by tashmcgill | Nov 25, 2005 | Uncategorized
Tired Of An Endless Discussion
Last night and today was the youth staff retreat. It’s the second year where we have gathered with the Focus Team for a meal and prayer and then stayed over to discuss and think about direction for the next year.
Interesting discussions about future directions. Things are being shaken at the core in terms of people moving around, ideas changing, applications changing. Even though we are a large group.. I’m drawn to addressing the question of what do we do well rather than how do we do everything.
Pretty tired of discussing an endless drift.. there’s a vertical line down the crux of the congregation and it doesn’t seem like people are moving from one side to the other in a hurry. There’s a lot of compartmentalised faith and that’s dangerous, limiting and cruel to those desperately seeking immersion.
It’s like the best way to learn a new language is to be immersed in it, and similarly, the best way of learning a new way of being, is simply to be in a different place with people who are doing it differently. I feel an unbearable pressure that as a single person without dependants or ‘responsibilities’ to model this. Yet I feel remarkably unequipped and dispassionate about doing it in this climate. I’ve suggested starting a step before intentional community living, with intentional lifestyle teachign & accountability. Even from there it may take years, if we ever are able to reach a point of sway, movement and bias away from ourselves and onto the poor, the addicted, the unloved.
We are not doing immersion. We are still doing lessons. We need to change the core of who and how we are operating. We need to be changed, rather than simply changing the strategy. Need to grasp hold of the fact that strategy for a task is not vision for a people.
Oh for me to live is Christ
And in him love abides
O touch my eyes that I may see
With child-like heart to wonder
O make my feet that I may run
The way of holiness beside the Lord
Oh for me to live is Christ
When You bestow Your Grace
Here in You my love awakes
Finds it’s Highest call
Be none of self and all of Thine
Your life in me abound
Oh let me live for Christ
There can be no other cause
All my heart wants to pursue
Is only you, is only you
My life is found in You,
Here fixed upon, the deepest Truth
So I will live for Christ
and in that moment death shall but disguise
My life eternal and complete
My life well satisfied
My life in Christ abide
And He with I, abide, abide, abide, abide
by tashmcgill | Nov 24, 2005 | Uncategorized
Bring It To The Table, Bring What I Am Able
world’s on fire, it’s more than I can handle
tap into the water, I try to pull my ship
try to bring more, more than I can handle
bring it to the table, bring what I am able
I am cursed, said one man to another as he was walking along a weather beaten path.
Explain yourself, said his companion.
Well, it’s clear. All my life I have ended up on the short side of the stick, the shallow end of the pool, and even now today as we are walking along this path look and see the potholes and stones on the left where I am walking, and the smooth dry ground where you are walking. That is my curse, said the man.
I see, said the companion. But was it not your choice to take the left hand side of the path when we set off?
Aye, it was, he said, but I couldn’t see then the road ahead to know that I had chosen the stumbling path, therefore it must be my curse that means I trip and curse and twist my ankles along this stony road.
Oh aye, said the companion, nodding. But is it not just as likely that as we round this next bend, my path will fall away into disrepair and shall you then point at me and say I am cursed?
Today Is The Greatest Day I’ve Ever Known
Today I am making grownup decisions and being the bigger person, about things that shouldn’t bother me as much as they do. I am so excited about the opportunities of next year, but terrified all at the same time.
Today the right answer to any question is to firstly answer from my perspective. Exaggerate your concern, regard, respect, adoration of me. I need the security of that today.
Today I miss my best friend who remains the person I always want to ask for their opinion, even on the trivial stuff. God, I miss it so bad sometimes I can’t focus on the thing in front of me for the want of that safe and dangerous place again.
Today I would like to take a camera, four guitars (Maton, Gretsch, Ibanez & Gibson), 2 notebooks, 1 Fender Rhodes suitcase model, 3 old-school condenser mics; 2 old valve amps, three comfortable chairs, 1 table, enough beds, couches, CDs, poetry books to last 1 month. I would like to take all these things and put them beside a waterhole in Africa, inside a polehouse with skylights. I would like to write songs and make beautiful noise with worthy beautiful people for 40 days.
Today I am living simply and managing ok. I am thirsty. But I’m not dehydrated.
by tashmcgill | Nov 23, 2005 | Uncategorized
Cos It’s All In The Way You Remember
Perceptions and perspectives are useful and dangerous tools. This week, I’ve been watching perceptions and perspective wreak havoc across people that are intelligent, well-meaning, well-educated and normally effective communicators. But it seems that sometimes when things get too close to our own soft centres and bitter truths… we get all skewy, and things that were loving and kind become cruel and harsh.
Pleading
Girl. Stop. You have too much potential to throw away all these opportunities. Stop. Look around you and realise that every bad thing that has happened to you, you’ve survived. So stop playing the victim, because victims are those who lose, and you haven’t lost yet. Stop holding everyone else to account for how you feel, react & respond to the world around you. There are a lot of people who want nothing but the best for you, and all you seem to give them is the worst. Are you testing our love, to see if we will love you even when you offer us nothing that is loveable? Fair enough.. but test and see that our love is good, because it comes from an eternal place. Girl, stop. Take a deep breath and realise that we are on your side. We have no agenda other than letting you find peace and purpose.
by tashmcgill | Nov 19, 2005 | Uncategorized
Everything Is Beautiful
I never left you
with my devotion like
a light inside you
and I’ll never let you down
by the light of the moon
my love alone to hide you
and I’ll never let you down
– Dobbyn
Everything is beautiful.. even depair in it’s ripest moment has a distinct loveliness about it. I am learning to be beautiful in all moments.
My loneliness is beautiful at this moment because it signifies that I stand apart, reminds me that even those connections that hold promise need to be held in perspective with all that I am and desire to be. It’s not a romantic or platonic loneliness, but more a sense of alienation. Makes me remember that there is a great coming home in my future.
My tragedies are beautiful cliches. I can accept that now. They are infinitely more complex that I even imagined in all my denial of their existence. They are intricate delicately flavoured human drama & comedy, the great stories of my life.
by tashmcgill | Nov 18, 2005 | Short Stories
A Life Lived In Installments
Last night I told my story – at least all the important bits, to a complete stranger. When strung together, the instalments I have lived within, the pieces and palette that have shaped and fashioned me… sound like a cliche.
A Small Disgrace.
1. A Simple Untruth.
A lie starts with a whisper.
If you listen carefully to the words, the untruths slip with a heavy breath from the mouth. You have to be attuned to it of course, the slight catch in the throat, followed by the husky expulsion of warm air before the sound forms fully over the vocal chord. Ears twitch and listen for it in the hum of a café as your girlfriend recounts her Saturday night. You listen for small exaggerations, out of place adjectives and tinges of hesitation in her sentences.
The beginning of a simple untruth, like a loose thread that pulled too tightly threatens to unravel the fabric of a life. These sorts of untruths are shades of the truth in amongst lies, half-lies, half-truths and the Truth itself.
In this particular life, the simple untruths are rapidly growing out of control, and things are quickly unraveling. Although day by day, it goes unnoticed, without any measure of control the whispers are overwhelming truth and soon she will be lost in deception, hidden in the shadow of a small disgrace.
A small disgrace once kept out of view, but now being revealed as gently as a blanket is unraveled thread by thread.
2. Nothing happened today.
That was the first half-truth that was spoken from her lips.
At least, it was the first half-truth of any importance. Previously, white grey lies had only been in regards to trivial things like boys, using her sisters’ perfume, her mother’s make-up, how much homework there was left to do and the reasons why she was late to class. Simple lies that never connected or added to anything. But today her throat did catch, and her voice was husky as she formed the words so uncertainly.
“Nothing happened today.”
It was a foolish lie to begin with, because much happens every day between the sun rising and setting; the delivery of milk and the collection of rubbish on Monday mornings. All of these things had happened today. What she was trying to say, was that nothing important happened today.
But even that was a half-truth because it was the sum of insignificant things happening that Monday that led to the first situation she had ever willingly and knowingly covered with deceit. At first, she kept the dangerous truth from her mother, and then from her sisters and father, until it became the truth that she was keeping from everyone. That is when the unravelling began.
3. A Monday of Insignificant Events.
Mondays are not always pleasant and this particular Monday was no exception, besides being her 17th birthday. After a breakfast, she walked to school. Schoolyards and classrooms are the birthplace of many half-lies and untruths. For her, school is both triumph and tragedy, a place she escapes to with questions and ideas. Neither a genius or a fool, she engages with the marvellous possibilities of “what if?” in the schoolyard, because the rest of her life is dictated by pragmatism and realism. Although she doesn’t know it yet, she will spend the next 5 years determining exactly what extent one has to engage with reality. Her struggle both frustrates her and defines her; one of many things she will call character-shaping.
For now, she indulges in the books of great writers and history, calculus and chemistry equations inside a mind that is cluttered in the malleable form of a developing psyche. She is there, just under the surface and yet still becoming herself.
At 8.45am she is walking through the school gates, passing by younger students walking less confidently and classmates who look bored. She is however, wandering along a clifftop, face out into the wind looking at grey clouds breaking on the horizon. On the clifftop she feels powerful and small, and believes in God. She spends hours each day reminding herself why she believes in God.
Not because she is scared of not believing, but because she is scared of forgetting.
