Reflections on Hebrews 11 and Romans 8

The day is long
shadows linger
sin whelms, misery grows
but if I listen carefully
the great cloud of saints
cheers me on

body
groans
decaying with increased ferocity and noise
pain captures my attention
a body
formally a slave to deterioration

this outward is fading and greying
but inside
slowly, gradually,
I am being renewed

these sufferings are
creating an everlasting glory
that will last forever more.

the saints cheer me on.

No Words Spoken

The decision.
A hundred indecisions,
time yet for a hundred more visions and revisions.

Words halted between the mind and the lips
Thoughts formed, sentences construed
and glued and unglued and de-con-strued.

Here's a face for a face that's beloved
Here's a smile for cheeks unknown
ma chérie, I present to you, "seulement" votre amie?

The edges of her mouth turn out,
creases around her eyes relax.
'Darling, are you remembering?'

Daughter, sister, cousin, lover.
A million miles away.

Close to you,
But no words spoken
a decision devised, revised, contrived
crafted to draw us slowly
softly
silently
away.

No words spoken.

Alzheimer's.

Silhouette against the light
False recognition.
Flush of blood to the cheeks,
oh look! the garden... it needs some attention... no, cake for me, I'm a small eater.
Confusion.

Ken, is that you, Ken?
I am, the man replies.
His legs stretch out in the before him, reaching towards the sunlight.
Stooped and twisted over the chair's back, a face lined with years.

Spare tire on his stomach.
Sorry, are you Ken? Have you seen my husband?

Oh, my darling, come back to me.
See me, see me,
to which the years have both subtracted and added
to which your love and service has sustained
the marriage in which Our Lord reigned.

Blood in, blood out.
But the embarrassment, forgotten.

A new moment.

Sisters.

Our siblings push buttons that cast us in roles we felt sure we had let go of long ago - the baby, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the avoider.... It doesn't seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we've traveled. ~Jane Mersky Leder

Reading Erin's post on sisterhood inspired me write my own. She quotes Louise Gluck; 'Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer'.

'Systems fail days'. We share them with a knowing smile, carefully watching the other crash into bed for hours on end, only to submerge bleary eyed and exhausted, yet calm, knowing some of the pain has subsided.

My sister and I have, until recently, had a treacherous relationship. Younger by five and one quarter years, others always made sure to comment on our differences. Ebony and ivory. The fashionable, creative arty one; the quiet, studious, melancholic one. Vivacious and easy going, harder to get to know yet opinionated. Tall and thin; shorter and rounder. Blond; brunette.

But it was not only the constant remarks on our differences and the large age gap that lead to our shaky relationship. We discovered in each the habits and personality traits that annoyed us the most. I am neat, she is messy. I am organised, she is absent-minded. I am planned, she is spontaneous. Adding fuel to the fire, she refused to wear my hand-me-down clothes and was sometimes bought new ones, whereas I had to accept the pass-offs from cousins and older female friends. She also had the enviable position of being raised by parents who were the youngest or second youngest themselves.

Despite some favour, she has had to put up with the very worse of me. Others outside the family may have been deceived, but every 'shadow side', every drop of evil within me was inflicted on her.

More recently I have strove to improve our relationship. Recognising that her attempts to annoy me were in response to years of mistreatment, I knew that forgiveness and love, difficult as they are, were the only answer to the hurt. One day, awkwardly, I announced that I had forgiven her, and would keep on forgiving her for the hurts she caused me, and asked her to do the same for me. In her response I heard her voice crack in the way mine had a few seconds previously. Whilst we are yet to have heart-felt conversations, I know that like Erin, 'when we hurt, we hurt in the same places'.


Some of our goals and habits are similar, others aren't. We share a desire to create beautiful gifts for special friends in order to show our love for them. She is, however, driven by the desire to create; whereas I seek to accumulate knowledge. She is less fussed by easy-going friendships, a sign of the absence of my deep-ache for intimacy and connection. She lives in the present, I in the future.

I feel that we have come to know that the labels others place on us should not limit us, even though these words have not passed between us. She has given up 'swimmer' and adopted 'teacher', I have given up 'un-fit' and adopted an enjoyment of some forms of exercise, she has said goodbye to 'non-dancer' to become a dancer, both in the sense of the poem and in practise.

My hope is that we will grow closer. Not by the natural path of time as everyone mistakenly told us but through sheer hard work and determination. We can and do sometimes exist as strangers, living in parallel worlds. But gradually, a few words of French which causes a smile in the other, the mutual exasperation with a high-school teacher and the reading of novels breaks us into the realm of the Other.

I celebrate her creativity rather than envying it, and begin to find ways to express my own, throwing off the label of the 'non-arty one'.

I know that there are so many thoughts, feelings, expressions waiting to be released.

I am here, waiting, listening.

Thoughts on loneliness.

I've been pondering loneliness quite a bit of late.

I suspect that like a lot of people, I often have pangs of loneliness despite being surrounded by people.

My reticence to write this post leads me to conclude that to admit loneliness in our society is unusual, if not subject to stigmatisation. Popular, friendly, outgoing, known people are what we should aspire to be, right?

It is not so much the lack of people, but the lack of meaningful conversations that leads me to feel this way. I feel that although I often converse with many people each day, we often fail to connect in a significant way.

I have questioned whether I 'set the bar too high'; that a moment of connection must be so poignant in order for me to know and feel known. I wonder whether I ask the wrong questions, make incorrect responses, lack 'presence'. I have asked whether I simply am difficult to know, holding my cards too close to my chest, trusting too little.

Whilst I think sometimes the answer lies in my questions, more often then not, it is none of these things. Occasionally the other person seeks an acquaintance-type encounter sans personal exposure. But it is not merely sharing that contributes to meaningfulness, even sharing ideas and knowledge can lead me to walk away having gained something.

I think that ultimately I am overly idealistic; I expect and hope that each conversation will be imbued with meaning, life-changing (or at least challenging to my preconceived ideas and way of being) and memorable. Often due to a plethora of factors this doesn't occur, and my feeling of disappointment is due to hopes prematurely raised, rather directly due to a failure of mine or of the other party.

I have gained hope in knowing that Jesus too felt lonely, most radically when he was abandoned by God on the cross but also when his close friends fall asleep rather than 'keeping watch' in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Peter denies him and also when Judas betrays him.

Each time I feel the stab of isolation I seek to turn to God rather than numb it in other ways (see Psalm 42 and 46). There is of course a sense to which we need other people and are designed to live in community ('it is not good for man to be alone', amongst others) but I think this is only part of the solution. Dependence on God in conjunction within honesty, loving friends in the community is the solution. Crying out to God must take precedence because unlike our friends, he won't leave or forsake us. On good days I also remember that being uncomfortable on this earth is a good thing, as it increases our hunger for the afterlife/earth's recreation (see 1 Peter).

Finally, the perspective of Charlotte Bronte expressed in Evening Solace is uplifting:

The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back­ a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others' sufferings seem.
Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie !

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress­
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,
Seeking a life and world to come.

Rediscovering the beauty of design.

Flicking through housing magazine Habitus recently I found myself uncovering my latent love of beautiful design, especially of houses. It was one of those 'life is beautiful' moments; my ability to see beauty in the 'small things' in life was awakened. Deadened by hours spent reading, writing, exercising, thinking... just going through the motions of life, locked inwards, not looking outwards. Cerebral, mental activities have certainly dominated.

As I read I found my awe in the created giving rise to praise to the Creator. I'll keep an eye out for signs of covertness, but the occasional read of such magazines will be fine.

I also love fashion. Not exactly sure why this doesn't translate into the way I dress... but I do love to read fashion magazines and observe the incredible taste of many students at Melbourne Uni and in the surrounding suburbs of Brunswick, Fitzroy and Carlton.

I remembered how I used to spend hours as a kid sewing and doing 'craft projects', which usually consisted of making gifts for friends. Bath salts, tissue box holders, cushions. I once made sewed a hammock and several pairs of shorts. At age four my grandmother taught me how to cross-stitch and knit. My desire to sew was gradually diminished by unsuccessful, or just not quite perfect projects; my need for perfectionism as strong then as now.

I also loved gardens and started two of my own, only to have them destroyed by the re-stumpers and then plumbers in our former house. Crushed by their destruction, this interest was also distinguished. When cleaning out my cupboard recently I discovered a folder of magazine clippings. Pages after page of plants and gardens, house designs, sewing designs, craft projects and recipes. I think my only 'creative outlet' that hasn't been dampened of late is cooking, and to a lesser extent, writing. I find it difficult to justify writing for leisure. My friend's post here on writing expresses well how I think about it:

Writing should be like breathing. Words to sustain one's passage through the world. Walking. Looking. Listening. In, out, along the edges of the world. Moving beneath the superficialities, and grasping the mundanity - seeing it for the beauty and brokenness. Writing should be about other people. Should be about transcendence. Moving beyond the scope of oneself.

Finally, I also find such 'creative joy' in beautiful photography. For some reason I find greater pleasure in photography than artwork. I love especially to see objects, places and people that I know represented or emphasised differently in a photo.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the 'small things' in life, especially those related to subsistence, are what contributes to one's sense of overall happiness and joy. For me (and for a lot of people) these are gardening, moments with friends and cooking. To these I also add the discovery of shared human experience in poetry or a piece of writing and communion with God.

I was surprised to find stumble across this sentiment expressed by Tolstoy in War and Peace:

Pierre now saw the the absence of suffering and the satisfaction of our basic needs, followed up by freedom to choose an occupation, or lifestyle, as the highest and most dependable form of human happiness. It was only here and now that Pierre had fully appreciated for the first time in his life the enjoyment of eating when you are hungry, drinking when you are thirsty, sleeping when you are tired... through deprivation Pierre now saw the satisfaction of his basic needs... as the ultimate happiness, and the choice of an occupation or lifestyle, now that this choice was so restricted, seemed such a simple matter that he forgot that a surfeit of luxury takes all the pleasure out of satisfying our basic needs, and maximum freedom in the choice of occupation, which had been provided for him through education, wealth and his position in society, makes the actual choice of an occupation extraordinarily difficult, because it destroys the need and desire for any such thing.

Stuff Christians Like.

I know that I'm about 2 years too late, but yesterday I stumbled across the blog 'Stuff Christians Like', modelled on 'Stuff White People Like'. The guy who writes it is quite prolific.

I was crying with laughter, which just confirms that Christian sub-culture (or, more correctly, Western Christian culture) has as many identifiable features as any other. The homogeneity is a bit of a worry, and I'm not talking about our shared commitment to following Christ. I'm convinced that there are Christians of all shapes and sizes but the prolification of Zondervan, massed Christian publications and postcast sermons are certainly doing their bit to narrow the spectrum. Whilst on one hand it's good that people have access to high-quality teaching at any time (and not so quality teaching, as the case may be), it's not so great about how small the Christian stereotype is becoming. As an extreme example, at church this morning a guy offered me a 'Scripture' mint. Yes, there is scripture printed onto the inside of the lid and each mint is marked with a tiny fish.

As for 'SCL', my favourite posts are definately #550 Surviving Church as a Single, #615 Making Sure Everyone Online Knows Your Married. and #613 Church Hugs.

What do you think?