wondering

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on telling stories about kids and wombats

I’ve had the delightful opportunity to join a ‘parenting panel’ on Brisbane’s 612 ABC Radio Wednesday morning show as an occasional panelist. I was introduced to the panel by long term team member and good friend Tracey. It’s basically three regular parents having a chat about what’s going on in their families – just to provide some encouragement and ideas for listeners. As is evidenced by the fact that I’m on the show, there are no expert credentials required!

It’s been fun so far, and no major blunders that I know of – except perhaps for comparing myself to a wombat (yes, I did).

Here are the two shows:

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that ancient spring

A poem by guest blogger Mitchell, age 11. An ode to the ANZAC poppy.

 

In that ancient spring, 100 years ago,

brick by brick,

the ANZAC spirit was in-scripted into the soul of a fresh nation

In that ancient spring, I was just fresh,

had no idea what was about to unfold its ugly body around me

In that ancient spring, I was the only light,

in an otherwise tragic scene

100 years on from that ancient spring, I still exist

My spirit dwells to the right side of the chest,

Looking on, from that ancient spring.

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to kaizen…..or not to kaizen?

IMG_2776I’ve been getting steadily re-addicted to mountain biking this year.

I had a period 10 years ago or so where I rode regularly, but this is on another level. I’m riding with a few mates a couple of times a week, exploring trails around south-east Queensland and having a great time.

We’re also putting lots of effort into learning how to ride better, faster, hit bigger jumps, rougher trails and so on.  In the grand scheme of things, we’re not that good – but we are trying!

One of the main tools in  this attempt to improve is a little phone app called Strava.  Strava uses the GPS in your phone to track where you’ve ridden, how fast, how much elevation gained and a heap more.  It automatically compares your ride performance against your previous rides on the same trails, and against other riders (who use strava) on those same trails.  Within a few moments of finishing a ride we can be looking at the data – how fast did I ride today? Was i strong on the climbs? How about that particularly difficult (we in the MTB world prefer the word ‘gnarly’!) descent? Continue reading →

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first comes hope…

Change management is the new black.

You know, the in thing.  Everybody is talking about it, wants it, needs it, is doing it.

And that’s ok because change is perhaps the defining characteristic of our day.  That’s not for a moment to say that at other times, in other places change hasn’t been significant, or real, or rapid, or hard.

But the breadth, and scope and speed of change in our society is breathtaking. Technological, moral, ethical, political, cultural, economic, relational.

Everything.

Breathtaking.

Some of it, of course, we choose.  But some of it chooses us. Sometimes the world changes around us in spite of our best efforts to keep things steady, or to hold onto days past.

If we eventually can accept that there’s no going back, there comes a time when we have to figure our how to respond, to react, to accept, to embrace, to thrive in the new.

I’ve been thinking a little about this question this week.  And like everybody, I have a theory.

So I’m going to test it on you.

All 3 of you. 😉

My theory is this: Continue reading →

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did you hear the one about…

Did you hear the one about the psychologist, the musician and the golfer?

It started a couple of weeks ago:

I was sitting in a meeting that included a guy whose profession I would describe as an ‘organisational psychologist’. By that I mean he specialises in understanding how organisations and groups develop, how they deal with changing culture and context, and what kinds of steps an organisation and its leadership can take to move from one place to another.

We hadn’t met before, and I hadn’t seen him at work prior to that meeting…but it very quickly became evident that he is brilliant at what he does (at least from where I sit). He was sharp, direct when required, tactful when that was helpful, and immediately able to pinpoint key issues under discussion in the meeting.  It was a short, chance encounter that left a deep impression on me.  I went away inspired.

And then last week:

IMG_3063[1]On Thursday night I went to see musician Stu Larsen ply his trade at Brisbane’s Black Bear Lodge. I’ve written about Stu before, here. If you haven’t heard of him before, go and read that story for a little introduction and then come back. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Stu’s life is that of a wandering storyteller. A guitar and a microphone all he needs. On Thursday night, he held the audience spellbound as with voice and string he wove a tale of place, of people, of life.  This room, packed to the rafters, was still and silent as he shared his trade. And full of voice as he invited us to join in song.  We wandered from King St Sydney, to the 101 Highway San Francisco, to outback Queensland and continental Europe as Stu’s stories and songs took us places that we had never been (and yet seemed strangely familiar).

In a former life Stu was a bank worker…and I’ve no doubt he would have done a good job at that. But here, on stage, singing stories, inviting responses. It’s where he belongs. He’s found his place. Storytellers, in my experience, do two things with their words. First, the words create images that pop up, unbidden, into our minds. We create for ourselves the images, the video that accompanies the story.  And second, they evoke in us, invite from us, our own story. They make us wonder. Stu does that every time I see or hear him play. And Thursday was no different.

And yesterday:

IMG_3071[1]I trooped down to the Gold Coast with a bunch of family and friends to watch one of our own, Matt Guyatt, play in the final round of the Australian PGA golf tournament. Matt was well placed and backed up a big month with a good finish. He played yesterday alongside recently crowned Australian Masters champion Nick Cullen.  It always strikes me as a strange profession (like music or any other ‘performance’ profession) when members of the public come along to watch you do your job. But that’s the daily reality for some, working live in front of an audience.  Matt (and Nick) put it all on the line yesterday, at times quite brilliant, and at others caught out by the gusting wind and fatigue on the final day of a heavy season.

I’m biased, but Matt is quite clearly an extraordinary golfer, with all the technical ability to play the game, shoot the low scores required to be successful in that particular career choice.  But more than that, it was obvious as I watch that he understands he’s in the entertainment and the ‘people’ business. There was constant interaction with the crowd. A chat here or there, a ball or glove given to a child, a joke quietly shared with those nearest the green to lighten the mood at a tense moment.

What I noticed in each case, was a person who had very clearly found their place. Who has discovered and put to good use a unique and delightful talent. That through doing and being what they are cut out to be, makes the world a better place.

We’re not all, of course, going to be pro golfers, travelling musicians or even organisational psychologists (does the world really need more psychologists? Probably!).

But I got to wondering, as I watched these four in action, what a difference it would make to our world, and to us each as individuals, if we never gave up and ‘settled’ until we have found our place. Until we are sure and certain that what we do (whether as a volunteer at nights or on weekends, or in a professional sense) makes the most of our God-given potential.  Jesus told a story about that once…go google the ‘parable of the talents’.

At each place, in each person, I found my own story being drawn out. My own sense of wondering, of self. That’s a powerful gift given when someone who is very good at what they do, simply goes about doing their thing.

And of course I got to wondering…have I found ‘my thing’ yet? At 43 years of age, husband, father, participant in multiple hobbies and community groups, and in my 3rd totally different career…am I in the right place? Am I making the most of what I have?

And….how about you?

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a pelican and a place to stand

Two of the reasons that I have grown to like running are that it gives me uninterrupted time to think (it’s really, really hard to play with the phone and check out facebook while running), and that it’s a great way to explore new places.

On the weekend I was in St George, hanging out with the folks from the Uniting Church Presbytery of the Downs (a regional gathering taking in Toowoomba to Queensland’s western border…quite a vast space!), and discovered to my delight a quiet running track along the edge of the Balonne River.

It was a pretty hot weekend, so that meant running had to happen very early, before the sun made its presence felt. I’m not a great early morning person, but it’s hard to deny something special about those first minutes of light each day…and so it proved at the Balonne.

A place to stand

My first day I ran the length of the town stretch of the river, ending up at the weir that holds back the waters – keeping a reasonable body of water even in the midst of long and widespread drought conditions currently impacting so much of Queensland’s west.

As I stood on the weir, I looked downstream. Here’s the view:

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There’s not much water to speak of, and the dryness is evident in the country side.  It’s stark, almost depressing.

And then, from the very same spot, I turned to face upstream, to see this:

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It’s a view filled with life and promise.

It occurred to me, that so often from the very same place, we can see such contrasting views depending on which direction we choose to face.  It’s perhaps the optimist/pessimist or glass half full/half empty question.  Which way do we choose to face? What do we choose to see?

In the organisation I work with, we are faced with many challenges, and the temptation to allow those challenges to hold us captive can, at times, be overwhelming.  Standing on the weir at the Balonne, looking upstream, I was reminded that in spite of the challenges there is always something interesting, even special to see….depending on our willingness to take a different view.

A pelican

pelicanOn day 2 of my stay in St George, I ran again.  And followed much the same route.

And found myself once more crossing the weir, enjoying the early morning sights and sounds.

On this day my attention was captured by a lone pelican, skimming over the water (unfortunately a little to fast for me to grab a photo!).

Now let’s think about this for a moment.

I was in St George, roughly 500km west of Brisbane. A long way from the coastal bays, beaches and harbours that are home to so many Australian pelicans. What was this majestic bird doing in St George, surfing the early morning breeze over the Balonne River?

It turns out it’s not an unusal sight. Pelicans often find their way into remote Australian waterways. The famed Lake Eyre – so often dry for years on end – attracts tens of thousands of pelicans within weeks of floodwater arriving to fill the lake. Nobody knows how the pelicans know there will be water, why they suddenly take off from the coast and head inland just as the floodwaters arrive to fill the salt pan.

What we do know is that when there is water, when there is the hope and safety that comes in such a place, the pelicans find it. And here on this stretch of the Balonne, surrounded by thousands of square kilometres of drought affected farmland, this lone pelican had found a place of hope and peace in the early morning sunlight.

And once again I thought of the church, the organisation I work for. And how we spend so much time and energy trying to figure out the right strategy, the right way to be a part of the modern Australia.

Perhaps the answer is right in front of me. Perhaps in our local communities what we first need to emphasise is creating places of hope and peace, pools of deep water in the midst of the dry.

Perhaps that’s all that is required. And those who are searching will always, in the end, land in a place that offers peace and hope.

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let the horizon be your guide…

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You know sometimes you find yourself in a moment that catches you by surprise? A time when an unexpected thought or encounter stops you in your tracks, or takes your breath away?

I had one of the those on the weekend.

I was helping to host a training course for church leaders, aimed at encouraging imagination and creativity as churches find their place in the modern world.  Towards the end of the day we invited participants to share something of what they were thinking about, stories from their local communities and churches about imaginative and creative fresh approaches to the age-old calling of the church.

One lady stepped up and shared her story. She’s from Barbados, and is currently in Australia for the Pan Pacific Master’s Games. She had visited a local church on Sunday and they’d invited her to come and join them as they participated in the workshop. Her story was of a group that decided to walk non-stop around Barbados, praying for the communities through which they passed as they travelled along.  The walk took 23 hours…impressive!

What caught my attention was her description of their walk and how they chose where to go: as they walked, they quite literally ‘let the horizon by their guide’.

Let the horizon be your guide.

I can’t quite say why exactly that phrase stopped me in my tracks: Let the horizon be your guide.

Maybe because some of the most enjoyable running or riding experiences I’ve had have happened when I’ve followed a coastline, and the simple pleasure of letting the horizon be my guide has been true in those moments.

Maybe it’s the very notion of living on an island, one small enough to walk around in a day, a community small enough to know and be known as opposed to the anonymity and closed-ness of life in a big city where the horizon (literally and metaphorically) is often not within my field of view.

Or maybe because in our culture and community today (or maybe just in my own life) we don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to the horizon. We tend to look down at our feet, just trying flat out to deal with what’s right in front of us. The big picture barely gets a look in.  The horizon seems to far away.

The very idea of letting the horizon be my guide….in many different aspects of life….encourages me to lift my eyes, to see the big sky, to look beyond the stereo-typical navel-gazing.

It’s almost, I think, a notion to live by.

Let the horizon be your guide.

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the fear of making people afraid

IMG_1872Those who read regularly (hi!) will know I’m a some-times runner.

I’m not that good or that fast, but I enjoy it, and I run. When I travel for work or play, I’ll usually pack the shoes and go for a trot to explore new places. It’s a nice way to start a day, and to get to know the lay of the land wherever I happen to be.  I sometimes do the same with my bike…but it’s not quite as portable as a pair of running shoes!

Those who know me personally will also know I’m a bloke, and a fairly big and tall one.  That matters too, in the context of this story.

A while back I was on the Sunshine Coast, and early one morning laced up the shoes and headed out for a run from Coolum down to Mudjimba. It was a beautiful early morning, and quiet, with not many people out and about yet.  On the return leg I started taking little detours off the main road, into little beachside streets or waterfront walking tracks and then back out onto the main road. It was a nice bit of variety and a few extra metres each time.

The first time I did so, I came back out onto the main running track just in time to see a fellow runner (a woman, and yes, in this story, it matters) join the trail from a side street a little in front of me. I was traveling a slightly quicker, so passed her by, offering a quick “hello” as a greeting often shared by runners, and continued on my way. Soon after I turned off the trail onto another little side route, and when I returned to that main trail found myself just behind the same woman. As I said, I was running a little faster so I went past, and continued on my way. I took the next side-route and on rejoining the main road, once again found myself behind the same woman.

This happened about three or four times before I made it back to my starting point, turned off the trail once and for all and went home for breakfast.

Later that morning (I’m a bit slow to pick up on these things) it occurred to me that I could well have been causing my fellow runner to think she had a stalker…a middle aged, dark-sunglassed, huffing-and-puffing stalker who kept on detouring and then running up behind her.  She could well have been quite anxious about my presence, really worried in the quiet early morning about my motives.

I have to say it was a horrible feeling, that I could have been causing anxiety or fear in another, and even worse that I hadn’t realised the possibility until later (when it was too late to take a different route for example). It matters not that the repeated encounters were totally innocent. It matters not that I was there (on the trail) first. In some ways it matters not whether she actually was afraid or anxious (I have no idea). The very possibility was real.

What concerned me then, and concerns me now, is that we live in a world where the very presence of one (man) can and does cause anxiety or fear in another (woman). We live in a world in which I understand women are continuously targeted for harassment or intimidation. Where men (yes not all men, hopefully including me and most men that I personally know…but surely that’s not the point) continue to inflict violence upon women that they know (and don’t know).

And that my feeling of anxiety and fear about making another afraid and anxious while palpable to me completely pales into insignificance when compared to the experiences and feelings of many women every day.

We live in a world in which this video (released yesterday) depicts an everyday reality for some/many women. I can’t say from personal experience if this is genuinely what it’s like (for as already canvassed above…I am a bloke), but women I know and trust tell me that it is:

And we live in a world in which a well known V8 Supercar driver (my sport of choice, please don’t judge) said today:

Hello Adelaide! In town for the 2015 @Clipsal500 launch. Most pressing item for the day, what do the grid girl uniforms look like?

This is a man with a huge public following, and with a wife and young daughter. And who continues the culture-wide objectification of women. And who is defended in social media commentary as “just having some fun”. And this is the relatively innocent end of the spectrum.

And….I don’t know what to do with all of this. Really, I don’t.

I’m a man. Men cause this.  Maybe not me personally (to my knowledge). Maybe not many of the men who might read this.  But we do, collectively, harass, objectify, instil fear in women everyday.

And that’s just not right.

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what happened to joy?

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There’s a 7-year old who shares my house, and my life.

She is ridiculously, relentlessly, noisily happy.

I mean, within moments of her eyes opening in the morning there’s a smile on her face, and it rarely leaves until the last giggling, cackling, out-loud goodnight tickle fades away.  She is just happy.

Her happiness is out-and-out infections, and those around cannot help but be swept up in the joyful life that bursts forth involuntarily.  She is just happy.

Even when disaster strikes (like a stubbed toe or an uncooperative older brother who refuses to play by her rules) the smile doesn’t fade for long. Wherever, whenever….just happy.

I feel the need to include an emoticon….  😀

It struck me this week, as once again I found myself marveling at this seven year old and her crazy antics, that somewhere along the line, we seem to have gradually lost this kind of general happiness.

And when I say we, I partly mean those of us who are a little older (and dare I say it, more sensible) as individuals.  But I mostly mean all of us collectively, our society.

It’s rare that I notice outright happiness, infectious laughter and non-stop smiling kind of behaviour.  How about you?

More and more we’re prone to expressing our frustration, disagreement, disapproval or downright dislike.  It seems like there’s a constant flow of dissatisfaction in our public discourse, and even in our private moments.

We’re more likely to be sadly observing how busy we are, how hard life is, how expensive everything has become, how the people around us just aren’t doing a good enough job (at anything!) than we are to just be loving life, out loud.

Maybe it’s years of advertising rammed down our throats 24/7 with the singular message “who you are, what you have is not good enough/beautiful enough”.

Maybe it’s the constant assault of “it’s all about you.”

Maybe it’s wall-to-wall media that is focused on stories of conflict and anger because they sell more advertising space.

Maybe it’s none or those things, or all of them.

I just know…when I watch the seven year old, I see in her this kind of raw happiness that I don’t observe anywhere near as much in the rest of my life.

And that makes me sad.

So my new month’s resolution (is that a thing? I think so!) is to strive for happiness. To find and enjoy moments of pure joy each day. Join me (if you’re not already there)?

PS: Happy birthday PG!

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the home run

So the end is nigh.  It’s 2 1/2 years since I first strapped on a pair of running shoes. It’s a year since I first ran a half-marathon distance, and  year since I first thought to myself “I wonder what it what would be like to run a marathon?”  It’s 5 months since I decided to actually find out and started training properly.

And it’s just now just five days until that ridiculous question is answered as I trudge power my way through the Gold Coast Marathon.

The training is done. The shoes are worn in. The eating plan for Friday and Saturday’s carb-loading is ready. The taper is well underway. Accommodation is booked. Race pack retrieved.

And now every moment of every day it’s all I think about.  Mostly those thoughts are “why?” and “this cannot end well” and “this is going to hurt”.

But occasionally there’s anticipation mixed in as well, moments I’m really looking forward to:

The energy in the field in the moments before the starter’s gun fires. Crossing the Nerang river for the first time. Running past Cavill Mall. Seeing my family at Nobby Beach and friends along the way. Turning around at Burleigh Heads to head back north again. The half-way point.  The last kilometre through swollen and noisy crowds….and so on.  I’ve played these moments a thousand times in my mind, looking forward to each of them.

I’m pretty much blocking out everything that might happen between 30k and 41k. I think that’s just going to be a world of hurt, so why bother anticipating it? 😉

There are lots of unknowns of course. Have I trained sufficiently? Have I designed my training program effectively? Will my dodgy knee last the distance? Will I get the anti-chafe stuff in all the right spots? Will I get super bored in four hours of running? Will I hit my A, B or C target times? Will I even finish?

So many unknowns.

And it occurs to me that’s pretty much how life is any time we try something new – whether it be running, starting a new job, living in a new city, becoming a parent, proposing marriage (still the most nerve wracked moment of my life….even though I was fairly confident of the answer!).

What’s your new thing? What are you preparing for that you’ve never before tackled?

We can read, we can talk to those who’ve gone before, we can surf the net and watch hours of youtube videos.  We can even train and practice, experimenting and simulating.  We can examine every possible outcome, ponder the good and the bad, mentally rehearse, get the right gear, eat the right food….and so on….ad nauseum.

We can be totally prepared.

But ultimately there comes the moment when we have to get out of bed, eat a banana, strap up the laces and run out the door.

That’s ultimately what I think I’m looking forward too the most. Standing at on the start line at 7am next Sunday morning, knowing that everything is done. Knowing that everything I can control is now controlled to the best of my ability.  Knowing that the outcomes are still unknowable. Knowing that all there is left to do is run.

And knowing that all I can do from that moment onward is deal with whatever comes my way, trusting that the preparation will give me all the tools to respond.

So here I am.

On the home run.

Thanks for reading these last few reflections about this adventure that lies ahead.  If I’m not in hospital I’ll let you know how it all turns out!