by tashmcgill | Jun 9, 2014 | Community, Culture & Ideas
A secret can be a sacred thing – something that deserves to be hidden away, held precious, close and carefully. But in turn, some secrets need to be shown the light – gently and gracefully. Some of the secrets we hold are keeping the dampers on life: releasing them is like turning up the colour, the volume, the taste of it.
Some secrets are like a kiss; so intimate they bind us to each other and their keeping is a safety net, a close retreat.
I think of my soft-hearted friend, whose empathy is a gift to the world but they struggle to reveal it through insecurity and bravado. They keep the secret of who they are tucked away, asking me to keep its hiding place quiet too. The secrets of ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ really matter much; but the secrets of who we really are – those are the ones that need the most wisdom.
That’s the lesson about superhero super identities: who you reveal your deepest, secret self to is probably one of the most important decisions you can make. Those people will either be your worst enemies, or your very best friends.
Considering how much I’ve written about honesty and being honest this year, it’s only fair to keep things on a level footing. Here’s the truth of it: life is full of little secrets. Things we keep to ourselves and things we keep hidden for other people. I keep a lot of secrets. Maybe it’s not so bad, a little mystery. Or maybe it is. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Apr 26, 2014 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Spirituality, Youth Work
You talk to your young people (the way you used to talk to me).
I spent this last Easter weekend at a Baptist Eastercamp, with 5000 young people, leaders and volunteers. It was a bit of a returning for me. About 6 years ago, you would have found me behind the scenes and on stage, running the programme and writing all sorts of creative experiences for young people.
At writing school, they try and train you to make your point up front, then produce your evidence summarised with a convincing conclusion. They also tell you not to begin sentences with the word ‘but’.
But today, I need to give you the supporting evidence before I make my point, so you have the opportunity to understand why it matters. So you have the chance to know why I can say it, must say it and say it with conviction of honesty, love and hope.
6 years ago, we parted ways from each other, that Eastercamp and I. About 6 months after that, I moved away from my formal connection with the Baptist church. So going back to that place where I have poured sweat, blood and plenty of tears – well, it was a big deal. It was like returning home and returning to the scene of the crime all at once. They were tumultuous days then, they still echo now in the peaceful times.
Here are some things you might want to know:
- I went back because the young people I work with now, in a different spiritual community really wanted to go, so their needs came first
- I have plenty of dear friends who continue to serve and volunteer with that event and do an amazing job. I admire them and love them deeply.
- I’m no longer part of the Baptist church, but I am connected deeply to dozens, even hundreds of youth workers & youth volunteers, young people grown up and young people still growing. I’m as invested in that community as I ever was. As I ever was.
- The event was good. Reconciliation is a process of years and it’s ongoing.
But this is my open letter to the Baptist church in New Zealand. As one of your born and bred. You trained me, you were my home for many years. I fought you and you fought me, and now I’m happy not to fight about it. But I will fight for you.
Here’s what I love about you, Baptists.
Here’s what I love about the Baptist church in New Zealand, and why when people ask, I still describe my way of following Jesus as being bred in the Baptist tradition. Which, for me, means ‘freedom of conscience’, the ability and invitation for every believer to participate in governance, theological practice and missional engagement. The tradition I grew up in was full of pioneers, ground-breakers, boundary pushers, people who engaged at the edges of society and innovated.
Baptists, please learn to love your boundary pushers again. Don’t fool yourselves that ‘inclusive’ doesn’t also apply to a line of political correctness that easily draws us away from provocative truth. Those who push the boundaries are diving into new territories of what truth looks like in today’s emerging reality.
Learn to love your provocateurs again. Don’t settle for talking to young people about sexuality in a way that gives them all the responsibility and none of the tools. I was horrified when my amazing friends, who worked so hard on the programming, had to swap out a movie choice. Somehow, no one complained about showing The Hunger Games (where children are forced to slaughter each other in a dystopian future) but it was unacceptable to show Captain Phillips, a movie that highlights the plight of Somali pirates in a cycle of economic oppression and slavery.
I’m not arguing the merits of the film, I’m pointing out that you can’t embrace some justice issues (freedom from sex trafficking) and deny the reality of others; like gay marriage, refugee policies or economic reform. You can’t choose the sexy stuff and deny the messier truths. There’s no film rating on the real world.
Eastercamp is just a shopfront window. It’s an insight into who the Baptist church is and will continue to evolve too. Everything you’re doing is good, even great – but you need to keep following through. If you’re going to continue to encourage young people to become agents for justice and social change – please realize you’ll be part of the society they’ll end up changing. You better damn well ensure there’s room for them at the table.
You see, you can read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’, but it won’t make you a change agent. Reading it so you can talk about it, doesn’t make it real. Please don’t settle for the soundbite of philosophy that sounds good but doesn’t mean anything without hard yards and uncomfortable moments. It’s not enough to talk about social justice issues alongside the Gospel. We have to somehow engage with what an expression of these things will look like in our own lives. It requires some provocation to get there because real transformation of people, culture, churches and mission will always be more than a slogan that sounds good and an easy-fix of donation money to a cause.
The Baptist church, nor any church community, cannot thrive on Facebook likes, fundraising campaigns and easily digestible, dualistic snacks of the Gospel alongside justice issues. For more on this train of thought, please read the 2010 commentary by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker, ‘Small Change‘. He argues that social media requires less motivation of those who participate.
Prophets and commentators
Societies need the prophets and commentators who cry out from the edges. Please be careful that you don’t lose too many of us. The way we think, often pushing and arguing with you will not ever be comfortable – but if you lose us all, you’ll begin to realize something’s missing. It’s part of your identity – to wrestle, to provoke, to engage.
The first Baptist church I went to as a young person was started by a group of rebellious 20-somethings. Don’t lose what it means to our history, to embrace the diversity and spectrum of who we have always been. Fight against the gravitation towards middle ground. Treasure the diversity at each end of your theological spectrum. That’s what has powered your ability to be accessible to such a broad range of New Zealanders and to wrestle with complexity in your missionality and governance.
In the last 20 years, the NZ Baptist church has bred and housed some amazing theologians, community leaders, creatives and philosophers. What I noticed last weekend was how they were missing from the shopfront. I saw lots of people excelling in their work – but they used to have prophets and provocateurs around them and beside them. They were the ones I called on, wrestled with and relied upon. Where have they gone?
Well, I know where I am. I still have the phone numbers, blogs, email addresses of many of those provocateurs. So I know where some of them are. It’s not our lack of fortitude that sees us finding other homes and places of respite, nor a lack of desire to engage. It’s that you don’t love us in the same way you used to.
It’s ok, I know (I’m) we’re hard work. We step on toes and speak out all the time. But it’s our role – we provoke, in order to give new ways of being and thinking a way to emerge.
You talk to your young people (the way you used to talk to me) and inspire them to take a stand. To be bold, inspired, challenging. But be careful what you wish for, because if you want us: the outliers, the goalpost changers, the innovators and boundary pushers – the ones our Baptist history was written on – you’ve got to follow through with what you’re asking us to be. We won’t be satisfied with ‘inclusive’ or politically correct, or safe. We’ll want to shape and change you, as well as the rest of the world.
You’re calling a generation of kids to be something you don’t know how to love yet. I know you want to love us, you’ve got to love us; sometimes we’re more Baptist than you.
by tashmcgill | Apr 10, 2014 | Culture & Ideas
Where there is no love, put love – and you will find love.
– John of the Cross
In other words, where you hope to find love you should surely plant it. Not a romantic, dreamy kind of love. A substantial, broader kind of love that feeds your roots, calms your soul, brightens your life. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 20, 2013 | Friendship
We cannot tell the exact moment a friendship is formed; as in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses, there is at last one that makes the heart run over.
Companion
My phone buzzes in the middle of the night, a repetitive staccato. Someone’s mind is wrestling and restless with contention, causing sleeplessness. No wonder, as I wake from my slumber containing a dream of you anyway, that my eyes and hands are flickering open reaching for contact before I’m even aware. I know the sound of your thoughts on the black sky and the moonlight wakes me before they reach me.
What is this strange entanglement of thoughts and presence that wraps around me? You reach deep into my mind and extract all sorts of secrets and goodness. You shine light into spaces I had kept away and make them appear beautiful for your knowing them, and I in turn, have a knowing of you that makes the heart full, the drop of running-over has landed on the parched soil of the soul. I am connected with all the intangible parts of me.
Companion is the word that stretches into my memory. A friend who is frequently in the company of another, a traveller on the journey who accompanies you. The ‘other’ of another.
Thomas Merton said ‘The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
On Friendship
Kahlil Gibran
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
by tashmcgill | Apr 25, 2013 | Culture & Ideas
I remember making a cake from packet mix when I was about 9 years old, in the matchbox kitchen of the shoebox unit we lived in with our mother. There was little room for improvisation with the recipe, I mean, really, adding a couple of eggs and some butter was hardly going to rocket this cake to memorial status. So recently intrigued by how adding food colouring to nearly any batter produced colour without flavour, I added red and blue to the cake and coloured the icing green. My brain still recalls that it tasted of blueberry vanilla. In fact, it was just vanilla. Purple and green vanilla cake. I thought it was hilarious.
So, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve come to this baking thing late in life. I remember various transgressions on my part through my early cooking years – a gunmetal grey F16 fighter jet birthday cake, flat scones, burst muffins and soggy pastry. I’ve no shame in admitting that I’ll happily use someone else’s guaranteed store-bought pastry to be assured of success in recent years. Now pies, tarts, you name it – leave my kitchen to happy homes and happy bellies. Baking has been a skill to master, a challenge to conquer even if cheating is required.
Bread, however, is another story. I like making it. I like that every dough is slightly different. I love the sound it makes hitting on the bowl as it changes through each stage. I love that it takes hours, consumes your attention. I’m yet to make a bread starter of my own, but the idea of a living starter of my own allures me with it’s ancient artistry.
Bread makes no pretenses about it’s demand for your attention, nor does it have any qualms asking to be left alone. It can be as individual as paint colours in final textures, finishes, flavours. I especially like that bread dough can look like a failure for the first 15 minutes, until the glutens hit their stride and transform into something moreish and chewy. It reminds me of people – you have to learn how to judge the moment and not beat them down too much, too soon and sometimes to just hold on a little longer.
Bread doesn’t need much adornment to satisfy you, either. Nothing more than a little oil or butter to be shown in it’s best light. Again, like the best people – in their simplest form, they are complete.
I like that bread is often best made in batches, not in single loaves. Worth sharing. Better for sharing. And while bread will bide time overnight if necessary, from the moment yeast hits water a process of inevitability has begun. Rise a little, rise a lot – so long as the yeast is alive, then your bread will come to life too. The cycle begins and then it continues.
Bread is simple, honest, universal and yet, personal because all bread eventually is finished by hand, prodded into shape.
Bread reminds me of people – you have to learn how to judge the moment and not beat them down too much or just hold on a little longer before giving up.
Bread is a lot like humans. We are all better off with a little interaction, a little time invested, a little hope holding on, a little belief and anticipation of the end result. Some of the best bread is finished in a fire, but it’s all good bread. Time is the best thing you can do for us. Time to prove. Time to rest, time to rise to the occasion.
The loaves I’m making today have an awkward beginning. You throw everything together* (see below) into a stand mixer and then beat it to within an inch of it’s life. For the first 20 minutes, it looks like a lumpy pancake batter, too wet to hold together and not remotely resembling any other dough I make.
A lot of folks would give up on this recipe about then, but you have to have faith that it will come together. Put aside how you expected it to happen and just watch it, beating on and on. Eventually something magic happens and the threads of gluten start to pull away from the bowl and follow the finger pulling them. The grip of the dough swings from the side of the bowl to your hand, with more of a desire to cling to itself than to a foreign object. And then you leave it, in an oiled dish – just a little oil to help it out and make it more comfortable you might say.
Let it sit, rest and rise – a few hours at least, then slide it gently to the floured bench, cut into four pieces, dust with cornmeal and leave to prove for another 45mins. Then and only then, pull and prod it into the oblong shape you want, dimple the top slightly with your fingertips, little dimples of love. Finish it for 25mins in a searingly hot oven (really 220 degress celsius for the first ten minutes, then 180). Mist it with water or oil until the crust is firm and crunchy, with a resonant hollow note when you tap the base.
It will make 4 loaves, 1 to eat, 1 to keep and 2 to share. Bread has a funny way of filling your house with warm, toasty fragrance and making your belly happy. It’s a wonderful excuse to fill a house with people too, people eating together, using their hands.
*Recipe:
500g bread flour or 350g bread flour + 150g semolina flour
500ml warm water
15g salt
15g active dried yeast
