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.
Change In down economies, the only thing that’s going to change things is changing things. This is hard for a lot of marketers who are used to defending the status quo, but it’s truly the best option.
If you’re not happy with what you’ve got, what radical changes are you willing to make to change what you’re getting?
The telephone destroyed the telegraph.
Here’s why people liked the telegraph: It was universal, inexpensive, asynchronous and it left a paper trail.The telephone offered not one of these four attributes. It was far from universal, and if someone didn’t have a phone, you couldn’t call them. It was expensive, even before someone called you. It was synchronous–if you weren’t home, no call got made. And of course, there was no paper trail.
If the telephone guys had set out to make something that did what the telegraph does, but better, they probably would have failed. Instead, they solved a different problem, in such an overwhelmingly useful way that they eliminated the feature set of the competition.
The list of examples is long (YouTube vs. television, web vs. newspapers, Nike vs. sneakers). Your turn.
Leading – Initiative, Intuition & Ignition In a time of forecast and present economic recession – the temptation is too much to streamline, restructure and do whatever it takes to maintain the “status quo”. That is, rather than leveraging a time when people need a boost of inspiration, a creative new solution to a previously unthought of problem, a sense of confidence and hope… we “manage” rather than lead.
Obviously, a simplistic overview but still appropriate to consider – we manage our response to the changing market – creating our own focus on maintaining a steady approach- we aim for consistency rather than ebbing and flowing on the wave of economic tide.
However – at Solafida, our approach is a little different. Sure, we’ve streamlined and we’re looking at the future with as much wisdom as we can gather from places like here and here. But we’re also looking at what new opportunities (problems without current solutions) there are for us.
Our number one rule : if responding to the market with the status quo solution, simply results in the status quo – that’s not what we want to do. So we are looking for opportunities to lead, initiate, innovate, ignite and use our intuitive creative sense to propel us forward.
In this time of overwhelming fear of failure – we have the opportunity to leap forward with confidence, for if the expectation is failure, then what’s the worst that could happen?
For example; some of our clients are re-budgeting and trying to figure out how to get the same results with less money. In other words, how do we use the same solutions to get the same answer, but with less investment?
Our response : Let’s choose a different solution, to a different question.
The same here is true for our churches and social organisations as we face decreasing tithes, donations and a more localised view of poverty and economic crisis.
Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for – love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men – will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o’-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted.
If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience.”
The reason why you have to read it is because I’m too lazy to re-type it. But in case you’re wondering, the humour in the story about poor intrepid Gossip Girl Rachel Glucina… is simply the following.
John Key (yes, we are Facebook friends) is Prime Minister of this fine nation. And that one of our leading ladies of the social pages and gossip columns can call him to verify facts… delights me.
Obama, schmobama…. – a few weeks ago, when there was a confusion over scheduling for my friend Todd’s radio interview with JK, it was JK himself that made the call to doublecheck the time, not a secretary or media aide. Just saying folks, that why I like him.
So, I was recently on a flight from Auckland to Wellington and back. What I was doing there doesn’t matter yet but I’ll tell you about it in a few days.
Point being, it’s been broadly publicised in my neck of the woods, how tight the domestic market for air travel has become.. blah blah, global recession etc etc. Read more here.
So, when your product becomes similar in cost to the other competitors in your market – all you have to build on, to generate return business, better loyalty and significantly better word of mouth sales.. is value.
I flew south with one airline and north with another. The first airline served a significant breakfast type snack, coffee, morning paper and inflight radio/tv entertainment. The second flight had no inflight music, nor tv, coffee/tea that was lukewarm and a ‘snack’ comprising of 2 pineapple lumps, 2 winegums and a jaffa. There wasn’t even a copy of the inflight magazine anywhere in our row.
The cost of each flight was the same within $5 dollars. In fact, the second flight was the more expensive one. Neither are advertising cut-rate travel options.
But I love to fly. So how I fly matters. The quality of service and environment. The provision of things that make the experience of flying worthwhile. The intangible, as well as tangible benefits.
So much so, that when on the same route today – I deliberately sought out the better flight. The pricing was still the same as the competitor, if not slightly cheaper. But my experience infinitely better. Similarly, had I wanted to go even further in the experiential goodness – the investment of a few extra dollars would have afforded me a slightly larger seat on a longer flight.
All this to say – it strikes me that we can so easily make the same investment in faith as we travel with Jesus. Full service, or lesser service .. the cost varies little – but the investment and commitment we make to the experience makes all the difference.
I do not want a short-changed experience – I long for the full service, faithful, accruing of airpoints that reflect a life of faith.
A message I heard recently about faithfulness and all sorts reflected on a significant passage of scripture for me = the words often said to the Israelites.. “Now, go up into the land that I have shown you and take possession of it. Do not be afraid for I go with you”. The speaker drew a parallel in our response to this call of God when it comes on each one of us, in each unique way… we either respond as Zachariah did, with disbelief… or as Mary did.. with eager and intrepid fascination at how God would go about fulfilling his promises.
The response of faithfulness to God’s promised land, and our required activity in that process is the scary frontline of purpose and pleasure. God does not need us, but He delights in us, as a friend reminded me yesterday.
Therefore, in the midst of all that is promised, all that is still becoming the fulfilment of God, we stand with two choices. The full experience or the lesser option. The cost truly, is just the same. A Christ who makes all things possible, made sin where there was never sin, for our sake, that he might become the fullness of God’s promise to us and we then, having the choice to respond in kind – might grasp hold of the fullness of His faithfulness to us, with our own meager offering.
Faithful, saying, Yes Lord, be it unto me as you have said! Only to be made more faithful by living and breathing in the full acceptance and experience of Christ at work in us and through us. By our very obedience and faithfulness becoming the delight of the Lord’s hand.
Hence, these were my thoughts at 30,000ft… as I enjoyed the fullest service and experience there was to be had today, and all the while wondering, “how Lord, will you do this thing in my life? yet, may it be to me as you have said.”
There aren’t many stories that surprise me – but this one, from my friend in Wellington (who shall remain nameless for now) takes the cake of the strangest-to-date.
They work in an area of town well-populated with gang members and various criminal activity. One member of a local gang has been involved with the church via the youth pastor for a few years now – helping out with Christmas decorating and other activities, generally associated because of the nature of this youthworker to connect with people of all sorts. In fact, because of this gangmember’s associations and connection with the church – he’s been introduced to the senior pastor a couple of times over the past ten years or so.
However, a short time ago, when our local friend was in fact, dodging the police.. he thought hiding out in the sanctuary of his church would be a good option. He hid, the police sprung him and the senior pastor happened to be there. Terrible time for the SP to have a memory lapse.. but.. when the local said this was his church.. the SP didn’t recall having seen him before.
Long story short – local ends up before the courts to answer a few charges etc. The police summon the pastor of the church (serving notice etc), to testify according to the affadavit he signed at the time of the arrest.
Small issue. The summons was delivered to the youth pastor who then ended up spending three days at court as a police witness, thoroughly debunking the senior pastor’s affadavit that said the local wasn’t associated with their church at all.
The end result? She thought she was appearing as a witness for the defence, the police got highly confused about exactly which witness they were questioning and the strangest days in her youth ministry career occur … spent in the docks testifying against the senior pastor’s sworn statement in regards to knowing the defendant.
Oh golly. Thankfully the SP managed to have a good laugh about it. Sheesh. Awkward timesheets at staff meeting though.
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.
Photograph by Luis Marden.