songs for Advent 6

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:37:32 +1100

Technically, I suppose, this one doesn’t rate as an Advent song. Still, it is the most beautifully truthful song I have heard this Advent season.

If I’m honest, my own confident professions of God’s imminence--the ones preachers make as routinely as breakfast--don’t always match the reality of my heart. Amidst my own frailty and that of others, I look just as awkwardly as everyone else for a glimpse of something holy, something angelic, something star-like to make love’s birth more immediate.

But then today, while waiting for the lift, I stared at an infant asleep in a stroller, her bare feet curled together, small and perfectly formed. Moments later, alone, I recognised holiness and it took my breath away.

There is something about this coming of God in a child that changes the view, that interrupts the horizon, that invades the most ordinary and routine places of life ... forever. Everything is holy now. Everything.

Peter Mayer’s ‘Holy Now’ may not make the Christmas carol list on Sunday, but it’s a gift to me.

‘When holy water was rare at best
I barely wet my fingertips
but now I have to hold my breath
It’s like I’m swimming in a sea of it

It used to be a world half there
heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
Now I’m walking with a reverent air
‘cause everything is holy now’

songs for Advent 5

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:04:49 +1100

I passed a shop window today with an image of the infant Jesus posted behind a display of cosmetics. Not one for lipstick or facial cleansers, I didn’t notice much about what was on offer but I was taken with the image. Jesus had the complexion of an Islander from the South Pacific, was wrapped in a crocheted Chilean blanket, and was held in the black arms of an African mother.

When I came home I saw Milton’s link to JT’s ‘Some children see him’ and felt quite moved by it. So here it is, # 5 on the list:

songs for Advent 4

Thu, 8 Dec 2011 22:07:45 +1100

I know. Including a song by an atheist in my Advent list is a bit left field. It could even be annoying. But this is my list so it’s in. The song is Tim Minhin’s ‘White Wine in the Sun’.

I like it for two reasons.

First, it’s honest. And that’s a trait I find increasingly attractive. After the week I’ve had, I reckon some honest disbelief outshines a pile of religious posturing, point scoring and bigotry any day. But that’s another matter. Really though, I reckon Minchin’s words probably tap into what lots of people feel this time of year, not just card-carrying non-believers. While there’s something about the Christmas story that resonates, even touches the heart, the institutional and commercial trappings that surround it create more scepticism than belief.

Second, Minchin’s song celebrates something about the Christmas story that’s well worth a song or two: family, identity, belonging. Sure, it’s not the whole truth, but it’s truth no less. And it’s evidence too of the spirituality—the deeper longings and values—that inhabits the average religious/agnostic/atheist heart. That’s good, isn’t it?

I’m really not up for telling the world how vacuous and empty its celebration of Christmas is. Sure, it might be shallow and poorly informed—just like my own—but that doesn’t render it illegitimate. I reckon what people find in the Christmas season—the affirmation of life, the celebration of community and good will—is worth cheering for. Otherwise we become like religious Scrooges who do nothing but turn the lip at the tinsel and good cheer. And what good does that do anyone? I’d rather sit in the sun with white wine, my family and my neighbours, and be quietly grateful for the life that is ours through God’s grace ... that grace expressed so magnificently and openly in Jesus.

So here it is:

songs for Advent 3

Wed, 7 Dec 2011 15:49:41 +1100

To be honest, I’ve never known what to do with Mary. Her life experience is so far removed from my own that I’d feel fraudulent suggesting I know anything beyond ‘the mother of Jesus.‘ And when I listen to the most popular retellings of Jesus’ birth story I’m none the wiser. It seems to me like Mary is either deified beyond all recognition or is merely a bit player in an epic drama that surpasses her completely and leaves her eternally silent.

The only glimpse of ‘truth’ I’ve ever come across to push me a little closer to this enigmatic woman came from a song I heard for the first time last Advent. It’s Patty Griffin’s ‘Mary’. My on-line friend Milton posted it in his own ‘music for Advent‘ collection and I was transfixed from beginning to end.

What I find compelling is the picture it paints of the relationship between Jesus and his mother, one that began in a manger but grew far beyond it. I still don’t have a clue as to what that relationship was like. But what this song hints at so gently is the unique but mysterious role a mother plays in a child’s life, no matter who that child is or becomes.

‘Jesus said, “mother I couldn’t stay another day longer.”
He flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face.
And while the angels are singing praises in a blaze of glory,
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place.’

Girffin’s song provides such a human glimpse of Mary, neither deified nor marginalised. Her role in Jesus’ life did not stop in the manger and neither was her love defined by it. Ever in the background, her finger prints were and still are on every page of her child’s story. Deification is completely unnecessary. Who she was is sacred enough.

songs for Advent 2

Mon, 5 Dec 2011 21:39:40 +1100

I hate to be predictable. In fact, I had already decided that ‘Silent Night’ would not make my Advent list, no matter how much it pulls at my Yuletide heart strings. But then I had this experience of not hearing it and I changed my mind.

On Friday night, I was standing alone in the Bourke Street Mall. I was lost. More accurately, I had lost my wife and I was loitering, dazed, wondering what a good husband should do in such circumstances. Just metres away were hordes of people pressing in around the Myer Christmas windows--hundreds of them--and that toe-tapping ‘Santa Clause is coming to town’ bellowing endlessly into the night air. It was kind of fun, actually, watching the kids craning their necks to see the five windows with their elves and reindeer while the parents did serious battle with their strollers.

It took me a few moments to realise that I was standing by the one window set apart from the others, and there was not a soul pressing in to look. It was the Advent window, a lovely scene of the Christ child in a crib with Mary and Joseph hovering over him. On the window was printed the words of ‘Silent Night’ ... all three verses in full.

It was very odd reading those words in this vacant space with the cheery words of ‘Santa Clause’ dominating the sound scape. Here I was just metres from all the red and white tinsel of a Melbourne Christmas and it struck me afresh how difficult it is to hear the silence of the manger amidst the endless noise of this crazy and wonderful time of the year. In fact, to do so is almost a discipline.

To be honest, the words of this old hymn paint a picture of the infant Jesus that’s a bit too saintly and serene to be credible, but the line in the third verse that saves the whole hymn for me describes Jesus’ birth as ‘the dawn of redeeming grace.’ I like that. Dawn. It speaks of a time and place of stillness and silence before the chaos of the day erupts in full.

So it’s back on my list! And what’s more, I’ve chosen a version without words and perhaps something akin to how it might have first sounded when it was written . Enjoy.

songs for Advent 1

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:16:48 +1100

I’m a sucker for the songs of Christmas; a complete musical pushover! Hum me a few bars of ‘Silent Night’ or ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and I’m sentimental putty in your hands. So with yesterday’s beginning of the Advent season, my heart and voice were ready!

In the morning service we sang that magnificent, almost haunting old hymn, ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.’ I’m told the lyrics date back to the 12th century and were penned in Latin, though who by remains a mystery.

O come, O come, Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

The words fit so beautifully with the Isaiah text for Advent’s first Sunday: Isaiah 64.1-9 -- words that form part of Israel’s aching lament over God’s apparent silence. While the people languish in poverty and hunger, their longing for God to speak, to act, to intervene in their tragedy and isolation grows more impassioned as the psalm proceeds: ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.’

I cannot even begin to comprehend the desperation that spurred such words. My own waiting for the breaking in of God’s love through the infant Jesus pales in significance. Yet in some small way, when I sing words like these, I join with the people of God in places far and near, the people of yesterday and today, and even those of tomorrow, in longing for the coming of God, for the birth of love and hope in places and circumstances where darkness and struggle prevail. ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel.’

Writing journal 4

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:27:25 +1100

Monday Oct 31

This term of writing leave has coincided with some interesting events in Melbourne. There’s the visit of the Queen for one, our foreign but much-loved Head of State. We Melburnians have always been suckers for a stylish frock and some pomp and ceremony. I didn’t get down to Fed Square to see her, but apparently I was the only one in Melbourne not there. And then there’s been the saga of Occupy Melbourne, the local offshoot of the international protest movement that originated on Wall Street.

I confess that I don’t really understand Occupy Melbourne. It’s drawing together of disparate concerns, local and global, is perhaps one of its strengths. But it’s also why average joes like me struggle to comprehend. Regardless, as I wandered through the eclectic community in Melbourne’s city square—a passionate but friendly group with their tents, trestle tables and placards—I was quite taken with the festival-like feel of their gathering. Predominantly young, the community’s focus and fervour was in direct contrast to the more usual gatherings of young people who inhabit the city on weekend nights: drunk, obnoxious and threatening. Though struggling to understand what bound them together, I was quietly impressed with the passion of these people for the good of their city and their world. United or not, I thought, surely that’s a good thing.

And then of course, came the eviction. Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, under considerable pressure from the city’s ‘diverse interests’, felt as though he had no choice but to rid Melbourne of this ‘dreadlocked horde’ and give the city square back to ‘the people’. I wanted to say that as a citizen of Melbourne—resident, consumer and worker—I really didn’t mind them being there and I, for one, did not feel the need to have the square back. But there was no obvious means by which to do so. I did submit a note of support via the city’s website, but with no reply.

Part of me felt for Mr Doyle. I know first hand what a contentious array of constituencies he serves. I have sat in enough town hall forums and committee meetings to know what a rabble we are. Leadership is complicated in ways that on-lookers rarely appreciate. I felt for the business owners who found their high-rent establishments suddenly hidden from view behind a motley campground, struggling to know when it would end and fearing for their longer term viability. And I felt for the police. Left with no choice but to enforce the dictates of government, how on earth does one remove people who don’t want to go and under such public scrutiny. Conflict was inevitable. Did they do it as well as they might have? Probably not, but with a member of my own family in the police force, I felt for them still.

At all this was unraveling, I was immersed in reading about the early development of Melbourne’s urban form. If you know Melbourne, you’ll know its unique grid of boulevards, streets and laneways. It was laid out back in 1837 by the surveyor Robert Hoddle. The mapping of Hoddle’s grid was driven by two parallel forces: one the desire of Governor Bourke to bring social and political order to a thriving but disparate settlement, and the other to feed the ravenous commercial appetites for land and space that accompanied Port Philip’s early growth. Governor Gipps, Bourke’s enterprising successor, quickly determined that the division of Hoddle’s grid would include no provision for a public or city square. His strong conviction was that such a space would only encourage democracy.

Indeed, post Gipps it took years, and considerable debate, for a small space to be surrendered for the purpose. Part of the problem with the city square of today is that it remains this awkward division between promenade for the cafes and bars that line its edges—overlooked by one of Melbourne’s most exclusive five-star hotels—and a public gathering place for exhibition, public entertainment and, every now and then, protest. Ultimately, because of the high rents charged for the commercial spaces around it, commercial interests end up usurping the more genuinely public interests that a city square is traditionally provided to serve. So where do public protests go?

Our public gardens are, by design of history, hidden from the common public thoroughfares. Because of this, they can’t provide the public profile that feeds the life of protest movements. The streets themselves are crucial to the movement of traffic and people, the Bourke Street mall a highly commercial space, the forecourt of the State Library cut off temporarily by public works. And then there’s Federation Square, itself highly compromised by commercial interests that now keep it viable.

So, sympathetic as I am to the competing interests now at play in Melbourne’s square, I suspect that giving it back to ‘the people’ is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. It begs the question, which people?

Writing journal 3

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:56:34 +1100

Monday Oct 24

There are few places in my world that I’ve found so consistently inspiring as the Latrobe Reading Room at Melbourne’s State Library. I’ve been going there for more years than I can recall. It always makes me feel smarter, which for someone like me comes in handy from time to time! Today I was there again. Sadly, at this pointy end of the school year it was overrun by students looking dazed and slightly panicked. Still, crammed full, Latrobe’s grand sense of space remains.

My two weeks in Castlemaine are over. It was wonderful and such a good distraction from everything else in my life. I returned to Melbourne on Sunday. For the remaining fortnight I’ll be here, closer to home but still nestled in with my books and laptop.

As for the writing, chapter six is as close to complete as I can make it and I’ve made tentative beginnings to chapters four and five. What’s more I’ve dumped a small bucket load of material into chapter three ready for some mulling over when I get to it. My son is perplexed by how I can write a chapter half way through the book when I’ve not written the ones before it. Though I assured him that all is well, I secretly suspect he’s right ... and I’m stuffed! Oh well.

I’ve had two books on the go the past two weeks. One is Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life in which I have discovered all sorts of things I never knew I wanted to know but have found intriguing. For example, did you know that a vicar in Victorian England kept at least four household servants and sometimes up to ten? And they were all very busy, apparently. Good heavens! The second is Andrew May’s wonderful Espresso: Melbourne’s Coffee Stories in which I discovered today that it was one of my predecessors at Collins Street Baptist Church, Rev Frederic C Spurr, who in 1915 first called upon the city of Melbourne to introduce open-air cafes on the city’s sidewalks: ‘A touch of Paris would make Melbourne the most attractive city in the hemisphere.’ Who said we Baptists are wowsers?