by tashmcgill | Jun 9, 2005 | Uncategorized

© tashmcgill

Coming Undone Again
I spent the weekend in Roto-vegas for the annual Queens BDay BYM Training weekend. It was all good quality stuff, a few special moments in seminars talking about the cycle of barrenness, preparation, conception, birth and new life. It has sparked some good thinking for me in terms of preparing for whatever happens next.

Brian Krum polarised me yesterday with the realisation that vocation choices I make now are going to affect the next ten years. It’s a crucial time to look for the opportunities that will allow the right people to see me in the right light at the right time, and a time to be cautious of becoming too crucial to someone else’s gameplan.

When I was working at Mitre 10 there was a sign on the wall saying, ‘don’t be irreplaceable. it means you can’t be promoted.’ I’m thinking that way now.

So… resuming normal life?

by tashmcgill | Jun 2, 2005 | Uncategorized

Out Here in the Wild
I got a phonecall from Steve. He used the words detached .. and some others. He was calling to see if I was okay. I need to call him back, but I’ve put his number somewhere I can’t remember.

I was at a music team retreat for the weekend, trying to inspire and regroup courage into this little band and allow them to see the Image of God in each other for a short while. Simon came along to help out. It was a good and strange time. So many hopes and dreams that I have for this motley bunch, so I guess there is a pastoral heart in me after all. I have a deep and abiding love for these ones.

I’m thinking about the next steps and the where-to’s a little bit. By now, the story’s becoming obvious. I loved a boy, he didn’t love me back. I lost hope and now I’m regaining ground on a slippery slope. See, the love of the boy doesn’t matter so much as how it reminds of the love of the father. I couldn’t figure out how to win his love either. So the doorway of grief was opened up and God has been restored to me in new ways because I’m processing and leaving some of what I need to at His door. It’s all happening in quiet moments, in dark spaces, late at night, early in the morning when I can’t sleep.

I feel foolish when grief grabs me suddenly in the middle of the day. Feel like I’ve been stolen away from myself when words and dreams and hopes of a year ago present themselves again.

I’m not afraid of not being loved by people, I’m afraid that the love of God won’t satisfy me. I know that He will respond as I trust in him.. and the RLP’s dissertation on this clarifies me..some of his other writings are making me think as well.., and but I know and recognize the ache for humanity inside me.

It’s making me think that it’s the Image of God in me, crying out for intimate relationship with the humanity around me. In thinking this way, I’m not making myself more divine. If anything, in this haze I am most sinful in my self-centredness.

Carrying On

I will carry on, Lord. I will seek You out.
Not because your plans are great, or wiser, or more trustworthy.
I can’t say any of those things honestly.
I hope that they might be, but I realise I don’t want to be dishonest with You
by claiming a promise I do not hold, a faith I cannot hold up.
I will carry on, and seek You out
because You are the beginning of satisfaction.
You are the beginning of Comfort, the beginning of Love.
I am too human, and analyse too much the end of things.
So I will look to the beginning.

You make all things new in Your presence.
I still wish that I understood these things though.

by tashmcgill | May 23, 2005 | Uncategorized

Leading Me On

tonight at 1am i’m still alive
i can feel it pulsing through my fingertips
a life being breathed in and out of my body
this hope being stirred deep within

tonight at 1am
the moon is a wonderful compass of love
so bright and full and shining down
lighting up the darkness like daylight

tonight we met to write songs, except none of them came easy tonight. The chords were right but the words didn’t sit easy, my melodies were boring and too old, there was too much noise in the room. And in the admitting of the disease of it, I had the opportunity to be lead tonight, which doesn’t happen very often.

I sat back and was lead through a confessing, adoring, sacrifical, honest, deep and heartfelt prayer. It spoke to my spirit and life in deeper ways than the pray-er will ever know. In the depths of the quiet and stillness, with one soft, deep voice uttering the deepest and most precious parts of my whole self, I was taken to the foot of Christ. He confessed for me, our shared dalliance from seeking the kingdom first, renewed my vows of Christ before all else. Commitment to risktaking and living wide was restored. I sat in stillness and quietness and I did not wish to be anywhere else, or with anyone else, or about anything else in that moment, than the pure unadulterated joy of being in the Presence of God. Not just in His Presence, but at His feet, and in His arms all at once. There has been no finer moment of worship in my life for some weeks.

It wasn’t until driving home under the light of the full, bright moon that things started to settle in my belly, heavy and soft. Like something had been birthed there once again. Things are starting to be made new again.

by tashmcgill | May 19, 2005 | Uncategorized

In The Morning We Will Rise
All night tonight I have been waiting for the inspiration to come to me. I thought it would have arrived by now, but I’m still here sitting, and I need to sleep. I’ve been playing over the same 6 chords on my guitar, strumming to the same rhythm; trying to finish off a verse, to a chorus that’s just about perfect. It’s been too long since we sat down to finish a song.

Danielle is finally coming Down Under and I just today really got excited. I had a day off classes, and nothing too urgent but some assignments. I took the day off basically, to read in the morning and then some research in the Library in the afternoon.

Truth be told I was a little bit relating-deficient today, so I pursued some cross-town friendship at the Atomic. I rang Stu to see what he was up to, and he suggested Atomic vs. spending $$ on cellphone bills. I’m going to let him continue to think that coffee was his idea.

Coffee was good. It always is, but it was especially nice to spend time with Stu who has some of the same gentleness as Wendy does, and yet they are so different. We talked about Easter and life, ministry, grief, lots of things. It helped me to feel more connected to reality again. Finding my way back to life again in the midst of all this personal discovery is quite important.

I still haven’t really answered any of my questions about how this subconscious and now public grieveing processed may or may not have affected my ministry. Stu seemed unconvinced, which would be good honestly. I am reminded, or rather, have been reminded, that the wounds I walk with may be the very thing that defines and personalizes a program of relatively ordinary youth ministry.

We also talked about misconceptions briefly, and laughed quietly and almost shamefully at some unfortunate ones. Needless to say, sometimes it is good to be reminded of the humanity all around me, that I am simply included in the mass of people who sometimes take things the wrong way.

Later On, Inspired By The Short & Too Brief Coffee With Courage
I wrote some emails responding to some of the ‘feedback’ circuits we have been doing with the music team of late. I tried to speak to the personalities of the readers, and not out of my own mamma bear tendency, when it comes to my team. It was well-received and I am relieved about that.

I spoke about in the nature of Christian competition, mostly to do with the pursuit of excellent when working with creative types, that humility does not always present itself as equality, and so there may be times where one group appears better at something than the other, and inevitably those ‘positions’ will move and shift all the time as we grow and experiment, develop our own styles.

I think that there is strong argument for the presence of healthy competition.. the sense with which another athlete training in the same circuit as you, will push harder and ultimately improve your game. But.. I have to ask, is there a Spiritual Competitive-ness that sneaks into some of the wider discussions about church?

It is probably a very simplistic thought but after a discussion on Friday, coming back from Janelle’s funeral, I was again left thinking, so much of the ideology of Emerging Church, is just that… Ideology. It’s not a new theology of Church, it’s just a new group making stylistic overtures towards the way things ought to be done.

By this I mean, there are simply so many people jumping on a bandwagon of emerging church, who really have done very little discussion or reading or conversation with either or both or many sides of this ‘progression’. It will be interesting to see what some fairly solid, mainstream, modern practitioners come back with from the extremely exclusive and elitest Hui in Wellington.

Small Pout
I’m taking issue with the fact, that even though I am normally extremely current with Christendom activities like the aforementioned hui, I haven’t seen any publicity, conversation, or discussion that makes me think or feel remotely welcome, invited, established or deconstructed enough, well-known or ‘up&coming’ enough to attend. Hence, I am already skeptical about what shape any feedback out of it will take. This is not because of the quality of people sharing, I respect almost all of them very much, except for a couple I do not know. However something about the nature of people attending, a number of seemingly innocent but potentially dangerous demographical trends just makes me think… well…. is this a step in discussion and journey, or simply another way in which people damage their own creditibility, or worse… create strategies for development, integration and practice within communities that are not yet even aware the kind of ’emerging journey’ they might be about to find themselves on. Put out, that no one is suggesting or requesting my attendance? Absolutely.. I’m sure I’m going to miss some good times, however I also believe that there is another group of ’emerging practioners’ out there that’s maybe a little left-field even for the emergents. So left-field that we’re right back in the mainstream.

by tashmcgill | May 13, 2005 | Uncategorized

One Sweet Day
This year at Easter we were privileged to shared in the story of the Hewlett family for a brief time. Charles Hewlett is on staff at Carey College, and his daughter was born perfect 12 years ago. He and his wife Joanne celebrated the way all parents do, until noticing that certain milestones of development weren’t happening for Janelle. They took her to the doctors, to discover that she had a brain tumour. It was a tumour that was meant to take her life within a year of it’s discovery. Then the year after that, and the year after that. 12 years on, today we celebrated her life with her parents, grandparents, teachers and friends. But the remarkable story here, isn’t that of Janelle’s death, but of her life. Her illness rendered her infantile in a growing and changing body. Unable to use words or speech, her communication was limited, but emphatic. Her parents have spent the past 12 years loving her with unconditional passion, love & support. Today, they stood in front of a community and thanked God for every small and good thing that they remembered of Janelle. They were small things, and it was humbling. 12 years worth of longing for a conversation, a ‘mum’ or ‘dad’, of nappy-changing and watching a little girl who was regal, suffering so has produced two remarkable followers of Jesus, and has asked more of all of us.

For whatever reason, Janelle’s illness was nothing genetic, however, her younger brother is severely intellectually handicapped also. Two parents, who remain relatively unrecognised or acknowledge by their children. Two children who are experiencing the remarkable love of the Father, and know not what they have.

Our Prayer
Our Father who lives in heaven
How beautiful your name
May you be honoured in this place

Amen