Just Been Thinking

Well, it’s WAY past Easter…and way past time for me to write again.

We have managed a lovely gradual fall into cooler weather, with the days holding their warm centre a lot later into the year than normal, but the cool, dark-edged grey palette is here now and the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness has massaged us officially into winter.

I’m having an unusual year thus far. It’s so far outside what I anticipated that I fairly regularly have to stop and recalibrate. It almost feels like I’m sailing in waters I haven’t any experience of and I have to take a new sounding every few days to keep track of things.

I think ‘those who know these things’ call it being present in the moment. There’s nothing spectacular happening. I’m ‘unemployed’ for now and have been since Christmas Day. Most of my days are fragmented into a random series of short interludes spent with one of my daughters, conversations, God time, family taxi duties, graphic design, study, appointments, church stuff, reading, internet surfing and domestic life. In some ways, it’s frustrating to be without a strong pull in one direction but I do feel that this is a season for resting, watching and waiting. I am deeply rested, and it was most definitely needed.

Talking with many friends, work colleagues and Jesus family, it seems most of us continue to live at a pace which is barely manageable, a pace that robs us of meaningful connections or shifts the weight of our commitments too far into a work space and away from what we value most. There is a sense of disturbance, sometimes vague, sometimes very sharp, that perhaps there is robbery afoot. Time and love robbery. A stealthy but determined draining away of our ability to spend ourselves on what we truly care about.

It is the unexpected return of redeemed space around me that blesses me most at the moment. I am not unaware of the treasure I find myself with right now. There are several stretching silent expanses in my week now and I get to choose if I fill them or not. Interspersed with fragmented bursts of activity, the silences are rich with thought, Word and communion. I feel as if time, previously eaten up by work appointments, phone calls and the insistent beep of my electronic smart-stalker, has quietly been re-credited to my account…

I know I squander it sometimes and no doubt I will look back at some point and get the ’shoulda’s’ (shoulda done this and shoulda done that), but there is some delight in even being able to squander! So I try for balance while letting the days form in front of me. I’m very conscious that this is a gift that may end quite soon and that I may well find myself running again. I’m conscious also that some who read this may be gasping for air and sinking under their schedules.

I hesitate to even write of this to some of you because I am only too aware that it may seem impossible to slow down or even snatch some time to rest. I feel for you and hope you too might have such an opportunity down the road.
I hope and intend that this season leave a deposit of wisdom, vision and peace in my soul that I will not surrender to any thief and may share with anyone The Lord sees fit to walk with me.

I encourage you too, to take hold of that which you love and what time you can find, and hold on with all the tenacity you can muster. These two, love and time, are our richest treasures, tender and easily taken yet so central to the sacred gift of life that God has shared with us all. I pray you will see clearly and choose wisely, that you will be watchful, grateful, and have time to live in the presence of love.

Shalom, Ann

It’s Easter week and I’m watching that delicious softness in the autumn atmosphere start to blur the sharpness of summer down here in southern Victoria. The dry grass in the paddocks has the colour and look of a grommie’s* surf-bleached hair - all oaten white and fly away, the sunrises pastel soft and the shadows at the end of the day are long in the golden light before slow sunset. Summer crowds recede and Easter tides increase. The beaches slowly come back to their senses, shifting from seething masses of sand real estate contest to leisurely landscapes of scattered families and individuals soaking up the fading summer daze. It is such a lovely time of year and the turn of the season from summer to autumn often finds me slowing a little on the inside too.

I find myself reflecting on this subtle change of speed and what it does to the inside of me. The knot of tension, slowly winding up through the increasing pace towards Christmas, the summer to-and-fro and the start off the blocks into work and school, loosens and relaxes as the momentum of life steadies and establishes itself and, although still very full, I feel, in the rhythm of this activity, there is a space opening up for quietness of soul.

This space, for me, comes sometimes at the beginning and often at the end of the day. Occasionally it knocks softly on my door during the day, and if the noise of life is distant at that moment, I will stop and listen for the sound. For me it is a space that’s quiet and often filled with Jesus. Perhaps that’s a learned thing as I have gathered His story into my spirit over years of discovery. Easter and reflective autumn come together and it’s now 32 years that Jesus and I have shared this season together. Every year is different and sometimes I have felt I have snatched at sacred moments like a starving child, while other Easters have been long days of delight, camping in the bush with friends, Harley throb and dirt road dust, firelight worship and smokey chocolate resurrection Sundays. Always, somewhere, there has been a sweet communion with the One that I love.

How can I even begin to express my love for Him? Jesus is my delight, He is my rescue, my discovery and inspiration, He is the gentleness in my soul and the strength in my bones. I go to Him in meditation, I sit with Him in quietness and we run and play together in the craziness of life. I shelter with Him when things get tough, I draw from Him when I am dry or dull of spirit and He lifts my head when I am spent. I know for some who read my words, this all seems very strange, but I strain to put into words the depth and richness of living in Christ and in this world simultaneously. I can tell you with utter clarity, my life is lived fully present and looking into the warm, loving depths of the eyes of God. In the words of Avatar - He ’sees’ me deeply and we are together in life.

What is Easter? It was and is Jesus giving everything, from His shared vision of life as it is designed to be to the gruelling reality of betrayal, hatred and the cross, from the spiritual mysteries of evil power fought and overcome in darkness to the full release of His love and Kingdom into the hearts of humans and creation itself. It is you and I watching and listening for the One whose presence is wisdom, life and love to all who come.

May your Easter space be space enough to seek and find Him.

*Grommie - young surfer - usually brown skinned, salt and sun-bleached haired, and obsessed with surfing!

Question…What is freedom?

Over 25 years of slowly declining fitness and slowly increasing fatness (with the occasional lurch of activity and weight loss) I have gone from fit to fat. And now…I finally find myself with a change of mind. Or is it heart? It’s been a curious shift and I have a sense of ‘this one’ being a deeper decision, one that has penetrated beyond the surface of my habits and fears and is now challenging a long felt intimidation around pain, weakness and the sabotage of headaches, migraines, gridlocked muscles and medical bills.

For many years, though an active person on the inside, I have, in reality, become progressively more and more inactive, as my ability to move and work physically has been narrowed by increasing muscular problems and other ailments, to the point where I basically gave up and succumbed to fat.

This passing of time has left me feeling robbed and frustrated at not being able to play and enjoy physical strength and confidence, not to mention the torture of psyching up for the occasional unavoidable bather and jeans-buying events, only to slink depressed from the change rooms back to the attendant who breezily asks ‘how’d you go?’ while I ‘calmly, smilingly’ pile her arms with a range of rejected garments that have really left my self esteem crumpled on the floor of the cubicle. Oh, but I’ve hidden it well…and I’ve had this area of my life well cordoned off so it couldn’t spread its confidence-sucking poison too far out into my landscape.

Still, as time has gone on, I have found myself succumbing to the ‘I can’ts’. This in itself points to a shadow of darkness in me as I am much more of a ’stand and fighter’ than a ‘give up and capitulater’. Chronic pain and weakness is very life-sapping. I would say it has been a mountain I have yearned to conquer, looked at and turned away from - over and over again. But not this time, now it’s time for change. It’s time to go from fat to fit and get out of jail. After all, it is for freedom that Christ came to set us free and I have definitely been under a yoke of slavery in this area!

It’s not all in my attitudes, there has certainly been a real health battle going on. But I sense the level of focus and determination on the inside of me and it is a different climate in there now.

For a start, I’m actually on my feet and doing it. Every second day I walk to the mountain of my weakness and I start to climb. I gasp and pant and groan and gulp down water. I sweat and feel pathetic and sometimes my throat is stuck together and I really think I’m going to throw up or wet myself. And my friend and torture creator keeps me going - ‘doing well’, ‘keep it up, ‘nearly there’, ‘don’t forget to breathe’(!), ‘take a break’, ‘now give me 30′, ‘lower’, ‘higher’, ‘10 more’, ‘have a drink’, ‘feel it burn’, ‘are you ok?’, ‘that’s enough’, ‘lets stretch’, ‘try this one’, ‘I’ll hold your legs’, ‘4, 3, 2, 1′, ‘great’, ’see you Wednesday’…

And there’s the hill…a sweet grassy knoll rising steeply behind the netball courts, a favourite spot for kids with cardboard sleds to rocket down at breakneck speed, and scene of several ‘I think I’m going to vomit’ moments for yours truly. I don’t run up it, I walk. I walk with my friendly torturer. I walk 50 metres towards it looking at it and about 150 metres up and down it. After the first two times I said ‘I can’t’ and I struggled to breathe, with jellied legs burning, sucking air in desperately as I reached the turn around point and staggered back down. After the fourth time I tried ‘I can’ and, because I knew the hill, I prayed ‘Jesus help me do this’. I still gasped and sucked in air and wanted to throw up.

Now we climb it once and back down, do 30 squats or a boxing session and another climb and more squats or boxing. I still walk and I still gasp for breath at the top but I’ve learned when climbing hills, and mountains, that it’s possible to size it up from a distance and ask for divine assistance, to tell myself to ‘just do it’ and ignore the ‘too hard saboteur’, to look just in front of me so the steps are my focus not the climb, to concentrate on breathing regularly and rhythmically, to just keep going…and that every day I choose to get up, stare the mountain down and step out is another day of breaking the intimidation and climbing higher. See you on the other side…even if it hurts.

Live simply, love much, seek God.

Well, I sit down to write this blog after a long absence working full time. It has been strange to go from two years working 50 to 60 hours plus a week with the accompanying hat juggling to the unforced rhythms of summer holiday family life. I cannot imagine how exhausting it must be for those who are single parents!

I feel as if I am rediscovering a person I used to know. She’s quite good company…she knows how to cook interesting, nutritious food and wants to! She seems to still know how to clean showers and toilets but alas…still doesn’t want to. She can hold a conversation instead of flopping into a chair by the TV, with VACANT written all over her face. Her thoughts appear to be roaming the landscape of life instead of plodding stoically down one work focused track…And her social life is slowly emerging out of the shadows, blinking and focusing on friends she has not shared time with for a long time…

I am very confident that God doesn’t waste our experiences, and living off a diary with six out of seven days designed by appointment has organised my somewhat chaotic ‘creative’ approach to life more than I thought possible. But I have to say it is a relief to loosen up.

It fascinates me how very different we all are and I have no doubt many would quite naturally follow the rhythms I struggled to adopt. How marvellous it is that we all fit into God’s symphony and each of us will play both melody and harmony as the songs of human life unfold. I’m no musician but I delight in seeing how our Creator weaves our very unique individual sounds and songs together. I would love to hear from you as we share this space and spark God’s creativity in each other.

Thinking on politics…Sometimes a door opens and as a Jesus follower you have to decide whether to walk through it. If you are fair dinkum about following you don’t leave your God clothes in a pile by the door - you just wear ‘em and walk on in. Mine don’t come off…and they are always clean and fresh, He washes me daily!

Government isn’t ‘Christian’ - only people are, but the more of Jesus’s family in that government who hold His values and love people - all people - the better the government will be. Esther of the Bible is a prime example - she was invited into a pagan king’s harem…Personally I’d rather my gig!

Selah.

I will be running as a candidate for Family First for the electorate of Corangamite in this 2010 federal election.

Why?

Because I believe we Jesus followers need to be available to serve God and people wherever and whenever He calls.

Because I believe the great wealth of Australia isn’t in what we dig out of the ground and sell overseas or what we can cream off people in taxes, it’s in our people. We are a unique, generous-hearted, open and gutsy bunch who have much to give in community and into the world. We live in a wonderful land, and we need to look after it and each other. That is worth standing up for.

Politics can be a tough game. I hope I can engage directly and respectfully. See you on the other side!

love Ann

British scientists have made a startling discovery re ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’

They say the chicken came first because a protein (OC-17) crucial to the formation of eggshells is produced in the ovaries of pregnant hens. Ergo, according to science, a chicken must have existed to make the egg. They haven’t yet figured out how the chicken got there in the first place…

I love science. I love the detail and the big picture stuff. I find it fascinating and wonderful to dig into and try to grasp. I can only imagine how fascinating it would be for those who are discovering and expanding our understanding of the natural world.

What I don’t like is when arrogance takes over and science is paraded as the only ‘mature’, ‘educated’, ’sane’, ‘intelligent’ position to take (or any number of other patronising barbs at people of faith) on the mysteries of life, the universe and everything. Let’s face it, even in the average suburban life, there are many inexplicable mysteries of soul, of spirit and of our existence in this biological sphere. Life just does not often fit into neat analytical, double blind trial triumphs of logic and prediction. Science is a helpful informant, it is not the blueprint.

Is it irrationally simplistic to say God created creatures, not eggs? That the Designer planned and created the capacity for a creature and a species to replicate and adapt to change over time.

Science may help to explain what God has done but science will never ever substitute for God.

The divine Creator is not man’s construct, man is God’s construct.

Selah…

Love, Ann

I was looking at the internet the other day and came across this quote, spoken in a different world to the one we live in now, but it got me thinking…

Abraham Lincoln, 1862, addressing the second annual Meeting of Congress, said:”The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

This profound quote, spoken nearly 150 years ago, still resonates with me as we personally and corporately weather change across societies, cultures, environments, nations and time.

We need to very wisely navigate our values, our faith beliefs, our assumptions, our absolutes and our choices. The ground under our feet is shifting and changing rapidly, particularly in our western world (hate that phrase: its ‘eastist’!!). An unjust divide continues to widen between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ as human society develops. Many of us are just swept along in this river, with a sense of unease and a yearning for more balance between simplicity and the inevitable adaptation needed with change. The poor, wherever they are, still have to find food, shelter and try to stay alive, distilling their lives into patterns and directions most of the developed world is either immune to or removed from.

Those of us who are wealthy enough to have the ‘burden’ of choice, whilst eating, sleeping and working in relative comfort, are under growing pressure, and often exhausted by, finding our way through an increasingly complex landscape of structures, expectations and ‘necessities’.

This brave new technological world is not so brave and not so new anymore. The Tower of Babel that is westernised culture continues to reach higher and higher at greater speed, separating it’s inhabitants from simpler patterns of life and perhaps from each other too.

In the intensity of these changes the world is experiencing, somehow we need to rise to these challenges with discerning, creative vision and equally, a sense of justice that stands up for those who are disempowered, ignored or victimised by the pace or direction of the cultures we are part of. Fundamentally, we must determine to take with us, or in some cases retrieve, the virtues of kindness, generosity, love, peace, courage and a deep respect for the world, and those we share it with.

The “rising with the occasion” Lincoln speaks of spans all aspects of our humanity and challenges us to look critically at why we do what we do, what we believe and how we express that, what is precious and to be carried forward and what is for yesterday and needs to be left there.

We may well need to lighten our load as we move forward. Our western culture (how else do I say that?) is heavy with greed, fear and self absorption and needs much adjustment. Change will force that upon us but choice may help us walk more freely forward.

Hi there folks, been a while. Are you still there?

I got weary of words so I stopped saying so much. Bit tired of hearing my own voice. Can’t really turn it off though. We’ve had a fair bit of activity going on in our family in the last twelve months so my attention has been somewhat focused into those circumstances. But…the world and the life of this Jesus follower are still turning and they keep producing words in me. So I’ll write them down occasionally and spin them out to you. One thing I would ask…send a few back every now and then so I know what you’ve been thinking too…

May I indulge in a word of unsolicited encouragement to the editor of this online treasure trove…Thanks David….You are patience personified and I love your work! Hmmm wonder if he’ll edit this before you read it? Nah, go on Dave, I dare you (Ed - after careful review, have decided to leave it in!)

Write soon…

Shalom, and love, Ann