The architecture of altruism

Some musings inspired by this...

The city is feeling more and more like home. I love the hushed weekends when we're as quiet as a suburb and can sit on our balconies under the sun, but I like it too when on Monday everyone comes back to town. The strangers passing left and right beneath my gaze feel every day more like My People. How good it is that my building's architecture should, in its own small way, encourage this sense of connectedness and community! There is something wholesome and affirming about being among other people - though it has the potential to be destructive and maddening too. I wonder if sometimes the privileges that money can buy do us harm - we move up in the world, buy a car and a house with a private lawn and only spend time in the company of those we choose. Might there not be something good about being forced to catch the bus with your kids or to take them to the local park to play on the grass? Perhaps it is, afterall, better to live in a block of flats than in your very own house? But when the block is twenty stories tall, the architecture brutally functional and absent of imagination, and the playground small and watched, then somehow the mass of people feels anti-community. It's an odd balance.

At the end of the year of the election

I do love this old post of Michael Jensen's. I wonder, is it like a particular author? Somewhere between Cormac McCarthy and Joyce, perhaps? But, more than that, I wonder how we did?

Along the way

Seven years ago, my boyfriend of just over three months broke up with me, because he didn't love me. The (absence of) feeling was not mutual, but I saw then and now that it was a good and right decision. It was easily the greatest suffering I have experienced, though it lacked the actual despair of an previous relationship breakup when I did not know God. I tell you this because I've been over that guy for a while now (though the experience has marked me); because for the last two and a half years I have enjoyed the gift of contentment which God one day rewarded me with; and because I have just started a relationship with a wonderful man!

I fought every moment of that long, long time to bring it all to God and to suffer well. I fought with what little strength I had, and, when I had no strength, I curled up at His feet and looked to Him in brokeness and tears. I prayed the same prayers over and over - prayers for the relationship to be restored, which I knew where probably crazy-prayers but I also knew weren't bad; prayers for comfort and endurance and other-person-centredness; and prayers for trust, trust in His goodness and purposes and for satisfaction in Him. The first prayer did turn out to be a crazy-prayer; the middle three were answered again and again; and the last two took years, but I knew they were good things to aim for so I kept on asking. And now when I look back on that pain-ridden time, it's trust that I most learned, because I found Him worthy of it. And while I would never willingly chose such a time again, I can see that it was very, very good, that I fought and gained, that it gave my faith a certainty and solidity because He was there for me through it all and when I cast myself on Him, He never let me down.

The relationship with that boyfriend was good and I loved him well and truely, but I also loved him too much or in the wrong way. For various reasons, I put too much on this man, who, after all, was just a person and a man. And I absolutely could not see that there being nothing more than affection on his part made the relationship a jaundiced version of what might be.

No longer having him, or anyone else, forced me to find my value in God, to learn to be satisfied by my relationship with Him. Gosh, it's a tough lesson to learn. I don't know exactly how I got there and I don't suppose I've learned it all. I think as much as anything, I just kept on praying, reading the Bible, being utterly honest with Him, being obedient, and He did the rest.

And now He's given me, not the idea of a man, but Pablo, this particular man, with all his complexity and uniqueness and circumstance. And I come to him grateful for what I have learned and how I have grown, knowing he's a sinner like me, but with high expectations of him as a man, yet no more than that. And, one of the things that has most surprised me is that I find myself glad for our relationship's limitations. I am glad to know that Pablo can't be everything for me. I am glad that I must love Jesus more and prioritise Him above my Pablo, and that he must do the same with me. And, strangely, I am glad to know that (if we get married!) this is a project for the years of this short life, and not for all eternity. To me, these boundaries allow me to throw myself at our relationship and give it my all, but they stop me from making ridiculous demands - complete satisfaction, absolute happiness. He is mine, but only for a time. We are in this adventure together for this life, but not after. So we hold each other dearly but not more tightly than we ought. Pablo is the most amazing blessing and gift, but he is not my all - God is my all. So when I think about the possibility of losing him, I know I could, I could get through it.

There has been another surprise for me - how good it is when you are loved, when someone not only treats you with great kindness, but when you are their first delight and preoccupation, when they want to know you and make you happy. I was satisfied with far less before and I suffered so at the loss of it and did not understand! But now I see it is not theory that God had something better in mind for me! Praise Him!

Pictures, practices... and knowing

Smith begins Desiring The Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, And Cultural Formation by asking, "What if education . . . is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires?"1. Beckoning words to one helping others grow in their faith lived out in the mess and joy of the everyday.

The book speaks of there being an order to knowing/being/acting. (It's a little hard to know which is the best umbrella-word.) First comes the twinned role of practices and pictures. Practices or rituals are of course those things we habitually do. Pictures are all the - non-intellectual, affective - ways in which The Good Life is presented us. Smith argues that practices and pictures always, inevitably bear a telos - an imagined future 'kingdom' that draws them forward and, if we are not careful, all of us with them. For an astute example of a modern day 'picture', allow me to quote at some length from his analysis of shopping malls:

If all the icons of the ideal subtly impress upon us what's wrong and where we fail, then the market's liturgies are really an invitation to rectify the problem. Though its stories and images point out to us our blotches and blemishes, they are not pessimistic; to the contrary, they hold out a sort of redemption in the goods and services that the market provides. The mall holds out consumption as redemption in two senses: in one sense, the shopping itself is construed as a kind of therapy, a healing activity, a way of dealing with the sadness and frustrations of our broken world . . . . In another sense, the goal of shopping is the acquisition of goods and the enjoyment of services that try to address the problem, that is, what's wrong with us -- our pear-shaped figure, our pimply face, our drab and outdated wardrobe, our rusting old car, and so forth . . . . 

On the one hand, this practice invests things with redemptive promise, on the other hand, they can never measure up to that and so must be discarded for new things that hold out the same (unsustainable) promise.2

While the advertising-leaden mall captures and charms our imagination, our routine practices create a normalcy to what it is to live in the world. Another lengthy, golden illustration:

The understanding implicit in practice is akin to knowing how to get around your neighbourhood or town. This is a kind of know-how that is embedded in your adaptive unconscious. Often if we've grown up in an area, we've never looked at a map of the neighbourhood. Rather, we have an understanding of our environment and surrounding that has been built up from our absorption in it: we've been biking and walking these streets for years. We could get home from the ball diamond without even thinking about it. If we're longtime residents and have never lived anywhere else, and a stranger stops us on the sidewalk and asks us how to get to Baldwin Street, we might actually be stumped because we've never really even paid attention to street signs.3

And while a sort of knowledge is indeed gained from exposure to and participation in such pictures and practices, Smith is eager to emphasise that it is of a very different type to intellectual knowledge and can never be wholly translated in those terms:

While aspects of the social imaginary can be articulated and expressed -- and even helpfully refined and reflected upon -- in cognitive, propositional terms, this can never function as a substitute for participating in the practices that themselves 'carry' an understanding that eludes articulation in cognitive categories.4

While I heartily appreciate much of Smith's analysis to this point, I do feel there is some inconsistency in his ordering. He speaks as if practices and images land ready-made, whereas I suspect the 'cold intellect' plays an early part. But this doesn't matter too much. Afterall, most of us aren't involved in the creation of society-wide rituals and art - for consumers these things do indeed seem to reach us fully-formed. I do, however, think his imprecision becomes more significant in his analysis of the Christian subculture and community, as this is an area over which we may well have some influence, especially if we find ourselves in some sort of leadership role.

As Smith pulls his analysis of secular culture over to the Christian experience, he argues that the religious rituals or practices we participate in come first and create a type of 'knowing' of our faith (I guess along with the pictures that are cast for us, though, oddly, he doesn't focus on this), before we ever attempt or encounter any sort of intellectual appraisal.

Before we articulate a worldview, we worship. Before we put into words the lineaments of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God's healing and illumination. Before we theorize the nature of God, we sing his praises. Before we express moral principles, we receive forgiveness. Before we codify the doctrine of Christ's two natures, we receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Before we think, we pray.5

It's not that we start with beliefs and doctrine and then come up with worship practices that properly 'express' these (cognitive) beliefs; rather, we begin with worship, and articulated beliefs bubble up from there. 'Doctrines' are the cognitive, theoretical articulation of what we 'understand' when we pray.6

I would go in hard here, but for a helpful interview Smith did with the good folk of The Gospel Coalition where he was challenged on this point and replied "[O]f course, it was the disciples 'belief' in the resurrection that gave rise to worship. But what sort of a 'belief' was that? It wasn't yet a dogma in the sense of a theological article of faith. It was a confrontation with the Risen Lord -- it was an 'affective' belief." So he does allow room for knowledge to inform practice (remember also his description of secular practices as carrying a meaningful telos), but it is always an affective knowledge (eg the encounter with Christ), never an intellectual (eg the doctrine of Christ's two natures). Smith develops this idea a little further when talking about worship, saying that the people of God "were worshiping long before they got all their doctrines in order . . . . when the Scriptures are heard and read in the context of worship, they function differently. Rather than being approached as a 'storehouse of facts' (Charles Hodge), the Scriptures are read and encountered as a site of divine action".7 So the sort of early knowledge he has in mind is knowledge that has to do with the commencement and cultivation of a relationship, not a knowledge that has its interest in the aquisition or ordering of facts.

It is helpful to note that part of what informs Smith's analysis is a desire to validate the experience of children and of adults with intellectual disabilities -- "because we are more fundamentally creatures of love and desire than knowledge and beliefs, our discipleship -- our formation in Christ -- is more fundamentally a matter of precognitive education of the heart."8 

He also wishes to commend a more realistic, workable way forward. In accounting for a much-lived Christian experience, he observes -- "when I fail to act in ways that are consistent with Jesus' call to holiness, is it because I don't know what to do? Really? Isn't it often the case that, in fact, I have the knowledge but lack the desire? Or that some other desire has trumped what I know?"9 As such, rather than looking to an increase in (intellectual) knowledge to address such gaps in holiness, he advocates "developing a Christian know-how that intuitively 'understands' the world in the light of the fullness of the gospel."10 

I appreciate what Smith is doing, I really do. But it leaves me feeling a little squirmy. I think that may not be his fault, but rather a result of seeing how some friends of mine run with a similar sort of anti-intellectualism. What of course ends up happening is that any sort of biblical study - or even perhaps reading - is gently belittled while experience and worship are so praised as to seem the superior path. I don't like it because I figure that if God put these words in a Bible for us and if he used human literary forms and logic, then he intended for us to read intelligently and learn. And I figure that if relationship with God is our ultimate goal, or worship for who he is, then (just as in any human relationship) we have to get to know him - dare I say it, we have to learn things about him - for that relationship to flourish and praise to flow. So I'm unsettled by the breaking of thinking into affective vs cognitive beliefs. And not only that - it also seems a little naive. I'm not sure it is actually possible to force a clean break between the 'two thinkings'.

I wonder if what Smith's actually reaching for has rather to do with a more basic cognitive knowledge (which can account for the real faith of children and adults with intellectual disability) plus a manner of receiving and interacting with knowledge that shows you know it has to do with a personal God, rather than some collection of facts.

So while I love what he has taught us about the part that practice and picture play, I would love to keep a whole lot more thought kicking around in the bilgy bathwater. And I would of course like to see myself and my brothers and sisters grow -- and absolutely in part by recognising the imagined kingdom implicit in those secular practices and pictures surrounding us: "We should be asking: What vision of human flourishing is implicit in this or that practice? . . . . What sort of person will I become after being immersed in this or that cultural liturgy?" 11. And, what's more:

seeing these cultural practices for what they are -- formative liturgies bent on shaping and aiming our desire -- can effect a limited deactivation of them. Since their affective power thrives on bypassing our critical discernment, there is a sense in which, by rightly discerning them for what they are, we can, at least to some extent, minimize their effect.12

May we rid ourselves of silly, stunted visions and replace them with one of our very own, a Kingdom that is good and coming. And may our daily actions, our Sunday rituals, the sights and sounds that gladden our hearts, and all we learn of our great God be the catalyst for our formation into the image of that Kingdom's King.


1 JKA Smith, Desiring The Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, And Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 17-18.
2 Ibid, 99, 100.
3 Ibid, 67.
4 Ibid, 70.
5 Ibid, 33-34.
6 Ibid, 70.
7 Ibid, 135.
8 Ibid, 136.
9 http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2010/01/12/spiritual-formation-through-desire-an-interview-with-james-k-a-smith/
10 Smith, Desiring, 68.
11 Ibid, 89.
12 Ibid, 208-09.

Behold, it was very good!

To love someone is to say:

It's good that you exist; it's good that you are in the world! 

(quoted here) and:

I would lay down my life for you.

(1 John 3:16). However painfully, reluctantly, carefully the decision is taken, abortion is the negation of these skipping shouts.

thank you; please

"Endings are for gratitude, beginnings are for faith", says John Piper.1 We have the privilege to gladly live each day in humble gratitude and courageous trust. These twin blessings rest on our Lord's unfailing character - that which we have heard from our ancestors, that we have known, and that which we look to with the eyes of our heart. Because of his deeds, we may live as very different people now. For, who is grateful? Who lives with courage? And for those who do, do they live this way because they have seen that life might be better so, or because of something they have known, from a deeper, quieter, surer and happier place? This is the gift we are given, to pass our days in thanks and trust while we are yet part of this fragmented, nasty, beautiful world that is not our home.


1 J Piper, La Vida Es Como Una Neblina (Miami: Editorial Vida, 2006), 50.

This precious person

Child sponsorship really works. For that child. This article tells us all about it and with great joy. Of course they do - these kids', these people's, lives have been changed. All that support growing up, all those letters of encouragement, of a bigger vision, they have all paid off - and this from a Christian organisation!

And I don't know if I'm pleased or not. I mean, I am for all those kids. But what about their brothers and sisters and the other kids in their village or city? Because the way the studies proved that there had been a positive effect for the sponsor kids was to compare their progress to other kids in the same situation - usually their siblings. Who didn't progress. Well probably a little - "We even find some evidence for spillover effects on the unsponsored younger siblings of sponsored children" (see here for a little more detail).

Is this okay? I mean, it's probably okay, but is it optimum? I love the personal approach, the chance to write them letters - because I know that the even greater gift than an escape from poverty is the gift of eternal life, and I know this is something you have to tell people about, something that gets shared one to another. But is it enough to love the one kid? Do we need to be doing something for their brothers and sisters as well? I guess I see this as different from the times when one needy person crosses your path. Then, your responsibility is to help that one person out and leave the bigger picture with God. But this isn't that - this is taking the initiative to step into a situation. So are we still called to help the one? I don't know.

Let us fix our eyes

Is there nothing greater than enjoying God? I think Bruce Pass would say there is more - for "a serious weakness of Ethical Hedonism is its tendency to strip away the inherent value of objects" [italics mine]. And, must we always enjoy our Father, in every moment of our lives? Here I think Pass would give a tentative no - "Whereas Piper says that an act bereft of joy is not worship, the Apostle Paul claims this for another virtue, love". I think he's right.

Yet, together with Pass, I wish to commend and honour most of what Piper says, his very great ministry, and his generosity and vision in making his work accessible to Spanish-speaking people. And I love what he has done to affirm our humanness and help us see that our soul is right when it longs for something more. Indeed, I think the Bible encourages this sort of self-focus and self-fulfillment. We are commanded to look again at ourselves in the light of God's reality and urge our hearts to repent, be at peace and satisfied. And yet, even more than this we are urged to cast our vision outside of ourselves, to look on God: not so we might gain some other end, but because he is our all. To think not of ourselves at all, or at least very little.

I've been noticing some occasions where the opposite is true, when I think we look too much to our own experience. So Christianity gets marketed as the path to true happiness. And such it is, but it is more. It is the path to God. Perhaps we think that unbelievers won't see the appeal, but we may need to trust the Holy Spirit to whisper it to them.

So we seek to understand why God would have things a certain way, why he would ask us to first pray "hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done"; and our answer is that these petitions help us to keep our lives in perspective, remind us there is more going on when we are going through hard times. This is certainly true, but it is secondary. We pray these things first-and-foremost not for any benefit we gain, but simply because we do desire to see our Father's name honoured, to see his kingdom come.

So we are told that because we have all we need in Christ, we may - and must - always be happy. And while it's true that this is ever possible for us, emotions are unruly things and we don't always properly appreciate what we have. And yet, even in these sad times, we have all we need in Christ. This is what is real and ultimate. This is what - normally - brings us joy.

Licentiousness and town criers

I love my mate Al's blog so much  - it's ever humble and sharp and just interesting - like a cheese perhaps. Recently he wrote a couple of absolutely cracker posts which I can't help but share with you. One was about Ryoji Ikeda's Spectra, a visual art piece exhibited as part of Hobart's new Dark MOFO art festival. (Tasmanian never used to be this cool.) Let me steal his thunder by quoting from the end. His description of the festival struck me because, as a non-believer, I was once drawn to these things...

Dark MOFO is an extension of MONA. It's about secrecy and licentiousness and freedom and pleasure.

It's predominantly about embracing and enjoying darkness.

So the inclusion and popularity of Spectra is a wonderful, almost undermining, touch of irony. 

The other had to do with the necessity of spelling out 'the Gospel'. From the middle...

It's not enough for the town crier to run down the main road enthusiastically shouting out "I have the most wonderful news of peace and rest for you all" but then not tell the townsfolk what the news is and why it's so good.

Women's rights X2

Australian Senator John Madigan (not the most charismatic guy ever) has introduced a bill seeking to ban abortion on gender grounds. A friend who is pro-abortion linked to this article -  a fair-handed presentation of the role the federal government really does play in supporting abortion both nationally and internationally (through Medicare and AusAid), and a warning that conservative politicians may be angling to use the issue as leverage for their vote on other matters. All of which is, as I said, fair. But what really interested me was that the article failed to address, or even mention, the bill's central theme. It was all about where Madigan's bill might take us, never about the content of the bill itself - gender-based abortion.

I understand if liberal commentators and thinkers are conflicted by this issue and unsure of how to respond, because here we see two values equally cherished by the Left butting up against each other - a woman's right to choose what she does with her body and life in one corner versus the protection and advancement of women and their equal standing with men in the other. I trust (and hope) that all commentators would instintively recognise that it is abhorrent to abort a foetus simply because it is a girl (or a boy: but this would probably never happen - which makes the issue all the more pointed). So I don't think it's at this point that the hesitation comes - I think it's the implication of what such a concession would mean that gives pause.

To ban gender-based abortions would erode the essential power of the pro-choice argument - that women have a fundamental, enduring right to make decisions about their pregnancy. Now if this bill were passed, women could still retain this right . . . except when their decisions were wrong (and here we're talking capital "W", misogyny Wrong). And if it's possible for us to have it wrong here, maybe there are other times where our choices are bad and should not be honoured. Maybe this right isn't so fundamental afterall.

If we're going to talk about where this sort of legislation might take us, let's not just do so by treating it as some sort of generalised 'pro-life legislation', but let's actually engage with the specificity of its content. To have any sort of integrity, the Left needs an answer to the question, "Should a woman be allowed to abort their foetus when they find out it's a girl?".

Neutrality's iron fist

Oh my goodness, I just realised something - a claim to neutrality is the biggest power claim of all. People who claim that their views are neutral and for everyone are no different from dogmatic Christians, except that they never actually claim to be Right - their fixed beliefs hide under the banner of 'Neutrality'. This sort of thing typically happens in politics and it goes like this. Christians are critiqued (/belittled/shamed/abused) for bringing their religious views into the political sphere. That is how the position gets argued for negatively. At times another step is taken. The secularity of the political sphere is proclaimed (never actually argued for, or even humbly advanced - but declared with the sort of self-confidence that implies that the view is, and should be, obvious to all). That is the approach's positive articulation.

Implicit - but never directly stated - in all this is the assumption that the secular view is neutral and therefore humane, peaceable and unifying (as over and against the loaded, niche, incendiary Christian stance). But it's not just this - this claim to neutrality is actually a hidden claim to Rightness. Theoretically, I'm not sure this need be the case (you could have a sort of 'chastened' claim to neutrality and I suspect many do), but, practically speaking, that's how it plays. When most regard it as acceptable, and even important, to resist, fend off and even shut down actions (like for example, votes taken by Christian politicians), influence or discussion coming from a Christian perspective, then those people clearly believe they are right to do so. They are no different to the Christian who baldly claims to have unique access to the Truth and who - more so in days goneby - does all they can to make sure the State and society does too.

And this is exactly what is being done in the name of neutrality. Sure, there are places reserved for religion (private conversation, inside the walls of the church or mosque), but they are decided by the people who hold the neutral position and are carefully demarcated. But never ever on any grounds should religion be allowed access to the houses of power, that seat where meek neutrality is king.

To give hope and comfort and all

Here's another thing that has to do with integrity, with consistency in all of life's domains. You see, in my own life's journey, it's the Bible's deep, honest truths to which I continually turn. They are the steady rock that underpins my every day; the shining past and future realities that blow my mind and proffer security and hope. But if I were to say these truths aloud, I'd notice straight away the points at which they pique and clang, where they need background and nuance to be properly understood. Usually I have already done this work. I've battled through the confronting and seemingly contradictory bits and the qualifiers that need to be made, and this gives me all the more confidence in their unadorned form. But when I say them to myself I don't add all the extra stuff in - I just tell myself the plain truth and that is what so marks my days.

But when I'm with my brothers and sisters in Christ I lose this unashamed talk. All the objections and discomfiting parts come to mind and I feel like a simple word would be misleading or ill-received. And it feels too intense - as though to suddenly speak of spiritual things would bring an embarrassing turn to the conversation. Better to listen and mmm and sympathise.

But why, if the things I know are such a help for me in the stuff of my everyday life, why won't they be helpful for others too? To know that a heaven awaits, and so it won't always be like this. That we are a people wracked by sin, that we do things that should not be done and will never be completely rid of it while on this earth, and yet God knows it all and died for us when we were kicking about in our sin. That nonbelivers do bad and foolish things because they are captivated by Satan and blind to the Father, and that's how we would be but that God saved us, so we should show love and pity, pray hard and share the Gospel with them, never thinking ourselves better.

These things can and should shape all our lives. I need to show my siblings the same consideration I show myself and ever speak true.

Being human in the big smoke

Anyone who reads this blog with any frequency will know about my ongoing fight with introversion and lack of generosity. Do you know what though? God really has changed me - I'm now genuinely pleased to share my food and time with other people, even at a moment's notice. In earlier days I would've noted these opportunities and kept mum. And I've got loads better at socialising at church too.

But there's a side of generosity I'm yet to nail and it has to do with introversion. It's the generosity of expending yourself in intense/exhausting/scary situations. Don't think I'm about to advocate going all out, pushing so hard against your personality that you collapse in a heap - I think we need to honour the way God made us and spend most of our efforts in the areas in which we shine, in being the part of God's body we were designed to be. But we are called to die to ourselves, to lay down our lives for others, to respond to the situations and people God places in our paths.

Which brings me once more to shopkeepers, beggars and passersby in the street, all of whom I would wish to treat as human. I don't want to be like every other big-city person, be they in Sydney or Santiago (is this really true of every single big city in the world?): shut-off, poker-faced, enveloped in a staged indifference. Not because it doesn't work - it really does, it's very effective. You get by, end up where you need to be, do what you need to do, and you never lose face, get hassled, threatened, or even just inconvenienced. It's great! And cold and inhuman. And I'm good at it - no-one ever looks twice at me (well except to check me out, but there's little you can do about that). I pass for a chilena! Hooray!

But I'm not this soulless in other situations, around the people I know. Then I'm generally - though, to my shame, not always - warm, interested, courteous and respectful. So, you know what the answer is? To not deliberately become another person when I'm out and about, but rather to just keep on being myself. I don't need to turn icy to protect myself, certainly not from inconvenience - if Jesus humbled himself for me I'm sure I can waste five minutes of my time chatting to someone unhinged. And nor do I need to protect myself from danger - God can and will do a finer job of that.

I'm never going to be totally myself in these sort of situations - I'm too much of an introvert for that - but that's okay, I'm just be the awkward version of myself. I've been that way before, even with friends, and no-one died from the experience. And I'm not aiming to go all out, to smile at each person, attend to every opportunity - as an introvert, that level of people-engagement would drain me dry and leave nothing for the women I'm here to serve. But, you know, I'll do my bit.

All over the place

It's been a while. Sorry about that, though not sincerely. It was an accidental thing borne of exhaustion in this new stage (I started my discipleship groups a few weeks ago), then a deliberate choice to change the rhythm of my days, including blog-day-Monday. Blogging's no longer a priority for the day and the fact that I'm now open to it on other days will probably hardly change things. But I still have so much I'd like to say so I'm not giving it up - it's just that I need time to think on Mondays, and not towards an end.

But now it comes to it I find I don't actually have much to say. So please do share in my consciousness. I'm reading a book about how the Christian life is worship before knowledge and practice before worship (a book that very much overplays its hand), and beginning to think what that might mean for my groups. I've found a great, safe place to go dancing and am still revelling in a perfect dance from last Thursday night and trying to put my finger on what it means, while knowing that, if I could, most probably there would be no dance. I'm wondering at how draining my groups are and how much I love our time and how I couldn't keep it up without a rest day and a thinking day and how I can't keep it up without God and how my life would be easier if I had a regular job and how I'd be sad and unsatisfied. And I'm glad for how muddled I can be and how God will answer a heartfelt prayer so well and sweetly. And glum over how sinful I can still be, given the right situation, and how the good things I know don't get through to me then and I get lost in my sin, and how relieved I am that I am forgiven, that I can get up the guts to ask forgiveness, and press on.

And I think I would prefer to live with someone else in a funky suburb a little out of the centre of town. I think I would like to write something, damnit: the great Australian novel, a swath of faultless verse. I think I would like to really roll up my sleeves and 'do life' with 'my women', be a person who takes a moment to call others or send a little note. I think I would like to get married and have some kids.

It's a strange life this. Such rich blessing, such deep, revealed truths, so much security, so much that is okay, so much satisfaction in the things you have to do, so many people caring for you and thinking highly of you, and the deep pleasure of other people's creativity in the buildings and grafitti alone. But then so much that nearl... that falls short, that smells of disappointment. You're knackered and salivating over the chance to watch a film, and you do and it doesn't satisfy and you feel a little dirty for not having done something more wholesome with your time. You have one glorious day to think and write and you never quite get going and anyway, what might you write? And church on Sunday is pure and centred and you trust in your brothers even while you know of their lives, and then it's over and you go home.

And there are these mountains-

Linkarama

A flurry of links for ya:

1. A Libertarian View of Gay Marriage introduces three concepts that help us think intelligently and practically about social institutions - the marginal case, the need to first consider social institutions as historical institutions, the real, well, reality of what I'm going to call 'legitimisation creep'.                                                                                                                   "In the end, our judgment is all we have; everyone will have to rely on their judgment of whether gay marriage is, on net, a good or a bad idea. All I’m asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations to make that decision. I realize that this probably falls on the side of supporting the anti-gay-marriage forces, and I’m sorry, but I can’t help that. This humility is what I want from liberals when approaching market changes; now I’m asking it from my side too, in approaching social ones. I think the approach is consistent, if not exactly popular." (H/T Mikey and Alan)
2. The Pastor's Heavy, Happy Heart describes my life (except for Fridays ;)) - and I'm not even a pastor and only share some of the challenges and heartaches of that vocation. This (plus the small fact I don't think it's right) is why I could never be one and why I counsel anyone, but especially women, to think carefully before taking on the full-time ministry gig. But, gosh, it's worth it :).
3. 5 Tools Needed to Reach Today's Teens makes me glad because I was one. I love it that someone has taken the time and had the love to think about where they're at and what their world is like, and then told the rest of us.                                                                                "You may say that all people judge, lust, envy, and lie, but your teenage audience likely can justify any of those sins at the personal level, believing they have ultimate authority over morality. Consequently, those ministering to teens need a theological understanding of how sin originates from the human desire to live independently from God and to be the "god" of our own lives." (bold mine)
4. The Peacemakers Ministries site is a bright thing. A very real joy to find some specific, applied aspect of the Christian faith that hasn't in the process shed its roots. The site contains loads of freely available, eminently practical, deeply and roundly biblical informed stuff, all to do with forgiveness and reconciliation. This page has the foundational principles given us by God. And it's in Spanish too!                                                                                                                       "If a dispute is not easily resolved, you may be tempted to say, "Well, I tried all the biblical principles I know, and they just didn't work. It looks like I'll have to handle this another way (meaning, 'the world's way')." (H/T Joanne and Claudia)
5.  A Different Kind of Teacher tells the delightful tale of a new graduate who accidentally got things right and later worked out why.                                                                                  "When a student feels comfortable in the classroom, they are more open to answering questions and when they feel comfortable answering questions they'll eventually enjoy success. Success breeds more success and when you have a classroom full of kids who are suddenly doing well in a subject which they never have before, you're suddenly a favorite teacher . . . . They laugh as I rant and rave about the ancient cave-man era of Doom and Pitfall and Burger Time, and when they laugh, they are happy, and happy kids learn best . . . . They insist that the way I teach math is 'different' than other teachers when, in reality it is very much the same. Nearly every one of my kids says that math is 'just easier now.' When looked upon with even a mildly critical eye, the reason for this is simple. They understand because they're suddenly listening. They listen because I talk to them about things other than trigonometric ratios from time to time." (H/T Ian)
6.  Closure, from one of my faves, is a beautifully and truly observed piece.                        "'Close', by definition, is a neat and absolute act, but each of us is constituted—for good or bad—by the inheritance of genes and the untidy accrual of experience. We are where we’ve been, and we get to choose if we’re okay with that or not."
7. Infanticide: The Coming Battle is a plainly written post (at times a little too cynical/simplistic in describing people) that looks to an ugly, plausible future.                                                        "If infanticide ever becomes permissible it will mean the death of western culture as we know it. No longer a light in the darkness, but a greater part of the darkness. It will mean that we are ruled by Barbarians with Law degrees from Harvard." (H/T Alistair)

Feeding the chooks

I love this blog - Martin McKenzie-Murray may have an unusually longwinded, alliterative name but his prose is almost always elegant and clean and his thinking sharp (every now and then he writes a more rambly, discoherant piece, but we all have our days). He's a man who steps back from things, reflects honestly on why they should be that way and on the failings of society and man. This piece on how we live before the threat of death is sharp thing sharp. Before I was a Christian, I would have given my assent to his concluding line: now I think quite differently.

Death comes to us all, and the trick is not to learn how to die but how to live as openly as possible.

Pessimistic idealism

The Christian view of the world is at once far more pessimistic and far more idealistic than the humanist atheist vision. We plainly state that, at least until Jesus comes, things will never be made right, there will always be poverty, suffering, cruelty and disaster. I suspect that many areligious people would agree, but they don't have a decisive story for it - rather, their narrative says that we are fundamentally good people and our mistakes are at most the product of other peoples' mistakes. These motifs profer hope - in facing and finding healing for our own damage, in doing better by others and by the environment, and in getting behind any small action or spreading movement that advances the societal good. The rhetoric is all about improvement and advancement - towards a shining, perfect goal.

For people with such a bright vision, everyday life (sometimes) rings an oddly discordant note. The same people who champion a kind world of mutual love and respect often cut corners in the little things, not thinking or caring how their actions might hurt the people around them. People freeload on their neighbour's wireless internet because they can get away with it and it will make life cheaper for them - the practical imperative of exchanging money for services received or the fairness of paying half their neighbour's bill of little concern. This is an easy example, and it is true that very often everyday selfishness is muddied by situations of real pain. So it is that women who wish they didn't have to have a termination (because at some level they recognise it's wrong), go ahead with it anyway because they're getting no support from their loved ones, only pressure. In a world full of hurting, wronged people, there is usually more at play than pure selfishness, but it's still there.

And it's not just that people make self-serving choices in the commonplace decisions that come their way. Alongside the championing of great, affirming causes, more cynical postures are taken. Someone will say they don't love termination and would never have one themself, but will advocate for the legality/liberality of the procedure because it will make a bad thing less-bad.

Why this inconsistency? Is it that humanists lie when they say they care about love and respect, dignity and flourishing? Or it is just that petty selfishness and deep hurts get in the way? Is it that the rhetoric doesn't even convince its advocates who, in their heart of hearts, know that people aren't really that good and the world isn't really that fixable, so you just have to patch it up as best you can, aim for the less-bad? Or are the sort of things I've mentioned considered of little import and influence, without knock-on effect on the grand goals? 

In contrast, the Christian says that the world is stuffed and will never in this life be made right.  So whatever good we might do, we never pretend to be working towards perfection. But strangely, in the small things, we are far more idealistic. We feel uncomfortable when someone suggests searching for non password-protected wireless accounts. While acknowledging it's not that big a deal, at the same time we know that it is. We care about being a bad citizen, about making our neighbour pay our way. And even on the (rare) occasions when there really doesn't seem to be any down-side, we still hesitate to do wrong, because it's wrong. 

Humanism is instrumental: If it doesn't hurt anyone, it's okay. (To which should be added: If it doesn't hurt anyone *too badly*, or if they're a corporate/government entity, it's okay - as well as: If it does hurt people, but it's already an entrenched practice and by accepting it we can make it somewhat better, it's okay.) The Christian vision says: If it's not okay, it's not okay (and I should add: If it's okay, it's okay! - we have positive things to say too!). Because we believe in a God who has everything in hand, we care less about results - that's his business. Because we have a God who calls things right and wrong and cares about how we live, we care instead about the nature of the deed. This makes it hard for us to rationalise doing wrong in terms of outcomes or external pressures. It matters what we do and who we are, even - perhaps especially - when we won't be caught and maybe no-one will get hurt. We don't always get it right, but we usually know it was wrong. We're more idealistic here.

It's because of this thinking that we reject the world-weary path of prettying-up an evil deed. We don't seek to make a bad thing a little better because that's just the way it is and what can you do. When we are at our best, we elect instead to fight for a different, better path. Of course this is tempered by the 'badness' of the thing - so Christians may give their support to safe drug injection places while at the same time pushing hard for drug rehabilitation. We agree that we're never going to be rid of the bad stuff, yet are convinced that the answer is to act well, to battle for what is right with whatever influence we have and the decisions that come our way.


This may all sound very smug and self-congratulatory, but that's not where I'm coming from. For as a Christian, I don't believe that people - including myself - are fundamentally good. What I do know is that we all make sucky, terrible, sinful choices - and that we can also choose to name this for what it is, be forgiven and given power not our own to embrace the right. The other thing I know is that the world won't always be like this - one day it will be made new.

"They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea." 

(Isaiah 11:9)

Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill ADDENDUM

I wish to add a bit to one of my submission's paragraphs (see the post immediately below for the whole thing). I'll put it in bold. I don't know why I didn't think of this before.

  . . . . I would love to see a Tasmania respectful of different viewpoints and committed to properly informing its citizens. If, in order to ensure that women receive “unbiased information from which to make informed choices”, referrals to medical practitioners or counsellors without a conscientious objection to termination are to be made compulsory, the reverse should also occur. So, if a women is attended by a doctor or counsellor favorable to termination, it should equally be a legal requirement that they receive a referral to a doctor/counsellor with a conscientious objection, so that they too may hear and assess the biases of both perspectives. And while I sympathise with the government's desire for a clear ruling in emergency cases, I would like us to continue to be a society that works hard to protect individuals' right to act according to their personal values and beliefs. As such, a doctor who believes that referring to a surgeon who performs terminations would make him an accessory to murder should have those beliefs respected and not be forced to refer on, just as a doctor who believes nothing of the sort should have her beliefs honoured and be free to make the referral.

Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill

Below is the submission I wrote regarding a 'reproductive health' bill currently being tabled in the Tasmanian parliament. I also sent a much-edited version to the Mercury and Examiner newspapers' Letters to the Editor (don't know if they got in). Please go to the Department of Health and Human Service's Women's Health homepage for links to the proposed bill and its information paper.

 . . .
 

The proposed Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill would be an elegantly designed, carefully defended bill if termination were indeed “like any other medical procedure”. But I'm not sure that it is and I'm not convinced the Tasmanian community is either. The information paper relating to this bill (accessed through www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/pophealth/womens_health) states that the vast majority of Tasmanians and Australians “support access to safe and legal termination”. But, as with all statistics, the answer given depends a great deal on how the question was asked. Naturally, if questions about termination are framed in terms of women's right to choose, the answer will be overwhelmingly favorable because our society respects and affirms women's self determination.

However I think we know that termination is a particularly complex issue. There is more going on in pregnancy than in other bodily changes a women may experience and make decisions about. Termination is not “like any other medical procedure”. Even the most ardent supporters of termination tend to regard it, not as a neutral-value medical practice but as an unfortunate yet necessary solution to unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Community ambivalence to termination is heightened by the extraordinary efforts we go to in order to conserve the lives of premature babies and the occasional incredible story heard about the survival of babies born even earlier than 24 weeks. It is also complicated by our more everyday efforts to protect foetuses' health, for example, as part of the Tasmanian government's 'Kids Come First' initiative which, among other things, seeks to reduce foetal exposure to alcohol and better equip midwives to address smoking in pregnancy. The locally run 'Butt out for Bubs' program is another telling named example of our community's complex thinking around pregnancy and the value of the foetus.

I would suggest that the majority of Tasmanians don't so much 'support' termination as reluctantly acknowledge its necessity. Tasmanians would, I think, be glad to see terminations performed only rarely. We certainly do not want to see women having terminations because they have been pressured into it by their partners, or women from cultural backgrounds that devalue their sex seeking a termination when they find out they're having a girl at their 20 week scan. And I dearly hope we do not aspire to be a society that sees women terminating eight month-old foetuses or ridding itself of people with disabilites.

I would love to see counselling made compulsory principally to ensure that women who are experiencing coercion from a partner or family members are given the opportunity to talk through their situation with a professional, but also so that all women can receive dispassionate support during this difficult time and as they make these tough decisions.

I would love to see a Tasmania respectful of different viewpoints and committed to properly informing its citizens. If, in order to ensure that women receive “unbiased information from which to make informed choices”, referrals to medical practitioners or counsellors without a conscientious objection to termination are to be made compulsory, the reverse should also occur. So, if a women is attended by a doctor or counsellor favorable to termination, it should equally be a legal requirement that they receive a referral to a doctor/counsellor with a conscientious objection, so that they too may hear and assess the biases of both perspectives.

I do not want Tasmania to be a place where early foetuses may be terminated for any reason at all. To guard against the barbarity of things like gender-targeting, the minimum requirement should be: “the continuation of the pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman than if the pregnancy were terminated” (the proposed rationale for foetuses over 24 weeks).

I do not wish for Tasmania to be a place where foetuses of the same age receive incompatible treatment. Where one prematurely born foetus spends the first months of her life receiving the best medical treatment we have to offer, and the other ends up as hospital waste. I do not personally wish this to happen to foetuses of any age, but I would suggest that the Tasmanian community is not ready to see this happen to foetuses old enough to be viable outside of the womb.

Most of all I would love to see a termination-free Tasmania; a Tasmania in which women with unplanned, unwanted pregnancies feel confident that adoption is a safe and compassionate option for their children; a Tasmania that leads the world in providing pregnant women and new mums with assistance from caring professionals and such an actively supportive community as to make us all proud.

Create or discover

I believe in a sovereign Creator who is Lord and Definer of all. Everything in the universe — the planet, the laws of physics, the laws of morality, you, me — everything was created by Another, was designed by Another, was given value and definition by Another. God is Creator and Lord, and so He is ultimate. That means we are created and subjects, and therefore derivative and dependent.

"Therefore, we are not free to create meaning or value. We have only two options. We can discover the true value assigned by the Creator and revealed in His Word, the Bible; or we can rebel against that meaning.

This piece is gold and the bolded words eminently helpful, placing godly submission in its true context. When we submit to God's counterintuitive, countercultural, offensive teachings, it's not because we lay our intelligence aside and follow blindly, nor is it because we love conservatism, nor because we are trying earnestly to win the Almighty's favour. Rather it is because - as the post says - God is God, and we are not.

In this light, submission is smart. Of course, as people made in his image, we love creation. And we can create, much and gladly. But we want to write our own rules, write our own story, write it all until we imagine we've toppled the true Author. This would be the way to live if he did not exist. But he does and when we create without reference to him, we do a awful job of it even when we think it reads well.

We are rebelling when we might be discovering. And discovery is not creation's lesser sister when God is real and good. It's an opportunity to do this thing called life well, in a way that works, that's within a culture but not bound to it. A chance to make the absolute most of life as it really is, as the little things we are in it, under the caring hand of the One who pens it all.


H/T Daniel

Chestnuts

Somehow King David knew he'd always been a believer. In a moment of deep anguish he appealed to God: "you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God" (Ps 22:9-10). This could be hyperbole, but to me it sounds truely meant. And I suppose this does make sense for people who "from infancy . . . have know the holy Scriptures" (like Timothy; 2 Tim 3:15). Generally speaking, we expect the children of believers to themselves be believers, not because they are forced, but because they are chosen - and choose.

Is this, then, what baptism is for? The sign of inclusion in 'the visible church' and of a hopeful expectation of the sincerity of their present faith and its perseverance into the future? It is certainly this much for adults - and more. The book of Acts tells us what that 'more' is: "the norm is that the Holy Spirit is received by believers at conversion and that baptism is associated with the response of conversion as an outward display of an allegiance (trust and repentence) to the Lord Jesus."1 Thompson continues:

In this regard it should also be noted that 'household baptism' in Acts is based on 'household belief'. Thus the emphasis in the account of the Philippian jailer is that if he believes he will be saved and the same goes for the rest of his household (probably including servants). Therefore, the word is preached to 'all the others in the house' (16:31-32). The implication is that they were all baptized because they all believed (16:33-34). The deliberate similarities of belief, household, baptism and hospitality between the Philippian jailer and Lydia indicate that the same is intended in her case. She is a believer and is baptized (16:15). However, what is implicit in the case of Lydia is made explicit in the case of Crispus, the synagogue ruler. Not only Crispus, but also 'his entire household believed in the Lord' (18:8; cf. also 11:14).2

Baptism is more than being part of a church, more than a positive expectation for someone's future spiritual state. The recipient isn't passive in it: they must first believe. Which makes me wonder if there were babies or little kids in the jailer's, Lydia's or Crispus' households? I do think the natural way of things in a communal society would have been to include the complete family unit, kids, babies, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins, the lot - but Christianity doesn't always follow the natural way of things (or Gentiles like myself would still be without hope). If belief that was the crucial thing, my guess is that Lydia, Crispus and co would have explained the Gospel to the kids old enough to understand, got them to say if they believed what they had just been told, and baptised them if the answer was "yes".

Of course, like King David, kids growing up in Christian homes can be given belief from the first day of their life. And yet I would find it hard to count little baby Jimmy among the household members who "believes in the Lord". I think I'd want to hold off on baptism until his fourth or fifth birthday to be sure he'd really understood the message and knew his own mind - but I suppose when he was two or three years old I could be convinced by the sincerity of his simple faith in "Gob".


1 AJ Thompson, The Acts Of The Risen Lord Jesus: Luke's Account Of God's Unfolding Plan (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 142.
2 Ibid, 142-42 footnote 60

Oraciones

This doesn't have much bearing on anything (for you: it does for me), but I wanted to say that when I read in Spanish I can hear the author's/narrator's voice. It was a surprise to find quite early on that this was possible. I can hear the voice, yet I cannot judge between a good sentence and a bad. Sure I have some feeling for how you may and may not express things and I'm sure I could tell if someone had done a too-literal job of translating from the English, but that's about all. I can't look at a sentence and declare, 'You can't say it that way' or remark on its 'clunkyness' or elegance. For I'm the one who says it the wrong way. It's a strange stage I'm in - able to say so much but frequently faltering on basic things (how to conjugate a verb, remembering to make the endings agree with the gender or plurality of the noun - "errores tontos," "silly mistakes" my teacher says) and making a hash of complex constructions. An important stage - I'm guessing that over the next six months the language will become more automatic and habits, good or bad, will start to stick. It's a good time to be all angsty and aware, to say "perdón" and self-correct. And perhaps one day I will read you a Spanish sentence and tell you what it is like, what it is doing and how successful it has been, if it is correct, if it is good.

people - food =

** just added a couple of concluding paragraphs and a footnote, folks **

My pastor has asked Pato (my coworker) and I to think through fasting. There's a John Piper book on the subject but I wasn't able to track down a copy so I just went ahead and did a simple search for places where the word appears. Here's what I'm thinking.

In the Old Testament fasting...

• is almost always spontaneous (not preordained, although the critical, organised annual fast on the Day of Atonement is the clear exception to this);
• can happen at a leader's command (eg 2 Cr 20:3), because of the choice of an individual (eg Ps 69:10) and occasionally a smaller group (1 Sam 31:13);
• always sees people humbling themselves before God. This one's deserving of some quotes - "There, by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions." (Ezra 8:21); "‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ . . . . You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?" (Is 58:3, 4-5); "Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting." (Ps 35:13).
• This 'humbling' almost always involves three things: sorrow, distress and mourning; turning back to God (sometimes explicitly because of sin); and a specific petition. Indeed sorrow and repentence are expressed, sincerely, in the urgent hope that God might intervene in their plight (eg an advancing army in 2 Chronicles 20, protection while travelling a dangerous road in Ezra 8, healing in Joel 1 & 2). There is perhaps only one occasion in which people fast to give expression to sorrow alone - at the death of king Saul and his sons (1 Sam 31).
• This humbling of self isn't a mechanical religious rite; it needs to be sincere and see expression in the rest of your life (Is 58).
• The Old Testament ends with a mysteriously positive vision for fasting, with the Lord declaring, "The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah.” (Zech 8:19) 

In the New Testament, the negativity of fasting remains but we also see the positive vision with which the Old Testament ended playing out. Here, fasting is...

• assumed ("When you fast..." Mt 6:16);
• supposed to be practised individually and secretly (Mt 6:17-18),
• although church leaders fast as a group (perhaps as a normal practice - Acts 13:2 - and certainly when 'committing new leaders to the Lord' - Acts 13:3, 14:23);
• equated with mourning (by Jesus, Mt 9:15),
• but also practised positively by the church leaders* (above) and Anna (Lk 2:36-37). Perhaps in these godly people's practice we see something of the joyful fasting spoken of in Zechariah. Perhaps for them, fasting was more an expression of humility before God and maybe also associated with bringing petitions before him - although they would of course have expressed sorrow and repentence at their sin.

And then we have the words of Jesus at Satan's temptation, spoken after having fasted for forty days and forty nights (like Moses before him)! To my mind, his rebuttal takes the practice of fasting in something of a new direction. Quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, he says "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Mt 4:2). Whatever the reasons for his fast, clearly Jesus was clearly not using it to mourn his sin or to turn back to his Father. Nor does it seem to have been associated with a specific petition. His words indicate that the act of going without food can show that there is something more important than eating, than being alive - the word of God. Here then, the focus is less on yourself in your sorrow and humility and need for physical care (although remember that earlier Jesus equated fasting with mourning), and more on God in your dependence on him, for physical care and in every way. 

However - and it's a sizeable however - the fact that fasting is nowhere mentioned in all the practical instruction of the New Testament's letters indicates that, even if Jesus' followers envisaged or assumed its continuation, they did not see it as an especially important aspect of the Christian life. 

So it seems to me fasting is a natural thing for a Christian to do, principally as a way of humbling yourself before God and expressing your utter dependence on him and his Word, and perhaps also as a way of expressing repentence and sorrow for sin and when presenting specific petitions. It's a good thing to do from time-to-time, at your own discretion and as a private thing between you and God (unless you're a church leader commisioning new leaders... and perhaps also regularly). But though it is good, it's not essential, and it's not that you're sinning or that you can't attain the same spiritual heights if you never practise it - it's not in the same category as prayer. So it's a personal thing, but, heck, why not!


* This practice, however regular or irregular it was, happened after Jesus was restored to the church leaders and the disciple Paul and after they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit, God's presence with them (John 14:16-18). This must mean that they did not understand Jesus as indicating (when he said "The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast" Mt 9:15) that fasting was only to be practised for the three days in which he was dead (although it certainly applied then). Whether the mourning aspect so intrinsic to fasting in the Old Testament carried on after Jesus' resurrection or whether it was now to be wholly/largely positive is, however, unclear to me...

I will be good and I will be happy

Hooray! Internet! I can write things and then they will be there so that the people can read them!
Yes, I did just get back from a (wonderful) two-week holiday, bursting with things to blog, to find that my internet's down and I don't know why. There's no point ringing the company - I tried that once before and it made Centrelink look gloriously efficient and accomodating. But I'm in a library with free WiFi and I've got a bit of time! 

Ahem. Late last night I got to wondering why all those years ago when I gave up on Christianity it was because I found it disappointing, almost heart-breakingly so. Why not that frustrating or plain wrong?

I think what happened for me is that Christianity seemed to be making me promises. "Be a Christian and you will experience the joy of knowing God, and singing praises to him will be your heart's desire. Hold to these beliefs, live this way and you will experience the assurance of knowing you are a good person, you will live with your head held high." The whole thing was clearly important and obviously Right and Good, so I think I guessed it might also be good.

But that was not my reality. I had a go at holding to my beliefs and moral views and living uprightly and all I felt was mortification. I saw zero examples I wished to emulate and zero acceptance of the Christian way. There was no place for abstaining from sex (the key issue for me). In my world this simply did not occur. So all I felt was that living was being denied me, my options and opportunity to enjoy life shut out. My faith's demands relentlessly severe in their near-impossibility. I was being asked to follow a path when I could hardly see how and to be mocked as I did it.

And the consolations I was implicitly promised brought me no actual comfort. So with heavy spirit I began to walk another path, bearing the guilt of knowing I was doing wrong but anticipating the solace of living alive, free, grasping the opportunities offered me.

My original disappointment came because I thought in being moral you would gain dignity and joy. I didn't see that not having sex and being opposed to homosexuality and abortion were hardly enough to make me moral. I didn't notice the myriad ways in which I lived my days cloaked in sin. I thought it a simple thing to be rid of. There is certainly dignity and joy to be found in purity, but that purity is only found in Jesus' death where I should die, in his twin-gift of forgiveness and righteousness.

It came because I thought that in knowing you were right you would gain peace and satisfaction. But I hardly knew the right and what I did know I did not love. I failed to grasp the beauty of things being as they should be; I did not see the goodness there is in truth, in reality, in living well. I had not learned to love the things of God. I had not learned to love him.

Whereas now I see that first to come to him with messed-up thinking and actions no better, and are forgiven. Only then do you begin to follow him and learn his ways, his truth. And in that ordering of things, you know from the very beginning the awfulness and ugliness of the wrong that sent your Saviour to the cross, and the beauty and blessing of right he has given you, and you learn to hate the one and love the other. That's the way of it. You can't force yourself to love what is right and so feel the dignity and joy of it while you are still scrabbling about in your sin. I had to learn that, and thank God I did.

I/the heat

On very hot days, I think I'd almost prefer Santiago's weather to be humid. The heat here presses heavily down, apart from you, like some giant oppressive master and there's no recourse but to continue on your shuffling way. In Sydney and in Asian countries the heat remakes you in its image, a watery being with a solid centre and a slippery outer. A lot of people hate it but I have this mind-trick where I chose to accept the heat and enjoy the earthy sweatiness of my bodily existence, like swimming or playing in the dirt. You might say that the heat and myself become one. And now I wonder if it is humidity that bears responsibility for pantheism and Buddhism's not-self.

DUMB

I suck at writing SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely). I always have. They drove me particularly crazy in the years I worked as a Speech Pathologist and it wasn't until my exit interview that I worked out why. I don't feel capable of predicting a patient's progress. I treated people who'd had strokes or head injuries and whose brains were damaged, and while it is possible to make general predictions, I think that we who do not yet properly understand recovery's process should hardly be expected to place a figure on its accleration over the course of a week or two. Goal-setting ends up no more than a reflection of past professional experience or the positivity, or otherwise, of the individual therapist. At my exit interview, it seemed to me that efficacy would be better measured according to whether treatment had been fitting and whether the professional had worked hard. It is possible to have input of the highest standard and yet only see minimal improvement because of personal factors (the person is a quitter or has despaired) or because their impairment is simply far too grave.*

But I also suck at writing SMART goals for me and you would hope that I would have a better chance of gauging what might reasonably be expected there. They feel so foreignly masculine, cold. I don't know what I'm aiming for in life, for the next two or three years. I mean I do have some plans of what I wish to do, sometimes quite concrete ones, and I could certainly tell you all about the philosophy behind my plans, and even, with a little pushing, what my desired outcomes would be - but to have to lay down individual steps and dates by which the steps will be done, something in me balks and bad.

The problem with SMART goals is that they bring a too-weighty responsibility, an end to romance, an abridging of how life is lived and they are sometimes simply unnecessary. I'm not sure I have the maturity, wisdom or creativity to plan out my years and I feel like in the doing of it I would be making a commitment to that path and that is no small deal for me. Nor do I particularly want to have it all mapped out - there's a romance to reactivity and heat-of-the-moment decisions that I don't wish to lose. What's more, like tests at school, I feel goals often fail to do a very good job of capturing and describing life's successes and failures. Life's more nuanced, more context-bound than something you can place a tick or cross against. And oftentimes I don't actually need a goal - I'm already well aware of how I'm doing at something. I don't need to think up some way of measuring my progress in Spanish - I'm speaking it all the time, noticing my mistakes and triumphs, and I can tell you exactly how I'm going anytime you want to ask.

Yet I did write myself goals for last year and at my pastor's urging, made them SMARTer, and many of them served me well. They worked well when I:

• wrote down what I was already doing and later reviewed the list to see if any had slipped; 
• wrote down the things that I hoped to make part of my life's routine; 
• was forced to think about what less intuitive or obvious success would actually look like (so for example, if I wasn't feeling like I was really part of my new church yet was ticking off the steps, then I knew I was doing okay); 
• had to include things I wasn't pumped for, difficult things; 
• got the satisfaction of ticking off concrete achievements.

The moral of the story is: write goals, write SMART goals if the steps or timing matter and write 'dumb' goals if you only need a memory jog. And don't include unrealistic goals because they'll only look accusingly at you and make you hate the whole thing . . . and yet, you might just want to include one or two because perhaps the writing of them will turn them into a mental possibility, and, you never know, the guilt or glimmering hope of them may just get the better of you.



*Of course, at this point - and before - the professional will also consider how to make their client's life functionally helpful, whatever their impairment, and goals are certainly a little easier to set here, but, even so, the social context brings its own complications which can equally well confound the meaningful setting of goals.

Bar set high

I watched Pride and Prejudice last night (the BBC version of course) and wrote a florid piece about the good and bad of Mr Darcy's love. Last night, it looked like it could be a watershed moment in literary history - today, well, it's not completely crap. But I thought I'd pen you a more, economical, version.

Mr Darcy's okay. His assured bearing, laconic address, intense passion and ardent gaze are perhaps too much to ask of any - real life - man, but his kindness, his deep regard and love for Lizzie, and his eagerness to win her hand and see her happy, these are all precious things.

Indeed on reflection, I think Mr Darcy sets the bar too low. His tender, passionate, sacrificial love is a sweet, and vapid, shadow of the love of God. God, who gave up everything, even his divinity (and who can comprehend that?), to rescue unlovely women and men. Who kept nothing back for himself. God the Son who became weak and grotesque and died as the wrath of the Father bucketed down on him.

This pitiful-glorious romantic deed is the model for every other. Men, we are not asking you to be like Mr Darcy, we are asking you to be like Christ Jesus. Darcy gets to us chicks because he's a bit like the other Man, the Man we're really longing for.

But the bar that Jesus sets is far, far above than Mr Darcy's showjumping pole. So then women, have compassion. Your guy is learning what it is to love, and so are you. Try not to let your heart be broken when he gets it wrong or when no guy is there - turn your heart to the God who looks at you with a compassion and fervent care far more profound than Mr Darcy's, and truer and kinder and all that is good.

Retell yourself the old story of your Saviour's love for you, so that it defines your world even on days when it does not feel true. If you are single (and if you are not), take comfort that you are much loved. Don't settle for crappy guys. Don't obsess. Be glad of your standing and of all that is good. Because you have this one thing, look outside of yourself. If you want for a man, then pray and take what chances come, and God will very likely send someone your way and you will be blessed by that man's sweet, vapid mirroring of the love of your God. And should he not, you are already blessed: ask that you would know it.

Spice

I'm still recovering from buying all the stuff for my place and so had trouble understanding when a Chilean friend living abroad wrote of missing "the fact that, by default, nothing is easy". Until today when another friend described traveling overseas for the first time, landing in Germany and sensing the system's oiled, powerful presence - nothing to stop you nicking the lollies off the supermarket shelves except that's not what's done; good quality furnishings in every home; streets streamlined enough to avert tripping or the build-up of water; and everything organised such that you need only simply, straightforwardly fulfill your part. Now I suspect this ease of living leaves space and energy for creative thought, but, to friends accustomed to another way of life, it can get pretty boring. On this continent, you never know if things will go smoothly or awry so life's lived in a state of alertness, ready for the moment people don't do as they should and 'the system' falls apart or bears its cracks. I think this is why simple errands have left me so drained. But with defensiveness comes offensiveness. Latinos are born improvising which, if nothing else, is interesting and can even be fun.

Homosexuality

People continue to write real, deeply felt and helpful stuff about homosexuality. Here's a link my friend posted on facebook. And her marvelous, marvelous comment that includes these guys, and everyone else, in its grasp:

When we are uncomfortable with holding up the beauty and blessing of celibate service as a joyous path, we are saying that Jesus is not quite good enough to give satisfaction to the single person or the widow or the same-sex attracted person... and by extension we cheapen the joy he offers to everyone else.

H/T Laura :)

Cazuela de pensamiento

I've got myself totally out of the groove with blogging, so this one's as much to help myself become reaccustomed as it is for you, dear reader. It'll be blathery and various. So, here's some things I've been thinking about/learning over the last weeks...

1. It's stressful moving house in a foreign country. Or maybe it's not? Maybe it's just that it's stressful buying a house-worth of goods when you never particularly feel at ease doing practical jobs. Or maybe it's this plus the fact that in this particular foreign country each shop's stock is unpredictable so you have to trek all over the city searching for what you want. And even more stressful when you care about what you want. It certainly must be something to do with these things because I've moved house stress-free many, many times before.
2. It's scary starting off a new life as an independent adult in a foreign country... especially when you're an introvert and no good at inviting people round even when that's exactly what you want to be doing.
3. It's hard to know what to do when you're feeling stressed because it's hard to get your mind clear. This is where muddled prayers, a deep confidence in God's final, shepherding control (even admist a lack of trust in his care for the details), and the advice and prayers of friends all come in handy. And time away and swimming. Swimming! And a new resolve to read the Bible and pray regularly, to entrust even my productivity to him, and to slowly but surely work out goals and take small but definite steps towards them each day.
4. I feel more whole when I have been for a swim. Ah yes, that's who I am! I love the city but I'm kindof still a kid - I need to dance, to get dirty, to shoot along the bottom of a pool. I've gotta find a pool nearby. Gotta find a way to go dancing without getting hit on too badly by sleazy (Cuban) men.
5. Hugo Chavez must really be sick, and when you see his parliamentarians interviewed they look just like the politicians here, but their words sound like they spring from some party manual. I guess that's what politicians often do in Australian too, but it's the cult of chavismo that's so striking, the speaking about him as the hope, almost as the demigod, of a land. The presidents of Argentina and Peru have both just been in Cuba, the Argentinian president visiting Chavez and the Castros and the Peruvian on other business. I've only been able to read the paper for the last few weeks, so I still don't know much about the politics of Latin America, but I do wonder what's going on there?
6. Meanwhile in the south of Chile, some Mapuchean activists burnt a rich couple's home to the ground with them in it. I've not seen the reasons given anywhere, but from what I can tell it was in protest against what is regarded as exploitative, monopolising, agrandising hegemony within a broader context of a struggle for indigenous landrights. However the couple's relatives say that they weren't landowners, but rather community-minded, peaceable business owners, and that, anyway, no landrights claims have been made for the land they did own. Like Australia, noone seems to talk too much about this sort of thing and I've no doubt that the situation's every bit as complex and difficult to resolve.
7. Back in Santiago - and back to less important things - I've been realising how difficult it is to visually assess a room's aesthetics when you've gone through the process of buying each item in it. Impossible to see as you do when walking into a already completed room. I can 'see' enough to know I'm happy with the elements and how they interact, but I just don't know if it's hit the mark as a whole. How do interior designers do it?
8. Also, in working hard to create an ambiente you can lose that very thing. I liked the space but the pieces had just become pieces and so I found myself sitting in a two-room flat (four if you count the kitchen and bathroom) exposed to the windows of the surrounding buildings and all the people walking by, like the outside space was seeping in and intermingling with the inside. But since getting back from an (awesome) camp, I've been retelling myself the story of my flat. Now it's something like a safe, sweet little eyry tucked away in the midst of the city's bustle and hum. I'm also trying to remember the jealousy I would have felt passing by and seeing someone sitting on my balcony, but it's harder coming.
9. I liked being on camp from when I first got there. This doesn't always happen in Australia. I think it was because, in my mind at least, camps feel more 'natural' here. Because Chile is more community-oriented than Australia, camps feel more like an expected extension of normal life, where in Australia I think we do them because we know they're good for us, but spending that much time with other people and in such close quarters is weird and we don't quite know how to act . . . or that might just be me. Also it didn't feel strange to be sharing a cabin with women a whole lot younger than me (it was a youth leaders' camp) - there's a way of relating here that's open and spontaneous and for all. 
10. So camp was awesome - great pool, fantastic, grounded, clear teaching, time for 'devotionals', fun games, the whole lot. The youth leaders were pretty mature and on-board and knew a thing or two about their Bibles. Except that... on the first day kicking off the level-one group training on how to make sense of a Bible passage, we were given a tough passage and asked to each read over it a few times by ourselves. Now I'd bet good money that in Australia there'd be a lot of angst and moaning when we came back together, lots of "man, that was hard" (or whatever it is the youth are saying). But here we came back together, the leaders asked how we found it, and everyone said "fine", "not too bad", "good", and proceeded to springboard off a solitary word or idea in the passage in an attempt to summarise its message as a whole. I've seen this done before and I'm sure this time wasn't the last. So it looks like before helping folks understand the Bible, it'll be important to help them see when they don't. 
11. I think the youth of any country can look pretty international - creative, experimental, striving, free. But over time, and especially after having kids, most people seem to settle into a more 'chastened', conservative version of themselves. So I wonder if it's simplest to look to middle-aged folks in seeking to understand a culture as a whole. So for example, here, as in Australia and I suppose everywhere, there are stereotypical concerns and forms of speech. But what's unique about these forms? Why do they make for smooth relating here? What do people talk about, what charms and horrifies them? I'm not sure I know the answers for Australia, but these are the sorts of things I want to be looking out for, either systematically or in a more intuitive sort of way.
12. I'm at an odd stage of language learning. I did the intermediate stage DELE Spanish test the other day, not under test conditions but without any outside help, and got 87% of the grammar and vocab right, so, technically speaking, I'm at an advanced level and yet... when I speak I still often can't remember how the irregular verbs are formed or think quickly enough to correctly use all the things I do remember, and when I'm telling a story and need to use a less usual form in a sustained way I often lose... courage more than anything, and flip-flop my way between forms. Also, I can read the paper now and am getting quite a bit of exposure to more sophisticated ways of constructing a sentence and yet when I'm speaking I often find myself quite unable to think of how I could express something exactly or gently, and am left with option of either keeping my mouth shut or saying it bluntly. Oh and while I do mostly understand what people are saying, there are still a good many times when I'm almost completely lost or when I only get the basic gist. It's very odd to live with this mix. And I think this is where my language will be at for a while to come - a level I find oddly more discouraging than my earlier inabilities. But I still do love Spanish and it doesn't feel foreign to me, I mean I feel like myself when I speak it - so that's all a lovely blessing. 
13. I first heard about the bushfires in Tassie when I switched on the morning news after coming back from camp. They were saying something about 100 fires burning and 100 people disappeared... in Tasmania. I mean you never hear about Australia, let alone Tasmania, from over here, so it made me think whatever was happening must be really bad. I don't know why I didn't think of bushfires - that would have been the obvious thing - but because in my head I translated desaparecido as "disappeared" (instead of "missing"), and perhaps because in Chile this word is associated with violence at the hands of the military government, and perhaps also because the last time I was away from Tasmania and heard news about my homestate was when Martin Bryant killed all those people - because of all these things I was thinking that maybe something like a massacre had happened. Anyway I did eventually find out what was going on and am so amazed and grateful to God that noone died. It's yucky not being home when something bad goes down - you just want to be there to be there, to commiserate and share in your people's sorrow. And when some people (my Christian family here) asked me about it, they were full of concern; but when others asked, you could tell it was abstract for them, that they weren't realising you knew the streets and bays that were names on the news, that you might know the people, and it was hard to convey the concrete reality of it in my reply.