sustain:if:able kiwi

faith of girls: more than a guy thing part 3

What do Lo-ruhamah in Hosea 1, Namaan’s wife’s slave girl in 2 Kings 5, the slave girl in Philippi in Acts 16, Jarius daughter in the Gospels, have in common?

First, they are pre-pubescent girls. Second, they are agents of new theology. God is made more real, more understandable, more present, through these girls. This is so consistent with Jesus, who takes children in his arms and reminds us that keys to God’s Kingdom are found in them.

My reading in gender and faith development continues. I didn’t expect this when I began my sabbatical. But I’ve learnt there are times to chase the unexpected, to follow the rabbit holes of research. My intuition says there is something important about the emerging church and gender, so I am reading.

In response to my posts last week on faith development and gender (here and here), Andy Goodliff commented, suggesting The Faith of Girls by Anne Phillips.

It is superb.

Phillips notes how gender blind is the church, and that most theologies of childhood have been written by men. She interviews 17 young girls, seeking to understand their faith development. “In asking the girls the question: ‘Who is God for you?’ I was not asking them to engage in abstract theory or systematic theology, but to narrate or to reflect on how and where in their own experience they had encountered God.” (105)

Anne argues for a “wombing” theology as an approach to faith development. It protects and so the need for a “home space.” It enables play, in which the one being birthed is free, away from adult control, to work at their identity. It connects. Regarding church, “membership of a cohort was not enough for the girls to feel a sense of belonging. Intergenerational sharing was named as a significant feature in their attachment to the environment … Girls [interviewed] regularly spoke of the impact on their faith of older people … Most participation was initiated by adults.” (160)

The Faith of Girls is practical theology at it’s best. It shows how by starting with human experience, in this case the faith development of young girls, we find fresh insights, new imaginations emerging from the Christian tradition and the Biblical text. (To the above list of Biblical characters offered by Phillips, I’d also add Mary. Plus the unnamed children of those effected by Jesus healing ministry, for example, if the leper in Mark 1 had a daughter, or the Syro-Phronecian woman had a daughter.)

Phillips is a Baptist minister, and Co-Principal of Northern Baptist College and the book emerges from her PHD research. The Faith of Girls is currently only available in hardback, which makes it pricey. But still worth it. There is a sermon series on young girls as Biblical characters, there is rich material to discuss with those in your church responsible for faith development, there are insights for fathers and mothers, grandparents, other family into how they raise children.

Jesus deck lectionary: spirituality of “wise men” as theology of family

I am using the Jesus Deck as my current lectionary. Every day I deal myself a card. Before Easter, it was Mark, as I ran through the drama that is Holy week. After Easter, Christians celebrate resurrection. A season of surprise. So the whole deck gets shuffled and dealt randomly. After Pentecost, I will use colour. I will keep dealing cards until I find some green. Growth. The colour attributed to the Spirit in Rublevs Icon. That will become my lectionary.

Today the Jesus deck dealt me Matthew 2. The text on the top reads “We have seen his star.” The text running along the bottom reads “Astrologers.” It’s a reference to the magi of Matthew 2:1-12.

It is interesting to engage this story outside Christmas. Although of course, given travel time, the story would have started months before.

Perhaps on a day in April.

A day like today.

Looking at this Jesus deck card, I am struck by how God uses hobbies – took the everyday passions of these “magi” and crafted through that a way to seek and search. So often spirituality is removed from the ordinary, and yet here is God inviting our hobbies and vocations, our passions and interests into a pursuit of divine. (Hence my Dictionary of Everyday Spirituality series).

Thinking of ordinary, I began to wonder if these magi had families. If so, what the star would have meant for their spiritual search.

You see, family is the perennial problem faced by all travellers. To take the kids and grandparents. Or to leave them behind.

The horns of a dilemna. To go alone. Or to drag in the innocent with you on an unknown search?

Either way, stay or come, relationships are being torn, domestic life reshaped. It’s a tough gig, seeing a star.

Which took me back to the Biblical text surrounding this particular Jesus deck card. Families in pain surround the magi narrative.

Jesus being wrapt in swaddling cloth and rocked to Egypt. That’s migration – forced to find shelter in a new language; look for work as your potential workmates comment on your accent; missing home; family not seeing the first Jesus smile, the first Jesus step. It’s a tough gig, carrying a star.

And let’s not talk about the screams that rent Israel. The nightmares of mothers screaming for their babies, dead at Herod’s knife. Families in pain surrounds this Jesus.

So what happens when we engage the story of the magi outside Christmas. We are invited to seek a star, to find God amid our ordinary. But as we peer at the spiritual search we ponder. Is it one of glamourous adventure? Or deep pain? Or both?

Time for a hug of those I love.

being consumed (at Christmas)

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire is a great little book. At only 100 pages, there is both a depth of theological reflection, yet an incredibly practical edge. It is an attempt to “sketch out a view of everyday economic life with the use of Christian resources.” (viii)

“The Eucharist tells another story about hunger and consumption.” (94).

The argument is that the Eucharist provides an alternative imagination to globalisation. It’s not just theory, because the assertion that the “church is called to be a different kind of economic space and to foster such spaces in the world” (ix) is followed by some really concrete practices

• turn our homes into sites of creative production, not just consumption (such a practical alternative perhaps to Christmas)
• donate time to those in need
• deposit in community development banks
• buy locally
• Christian business practices and
• Fair Trade

I reckon it’s a sort of Catholic equivalent of Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling in the sense that both seem to provide an integrative center for mission. So in Being Consumed, that integrative centre is the eucharist, while in Culture Making it is the invitation to play in culture that allows a mission, whether it is a minister leading a change, a teenager engaging in social justice, a retired person crafting for charity or a Council worker enacting legislation for the sake of a cleaner city.

(For some of my commentary on this a great little video, see here).

Both seem to provide ways beyond the church-centric imagination that plagues so much of contemporary mission (including fresh expressions) thinking. What is more appealing about Being Consumed, in contrast to Culture Making, is that the eucharist is more more communal, much more social, than the tendency to individualism in culture makers.

Further links:
Consumerism at Christmas (part one)
Consumerism at Christmas (another here).

Advent acts of healing and redemption

The Lake (Ellesmere) on which my most re-creative space is found, was a few years ago, declared pretty well dead, a victim of chemical pollution and lack of care.

After much negotiation, the local Maori tribe has been given a greater opportunity to care for the Lake. This morning, with the air dead calm, I walked out where the River (Selwyn) meets the Lake. What was a paddock is now planted in native bush. An attractive set of wooden steps welcomes. A number of new trails toward the lake are being developed. It might be a coincidence, but the bird life seems more abundant. Black swans patrolled the river and a range of shags and seagulls fought for fish.

It struck me as being a wonderful metaphor for the work of God in the world. I have been absent, in another country. And yet creation care continues, land is being offered some space to healing and the birds rejoice. In a few days we will celebrate the birth of the One who made healing and redemption, of human and creation, a possibility in which all are invited to participate.

Romans 8:21, 23 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God …Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

what would I use an iPAD for?

I’ve been given a monetary gift. It’s a thankyou in response to working quite intensely over a recent weekend, a period that left me quite drained.

So it would be nice to use this gift to intentionally re-source and re-plenish myself, to be able to point to something and say ‘this is a blessing back, for being a blessing out.’

Books, music and art are (definite) possibilities. Another suggestion is that I buy an iPAD. I already have a kindle (which I use for reading and love the new reading horizons) and a laptop (for work) and I’m not not convinced about more technological acquisition.

So, fellow readers what really – usefully, resourcefully – would I use an iPAD for? How would it help re-source and re-plenish me, in ways that a kindle or laptop couldn’t?

What to Remember When Waking: a poetic opening into Incarnation

I’ve been sitting for the last two months with a poem by David Whyte (What to remember when waking). My supervisor gave it to me, first in response to some prayers I was writing: short tweets type prayers as I sought to turn into prayer my first waking moments. Like these:

Gentle patter of falling rain is a healing, relational gesture. God help me treasure your active participation in the world today.

Mist, a mystery, gently striding the hills, a humble quest suggested. God, courage please, for every question in that quest today.

Sparrows you flit, in effortless flight, through God’s wide world. Today, God may I share in playful participative play.

My supervisor connected my prayers with the first line of the first verse:

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake

As I say with it, it began to provide a way to pray as I considered the Principal role, especially the last verse:

What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Then, as we have moved into December, into Advent, as I’ve been pondering the Christmas message, the 3rd verse has become significant.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

It suggests a way of understanding Incarnation, God-in-flesh. God choosing to become visible in Christ, Christ carrying a gift of love to others, a gift not from this world, but from the Eternal, a gift defined not by these world’s values, but from the life and love of God.

It’s amazing how a poem can live on, find increasing depth, resonate with different parts of my life. Anyhow, for those interested here’s the poem, offered in the sense it might be useful to others in this Advent season.

burning bush (Exodus 3 and 4), mission, call, creativity and Advent

I’ve been sitting for the last few months with the call of Moses in Exodus 3 and 4. A few months ago I heard it told well as a children’s story and really hit me. First, mission and the importance of beginning with our ears on. Second, call and what it means for me to respond to God’s call by simply giving my “staff” – my gifts, talents, experiences.

Over the weekend, as a way of trying to dwell further on the text, I googled burning bush icons. (I’m just about to finish an icon (another pioneer Jesus), so I’m beginning to feel my way toward my next icon project.) I could only find about four and one, was most intriguing. It is titled the Theotokos of the Unburnt Bush.

Mary is surrounded by the flames. She literally sits in the middle of the burning bush, while Jesus sits in the middle of Mary! I like how small Moses is, off and to the side, and the little angels up top, doing their spiritual play!

Textually, much of Jesus in the Gospels, especially in Matthew, is framed as the new Moses, leading a new Exodus. Thus visually, a burning bush icon that references Jesus is very Biblically astute.

What struck me was how visually it connects for me with that superb Advent icon, the Theotokos Orans icon.

Toward the end of last year, leading into Advent, I spent much time reflecting on the Orans icon and the implications for mission, church and pioneer leadership (here and here).

So there is something intuitive here for me, about the need to take of shoes for we stand on holy ground, about the mission of Moses as a forerunner of the mission of Jesus, about refinement, about possibilities.

Yes, I think I know what my next icon might be!

I am a pimple in the life of a century-old church

Over the weekend, the church, I used to pastor, Opawa Baptist, celebrated 100 years. It was a great thrill to be there and to hear the stories and look at the photos and to see the archival video footage. Which all served to reinforce how insignificant my 6 years of involvement was in the span of things.

I was merely a pimple in a church in which so many ministered and loved and prayed. Which feels good.

As part of the Sunday morning sermon I was invited (along with 3 other ministers in the life of church) to spend 5-8 minutes addressing the question – what was the Spirit up to? My period of ministry was from the beginning of 2004 to the start of 2010 and here’s what I said. (more…)

What does the Spirit smell like?

Yesterday in class we began by smelling the Bible. I realise this is not a standard approach to Christianity, the Bible or to tertiary study. So before we began, as a group we needed to take quite some time to make sure we were connecting with our noses.

So I began with a quick quiz. People were asked to rank favourite smells – sunday roast, coffee, bbq, gingerbread, popcorn, cut grass. The buzz of conversation confirmed that people were starting to think through their noses.

Second, we read an excerpt from Sense Making Faith, reminding us of how important smell is – our unique smell, smell in creation, the changing smells of life.

Third, we took some quiet time to reflect on the familiar scent of a person we love, followed by the smell of our church. How would we recognise people and place by smell alone?

Fourthly, we prayed

Lord God,
You walk in all our memories
You know where we have been
What we have said, known and felt
Come to us in the scent we remember
The time when we walked with you
And know that we walk with you still
Amen. Prayer from Sense Making Faith.

Fifthly, we considered not just good smells, but also bad spells. We asked ourselves where are the bad smells in our community? And we prayed, together again. We started and ended the prayer together, with space in the middle for us to name individually the smells we have been reflecting upon.

Lord God,
In the stink of rubbish tips where people make a living
In the stench of grave where people search for their dead
In the foul odour of disease where people are suffering
You are there. (space for individuals to name the smells). You are the fresh air.
Help us to make lives for the scavengers of rubbish
Help us to bring justice for the unknown dead
Help us to nurse and heal the diseased.
Help us to bring your fresh new life to the world. Amen (Prayer from Sense Making Faith).

We were now ready to smell the Bible. We were aware of the importance of smell and the fact that smell can work both positively and negatively. And so we smelt our Biblical text for the week (Luke 1:39-45). I read it slowly, pausing often.

And we were moved, by the fresh insights that emerged, by the growing awareness of the humanity of the text. And we were stumped by verse 41 “filled with the Holy Spirit.” What does the Spirit smell like? Are we “smelling” too much into the text? Or is that the Spirit does have an aroma, and we’ve simply never yet been aware of it, never paid attention?

A note: Much of this material comes from Sense Making Faith which is a wonderful resource. For more on how it can be used, not just in a class, but in church and in mission, go here.

an icon of the everyday: Mary holding the digital (to)day

I arrived at work to find this delightfully random moment …

I am in the midst of writing a course for distance. It’s all pretty chaotic, both in my head, on my desk and around my office floor. Before I left last night, I cleared my desk and placed a piece of paper on the noticeboard – a printed page of icons. Each icon signals the need for a student to read, to www, to reflect, to discuss, to do, to write, to media, to send.

Anyhow, overnight the “icon” paper had fallen. It had come to rest on my Mary icon (which I painted a number of years ago, and sits on my desk as a silent plea for me and my work).

So as I arrived today the paper icon, my workload, had randomly come to rest in Mary’s arms. Digital icon held by my ancient painted icon. A nicely random moment, an icon for my everyday, a random reminder to my cluttered head as it progresses throughout the day.

For more I’ve written on icons of Mary, prayer, mission and the church, go here

My first Christmas pastor-free

means
enjoying breakfast
slow,
with family

being upright post-prandial
stuffed, but not
from Christmas service

but whether pastor
or -free

the Christmas task
of unraveling hope in tinsel-town
of finding heavenly peace amid family wrappings
of defining love and joy
as glue stronger than glitter

Life’s view thru babies eyes
Christ, that’s hard

commercialism at Christmas? postures worth pondering (part 2)

Further to my commercialism at Christmas? An ancient story worth pondering, I came across this quote:

“Christmas celebrations …[are the] embodiement of consumer culture,” according to Russell Belk, 78.

So Christians need to be thinking carefully about how to respond to Christmas. As we plan, is our Jesus been co-opted, consumed even, by the marketplace? In the midst of canned carols, what’s our posture?

Anti: We choose to stand with the Gringe and moan. We wring out hands at the consumerism, the secularisation, the hype, the excess.  Despite such rhetoric, we will all continue to shop over the next days. Such is the enmeshment of the consumptive system we part of.

Alternative: “The very fact that consumerism continues to draw upon and inhabit religious ideas and events for its own ends also means that religion continues to quietly peddle its countercultural message … the sentimentalizing of the nativity story at the height of consumerist indulgence creates alternative spaces for different meanings.” (Martyn Percy, Engaging with Contemporary Culture, Ashgate, UK, 58)

In other words, we see a sort of symbiotic relationship, in which the very consumerism of the culture in fact opens up a space which makes elements of the Christian story more appealing, more present. In practical terms

• the earlier the carols, the greater the importance of Advent themes, candles, resources
• the more the stress, the more the chance for churches to provide quiet, reflective spaces
• the more the pressure to spend, the more the chance to offer simplicity in card-making workshops or home-made gifts
• the more the hype, the more the chance to offer community meals on Christmas Day
• the more the family emphasis, the greater the chance to offer Blue Christmas services or carol sing to the elderly and lonely.

Such a posture still leaves us open to the charge that we are tilting at the surface, and not dealing with the systemic injustices of global consumerism.

Affirmation: Much exists in Christmas that Christianity might want to affirm. Charitable contributions peak at Christmas, while far flung families connect and reconnect (Russell W. Belk, “The Human Consequences of Consumer culture,” in Elusive Consumption, 67-86). All of these are reflections of God’s goodness in and through humanity and surely reasons for Christians to affirm parts of Christmas.

In a Western world, awash with consumption, what other “Christian Christmas” postures are you seeing?

commercialism at Christmas? An ancient story worth pondering

A world-denying Jew heard the call to asceticism. He thought it a part of the commandments that he must do without good food, good wine, and the company of good women and friends in general. He took no place at their festive tables; he heard no good music and did without great art. All of this he did with an eye on the promise of paradise for the renouncer.

He died. He did indeed find himself in paradise.

But three days later, they threw him out because he understood nothing of what was going on.

ordination sermon: creationary re John the Baptist

A creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary. For more resources go here.

I had the privilege of being asked to preach at the Uniting Church ordination of five folk today. For those interested, here is the sermon. A story, some theology and integration with U2′s Stand up comedy. (Since it is also based on the lectionary text for the day (Matthew 3:1-12), John the Baptist, I’ve added it to the creationary). (more…)