by tashmcgill | May 25, 2007 | god ideas, Uncategorized
Failing Forward
Stories of failure permeate our contexts, whether spoken or unspoken. Steve raises the question of how telling our stories of failure helps or contributes. This has been a subject of contemplation for me lately in reviewing both my own experiences and the stories of others.
It’s a curious part of the human condition, that we are so poor at redemption. Which is, in turn, why that is the business best left to God and worked out through us and in us. Failure stories thrust us into the middle of redemption at work. I find even in my short lifetime that it is very rare for something to fail and then finish.
Failure is so often followed by regret, suspense, debrief, analysis, discussion, avoidance, guilt, confrontation, conflict, new beginnings, wishes, could’ves, if onlys and reflection. Even when small failures are found in amongst success stories, the failure lingers longer.
It’s so important to bring these failure stories into the light, especially when are failures are not sin-related stories, but rather the stories where God-filled possibilities ended in a different place than where we expected.
I think of a friend who followed God’s prompting to the letter, in the face of so many friends and associates predicting failure. “Failure” came, and left things undone, but not without hope. Redemption came, and esteem, reputation and the team of people involved were all restored to optimism. My friend still places God at the centre of failing, and wouldn’t change a thing, despite the cost. For him, obedience to God led to failure. More than that, it was a failure that God was in the midst of. In telling our own stories of failure, we show people that God can be present right in the midst of failure. That’s precious ground in a Christian world filled with success stories.
My senior pastor once floored a room of seventeen year olds, by sharing his own deep sense of personal failure in regards to some mission time spent overseas. Failure makes us all a little more human, which in turn, is a little more divine.
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” ee cummings
by tashmcgill | May 21, 2007 | Uncategorized
On Food, thanks Danielle!
The rules:
1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you. Include the city/state and country you’re in.
Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Todd (Louisville, Kentucky, United States)
miss kendra (los angeles, california, u.s.a)
Jiggs Casey (Berkeley, CA, USA! USA! USA!)
Tits McGee (New England, USA)
Joe (NE Tennessee, USA)
10K Monkeys (Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA)
Big Stupid Tommy (Athens, Tennessee, USA)
Danielle (Brisbane, Queensland, AU)
Tash (Auckland, NZ)
2. List out your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.
1. Altezano – it’s a coffee joint more than anything else with a small select but perfectly urban menu of salads and all sorts of small joys. Before the diet, I really loved their version of the South American ‘churro’. Divine. The coffee is still excellent.
2. Circus Circus – oh, I like the trend of choosing places that have no websites! Circus Circus toutes itself as the greatest little cafe in the world. It truly does make the grade with some of the best coffee around (right, Dani?) and it’s hot menu plus sideboard cakes are fabulous. I particularly love the bagel stack with bacon, avocado and delicious field mushrooms.
3. The Lilypad – without a doubt the best eggs benedict on the southern side of the Bombay Hills, the Lilypad is an art gallery, garden and eatery located about 10mins south of Mystery Creek and slightly outside Cambridge. Their eggs bene is worth eating at anytime of the day, so conveniently it’s available anytime. And the location is to die for.
4. Kebab Stop. – Mt Eden Village is like a spiritual home, encased by De Postt for drinking, Circus Circus for coffee and Kebab Stop at the other end. They make the perfect kebab – warm and juicy without being greasy or overpowering, always fresh and so tasty. The best place to eat on the run, even til midnight and then shoot up Mt Eden for a city vista of lights and starlight. Probably the only place in Auckland that runs a cash till without eftpos. Perfect.
5. White. Almost enough said about this luxurious place on the Waterfront. The views and exquisite and the bills are more expensive than a month’s rent when dining for two. I’ve eaten here just once and every bite was as perfect as it needed to be. Obviously, not for the fainthearted by the combination of location, menu, service and guilt-ridden indulgence means it makes the list.
3. Tag 5 other people (preferably from other countries/states) and let them know they’ve been tagged.
This is the hard part…
Nurse Roni (Indianapolis, USA)
UPDATE
Actually I know plenty of people to send this to.. foodies unite!
Etnobofin (Oxford, UK)
Blake (Cambridge, UK)
Marko (San Diego, CA, USA) – will probably be too busy but is an out and out foodie, so deserves to be included!
by tashmcgill | May 15, 2007 | god ideas, Uncategorized, worship
Holding My Breath
This one’s for the lonely. Hold your breath with me. Close your eyes and let it out slowly. You are ok. We are going to be just fine.
“There is much mental suffering in our world. But some of it is suffering for the wrong reason because it is born out of the false expectation that we are called to take each other’s loneliness away. “
Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out
It’s too easy to fall back onto others to fulfil the emotional and physical expectations of what it would feel like to be present in our own lives. We live so vicariously in our own skin through the people we experience our life with. Their reactions, words and responses to us begin to shape our own perception and satsfaction with life. We fill our loneliness with other people because we are so terrified of ‘aloneness’. Aloneness requires we know ourselves before and beyond the reactions, words and responses of others. It requires we are physically present in our own lives without interaction or touch from another body. It means we feel each breath and step, and own it. No wonder we would rather fill up our loneliness.
As much as the body aches to be known, the spirit to be loved, the mind to be explored by ‘Others’.. so it longs to be known by the occupant. Take a deep breath and dive into ‘aloneness’… you will find loneliness is not so bad.
Love Love Love
we never think things through
We fall all over each other
And there’s no telling exactly how this ends
cos we fall over each other to get to it
I certainly need you
red wine nights and moonlight songs
It’s so much waiting at the door
it’s as little as needs to be said
between the dawn and the dusk of it
How many days must we do the same old things
To get to the same old places that only bring us back
To misery
Your love is a lightening strike
A deep, dark warmth on a cooling night
A walking contradiction I can’t go past
so I come here again
how many days must we do the same old things
still find one another at the end of it
Said the Lover of the Beloved
“Who is this that grows like the dawn, as beautiful as the full moon, as pure as the sun, as awesome as an army with banners?”
Song of Songs 6.10
All jokes about clusters, vineyards, fawns and gazelles aside .. isn’t this the most stunning line you have ever read?
by tashmcgill | May 7, 2007 | god ideas, Uncategorized
Attitude
I’ve been thinking a lot about the requirements of intercession that are held so strongly in tension with the insight or observations that we make of the world around us and the people we interact with.
I’m in serious need of a holiday, because I am finding this so hard. I’m so tired that I’m lazy in the discipline of graciousness and holiness which should be so common day. I’m finding it far too easy to neglect those basic daily tasks which actually restore so much life and revival.
Song of the Moment – You
by Fisher
It’s late now, time to sleep
Close your eyes, go to dreams
Clouds on walls and blue skies
Mommy’s sun, her moon, her stars
And you, you make me run
And you, you make me want to live
Your smiles – well they make my day
You don’t know it yet but you’re everything
This little song – well it’s for you
These lovely years here with you
And you, you make me run
And you, you make me want to live
And you, you make me run
And you, you make me want to live
For you
by tashmcgill | Apr 27, 2007 | Uncategorized
The Narrow Way Travellers
The way is steep, and rocky. The path is narrow and easy to wander from. The fields on either side are lush and green, and the view worthwhile if you know where to look, and what you’re looking for. But yes, the way is narrow and hard to follow. The wide, smooth road is much easier to walk, and it always seems so closely parallel to the narrow path, but the destinations are so different.
Grace is God’s gift to us, grace to walk the narrow path, to climb the treacherous hill. It’s so easily received, once we know what we have. Grace pours down like rain once we recognise it. It falls like asphalt to smooth the small, faltering steps we take.
Grace is the most costly of all the things God has given. The ease with which we accept it is overwhelming, the cost and brutality through which it is supplied is an ongoing wound. So easy to take, but it cost so much to give.
How do you respond to such a gift? The gift of a narrow road, but a priceless destination? The gift of the One Who Travels With Us, the gift of the One Who Came To Open The Gate, the gift of the One Who Provides Every Strength we need along the way?
The gift we have to offer in return is a gift in kind. For His great cost we find ourselves at the precipice of Great Cost ourselves. Ours is the gift of Discipline, the Way of the Disciple. For in accepting Grace so easily, we must choose to offer the painful sacrifice of Being-A-Disciple and all that it entails, and so experience in a small way the pain of the Father.
The Way of the Disciple is to find the Character (which comes from perseverance) to pursue the steep path, the Vision to see what God reveals along the path, so unique to each one of us and yet each sight an intimate revealing of the Father. The Hope to walk still when the steps are lit only one by one, and when the Way is lonely.
The Way of the Disciple is to accept and know loneliness as being without the company of other travellers. To learn the discipline of hearing the Master’s voice. To learn obedience. To learn to Love holiness and integrity. To pursue them with wold abandon. To choose others, to lose your life willing in the act of serving Others.
The Way of the Disciple is to lose your life not in martyrdom but in selfless expression of the Saviour’s Love. It is a great pain, a living wound. But where there is hurt, love, and you will find there is no more hurt, only more love.
There are many who choose the way of the field. The lush green grass between the narrow road and the smooth. They travel close enough to the narrow that they are ever at the edge of losing their footing, stumbling back onto the narrow way. Creating new scars that show they belong to Christ.
The Way of the Disciple, the gift of Discipline is our costly gift to God, and the easy acceptance of His grace becomes greater and greater as you go. The burden becomes indeed light, as the path reaches new peaks and greater heights. Each step strengthens you for the next, and your scars become the signs that show; you are a Narrow Way Traveller.
onward, to the distant shore
onward to my Father’s house
to a land I’ve never been
places only Heaven sees
to this day, I pledge my sight
not to close or turn my eyes
from the path, so steep inclined
this the narrow path I find
to the clouds of greatest sorrow
still I know my Saviour’s pain
and the Gospel Love’s companion
shapes my faith, my heart, my soul
find me climbing in the morning
taking step by step in starlight
for I travel where He leads me
on the narrow way I go
there He finds me, there He lifts me
with His hand so strong and still
bears me onward when I falter
when I fear and fail Him still
still I choose You, dearest Saviour
still I choose this rocky way
by my scars Lord, does Love grow here
so to love and bear Your name
love grows quickly by the hour
deeper still as yet I climb
hand held tightly to my Saviour
arms outstretched on either side
bring me Lord to your good measure
teach me wisely teach me well
let me learn the path so holy
help me climb that narrow way
grace that holds me while I tremble
lets me lean on Hope and Faith
grants me peace when storms are raging
grace that leads me on the way
by tashmcgill | Apr 24, 2007 | god ideas, Uncategorized
When You Don’t Find What You’re Looking For In The Usual Places..
I’m going on a journey with a good friend at the moment. I’ll say that it’s a journey we’re on together, because I’ve taken the liberty and he’s created the opportunity for a commitment to walking the path with him.
Sometimes life takes unexpected turns, and the boundaries you grew up building your life inside need to change, because life is bigger and messier than what those boundaries allow for.
It reminds me of the Fences & Wells picture. You don’t need boundaries if you dig deep enough wells. The cattle learn for themselves to stay close to the source. Boundary lines and fences create false realities. You might be perfectly safe within the lines, but you still need to know where to find the Living Water.
Epidemics of the young adult community could be described and defined by the exploration of a couple of ideas that keep floating around my brain; ideas that are all part of the latest journey I’ve committed to being part of.
1. Being a “young adult” is a transition and not a lifestage.
Basically – being a young adult is being on the way to something else – adulthood. Adulthood carries all the implications of development, responsibility, understanding, cognitive thinking ability, recognition of risk and assessment etc. When you start to treat this transition period as a “stage of life” ministry, you actually inhibit the need for ‘graduating’ from adolescent development to fully-fledged adulthood, hence trapping mid-late 20-somethings into post-juvenile behaviour patterns and sociological norms.
2. Theological understanding still does not correlate to “relationship with God”.
There are still too many people in my own generation that can discuss theological moots at length and feel self-satisfied at the end of it. However, the ability to discourse with theological, even ‘spiritual’ prowess is moderately hampered when it comes to relating to a God that operates and calls His followers out of the boundary lines of ‘normal society’. This creates an uncomfortable tension for thinking believers when confronted with a faith that requires them to re-create the canvas of their lives. Our approach to spiritual education and development has left people theologically equipped but life-application deprived. When challenged to seek God’s direction, they stumble to find how to pray, how to listen, how to interpret and especially how to wait. The ancient practices of holiness and devotion are almost completely foreign.
So, one could say that there is little impetus to ‘grow up’ and even less practical, common societal education about how to ‘grow up’ without replicating the boundaries found common in the lives of parents, church leaders, society leaders.
The issue here, and that is common to the journey that brings me to this point – is that the mere replication of the behaviours, beliefs and practices of our parent’s generation isn’t the goal. The world has changed so dramatically since the 1960s that it would be imprudent to imagine God’s outworking in the world hasn’t expanded in all the same ways that our basic human expression & communication habits have.
Therefore…
When you’ve looked in all the usual places for the pathway of your life, for the vision, the purpose, the call, to find the ‘river’ so to speak .. and you’ve come up trumps…. how do you go about digging a well (I suspect that the well looks a lot like some basic disciplines) while you take down the fences… all the while trying to impart bravery and courage to the one for whom parameters and expectations are slowly shifting.
You start by looking in the unusual places. Ok, we’ve done that. Now the next exciting part of the journey begins.
In Other “Thinking News”
Aw, shucks. Etnobofin has tagged me with one of these…
A couple of days ago Marko was tagged as well, so I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the calibre here! However, let’s face it .. these are more of a gimmick than anything else, but I’ll happily play along. Here’s how it works; the participation rules are simple:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).
So.. here are the “thinking five”… (in the interests of being honest, I HAVE to revisit…)
1. PostSecret – this is consistently challenging, invigorating and inspiring pop culture.
2. Mark Oestreicher – now a friend, as well as one of a small number of ‘thinking’ youthworkers. We need more people who will engage with the science & the faces of youth ministry.
3. Stu McGregor – I don’t always agree with Stu, but I certainly appreciate his unique and strong perspectives on theology, community and youth ministry. His journey into the next phase is going to be worth walking alongside.
4. Paul Windsor – Principal of Carey Baptist College and one of the practical theologians and hymn-lovers I respect so much.
5. …. I’m going to have to decide tomorrow.
