by tashmcgill | Oct 28, 2009 | forgiveness, Uncategorized, youth ministry
There are lots of things going on at the moment .. and lots of things I’d love to write about it, but the timing isn’t quite right and the barometer is unsettled. I’m looking forward to time passing enough to be able to write about these things with the benefit of hindsight and discovery.
However, I can write a few, momentary reflections on some things seen and heard lately…that may or may not speak to things current, cos you know me so well.
1. Dave Matthews Band is still amazing live. And there is no more powerful witness in the world to any cause or movement, than a group of friends that stand together to honour one of their own. There are seasons of turmoil, grief and loss – when someone like LeRoi is suddenly gone… and there is a story left behind to be told by those who know him so well, that honours the music, the very being and core of his life, to love on the family of which we are all part, continuing on in the cause we are all living and believing in.
2. It’s someone else’s quote but it’s true “that which has the power to create an over or under reaction in us, usually has control over us, and will force that reaction from us”. If you know me so well, you know that I believe some of the essence of life is learning what to hold on to, what to let go of. There are some things though, that still hold on to me.. by their persistent ability to provoke an unwelcome response in me, because I’m still waiting for the freedom that truth brings. I realised that in some instances, I have laid down my right to write those truths, telling those stories.. because I fear the response. But the response in my spirit to not telling these things.. is much too much.
3. The adventurer in me is not dead, not the creative spark buried under sadness for a time. Cos you know me so well, I can speak to you of high desert plains, mountains, rocks, dry heat and long concrete & asphalt paths carved out just so that I can stand in the middle of nothingness. Stand there and realise how much I loved the unbeaten path, the unfolding day, the clarity of time and space. I am adventure-bound, ready for the wilderness of life again. The spark in me is rising up again, beating and warm within me.
4. Justice and compassion belong together. Cos you know me so well, you probably know that tears come more often now, more easily. The injustice of elderly couples treated with disdain, kids climbing out of the gutters towards the future, that which is lost…. So may my sense of justice not lead me towards rage, and may my sense of compassion still operate with discernment to the way forward.
by tashmcgill | Oct 5, 2009 | forgiveness, god ideas, Uncategorized
Forgive Thy Brother – by Scott Erickson of The Transpire Project
tonight with the moon full and low in the sky, blue
finally to write about you, to talk about you, with love
the way i used to, with hope and promise and joy
finally i am sick of ache, weighted arrows in my shoulder
harnessing my force, good or bad, from reaching you
forced I am, into stepping close enough again
fallen into embrace, to rest the weight of it upon you
done. … with just space enough
for continuing despite what we have … chosen to forget
i’m still learning what love is, learning who i am…
…. the moon demands all of my attention to this task, to love you
brother.
Strictly Personal.
I stumbled upon this painting by Scott and was stopped in my tracks. Here was an image that seemed to capture the wrestle in my mind for the last few months.
Getting to America, to this place, these people – this movement, was meant to be a definitive stepping stone. A brilliant release from a scarred and troubling chapter in my life – where things ceased to be true as I had known them to be. It was a scar of my own doing, and yet not. I doubly owned it with the other partakers, yet carried it so heavily. Struggling not to be a victim, to forgive, to move on.
But it takes time, and this place is like a sharp lens, a focusing ring pulled tightly towards my body.
My desire to genuinely forgive and be a better person as result of my mistakes, my justification and my grief is like a taste in my mouth. Yet I doubt my ability to do it.
But maybe the desire to forgive, to carry on, to grow beyond my borders is enough. Maybe that’s all there is. Maybe this kind of confession and forgiveness offers nothing else but… desire. Actually achieving some palpable, tangible feeling would be too noble, too gracious for someone as incomplete as what I am.
That being said, I am moving closer towards what I want to think and feel in regards to forgiving, than I used to be. Good news, huh?
by tashmcgill | Sep 4, 2009 | Uncategorized
The Pacific Coaster from LA Union Station to San Diego takes about 3 hours, counting the time it takes to walk from the queuing platform to the station deck. Last month, I traveled out from a central part of the city to the outer reaches of LA, then on down the coast to my new home. It started with a queue, to pick up my ticket at Union Station. Once that was done, I walked and admired, in the sticky heat of a body not used to the warmth, the architecture and other-worldliness of this place.
Then we queued, under a sign. The sign told us to queue and wait for the signal from the usher, to walk to the platform where we were to board our train. I don’t really know why we had to stand there when we already had our tickets explicitly stating the platform and time of departure. But we queued, in an orderly and complicit manner until we were told we could move to the platform. Then we dispersed like flurry of fast-moving ants, which I’m not sure was the point.
As we (I guess the train and I) traveled, the railway lines were clinking and clacking with the roll of the carriage. It was kind of like those old spaghetti westerns carved out in Hollywood studios in the 30’s & 40’s where I sat out looking at the world, all the while suspecting there were half a dozen stagehands methodically rocking the carriage in time with the soundtrack in my head.
LA County rolls out it’s smaller cities and towns in a continual mass of concrete, brick and tile. By the time you hit the coast, it’s more like rolling past a line of school-children awkwardly holding hands. Some do it easier than others.
But the hand-holding really starts much closer into the city. You can tell a lot by the train line. Like back home, you get the best view of the billboards and industrial areas, great views of the central city suburbs until you hit the underground into Britomart. Here, you get a view into people’s backyards, their malls, parking lots and then into trailer parks. You get to see a lot of trailer parks.
Closer into the city, the trailer parks have a tendency to look like half demolition yards around the edges, with enough clear road left for the cars to move in and out. Corrugated iron in ruby and russet, with blue and gray tarpaulins part shelter, part windbreak, part privacy-shade swamp the permanently parked trailers.
About thirty minutes into this journey, we’re climbing our way through the freeway intersections and out into the hand holding inner suburbs, who sit shoulder to shoulder. Forty five minutes out of the station and the trailer parks begin to change their form. The driveways and streets are cleaner. There’s no tarpaulin in site and pot plants start to adorn the weatherboard-covered axles. The ruby and russet hues of iron and steel are gone, replaced with cool grays, blues, creams. The dusty inner-city haze seems to be cleared away.
At first I don’t think of there being any unusual thing in this situation. I’m laughing internally, the way a cynic who’s ashamed of their callous observations does, about the cars. It doesn’t matter how rickety-ramshackle the trailer park is, it sure seems that most of the cars are of a similar vintage. New. Spanking new. Well, within a three year model run.
The humour of it is, in my world the tidiest garages in the priciest central city suburbs house the rusty, fifteen year old student bombs held together with chewing gum and number eight wire, warranted by the Onehunga testing station, spit and grease. We’d trade just about anything for location and acreage when it comes to our homes. We long for ten foot ceiling studs and the quarter acre section, with vege garden and grass. Lord, we love grass. Paddocks preferably.
Here, a trailer-sized plot is big enough, so long as there’s a spot for the car, sparkling and fresh. The height of the ceilings doesn’t matter. It’s more of the same, keep the sun & light & heat out philosophy I guess, just in a different expression. Space for a bed, a chair, a place to eat. A shower. It’s all you need – so this is a simplified manner of living. In the East Coast Bays, we’ve talked about community, but this is shoulder to shoulder living.
We get an hour out of the city and the trailer parks are holding hands along the railway lines now, with the odd little stop tucked between. Some of our stops have me overlooking the garden sheds, kitchen windows and second-story bathrooms. The same colour landscapes apply to some of these suburbs and trailer parks.
The car rule is definitely the same.
By the time we hit the coast, traveling past the shoreline swamped with human bodies, beach umbrellas and lifeguard towers line up against the Pacific. It’s summer in California and the burner is turned up, even though the safety glass of the train’s window my arm is tingling and protesting against the heat. The vitamin-D starved, winter skin is both craving and detesting the sudden assault of sunlight. I feel pink and flushed all over, wishing I wasn’t so pale and out of place.
I’m watching the coastline and feeling every glass of wine, every pizza, every pistachio nut that has accompanied my winter hibernation. Golden, ruddy golden bodies are like moving exhibits in the ocean. I’m envious.
The trailer parks are non-existent now, beachfront condos and houses with Spanish influences crammed together no differently than my shanty town trailer parks and shackle the coast like palisades. Row after row, they line up the same way bodies cover the beaches. Americans know how to queue and line up, that much is for sure.
Then we hit the recreation parks. Parking lots lined with asphalt along the beaches. Black asphalt. So black that the tar was molten and glistening, even so I could see it from the train. They were covered with RVs. Dozens and dozens of them, and then the tents. Asphalt parking lots covered in tents and RVs, littered with bbqs, picnic tables and coolers.
I’ve learned since arriving, that it’s not at all uncommon. To park in a carpark in order to have a holiday by the beach. Others take their RVs into the desert with quad bikes and farm bikes. So I get it. I think.
Here are my observations, that really bear no aspersions or commentary on the place I’m living, it’s just different.
1. People are good at queuing here. It’s a culture of queuing probably determined by the crazy population swell of Southern California.
2. People are so good at queuing that even vacations are big queues of bodies, RVs, campers and tents.
3. People here live close together because “space” doesn’t seem to matter in the same way it does back home, when you simply don’t have the choice. Buses, trains, sidewalks, parks, suburbs, cities. You all gotta hold hands.
4. The tidy car seems to be more important in American culture than the tidy, freshly painted garage. Interesting ideas on home and space.
by tashmcgill | Aug 30, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’ve been thinking recently, and possibly some might have noticed, the lack of regular posting here. There are lots of potential reasons…
1. Too much going on to form coherent thoughts.
2. Too many things that are inappropriate to talk about in this forum.
3. Quality not quantity.
This third, I can reference right away.
I’ve noticed, in surveying some of what I’ve written in the last few years that the immediacy and accessibility of blogging technology to ‘publish’ my thoughts has possibly led me to a lazy place when it comes to the craft.
Storytime
When I was at high school, I shared an English class with a girl who simply a phenomenal writer. She had a distinct style, her talent was obvious to see, as was her passion. At school – I was focused on radio & media. That form of storytelling was more important for my career path. And sharing a class with Jenni, whose rising star absorbed the disciplinary focus of our teacher at the time… well, left me feeling lacklustre about my own prospects as a writer.
If it hadn’t been for my English & Media Studies teacher, Mr Bates.. (I google him often, just in the hopes of finding him again)… well, possibly none of my writing would have ever found the public eye again.
It’s amusing, considering how much of my business and communications skillset come from simple, well-practiced art of writing. And I still have more in me.
I left that 5th form class thinking I would never be published and never attempt it. I’ve graduated my early twenties, making a living from it without shame and owning the craftmanship required to ‘write’… or (how I think of it).. “be compiling words” in many forms for many reasons.
My love of language and construction leads me to journalism, poetry, prose, lyricism and storytelling through script and visual medium.
So.. the Blog?
The temptation with blogging is to be too undisciplined in my execution.
Not enough thought or precision put to style, word choice, construction, punctuation and process. So here is my dilemma..
If in every other medium, I am well-edited, processed, re-written, outlined, architecturally sound both in flow and ideological progression – is it permissible to be so stream of consciousness in blogging? Or does that reveal the weaker flaws in my writing?
Is this like a journal of thoughts (I’m still scarred by those who simply consider this an inappropriate forum for what is published here… though they have little idea of the catalogued journal and notebook system in place for that which is much more private) – so it’s “casualness” permissible?
Or, like meeting someone for the first time – because this becomes my most prolific publication source, should I make more of an effort when it comes to first impressions?
I’m going to start reviewing those posts which have led me into trouble. You can expect that I’ll re-publish those posts previously removed, revised and edited.
The difficulty is that I want to be a good writer. Mostly because I want to say things that are meaningful, more than saying nothing in a beautiful way. I’m no Jenni, but now.. rather than suspecting I’m not remotely deserving of my ‘teacher’s’ attentive discipline and correction.. I’m looking for the process myself.. in hopes of sending her a book one day.
So, in true McGill style.. I’ve said in several hundred words what I could’ve accomplished in 35.
All writing deserves the attention of craftsmanship, to refine the thoughts interred and the manner of architecture around them. My suspicion is that blogging has made me lazy, so I’m attempting to turn the tide.
Feel free to offer your thoughts & comments. Am I the only one that feels this way from time to time?
by tashmcgill | Aug 28, 2009 | Uncategorized
Must have a creative sense of imagination.
Pleasure is taken in the smallest things – small oddities and genuine experiences.
Must not include “must-have” fast food. I don’t believe you.
Great stories & history will always inspire, especially if from your own experience.
Sense of adventure and spontaneity a bonus.
Just saying, I agree with my friend Jill, that the advice and recommendations of locals or experienced visitors.. is usually the best way to experience a place.
