Well, it’s 17 days til I break my Lenten fast. Before you start quibbling, I’m following the liturgical calendar, not the Orthodox, so I’ll be finishing on Maundy Thursday. That’s 17 days (or more importantly, nights) away.
Usually about this time in the fast, I’m starting to have some clarity about the questions I entered into it with. As I said here, there are a lot of good reasons to consider giving up a habit to reconsider the place it has in your life and the rippling after effects.
It used to be so easy – Eastercamp would beckon and so my 40 days were easily counted out in preparation, busyness, late nights working with friends on all manner of creative projects. Since those days are long over, it’s been funny to watch Lent all of a sudden becoming popular again among the evangelicals as well as the more liturgical traditions. Of course, for some it’s hard to conceive that anyone who isn’t Catholic would partake.
Here’s what I’ve experienced anyway.
1. There was no hardship in giving up. Only once have I desired a glass of wine, as there was a chill in the air and I was eating something hearty. I’ve been to parties, dinners, drinks at the bar and many more occasions managing to stay true to my decision. I’m really glad, because if it had really grieved me to give it up – I would have been disappointed in myself and concerned for the role alcohol was playing in my life.
2. I’ve been pleased to still hang out in the same places and see people behind the bar cater for me well and (mostly) without too much grief. Can’t necessarily be said for those on the other side of the bar, but that’s part of the attraction for me; the colourful characters that you discover.
3. Focusing on not drinking has brought… well, focus to other parts of my life. There was a brief detox period where I felt sluggish for a couple of days, drank a lot of water and green tea, feeling ill like I would throw up at every training session. For the most part though, my focus has increased and my productivity too.
4. But I do miss it. I miss drinking with friends, I miss tasting the creations of my friendly genii behind the bar. I miss the opportunity to be out and about to try whatever takes my fancy. I miss wine-matching. So I’m looking forward to the 5th, when I will break my fast with something delicious and in the company of friends, first at a Maundy Thursday service and then at the bar before we close it down for another Good Friday holiday.
And thus, here comes Easter – that aching, painful, beautiful gap in my heart. I am looking forward to another break, I’m looking forward to a good party and some great food. I’m looking forward to sharing some good stories and partaking in some brilliant creative endeavors in my community.Wouldn’t change a thing. For those of you who follow the journey of Eastercamp, I begin to wonder (through Lent) if the years we spent wondering if this was the last year, were just years we spent procrastinating the fear of ‘not being there’, ‘not being useful’, ‘not playing my role’. Now I think – the first year I asked the question, is the year I should have quit. Thankfully it was, I just got fired first.
This picture tells the story of Irma Ivanova, a Bulgarian woman who was arrested for drug trafficking (a charge she denied) in Ecuador and at the time of this photo, in 2007, had been imprisoned for 3 years without trial or verdict in her case.
When I saw it, immediately I was reminded of visiting a group of soldiers imprisoned in Fiji for their role in the coup – detained without trial for 5 years. That visit is one of the most moving I remember.
As I am moving through the Lent season, I am reflecting more and more on the phrase Andrew Walls penned (as far as I’m aware) The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture, first in his essay of the same name, which also became a chapter in his book. It’s too weighty a title for me to remember off the top of my head, but to be fair – I think the one sentence is enough. It’s become a bit of a motto as a walk a tightrope of tension in my life. (more…)
Ash Wednesday is a strange day, especially in New Zealand today as we remember the anniversary of the Feb 22. quake in Christchurch. I’ve been writing about the Phoenix mythology lately, as well as fire and it’s all imagery that suits the beginning of a Lenten season. Burn something to ashes, taking it away, seeing what arrives in it’s place. It’s important to remember the role ashes play in cleansing of any sort – fire to sterilize, soap made from ashes since soap was first made. So Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and time to give something up.
I caught up with a good friend this week and we were talking about all manner of things, including the Lent season and what I was thinking about giving up. At one point he called me an epicurean. It’s not really an insult, to my way of thinking – although I couldn’t tell if it was mockery or envy in his voice. In colloquial terms, to be an epicurean is really to be known as a bit of a foodie, which is me to a T. But dig a little deeper and the word really originally meant someone who was passionate about the sensuality of life, all the senses – not just those to do with food and drink. (more…)
Whenever I begin to feel cluttered in my head, I can see the telltale signs in my environment. It starts in my car – a piece of paper left in one place for too long. A plastic water bottle that never gets put in the recycling bin. Then it travels to my office, where a pile of things I need to deal with accumulates in the corner, on the desk, on quickly jotted Post-Its stuck to the iMac and files on my desktop unsorted. Sometimes figuring out the rabbit warren and getting back to calm is like unraveling a piece of thread.. long, laborious and seemingly unending.. until you undo the one little knot that was holding you up and away you fly.
But when I find myself stuck on a knot that I just can’t figure out.. I have one solution, with three simple steps that always helps me to ‘unstick‘ it. (more…)
History and hindsight do amazing things for our sense of place in the world. In the context of current economic strife – I wonder many things. Certainly, we have been in similar places throughout our human storybook. But in different ways, this is a new time.
I wonder that if we had not embraced the slow, and accepted a suitable pace for achieving much, then for the sake of speed, progress and efficiency – we would have lost much less and learned better habits for our humanity along the way.
We have a collection of old National Geographic magazines in the office. The new editions arrive every month – but I love the storytelling of old, stories that took months to collect, photographs that had to be developed before they knew whether they’d got the shot. Before the seabeds of Chesapeake Bay were desolated with the smell of grease and smoke in the air.
As with so many things I post on this blog, I’m happy to throw a few puzzle pieces out there, and let you come up with what you will. But this essay moves me, in this time of regret and fear.
The Sailing Oystermen of Chesapeake Bay – by Luis Marden, Nat. Geographic, Dec. 1967 (excerpts)
‘Dawn-etched phantoms from a bygone era, skipjacks dredge for oysters. Until last year, Maryland law decreed that only sailing vessels might take the shellfish from deepwater beds. Bit the coming of power may toll a knell for these proud survivors of working sail – and for a way of life.’
‘”The way I figure it,” said the captain, “most men live in hope and die in despair.” He eased the wheel off two spokes. “The trouble with drudgin’ with sail, you either got it flat calm or it’s too much wind. You go to bed at night wonderin’ where the wind’s gonna be, and you don’t know where you gonna make your day’s work. “Days like this, when it’s pretty, we can’t work – ain’t neither breath in the world. When it’s blowin’ not fit for a dog to be on the water, you have to go.” Yep, there’s hardship in the oyster [he pronounced it ‘auster’] business. “But,” said Capt. Eldon Willing, squinting at the red disc of the setting sun, “me, I’m like everyone else. I live in hope. I don’t think it’s ever been so bad as I couldn’t make it.”
‘”There’s no comparison between sail and power,” he said. “Take this boat, put an engine in her, sit on a box sniffin’ that old grease and push her into the Bay; turn one way, let go, heave and wind in. The same thing, day after day, whether it’s blowin’ or calm. I wouldn’t like it. This way, standin’ at the wheel with a breeze on your face and the sails flappin’…. It’s somethin’ that gets into you, you can’t get it out of your bones overnight.
“No sir, if it comes to drudgin’ with power, I’ll go home and get on relief. For sixty years now I’ve been drove hard and put away wet, and if it comes to that I’ll just set there and do neither thing in the world with the rest of ’em.” But I doubt that he would.
“Ever’ year there’s one or two taken up the creek to die,” lament watermen of proud old craft such as this skipjack [pictured] abandoned in Man Gut, a Dal Island backwater. Before mooring her for the last time, the owner salvaged all gear; tides and winds finish the hulk off. She epitomizes the fate awaiting the Nation’s last commercial sailing fleet.”
Photograph by Luis Marden.
On Distance – Je t’aime
“Dubious questioning is a much better evidence than that senseless deadness which most take for believing. People that know nothing… have no doubts. Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the truth.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Richard ‘Cheesy’ Cotman has been in my close circle since we were at high school. Born to fascinating parents and the perfect nuclear family, he’s intelligent, creative, a words+music fiend, who loves many of the same things I do – great stories, interesting characters, experiences, travel, places, adventure. He lives an unusual life, somewhat nomadic crossing plenty of borders.
I always was a little bit surprised at how cemented a place in my heart Cheesy has – and he’ll read this, so I can be both gushy and silly, overly sentimental in my memory – because I am a girl, and allowed. I admired him, a year above us at the boy’s grammar school up the road, us music students who played together and found ourselves as part of each other’s lives.
The first time Cheesy went to overseas to live seems so long ago now. In those days, there were letters with tickets, lolly wrappers and photographs actually printed on paper(!). I still have them all collected in a box. In that time, one occupies a space in the mind and heart.
On his return – our time & space in the corporeal so easily becomes more trivial, less precious.
On the next trip – a longer stint to Oxford, the advent of the blog had done much for closing the distance, but they were still letters of a sort. There was still an inevitable wait, space, breath between the event and the reporting. Many personal emails gave way mostly, to blogging…
Now, in Montpelier, speaking, thinking and even writing in French (je t’aime!), the distance is closing – thanks to Twitter. Montepelier time means that I am closing my eyes to sleep, somewhere around the beginning of his day and I am waking to some aspects of daily life. And while this moment by moment existence loses some of it’s intimacy .. it closes the distance. And I appreciate that so much.. because it means that those who are most proxim do not have the chance to dominate the spaces of my heart and mind, already claimed by others.
And that is why, [as my mother asks], I tell the world what I am doing in my Twitter/Facebook status. I’m not telling the world, but the world may listen, while I tell you.
On Space – The Beauty Of Lent
Song Of The Moment : Everything is Yours by Audrey Assad and Steve Wilson
when all the world is blossoming when everything around is bursting into life and I don’t have to strain to hear the beat of Your heart oh, oh…
when all the world is under fire when the skies are threatening to thunder and rain and I am overcome by fears that I can’t see oh, oh…
if everything is Yours, everything is Yours if everything is Yours, I can’t let it go; it was never mine to hold.
who could command the stars to sing or hold the raging seas from breaking through the doors and tend the fragile roses with the very same hands? oh, oh…
I can’t let it go–I can’t let it go Cause everything is Yours, everything is Yours.
You can’t take Lent away from Easter. Previous years, the countdown to that precious celebration has been my Lent. 40 days of disciplines, prayers and preparation in every aspect of my being. But, when the Passion of Easter is no longer mine, I must t
hen, reframe Lent.
pas·sion n. 1. A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger. 2. a. Ardent love. b. Strong sexual desire; lust. c. The object of such love or desire. 3. a. Boundless enthusiasm: b. The object of such enthusiasm: 4. An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger: 5. Passion a. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper & Crucifixion. b. A narrative, musical setting, or pictorial representation of Jesus’s sufferings. 6. Archaic Martyrdom.
So, this year, I choose to not fast, but to discipline. For each day of Lent, I am meditating on a single psalm (1 – 40), writing them by hand in a journal, drawing, commenting, letting ideas springboard.. noticing, observing. Then on Sundays, I feast and compile all those thoughts/ideas/cross references onto their own page.
This practice of reflection, noticing but then holding on to my conclusions has been a wonderful slowing of my devotions. It’s creating Space for truth to coagulate, unfold, take root.
However – halfway through my psalms and I cannot help but say.. how much is the presence of God for all people, found in the love and servitude of the poor. To love and love well, with grace and mercy is to worship.
As I read these psalms, reflecting on my own hands as I write (a slipping artform..) words, ancient and uttered on the page.. I find that I have been writing and singing psalms for a long time. For when you dive into these songs, you find again, the echo of the human voice so strong, you cannot help but come face to face with your creator and creation all at once.
Never Mine To Hold – The Wonderment That Comes From Time+Space+Distance I said at the time of the Easter chapter closing, that the task was never mine to hold, that it was always held in God’s hands and he simply allowed my hands to slip inside his for a time.. I find that still to be true as I pray and encourage those who are attending/serving/working on Eastercamp this year. So thank you, Audrey Assad. Can I encourage you to click play.. and soak.
Tash McGill is a broadcaster, writer and strategist who works with people and organisations to solve problems and create transformation. She believes people are the most important thing and that stories are powerful ways of changing the world. You can find out more at tashmcgill.com or by visiting her LinkedIn profile.
