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.