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Reconciliation

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This business of reconciliation

Fr. Davids musings

2020 was not the most attractive year. What made it so unattractive was not just the ventilators, the tired and frazzled health workers and the refrigerated morgue trucks. No, far more uglier and painful than any of those things was the relationships that became fraught and frayed. Some I imagine were able to stitched back together again. Always with a line or scar to show that ‘something’ had happened. Some perhaps were left as irreconcilable, irreparable, gaping wounds.

Here we are with one month completed of 2021 and while there is a psychological edge to starting a new year, COVID has not mysteriously vanished into thin air never to return again. There are still restrictions at least in some parts of the world and understandable precautions are still being exercised. The business of reconciliation is still just as urgent and vital as ever.

Now this business of reconciliation is a tough gig because it must start with the individual. In other words it has to begin with you and it has to start with me. We need to get our own stuff together before we pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV. Before we phone old so and so, or type that email and text. We need to be reconciled with ourselves and with our God, whatever your version may or not be. If you are not as placid as Lake Hamilton on a gorgeous Autumn morning, then your encounters will be choppy and rambunctious. For the rest of this year  our news people we will continuously remind us just how enormous and urgent this business of reconciliation is.

Every decision and every word should be guided by this question. Will my actions and words lead to reconciliation or will they lead to disaster? The choice is ours.

January 31

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The question God asks us when we muck up is…

A reflection from Fr. David.

For Christmas I was given a splendid book called “Humans”  by Brandon Stanton. Brandon travels the world to interview people and they offer a brief snap shot of their life. Sometimes its just a one liner  like “I’ve seen a lot of death” from a person in a displaced persons site in South Sudan. Sometimes it's a youngster “There’s nothing hard about being four” from a child in New York. This child in Paris was particularly endearing “We’re eating cookies before lunch because Grandpa doesn’t have any rules.”

The book has a photo of each person that is interviewed.

But the one that smacked me in the right ear hole was from a gentleman from Colombia.

“I’ve been sitting here for four hours thinking about what I should do.  I don’t want to go home.  I *** up again.  I’ve been a drug addict my whole life.  But I was clean for three months.  I got a job at a call centre.  I was doing well.  Then as soon as I got my pay-check, I went out drinking with some co-workers.  Just a normal thing.  But then I tried a little coke, went on a binge, and lost my job.  Same story as always.  And now I don’t want to go home.  I live with my mother.  She’s never lost faith in me.  My brother was killed in the army so I’m her only son.  She doesn’t deserve this.  She was so happy that I had a job.  She’d convinced herself that things were finally going to be OK.  And I’ve got to go home and tell her what happened.  And I don’t want to do it.  She’s not even going to be mad.  She’ll just be so hurt.  Then she’ll ask me if I’ve eaten.”  (Bogotá, Colombia)

It was such a candid piece and I related to it so strongly.  I believe that it has much to teach us about our fallible, faulty ourselves and more importantly the forgiving nature of God.

Let's unpack what this guy says and see what we might learn.

“I’ve been sitting here for four hours thinking about what I should do.  I don’t want to go home”

Our friend is clearly procrastinating. He knows what he needs to do and where he needs to go. He needs to go home and own up, but for very understandable reasons he doesn’t want to.

Then the very first important and hardest thing happens. “I *** up again.” The recognition that not only has he failed, but he has failed again. And for me, looking in on that admission there is a sense of grumpiness but also I want to say ‘Bravo’ for being brave enough to fess up and own up. To face not only what he has done but also the consequences of his actions.

Then the whole sorry story comes out. How he has always been a drug addict. Just like us, we have always been sinners. How he was doing so well and how his mum was so proud of him. Read God and the heavenly host enthusiastically cheering us on.

‘My mother has never lost faith in me’. Just as God has never lost faith in us.  ‘My mother doesn’t deserve this’, just as God does not deserve this.

“And I’ve got to go home and tell her what happened.  And I don’t want to do it.”

I know this feeling well. I have to go to my heavenly Father and tell him what has happened and I don’t want to because I am ashamed.

‘She’s not even going to be mad.  She’ll just be so hurt’.

Whenever I have gone home to my heavenly Father He has never been mad. It’s why fessing up is such a painful experience. In some ways it might be easier if God got grumpy but he never does. He is saddened, yes; disappointed, frequently; tender, always. He always wants to be reconciled to me far more than I to Him. He is already at home waiting for me. In fact, He was probably on the front porch before I have even turned around and started walking home towards Him.

“Then she’ll ask me if I’ve eaten.”

And there it is. A ruling off, a new beginning, the offer of nurture and nourishment. That is how God loves us. Our fear of retribution and wrath was severely misplaced. Instead of a blazing blowtorch of indignation, we are fed and given what we need to go out and make a fresh start.

We believe in a God whose only concern is not retaliation and punishment. He does not say “What a naughty brat!” He does not ask  “Why did you do this… again? What were you thinking?” The question God asks us when we muck up is…

“Have you eaten?”

Come After Me

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"Come after me"

Each year we read one of the three gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke. We get large slabs of John in Lent and Easter.

This year we will be reading through Marks gospel. It is the shortest of the gospels and was designed to be read out loud to a congregation.

In Mark’s gospel the figure of Jesus is an irrepressible and energetic person who bounds swiftly from one incident to another. No wonder Mark is represented as a lion and if you look closely at the pulpit in Christchurch Hamilton you will spot the lion. To accentuate this, the phrase “and immediately” is used no less 41 times in the short gospel of Mark. Look out for it this year.

Further this industrious and spritely Jesus goes blithely and swiftly from one incident to the next episode, seemingly with little regard for the confusion and bewilderment that he leaves behind.

In today's gospel it reads as though the 4 fishermen were parked close together on the same beach and were all called on the same day. The reality was probably quite different. But what of poor old Zebedee who apparently within the space of a 10 second conversation, finds himself without 2 of his leading hands. In fact we don’t hear anything more about Zebedee for the rest of Mark's gospel. For Mark’s purposes, the call of his sons James and John is the important bit.

The usual translation of Jesus' invitation is “come follow me” but I happened to stumble across a slightly different translation. “Come after me.” Now that puts a totally different perspective on things.

It could mean ‘Come after me’ in time and that is certainly true of us. We come much later. A couple of 1000 years later in fact. But at a deeper level the words ‘Come after me’ evoke a sense of tease or of dare. “Come after me”. An invitation to dance, to chase, to try and catch up. If we think of it in this sense, we come to understand that Jesus often seems elusive, almost mischievous, almost as if He knows that the more we chase, the more we want Him and the more we will enjoy Him in those rare moments when sometimes He seems so very, very close.  In those rare moments the Master is like an ethereal bubble. There, but not really there. The  bubble pops just as quickly as it arrived. Then He is gone again and we are left wanting Him more than ever. Bewildered and be-puzzled we are left scratching our head and realising that He was not where we expected Him to be. Then we are fired in the chase, and we start the search again. Come after me.

Perhaps there is a sense in which we are always playing catch up with Jesus. We get close and we think we understand; that we finally have our brain around one small piece of the puzzle. That He is near. And then just when He is at our fingertips, He streaks ahead, laughing and playfully invites us to come after Him once more. And far from despairing, we giggle and come after him in our limping stumbling, tottering way just as a toddler comes after their parent. With arms outstretched with hope and joy, knowing that an embrace is always there for the taking and the asking. Come after me.

It is when others sense the urgency, vitality and purposefulness  of our pursuit, that they just might begin to wonder what all the fuss is about. It is your vocation and mine to invite them along in this game called “Come after me”.

And there are moments when the pace seems frantic and our brains and hearts go into overdrive and there are times when we lie down in green pastures beside still waters and He spreads a table for us. Then we just sit quietly and feast in his presence. Come after me. We are called to make a conscious, intentional response to come after Him.

This is a choice. To work at a living relationship with the Living Christ. It is not inherited, it is not accidental, it is not a written contract on a bit of paper with a sunset clause and a use by date. In another place Jesus will offer an implement to help you on your way with this journey. If anyone wants to come after me he must….Come after me.

Sometimes in this game, it is us who need to do the asking. Just like Matthew the tax collector did. "I’m having a dinner party tonight Jesus with some of my dearest and dodgy friends. I’m hoping that you might come along." Come after me.

But with affection, the thing I come back to, is an image of The Master walking along a golden beach on a bright sunshiny day. Me, self absorbed in something that is about to become redundant. I just don’t know it yet.  He stops close by. I turn and look up. With a twinkle in his eye and a winning smirk, He says “Come after me”. And immediately, in a heartbeat, I am there. I am walking away from everything that is familiar and I am already home.

This Week’s Words

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Play School

I grew up with Play-school on a black and white TV screen. I can still remember the song.
“There’s a bear in there and chair as well; there are people with games and stories to tell…”
I heard these words afresh the other day and it occurred to me that they are indicative of every family and every home. Doesn’t every home have it’s characters like Big Ted, little ted, Humpty and Jemima? Some are fragile, some are noisy, some are cuddly and others are larger than life. Some are helpful, some are less so. Some of the people play games and these games can be amusing, but they can also be manipulative and detrimental. Time and time again, I have learnt the hard way that I have no idea what goes on behind closed doors in other peoples ‘Play school’. It all may seem sugar and spice, but the reality is often quite different.
Things are never exactly as they seem. Sometimes things slush around a bit. People can grow twisted and brittle while others in the most arduous of circumstances seem to become bold, and mature like a fine bottle of wine. And it’s so terrifyingly easy to think that we know exactly how ‘their gig’ works, when the reality is that often we haven’t got our own gig worked out. So next time the door is ‘open wide’ and you are invited to ‘come inside’, tread gently friends. Tread very gently. Sit on the ‘chair in there’ and remember that you too come from a home that is complex and full of characters. Remember that like the windows in Play-school, you are only being shown one fleeting insight of something that is continuously evolving.
Play-school continues to be educational at every stage of our life.

Fr. David’s musings

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Start where you are | Begin with what you’ve got

I was reading a rollicking yarn the other day. It turns out that this guy was speaking at a mammoth conference. All these people had scheduled 3 days into their E-calendars. They had come from far and wide and listened attentively. They liked what they heard. Some had applauded, two people whistled and a dog even yapped.

But someone had forgotten to hire caterers. This was unfortunate and unpleasant. No-one had even thought to order a few canapés and a roast dinner. The keynote speaker was gutted. He was adamant that these good people should not be sent away for fear that they would collapse on the way and the whole ‘duty of care’ thing would rear it’s hoary head. Hmmm what to do?

A quick whip round revealed a few fillet of fish. The keynote speaker gave thanks for this trifling offering and handed around the fish which went a long way. In fact much further than anyone could explain. Actually, no one went away hungry.

A few things about this story.

First, even the most efficient and professional make mistakes. We do not live in a perfect world and before we point our finger we ought to recall our blunders.

Secondly,  this banquet began with the speaker seeing the need and having the compassion to actually do something about the situation. The answer is deep within us and it must be kindled into action.

Finally, I once went to a wise old priest when I was dispirited. He listened to my tale which seems self centred now and his counsel was simple.

“You start where you are and you begin with what you’ve got.” That’s what the keynote speaker did. The location was remote and what he had was trifling. But it was enough, especially when he said Thankyou for the little he had.

Reflection for January 17 ‘On seeing’

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Noticed that there is a lot ‘seeing’ in today's gospel? 

Let me run through the list.

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming

Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree

Jesus said You will see greater things than these.

You will see heaven opened.

And it got me asking myself… how is it that I don’t see? What are the chunks of driftwood in my own eyes that stop me from seeing what should be obvious to me? To my great embarrassment I managed to draw up quite a list. Perhaps you have these same symptoms and if so, my message is one of encouragement. Perhaps we can learn from each other and see a little more clearly going forward.

Our own past can blind us. We see the present and future through the filter of our past. Take for example someone who has suffered as a POW in the war. Understandably the people of the same race as the enemy are looked upon folk to be feared and not trusted. Or the person who has suffered assault at the hands of another. Is it any wonder that they are often  limited in their capacity to enjoy a flourishing relationship into the future?

Few of us would fit into these categories but we all have a past of some sort and it has shaped us to who we are and how we see things. The trick I suspect is to learn from our past and to understand that our warts and blemishes can actually enhance our vision of the future.

For your reflection you might like to hearken back to the bit where James and John get their mum to ask for the front row concert tickets in the next life. The important places. Clearly their past has given them a certain perspective on what is important. It’s a skewed perception but somehow they have gotten the idea that the best seats in the house mean lots of lovely dinner parties and hot and cold running servants. Our Lord, in the bluntest way just asks them a rather disturbing question.  “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?”. Being the servant is more important than having a servant.

What else blurs our vision?

Prejudice. And by this I don’t necessarily mean thinking less of someone because they happen to have grown up in a different culture. A little story might help here. Once upon time in a parish in another galaxy and in a  different time zone I naively believed that Mr. Bloggs gave his wife a hard time. I saw it clearly in the way the couple interacted. So I quickly formed to my shame a certain set of prejudices and I interacted with Mr. Bloggs in a particular sort of way. What I didn’t find out until after the funeral of Mrs. Bloggs was that she wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. And all of a sudden the scales fell from my eyes and I saw things as if for the first time and it all came sharply into focus. Or at least a little bit more so. We have no idea what goes on behind closed doors, where someone has come from, or what might have scarred them or scared them and scares them still.

Familiarity is another thing that can blind us. For example when I  read the scripture most of the time I just read it and think.. yeah… I know how this goes. I know what happens. But sometimes, just sometimes, something belts me between the ears and I see something that I have never seen before. And there is a little part of me that is disappointed with Fr. David for not seeing it earlier and there is a much bigger part of me that is excited by this new found insight. I wonder what else I might discover as the days go on. Some folk find it helpful to take their pew sheet home and with one of those highlighter pens just pick out one phrase or one word. Until I started writing this homily, I had no idea that the word ‘see’ occurred so often.

Weariness too can cloud our vision. We cannot hope to see things clearly if we are tired out of our skull. Is it any wonder that God had a day off after creating the heavens and the earth and is it any wonder that The Master consistently sought out a quiet place to be by Himself?  Do we pause long enough to know and asses how much battery life we have within us? I am usually unpleasantly surprised as to  just how depleted my resources are.

These are just some of the reasons why I don’t see as clearly as I should and perhaps you might relate to them.

Perhaps it explains why we don’t see others as we should. And perhaps if we recharged our batteries more often we would be open to the complexities of others and read our bible more slowly and as a joy, instead of an onerous duty. Maybe then we might even see angels ascending and descending.

A reflection for the baptism of Jesus.

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Baptism of JC Jan 10 2021

When a biographer begins their account of a life the first thing want to do is they want to establish who the person really is. They can do this in a number of ways. By the locality and community into which the person was born or by the person's ancestors. The gospel writers all had their own ways of establishing who Jesus was and his credibility. Let's take a quick look at each one. Matthew begins with a very exhaustive and exhausting genealogy. There are no less than 17 verses and 28 generations listed in grizzly detail beginning with Abraham and finishing with Our Lord. And if you are ever having trouble with insomnia then I can highly recommend this as a marvellous antidote. Luke was keen to establish Our Lord's credibility to the Jewish community for which he was writing and has Jesus born at Bethlehem. Then Jesus is quickly marched off to be him circumcised and go to the temple for the Jewish rite of purification. So Jesus has ticked all the synagogue boxes. John has the exquisite prologue that was read at Christmass eve. “The word was made flesh” leaving the reader in no doubt about the divinity of Jesus and his close relationship with His Heavenly father.
But in this morning's gospel we have Mark establishing who Jesus is with the account of Jesus' baptism. So the story is not just about two guys splashing about in the murky Jordan river. This is Mark's way of showing his readers who Jesus is and this baptism story will do so in several ways. First Remember that Jesus doesn’t need baptism. Jesus is the son of God, the divine the perfect. So how come Jesus is undergoing baptism, in fact he insists on it when John gets all coy. And quite rightly says “No I need to be baptised by you cousin Jesus”.
Answer. Jesus is there in the waters of the Jordan to be baptised not for himself, but for us. He takes our humanity into the waters of baptism and therefore death, in order that when it is our turn to go into the waters of death we may come out triumphant and rise again. Jesus is being baptised for you and and me and that is very good news indeed. Now that tells you what Mark is saying about Jesus. Jesus is the one who will go to extraordinary lengths to be with us in all our murk and yuk and especially our death. Jesus is our saviour and very closest friend who is with us in good times and in wretched.
The next thing Mark tells us about Jesus is that Jesus has a unity with the Holy Spirit. And the spirit descends on Jesus like a dove and in the very next verse that we don’t get in this morning's gospel, the same Holy Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted. Odd,… isn’t it that the Spirit can be around when it's all joy and fantastic, but also ask the most challenging things of us. Another  thing that Mark tells us about Jesus is that he is God's son, the beloved and God is very pleased with him.

And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” John the Baptist and those who were waiting for baptism all heard those words. Remember that they were waiting to confess their sins. So Jesus is for everyone and in a loving way those who know that they get it wrong. So there is hope for the guy that winks at me in the mirror each morning.

So what else is going in this story?

There is a transition. The private quiet life of Jesus is over and can never be recaptured. Jesus cannot go back to how things used to be. Jesus transitions from a hidden life to a public ministry. A new era has begun. John the baptist was the last of the prophets pointing to the Messiah.  God is now doing something new in His son. What happened in the Jordan is a bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament era of grace and truth. So you see by halfway through his first chapter Mark has already told us and his community heaps about who Jesus was and established Jesus credibility as the messiah.

This feast of the baptism of Jesus concludes the Christmass season. We have learnt that in the person of Jesus, God has taken us on. When we understand this, when we know this, when we live this, then you and I have the potential to also be transformed.

Something to think about ..What if … what if God is already saying to you today “You.. are.. my… beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.” “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.”

Doesn’t that have to change us?  Aren’t we also being ‘transformed’? And isn’t the world already being transformed?

Musing

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That thing you just can’t leave alone.

With all the hand washing and sanitising there has developed this small piece of dry skin at the base of my left little finger. It’s been there for some time now. It’s not sore, it's not itchy, it's not noticeable… it’s just there. I know it’s there because I scratch at it sometimes and it has become an unfortunate habit. I know full well what I have to do to fix it. I should use some moisturiser goop. But I don’t make time and I procrastinate. It would take me literally seconds to fix this, but I don’t. I don’t need to play with it. It achieves nothing, but just exacerbates the problem ensuring its longevity and preventing its demise.

It occurs to me that this outward physical thing is a perfect symbol of some of the things that I cannot leave alone. Stuff that is deep within me. Hidden unnoticeable, uncomfortable blemishes.  The hideous ease and speed with which I revisit my past mistakes. The involuntary flinch when I see old so and so on the street. When did that start … and why?

But there is good news. My perception of The Master is that he has long forgotten about my blunders which are most definitely in the past. ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far has Our Lord put away your sins from you’ are the words we use in the sacrament of reconciliation. In other words the past blunders couldn’t be further away.

Still we rake over them. We can’t seem to help ourselves. Maybe with this shiny new year it is finally time to just stop! Draw breath. Reach for the moisturiser and rejoice in a new beginning which had already begun a long time ago.

Fr David’s Musing

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Limited Edition

Black in colour, the T-shirt had two words printed on it. “Limited Edition”. At first I wondered if the wearer was advertising something for sale. But there was no phone number to dial or email to type. Then I woke up. The T-shirt was making the point that each and everyone of us is a limited edition. In fact we are so rare that there is only ever one of us. The human genome people say that while we share a goodly number of our genes with close family, no two people are exactly alike. Even twins who arrive on the same day, to the same parents, with an unexplainable ‘connection’ are different.
The fingerprint folk in our police force tell me that each person's fingerprint is entirely unique and this type of evidence stands up in court. This fingerprint technology has other applications as well. For example, when my old iPad went into palliative care and I had to get a new one, one of the security devices to ‘unlocking’ it is my thumb print. How nifty, but how exciting is that?
Each one of us is completely and utterly and totally unique. In all of human history, there has never been another person exactly the same as you and there never will be.
Now if you were to bid at an auction for a one off creation that could never be reproduced, how much would you expect to pay?
Answer… you couldn’t put a price on it. You are of immeasurable value.
Thus the person next to you, the person you see down in aisle 7 of the supermarket, the person who aggravates and annoys you, the person who rightly is doing a long custodial sentence… Everyone one of us is a ‘Limited edition’.

Reflection For Epiphany

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A reflection for epiphany

Even after we have re read this passage, the Magi of Matthew’s Gospel still remain mysterious people. It seems they are far more unsettling characters than those regal figures riding their camels across our Christmas cards. There are so many layers of meaning to this story, so many symbols, that it is impossible to do it justice in one short Fr. David  sermon. But let me leave you with a few thoughts. One is related to something about staring into the night sky. The Magi we read about are those who, looking at the stars, wonder what it all means. It does not mean that they wrote horoscopes and worshipped the Goddess of Venus.As a lad on a farm at Sheep-hills I often found myself doing exactly what the Magi did… looking up at the star-studded black velvet sky.

It is such a pity that where most of the population live, the night skies are obscured by the light we humans create ourselves.

It’s not quite so bad here in Hamilton, but in Ballarat the light pollution was a real discernible problem. And you see where this is going right?

How often is it that the fall out from our modern day way of life obscures the dazzling mystery that is so obvious to us.

A mystery that is in fact all around us if we only took the time to look.

And for a bit of new years 2021 self examination, you might like to try and discern what is your own light pollution. What is it that subtly and surreptitiously hinders your clarity of vision and what steps might be needed to declutter so that you more easily see what it is that God wants to show you?

I believe that we are called to admire, to be enthralled and yes even to be puzzled. It’s Ok to gaze at something so gawpingly profound and realise that you don’t have all the answers. As an insatiable question asker myself, I can reassure you that it’s OK to ask. Ask early, ask often, ask again and again. Then you can say to yourself

“Good golly gosh I am going to go on looking and enjoying because this vision before me  points to the divine and engages me with a God who is both exhilarating and exciting. When I look at the night sky I see a God who is Knowable and yet unknowable. A God who Shows himself and yet hides himself. This is the wonder and the alluring beauty of the God that we worship.

As a Lad gazing up into the spangled black night I used to  ask myself

“What is being said from the vast universe to me?”

The magi were right to be enthralled and to ask lots of troubling questions. And so the next time you find yourself perplexed and troubled and not having the easy glib answer you might like to take a metaphorical step and back and think.

What is really being asked here… and what is being asked of me? Am I perhaps, like the Magi, being asked to move along and go into a territory unknown where there are traps and heroes and long nights and dragons and joys and Jesus and Mother Mary.

There is also a message in here about those who come to us from different parts of the planet who think differently and ask questions and directions. Sometimes their questions will be puzzling and we will have to think again and in the long run our faith will be strengthened and we will be better informed. Even if we don’t come up with an answer we will at least know why we have no answer. We will have explored all the burrows and turns of the argument and be the better travelled and hopefully wiser.

Most of us don’t spend much of our time looking up into the sky: perhaps foolishly, we suppose there are better things to do. Another thought about this story is about Jesus’s significance for the Gospel writer and the community he wrote for. The three gifts symbolise some central things about Jesus: gold for a king; incense for a god; myrrh to foreshadow the anointing of a body for burial, which will, of course, take on such great significance in the Easter Scriptures we will hear again in a few months time.

The Magi bring their questions, as well as their gifts, to the crib and I would encourage you to bring yours too. One of the magi’s questions is answered; they find the child they were looking for. But in his poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’ T.S. Eliot suggests they return home with as many questions as they brought with them and perhaps that will be your experience here this morning too. Perhaps you might go home with more questions than what you came with. Above all, the Magi ask themselves, ‘Were we led all that way for birth or death?’ Their spiritual journey, it seems, is not over. Nor is ours.

To conclude… What we are told is that the Magi returned to their own lands by another route. Well, after the Christmas encounter with the Christ child, nothing – not even the way home – could ever be quite the same again. Going back to normal? There is no normal anymore: things are different now.

Therefore with Angels and Archangels

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Therefore with angels and archangels

I miss Park run. I miss it for lots of reasons. The collegiality, the dogs, the people. But there is something else.

Maybe it's because I am just a little older but I have discovered that I am not running as quickly as I did when others were there. When park run was happening I could do the 5 kilometres in just under half an hour. I have been unable to repeat these dazzling times of late and I think that it is more than just old age.

I need others to spur me on. My pride was piqued because I saw people half my age going twice as quick and that was a catalyst  for me to find that extra something. To put on that little burst of speed.

But the Park-run folk did something else. As I toddled around there were numerous murmurs of encouragement. The odd nod or ‘Hello’. Breathless, I could only grunt and hope I didn’t sound rude. As you got to the end there was always someone there to say ‘Well done… Good job’ and give you the magic bar code which helps record your time.

I am firmly convinced that it was this positive invigoration that helped me get such great times in the past. Of course, like any child or adult I’m going to do better when I get a hearty cheering on.

In my little life there have been many times when I have been convinced that others have cheered me on from their place ‘on the other side’. This has been particularly potent in my darker patches. Always this cheering comes unbidden, as a welcome surprise. But then I should not be astonished. After all I am the guy who several times a week says ‘therefore with angels and archangels’.

It was an embarrassment

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It was an embarrassment! - A reflection for Christmass

It was an embarrassment! An experience that was excessively cringeworthy. The family Christmass lunch is one those events where only the brave and foolish prosper. Let me tell you about one such fictional attempt at peace on earth and good will to all people.

Fleur and Jack are your welcoming hosts and while there had been some passionate disagreement about Jack's code of dress (Hawaiian shirt, shorts and thongs) they are at the door to greet and meet the troops as they arrive. By the way, Fleur had won and was proudly wearing a twin set and pearls. Jack got away with a dubious but clean T-shirt.

The first to arrive are Darby and Colt. Darby is 17 and has discovered her feminine hormones. Colt is 22 with alluring body art and a face full of fishing tackle piercings. He speaks with an accent that no one can quite identify. They are obviously very happy to be together and sit very closely.

Next to arrive is Martha and June, her partner. Fleur has never really approved of this arrangement while Jack is already pouring them large glasses of Chardonnay as they settle themselves down next to the loud TV. Unannounced they have brought Jimmy their son along and he is gazing down the bottomless black hole of his shiny new Ipad.

Ryker and his Dad Kingston arrive. They live at the dodgy end of the street but have bought a chook from Coles and half a dozen VB cans. They have no-one else for Christmass and Jack thought it would be a cracking idea if they came along. The first Fleur knows about this is when the doorbell goes. Imagine Hyacinth Bucket and an unexpected Onslow.

Ryker and Kingston are the last to arrive. Extra chairs are squished in around the table and a smoky aroma begins to waft from the kitchen. Fleur exclaims a very un-lady like word and hurtles away to sort out the mess.

The Christmass presents are predictable except those between Darby and Colt. They are curious in shape and design. The conversation starts innocently enough. Chooks, footy, cars, real estate and the weather; but then slips mercilessly towards politics, COVID and religion. The booze flows, Faces are flushed, voices begin to be raised. Somehow a chicken drumstick magically sails through the air striking Jimmy's beloved iPad. The christmass tree topples over onto Colt and Darby who are mercifully oblivious to everything else that is happening. The doorbell goes  and the Vicar arrives for a nice pastoral visit and a cup of tea. The police pull up outside as there has been a complaint from one of the neighbours.

It was an embarrassment. So why am I telling you this story and where does God fit into all this mayhem? The good news is that God fits right into our every embarrassment. It is an embarrassment that the Mother of God was a peasant teenage lass from a backwater town. It was an embarrassment  that she and her hubby hadn’t been married for nine months before her waters broke. It was an embarrassment that their pleas for a room were declined.  It was embarrassing that the maternity ward was nothing more than a dark dank cave. It was an embarrassment  that the wise men had to stop and ask directions from a devious and manipulative monarch. It was an embarrassment that Our Lord died a lonely criminal's death with only a few by his side.

It is embarrassing that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords offers himself in meagre busted bread and a sip of wine.

There is no circumstance, no dysfunctional family, no embarrassment so catastrophic, that God is alienated. He can never be apart from Fleur, Jack and the crew or even the well meaning Vicar who should have known better and been at home with his own family. I am going to conclude with some words that I did not write.  A parishioner wrote them and I sought their permission to use their words. If you listen closely you will discern another embarrassment that I had not thought of. The crisp eloquence of the words is something quite special. I found the words helpful and my prayer is that you will too.

Bare feet kissed the stony walkways of Bethlehem
In the early morning dark
Young boys, junior to my fourteen years stood  about in the  mist.
Stood about and stared making me uncomfortable
unable to bare my breast and feed.

Country boys speaking quickly with a pronounced accent,
taking no notice of the cold laughing at private jokes
just standing around devoid of their sheep.
The sky opened for them or so they said
peering into the highest heaven announcing this birth.