SOUL DIARY
Fist or furniture
Flight or failure
Deep crevices
Broken arm
Broken plaster
Forgiveness
Left to dry
Turning white – so pure
So bright
Like nothing ever happened
Until the tempers rise
And grit gives way
The pulse of life
Demands our fix
Putty turns ivory
SOS x 77
Our DIY love
I found shelter under the awning of a small Ramen place on Robson. On my way to work and almost at the pier when the podcast overwhelmed me. Rather like a sudden thunderstorm, it demanded shelter from the rising emotions and a few moments for it to pass. A most beautiful mess was being unravelled through my ear pods. I needed a few minutes to wait for the emotions and tears to dissolve.
Ironically it was Sunday morning – a wintery pandemic holy day in Vancouver. The interviewer was looking deep into the eyes of Tammy Faye – the overly adorned eyes of this evangelical madame. I heard someone talk about her with kindness for the first time ever. I was enthralled. This character, this larger-than-life Christian personality, was full of heart? Go on. Tell me more.
The podcast featured an interview that aired in 1985 during the early days of AIDS. In November of that year, Tammy interviewed a pastor who had just been given six months to live. A homosexual pastor. While the haters were raging and finger-pointing around her, she proved brave and kind. I stopped and wept as I heard snippets of the interview. I had mocked her for years and criticized her TV evangelism show where she shared the stage with husband, Jim Bakker.
It was both confusing and wonderful to find a moment to love Tammy. My tears were for her and were laced with my own shame for being one of the haters. Her kindness in that interview is palpable.
Kindness prints the invitations, enabling more people to sit at the table with Jesus.
Kindness has a primary role in softening our prejudices. If love covers a multitude of sins, then kindness is the paintbrush in love's hand. Kindness often saves a seat for compromise and, in doing so, ushers in the power of love leading us gently towards a more profound understanding, despite all things not being perfect.
Podcast: Things Fell Apart by Jon Ronson BBC 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011sf7
I have found great solace in the past few years, knowing that others are asking the same questions. I spent many years in a space where the currency of community was trading in answers. The community was built with bricks, all resembling each other and coming out of the same kiln. Now I very much enjoy being part of a team of rugged stonemasons- rather than bricklayers. We collect interesting rocks and spend our time trying to make them fit.
I've got a high pain tolerance. Probably because I don't expect much, or at least I pretend I don't - so I beat pain in a sort of bullshitty sort of way.
I first experienced childbirth in a very pristine, clinical Swiss hospital in Zurich. Lots of white linen and stainless steel products.
In the adjacent birthing suite was a yeller. Who knows her life experience or her dilation measurements, but she was making some serious noise. The wailing became increasingly alarming.
For a first-timer, it was utterly terrifying. Is that what awaited me? During the 5-part birthing prep sessions with midwife Vreni, I don't remember being warned of the possibility of overhearing screams through thin walls. The raging decibels of the delivery was in stark contrast to the soft, nurturing tones offered by my team. A chunky Brazilian nurse assured me, "Don't you worry. She's Italian. They do that.” All of a sudden, the room next door was quiet. I didn't get to hear the predictable 'oohs' and 'aahs' post-birth.
During my 3-day hospital stay, I walked the corridors at all hours comforting my new boy, and I wondered where she was – which one of these women had the guts to voice her pain so freely. I never did get to meet the screamer or her baby, sharing a birthdate with my firstborn.
I gave birth quietly. Stoically. That's my way. That's how I've been taught. I'm not free enough to howl. Not free enough to be wild. To kick and to fight and never back down.
Now seems like a good time to never back down. To make lines in the sand and stand firm.
So many are voiceless not by choice but by nature of their life narrative and birth. Children, babies, immigrants, the poor and uneducated – and, in my case, the privileged who never needed to yell.
'We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.' says the writer of Romans.
Now is my time to groan. Or at least to encourage this growing wail. This universal lament. Let the whole world cry. Let something fresh be birthed.
Never Back Down. There, I said it. I'm joining creation.
Take another shot of courage
Wonder why the right words never come
You just get numb
It's another COVID sunrise
This old world still looks the same
Another frame
I worked at a pop-up Vaccination Clinic a few weeks ago. You know the drill by now. Line up, register, jab, wait and leave with a sticker. Anyway, the clientele changes like the tides. King tides were experienced during late summer last year when appointments for first and second jabbers seemed to coincide. Now we are entertaining the very young and the over 65s. An interesting dynamic. Conditions are choppy.
Most notably, we have millennial Mamas and Papas bringing in the younger set – those between five and 11 years of age. Anecdotally, about 50 percent of the children coming in for their shot demonstrate some form of anxiety. They line up in front of my registration desk, holding tight onto a parental glove with one hand while hugging their favourite stuffed toy in the other. This clinic has found its temporary home in a relatively wealthy area in the downtown core. We are utilizing one of the large classrooms in a community centre. The acoustics are horrid, and no partitions separate the immunization stations – so the chants of wailing children ring out loud and clear. This results in a very nervous time for those waiting in line. As well as the sound of the "No, Daddy, no DADDY, don't make me have it" ringing out in high decibels, we also have the phenomena of the runaway child. They run around the room avoiding the vaccination tables. The poor parent is just overwhelmed and everyone finds it so difficult to know what to do. When you have wailers and runners ‘performing’ simultaneously, the whole space goes into high alert. We have a cot behind a screen at the back in Aftercare, but it is anything but private.
So we have the screamers, and we have the runners. We have the poor vaccinators who sit back and take little action except doing their best to reason with the child. They are careful not to intervene in any way contrary to the new codes of practice.
And then we have the parent. And this is where the "in my day" line comes into play.
Yes, I have succumbed to using the "in my day" idiom. I have arrived at that time in my life. In this instance, my speech goes like this.
In my day, I would have taken my child and swung them onto my lap. I would have placed enough pressure on both arms, probably resulting in light bruising. The health worker would have been complicit with me in this action and, as my accomplice, quickly and forcibly got that needle into the arm. Sticking to the script, we would have used words like, look now it's done, what a silly girl you are, it's nothing, now sit down, I won't tell you again. …. Need I go on. It was the 'no nonsense' approach.
On one of my clinic days, a doctor came over to our desk in a moment of relative calm. She is a pediatrician. So she has seen it all before. She told us that she had just witnessed a wonderfully calm mother at her station. The seven-year-old daughter was distraught, she said. The mother had quietly agreed with the child that this was a difficult decision to make and said she felt anxious too. Her tone was loving and understanding. Just what you would need. She oozed confidence and serenity, said the doctor. Slowly and surely but with dogged conviction, she convinced the child to give it a go. 'I don't know quite how she did it, but she was fabulous,' said the doctor. No bruised arm, No bribery. No trickery.
So there is a middle ground. A place between heavy coercion and the new precious parenting. It begins with confidence and in teaching our children to make difficult decisions. Growing resilience. My brute force methodology suddenly seemed a less than exemplary method.
We have so many teaching moments in life, for our children and ourselves. We are gifted opportunities to stretch and to exercise resilience. These strange times during the pandemic have provided a perfect place for improv and new emotional pathways.
I previewed a book on order from my local library, The Coddling of the American Mind.' co-authored by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The title alone had me wondering if they sold merch - a t-shirt or coffee mug perhaps?
The authors examine the new parenting culture and conclude we have bought ourselves "into a myth that students and children are inherently fragile." They go on to surmise that "for the most part, this represents an understandable desire to protect children from emotional trauma. But overwhelming evidence suggests that this approach makes kids less psychologically stable. By over-sheltering kids, we end up exposing them to more serious harm."
They offer a third option, like the example provided by the mother, so admired by our pediatrician that day. That is to provide a pathway for the child to grow emotionally and to help them to expand their resilience threshold.
My brutal method punished my child for non-compliance. The opposite route displayed during my clinic shift was to consider the child as overly precious and fragile — offering all the possible safety bells and whistles. Some kids took 45 minutes to have their jab with all the talking and the pandering to this need to feel safe.
The Coddling of the American Mind authors have coined the phrase, Safetyism —defined as "a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns." I recognize that we all have different levels on our safety gauges, so we are talking in a generalized realm here.
If the authors are correct and this rise of safetyism is dangerous. We might also ask how it affects the ways we nurture children.
What is that old biblical verse from the Book of Proverbs? 'Teach a child in the way they should go, and then when they are old, they will not stray from it.' Not much actual guidance there. But it speaks of an emphasis on parental teaching – and these days are full of teaching opportunities – anything difficult is a chance to teach something that will stay with children when they are older.
My hope is that this year has built a level of resilience in us all. That puts a slightly different slant on our desire to see the back of 2021. Perhaps we are moving into 2022 with greater strength than when we started the year.
I thought of our joint lament this morning. I pictured the common consciousness as tears serving as mulch to activate a natural compost of all the good leaves together with the dead leaves that fall to the ground. Sort of a massive 'mishing' together of all that is good and evil and restoring or redeeming it to the good.
Throwing everything in the compost. Activating forgiveness and grace in order to turn it into something of value. Maybe that’s how I can better understand ‘ all things working together for good.’
Our faith needs a laundry. A container where ideas are proven solid enough to survive the whoosh of a 10-minute spin or a heavy soiled cycle. Ideas and practices that can live in the cramped, still place. The imagination is hidden behind the thick glass. Precept upon precept. I suppose Jesus died that I might sit and watch him take the stains out.
I am fascinated with bridges. I like to imagine cities before bridges were built. Bridges in Sydney, Perth, San Francisco, New York and Vancouver join big chunks of their respective towns. My grandfather was a bridge builder. Every time we cross the Narrows Bridge in Perth, I think of my dad proudly saying, ‘your grandpa built this bridge.’ It joins the north to the south of the city. A highway in Perth is now named after my grandfather – Leach Highway.
About seven years ago there were community discussions in Vancouver as the new Port Mann Bridge was opened. The new bridge has 10 lanes and spans across the Fraser River. The talk centred around what to do with the obsolete bridge? One idea for the redevelopment was to turn it into a long strip of public parkland, like the ‘High Line’ on Manhattan’s West Side. The New York version is a project completed in 2009 whereby an old freight line was turned into an elevated public park. It has become a new tourist attraction. Have a look at it at http://www.thehighline.org. Unfortunately, the developers and NYC have taken a high line when it comes to prohibited activities on the High Line. Visitors to the High Line are NOT able to walk on rail tracks, gravel, or plants; pick flowers or plants; sit on railings or climb on any part of the High Line; cycle, skateboard, skate, drink alcohol, feed any of the wildlife or produce any amplified sound.
It was decided to demolish the old bridge, built in 1964, using what is termed reverse construction. Shame.
Bridge restrictions, like custom crossings, can make our cityscapes difficult to cross. We put tolls on bridges. The on and off ramps of big city bridges tend to be places of traffic congestion and frustration. Bridges are pricey for cities to maintain and come under great scrutiny for safety. Recently the new and elegant Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver, built to solve traffic problems, has been under fire due to so-called ‘ice bombs.’ Ice falling onto cars and creating traffic hazards and insurance claims in the winter months. Did the architect predict this might happen? Once built, bridges are difficult to modify — challenging to widen, and modifications for bike lanes are a high priority these days.
Jesus is our bridge – he just stretched out his body as a way to bridge the chasm between God and us. He took away the tolls, the maintenance fees, the design headaches, the safety issues. He said - walk – or ride a bike or drive - across my body that has been laid out flat for this purpose. He encourages us to stop and pick the flowers and sit on the railings. To slow down. He is always just and kind, and forgiving.
Bridges are infrastructures that join people and enterprises together. They enable movement and opportunities for communities to spread out and grow. I consider that is a big part of the call for Soulkitchen here in Vancouver - to facilitate movement. To create bridges between communities, businesses and lonely people. Making kingdom connections of promise and hope.
The Dreamtime is a commonly used phrase to describe the spiritual beliefs and experiences of the Australian aboriginal people. It speaks of their connection with the beginning and with creation. It imagines and takes the people back to a time past. In the beginning, in the Dreamtime, they are given their identity in the universe and their place. The poetry and stories of the Dreamtime have become increasingly mournful and wistful as these people have been displaced and their identity as a group distorted.
In Kath Walker's poem of 1970, read first on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra, she says:
Oh spirits from the unhappy past,
Hear us now.
We come, not to disturb your rest.
We come to mourn your passing.
You, who paid the price,
When the invaders spilt our blood.
Your present generation comes,
Seeking strength and wisdom in your memory.
The legends tell us,
When our race dies,
So too, dies the land.
May your spirits go with us
From this place.
This is the voice of longing and loss and much like the rhythm of the contemporary mystic. We cry out in earnest for refreshment and a return to the naivete of our salvation. The Spirit within is the greatest gift allowing us to 'travel' in another dimension and find our identity in Christ and our assignment on earth. Our Dreamtime.
This inward place is where we work with our own thoughts—our own sovereignty of mind, our own sovereignty of imagination—and where we keep our own knowledge safe. This is where we fashion, and refashion, and imagine the stories we want told, where we catch the essence of a story before it drifts away, or before it is overrun by the power of those other stories, created by the score in this country, to distract our thinking. In the inward place, we can speak the truth more easily, and often with humour, because of the ease we feel being in the family home of traditional country. This is also where we flourish by making new stories: bringing new sagas of the "all times" into our world and also dealing with the stories of consolation, redemption, and reckoning. Alexis Wright[1]
Imagine placing you and the Holy Spirit in the text above. Like a holy conversation and a holy cookout mixing the past and the present and the future. Conjuring up a new knowing of God and shutting off misconceptions and dreaming of God entering 'country' as Jesus and now as Emmanuel – God with us.
Our place of contemplation is not so much answering our big life questions but instead pondering them, as the word itself suggests. Considering God and me across time. Not needing answers.
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-inward-migration-in-apocalyptic-times/
“O Shepherd. You said you would make my feet like hinds' feet and set me upon High Places". Hinds Feet on High Places - Hannah Hurnard
I suspect when it comes to faith matters there are often ‘use by’ dates attached to spiritual revelations. The writer of Hebrews 13:8 tells that it is Jesus who stays the same - yesterday, today and forever. For us mere mortals, it is change that signposts our maturity. If we are indeed to aim for hinds feet on high places, then we need to be alert when it is time to jump to the next level. If I did this faith journey all over again, I would strive to be more nimble and ready for change. To try new things out. We get comfortable with our latest religious thinking platforms on healing or care or prayer. Move baby, move says the holy spirit. Movement and adjusting our thinking keeps the faith juices flowing and helps us avoid sitting like lazy goats ‘under’ the teaching of some guru and not following our individual call.
Blundstones with
Bourbon and a dash of bitters
The leather sucked it up
Greedy boots
We are all avocados
Some are ready and willing when you open them up
Spreadable
Other need a moment
Time to soften
Persea gratissima
Blundstones are pre-softened
Just for you
Ready to wear
Leather gratissima
Today I ran
It wasn’t about the running
Or even the breath it was about the wind
Against the wind
It worked
Post Malone
And his circles
Didn’t hurt either
Practice your wow and not your but.
When writing in a pandemic, one has to be aware that one is writing in a pandemic. Rather like when on vacation in Maui or Bali, or Tahiti one needs to remember at all times, 'these are just vacation thoughts'. THIS IS NOT THE REAL WORLD, thus avoiding the linked maladies of holiday romances whilst in a food and alcohol coma. Developing our social intelligence allows us to be in the moment whilst knowing that this is just a moment.
I love a good discussion. Perhaps that is the greatest void in this season of limited social connection. I am watching discussions on the screen. I am listening to way too many discussions through my earphones.
But I am thirsting for face to face chats. You remember the ones where you could see the subtilities of a smirk, the swish of a hand, the twinkle of the real-life eye. I'd even venture into a Board Room. Gate crash a prayer group. Be seen at a Starbucks (that's for the coffee snobs) Anywhere and with anyone. I'm tired of walking with people. In my pre-COVID life, I preferred to walk alone, only accompanied by Tippett, Gross or Swisher's pod-voices.
The discussion was already under an attack before all this happened. Before Trump. Before COVID.
We now have to be ultra-careful about what we say lest it is deciphered in an unfavourable light by the ruling thoughtsters. After all, it is the season of hyperpartisanship. Heidi Klum's mantra ‘
you are either in, or you are out' rings loud in my ears. Oh, and if I had a penny for every time I've given the 'shrewd as snakes and gentle as doves' pastoral advice lately.
Malcolm Gladwell says being interesting is the most critical tool for a writer. I find that it is one of the things that most attracts me to people. But we live in a world that is beginning to value tidy thoughts, linear thoughts, acceptable thoughts. It looks like the thought police might deprive me of such an essential part of life's journey. Interesting is getting harder to find.
Gladwell explains further that he loves to work out puzzles. He doesn't want everything worked out for him. I don't want to watch people doing the jigsaw puzzle; that would be boring. I am interested in doing this life puzzle with others – learning from their narrative and using it to create my own.
A teleprompter society will become boring. A community where stories can be told and those stories will be varied and colourful. And, if we are all made in the image of God, it follows that a Christian environment surely should be very colourful and very varied.
Gladwell says that to tell someone a story is taking a risk, and we need to practice our 'wow' response in the face of someone taking that chance. He says the 'wow' this is the greatest encouragement. We slowly shut down in the face of constant disinterest by others. What is even worse, is a continual response of 'but' or 'let me give you some feedback’. Feedback means criticism, by the way. Perhaps the image of someone scrolling on a device while you are talking is something we have got used to but is a poison to the art of discussion. Especially in these times of polarization, we don't know how people will react to our conversation – will they pick up on my bias, on my dumbness, on my doubt? The mask makes it even more challenging to read the response. To have someone engage in my doubt, despite my bias and sidestep, my ignorance is pure friendship and builds our trust for the other. I'm scared that even in this time where story and personal narrative are social media royalty, we will pick and choose what stories are allowed to be heard.
Be interested. Practice your 'wow' and not your 'but'. And please, answer my 'hello' with something. Anything.
It is rare for me to remember exactly where I was when I first met a friend – especially a brief conversation serving as our introduction nearly 30 years ago. I have relocated often enough for the memory of specific places and events to become somewhat hazy. Ah, but friendships and those born out of generosity and delight are to be treasured and commemorated. Such is this friendship.
I remember laying eyes on baby Sophie in her pram at the back of a church auditorium after the Sunday service on a February morning in 1992. I introduced myself to her mother, Nerida, as I admired the little miss with her angelic face framed by a beautiful hand-made bonnet. That was the beginning of a life-long friendship with the Cottrell clan. A few weeks later, Nerida approached me bearing a gift – a replica bonnet for my awaited child. I was seven months pregnant with my 3rd. The bonnet was crafted by Kath Pitman, Nerida’s mum and Sophie’s grandmother.
Tomorrow – 29 years later – that dear little babe is to be dressed up and walked down the aisle to marry the love of her life. She has inherited the grace and countenance of her mother.
Sophie, your family, has passed on more than bonnets. It is an extravagant love that is the currency of the Cottrells. Wesley is fortunate and astute enough to have discovered a rare treasure in you. We wish you all the happiness in the world.
And I make a promise of a ‘bonnet passing’ of my own on the event of the birth of your first child —possibly not hand-made like Nina’s, but it will serve to honour the long tradition of love gifts and friendship continued throughout the generations.
Congratulations, Sophie and Wes.
