by tashmcgill | Oct 21, 2008 | forgiveness, Uncategorized
‘Say’ Music Video from Matthew Singleton on Vimeo.
Build a Strong Bridge
The first Turkish proverb I remember hearing was in a gathering of people who were concerned about human rights and religious freedom in Turkey. Too many stories of churches being padlocked shut and leaders being detained caused us to question what we heard from the upper echelons of the government or from the headlines in the acceptable newspapers.
One amazing young Turkish woman was there who spoke with dignity and grace. She spoke slowly and what she said was all the more poignant for the speed of delivery.
“When truth is heavy, you must first build a strong bridge.”
She spoke of many other things, but that phrase has stayed with me.
Think about it. Sometimes there are truths we do not want to convey, or to take delivery of. Speaking truth can be awkward. There can be risks involved. So could be the testimony of many a prophet or medicine man.
My warning then is, not that we avoid speaking truth, but that we build strong bridges.
by tashmcgill | Oct 14, 2008 | god ideas, Uncategorized
‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.’ – Kahlil Gilbran (Sand and Fog)
From the beginning, we lived in the presence of greatness. We lived under the constancy of light but we barely understood what it meant. We lived with great provision without realising the character of the Provider. We were treated as sons and daughters by the Master, when really we were still slaves.
Slaves not to Him, but to ourselves. Slaves to fear, to darkness, to false truths. Slaves to our own bodies, created for a wide open lives but squashed into terrifyingly small spaces. We lived in the presence of completeness, of wholeness and yet we never grasped the fullness of it. Our slavery led us away from the light until we were so far away from the original intention of our being, we were cast out into the darkness and the light longed for us, called out to us but was not with us as the Light had been.
You see, we share it in, equal parts, the slavery that led Adam and Eve, the first man and woman into abandoning the presence. We share in the same humanity that led us to suspicion and distrust of the only Loving Father we had ever known. We choose to walk in opposition to the only thing asked of us and we walked straight into the darkness, the bloodiness of human history.
Adam, from the word “Adama”, literally named of the earth, chose slavery over freedom, and cast out from the garden, walked onto the earth to cover it with bloodshed. The very blood which gives us life, became our undoing, our brokenheartedness, the scar of our history on this earth… acres and acres of bloodsoaked earth.
But we weren’t left alone out here. In fact, God barely left us for a minute before redrawing the path, the Way back to Him.
Time and time again, he re-drew it in the earth, the sky, through the history of humanity as it poured out its story on to the planet. And still it faded from our view because we so easily turned our eyes. We washed out the path with dirt, blood, greed.
Again and again, He, the great Father, used his own hand to lead us back to him and our history of words and stories is the history of our enslavement and our freedom, being captured and set free, choosing entrapment and crying out for salvation again.
We still live in the Presence. His light is all over us, the footsteps of the Way before our eyes. Through blood and war, peace and beauty He still points out the Way and welcomes travellers onto it. Whatever you do, once you find the Way, don’t lose it as so many are prone to do.
We are still sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, still making our way through the human story and wandering the earth. Hold to the constancy of light, the character of our Father, do not take your eyes from His hand drawing us home. Don’t lose the Way.
by tashmcgill | Oct 1, 2008 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas, Family, Health
Last weekend was the 31st anniversary of my grandmother’s death from breast cancer, a disease that she fought, along with hundreds and thousands of other women around the world. My sister is running here to raise money in Vancouver shortly. She ran first in Indiana with my Aunty Val who runs a breast clinic type scenario there. In just a couple of weeks I’m visiting a dear friend who has encountered the disease this year.
Growing up in a family of women, it’s hard not to associate our breasts with our feminine identity. I’m not one of those girls that gets indignant about propriety either. Just about any pair in the world has an uncanny ability to grab attention one way or another on any given day.
I’ve been thinking recently, watching a friends teenager growing with the signs of pregnancy, other young girls in the youth group growing into their adulthood and all that entails, how spiritual the connection between body and soul can really be.
Especially because of all that the breast represents; conflicting images of pleasure, life, beauty, sex, womanhood, strength, vulnerability, dependence, desire, nurture, sustenance. I think about how these things are both physical and spiritual. Partly they are physical and present by way of our own enacting or being, but they are also spiritual because of our character and intention behind these things.
Could it be that the spirit and nature of our divinely created womanhood finds genuine expression in our physicality – not just in the functionality but the presence? These parts of my body that interact with my conscious mind and feedback the condition of my own self? I am imagining, as with men also, our soul stretching out and filling all the physical property we pertain to it…
So when this intimate part of a physical/spiritually connected self is involved in any act – breastfeeding, sex, illness, even day to day posture and image.. surely that related to the Imageo Dei that we see within ourselves.
I am wondering, how to help with the healing of that image. How to help mould the spirit and soul to it’s new form. How bring purpose and space back to the functionality of the spiritual nature of nurture, sexuality etc. Not there is any healing in me beyond deep, soft words – but there is a walking I can do alongside, and a holding of hands.
I do this for my mother, my sisters, my grandmother, the many women of my family and for my friends. I wonder about my future – children to be feed and loved at my breast, a husband to be satisfied always. I think about life, bodies, spirit, soul .. and I find myself amazed at science and beauty. What is life that we fight for it, rage for it, cling to it… but the opportunity to love over and over?
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
— Dylan Thomas
