I am a fan of this simplistic yet strong artistic style. The mix of silhouette and papercut is really appealing to me.
Searching for an image like this was inspired by a song I am currently writing. I think it is probably one of my best pieces to date. I am even hopeful that it will make it to the demo recorded stage – a lyric and a melody for a moment in time that I want to remember.
The Story The group of people I share my life with on a daily basis is eclectic. Fascinating – of different ages and faiths and stories. But I have one, who has been with me since they were young who I have mentored and journeyed with. We have become friends as well as colleagues and comrades. He is still young, I am still older – but we grow together. Lately though, with all the changes that have gone on in our community – I am concerned that I’ve not been able to walk him through these days. The hardest lesson is the one that comes last – the smallest step sometimes the largest.
oh don’t forget your voice little songbird you wake for the dawning of the light oh i’ll watch and listen for you as you take flight loose your wings and climb up towards the light
my love for you is as wide as the day is long your love for me is the reason i carry on no need for worry to weigh heavy on your mind cos i don’t worry, you’re there when i close my eyes so i don’t lose hope, we got love on our side
oh and i’ll be alright with your faith so strong and true oh and i’ll be alright with your hands to hold on to oh and i’ll be alright long as you love me til my days are through
storms will come and rain just appears and our hearts they may shatter just like glass but rest easy, cos our souls they were made to last
oh and i’ll be alright with your faith so strong and true oh and i’ll be alright with your hands to hold on to oh and i’ll be alright long as you love me til my days are through
and as long as you’re breathing long as your heart is beating i gonna show the world i’m feeling, i’m feeling oh
oh and i’ll be alright with your faith so strong and true oh and i’ll be alright with your hands to hold on to oh and i’ll be alright long as you love me til my days are through
If I could choose one phrase to describe the history and story of the Israelites at this time, I would say theirs is a Story of Ascension and a Wrestle with Hope.
There is a small collection of songs that are set apart in the history of the Israelites. These songs are my songs too, tales of despair that rises to hope, recognition of shame that leads to restoration – and always, in the closing stanzas, God is glorified, made known, shown as merciful and good.
These psalms are short (sweet relief immediately following the epic ps 119), able to be memorised and they were sung as the people ascended the steps into the Temple for sacrifice, worship and ritual.
1. The Ascension The Climbing of Stairs, the memory of rhythm, of rising, of systematically and methodically going back to the place of worship and the Glory of God. The rising up from lowliness. As we approach God, we are raised up from the earth into the kingdom of heaven. Light is always above us. Many of these psalms journey from darkness to light just as we climb closer to the sun as we ascend the heights.
The rhythm of hope that beats through the psalms of ascent is the rhythm of returning. Year upon year, time after time, recalling to God his great promises of mercy, his great deeds of deliverance and redeemption throughout their history they would remind God of his promises as they approached the holy of holies.
So we rise, those of us who have been prostrate, laid down in the darkness. Blackened with soot and desperation. Those of us that have words too honest for keeping, they burn on our tongues. And we climb, onwards and onwards, recalling the songs of our own history, recalling God’s promises to mind, declaring again his merciful hand with us. We climb and ascend once again towards the Light, only to grow evermore conscious of these two truths…. the unfailing and unstoppable force of redeeming love, as we watch the curtain of our own hearts be torn again from top to bottom….. and the ever persistant hope that is birthed in us again, even as we climb.
clenched fist against my chest desperate words of hope confess i am empty for the sight you
some say that it’s a gift to see what i see and to know but i see the truth it is
a gift like this is only for my father’s table a gift like this means nothing if not for you, my father’s hand guides me where to go, i only know his direction
how is it here in my broken shame i still know your voice and i lean in compulsively drawn to the truth i know i will walk this way where my brother goes and i take the cup as it is to me the sorrow of knowing you keep me in this life for where i want to be you know in my father’s home, is the life i long to know
for to make what i can from these hands threading my words for another man’s praise oh i need not your praise for the work of my hands is only for my father’s display and all other causes a plain facsimile, mean nothing to me
i put my life in your hands make your Glory in me, be seen. Oh i’ve learned what pleases you more than most and my gift is the gift of sight i recognise your art in life.
when did i last see you? how long ago that ache when i recognised the broken and the lame that we, you and i, are all the same?
when did i last see you and truly know myself? how did we grow apart while in this life we walked so closely side by side?
when will i see you once more? without the dread, or shame? without the peace but with the blame oh endless ache of absent friend i miss your hands, your eyes, your voice now silent in the noise of my life oh i have been walking alone a storm and blood upon these streets but you and i, we are the same.. the broken spirit and the clay the only one who can mend me oh tender blood stained hands come hold my life in yours again
I come down a lot I turn on the lights Making promises of peace tonight I shut the door Quick I tell my lies Before I bend my knees Oh I refuse to give or take an inch And I won’t bend or break Oh I come down a lot
I shut the door to keep you out I lean myself against this wall Do anything to keep the weight of the world From falling down, from falling down Around me
I am terrified of falling I feel myself burning I am buried with confession I can’t get the words out And I’ll fall apart if it all comes down And I am scared to be broken But you can take the fear apart And you can break me
I am swallowed up by pride I live inside myself Telling lies and it’s so cold I won’t bend or break I won’t give or take an inch
And all these promises I break They take my strength I am slowly dying I die a little every day Oh I come down a lot
I am terrified of falling I feel myself burning I am buried with confession I can’t get the words out And I’ll fall apart if it all comes down And I am scared to be broken But you can take the fear apart And you can break me
Adj. 1. humiliated – subdued or brought low in condition or status; Adj. 2. humiliated – made to feel uncomfortable because of shame or wounded pride;
When I was about 14, I was part of an inter-school competition for smart kids and problem solvers. My team from the girls school was fun, but also pretty quiet, kinda mellow. I was all about expressing my extroverted self. We were staying at a campsite out in West Auckland, in bunkrooms that had connecting doors.
Imagine my delight when the door to our bunkroom opened and on the other side – was a group of smart, funny and entertaining boys from Kristin School on the North Shore. This central city Epsom Girls Grammar girl was delighted with the opportunity to converse and laugh and spark with like-minded but very different teenage males.
One of the group ringleaders went by the name of Adam, a dark-haired rascally type who was clever and witty and political aware (as you are at 15). I found him somewhat enchanting and interesting. And I thought he did me too. We spent long dinners and afterhours programmes laughing and joking.
The other members of the group were full of fun too, except one kid, who even know, I can’t even remember. He was the geek, with body odour, glasses. He was pretty quiet and definitely not highly regarded by the rest of the team.
After the heated final competition, Adam and I traded numbers and promised to ‘stay in touch’. Already my delicate teenage self-esteem had bloomed a little in the short few days of attention. But I wasn’t foolish enough to assume that I would hear from him.
It genuinely took me by surprise when he rang within the week, to invite me to a BBQ his parents were having the next Sunday.
Sundays were always difficult days in my house. They were Dad Days, usually begun with some measure of tension and stress from the maternal end, endless waiting and hoping for Dad to arrive (invariably always late) and then spent in the nervous tension that the eldest sibling lives in .. wanting to make sure that everything’s ok for everybody. So I nervously asked Dad if he would drop me out to the address in Greenhithe, which in those days was simply forever away.. over the bridge. For my often-unemployed and very often broke Dad, I felt the burden of the gas, the journey, the time. It was a really big call.
So the morning came, and I had invited my friend Tere to come with me. We picked her up and Dad dropped us off. Me, being foolish and shy, asked him to drop us off at the top of the driveway. And down we walked.
Adam had given a precise description of the house and the surrounding garden, which featured a large flagpole. I’m not sure why that sticks in my mind but it does. We got to the door, knocked on it, and who should answer.. but geeky, smelly kid.
And when we explained what we were there for – assuming that Adam must have invited his friends from school as well, he looked more and more confused. He blushed redder and redder and went inside. It seemed like an age of confusion before his mother came to the door.
She brought us inside and explained that there was no BBQ, that this wasn’t Adam’s house. She looked at me first with incredulity, disbelief and anger until she finally came to see that I really had no idea what Adam had been playing at. Then the pity in her eyes took over.
Soon, it became obvious what was going on. Not only was the geeky, smelly kid the victim of Adam’s bullying, but I was too. I wasn’t meeting with a like-minded friendly funny guy, but actually had been the butt of a well-played joke. Adam had revealed to his cabin mates late at night during the competition week, a plan to ‘trick’ the girl from next door into really liking him, then playing a prank.
Geeky, smelly boy revealed all under the prodding of his mother. Poor kid hadn’t realised that he too, was going to be the butt of this practical joke. he had thought it the perfect scam.. win over the ‘ugly fat-face stupid slut’ as he had called me to the others, then really make her feel a fool by sending her to Geeky’s house under false pretenses, thus humiliating both myself and his schoolyard prey.
Finally, a phone call to Adam’s house revealed nothing but a laughing teenage boy on the other end. While Geeky’s mother promised to ring Adam’s parents and get an apology, I never heard another word.
Worse still, was the inability of contacting my Dad. His cellphone (at that time a brick) simply rang and rang and rang. I rang my mother but she didn’t answer the phone. In the end, in utter humiliation, having already suffered this crisis in front of my best friend who had heard me excited and full of enthusiasm for this teenage crush, we then had to call her mother to come and retrieve us then wait the 45minutes it took her to get there.
How I wanted my dad to come and rescue me from that moment. By the time I got back to school on the monday – the story had travelled plenty far. I so needed someone to crackdown on the arrogance, impudent boy. I needed someone to be furious at the injustice of a young boy’s prank. I needed someone to act quickly enough to restore the crushing blow to my self-worth and refute the words “ugly fat-face stupid slut”.
The Power Of My Helplessness The feeling of public exposure, the feeling of my foolishness at being duped into the fraud, of somehow not perceiving the lie, the rathood of the cad, the visiblity of my shame.. being exposed in front of those that knew me.. those whose opinion mattered most. The shame of the rejection, the cruelty of the names and the lack of their refuting… that is the power of my helplessness. I end up crushed into humiliation and remember that girl, so frail, so tenderly holding onto the ledge of value and reputation. I remember the trust that was broken and rebuke my own stupidity. I remember the loneliness that stuck in my heart in that moment… the sorrow of unworthiness that crept into me.
There Are Moments Of Memory For so many reasons the past few days have been full of insecurity, and it’s at these times this memory creeps up on me again and I remember Adam and what he did to my Eve. In her blossoming hope, how he devastated her.
I sometimes wonder if I have spent the last fifteen years waiting for Adam to strike again, wrestling me into public shame again. I know that this is my moment with Christ in front of the Pharisees, where I am the woman of shame brought before their judgement. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a criminal or not, just that the humiliation and fear of public rejection is equally strong. The ‘not being loved’ lie that crept in so young… renders me sometimes undone, and I have to restitch myself with words of truth.
Who is the Christ? Where is the defender, truth-teller, lover?
I don’t shy away from the utter revelation of self.. public humiliation I wear and have worn in the public eye before… but don’t leave me standing alone. All revelation is secure in the eyes of the one who stands despite the Truth.. whether it be my lack of beauty, my overpowering strength, my weakness, my sin, my sorrow… know all of me, every breath and beat and embarrassing truth.. and stay.
Stay and your love conceals me, covers over my sin and heals me. Stay and your love reveals me, all that is beauty and truth and goodness.
Song Of The Moment : My Lover by Melissa Etheridge
No one conceals me like No one reveals me like My lover No one can disconnect No one can resurrect Like my lover
My lover makes me weak Gives me breath to speak My lover takes me home Cools the rolling stone My lover’s thorny kiss The reason to exist I wonder
No one can saturate No one manipulates Like my lover The sensuality It’s immort
ality My lover
My lover needs to seize Bring me to my knees Reads me like a prayer Calls the spirit there Secretly inspires Strips me to desire I wonder
No one can visualize No one can make me rise Like my lover They dream of paradise They’ll never ever pay the price My lover
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.
