wondering

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just around the corner

I parked yesterday in a suburban street in West Launceston.

It could have been anywhere. Houses, footpaths, cars. Kids playing. People walking. A school at the top of the hill, a shop down the road.

It was so very normal. Suburbia.

And then I walked.

After two minutes I was in ‘First Basin’ where the South Esk River comes spilling out of the upper sections of Cataract Gorge, into a large open pool, before continuing down the Gorge to the waiting arms of the Tamar estuary. The water is surrounded by cliffs and hills, parkland and bushland, a 300m chairlift carrying excited school kids overhead. Peacocks fussing and preening.

It’s anything but suburbia.

And I walked again, following a trail upstream toward the delightfully named Duck Reach.

Not 10 minutes from setting out on foot from my car parked in the heartland of the suburbs I was a world away.  The remnant of last week’s floodwaters tumbled down the rocky riverbed. The steep sides of the gorge deep with forest, the atmosphere still and heavy – the river and an occasional bird’s call the only sounds beyond my own footsteps.

It is a beautiful place, and all the more remarkable for being so close to the heart of the city.

At one moment I was in the normalcy of suburbia, and minutes later deep in tbe beauty of the gorge.  It never ceases to amaze me that such a remarkable spot can be so close to ordinary life, literally just around the corner.

As I walked I thought a lot about that fact. I wondered how often we who are caught up in the ordinariness of daily life miss the spectacular, the remarkable, the astonishing that is just around the corner.

And I wondered about the church that I work among, so obsessed with worrying about our daily bread that we miss all the opportunities that lie just out of sight.

It seems an obvious connection. Lift our eyes from suburbia to find the remarkable that is literally on our doorstep.

But as I trod the riverside path on my way back home, something started to stir for me.  I had parked my car in the middle of everything that I know, and gone off to find something better.

And how often, I wondered, is that the case?  How often do we give up on all that is normal and around us to go searching for the something remarkable?  How often do we leave suburbia to go hunting for Cataract Gorge?

The closer I got to my car the more I realised that suburbia is anything but ordinary.  This is where I live. There are friends and family, there are stresses and tension, there is laughter of kids playing in the front yard, heartache as an amublance races to the scene of a domestic tragedy.

This, suburbia, is life. It’s not ordinary, it’s incredible.  When I go looking for the amazing that I’m convinced is just around the corner I think perhaps I miss the remarkable that surrounds me right where I am.

The grass is always greener, or so we say.  The salvation of my church, the restoration of my soul, the reclaiming of my world as a better place….these things are perpetually just around the corner.

Except they are not. They are right before my very eyes. They are my neighbours, my family, the shop at the end of my street.  The best stuff isn’t around the corner, its right here.

Perhaps I’d best start just here.

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let silence do the heavy lifting

There’s a spot, just off the side of the walking track that runs up through Cataract Gorge here in Launceston.

It’s one of my favourite spots. You climb a few steps up off the walking path, into a space that is dark, and sheltered, mysterious and quiet.

There in the silence there is rest, peace, freedom.

And marvellous carved and polished granite artworks. Each stone has one of two words.

Silent

Listen

And if you sit there a while, it becomes possible to do just that, listen to the silence.

I love going there, and rarely miss a chance to step off the path into this place of stillness.

Silence, I think, is one of our most under-rated resources. In a world that is constantly noisy, and in which data streams to us from every imaginable source almost without pause, silence is rare and precious.

Maybe its just the introvert talking, but today I crave silence. Stillness.

But, of course, the reverse is true. There are moments when silence is destructive. When injustice is being done, silence is complicit.  When harsh words are spoken, silence can be agreement.

And so, while it is right for us to let silence do the heavy lifting (to unashamedly use the words of Susan Scott), there are moments when we have to shout loudly, to refuse to go gently into the night (to yet again use someone else’s words).

The trick then, has to be finding the right moment. Finding the time when silence is golden, when silence transforms, renews and, yes, challenges.

But to be wide open to the times when silence is the last thing that’s required. When it is exactly the right moment to call our society, our leaders to account, to speak truth to power.

Let silence do the heavy lifting, but speak clearly when it’s important. That’s what I’m learning this week.

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the challenge of team

For the last few months I’ve been working with a group on a joint project.  The project is starting to get towards the sharp end of our deadline, with just a few weeks to go before delivery date on a joint report.

Today we met to mull over the current draft version of our report.

It’s a document that I wrote on behalf of the group, trying to listen well to what was being said (and left unsaid) and say what needs to be said, in a way that can be received.

Today was about sharpening the draft, about picking out the parts that needed fine tuning (or removing), about putting some more flesh on the bones in a couple of spots.

The group I’m working with bring to the table a lot of experience, and a wide collection of wisdom.  And they were gentle with me (really), encouraging of the work that had been done, and offering valuable insights into how to make the report even better.

It was a positive and healthy discussion that will result in a better document.  A good example of how a team can produce good work.

So why then,  did I face such an internal struggle with the whole discussion today? Continue reading →

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confession: i like toy cars

I have another confession to make:

I like toy cars.

Not just any toy cars, but R/C (or radio controlled) toy cars.  And I don’t just like playing with them in the yard, I like racing them, competitively, on a race track.

They’re not really toys either, they are serious racing machines.

Nobody can tell me otherwise. Continue reading →

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Leadership….is not a dirty word

There are two leadership quotes that I particularly love.

Lao Tzu: A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him….But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, “We did it ourselves.

Napoleon Bonaparte: A leader is a dealer in hope.

Leadership is not demanding, commanding, directing, or driving.  It is not managing or administration.

We have an oversupply of ‘leaders’ (whether political or otherwise) who lead by being negative, by pointing out the problems in our world, the dangers we face, what we should “not” be doing.

The kind of leadership that is most effective, and that is most lacking in our world today (and if we’re honest, in our church as well) is the kind of leadership that deals in hope, that inspires initiative and energy.  A truly effective leader is one who paints a picture of an alternate reality, who reveals to us what we ‘could’ be, and motivates us to go where we might not go if left to our own devices.

That’s the kind of leadership I would love to see us nurture in the Uniting Church in Tasmania.

What does it mean for you to deal in hope?  Who can you encourage or inspire? What new possibilities can you imagine….and call into existence?

(this story first published in Uniting Tas – the monthly newsletter of the Uniting Church in Tasmania)

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Knowing the ending

I read a book last week.  It happens occasionally.

It wasn’t the latest literary classic, or a leadership text. It wasn’t even theology.

It was, how shall we put this, airport fiction. Clive Cussler.  Adventures. Craziness. Action.

I like reading Cussler’s stories when I’m after a bit of escapism.  They are non stop adventure romps. This particular book featured a husband and wife treasure hunting team who lurched from adventure to adventure, taking on and single handedly defeating the bad guys, finding the treasure and saving the world.

All good.  Right?

Somewhere along the way, I found myself getting annoyed at the book.  I was frustrated at the predictability of it all. No matter what the odds, no matter what the obstacles, the hero couple always prevailed, always found the hidden clue no-one else could see, saw off trained commandos with a piece of rusty steel and some basic physics…..and so on…..endlessly.

Now I knew full well what I was getting into when I opened the book. Cussler books definitely follow a fairly standard format, so I wasn’t surprised.

But still, I was annoyed.

Where was the reality?  The obstacles that sometimes are insurmountable? The good guys that sometimes can’t defeat the bad guys?  I found myself just wanting a little more rawness, a little more “real-ness” in the story.

And somewhere along the way I got to thinking a bit about church worship services (no, I don’t know why my mind makes these strange leaps either).  I got to thinking about how so often our church services follow predictable plotlines, where the good guys always triumph, where we are always able to “praise God”.

Sometimes in church, as in Cussler, I wish for a little more rawness, a little more real-ness.    Sometimes we should spend a little more time crying out to God about the awfulness, and a little less pretending we’re full of praise and worship.

Sometimes life just sucks, and church is one place we shouldn’t be afraid to name that reality.

Even if Cussler doesn’t.

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hammering home hospitality

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail……or so the saying goes.

For those churches who follow the lectionary (a set cycle of bible readings around which church services are based), this week there is a story of Jesus’ encounter with a woman who washes Jesus feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, then cracks open an expensive alabaster jar of perfume to finish the job. All this happens in the middle of dinner….at which Jesus is a guest, and the woman an uninvited gate crasher.  Read it here.

I was chatting briefly about the passage with a colleague this morning, and she pointed out what were, to her, the important features of the story.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a bit about hospitality lately, as I’m working with a group of people to host a training/reflection weekend on that theme.  So with hospitality in my mind for other reasons, I read this story looking for, and finding lots of expressions of hospitality.

When you have a hammer, you see nails.  And that’s the beauty of good stories (and the bible has more than a few good stories). Good stories speak at many levels, offering insights into many different situations, and allowing many different ways of interacting with them.

As I think about this story through the lense of hospitality, I’m drawn to ask the question, who offers who hospitality in this story?

Jesus is invited for dinner, but not particularly cared for by the host.  The cultural practice of offering water for foot washing for instance……is not extended.

The woman is not invited, but comes anyway and offers generous hospitality to Jesus.

Jesus in turn, seeing that the host is not happy about this intrusion, or Jesus welcoming of the visitor, extends welcome and honour to the uninvited guest in a must unexpected way.

What does it mean to offer hospitality in our culture today?  Or for that matter what does it mean to accept?  Surely it’s more than bringing a bottle of wine to dinner….or offering to do the dishes (an offer which must by convention be politely refused).

And who are the outsiders in our day? The uninvited? Who is not welcome at the table?  How can we make the outsider welcome…even if we are guest rather than host?

These are the kinds of questions this story evokes for me.  But I have to say, I’m wondering, what do you see in it? What kind of hammer are you holding?

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familiarity breeds immunity

Recently I visited one of our UCA congregations in Hobart to run a workshop with the congregation after their Sunday morning service.

As I also had the opportunity to introduce myself during the service, and to speak briefly on the topic of the workshop, I thought I’d take some time before I made the journey south to reflect on the bible reading they would be using in church that day – to see if there were any connections between the reading, and my workshop.

It’s this story, from the gospel according to Luke. Hit the link and go read it. See what you think.  Even if you’ve stumbled upon these musings and you’re not religious at all, take a moment to read it. Go on. I’ll wait here until you get back….. 😉

As I read the story I found myself nodding along with it. “Yep, ok, Jesus and his followers, see a funeral, Jesus feels sorry, brings the guy back to life, goes on his way.  Typical Jesus story.  No big deal.”

Wait. What?

No big deal? Continue reading →

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changing flights

Some days, things just don’t turn out the way you expected.

Yesterday I was heading for a day of meetings in Melbourne. It happens every couple of months, and as usual I booked the early morning flight across, and an evening flight home again.

At 6.15am, the normal boarding time for my flight, airline staff announced that Melbourne airport was fog-bound and we’d be delaying the flight a little while.  At about 7am they got us up and moving and on-board.  Unfortunately in the 45 minutes that had passed, fog had drifted in over Launceston airport as well.

We ran up and down the runway a couple of times, and the movement of air must have caused the fog to lift or dissipate just enough….so at about 7.30 we took off, on a 50 minute flight to the north island.

30 minutes into that flight, somewhere over Bass Strait the pilot announced that Melbourne was still fog-bound, so we’d be circling for a while until it cleared.  Nearly an hour later nothing had changed in Melbourne, but the fog had descended over Launceston again. We were stuck in the middle, unable to go forward, unable to return. And presumably without enough fuel to keep circling until something changed.

So we went sideways, heading west to land at Adelaide a little after 10am.  Definitely not what I had planned for the day.   People on board the plane reacted differently. Some were anxious, others confused, some unfussed, and others angry at this unexpected detour and delay.

Isn’t that just the way things go sometimes?  We set out on a journey, a path, seeking an opportunity, having a plan, expecting a particular outcome…..only to be run over by circumstances and end up somewhere quite unexpected?

Lots of people I’ve encountered when we talk about the need for change (particularly in the church) say “we’re ready for change, just tell us what we’ll be changing too”.  One of the challenges of this time in our culture is that we’re deep into what the experts called “discontinuous change” – a time when things are changing so much and so rapidly, that its difficult to see what comes next.

How do we build within our communities the capacity to set out on a journey, to chart a course of change, but to be able to cope with the fact that things might go wrong along the way? That we might find ourselves stuck in the middle, unable to go forward, but not able to return?  Ready for the possibility that we might have to turn sideways (and end up in Adelaide)?

Flexibility, resilience and creativity would seem to me to be the key. Building those characteristics into a community perhaps one of the most important tasks of our day.

I landed in Adelaide resigned to a pointless and boring day of sitting around airports – knowing that by the time I eventually reached Melbourne I would miss my meetings and be once more sitting idly, waiting for my evening flight back to Launceston.  Then as I stood in the queue to pass through airport security I was tapped on the shoulder by a friend I don’t see very often, stuck in the same situation as me.

Somewhere over the next hour or so, as we sat in a coffee shop in Adelaide airport, we had the opportunity for an unplanned but important conversation we otherwise would not have had….and I remembered that old saying about clouds and silver linings.

Perhaps the unexpected is not such a bad outcome after all.

Perhaps it’s the unplanned detours that give life its colour and texture

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seize the day?

Yesterday I missed an opportunity.

The South Esk River was thundering through Launceston’s Cataract Gorge – the first time this wet season that Trevallyn Dam had overflowed and the river run freely.

As I cross the bridge at the entrance to the Gorge I thought for a moment about parking the car and taking the tribe for a walk up the Gorge to see it in all its glory.  But time and tiredness got the better of me, so we continued home for bath and dinner, thinking “we’ll go see it tomorrow”.

Tomorrow came, and the river level has dropped.  The opportunity is gone.

It got me thinking, how often do we miss out on opportunities because we’re not quite game to act immediately? to respond when the moment is revealed?  To “seize the day” as that famed ’80’s film Dead Poets Society popularized.

In this case, I’ll be able to wait a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, or at worst the next big wet season to catch the Gorge in full flow…..but what if I’d missed a unique opportunity? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?

When did you last seize the day?  Make a snap decision? Take a chance that might not be presented again?