradition.  This is so different to reading books about religious practice.  meeting priests who will welcome us, and talk with us raises questions about the way the christian tradition has so often dealt harshly with traditions other than its own.  The imperialist view of christianity has been like a certain priest I know who thought he should convert all the nearby buddhists because they were wrong, and therefore he was right.    Visting Japan is a way of touching a tradition that helps me reflect on my own.  There is much in buddhism that I don’t understand, and that I don’t want to have in my own religious life.  But I don’t think it’s my prerogative to be critical of that tradition either.  I have been helped by so many aspects of it.  The quiet spaces, the meditative tradition that was/is part of my christian tradition is important to me.  I like the way buddhism openly deals with the harsh moments of life and offers a way to confront it.  We can learn much from this – the christian tradition tends to downplay the hard bits of life.  It was a rich experience yet again.

I’m glad my life has the opportunity for such times!

It’s autumn. The other day as I was biking in the countryside I startled a pheasant into flight. beautiful. And loud. There are small birds sitting on grass not moving as I pass. A pukeko stood a metre or two away and looked at me with something approaching disdain. It wasn’t scared of me, or I of it, so a nice mutuality existed for a short time before we both got on with our day. I pass a line of poplar trees at one point on my usual ride. The other day they were showering me with leaves. It was like riding down an avenue of sadness for a moment as I realised what the dead leaves meant – summer is on its way out again. The earth has turned one more little bit. Now it’s autumn, or at least the beginnings of that amazing season of slowing down and colouring up. The temperatures reflect that slowing too – a little cooler in the mornings now, and darker of course.
Noticing these things is important to me. It’s a key part of my understanding of spirituality. I find a god-sense among the random non-sense of the world. The seasons are an anchorpoint, a never-ceasing cycle of change into which I have to find my way. Because whether I notice or not, the seasons are there. In Christchurch lots of people have taken to farewelling the godwits as a sign of the season. Later in the year we’ll watch for Matariki. I like this sense of spirituality. It makes sense. It doesn’t have the doctrinal stuff about it that church has built; it rings true in a deep way. God is in there for me.
So, today, I noticed again, it’s now autumn and there’s no going back to last summer. Or revisiting the things that either hapened or didn’t happen. Time to move on.

Recently our infant Menz Shed had a table at the City Council’s Older Person’s Day. Publicity was our aim. It was great fun, being beside the Library stall and along from the Zoo Doo lady and the Canterbury Lacemakers. Not too many men there though. But the ones who were came along and began to tell us stories of their sheds and why they thought it was a great idea to have a community shed. Not all understood the concept at first. One woman asked if she could come to the shed to find a man! Another told us of her husband’s death a few months ago, and how she now had a huge amount of tools to get rid of in due course. She asked why men always bought two of everything! Another woman told me stories of her husband who never threw anything out. Ever. He has a bottle of corks, in case … I interviewed a manager of a car firm recently. he reminded me that a bloke can never have too many tools.
So, at St Ninian’s we’re getting closer. The permit is on the desk, the site is there, now it’s a matter of removing a tennis court structure so we can get going. Ah, now where did we put that bag of tools. That’s right, in the small shed, shortly to be replaced with a bigger one. I wonder how long it will be before the new shed has the real shed smell?

The internet is a great thing.  On some levels at least.  My daughter has a blog about her life in Japan. (http://www.joruraljapan.blogspot.com/) I read it of course; she is more regular than I am.  I’ve noticed that some people respond to her blog regularly with comments.  I asked Jo a couple of times if she knew who these people are.  She wrote about that in a recent blog, so what happens?  I get a comment from one of them to which I responded on their Blog.  None of us have met.  But Jo recently met up with some of the women who have been regular readers of her blog.  They felt like they already knew each other, as indeed they did.  On that level, getting in touch, staying in touch, I’m a fan of the internet.  It has enriched my life immensely.

I’ve just come back to work from my summer holiday.  We drove along one of the most beautiful highways in the world – down the West Coast, through the Haast Pass to Cromwell in Central Otago.  I was reminded time and again of the way the environment in which we are raised plays a huge part in our spirituality.  When the Psalmist wrote about lifting eyes to the hills, he asked a question: Where is my help tpo come from?  That’s because lifting his eyes to the hills was in anxiety about enemy action from there.  When I do it, it’s to be amazed at mountains or the light of a sunset.  When I read stories about Jesus fishing I can picture Moeraki, a favourite place for me.  Spirituality is about my response to the world around me.  It’s about increasing my awareness of the way that world works.  The idea that humans are the centre of the universe is no longer tenable for me.  So there are some questions as I reflect on the world about me and my place within it.  And there are some affirmations too.  Happiness lies in the questions and affirmations, in being content with not knowing it all, and in relationships that cement it all together. 

I’m glad our NZ New Year happens in summer.  I rarely make resolutions because I almost always break them.  Why makem to breakem?  But with the added incentive of my doctor telling me to lose weight – I noted that he told me by looking at his monitor rather than my eyes – I’ve decided it might well be important to get fit.  My preferred activity is biking so I’ve been out and about on my pushy.  There’s a code you find with other cyclists on the open road which is where I cycle.  Acknowledge each other with a nod, wave, or cheery out of breath greeting.  When coming from behind, breathe loudly so the person you’re overtaking doesn’t die of a heart attack with fright – bikes are almost silent.  There’s also the testosterone effect – noticeable in both males and females actually – if there’s someone in front of you, pass them.  Now, when you get to my advanced age, that’s an impossibility, but I must admit I found my head telling me to do it, or to catch up with the younger person who roared past me.  It’s progress that my legs no longer obey the head signals and in an advanced state of tiredness just keep turning enough so I remain balanced and upright while heading in a continuous forwards direction.  No, I won’t wear gaudy lycra with advertising for some French cycling team or the local bar on it.  And I hide my bike shorts under ordinary shorts.  I’m not the fastest cyclist, but I’ve been having the greatest time getting fitter.  And even better, keeping my own little score.  This week I’ve cycled over 100km in 3 days.  But my legs tell me that enough head wind is enough.  So tomorrow I’ll walk, without the bike!  maybe next time I go see my doctor he’ll look me in the eye enough for me to say thanks.  I’m alive and well.  Apart from …