the sun always sets

We live in a place where the sunsets are magnificent … every night. As I walk home from work, it’s like a daily reminder that beauty is stubborn. It persists, regardless. 

Life is overwhelming right now. The whole world feels brittle. And so do I. But the sun still sets, and rises, and sets again. Breathe.

The Cicadas are Still Singing
by Will Small

I tricked myself again,
that life is waiting round the corner
that it will all be simple soon
that I’ll be everything I hope to

And all my future proofing
all my constant scheming
my somewhere else dreaming

Was rudely interrupted
by a strangely peaceful moment
on an ordinary evening

I am weary, maybe wounded
scattered, inconclusive

But that sun doesn’t care
and those cicadas are still singing
no price here for admission
no losing, no winning

All the ever-present grace
that doesn’t wait for my achievement
it’s just thread through all the lining
of this air that I am breathing

time is short?

The Australian poet Banjo Patterson loved the bush. Man from Snowy River, Waltzing Matilda — his poems are filled with imagery of wide open spaces and those heroic figures who inhabit them. That said, he was not so keen on the city. In the classic Clancy of the Overflow, Patterson described the bustle of 19^th century Sydney and those who walked its streets:

And the people hurrying daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

He’s a bit rough, I reckon, but his point is made. Certainly we ‘townsfolk’ inhabit a different world to his. In 21^st century Melbourne we live and work in one of the busiest neighbourhoods of the nation. Patterson’s ‘rush and nervous haste’ is part of our lives. We are driven by the clock and at a speed inconceivable to previous generations. Indeed, we are now so accustomed to life at speed we’ve become impatient with the slow.

In his book Faster, the sociologist James Gleick documents our obsession with speed. He argues that we’ve become so addicted to it that the slow gaps in life have disappeared: we talk into our phones as we walk down the street; we scroll Facebook as we stand waiting for the traffic light to change; if the driver ahead of us hesitates at a green light or our train is running a minute late, we’re on edge. 

Driving all of this is the assumption that time is short — we have a limited amount and must make it count. The pace of our lives only accentuates this. The philosopher of transportation John Whitelegg observes a universal truth: the faster we can travel, the further we travel. In the same way, the faster the basic tasks of life can be done, the more tasks we take on. Our natural instinct is to fill the space.

I have to admit, Patterson’s assertion that “townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste” has a personal kick to it. My son’s recent comment, “You’re always so busy, Dad” is a thud to the chest. Instinctively, I know that things of worth take time — friendships, conversations, family, prayer. I know from experience that unfettered speed in my life has the potential to alienate me from those I love. And even from myself. 

Earlier this year, I sat with another pastor on the front verandah of my church.  We are friends and he was exhausted. His previous year of ministry had been demanding in the most intolerable ways. His relationship with his wife had suffered and his team ministry had crumbled. His confidence was shattered. Close to tears, he looked off into the distance and said, “I hardly know myself anymore.” The Australian theologian Robert Banks argues that when  we are consumed by speed and its busyness, we have neither the time nor the quiet to see ourselves. “Since the opportunity for inward attention hardly ever comes,” he writes,“many of us have not heard from ourselves for a long, long time.”

This mantra that ‘time is short’ pervades our lives.  Look just below the surface and you discover what feeds it: arrogance and anxiety. In the New Testament letter of James, the writer addresses business people, merchants most likely, in his community: 

“To you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes … As it is, you boast in your arrogance.” 

The conceit is obvious. The assumption that time is ours to master betrays a blinding self-importance, as though our little portion of time is all that matters. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks more gently. He addresses not arrogance but the crippling state of anxiety that pushes us forward. It’s fuelled by a narrative of lack — if time is short and resources meagre, then I grasp at what’s there and fret for more. Jesus’ response: “And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?”

Whether fuelled by arrogance or anxiety, this idea that time is short is a lie. From the perspective of Christian faith, time is not short. It is eternal. It has no beginning and no end. Certainly my portion of it is meagre, but I hold what I have with humility, understanding that my small handful is not the full story. It is just one tiny part of time everlasting.

James Hudson Taylor was a missionary who spent 54 years of his life in China. He was a busy man, responsible for bringing more than 800 missionaries to the country. Under his leadership they started 125 schools and established 300 stations of work across eighteen provinces. Regardless, in a biography of his life, Taylor imagined himself as a child standing at the edge of the ocean with a bucket.  He kneels down and scoops up his little bucket of God and carries it to his sand hole. He pours what he has into the hole before turning back to the sea. When he does, he notices that not even the slightest indent has been made. The vastness of what’s before him is just the same. That is us and the reality of time.  

It was the great Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel who observed that “the spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.” My sense is, only as we hold our small cups of time in the presence of the eternal can we live generously with each other, peacefully with ourselves and humbly with God.  

Time is money?

I love a good sandwich. So when I read recently about a new sandwich shop at the top end of Little Collins, I was there. As was the rest of Melbourne, so I joined the queue. The man directly in front of me was tall, well dressed with pointy leather shoes. He was on his phone, agitated, demanding loudly that a contract be on his desk by 2pm. When his turn came to order, he continued his phone conversation, jabbing his finger at his choice on the menu card.

As I stood behind him, I noticed a sign in the shop: “a good sandwich takes time.” Clearly, this man didn’t read it. After placing his order he paced, still on the phone. Finally he barked at the young man behind the counter, “Where’s my sandwich?” “It’s coming sir.” A moment later he hung up and snapped, “You’ve just wasted six minutes of my time!” And he walked. No sandwich. 

No doubt, time is a precious thing. No matter who we are or how pointy our shoes, what we do for a living or how much money we have in the bank, our lives are contained by time. Each of us have the same number of hours in a day and days in a year. What’s more, our lives have a beginning and an end. Our time is limited. 

Perhaps that’s why the most common way of understanding time is as a commodity. It’s something to be counted, a currency in limited supply. There’s a whole language of time that supports this idea: we can save time or spend it; we can waste time or lose it; time can be stolen, budgeted, allocated or invested; effective managers of time are those who take control of it, banking it strategically or spending it wisely. 

This language of time as commodity is all around us. We are impacted by it, perhaps more than we know. I think of the person who approached me earlier this week and asked if I could give them an hour of my time. I pulled out my calendar to see what I had to spare. To some degree this organisation of time is part of an ordered and productive life, but the assumption that underlies it has a dark side. 

Karl Marx, the 19^th century philosopher and economist, once quoted a British factory master who said, “moments are the elements of profit.” Time is money. It’s a powerful idea that shapes our days and, in time, determines our lives. 

First, it separates out what is profitable from what is unprofitable, what is productive from the non-productive. It infers that the productive use of time is virtuous while non-productive time is laziness. The so-called Protestant work ethic was fuelled by this notion. It’s like that meme that does the rounds online: “Jesus is coming. Look busy!” From this perspective, rest has no value. We justify our worth through busyness.

Second, it assumes that what I am paid per hour correlates with what I am worth. A management consultant who charges thousands of dollars per hour is clearly worth more than a childcare worker on close to minimum wage. Even more, if time is money, then the retired or unemployed are left wondering if they have any worth at all. 

Third, this notion that time is money verges on idolatry. It can be so in two different ways. Either our lives are controlled by the demands of time — we bow down to the god of profit as though it can save us — or we assume that once we subdue our time, we will have life under our control.

The fact is, these are all falsehoods. 

One of the ancient hymns of the Bible is in Psalm 90. It’s identified as a prayer of Moses. In reality it’s dated long after Moses. Most likely it was written for the Hebrew people after their years in exile. They return to their homeland decimated, their homes destroyed and their city in ruins. They sit together in the dust and they weep. This hymn is a reminder to them of two things. First, God remains eternally present in the world no matter what the circumstances: 

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” 

Second, our lives are momentary, a sigh — here and gone — and can only have meaning when gathered up in a story larger than our own:

“For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday  …  You sweep them away; they are like a dream … our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty if we are strong. Even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” 

This contrast between the God who exists “from everlasting to everlasting” and our brief existence demands from us a certain humility. Even more, it exposes this notion that ‘time is money’ as a lie. Frankly, it is nothing but hubris. The truth is, in whatever quantity it comes, time is a gift. Further, its brevity finds meaning only when it’s enfolded into the eternal story of God.

The hymn ends with a plea on the part of those who sing it: “So teach us to count our days so that we may gain a wise heart.” This task of counting our days is not so much a mathematical one, as though we can tally up what’s left. That would be foolishness, not wisdom, for who knows how long we have? The more accurate rendering is, “so teach us to deal with our days …” That is, teach us to understand our days, to confront their brevity and hold them with humility.

Time is not money. That’s a lie! Time is first and last a gift. Whatever time we have, it is grace from beginning to end. 

In the mood with joyce carol oates

True for me, mostly

“One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood.’ In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates, The Art of Fiction (an interview with Robert Phillips) in The Paris Review, Issue 74, Fall-Winter 1978.

ANOTHER YEAR

Today begins my 14th year.

For thirteen years I’ve been pastor of a city church, one of the nation’s oldest. Fronted by tall white columns, it stands temple-like on Melbourne’s most prestigious street. With neighbours like Versace and Prada, we’re surrounded by theatres, gleaming office towers and clubs full of old port and even older money.

It’s not always been that way. When the settlement’s first residents lived down by the river, they complained about the churches being out in the bush. Back then our street, Collins Street, was nothing but a dirt track. There are stories of potholes large enough to swallow a horse. But not anymore.

I often wonder how I ended up here. The church’s heritage is one of great names and influence. Its ornate pulpit attests to a grand tradition of oratory and the calibre of its ministers to leadership far beyond the church’s front doors. I’m a decent pastor, I know, but my skills in oratory are middling at best and, if I’m honest, my influence as slim as the railings on the front steps.

What I have in spades, though, is a love for this city and a continuing belief in the role of the church at its heart. Certainly the church’s place in the public square is different today than it’s been. Though still a privileged keeper of real estate and tradition, its historic ‘entitlement’ to voice and political influence is mostly spent. What a local church like Collins Street maintains is its God-given identity as an embedded community of courageous faith and generous belonging. We may not be as prominent as we once were, but we persist as a living sign of hope and of God’s all-embracing grace in this neighbourhood.

There are moments when I crave just a little of the church’s past glory. But I know much of that is driven by self-interest. The church does not function for itself and certainly not to stroke the egos of those that lead it. In whatever place it is, the church exists to glorify God and love its neighbours. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.”

Perspective is the rare benefit of age. For 185 years this church has shared Melbourne’s journey from fledgling settlement to thriving city. We have tracked with its ups and downs — we’ve not just watched the roller coaster; we’ve ridden it. And now as our city claws its way back from the disabling impact of the last few years, we are here, as committed to the city’s flourishing as we have always been. Another year of that sounds good to me.

[My thanks to Geoff Maddock for a beautiful image]

Bibleman

It was Bibleman!  We saw him, first in New York at the zoo and then in Texas. He was in homewares at Wal-Mart.  Actually, his mum was trying to coax him back into the stroller.  He threw a super-tantrum and his cape ended up around his knees. 

My kids were in primary school at the time. My son dressed up as Spiderman more times than I could count. But never Bibleman. I felt like the most negligent church-going parent. 

I checked the website and, sure enough, Bibleman had been battling the “flamboyant villains of darkness” for a decade. The local Christian bookstore carried all the videos:  Six Lies of the Fibbler, The Fiendish Works of Dr Fear, A Fight for the Faith. Armed with a light-saber of truth and his ammo belt of bible verses, the fearless Bibleman appeared in blue. His mission: to rescue doubters from the darkness of arch villain Luxor Spawndroth. Wow!

Honestly, as a pastor there are times I would love to be Bibleman. I’d skip the blue spandex, but that arsenal of bible verses ready to fire in any situation of doubt or pain — it sounds perfect. If only.  

As I settle in for my 39^th year of pastoral ministry, I’ve already had conversations with people in the most wretched circumstances: a life-altering diagnosis; depression that won’t lift; news of a senseless and tragic war in a beloved homeland. For each person there’s an awkward mix of faith and doubt and an almost desperate hope for things to be different. 

No matter how long I’ve been at this, I never get past that longing to make things different, to fix things for those in pain, to speak perfect words that liberate or heal. But I have no superpowers and no evil villain to blame. All I have is me, the world as it is, and deep sense of God’s grace. 

Don’t get me wrong. There are times when ancient words quoted from sacred texts can be a balm for weary souls, a reminder of truths that hold and sustain. Even more, the care I offer is grounded in more than who I am and my trifling skills.  But as much as I have confidence in the love and immediacy of God, I have no secret weapon apart from my willingness to be present. As one made in the image of God, it turns out the only cape I have is my humanity. So, on that goes for another year. 

resolutions

My track record on resolutions is atrocious. A new year appears and my resolve is strong. Typically, it lasts all of five minutes. So why do I persist? Because often there’s wisdom that sits beneath a resolution, no matter how trite. I look back on resolutions past and the longings they name are still worthy.

A few years back Jason Zweig, a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, provided a list of resolutions worth considering. Here are some of them: 

• Listen to what someone else is saying without hearing what you already think. It’s one of the hardest challenges for the human mind.
• Say “I don’t know” at least 10 times a day. That will disqualify you for a career in politics but make you a better person.
• Learn something interesting every day; learn something surprising every week; learn something shocking every month.
• Be more judgmental about ideas and less judgmental about people.
• Get outside more — a lot more.
• Don’t laugh at things you don’t understand. Take the time and trouble to understand them first. Most likely, you will find that once you understand them, they either become even funnier than you thought in the first place, or not funny in the least.
• Own your mistakes; lend your successes. They will come back, with interest.
• Get home 15 minutes earlier. It will make you 15 minutes more efficient the next day.
• Call your mum.
• Forget about getting better at what’s easy for you. Get better at what’s hard for you.
• If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you must not have talked to everybody in the room yet.
• Stop walking with your phone in your hand all the time. Look up and see how strange and beautiful the world is.
• Never try to get other people to change their minds without first trying to understand why they think the way they do. Never do that without being open to the possibility that the mind that might need to change the most could be your own.
• Show, don’t tell.
• Teach, don’t preach.
• Befriend someone at least 20 years younger than you, and someone at least 20 years older than you. Each of you will make the other smarter and better.
• Get better at accepting compliments; despite all you know (and all they don’t know) about how the sausage was made, people still have a right to like what you did. And you have an obligation to thank them.
• Tweet less; read more.
• Talk less; listen more.
• Say more: Use fewer words.

The brightness of dawn

I woke this morning anxious, the day ahead full and my concern for others heavy. Then I pulled the blinds. Wow. The sky was a wild layering of purples, blues and reds — the dark and light of a Melbourne dawn stretched out, audacious and bold. I can’t say the anxiety vanished, but something stepped in.

In these few days before Christmas, it occurs to me that this morning show of light points to something more than momentary. Perhaps it’s a precursor to the ballsy hope that’s about to be unleashed. I like to think so.

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Isaiah 60.1-3

LET THE STAR OF MORNING RISE

Lord God,
in the deepest night
there rises the star of morning,
of birth,
the herald of a new day you are making,
a day of great joy dawning
in yet faint shafts
of light and love.

I hear whispers of peace in the stillness,
fresh breezes
of promise stirring,
morning sparrows
chirping of life,
a baby’s cry
of need and hope — 
Christmas!

In the darkness I see the light
and find in it comfort,
confidence,
cause for celebration.
For the darkness cannot overcome it.
And I rejoice to nourish it in myself,
in other people,
in the world,
for the sake of him
in whom it was born
and shines forever,
even Jesus the Christ.

Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace

A Spiritual Quest

I’m a keeper of journals. For as long as I can recall I have written my way through life. In copious notebooks I’ve documented and reflected on what’s been a mostly unremarkable story. Regardless, the earliest of these are drenched with angst. As I scan them now, I cringe. They read like an endless and urgent ‘quest’ for improvement or for reality different to the one I knew.

My religious upbringing did not help. The journey to Christian devotion — a quest of the most noble kind — was fueled by a dim view of the human heart and of the world in which we’re ‘entrapped’. The narrow road out and toward God was paved with words of obligation: repent, give up, let go, deny, quench, resist. It was an urgent business. Honestly, I felt more failure than progress as I trudged along, but the drive to ‘press on’ remained.

With the benefit of age, I wish now I could go back to that ernest young man and others like him. While he sits hunched over his journal I would stand behind him, my hands on his shoulders, and speak words of peace. “Go easy,” I would say, “this world is good and precious, and so are you.”

It is the psalmist who affirms all creation as filled with the beauty and majesty of God and St Paul who marvels at that all-encompassing love that leaves no peak or crevice of this life untouched. The Franciscan Richard Rohr describes true religion as “always a deep intuition that we are already participating in something very good, in spite of our best efforts to deny it or avoid it.” Indeed, this world declared ‘good’ and ‘very good’ in the creation story continues to be so. The great privilege of the Christian faith is not that we are on a journey toward God, but that we are in God and the life of God is in us.

Yes, I am still journaling and still questing. I still seek meaning in what I do. I still aspire to goodness in who I am and justice for those around me. But the urgency of it and the self-criticism, they are less. Rather than being driven by a rejection of the world’s darkness and a desire for improvement in myself, I find myself inspired by the beauty of all that’s around and even within me. Today there is less drive for personal progress and more longing for the grandeur, kindness and grace that fills this world of ours.

The gift of Winter trees

Winter has begun.

This morning, pulling in the folds of my coat as I walked to work, I was braced not only by the chill of the air but by the beauty of the bare trees that line the paths. There’s something elegant, mesmerising, about the naked branches of a tree that reach up against the blue of the morning sky.

There’s much about this season that’s challenging. We instinctively retreat. We might assume beauty goes dormant until brighter times. Yet the trees remind us otherwise.

The English farmer-poet Philip Britts knew this. Back in 1936, in a place much colder than mine, he said it beautifully.

Upon a Hill in the Morning

The timid kiss of the winter sun,
The waiting faith of the naked trees,
The breath of the day so well begun,
Take what you will and leave me these.

Leave me my love and leave me these,
Leave me a soul to feel them still,
Better to be a tramp, who sees,
Than a monarch blind upon a hill.