Hermeneutics

Bring meaning to my text
Oh Word of God

The daily tasks
The minute, hour, day

Page upon page
Life upon life

You were there
In the beginning

You shall be there
At my end

Book of Life
Inscribe your text on me

Poem

Lord, on mornings like this one
It's hard to believe you exist

The birds splutter out joyous song
Light shutters through the window

And my heart crashes
Shipwrecked and ripped at sea

My soul a tea strainer of tiredness
Squeezed out into a chipped cup

Joy does not come in the morning
And I find that dreary night is more preferable

In darkness at least we can hope
Uncertainties leading to leaps of imagination

In blinding sunlight
Our dreams are revealed for mirage

Chiasma which do not hold water
And reality bursts upon the brain

Are you there, Lord?
Are you true, Lord?

It's me.

You are too far for me to reach
My arms go only to trunk of bark

Then you must hold onto me, Master
Breathe fire and life into cold bones

Tree of Life!
Feed me with your healing leaf

Wrap me in splintering shadows
My faith is but gossamer thin

Your love is warp and weft
You mend and make sufficient

Succour me, sustain me, carry me Lord
Into the blithe continuum of joy

Fiction

These days, everyone is writing. Everyone wants to be a writer. Everyone has things to say: advice, profundities, rants, opinions, stories: a personal, individual take on life, the world, the bigness out there. To some extent I shouldn't be complaining - I'm part of this herd. And it's great! What a wonderful gift, being able to see the world through someone else's eyes. But what is a writer anyway? Why are we so precious about it, giving it a title, a role? Defining ourselves by it? It's something that everyone does! Literacy gives everyone a chance, language belongs to the hoi polloi, and the blogosphere makes it all the more easy.

What makes one person a published writer, another an itinerant blogger, a third a sometime letter writer? Does it all matter? I know some writers. Quite a few are self-absorbed. Brilliant, to be sure, but anxious for fame, for self-expression, defining oneself against others. Hoping to be better. Is there merit in this?

Maybe. Sometimes one's vision is such that others might revel in it. Laugh, cry, be shattered, become expansive. See by its beacon something else in the world, and beyond this earth.

And I understand the need for creativity. Or better, for making. In being makers, we reflect God's creativity. The great, only real creator, who made all things from nothing, ex nihilo. While we merely play with the lego blocks that God has already provided.

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.

Guess I'll never be a writer. Le shrug.

3-D People

I am starting to really appreciate blogs. Not my own, but other people's. I am learning all sorts of things about my friends that I didn't know before, and hearing their writing 'voices' - which is so often different from their normal selves. I am discovering their passions and ambitions, daily reflections, witticisms, aspects of themselves that I guess are often lost in the everyday, or don't necessarily come to the fore.

We are all so multi-faceted. There is so much more under the surface that we'll ever know, even of ourselves.

Oh, to know, and be fully known! Who of us can truly say we know a friend so well? What is true friendship but this? To be like God in this! Glory.

Tonic

Tonight I had the joy of listening to Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Alice Pung read from their work: Chris from his varied books of poetry; Alice from her autobiographical work, Unpolished Gem, and from a short story she'd written about a family holiday.

They didn't have powerpoints. Without the pondering heaviness of academic learning, though ladened with sharp wit and intelligence, the night was for the Spoken Word. Two voices, two vocabularies. The presence of two very different writers, and yet what held them together was a joinery of honesty, of reality, humourous presented. Mundane realities - saucers; white goods; mobile phones; a part-time job at Retra Vision; the daily task of making up a bed.

Neither writers romanticised reality, tho' perhaps by virtue of the act of description, or the lyric of poetry, one elevates the mundane. At any rate I came away with a sense of seeing (rubbing my eyes clear), and a deeper appreciation for truth telling.

The disarming nature of honesty! I had not, until now, seen honesty as an exacting but fair friend, who welcomes you to sit and speak. A friend once told me that she makes a policy of "honouring honesty" in her life, and has found that honesty repays her, and honours her in return.

I have often seen honesty as a cruel taskmaster. One that reveals the horror, the ugliness within. A master who forces me opened upon a surgeon's table, at worst for the gawking masses, to bear witness to the cruelity and sin, at best for the Master Surgeon to work upon me, cutting and tearing what is diseased.

Tonight, through Alice and Chris' words, I understood that honesty could be gracious and affectionate, tender and nuanced, rather than honesty that is always blunt, cruel, blistering. Honesty that is can be more than simply the opposite of niceness or disimmulation. Honesty that could see reality, and yet not break your spirit. Honest that does not judge.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me! (Psalm 139:1)

God sees us honestly. We are transparent as glass before him.

So should it be with ourselves, and with each other. Looking inwards, looking outwards, looking upwards. Sometimes it feels easy. Mostly the looking at others bit. Sometimes it takes effort, and discipline, not to forget to look upwards. Looking at ourselves? That takes courage, that kind of seeing. Constant and conscious acts of everyday bravery.

For who of us can really bear that much honesty? Emily Dickinson once said that "the truth must dazzle gradually, else everyone be blind." One online commentator, obviously American, likened it to "not yanking up the blinds in the morning in a dark room or the outside sun is going to be blinding!"

Emily's advice then? To tell all the truth, but "tell it slant".

I think I can see what she's getting at. Speak honestly, but indirectly, with nuance and subtlety. In the rest of that poem she talks about "success in the circuit" -moving around the truth, spiraling to reveal, rather than blurting it all out. I'm not sure I entirely subscribe to that, being someone who appreciates directness, and finds subtle circumlocution somewhat patronising and occasionally false (I can see what you're doing, y'know, just tell it to me straight!) But I would definitely say: our words should be considered, carefully picked like choice fruit, and lovingly appropriate for the occasion and person.

Further on, Emily uses the illustration of children, who, initially frightened by lightening, become easy by having the phenomenon explained to them. So too us, in our "infirm", must have the splintering brightness of truth "eased", by its being told it kindly. Our tone (for what is content without form?), ought to be sweet. Our intention not to accuse, but to elucidate, letting, in Emily's words again, the truth's "superb surprise", come to us, dropping slow, and lightened by understanding. For there is joy in truth, just as the morning sun is a delight, as long as our eyes can adjust to the sudden light slowly.

And, I think, as imitators of Christ, we can go one better than Emily in why and how we tell the truth. God saw us, and he judged his Son instead. Unexplainable logic! impossible grace! We have freedom, but we live with the responsibility of mercy.

"Tell all the truth, and tell it in all grace." It doesn't scan as well on the page, but I think it'll work OK in life.

Present Tense

I am by nature not a very present-minded person. I'd much prefer to dream about the idealistic future. It goes without saying that dreaming of future hope might often marr our ability to live fully in the present. I keep expecting long stretches of contentment, only to find that happiness comes now, in small moments, sharp and stabbing, or soft and barely registered, momentary breaths of a sleeping babe.

I am in a bookclub, and we recently read the dystopia novel "Brave New World". (By read I mean I skimmed!) But one of the central thesis of the book is that it is better to have continual peace and comfort than any extremes of emotion.

CS Lewis once remarked that it is in these momentary moments of joy, rather than in the settled comfort and heartsease, that the past is transfigured, and shows forth its eternal quality.

So here are my moments of happiness for the last few days:

Sitting on the black snail sculpture at uni, eating cherries with Sandy and engaging in a pip-spitting competition.

A barrage of bad puns in a facebook message with a friend. Plantea (plenty) of Plan and Tea was the worst.

Finding Jalna yoghurt on sale at Coles.

Funny Italian chap at Brunetti's who threw the plastic lids of coffee cups on a pile like a frisbee and then apologised for his agression.

A baby who couldn't stop laughing at me at the stoplights on Lygon Street. I don't know what about me made her laugh, but she didn't stop.

The bane of being busy

Lately I've become increasingly (and painfully) aware of my reputation for busyness. This came to a head yesterday when I offered to catch up with a friend over the weekend, and her response was: "But you're too busy."

My busyness has gotten to such as state that my friends don't even trust my word anymore.

On any given day I find myself beginning conversations with students at breakfast with: "Got a busy day ahead of you?". I always have to "rush off" after scoffing down a hurried lunch, and I have begun a habit of taking early dinner, as I don't have time to attend Formal Hall and coffee in the SCR afterwards. My invariable response to the question of "How are you?" seems to be: "Good, but ... busy!" It's funny tho', I don't think I always mean it when I say it - it just seems to be easiest thing to say. No-one questions you, and most nod their heads respectfully, or click their tongue in sympathy.

Busyness has become a by-word in our society for our self-importance; a badge of a person's success. The more tasks we have to do, the more important/interesting/needed we feel. Our identity is placed in being strong, action-filled people, and we pride ourselves in being able to juggle multiple jobs at the same time. Busyness, I suspect, also means we can hide in our work, and avoid having a real conversation. It's a way of hiding from our fears. By getting caught up in the pressing minutiae, we don't have to lift up our eyes to look at the bigger picture of our lives, and where we're going. But busyness saps our lives of beauty. When was the last time I went for a long walk and looked at a tree? Or spend an afternoon with friends, unfettered by nagging thoughts of unfinished projects, my brain empty of calculations of rescheduling my timetable so that I can squeeze in an extra hour of admin in the evening?

Of course, I'm not decrying work. Work itself isn't bad. In fact, it's very good. There are many valuable things to be done, and idleness is as much a danger as busyness. Sometimes we simply have to work mad hours and numerous jobs - the reality of life is that there are responsibilities, rent that needs to be paid, assignments that need to be turned in, deadlines that need to be met. But work will always want more of us, and when busyness become a habit, and you give the impression of not even having time for friends and family (let alone God!), then you've got to wonder.

Jesus understood this very well. We've been working through the gospel of Mark at Christian Union this semester, and students have picked up on the almost ritualistic regularity of Jesus' departing to a high mountain to pray. There couldn't have been more important or urgent work than the proclaimation that the Kingdom of God had come near, and yet the Son of God took time out to spend with his papa.

So, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to be so busy, and, perhaps more revealingly, not to appear as if I'm too busy.

*****************

The formal rituals of liturgy really help in regulating rest and work. There is the Jewish Sabbath or Shabbat, a day of rest between Sundown Friday and the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. It's a time of rest, of celebration, of reflection and prayer. (Compline and Evensong, services within the Catholic and Anglican tradition, echo similar concepts in the closing of a day's work with thanksgiving and prayer.)

Shabbat is ushered in with the lighting of candles. Traditionally, the women of the family lead the prayers. Hands are drawn over the twin flames of the candles towards the face, welcoming in the light of the Sabbath day into oneself. (In fact, in one of the songs, Shabbat is conceptualised as a bride or a Queen, to be welcomed into the home). Then the festivities begin, as the family gathers around the table for the evening meal. Prayers and blessings are recited, there is singing, and bread and wine is shared.

Saturday is then spend in enjoyment and play, the contrast being not to engage in activities that are considered to be 'creative', by way of exercising order/control over our environment.

My favourite part of the Shabbat ritual is the Havdalah, the service that marks the end of Sabbath. Again, a braided candle, symbolizing the light of Shabbat, is lit. Wine, as always a symbol of joy, is passed around, so that people can take a final sip of the joy of Shabbat.

As one of the final acts of Shabbat, spices, such as cinnamon and clove, are placed in a box, and passed around, so that everyone might smell the fragrance. The sweet-smelling spices symbolize the sweetness of Shabbat, and the idea is that worshippers breath in sweetness of Shabbat in one last time so that it might sustain them through the week to come until Shabbat can be welcomed once more.

Havdalah is intended to require a person to use all five senses: taste the wine, smell the spices, see the flame of the candle and feel its heat, and hear the blessings. Thus the sounds, tastes and smells of Shabbat brings the holiness (ie., the set-apartness) of Shabbat into the rest of the week.

Whatever you might think about the divide between the sacred and the ordinary, or the role of ritual and liturgy in daily life (and I'm certainly not into forbidding certain tasks and abiding by strict laws on the Sabbath), the sentiment deserves consideration. This is one of the occasions I find myself deeply grateful for our physicality. Time and meaning are marked through our bodily senses. God dignifies and enriches our mundane, transitory doings with glimpses of eternity, as we echo his pattern of work and rest in creation with our own.