a snake in sydney airport

standing in he belly of a dormant
snake of waiting travellers
we make ourselves a community
sharing sighs of lament
raised eyes of understanding
news and stories to pass the time
gifts to lift us from the melancholy
a smile
a laugh
encouraging words
a helping hand
a challenge - accepted - a poem

then the lights come on
a plane takes off overhead
and the snake shakes itself
into life

this one won't win any awards, but marks a moment well enough

travel log. day two. american adventure.

and so the dramas continued. arrived at sydney airport saturday morning to a power outage and joined the end of a very long line. did not move for 2 and a half hours. when we finally got near the front, they were anxious to get our flight moving, so called the last 6 or 8 people forward and checked us through, asking us to put our bags in a designated area. realised later that this would mean our bags would not be joining us in america just yet. ran to the plane, taking a couple of minutes to stop for a toilet break, though not having had any lunch, and boarded. sat there for over half an hour waiting for the luggage that was coming with us and the last couple of passengers. finally, finally, we taxied onto the runway and flew out over the entrance to sydney harbour. i saw the bridge and the opera house as we departed, and the cliffs on the edge of australia. and then my homeland was behind me.
we flew over sea, then into night, and i tried to sleep, but didn't have a lot of success.
as we lifted the blinds and ate breakfast, we were flying over mexico. now, i thought, now i can believe i am goign to make it to america. the land below was unfamiliar, with its sandy deserts and circular fields, then as we descended and could make out the towns and cities of texas, they looked so strange to me, pockets of housing estates it looked like, rows and rows of houses sandwiched in together, in little sections all themselves. quite unlike the sprawling haphazard city of sydney we'd flown out of 15 hours earlier. the roads are a different colour,  remember noting.
got confused in customs, but really it was a smooth enough process. then discovered my bag was indeed not in america at the same time i was and began to feel the urge to cry. held it together long enough to find my way to information and phone to contact my hotel and arrange for a shuttle and at last, i am here. i fell on the bed and cried. what an emotionally and physically exhausting journey to this point. i do hope my travels are smoother from this point on. and i hope my dinner arrives soon. i am hungry. missed lunch again today.
but i've rearranged the final detail for tomorrow that needed my attention, been in contact with the orgniser of the workshops in santa fe, and thankfully don't think i will miss out on too much, as i originally thought i might with all these delays. so it's off to dinner and a good night's sleep, so i can turn my attention to poetry for a week beginning tomorrow.

travel log. american adventure. day one.

well. the american adventure hasn't got off to a good start. arrived at the airport feeling full of butterflies flittering in anticipation and nervous energy. go to drop off bag to discover the flight has been delayed. a bird or birds smashed into the windscreen of our plane as it was flying from sydney to adelaide and it had to return to sydney with a broken windscreen. so we weren't going to leave until two hours later than scheduled. which would mean we would miss the flight to dallas. a short wait to discover that, no, qantas were not going to hold the flight to dallas, so we would be flying to sydney only today, staying overnight and flying to dallas tomorrow. so i then had to get on the phone to my travel agent and arrange changes to accommodation in dallas and my flight to albuquerque, which i was now also going to miss. thankfully i have a helpful travel agent, and it's all been arranged. and thankfully the insurance company will cover me for the costs incurred because of the birds interrupting my arrangements. if it was a technical fault on the part of the airline they wouldn't have been so generous, apparantly.
the day has been made easier to take by the company of a lovely lady named Grace, who lives in Texas, and is also travelling alone. these things really are a bit easier to handle when the frustration can be shared with a laugh with others in the same situation. met another girl in the same boat who had already had her flight to america delayed from last night. so we're not alone.
but i am hungry, and my 'lunch' has just arrived. with beer. then in an hour and a half grace and i are going to go down for our dinner on qantas.

a prayer for Oslo

I prayed these words with my congregation at Belair this morning (slightly edited, poet's prerogative). 

God, there are lots of words we want to say to you,
lots of people we want to pray for with you,
places we want to give into your care.

Today we want to say things to you about Norway -
we want to say, Why?
What?
We want to say - No!

We pray with you for the people of Oslo
those who have died,
their family and friends who have lost sisters, brothers,
children, friends ...
the people of the city and the country whose hearts are breaking -
our hearts are breaking with them,
and we know your heart is breaking too.

We pray for the emergency services people finding the broken bodies
healing the wounded,
searching for the missing,
protecting the living.

We pray for the person or people who have done this terrible thing
for their troubled souls
and we pray for those who are investigating and prosecuting
may calmness and wisdom guide them. 

We give to you what is your land,
the country of Norway
may you be known there as peace and love.
may we not forget the land and the people of Norway
in the weeks and months as they heal.

a moment of honest appraisal

so i've been thinking about what i wrote this morning, and wondering why i felt so defensive at the enthusiastic promotion of fresh expressions to churches seeking new ways forward in their life, mission and ministry.
in a moment of honesty with myself, i wondered if perhaps i am feeling as though there's a fresh expressions band wagon that people are really happy to jump on, now there are more people saying it's a good thing, and that amongst the enthusiasm and excitement, my story is being dismissed and forgotten. it's not only my story, there are others who tell a similar story.
a story of struggle, and loneliness, and being misunderstood, and not having a place or knowing where my place was as  pioneer. and still actually very tempted to choose the easier road of secure placements and income, because pioneering the pioneers has left me quite bruised and battered.
perhaps it's narky and ungracious of me to constantly speak up with the harsh realities of starting a fresh expression. perhaps it is ungenerous to dampen others' enthusiasm.
perhaps.
or maybe i'm a bit jealous and feel like it would be nice to be among the next batch of pioneer leaders for whom the church will be better prepared, will be seeking to find financial and practical support. perhaps i am simply longing for the people i dreamed of gathering for an artsy faith community, feeling i failed to find them and not quite knowing what to do now

it's all about relationship

speaking with a friend yesterday, some thoughts emerged on my underlining philosophy as we approach 'fresh expressions'. it's becoming such a catch-phrase, and i feel a little anxiety as it's thrown around, that some in the church might see 'fresh expressions' as a quick fix to the missing numbers in our churches, or something. fresh expressions names what is emerging - alternative forms of christian community to the mainstream churches, for people who are seeking community and spiritual expression, but don't find themselves at home in church as it is. these communities take time to emerge.
i was asked recently if spirited conversations, our young adults' gathering, is a fresh expression. my response was 'not yet.' in its first six months, let's not name this as anything other than it is - a gathering of young adults seeking a safe space in which to explore some of the big questions and challenging issues in life through conversation informed by the Christian tradition & story. it may become 'church', the primary community of faith for its members. it may not. let's wait and see.
i know we want the church to be thinking 'fresh expressions', but the new and emerging faith communities will emerge out of relationship.
we need, actually, to think missionally. relationaly. let's look beyond our existing communities, from the strength and gift of our existing faith communities, to the community beyond; let's take the love of God with us wherever we go, meet the needs of the community as best we can, seek to encounter God wherever we are - and people may indeed join existing worshipping communities. or gather to form new faith communities.
can we be liberated from our need to balance budgets or be the biggest church around or have every age group represented - and realise that relationships are enough in themselves? this seems to me to be a core Gospel imperative - Jesus went, didn't stay put and ask people to come to him, he went to people and engaged with them, appreciated them, and built relationships with a core group of people who went and did the same and look how the Christian movement has grown.
our core investment needs to be what God's, what Christ's, core investment is - healing, reconciling, life-giving relationships. communities new and old will grow because of these relationships.

(thanks Cogs for helping me to remember these thoughts, and for the conversation in which they emerged).

of the rich blessing of community

once a month I go across the road from my church to a retirement village and join a small group of women who meet each week for bible study. a lay or ordained person from a different church goes along each week to facilitate the conversation. I like this, it helps to build the relationships between the various churches and the members of this community. there's three in the group who are part of our congregation, and they are always so delighted to welcome and introduce their minister. makes me feel very special.
I appreciate the opportunity to meet some of the people who form another community of care for these women of my congregation, and who are part of the wider community in which my congregation participates.
today we took a fresh look at the parables from Matthew 13, which have been the lectionary readings for the past few weeks. we usually follow the lectionary in our bible study.
so I suggested that we follow the usual practice of reading a verse aloud each, but that we would read only the parables - not the explanations - and we would stop after each parable and think about what the parable reminded us of from our own experiences. the conversations made me wish (as they often do) that I could jump a couple of weeks ahead in the lectionary for my visits with this group, because our conversations always bring out different thoughts, highlight different discoveries that I don't make on my own and which make me want to go back and change my sermon from the previous sunday...
the parable of the sower reminded one of us of growing up in the country and watching farmers sow fields, seeing the grain picked up by birds before it has a chance to take root, noticing the way a harsh wind or hot sun - or goods trains with their shaking the ground and hot steam - kills off grain that doesn't have strong or deep roots, observing that some farmers are better than others ... it brought the image to life in a new way for me. I had reflected a couple of weeks ago on the nature of the farmer in the parable, and wondered if this was a thoughtless or careless farmer, or a generous and extravagant farmer. But after today, I saw the grain falling on different soil as neither being necessarily careless or generous, but just part of the process, and wondered if I had been reading too much into the parable with my interpretation?
we also talked about how important it is to listen, and how sometimes we have known ourselves to listen to a message or a person's story well and others not very well at all. 
we mused on the way we don't know sometimes if a shoot is going to grow into a weed or wheat, and that it can take quite some time to discover the true nature of things - and people. we talked more generally about this parable, and that there is often good and bad natures in all of us, things are rarely, people hardly ever, black and white.
we were coming to the end of our time, so we chose the three parables of the kingdom to finish. the last of these we found particularly hard, though we didn't have much time left to do anything other than express the uncomfortable feeling we had hearing about the harsh judgement that will one day come. then one of us spoke of her memory of another way Jesus describes the kingdom of God as within us. which took us back to the first of these three parables, about a person who finds a treasure and hides it. perhaps finding the kingdom of God within is like that? but then, we asked, wouldn't you want to tell people about it? you want to share good news, we naturally share our joy ... and again, we felt a little uncomfortable, not quite knowing what to make of this parable for ourselves. we remembered that for Matthew's community there were some difficult times of persecution, and wondered if remembering this parable told the people that there were times they needed to hide their treasure, protect the good news and the joy so that it wasn't stolen from them. and we thought that this is an important part of the Christian experience throughout different times and places, even if it hasn't been part of our experience.
there is a reason we are called to read the Bible in community, not just alone - the Basis of Union talks about needing to hold each other to interpretations of integrity and congruity with the Christian tradition. but there's more to it than integrity - there are things we will never discover about the way the Bible resonates with our experience if we only engage with the Bible through our own experience. others' experiences will bring a new perspective, help us to see the story in a new way, and will shine new light on our own story, so that we reach transformative understanding not possible alone. what a gift community is.
may you be blessed by the richness of the stories and the people you encounter today.

“The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

Hear the Gospel according to Luke live!

As part of the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, a storyteller is bringing to life the Gospel according to Luke. 

Get along and hear it if you can - there's nothing quite like hearing the foundational stories of our faith told from the heart of the teller to the heart of the listener. 

Bruce Kuhn's "The Gospel of Luke" is the story of Jesus, memorized word for word from the Bible and told with the passion and surprise of an eyewitness account. In a compelling ninety minutes, the words come alive with the urgency and humor of someone who was there. Alone on stage, Broadway actor Bruce Kuhn weaves the tale of the Christ without props or sets, dressed in modern, casual clothing. The show premiered at the acclaimed Actor’s Theatre of Louisville (one of America’s largest professional theaters) to rave reviews and an extended run. The text is the King James Version, which takes to the stage like Shakespeare.

Tickets: 

• All single tickets (adult, child or concession) $10
• Group deal 5 tickets for the price of 4
• We are selling our tickets securely online through TryBooking. Each ticket will incur a 30c booking fee.
• Upon payment you will have an option of printing out the tickets. You will be also emailed a link which will allow you to print them at a later time.
• All tickets are GST inclusive
• To purchase tickets over the counter contact your local Bible Society office

Date	Time	State	Venue
26 Jul	7pm	SA	Concordia College, Highgate - purchase now!
27 Jul	7pm	SA	Scots Church, Adelaide - purchase now!

the lonely role of the pioneer made less lonely

my spirits were lifted today, as I gathered with a bunch of people from the Anglican and Uniting churches to talk about missional leadership, otherwise known as pioneer leadership, leadership for fresh expressions of church ...
i have written here about the various joys and frustrations i have experienced as a 'pioneer leader', even a pioneer of the pioneers.
we talked about the different places on a spectrum of pioneering that we find ourselves, heard stories of fresh expressions from the UK, and thought about the general nature of fresh expressions as not really new at all, as the New Testament letters are all about exploring how to live in fresh expressions of communities of people of God.
what i found most helpful was being heard, i think. that here was a bunch of people who were open to the stories of fresh expressions and of pioneer leaders, who are thinking about themselves as pioneers and using this language to frame their understanding of their experiences as leaders in the church so far - and this bunch of people heard me say this is hard, this is unbelievably hard, it is lonely, frustrating, uncharted, and their nods and expressions were not empty or blank. i was heard and i was understood. particularly dave male, who is here from the uk and facilitated our discussions, who nodded and affirmed that he understood as one who has been here before. it's comforting and reassuring to meet with someone who has put out some of the signposts in these uncharted waters, and i am glad to feel, for the moment at least, a bit less on my own out here.

and so, though my reflection for worship at Belair this sunday is not yet finished (or hardly started if i'm being honest), tonight i am going to dinner with our guest speaker and fresh expressions folk, because i want to linger with this community of fellow travellers off the map for a little longer.

disturbing pictures

as the rain thunders against my roof

and I dive deeper into the sanctuary

of warm covers

I can’t help but picture

a woman

diving between raindrops

to steal half a metre of awning

the luxury of stealing another moment

in bed

                        a fading picture

on a wall she no longer owns