by tashmcgill | Jun 12, 2007 | god ideas, Uncategorized
“We try and make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so a few can live as they wish.” Shane Claiborne, The Irresistable Revolution
Song Of The Moment : Oh Sister
by Bob Dylan
Oh, sister, when I come to lie in your arms
You should not treat me like a stranger.
Our Father would not like the way that you act
And you must realize the danger.
Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you
And one deserving of affection?
And is our purpose not the same on this earth,
To love and follow his direction?
We grew up together
From the cradle to the grave
We died and were reborn
And then mysteriously saved.
Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door,
Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow.
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow.
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 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 11, 2007 | Culture & Ideas
“…..every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.” Henri Nouwen
When you plant a seed in the earth, the seed must die in part in order to bloom. The seed disintegrates while germination takes place, so it is a kind of death that requires earth, moisture, warmth and oxygen. It is the kind of death that usually brings new life with it.
Today I realized that for a long time I had been holding on the seed that I had planted in hope so long ago. Sure, I buried the seed so it could grow. But it was never dead to me and I never let go of it. Never let it touch the soil or the damp darkness of the earth. It simply lived on in my heart as did the expectation of that seed’s rebirth. I expected that when new life from the old – that the seed would be resurrected as it had been.
During the long wait and wondering why the seed had not yet bloomed, I realised my foolishness and error. I had buried my hand in the dirt along with the seed, and stay locked to the place I had been and given the seed no chance to emerge. So I pulled my fist from the earth, reburied the seed and took my hand back to myself.
I prayed for a bigger heart willingly to love deeply instead of the small, tight-held heart of my hand and that my eyes would open to whatever new things could now burst forth from that seed of my dream.
little seed, you have carried the hope of my soul
you have been my world, my all, my invested self
i have finally learned that burying you in the dark, damp ground
is the very task you were made for, that I was made for.
made to be buried, my confusion and sorrows
little seed, today you are gone down into the dirt and
i am empty handed again, bruised from holding you so tight
so long holding myself from the brink of homecoming
my pathway home, to the house of my father
the wide open, unknown but familiar embrace
is scattered with small burial mounds, hope filled moments
where I have learned to trust openhanded into the darkness
secretly I am burying myself, placing my too easily constructed
ideas into the earth to break down, shake out new strength
learning to breath in the big empty spaces
now that I am ready to be new.
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
