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.
by tashmcgill | Nov 14, 2005 | Uncategorized
Iti Noa Ana, He Pito Mata
Only an ordinary little morsel, but it has not been cooked
When an uncooked piece of kumara is planted it will sprout, and there will be a harvest.
Assembly
Sometimes when the larger body of the Church gathers, remarkable things happen.. like at the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts 15. It was a good weekend in Hamilton for Baptist Assembly. Steve writes here about some of the results..
Mostly I enjoyed watching what I felt was a very genuine effort towards good process and discussion. Rather than previous Assemblies I’ve attended where there has been much advocating going on.. there was so much open-ended discussion. Of course, not all parties were pleased but I think that it was a remarkable step forward in terms of the way we, as a denomination, are sensing and responding to the need to grapple.
Grappling may be the most important theological task we can set ourselves to in this climate. Hand to hand wrestling in the texts, the contexts, the traditions, the intuitive sense of momentum about our culture, climate and predicaments.
I came away feeling invigorated and energised, by all the goodness around me.
It’s sometimes difficult to straddle between what it means to be here at Windsor Park, and the stereotype of what an emerging new leader (ick – awful phrase) should look like, talk like or sound like. I was disappointed with so much of the conversation that I overheard, whilst I could understand the root perspectives, that seemed so dogmatic and attacking to people whom I observe to be genuinely seeking to lead diligently. It’s hard to be in the middle land sometimes. I respect both sides, but struggle to maintain a healthy distance from a potentially unhealthy debate.
by tashmcgill | Nov 4, 2005 | Uncategorized
Two Weddings And A Wedding Singer
Tomorrow there are two weddings, one for Sam & Maria that I’m not attending, here at Windsor; and another that I am singing at for Alex & Lisa in Manurewa. Strangely enough, both weddings collide in Cheltenham/Devonport where the receptions are being held at respective venues.
A Wedding Blessing
May you know and live out grace
with one another, keep each
other warm in coolness and
never let coolness win if
what is required is a touch
a hug or an apology. May
God’s wisdom be in your
ears as you listen, your eyes
and hearts as you truly
see one another. Mostly
may God and those around you
constantly remind you of
the Greatest Love, the highest
cause, and may all your
life and love together celebrate
and serve that Truth. Amen
by tashmcgill | Oct 28, 2005 | Uncategorized
Here’s Another News Report
Strikes me as somewhat sad and condemning that we are currently seeing more news reports, tributes and commentary on the life of Rosa Parks than we are about the ongoing disaster zone in Pakistan. Read here for a blog on the spot.
I’m a history buff, particularly 20th Century history. The human story started racing ahead as we filled more pages than we ever dreamed of with our ideas of progress, philosophy, invention and prevention. We cured diseases and discovered new ones. As quickly as our ability to record our history developed, so did our voracious apetite for preserving our triumphs and tragedies in all forms of prose, image, moving image, soundbites and cyberspace.
Throughout history the human race have been storytellers. In every culture, we have maintained, developed and kept our history in the oral tradition. In our storytelling, it becomes nearly impossible to resist the urge to bring out the romance of every story. Sometimes I think this has skewed our ability to determine what is pre-meditated intent, and what is unintentional influence as we write, re-write and re-tell our stories.
Rosa Parks
I loved the Rosa Parks story. I loved her for her stubborness, for her simpleness. For her ordinariness. She was just a woman who was tired at the end of a long day. But in no Modern History Of America, nor even in the journals of the Civil Rights movement, did I ever read or even come to understand that there was pre-meditated intent behind her actions on the bus that day. Her humility in admitting even then, that she simply couldn’t be bothered make her admirable.
Long Way to Pakistan
Now that she’s dead, her heroism is even easier to grasp hold of. Let’s re-tell the story. And fair enough, because human beings need to hear our own stories of triumph and stubborn unwillingness to give in, in order to inspire us. Now there will be a Movie of the Week, and family estates that will benefit. And all of this is good and acceptable, because it will raise awareness of an important story. The ordinary can triumph, your voice can be heard, you can make a difference.
But at the cost in our news reports, of remembering the current human story. The tragedy and need that is so malignant, growing each day, in a part of the world where individual heros are so rarely recognised, and yet we have the opportunity to do so much without needing to be praised for it. Daily the body count will continue to grow, and we will mourn one hero after another as they pass on through the rest of 2005.
We will perpetuate the practice that we venerate Rosa Parks for contributing to ending. We will discriminate the plight of a nation, and villify the value of one life with our remembrance, while thousands and tens of thousands die while we continue not to tell their story.
Donate money, do whatever you like. Switch channels and speak knowingly at the water cooler about the disproportionate and discriminatory media.. do whatever you like. But do it honestly, in light of the fact that as a human race, we are still plagued with our own hypocrisy.
by tashmcgill | Oct 19, 2005 | Uncategorized
Song Of The Moment : James Blunt
I have seen peace. I have seen pain,
Resting on the shoulders of your name.
Do you see the truth through all their lies?
Do you see the world through troubled eyes?
And if you want to talk about it anymore,
Lie here on the floor and cry on my shoulder,
I’m a friend.
I have seen birth. I have seen death.
Lived to see a lover’s final breath.
Do you see my guilt? Should I feel fright?
Is the fire of hesitation burning bright?
And if you want to talk about it once again,
On you I depend. I’ll cry on your shoulder.
You’re a friend.
You and I have been through many things.
I’ll hold on to your heart.
I wouldn’t cry for anything,
But don’t go tearing your life apart.
I have seen fear. I have seen faith.
Seen the look of anger on your face.
And if you want to talk about what will be,
Come and sit with me, and cry on my shoulder,
I’m a friend.
And if you want to talk about it anymore,
Lie here on the floor and cry on my shoulder,
I’m a friend.
This Time I Want To Change The World
The first annual Human Security Report is discussed here. According to it, the incidence of violence across the world is in decline, despite the current situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Congo and so on and so on. Makes for depressing reading if you’re a fatalist who also thinks the recent earthquakes, tsunamis and killer fires are signs of the end times. What does it say about the ‘Terror State’ stranglehold that the media has on us.
