by | Jul 27, 2005 | Uncategorized

Excerpts From A Conversation Of Significance
I have a camp this weekend.. and it always frustrates me when the slightly older, independant members of the community chose to leave early. It breaks the flow, it devalues the time together.. all these things. So when one of my beloved ones, told me that he was planning on leaving early.. I spit a few tacks. In writing to him, trying to explain my frustration.. I happened upon something that I like.

Dear ****.

I thought I would write a quick note so as to not let this become more
of a big deal than it is, because maintaining perspective is always
important, and I like to have moments of rationality thrown into my usual
exorbitant emotional state.

**Edited.

Outside of that, people leaving early has always been one of the most
challenging parts of camp, because it brings such a broken feeling to
the rest of the community. This has been something that I’ve worked so hard
to prevent this year, to the extent of even saying to Blue that I would
rather he didn’t come than leave early. It’s morale-reducing and makes
the whole camp start to slow down.

So please understand I’m frustrated by a contentedness to want to change
the rules or bend them because it seems that your priorities have
changed from what they were a year ago. Mine haven’t and I still believe in the
value of camp. That sense of disappointment isn’t restricted and goes
for other people I found out are also planning the same thing.

We talk and talk and talk about wanting the most from community, but we
miss the boat a billion times. We make rules instead of principles, and
rules are infinitely easier to break. We can easily say ‘don’t do this
because it’s wrong’ .. but there’s no meaning to that. Or we can say
‘don’t do this because the best possible thing you could do is this
instead’.

We live in a world of half-assed people who play by the rules so long as
it suits them, but still don’t bother to pick up on the deeper principles that go underneath. The rules are the do’s and don’ts that prevent us from doing the WRONG thing, but abiding by the principles will help us to do the very BEST thing.
It’s not wrong to go home early if it fits in with your priorities. But
the best thing would be to invest in the whole weekend, because then
everybody benefits from your presence, and you benefit from being in the
community and that’s everybody’s priority.

So I understand that people will continue to make their choices, and it
could be as simple as a matter of opinion, and we can agree to disagree,
although once upon a time, we held the same side of the argument. We
believed in the priority of the group, being important for the
individuals to value as well.

Doing The Very Best Thing
It refers to the apathetic nature of our culture. Particularly where I am on the North Shore of Auckland. People value the prerogative of independence & freedom, more than the distinctive of the whole. There are multiple justifications for it, some of them more reasonable than others.. but for someone like me, who’s life-work has become serving the People of God.. it’s hard when the People would like a revolving door.

It’s not enough to not do the bad stuff, for that only leaves you halfway.. a full, brimming over life comes from choosing to do the best things.. So, you want an overflowing community experience.. you must overflow and invest into that.

These thoughts are still too un-constructed to really be here.. but the implications or basis for application is broad, and I’ll think about it some more.

by | Jul 21, 2005 | Uncategorized

Song Of The Moment : Love Is Everything
Jane Siberry

Maybe it was to learn how to love
Maybe it was to learn how to leave
Maybe it was for the games we played
Maybe it was to learn how to choose
Maybe it was to learn how to lose
Maybe it was for the love we made

Love is everything they said it would be
Love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I cant wait ’til you make
The whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving

Maybe it was to learn how to fight
Maybe it was for the lesson in pride
Maybe it was the cowboys’ ways
Maybe it was to learn not to lie
Maybe it was to learn how to cry
Maybe it was for the love we made

Love is everything they said it would be
Love did not hold back the reins
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I cant wait ’til you make
The whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving

First I turn to you
Then you turn away
So you try to hurt him
But it breaks your body down
So you try to love bigger
Bigger still
But it…it’s too late

So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
And know you’ll never be the same
And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love didn’t I?
And I gave it big…sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I’m just leaving

A Question Of Identity
There’s been some interesting activity in the SiteMeter lately, and it raises questions that I mostly avoid thinking about. For example.. when somebody googles ‘tash mcgill’ and they end up here, it’s really no surprise. When they google me, and then read my diary all the way back into 2002, then I got issues.

I know what all can be said.. don’t write anything you don’t want people to read blah blah blah. And I do work relatively hard to maintain anonymity for people within the blog, if for whatever reason I don’t want them to be known. But in 2002, there was no one reading this but Dani. And between now and then, I’ve variegrated between moments of crystal honesty, ranting, and deeply thoughtout intellectual arguments on theology & philsophy.

It’s the secretive nature with which people peruse.. the lurkers, the non-commenters. I can guess at who they are based on when they read, where from, the browsers they are using, but it’s not the same as the honesty of.. hey, I read your innermost thoughts, but that’s ok, you can trust me with them.

So why do I blog if every six months I’m going to have a crisis about the former self that used to blog here? I’m not the same person, don’t judge me! I long to cry it out, or disable the archives or something. But the reality is.. perusing my site this morning… I think that if you came here looking to find yourself hidden away between the lines.. you probably could. Just about any one could imagine themselves the focus of my attention here.

The reality is probably a lot more mundane. I just write and sometimes the thoughts in my head about you and sometimes they are about someone else, and I’m just glad for the opportunity to spill out these words and keep them somewhere, so that when I am old, I can look back and laugh at my foolishness and gabbled youth.

I’ve always made a point of being honest here, even if I didn’t reveal names and places unless there was no danger in it. I’ll still continue to be honest, but couldn’t you help me out just a little, by at least fessing up to who you are? After all.. if you don’t know me by now…

by | Jul 21, 2005 | Uncategorized

Words
In the beginning there were words. Words that in their being, brought earth and all creation into being with them. Words that shaped land and ocean, sky and heavens, words that placed stars into the atmosphere and brought water out of springs in the earth, to water the ground. That the ground might bloom into life, and the walking, breathing life that lived upon the earth might eat of the blossoming of the earth. All this came from words.

At the end, there are always words. They are heavy words filled with sadness and loss, words that endeavour to bring meaning to a series of repeated breaths, repeated motions that together construct what we call life. We use words to describe a person in all their broken glory. Words that paint pictures of them in younger, more productive years. Words that make small triumphs from failures, words that give us the power to influence and change the purpose of a life, from smallness to greatness at the moment of death.

Words seem infinitely powerful at that moment. When the silence becomes an ache, and the ache an emptiness, and the emptiness cannot be filled, then words have the infinite power to restore, to birth, to create, to offer. Until the final word is spoken, hope remains and life endures in the breath and intonation of the phrases we choose to define the life we mourn.

So ask me not, to give to you my mind or body, or my soul so much as you could ask of me a kiss; a kiss of syllables and consonants, of round, deep vowels and slowly formed phrases. My kiss of words I give to you, crafted with the infinite depth of my heart, which cannot find sharper, truer or more apt gift to give you, than my words spilled out on paper and in space; carved out in the ether.

Words contain more of ourselves than we realise. Why do I always say woman and not female? One is sensual and human, the other cold and scientific. Why do I twist and turn the phrases in my mouth into new shapes and sounds to soften that which is hard or smooth that which is broken? How is it that within my phrases I find spaces for latin, greek, hebrew and polynesian roots and yet I am an English mutt according to my ethnic blueprint? Why do I find a deep sense of home in listening to the words that roll from your tongue in fluid apathy to my apparent need of them?

My words speak my heart aloud and they fly up into the air, resting on shadows and clouds, sliding down raindrops back into puddles at my feet, before the listless wind blows fragments of my phrases back towards me. I do not recognise my own heart as it comes broken back to me, and yet drawn to these fragments I piece together a strange jigsaw puzzle of a poem. Once poems were my bridges to the world. I slid over velvet phrases into reality, and landed softly amongst other poet friends. The lens of ‘form’ was like a comforting blanket, where any phrase could be turned around, remade into something gentler to the ear. All phrases were turned around in the end.

Our words together seem like a dance where one is never certain of the other, and the orchestra slips ahead, like salmon darting ahead upstream, always dragging us behind, always lost in thinking of a lyric for the bars that we pass by.

Some words hesitate me for moments and hours, glueing me to the spot in a fickle jelly, for fear never likes to admit what it is, except what it is not. I am not cold, I am not small, I am not frightening. I am terrified. It is a follish assumption to believe that words alone can prove their Truth, for words without context are like sentences without punctuation. Neither likes the restraint but is depending on the clarity it brings. Words like beautiful can trip me up for hours, words like father bog me in delay. Others are like deep, sapphire pools of the ocean and entice me to frolic and play.

Words are like the breath of the wind, even lighter than the wind, but existing in every atom of the air. They sit like art upon the page, they fly soaring when spoken. They have a power all their own, they don’t deserve the loneliness of One-ness. They are tiny threads that march out from my heart into yours, along an invisible string, that seems tightly tied to your heart also, and so we walk now tied together by the heartstrings of words that have been spoken and twitter and dance between us.

by | Jul 21, 2005 | Uncategorized

Dirty Bomb Detector

I had some riveting posts planned for yesterday afternoon, but apparently the Universe had other plans. A candidate walked into the office just as we were peering out the windows and seeing police close off our street on both sides. The candidate informed us the there was a bomb scare in the other tower. You see, our building is actually two towers joined by an atrium. So we decided to evacuate, moments before the alarms went off. Then the whole block was cordoned off by the police for about two hours. I went home after the second hour, pretty convinced that there was not much point staying around. Pretty devastatingly boring to spend two hours walking around half of Queen Street. Especially when nothing went boom. Not that you actually want anything to explode, but all the tension builds up inside your body.

Traffic
This morning when I woke up at dawn, I had the joy of being able to roll over and go back to sleep for an hour or so. But instead of sleeping, I listened to the hum of the traffic build until it felt noisy in my peaceful little house. How destructive all that noise and pollution must be, not just to my peace, but to the way we live. We wake up in the morning and make noise. Not even attractive noise, but just loud, murky, smelly noise.

by | Jul 19, 2005 | Uncategorized

A Flurry Of Small Things
Last night I stayed home, ate wholesome food, drank only one beer, read a novel, watched the news, painted, washed my dishes and allowed the emotions of being just to wash over me.

This morning, I have perused this website… Visual-Voice. It’s truly stunning macro photography, and I have appreicated reading her entries as well. The posts are peppered with quotes.. and some of them have captured me this morning.. so I’ve put them here, bookmarked for later days of contemplation.

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.
~ Dwight L. Moody

Let your heart speak to other’s hearts.

What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?
~ Pablo Neruda

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
~ Khalil Gibran

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~ Anais Nin

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.
~ St. Augustine

An Uncanny Juxtaposition of Time
So.. Kahlil Gibran has been a favourite for a long time, and it was his words that I poured over in my various bookstores follies last week. Around about here, I happened upon him in the phrase ‘Love does not know it’s own depths until the hour of separation’. Now even though he bridges Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and hedonism into one nebulous set of humanistic beliefs.. the words are still poignant and powerful and truthful, depending on the lens that you use. I particularly like this excerpt from ‘The Prophet’ that I read with Carlene last Friday.. particularly this phrase.. And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. Silence between friends can be a soothing balm, a wellspring of understanding, a strong bond. I miss silent space.

Friendship IXX
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Khalil Gibran