by tashmcgill | Jun 29, 2015 | Spirituality, Youth Work
When I was let go from the youth ministry job I had loved so dearly, one of the Board said to me, ‘Well, it’s probably for the best, your business seems to be going well so you should probably just focus on that.’
It’s taken me seven long years to realise that he was accidentally right. With stumbling words that pricked and stung, he cut to the heart of it and said something so brutally true my idealist heart didn’t want to believe it. And in the end, the only reason it stung was because my pride was on the line. Now I’ve learned, it’s exactly what I need to focus on.
I was 15 years old when I drank the Kool-Aid and believed that my life would only be truly meaningful if I was a minister, a youth worker, a preacher or teacher. Then (and only then) I would feel satisfied and worthy. My vocation was only meaningful in so far as it was meaningful to the Church. You can hardly blame me – I sat through my share of sermons focused on how to become world-changing or the world’s greatest missionary. I did all the courses and quizzes on personality and spiritual gifts. I took every leadership course because you’re only as significant as your leadership role and I was inspired and intimidated by every testimony I heard, wondering how I was to ever live up to the expectations. Maybe not when I was 15 or 16, but by 17 years old, those inspirational programs were a weight of expectation I had set myself. And ambition. It was ambition too. That’s nearly 20 years of ambition right there.
So I did it. I’ve been youth worker, pastor, creative minister and worship leader. I’ve been in Christian ministry writing youth programs, training seminars, hosting radio shows and music festivals. I’ve done it all, relentlessly believing that I was pursuing meaning in making a difference. There are not many things I set my mind to that I don’t achieve.
What kind of significance was that? I’ve always been ambitious. I want to change the way people think – but changing the thinking of the middle-class, largely white, Western evangelical church through Sunday services and events? That’s not enough for me. It’s never been enough.
Here’s the truth: I’ve wanted it all and tried to have it both ways.
I wanted to be significant in the Church and to her people but I want it in the world too. In fact, I think I want it out there more.
My old friend’s hard truth stings me here. It’s not because the Church doesn’t please me. It’s my ego that wanted the Church to love me back.
Like an unrequited love, I wanted her to need me just a little bit more while I pursued the attention of the world. So much so that every commercial success I’ve had, I’ve tried to turn back into something for the Church. Because if the Church doesn’t find me worthy, how could God and what does any of it mean?
I’m finally accepting that we’re a bad romance because of me. It’s not that the Church doesn’t want me. The Church doesn’t always know what to do with me but the truth is I want more because the Church is not enough for me. I want the world. I want to influence world leaders and titans of industry whether it’s through the ad business, strategy, politics, TV or hospitality.
I want to be the place and person people come to ready for truth, ready to eat, drink, laugh and make decisions that really change things. I’ve got a long way to go. There’s just a spark of wisdom in me now but I intend to stoke a raging fire. The world is just beginning to catch alight.
Confession: I’ve spent many years being or trying to be bi-vocational because I’ve wrestled with my lack of meaning and significance outside of the Church. Slowly, I’ve done less and less inside the Church and the Church wants (needs) less and less of me. I’ve struggled to find a meaning. I’ve screamed, cried, raged and fought to be held on to, I’ve wanted so badly to find meaning there because I haven’t wanted to be one of my generation who have given up. All the while being almost ungrateful for all else I’ve been able to do. While I’ve wanted more from the Church, I’ve almost failed to see everything I’ve been given.
Still, here’s a little snippet of what I’ve been working on the past few years:
- Digital strategy and lead for New Zealand’s largest global exporter Fonterra
- I work for the greatest digital agency in New Zealand (Digital Arts Network), part of a global advertising agency (TBWA\Worldwide) that kick ass, two years ahead of my planned schedule
- I lead the Tourism New Zealand digital work including business planning, digital and content strategy on a daily basis www.newzealand.com
- I was able to work on and then lead the brand refresh for 100% Pure New Zealand, the longest running and most successful tourism marketing campaign in the world, in a ground-breaking piece of typography and fully integrated digital design system
- Oh yeah, I did get to work on this amazing Bible project thanks to Marko.
To Be Good At It
I want to be good at the business of Church. I can’t stand not being good at anything I set my hand to but truthfully, it’s time I wholeheartedly accept the advice I was given all that time ago. Focus on finding – no, making meaning in what’s in my hand.
A few clarifying statements
- I’m not leaving the Church
- I still love the Church
- I still want to influence the Church
- I’ll influence from outside, not inside
We revisit the things that matter our whole lives, over and over. So truthfully, pieces of this understanding have been emerging throughout my life for a long time. I’ve written about medicine men and chiefs before, knowing full well I’m a medicine man. I’ve been hoping by some miracle, I was still going to get the ego fix I wanted and the Church would chase after me with open arms, claim me as her own. So I’m revisiting again, embracing her again – no, not the Church, but She who is I. Wondrous, mysterious, powerful, wise and intense creature that she is. Medicine woman, earth mother and messenger.
I have wanted the Church to be my ahi kaa, the home fire. Here’s the truth though – I take my ahi kaa with me and any one who gathers around my table, my fireplace, my whisky circle or round my boardtable sits there with me. There are a few other fires I want to go sit beside too.
“Kia mura tonu nga ahi kaa mo te matemateaone”
Keep the home fires burning, so loved ones will always return.
The beauty is, I think the Church will still want to hear my stories when I come through her gates.
She’ll still like my provocative, challenging ways and wrestle with what to do and say.
I’ve got a long way to go. There’s just a spark of wisdom in me now but I intend to stoke a raging fire. The world is just beginning to catch alight.
Kure kwandinoenda, asi ndichakusvika chete – Where we are going is far, but we will eventually get there.
by tashmcgill | Jun 27, 2015 | Culture & Ideas, Spirituality
Today the Supreme Court of the United States voted (only just) in favour of same- sex marriage being legalised across the United States. Read more here. I’ve made my personal views and what I believe the Law should represent here. I’m glad because I believe that this ruling represents a just civil system for all citizens of the United States. In my home country, New Zealand, we’ve already made the leap.
We won something today, but we did not win the War.
Here’s what I’ve seen in countries where this legislation has already been put in place: not a single one of the stupid arguments I heard has come to pass.
- Nobody has yet married a pet or an inanimate object
- Polygamy is still not legal
- The divorce rate hasn’t increased or decreased, inside or outside the church
- Domestic violence hasn’t increased, nor decreased
- Juvenile crime rates haven’t increased
Here’s what you’ll probably be afraid of next.
Considering the amount of vitriol, bigotry, hatred and fear represented either truthfully or under the guise of free speech on Facebook, blogs, Christian columnists and the like today – I thought I would cut to the chase and help you figure out what to panic about next.
Freedom of Gender Choice
It’s inevitable that choice of gender/gender neutrality and/or expression will soon fall under the microscope. It’s possible we’ll give birth to children who have the freedom to self-select their gender post-puberty or even before.
Renewable Marriage Licensing
Now that everybody has the right to divorce, we should probably streamline the legal and economic efficiencies of that. I suggest marriage licenses that require renewal after the first five years with full dissolution of marital property right up to that point unless there are children. Then every ten years following. Less anniversaries but with more significant meaning.
Separation of Spiritual and Civil Marriage
You should probably begin to be concerned about an onslaught of Christian couples ‘living in sin’. Without the careful separation of legal ceremony to make the distinction between civil and Biblical marriage, pastors will more likely be asked to bless non-legal unions than to perform same-sex marriages in their Churches.
What a beautiful indulgence offered by the liberty of democracy and relative economic security.
It’s all about choice.
- Gay men now have more rights in the United States than women do in parts of Asia, Africa, Europe and … oh, EVERYWHERE.
- Gay men are now more likely to be esteemed into positions of spiritual leadership in affirming churches than women in most mainstream denominations.
Collectively, the decision made today and throughout a debate that has cost upwards of $20million in the United States alone is a decision about choice. What a beautiful indulgence offered by the liberty of democracy and relative economic security. We have spent years fighting for choices. What choices to allow people, what choices to withhold from people.
Should this argument be had? Yes. Absolutely. The importance of this conversation is not any less important because of what I’m about to say. But truthfully, those of us who believe in justice and those who believe in liberty (‘Merica!) should orient around these important truths, especially the most liberal of progressive Christians.
The risk is the same-sex marriage, gender and sexual expression debates will overtake the true intent of the social justice movement. The decisions of others to express and honour their same-sex relationships will never impact your own spiritual fate or expression. To believe otherwise is to be deceived and distracted from the real justice issues that daily plunge human lives into darkness.
Be prudent and wise with the battle you choose to fight. The West (and the church) has been distracted with this issue at a time when the ideals of justice and liberty are at risk in the majority, developing world. We need to get back into the business of the poorest and least.
What about those who remain choice-less?
- Today, more than 5000 people will be trafficked and sold into slavery or sex work throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. They have no choices.
- More than 50million people are currently classed as refugees throughout the world, as reported by the UN Refugee Agency on the 20th of June, 2014. They are displaced both externally and internally due to famine, genocide, political and civil unrest and war. They have next to no choices.
- Women make up 80% of all global refugees. They have the fewest choices.
- Each week, refugees drown trying to make their way across the Mediterranean, or to Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia. THe Rohingya are currently the most persecuted refugees in the world. Meanwhile Australia refuses refugees by the boatload or inters them into camps that are closer to prisons than refugee quarters.
Meanwhile, men and women who break the vows of fidelity and honour in their relationship will still sit in church on Sunday. They will even preach from the pulpit. We will wear clothes made in the sweatshops of Thailand, India and China but we will Instagram our supercool organic, gluten-free meal choices. We will choose to ignore the underpaid, uninsured illegal workers that underpin industry in the United States, we will continue to say nothing at all about colour or race and yet daily make choices based on stereotypes and misogny. We will get worked up about 50 Shades of Grey but do nothing about sexual abuse and domestic violence in our homes, churches and communities.
So, we have won something but it’s not the War. What will you fight for next?
by tashmcgill | Jun 24, 2015 | Poems, Relationships
I once said to someone that writing requires an ability to recall a moment, a feeling, a person in an instant. To re-enter the past and all we experienced there, then step back into the present. Thus, it is possible to live with much experience and emotion close to the surface of your skin yet not live trapped in the past.
It’s muscle memory; the ability to recall, interpret and re-create those moments into new moments. It requires some remembering and some deliberate forgetting.
I saw a man in the corner of my eye the other day who may or may not have been worth remembering or forgetting but I walked quickly away; without giving myself the chance to change my mind. I think now, in reflection, he is better to be forgot.
At the crosswalk I chose to not look behind me although I was certain I could see his shadow catching up.
Regardless of what we wish for; it’s remembering that happens so fast and forgetting that takes so long.
This was born on an airport concourse, while I was travelling forward. I stopped and breathed and this time, I was not caught.
i.
Remember is quicker than Forget
on the track of a mind.
You are easy
to forget to think about
if I walk quickly in a forward direction
if I do not look back
– I do not think to think about you.
I do not write you down, I do not imagine words to shape you
Out of the nothing, back to the mind.
I do not remember to make you from memory, I would not remember to forget.
I leave nothing in memoriam, but everything is left behind regardless; in nothing-ness.
But – if I stop or pause,
if catching my breath on an airport concourse
at a train station;
driven but not driving and left to wonder
interrupted by a red light –
if I do not propel myself forward from you
in every moment unceasing;
then Remember is quicker than Forget – and catches up to me.
I encounter the memory of you
who taps me on the shoulder,
I collide with you, the thought and thinking of you.
Remember is so quick, Forget so slow.
by tashmcgill | May 30, 2015 | Poems, Prayers
I wrote this piece in the last few days.
It’s a simple prayer really; it has a lot of uses and it echoes a number of sacred acts.
i.
my body welcomes your body
my blood rises to meet your blood
our body welcomes your body
our blood rises to meet your blood
come to me deep, i am hungry
i thirst over and over
collide in me, divine
ii.
my face turns to the sun
turns to the sun to feel warmth
my blood and bones touch your
body and blood and bones
under the sun
i drink you in
iii.
my body welcomes your body
our blood rises to meet your blood
i hear the song of the tui
the fantails dance beside me
by this i know, the body knows
death and life are coming
my body touches your body
tells my soul, thirst no more
hunger not, here is our body
death and life colliding
in our oneness
Words About The Body
There’s a ritual many of us partake of each week or month that has a tone of Holy Sacrament. It is visceral, complex and symbolic. We take bread and say that it is the body of man. We do not say it is ‘like’ the body of a man, we say simply ‘it is’. We eat the bread and our bodies respond. Tastebuds activate, tongues moisten and the body welcomes the body back inside. We take wine or juice and pour it. This time, even more primitive, we say that wine is blood and we swallow deeply, blood into our blood. Lips flush, cheeks redden and we taste.
The intimacy of eating and drinking, the act of consuming another person’s body is not unlike other intimate acts. Oneness is the goal, union and communion the objective of these acts. The body willing, the mind open, the heart and soul receiving one person into another. Adopting that personhood into ourselves.
What a gift of beauty, what an act of love to welcome another’s body into your body and to realise the Christ ritual of Holy Sacrament is deeply personal; the idea of communion with the Divine a holy sacred and intimate one.
by tashmcgill | May 30, 2015 | Tasting Notes
Amongst whisky drinkers, there are two types of people – those who love the smoky, growly and utterly unique peat of Islay and those lesser mortals. Well, they just don’t care for it. Still, it would be hard to find a single character within either sect who cannot appreciate the sentiment and passion behind Ardbeg Day.
Ardbeg Distillery on Islay in the Inner Hebrides.
Every year, around the 30th of May, Ardbeg release a limited edition singular expression with a theme or profile that adds to the legend of this distillery. This year the release of Perpetuum will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the distillery founded by John McDougall but restored to it’s former glory in more recent times by Glenmorangie. (Ardbeg closed for the second time in 1991, before being purchased by Glenmorangie in 1997.)
Why so much fuss about an NAS (non-age statement) whisky? Well whisky has always been and will always be about stories. So here’s my take on the who, where, what, when and why of the Ardbeg legacy… may it live on in Perptuum.
Where: An isolated cove near Port Ellen on the south coast of Islay, accessible at the end of long, purposeful road. Isolated enough that it was once the domain of smugglers, pirates and hard Scottish coastmen. Close enough for Loch Uigeadail (which means ‘dark and mysterious place’ in Gaelic) to be it’s primary water source; the very location of Ardbeg creates exception amongst the world’s great whiskies.
Who: A legacy beginning with a farmer and clan descendant of the Lord of the Isles and more recently embracing Dr. Bill Lumsden; one of the foremost distillers and whisky creators in modern history. His work to create the flavour profiles of two distinct yet equally important houses (Glenmorangie and Ardbeg) sets him apart as one of the great distillers of our time. This whisky, still made by hand and on a very human scale carries the essence of a people not easily dissuaded from great craft. Not to mention the Ardbeg Committee, a membership some 110,000 strong who ardently pursue and imbibe Ardbeg’s great malts.
What: Whisky, because whisky. Malt, peat, dark and clean waters of Scotland alongside her salty, crisp Islay air. Enough said. One of the best whiskies in the world.
When: Today and in short supply, the Perpetuum is only available at the distillery itself or at an Ardbeg Embassy around the world for the first two weeks after release. There are three in New Zealand – Sam Snead’s House of Whiskey in Auckland, Regional Wines & Spirits in Wellington and Whisky Galore in Christchurch. I’ll be at the House of Whiskey from 12pm to taste, laugh and celebrate this legacy of 200 years from first legal distillery to today.
And most importantly; why?
Here’s what Dr. Bill Lumsden has to say;
“Ardbeg’s character has endured for 200 years and we hope it will continue for centuries to come. The 2015 Ardbeg Day anniversary bottling, Ardbeg Perpetuum, celebrates this milestone year with a recipe that includes some very old and young Ardbeg, silky Ardbeg from bourbon barrels and some spicy Ardbeg from sherry casks. The resulting expression combines classic notes of dark chocolate and treacle with sea-spray, peat smoke, vanilla and a hint of sherry casks, to create an unforgettable single malt with an after taste that is never-ending.”
Tasting notes: olive on the nose but the taste in the glass soon overpowers with creamy, vanilla oaky notes, hints of licquorice, white chocolate, cranberry tartness. Finishes with traditional medicinal notes and salt. It’s a tribute to classic Ardbeg expression. Sits at 47.4% abv.
Sláinte!
