by tashmcgill | Nov 29, 2014 | Church, Mind, Spirituality
I recently celebrated my birthday with a backyard bash for friends and family. And because I think it’s always important to add moments of emotion and poignancy to an event – I asked a few dear friends to share a few words.
They captured almost every facet of who I am with their words and memories; it was sweet and it made me glad. Without weddings, funerals and birthday parties we would rarely have the opportunity to review the world’s opinion of us.
There was one phrase that stood out in particular: “What I love about Tash is that she manages to be a person of deep faith without being a weirdo”, or words to that effect.
Confession: the words made me nervous for a moment. It was a diverse crowd filled with work colleagues, old friends, friends from the bar and clients. And while I don’t try to hide my spirituality any more than I try to thrust it upon people; there were a lot of people there I’d never ‘fessed up to my faith in front of.
Unwittingly I’ve stumbled on one of my greatest insecurities. I’m afraid of being alienated from people I genuinely care about because my spirituality is misunderstood or inaccessible to people.
One of the most poignant reminders was a conversation at my local bar. I couldn’t tell a lie so I had to ‘fess up to being a person of faith with a couple of regulars as the topic of conversation turned to all things spiritual. I watched the walls of defense slide into place as the conversation turned and the casual easiness of our camaraderie fell away. It wasn’t anything I’d said or done, but the risk it posed. Sometimes our history has done too good a job of shaping the myth.
My fear is that when people have experienced personally or witnessed from afar, a singular or communal failure on the behalf of traditional or even modern Christianity, it creates unnecessary distance and wariness between us. Mistrust and unease are the by-product of those experiences, often rightly so. I don’t really care so much about evangelism (that’s an inside word). I don’t care about converting you or anyone to faith. I really don’t. I care about people having the freedom to engage with their own spirituality, discover meaningful truth and communities of expression that support that. A steady, life-long, flexible engagement with spirituality. None of that is about conversion, yet so often that seems to be the greatest fear people have, thus my greatest fear is that people will assume that’s what my goal is.
My goal is simple: he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
“Ask me, what is the most important thing and I will tell you, it is people, it is people, it is people.”
My fear is that I will be robbed of relationship with you because of other people’s bad history.
Still – this is not a story about my sense of loss or alienation. This is a story about coming out spiritual, defining what I mean when I say it. I’m not religious; if religious means living by prescribed belief and without ongoing engagement of my intellect. It does mean the applied force of my humanity and intentional engagement with the earth, the air and the heavens. It means engaging with other human beings and listening, looking to the universe in all her signs and wonders. Yes, I believe in God. I am open to how that is expressed.
A non-Traditional Spirituality
I spend a lot of time with people and in places that ‘good Christians’ aren’t expected to be found. I don’t regularly behave in a way that people might expect or demand. I’ve regularly got myself in trouble with organised faith communities for not holding to the party line. The trouble is – when you don’t fit easily into the Church’s idea of faith and you don’t fit easily into the world’s perception either… well, that can be a difficult path to walk.
I have found enormous comfort in the spiritual rituals of our ancestors; both Maori and European. I have found meaning in the faith of my Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i friends. I have found centering and powerful emotional connection through yoga as much as through boxing. I believe that the world is full of signs to point us on the way. We came to define coincidence and serendipity by experiencing and describing those circumstances. The world is full of signs – from the tui that sings in the trees outside my window no matter where I sleep to the reminder of the ongoing rebirth and rejuvenation of creation that happens constantly beneath our feet while we talk about the demise of the planet.
I believe there is no greater way to discuss or describe music and the arts than to engage the part of the human soul that reaches outside of itself to a higher or deeper expression. I have seen a birth. I believe in a creative power in the universe. Even if our engagement with that creative power is no more than to acknowledge the mystery of it, to resign ourselves to not understanding the complexities of the world in which we live – I would rather that, than to cast aside the possibility.
I am smart. I know church history. I am learning and engage with broader faith practices than simply the Judeo-Christian traditions. I know, better than many but less than my scholarly friends, the critical errors of church polity that have caused so much friction and fracture within communities that should only thrive in serving a wider society. That’s probably why I’ve been so afraid of losing the opportunity to connect and engage with people if I wear my spirituality on my sleeve.
I’ve been struggling for years to walk the line – not to deny my spirituality but also to run a mile from becoming a proclamation-based, traditional Evangelical. The core of my fear is my dislike of traditional evangelism. I am actively engaged in the exploration of what faith means in this world. My challenge, is to be honest about how little I like to publicly own my faith, despite the enormous amount of time I spend with people who don’t have connection with traditional Churches or spiritual contexts. In the darkest of nights, I’ve questioned whether in fact, I am a fraud.
There is much about the historic and the modern Church that disappoints me. But I will not quit it, for transformation is only made possible from the midst of her. I will not quit. I wrestle, argue, get frustrated as much, if not more than those who hate the Church. But I won’t give up on it, because the idea of a community of people committed to the same values of serving humanity should be the most successful humanitarian work on the planet.
I work really hard to not be a spiritual weirdo. To be grounded, relatable and approachable while still exploring and expressing my own spiritual beliefs and journey. Those beliefs are prone to change from time to time, but my values largely are not.
“Feed them, clothe them, love my sheep.”
It’s a paraphrase of a conversation between the prophet known as Jesus and one of his most passionate (and at times, hapless) followers, Peter the fisherman, and those three verbs are practical expressions of the values I hold most dear – people, hospitality, love, generosity and nurture. That’s what I’ll value the rest of my life, regardless of how my spiritual beliefs and expression may change.
So what do you think? Is my fear ungrounded? My insecurities for nothing? I promise, I’m not what you’d expect – but only you know what that is.
by tashmcgill | Nov 25, 2014 | Family, Friendship, Relationships, Travel
I need another suitcase. This beauty has accompanied me more than 100,000 miles and she’s starting to show her age. She’s been the perfect size though – an ample fit for a two week journey that’s not overly cumbersome to deal with. She’s modern, sleek but not flashy. Practical but with a splash of colour and a curve here or there. I’ve packed her this morning in Tennessee to realize that she’s on her last run home, while I’m leaving again from a place I’d like to stay. Time to talk tough to myself and start the next leg of my journey home. Here goes.
Dear Heart,
You will be ok. I want to remind you not to wear your heart on your sleeve but we both know it’s too late for that. You’ve dug yourself a hole you can’t get out of now, invested so deep in a place that’s far too many miles away from where your life is everyday. You’re a bit of a fool, really – but a sweet one.
You should own up to the fact, you could have stopped this years ago. Put your foot down and refused to get involved but people have this way of crawling inside of you and taking up space. The ones that are making a home for themselves in there now are too good to throw away and you know it. But you could have pulled the plug before it got this hard.
So you need to toughen up. You’ve got a couple of hours til your next flight and it pays to remember there’s a whole other family of people you love waiting there, not to mention your family back home. If you wouldn’t spread yourself out so much, maybe you wouldn’t have this problem.
Just acknowledge that every hello comes with a poignant goodbye. Every goodbye is easier when you’ve planned the next hello. And this is a cycle you’ll probably be in for life now. So toughen up, Heart, get on the plane and then you can let your tears swell.
Every year you hope and pray that this year will be the one you travel one way. Every year you find a little more home here and find it a little harder to re-engage back there. Every year when leaving, you say – next year, I’ll unpack for good.
And if we’re honest, you suspect that time is a clock still ticking on things working out the way you suspect they might. You think you might have stumbled on the best of the best but it’s not something you’re brave enough to admit yet.
Here’s the truth of it, Heart. You’re lucky to have found something that is so hard to say goodbye to. Lucky to have people to return to. If you will keep expanding the boundaries and letting more of them in, you’ll always be travelling somewhere. Maybe there’s no unpacking for you anymore. Maybe you’ll always be travelling between here and there.
Maybe it’s time to accept, Heart, that home is the people and life will be a series of journeys between those you love – unless you’re prepared to give one of them up? No, I didn’t think so.
Dear Heart, you are a brave little soul. You throw yourself into loving people with everything you have and wonder while leaving feels so much like being torn apart. But without this pain, you wouldn’t have the joy of coming home. You, Heart, are at home here with these people. Truthfully though, your next stop is home too, and the next. Enjoy the travelling. Tonight, you’ll land somewhere new and begin it all again.
Good luck – you will be ok.
Self.
by tashmcgill | Nov 20, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind, Relationships
I’m sitting in a kitchen in Tennessee, looking out the window. I have arrived too late to see the turning of the leaves but as the cold November wind blows through the trees in the yard, I see them fall, fluttering yellow gold and bronze.
I’m reminded of a song, an old jazz standard, ‘Autumn Leaves’. It was a favourite of mine for a long time. I hum it now gently to myself and remember listening to Nat King Cole with a glass of red wine in front of the fireplace. I’m smiling now, into my coffee cup. It’s a romantic kind of feeling, being in a place you love with people you love and who love on you. I’m already anticipating the coming knock at the door. A treasured one is travelling from Atlanta to get here and my pulse races knowing the next few days will be full of love and laughter. We’ll be good to each other, these loved ones and I.
I am romancing myself. Lingering, filling up my senses with moments that are good for my soul. Romance is good for us, it gives you stories worth telling. This is really the heart of my annual Thanksgiving sabbatical, a chance to immerse myself in the feeling of being alive.
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by tashmcgill | Nov 19, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Relationships
I am boarding a short flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Soon, I’ll take an overnight flight they call the red-eye to my final destination. I’m drowsy and looking forward to a few hours of peace in my own mind during this stretch of travel.
The young Australian couple seating themselves behind me have other ideas. His nasal twang is behind my right ear within minutes of beginning to taxi. I can see him twisting in his seat, moving his shoulder away from his partner but pushing his face into hers. He spat out the words.
‘Get off me! We’re going to be next to each other for 15 bloody hours, the least you can do is give me this one flight without cuddling me to death.’
My mood breaks with a crack. My head hits the back of the seat and I can’t help but tilt my ear towards the rest of the conversation. Human observation is my skill and trade, inescapable even in a steel tube hurtling down a runway.
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by tashmcgill | Nov 18, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Travel
You can learn a few things in Las Vegas. More than blackjack or how to play the house advantage. You can learn a lot about being tough, surviving and rebirthing yourself. After all, Las Vegas is a city in the desert, without a water source close-by. Lake Mead is some 45min away. None of the greenery here looks real, its irrigated golf courses and landscaped gardens a far cry from the stark desert ash everywhere else you look.
Amidst the lights and neon signs, the truth of Vegas is a testament to the best and worst of human experience. Here, each rebirth of Las Vegas can be seen etched into the landscape of architecture, signage, history museums and photographs. While new hotels and resort complexes rise up on the dust and ashes of previous monuments, others sit abandoned on the Strip, rusting slowly in the parching desert sun.
This is human. We live out of our history and everything we are becoming is from the context of who we’ve been. My mistakes and my triumphs exist side by side, the evidence of both scattered through stories, opportunities and lessons learned along the way.
The best of us learn how to drill down and find water in the desert. We learn to build our future stories out of and beside the rubble of our histories. We let our darkness live as shadow of the lights.
Sometimes we refurbish. We take the old structures and ways of being, strip them out to bare bones and begin again. New furniture and fixtures make a difference. We can change our habits through careful new architecture and design. Human beings are like houses – we build and design our lives carefully and those that dwell in them should be carefully thought through.
Sometimes we leave the rusting, decaying pieces just within view. Sometimes they are the challenge yet to come, a restoration so complex or unprecendented that we haven’t figured out just how to approach it yet.
Either way; this is a testament to human survival. When we triumph and when we fail – we go on. We begin again, we build more, we stretch more. If we fail but do not persevere, if we do not find another incarnation of ourselves, we do not survive.
Vegas knows this. Her rugged history of men and women escaping taxes and the law is written in the dust of this desert. No matter how many shows, new hotels and great restuarants pop up here – this is a place with a slightly dark underbelly, where people are often looking to lose themselves for a night or a weekend.
But that’s not all that Vegas wants to be – and why wouldn’t she want more? We, as people, are rarely satisfied with the status quo for long. So now, she reinvents herself as a city for the arts, a city for performers, for families, for luxurious and clean escapes.
In this city, rebirth and survival is found through reinvention. But it’s never reinvention from scratch. It’s actually evolution. Core ideas reshaped into new expressions. Take the circus. Once upon a time, circus trains travelled the deserts of the mid-West, slowly fading one by one from railway tracks and then from caravans until people began to say – the travelling circus is dead.
Not here in Vegas. Here, for more than 30 years, Cirque de Soleil has rebirthed traditional circus into a haven for the performing arts community. Gymnasts, dancers, contortionists, divers, fire-breathers – all have found a home in the new Circus that people travel all over the world too. That’s what Las Vegas has become for many – the home of Cirque.
Evolution through history. Future, present and past standing next to one another in a single view. Rebirth and survival.
Perhaps it’s best expressed like this: once, I knew how to live until it no longer made sense. The world around me changed enough I knew I must change too, in order to survive. So I reshaped how I lived in this new world, and found myself building new habits and ways of being. I am still present, still full of what has been but I am newer too. I am a survivor.
