of Christmas @ Belair Uniting

Christmas Eve #1, in which I bookend the story with a welcome and a blessing

Christmas Eve #2, in which I lead with my licorice stick

Christmas Eve #3, in which I take the part of the angel ...

walking, I received a gift

what the butterflies taught me about life 

fragile, beautiful,
fleeting - but to have had it -
ah, that is the gift

of music, the language that speaks straight to the heart

music is a language that speaks across so many of the boundaries we place between ourselves and others. of course, not all music does that, and music can itself be boundary-making - my dad dislikes much of the music his daughters listen to, and vice-versa. but there are those pieces of music that speak to us, regardless of our preferences of style, and remind us, connect us to, our common humanity, and perhaps also, the sacred.
last night at our Blue Christmas service, music did that, I think - we had with us three Papuan men, whose land, whose families and friends, are suffering persecution as the people of Papua strive for liberation. These men had brought their instruments with them - a guitar, and a drum whose beat resonates hope. These men had brought their songs with them, sung in the midst of great personal and communal suffering, songs of the trust we can hold onto in the midst of such pain and grief, that God is indeed with us. We can learn much from each other. And Australians who enjoy a measure of comfort and security and freedom (though not all of us) would do well to pay attention and listen to these songs and these stories - for what we know of the hope and peace we sing of at Christmas is not all there is to know.
a friend posted a link to this song, a very different kind of Christmas 'carol' to the European carols we sing. I often wonder why we continue to sing songs of deep mid-winter, and appreciated greatly the songs Leigh Newton has written and sang at the Alive @ 5 interactive Christmas last Sunday - imagining, retelling, the Christmas story in an Australian voice, in our language, with our images and land in mind. It doesn't snow in Australia at Christmas, and the sun shines bright and hot - so we need to tell the Christmas story in our language - light breaking through the darkness isn't nearly so evocative an image for a summer Christmas celebration. We sing the carols of our ancestors because they are the carols of our ancestors, and I have no problem with that. But let us also allow the new carols of this land to emerge and be sung, for music is a language that speaks straight to the heart.

or has stories told about her & her family

page three of today's indaily has the story of how Flinders University is kind of like our family business.

of Mary's encounter with the angel Gabriel

This evening I told the story of Mary’s annunciation at Rosefield’s Alive @ 5 interactive Christmas. 

I found it interesting that whenever I rehearsed the story, I almost cried at Mary’s acceptance of God’s invitation to participate in the incarnation, but didn’t quite get there any of the half a dozen times I told the story tonight. But then that does sometimes happen – the emotion is more under control in front of an audience. I was disappointed, though, because it felt right to feel that response of shock, awe and wonder after the words from Gabriel: ‘anything is possible with God’.  I would do this sharp intake of breath, as this 14 or 15 year old girl realises what she’s being invited to do, that God has chosen her, that this is actually almost incomprehensible.

I took out the opening words ‘in the sixth month’ as they seemed to refer to the earlier passage talking about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and here I was just telling Mary’s story. the angel mentions Elizabeth being in her 6th month anyway, so the reference is there later, and more clearly. I also switched into an active tense rather than passive – so rather than the angel Gabriel was sent by God, I said ‘God sent the angel Gabriel.’ So as well as being active, which is better practice for storytelling today, I also put God front and centre as the instigator, the one acting, in the story. which I think is important, as these events are all at God’s instigation, out of God’s grace – coming amongst us, choosing Mary, sending the angel …

I condensed the story of here visit to Elizabeth, and led into Leigh Newton singing a version of the magnificat he wrote, which worked really well. I had felt as I rehearsed, that the magnificat should be sung, that the way I had crafted the segway was leading into music. I could have told the whole thing, but I think it was better to have it sung. And in the light of the short amount of time we had, it meant that more time was given to music, which probably also worked well. I wonder if I had told the magnificat, if I might have found a contemporary English translation more appropriate than the NRSV I usually use. The words of Leigh’s song – which of course I can’t recall accurately now – put Mary’s praise of God’s feeding the hungry, remembering the poor, into this sort of language, rather than lifting up the lowly, which would have been meaningful at one time, but loses an audience rather quickly today. Especially for the number of folk who come to such gatherings as this one from outside Christian community and tradition, and don’t know the language.

The telling changed a bit for me with different sized audiences – because most of them were small, I made my voice a bit small, and brought the power from the voice not the diaphragm, so my voice is feeling quite strained now. From a technical point of view, this is important learning – and I may need to seek out a voice coach to help develop & nurture techniques of projection, using the diaphragm even when I don’t want a ‘big’ voice. Then Leigh did one more song for us – the musos and a couple of volunteers – and was pleased to hear that, though this song isn’t used very much, it has been sung in recent years at my former home church. He also did an Australian Christmas story in verse, which was great. I wondered about learning something like that myself …  

of being in bed listening to the rain and pondering

I was lying in bed this morning listening to the rain, one of my favourite things, and it occurred to me - wouldn't it be great if everyone could take these moments, extend them, delight in them? These moments of beauty. But they can't.
And so I tweet: 'in a just world all wd b free 2 delight in moments like these: lying in bed listening 2 rain', when it occurs to me - I wonder if people will find it strange that this is my picture, my prayer, for a just world? Rather than saying 'in a just world all will receive an education / be fed / have access to health / be allowed to marry who they want,' I say, people should be able to lie in bed and listen to rain.
Well. Of course I want all to eat and be healthy and have the right to ask the state to recognise their life partnership under the law if they want to. But my prayer this morning, in response to this moment, is for a world in which all are free to appreciate, delight in, this beautiful world God created and gave us.
I watched Dogma* last night with my young adults group, and this film's picture of God (played by Alanis Morisette) - in a dress, smelling flowers, doing handstands - lingers with me. It is a picture of God who delights in humans, creation, life. It is one of my pictures of God.

In the wealthy West, we tie ourselves up with busyness and purchases and striving to succeed, and thus deny ourselves the freedom to stop, slow down, pay attention. And we are poorer for it.
In the sometimes less visible (or ignored) western places, people are bound by their poverty, poor health and mental illness, violence. Are people in these situations free to stay in bed and listen, smiling, to the rain?
And then there are war-torn countries, where families hear rain and find another hole in the roof from the rain of bullets; or developping nations where HIV/AIDS or drought or famine cripples whole communities and countless individuals.
Or the child in any number of countries who doesn't go to school because he has to get up at dawn or earlier and spend the whole day walking to the water hole and back for his family. He is not free to lie in bed and listen to the rain with joy. In a just world he would be.

Like I am free to lie in bed, delight in the sound of rain falling, birds chirping, and write about it all. But until that child, until all, are free to lie in bed (until all have a bed who want one), and listen to rain on the roof (until all have a roof who need one), I am not free.



* Kevin Smith writer / director. View Askew Productions 1999.

a prayer for joy in Advent

This is from a book called Openings, and it helped turn my mood, my sense of being, from feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, to feeling at peace with all the 'tasks' of this very busy season for Christian ministers, and more joyful about the season itself:

O God, let some joy loose. Let it rise to the surface and shake me out of preoccupation with lists and tasks. Forgive me for my heavy-hearted approach to your season on joy and light. Help me not to let long lists and calendar events overwhelm the wonder of your birth. Smiling God, let some joy loose in me, and let it rub off on others. (Larry James Peacock)

May it be so.

telling Mark 10:13-16 - Jesus & the little children

This was the second of three stories I recorded this week for Pancake Day 2012, with a theme of who is our neighbour.

People were bringing little children to Jesus that he might touch them - but the disciples spoke sternly to them. The disciples spoke sternly - that is to say, they were sending the people away. My voice carried a sternness, my gaze a rebuke, and I swept my hand strongly, palm upright, between where I imagined Jesus and the people to be as a 'stop'.
My immediate feeling with Jesus' indignation was to insert 'Oi!' into his rebuke of the disciples! In the end, the 'Oi' dropped out of the telling, perhaps because it felt distracting, or too comical, or too much like eisegeting Australian culture into the story. I carried the feeling of the 'oi' into my expression of Jesus words - Let the children come to me. 
And as I spoke the rest of his words, I entered his character a little more, and played him inviting the children in between the phrases do not stop them, pick up a child and lift him above his head, and I would look at the camera as he spoke, for it is to such as these that the kin-dom* of God belongs, take a baby from the mother and hold her in his arms, back to the camera, Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kin-dom of God (looking back at the child now for a moment) as a little child (and back to the camera) will never enter it. Then I played Jesus handing the baby back, and looked at the camera again for the final lines - and he took the children in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them (with a smile).
It felt important to enter the character of Jesus and cross the line into acting just a little in this story, for a number of reasons:

I was telling this within a theme of who were Jesus' neighbours, so I wanted to bring the children in as neighbours, as characters present in the story. It is Jesus who brings the children into the story, into the picture, so rather than only having the narrator tell the audience that this is what Jesus did, communicating the meaning of this by showing Jesus welcoming the children felt more effective.

In some ways, this story isn't about the children as neighbours, but about how we are to enter the kin-dom of God - with the vulnerability of little children who rely on their parents with a dependence for their lives. However, here's something that occurred to me as I was reflecting on the story: if we do not welcome others - vulnerable, unseen, seemingly insignificant human beings like children were, and often still are - we can not learn from them. In this story, Jesus welcomes the children, and invites the children to teach the adults something very important about the kin-dom of God - that we are to remember our vulnerability and deep dependence on God for our very lives. How many times have our 'children's talks' in gathered worship taught the adults more than the sermon? How might 'children's talks' become opportunities for the children to more explicitly and intentionally share with adults? This is something I am hoping we will explore in my congregation in coming months - to have adults share with the children (and adults) something of their life, their work, a hobby, an experience, that implicitly or explicitly shows their faith & life lived out; and to have children share, as a group what they're exploring in sunday school, and as individuals, what's happening in their lives. Perhaps we can thus learn and grow together, through relationships of vulnerability, sharing of who we are, how to live God's way of love in the world.

I often find myself deeply engaging with Jesus when I tell his story - imagining what he might have felt, feeling the indignation at children being turned away. I couldn't feel his indignation, which is there in the story, and not show it. My instinctive 'Oi!' was a deep connection with his feeling here, with the emotion in the story. Storytelling is a gift because it connects with the emotion and invites listeners to connect with the emotion. When we feel something we know more deeply than anything we know cognitively. And by allowing myself to feel his indignation, I understood the value he placed on those children, and how, when looking at them, he was reminded of our relationship with God. His love for the children, his love for the adults, moved him to urge the disciples to look at the children, and understand God and their relationship with our Divine Parent.

of writing and worship, courage and comfort

This morning in gathered worship @ Belair, the events in the lives of some of our members reminded us all of the way joy and sorrow sit side by side, sometimes painfully & uncomfortably, in life. And as a couple of us reflected after the service, one of the beauties of a community like church is that when we can’t sing songs of joy, others will sing for us until we can. And while we lament and while we weep, others will weep with us. We are not alone.
We are using the material from SeasonsFUSION worship outlines: the theme for this week was words of comfort, and that I wrote the words we were praying gained a new depth this morning, as we heard of the pain and sorrow in the lives of folk from our community. I haven't mentioned that they are my words, and there's part of me that doesn't want to draw attention to that - perhaps I will once the Advent, Christmas Epiphany season has finished, and we move onto using others' words. We prayed specifically for a couple of people this morning, but it struck me as we spoke together the call to worship after having shared news early on, that these words were crafted by their minister, and all of a sudden it was as if I had written them just for us. I know that people in churches around the country and the world will be praying those prayers, and I wonder what will make them particularly significant for them. What are the needs of their communities, their members, that will help them to feel that those words were written just for them? Because I hope they feel that. 
Writing for Seasons, you're about 12 months ahead, or more, and it can feel a little odd, a bit removed from the moment of gathered worship. You have a community in mind, one that you know, but you also know that you've got to write in such a way that the words invite people from different countries, hemispheres, experiences, ages ...  to worship God, and you don't want to compromise so much that you say nothing at all. So as we prayed the words I wrote 12 months ago, I had a moment of deep gratitude for the way they spoke into our longing for comfort today. And for that, I can only thank that wondrous, mysterious, Sacred Spirit, as well as the courage of those who shared their pain with our community this morning. 

interpreting Mark 7:24-30 for telling

The story begins with Jesus going away to a region in Gentile territory. He goes into a house and doesn't want people to know he's there. So he's taking time out, seeking rest; I felt his tiredness, exhaustion. That becomes important for me in telling his response to the woman who kneels beside him.
That he couldn't escape notice made me imagine the crowd that travelled with him, followed him. Wherever he went, people were talking about him, his teaching, his healing. This was a man to notice.
As the woman comes to kneel beside him, I imagined that she would have to fight through a crowd, and probably fight to get past the disciples. I'm not convinced I quite conveyed that, because to show here fighting her way through the crowds is a lot of movement, or requires adding something to the words of the story. To do it with movement only would be to distract unnecessarily - especially for a recording. I settled for communicating the woman's determination and a gentle embodiment of the strength I imagine she would have needed to fight through the crowd.
As I told Jesus' response - the words he says about feeding the children first - I imagined that he wouldn't look at this woman. From the opening description of his desire to be alone, for no one to know he was there, it felt to me that he would be displeased, disappointed, to have this wish not come true. And I felt his tiredness. If he wanted no one to know he was there, this man who was so giving of himself, I imagined that he had nothing to give, and needed time to rest and regenerate his energy.
And so we come to her response - she's been dismissed. Let the children be fed first - and at this point, he doesn't even have the energy to feed the children of Israel, hence the sojourn in territory beyond the people to whom he feels sent. But she says - dogs eat the crumbs from the children: which I heard / felt as 'all I am asking for is the small amount you have left'. And as I think about it - is this a statement of trust and faith that even his small amount of power will be enough to heal her daughter. Because, actually, Jesus says over and over again, it is the faith of the people themselves that heals them, or their loved ones. Does she know this? I don't think so. She knows that through him, healing is possible for her daughter. She believes.
And met by this faith, Jesus can't resist. Exhausted as he is, her faith makes him turn around and look at her. And as I turned, telling the story from Jesus' point of view, I felt like taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh, with a fair amount of effort - like breathing the Spirit, acting on her faith. I'm not sure what the words are to describe what I understand the meaning of the sigh to be, but the sigh felt like the right action for this part of the story. Then I felt him reach out to her, extend the invitation into the kin-dom of God beyond the borders of the nation of Israel; acknowledging her faith and the broader possibilities for God's dream.
And I turn back to look at the camera for the final words of the story - she went home, found her daughter lying on her bed, and the demon gone - with a big smile on my face!

of filming stories for pancake day

Pancake Day - held on shrove tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent - is a huge fundraising campaign each year for UnitingCare, the Uniting Church's social care agency. Churches, schools - any group really - cook pancakes for their community asking for a donation. The money goes to UnitingCare. And awareness is raised for these agencies.
Part of the awareness raising of the event is the pre-materials inviting people to take part in the event.
That's where I come in. They asked me to tell some stories of Jesus and his neighbours. My friend Jana offered a reflection on how we engage with our neighbours, living out stories like the well known story of the Good Samaritan, working together to feed, nurture, offer care, and share love.
Filming of the clips was this afternoon, and we did have fun! Scouting out all the nooks and corners of Pilgrim Church to find just the right spot, the right light balanced with the feel of a sacred space, including standing on chairs and stepping side to side in front of windows ... half an our of this & two takes (plus one false start) for 5 minutes of stories!
But that's what it's all about, really, bringing our gifts, each of us, our insight and our experience, the vision for the job and making it happen - working together, appreciating what each other has to offer, and enjoying the collaborative effort.
And once you hear Jana's sermon, you'll all want to find a way to be involved with pancake day - I promise!

For reflections on the stories themselves, the three I prepared and told, and new things I heard from Jana, stay tuned.