Hebrews

on the edge of the ocean
i swam in the sea
cold salty water
washed over me
i started to hope (again)
that i could be free

today in class

me: Corey did you see Harry Potter last nght?
Corey: Nah I don't watch Harry Potter.
Me: Well you should. Harry Potter's awesome.
Corey: Isn't he a wizard thing?
Zivana (from the other side of the room): Who's a lizard?


hehehe

remember

Have just come back from our Remembrance Day assembly. It was really beautifully done, and good to see all of the kids in our school standing quietly and respectfully (despite heat and discomfort). I would have to say that this has been the first time I have seen the whole school body brought together in unity and respect for something, teachers and students, and with hardly any coersion at all.


As the last post played and we entered our minute's silence I thought about the different world that seems to have existed at the time of WWI. A world where young men and women would offer themselves to fight because someone required it of them. A world where the tragedy of millions of lives lost could happen.

Our modern world has grown out of that. Individuals would not be willing to fight and die in those massive numbers nowadays. And that is a good thing isn't it? Our society wouldn't be caught dead on a killing field at the hands of the authorities? No way.

And then the minute's silence ended and the reveille began. And as my heart quickened, I remembered another thing our society has 'grown out of'-

the hope of ressurrection.

from little things

I am thinking about this song right now. My Year Ten History class have been listening to it as a way of remembering the names and story of the Wave Hill protest and it's making me remember some other stories. Like Jesus' ones about the mustard seed and the yeast. From little things big things grow.

It's the way the world works and it's direct evidence that goodness is much bigger and quieter than noisy, ineffectual evil and destruction. And yet my mind insists on defaulting back to the assumption that I need to see or do this or that RIGHT NOW, witness immediate effects, and if I don't then I'm doing something wrong.

Two minutes ago I saw evidence of that big, quiet goodness residing in and working away through a Year Ten boy whom I have despaired over many times this year. What does it mean God? Are you bigger (and quieter) than the sadness and waste I'm confronted with in these teenagers' lives? Are you still present and working away? Can goodness work away right next to evil?

And am I so lucky, have I become so used to a glut of goodness in the people around me that I am unable to see it quietly working in my kids?

It makes me want to stop. And breathe. And rest in the small acts (very small) towards goodness that I am able to do.

And you can take those small acts, watered with the kind of despair that chooses to trust something bigger than itself anyway. And if we wait...

HARRY POTTER SEVEN!

My Year 10 girls just informed me that I need to buy a ticket from them to see Harry Potter SEVEN (a) on 17 November to raise money for their prom. ONE TICKET???? I INTEND TO BUY FIVE!!!!!

some thoughts from Chapter 3

I am in love. And I have been reading this book. Being in love threatens to distract me from really thinking through the concepts in this book, but I really want to understand them so it's as though God is using this book to teach me about the stuff in the book, but also about how being in love is very different to loving, leaping, trusting, watching and learning...

So here are some of the really good thoughts from Chapter 3:

"...doubt not only can be seen as an inevitable aspect of our humanity but can also be celebrated as a vital part of faith... the believer who encounters serious doubt does not renounce his or her faith but rather uses it a an opportunity to affirm it... Only a genuine faith can embrace doubt, for such a faith does not act because of self interested reason (such as fear of hell or desire of heaven) but acts simply because it must.... celebrate this dark night of the soul, understanding that this is not a threatening darkness which conceals an enemy but rather is the intimate darkness within which we embrace our faith."


"If we are to guess a motive for Jesus' miracles, then we would have to think that he performed them out of love rather than as a means of compelling belief... Instead of religious discourse being a type of drink designed to satisfy our thirst for answers, Jesus made his teaching salty, evoking thirst. Instead of offering a scientific explanation that would convince, or publicising the miracles so as to compel his listeners, Jesus engaged in a poetic discourse that spoke to the heart of those who would listen..."



"The silence that is part of all God-talk is not the silence of banality, indifference or ignorance but one that stands in awe of God... the Christian faith is extrapolated via a powerless discourse which, at its most evangelical, attempts to create a space in which others can seek for themselves... our approach must be a powerless one which employs words as a way of saying that we have been left utterly breathless by a beauty that surpasses all words... we use words in order to tear through them and glimpse at what lies beneath..."


extracts from How (not) to speak of God by Peter Rollins, SPCK Press, London, 2006

now i have eveything

Rehearsals for Fiddler on the Roof are going well with sets and costumes falling into place (thanks Katrina the legend) and the opening scene pretty much rehearsed. Yesterday Annabelle and Katelyn and I blocked the scene where Perchik proposes marriage to Hodel. It was so much fun. And we came up with some cool moves for the Sabbath Prayer song. It was a great rehearsal.

And in other news, I have been getting up early to go for walks this week and it is proving a lovely time of day for connecting with the earth and my maker. A great chance to think about and rememebr all the people and needs I have run into in the last few weeks. So I can recommend it - except it means being determined to be asleep before 11PM!!!! Eeek!

the game

It feels like a game I cannot win. I’m not very good at strategy you see. And I seem to make the wrong move by instinct. Is it fear that causes me to fumble?

But if it’s true that the music playing at the core of my soul could be part of a larger symphony, what I really need to learn is to relax; to trust; to live in the river I am being carried by: to play, to float and not to worry too much about the destination.

when a retreat comes to visit

The last couple of days have been blissful.

Peace. Quiet. Stories. Joy. Cheese. Guitar.

Most members of our community have gone away for the first week of school holidays. Only David Orozco and I are left to represent Cornerstone (apart from a couple of plants and animals). I do miss the others (because they are the greatest community a girl could ask to be part of). But it doesn't happen very often that I get a couple of days to myself (probably because I know so many wondrful people that I long to see and hang out with). I have really enjoyed the pace the last few days... a few welcome visits from friends occasionally interrupting a leisurely solitude filled with reading, singing, cooking and cleaning, contemplation and conversation with... well the one who has shared it all with me to begin with.

How lucky am I? I didn't plan this retreat, it planned me!

Tell me a story

Today I woke with a story in my mind.

There was a young girl named Ellie whose nose turned up at everything. She didn't realise it, but she didn't enjoy much, and when she laughed the sounds came out in thin shreddy snorts. All of her friends had exactly the same layered hair style and laughed with the same sound and they never differed on anything (if they could help it).

One day at recess a quiet year seven boy named Timmy passed Ellie’s group. As he trotted by, Timmy slipped over and landed smack on his backside. It looked so funny, but it was even more hilarious when Timmy, rising, tripped on his shoelace and fell a second time. Hilarity can be catching and everyone started chortling.

Ellie couldn’t contain herself. Soon she was giggling and hooting. And when Timmy tripped a third time (by this time even he had begun laughing) tears were pouring from Ellie’s eyes. Ellie’s breath was coming in short bursts as she pushed air out in great gobby laughs until she got confused about whether she was breathing in or laughing out and shot a large globule from her nose. It glided through the air, landing splat. Everything went very quiet.

Residual laughter faded from Ellie's wet face. She looked around and saw all of her friends staring at the globule. Embarrassed she watched as it stretched upwards forming a thin pliable strand. A haughty face appeared in the slime at the top of the strand. Small feet poked out of the bottom. With great dignity the slime turned up its nose and tripped penguin-like out of the circle of onlookers, preserving a dignified silence.

A smattering of titters soon caught flame, fast growing to roaring hilarity as everyone, including Ellie, fell about laughing at the silly slime strand tripping across the playground.

Fiddler

Gosh it's fun singin musical songs with kids and seeing them grow in confidence. I really like being part of a show and seeing it gradually come alive with the joy of kids on stage working out their characters and beginning to inhabit them. This week we had a nice mixture of violence, dance and love.

And this show has so much beautiful music in it. Melodies streaked with sadness and hope. And then some of it just downright FUN. To Life, to Life L'chaim!

Favourite moment from this week... Milly singing, "When Moses slew Goliath," Tom's action is supposed to be to wind up a big imaginary sling and send it off into the audience crying out YESSSS. Instead his winding ended in an anti-climactic... "huh?"

Hunger games

A new book I am reading. It is addictive. I'm not sure how good it is yet. But it is definitely addictive.

I have been thinking a lot about a quote from a very good book indeed, LotR. Tolkien thought the image was important enough to include it twice (once in a dream at Tom Bombadil's and then at the Grey Havens). Though I really didn't understand it when I first read the book, it is becoming important to me now.

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled sweet frangrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.


I love the image of the grey haven and the rain receding behind the ship, while the shore and the morning sun approach. The atmosphere feels familiar, except I am always in the rain, looking forward... 

I wonder if that is what my life looks like to God. Just as human lives seem to be a passing dream to the elves in LotR, perhaps my grey self is receding quickly under the light of eternity.  It just feels so wretchedly slow to me. 

Maybe I can begin to wake to this kind of life now? Do I dare to hope that my waking is watched over eagerly, by one who longs for my eyes to be opened and filled with light today?

Or must I, like Frodo, wait until my journey is over, my task complete, my quest has been settled? Oh, I am hungry for the light of Aman to be in my eyes.

lilith a

'Life was rather dull for a while; but a comforter was given me, and the name of my comforter is Hope.'

still holding a trembling hand

the title of this blog is beginning to seem very ironic... did I unknowingly create a sarcastic mission statement for myself when I composed it in two seconds flat in January of this year?

I was looking back through some entries from last year's blog, trying to recapture a sense of the inspiration or purpose I lived with while i was on team, and I found this quote...

"God uses people to perform his work. He does not send angels. Angels weep over it, but God does not use angels to accomplish His purposes. He uses burdened broken-hearted weeping men and women."



David Wilkerson

housewifeliness

Upon entering the Walker's kitchen and discovering the intrepid two, Samuel Walker and Lachlan Skinner, hard at work making pikelets for our community dinner dessert last evening...

Me:          Ahh, it's lovely to see you boys cooking for everyone. If you keep going
               at this rate, you boys will be worth marrying someday.
Samuel:   I am already worth marrying... I am practically housewifely!


hehehehehe

what my Year 10 boys told me...

In class this afternoon no girls showed up. Only seven boys. And they smelled bad. They were 'completing their writing tasks'.

"Sorry I've been away, Miss. I was in Japan at a BMX championship. I am now officially the best BMX rider in the world."

"I saw you on Saturday night Miss... did you see someone pop their head out of a car and say 'G'day'? 'Cause that was me."

"I was a janitor at a university and I used to solve maths problems left on the board. Some people call me the Einstein of the world... others like to call me fat."

"I'm the biggest computer hacker in the world, Miss. And if you dob on me I will lay you out because I am a black belt in karate as well... and yes I would hit a woman because I had gender reassignment surgery and now I am a woman."

"Did you know I'm a hobo now miss? I got kicked out of home on the weekend... you don't want to know what happened. I got into a fight with someone and killed the cat."

"Did you know that Aden is straight, Miss?"

"Tell me where you live Miss and I'll drive past and do a burn out. But don't tell the cops my license plate, Miss. If you do, I'll burn your house down. No, I wont. I'm not crazy enough to do that. And if your house burns down don't tell the cops I said that. I'm in enough trouble with them already."

Some of the other things they told me don't bear repeating. They live in a different world to mine. I don't think I'll tell them where I live just yet.

why old people are afraid of young people in groups

Last night I walked into the local watering hole of a small but select group of ageing Broken Hillians. They sat around a long table, taking up most of the space in the small barroom in the South Australian. As I entered the little pub they all turned towards me. I frantically scoured the space before me looking for my friends. Not seeing them I sat down.

A man with a moustache looked at me slowly, and asked me how I was doing this evening. It was intimidating. My voice cracked as I replied, "Fine thanks." I had to walk through them to search the back of the bar. It turned out to be empty. Then I had to walk back past that intimidating group all sitting around sipping their drinks... Ahhh they all belonged there and I didn't. It was SCARY.


I later found out we were meeting everyone at the Southern Cross, not the South Australian.

drainsinging

Last night we went to our local friendly drain with candles and blankets and sang reverberantly into the darkness and into one another's hearts. Some hearts were tired and hurting, some shy, some joyful and exhuberant. All were lifted by the beautiful noises. And the Heart of our own was there, even though we may not have remembered it completely*.

We went in honour of our new friend and honorary Broken Hillian - Annie - who has been with us for the last week. With her smiling open face and her earnest desire to serve and meet the needs of others she has been a fun companion and contributor, and we all (especially David Rozali!) feel that she fits into our community beautifully.

Annie writes songs like it's a natural part of human life (maybe it is).

Though I am finding it difficult to live up to the sentiment in this one, I do love it and feel inspired...

i wish i was robin hood
fighting the rich for the poor
and doing a bit of good

* incidentally I wish I could remember the fact that the heart of my own is present with me without pause, and get the good of it in all situations... and more importantly GIVE the good of it to others

cry... cry to him

Yesterday I prayed, asking God to disturb me in the depths of who I am so that I could be changed, broadened deepened. Why would I pray such a prayer? Certainly not thinking too intelligently about what that might mean in practical terms. I mean, if there is an actual god of the universe who creates, loves and helps, but trusts and waits for me to be ready and willing to move further into the mysteries of my own humanity.... then presumably He is waiting for me to ask him to do such things, and will take me at my word when I do.

So yesterday was surprising. And difficult. I found different things in me that I didn't know were there. Scary things. And I am choosing to trust.

cry, cry to him who is good, for he sees you through all the gloom, and he is with you. Fear not , for he goes before you. The lord is a strong tower, those who run to him are safe. Where will my help come from? My help will come from him, maker of heaven and earth, father and protector. He guards your footsteps...

generation alphabet

I'm not sure if it is a generational thing or if I am just a little dense. I showed the following graph to my Year Nine students, hoping to baffle them as much as I had been (it took me about ten minutes to figure out what it was all about)....

http://dukeoflimbs.blogspot.com/2010/06/junk-post.html
see my friend Spindleshanks' blog for original and larger version.

Of course they all figured it out in under 2 minutes and handed it back to me, very self satisfied and happy to point out how culturally savvy I was NOT.

In other news, the load of marking and reports due before going to Strath this weekend is making me amazed that I am even writing this post. Is it possible that I am doing it in the two minute gap between periods 3 & 4? Noooooooo.............