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“Stay soft”: Sabbath rest

  1. In many times and in many ways, God speaks
  2. We may drift away
  3. It was only right
  4. Where you’ll find God
  5. “Stay soft”: Sabbath rest
  6. The difference between right and wrong
  7. An anchor for the soul
  8. Our great desire
  9. Which promises?
  10. Write it on their hearts
  11. The community’s relationship to God
  12. Everyone will know me already

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

Hebrews 3

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

Hebrews 4

When I was a teenager I got a birthday card. There were messages in the card from a few different staff and leaders at my church, but one of the messages was only two words, and they’re the only two words I still remember from it.

Stay soft. -Ads

Adam – a friend and a church leader I looked up to – would often talk about the importance of keeping your heart soft, responsive to God, not being hard-hearted. When he picked those two words to write to me, I took them to heart, and it’s been a formative posture for me, a big part of shaping who I am now.

And that’s the message coming out from this passage in Hebrews too: stay soft.

The couple of verses I’ve quoted are part of the passage I remembered that originally drew me back into reading the bible earlier this year. Our family life has been a real struggle, and we have been exhausted and depleted, and the promise of a sabbath rest, some kind of deep, fulfilling rest, and a call to enter that rest, sprung out of my memory and, like a siren song – so appealing and so urgent – its words drew me back into this passage, and back into the bible.

Do not harden your hearts.

Stay soft.

Not like in the rebellion, the time of testing in the wilderness.

The psalm being quoted actually includes the names “Meribah” and “Massah”, which suggests its probably referring to the two stories where the Israelites have run out of water in the dessert and are wishing they were back in the Egypt, the land of their slavery, because at least there was water there. In both stories Moses strikes a rock with his staff, and miraculously, water comes out – enough for the whole community.1 While much of the commentary on this story is about if Moses did something wrong, Numbers 20:13 puts the focus on the people not trusting God:

This place was known as the waters of Meribah (which means “arguing”) because there the people of Israel argued with the LORD.

Numbers 20:13 (emphasis mine)

And that’s what both the psalm and the book of Hebrews seem to focus on too: the community of Israel didn’t trust God to look after them and give them water.

Despite all the miracles they’d seen so far – “for forty years they saw what I did” – they didn’t trust they’d be provided for. They’d rather go back to slavery because they knew there was an agreement there – they’d do work and they’d get water and food.

All the miracles and provision that came during their time in the desert had not helped them internalise that God would provide for them, and so they kept trying to make other plans. “They have not known my ways, their hearts are always going astray”.

They shall never enter my rest.

Brutal.2

But in Hebrews, the author tries to remind us that they think we’ve still got a better offer open: “Dear friends, even though we are talking this way, we really don’t believe it applies to you.” (Hebrews 6:10).

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God… Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest…

The point being made in Hebrews is about an eternal Sabbath, a permanent rest, full of joy and liveliness and deep delight, that lasts forever – not just the weekly rhythm and the seventh day. But as I’ve been dwelling on this passage in Hebrews, and this rallying cry to “stay soft”, I realised that a weekly Sabbath practice can be a part of keeping a soft heart.

Here’s how I see it:

  • God was doing work among their people, and they saw it.
  • But they did not know God’s ways – they never took it in, never seeing it or beginning to understand who God is and how God works, never internalising it, never learning to live in a way that trusted God’s working.
  • So they argued with God, and made other plans.
  • And so they never entered the promised land, or the promised rest.

…

So, we don’t want to harden our hearts. We want to stay soft. What can we actually do?

When I was in my early twenties I ran a fortnightly small group meeting for young adults in my church, and there was about 30 of us, and to facilitate some kind of conversation that attuned us to what God was doing, I would ask everyone to break up into groups of two or three, and ask a question to each other: where did you notice God this week?

There’s a similar question I ask myself in an end-of-day “Examen” reflective exercise I do, at least when I’m not so tired I fall asleep instantly:

Where have I felt true joy today?
What has troubled me today?
What has challenged me today?
Where and when did I pause today?
Have I noticed God’s presence in any of this?

The Examen: A Daily Prayer

This kind of reflection requires you to pause.

To rest from your works.

To stop.

To cease.

And when you do, your heart rate shifts. Your thoughts shift. You stop problem solving and stop rushing and stop striving and … notice things. Notice the things that brought you joy. The smile from a kid, or the sunshine through the window. You notice the things that were really hard. The words spoken that pierce your heart and cause your stomach to churn. You notice where God’s presence was in it all.

You see, when you’re so focused on what you have to do, it’s easy to miss what others are also doing, easy to miss what’s going on around you, or what’s already happened. This is why gratitude is such an important practice. But more than just the gratitude, there’s the stopping. The ceasing.

When we cease our work, we have the opportunity to see what God is doing, and to know God’s ways, and to stay soft.

In Marva Dawn’s classic book on Sabbath3, she talks about what the Sabbath is for:

  • Its Ceasing deepens our repentance for the many ways that we fail to trust God and try to create our own future. 
  • Its Resting strengthens our faith in the totality of his grace. 
  • Its Embracing invites us to take the truths of our faith and apply them practically in our values and lifestyles. 
  • Its Feasting heightens our sense of eschatological hope — the Joy of our present experience of God’s love and its foretaste of the Joy to come. 
Marva J Dawn, an excerpt from “Keeping the Sabbath Wholly”

Ceasing from “the many ways we fail to trust God and try to create our own future”.

We’re so damn busy trying to create our own future, that we don’t even notice the future God is creating right around us. We have not known his ways.

Ceasing on the Sabbath is an antidote to that, a weekly chance to stay soft, to notice God, and to know God’s ways, and to live in trust. And from there we can move to experience the resting and embracing and feasting too.

And as we practice Sabbath each week, it is indeed practice for that greater rest that is talked about in Hebrews 4.

So I’d encourage you, make every effort to enter that rest. Practice for it by practicing the Sabbath.

One day a week, cease your work.

Notice instead where God is working.

Learn to trust God’s ways.

Stay soft.

Footnotes
  1. The “water from the rock” stories are super interesting. In the Numbers 20 version, Moses is supposed to speak to the rock but instead hits it twice, the miracle happens and water comes out, but for some reason, God is pissed. God says Moses will die in the desert and not see the promised land. But no one is quite sure why God is so angry. This article has a whole gamut of theories from Rabbis who are trying to make sense of it. One particular theory from the 15th century made me laugh:

    “Moses and Aaron’s sin was not particularly terrible; they merely made a mistake. However, G‑d did not want them entering the Land for other reasons. Moses, because he sent the spies, and Aaron because of his involvement, albeit unwilling, with the sin of the Golden Calf. G‑d wanted to protect Moses and Aarons’ honour, so He pretended that the rock was the reason for their punishment, to cover up the true reason.”

    Once you start going down this rabbit hole you notice the death of Miriam at the start of the story, and that leads you to Miriam’s Well and then you start learning about how Miriam was probably a much more important leader than is recognised, and the texts we have tried to diminish her role. Patriarchy 🙄

    Also the Numbers 20 story sounds like it happened at Kadesh, right on the border of the promised land, the same place where the Israelites were when 40 years earlier they had spies come back and tell them about the promised land, and they didn’t trust God would make it theirs. In both this story and the water-from-the-rock story, God was trying to give them something good but they didn’t trust it, and wanted to go back to Egypt where they worked for the things they need.
  2. I’ve written before about how my beliefs around hell and eternal punishment are not what most Christians might expect, and I’ve probably had a few years of having a fairly “universalist” worldview, seeing God in all different places, and so trying not to think about the reality that some people live lives in a way that is not just “a different experience of God” but is actually separate from God and that there’s a pain and despair in that. I still don’t think the dividing line of those who experience God and live in line with God is the same as what religion you put on your census form. But this experience of reading Hebrews in depth for the past few months has actually forced me to open up to that: God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. (Hebrews 4:1)
  3. One day I was looking at my parents bookshelf and I picked up “Keeping the Sabbath Wholly” by Marva J Dawn. I’m glad I did. Sabbath wasn’t a concept that was well taught in my childhood churches, and so this book was my starting point. Even read the dedication:

This book is dedicated to all the people who need the Sabbath

the busiest, who need to work from a cohesive, unfragmented self;

social activists, who need a cycle of worship and action;

those who chase after fulfillment and need to understand their deepest yearnings and to hear the silence;

those who have lost their ability to play because of the materialism and technologization of our society, who need beauty and gaiety and delight;

those who have lost their passion and need to get in touch with feelings;

those who are alone and need emotional nourishment;

those who live in community and need solitude;

those who cannot find their life’s priorities and need a new perspective;

those who think the future is dictated by the present, who need hope and visions of the future to change the present order;

those who long for deeper family life and want to nurture certain values;

the poor and the oppressed, who need to mourn and dance in the prison camp;

the rich and the oppressors, who need to learn nonviolence, stewardship, and God’s purposes in the world;

those who suffer, who need to learn how suffering can be redemptive;

professional theologians, who need to bring the heart back into theology;

those who don’t know how religion fits into the modern world, who need a relationship with God;

those who are disgusted with dry, empty, formalistic worship and want to love and adore God;

those who want to be God’s instruments, enabled and empowered by the Spirit to be world changers and Sabbath healers.

From “Keeping the Sabbath Wholly – Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Fasting” by Marva J. Dawn.
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Where you’ll find God

  1. In many times and in many ways, God speaks
  2. We may drift away
  3. It was only right
  4. Where you’ll find God
  5. “Stay soft”: Sabbath rest
  6. The difference between right and wrong
  7. An anchor for the soul
  8. Our great desire
  9. Which promises?
  10. Write it on their hearts
  11. The community’s relationship to God
  12. Everyone will know me already

Christ, as the Son, is in charge of God’s entire house. And we are God’s house, if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ.

Hebrews 3

When I hear a phrase like “God’s house” the image that comes to my mind is usually a giant building. Perhaps one of the cathedrals of Europe, perhaps a more modern auditorium setting, or perhaps an imagined palatial setting that’s giant and magnificent and heavenly. But in my mind, it’s usually a building.

But here the writer reminds us very clearly that we are God’s house. It’s not a building, it’s people.

It’s also not a single person – it’s plural. They don’t say “and I am God’s house” or “and we are God’s houses”. All of us, together, are where God chooses to live.

And so if you want to find God, your best bet is to look where other humans are gathered.

And that’s what the word church actually means – the gathering, the assembly of people. The building isn’t where God is found. We, the people, are where God is found.

For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”

Jesus in Matthew 18

You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests.

Peter in 1 Peter 2

Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 3

“Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

Jesus in Matthew 25
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It was only right

  1. In many times and in many ways, God speaks
  2. We may drift away
  3. It was only right
  4. Where you’ll find God
  5. “Stay soft”: Sabbath rest
  6. The difference between right and wrong
  7. An anchor for the soul
  8. Our great desire
  9. Which promises?
  10. Write it on their hearts
  11. The community’s relationship to God
  12. Everyone will know me already

God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.

Hebrews 2:10

Everything we see and hear and touch, all of the universe, all of creation, was made. This is one of the starting beliefs of Christianity: that there is a creator. A person behind it all, a person who had a reason to create. It’s not just matter. It’s not just energy. It’s not just existence.

The universe is personal.

“Through whom” is about the craftsmanship. That God is involved in the making of every water-drop, every flower, every person, every galaxy. To quote a church song from my teenage years: “is everything I know marked with my maker’s fingerprints?”

“For whom” is about the intent and the reason. God wanted this universe, and God wanted us in it. That’s our chosen starting point for the big life question: “why are we here?” We’re here because God wanted us, so God created us.

And the intent here is to bring many children – that’s us – into glory. It’s hard to even imagine what this is supposed to mean. The word “glory” here is the same Greek word “doxa” that is used again and again when Jesus talks about “returning in glory“, when Paul is “blinded by the intense light“, when Jesus talks about not needing the approval of the religious leaders, or when he gives examples about the seat of honour at special occasions. Whatever it means, God intends to make us stand out, make something bright and radiant, something honoured, something glorious, out of our lives.

It’s an incredible starting point, that imbues all of life with meaning and purpose and worth and hope.

But we all know life doesn’t actually look like that.

It’s far more messed up.

You know that. I know that.

These grand theological statements just don’t match the experience of our lives. Yes of course there’s joy and radiance… at times. But there’s just as much drudgery, or cruelty, or outright suffering. We feel heartbreak over separation, heartbreak over death, and we live in fear of both of these. We feel shame. We feel loneliness. We know life has suffering, and we know the suffering.

And with that, the writer of this letter to the Hebrews brings us back to Jesus. They promise Jesus is the leader who brings us into salvation, leading from this life to the promised life – from the suffering to the glory.

And while you know and I know that life doesn’t look like the promise being laid out, the writer knows it too, acknowledging that “we have not yet seen” the promise.

They know there is suffering, and they drive home this point: Jesus knew suffering too.

He didn’t just know about suffering. It’s not even that he knows about our suffering and sees us. It’s that he suffered.

Like we do. More, even.

…

So, when I originally thought I’d write a post on these verses, I imagined narrowing in on the idea that it’s through suffering you become a perfect leader. And there’s truth in that… but the more I meditate on this part of the letter to the Hebrews, the more I realise that’s not the truth the writer is trying to get across.

You see, I think Christianity is more about following than about leading. So the thing I’m finding myself focusing on is not me and my leadership… it’s Jesus and his leadership. Because I’m planning to follow him.

And while his path started in a place of honour and privilege – the son of God! – he then became human, deliberately made his home and found his community among those who lived in suffering. Not as a visitor, not as a rescuer, but as one of us. He embraced that, even to death, and through that was lifted back up to the kind of glorious life we talked about. And that is pretty much the story told in our earliest hymn and creed.

If that’s his path, and we’re following him through it, then it’s something worth meditating on.

What we do see is Jesus… because he suffered death for us, he is now “crowned with glory and honor.” Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone.

…

Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.

…

Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God.

…

Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested.

Hebrews 2 (excerpts)
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Dead Stars by Ada Limón

I was listening to an interview with Krista Tippett and Ada Limón, and it was a beautiful, fun, hilarious interview. When she read the poem “Dead Stars” near the end of the interview I was brought to tears.

Here’s the interview.

And here’s the poem:

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising —

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

The lines that cut through me: “Look, we are not unspectacular things We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?”

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We may drift away

  1. In many times and in many ways, God speaks
  2. We may drift away
  3. It was only right
  4. Where you’ll find God
  5. “Stay soft”: Sabbath rest
  6. The difference between right and wrong
  7. An anchor for the soul
  8. Our great desire
  9. Which promises?
  10. Write it on their hearts
  11. The community’s relationship to God
  12. Everyone will know me already

So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it… what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak?

Hebrews 2:1

Last week I wrote about how it had been years since I’d read the bible in any meaningful way. And here in the book of Hebrews it said something that aligned with that experience – if you don’t pay careful attention, you tend to drift.

It’s kind of a relief to read this, honestly. Most of the Christian New Testament parts of the bible were written by people with powerful first hand experiences of Jesus: Peter and John and Matthew were all walking with Jesus everyday for three years before his death. Even Paul who wrote most of the letters in the New Testament talked about his life altering experience as a physical encounter with a resurrected Jesus. I imagine that kind of exposure to a person is indelible, it leaves a permanent mark, its hard to drift away from.

But that’s not what most of us get. We might experience the invisible God, and have spiritual encounters of various kinds, but we don’t see or hear or touch or smell Jesus like they did. Not in a physical, tangible way. If Jesus is the image of the invisible God, we don’t get to see him. We just hear about his life from others. And the experiences we do have first-hand tend to be more intangible.

So it’s refreshing to here someone who wrote an important part of the bible, this letter to the Hebrews, say they’re in the same boat as us. They didn’t give us their name, so we don’t know who exactly it is. (Scholars like to guess. An audio-bible I used to listen to had the voice for Hebrews played by a cast of men and women to demonstrate the ambiguity. I liked the idea that it might have been a woman, because we know several women had important leadership roles in the early church but we’ve mostly been kept from hearing their voices.)

Whoever it was, they say they’re in the same boat as us. They didn’t know Jesus directly, they heard about him from someone else. They’re a second-generation follower. And they say it’s easy to drift and forget.

For me personally, some stuff didn’t drift: a sense of worth, value and dignity, of being made in the image of God. That was deeply internalised. My values as well have been deeply shaped by my faith earlier in life, and those mostly held steady even without continued focus. So what has drifted?

I think its the focus on the “great salvation” they talk about. There’s a big picture, a meta-narrative, an arc of history that ties together the story of Jesus and the stories of us.

When a person keeps this big picture in their field of view, it can yield a big change in the way they lead their lives. Being part of something bigger is incredibly motivating for most of us – and can call us into living courageously, selflessly, resiliently.

And I think that’s the bit that has drifted: without a focus on the big story, the routines and the challenges of my life have become all encompassing. I’m not suggesting I should have been going and serving the poor or preaching in churches instead… keeping my focus on my young family and loving them, providing for them, that should have been the focus anyway. But I wonder if I’d kept a connection to the larger story, if it would help strengthen the moments of joy, help bring meaning to the moments of suffering, and help me see beyond my own troubles to offer compassion to others around me who have their own challenges going on too.

I want to live my life with that big picture in view.

“We must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away”.

Now, there’s a thousand different ways to understand what “great salvation” means, and I think each person’s experience of it, and the way they describe it, would be different. There’s a deep shared truth in there somewhere, and then the just-as-real truth of each person’s experience of it. And of course for me its complicated, because I don’t feel comfortable with some of the simpler narratives of sin and salvation and heaven and hell.

But there is something speaking there, something true, and if I want my life to follow that path in my life, and not drift away, and I should listen carefully, actively, asking questions and seeking to understand.

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In many times and in many ways, God speaks

  1. In many times and in many ways, God speaks
  2. We may drift away
  3. It was only right
  4. Where you’ll find God
  5. “Stay soft”: Sabbath rest
  6. The difference between right and wrong
  7. An anchor for the soul
  8. Our great desire
  9. Which promises?
  10. Write it on their hearts
  11. The community’s relationship to God
  12. Everyone will know me already

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.

Hebrews 1:1

I was catching up with friends from my church recently and one of them talked about how they’d been struggling to read the bible in any valuable way lately, and I struggled to relate – not because I have a vibrant relationship with reading the scriptures myself, but because it’s been so long since I have that, unlike my friend, I didn’t feel its absence in my life.

Years of daily reading as a teenager and young adult, and years of deep study in preparing to lead a small group or write a blog post or preach a sermon, have meant that the christian scriptures have been deeply embedded in how I think. But as the habit of daily reading dwindled, and the need to prepare for small groups or sermons dissipated, I haven’t found myself opening the book often, and when I did, I was often coming to it with a transactional mindset: looking to find something specific, as if the bible’s main purpose was to be a “proof text” to help me feel better about a position I hold or a life decision I’m making.

My friend mentioned they had been finding something else valuable – a book of readings and prayers for everyday life called “Every Moment Holy“. The bible isn’t the only way to hear God speaking. I know that to be true for me: in the years where bible reading hasn’t been a habit, I’ve still felt God speaking through time in nature, through times of reflection and introspection, through podcasts, through music and art, through friends and family and small children.

In all those I felt a sense that “God spoke”. Not an out-loud voice that moves through the air waves and into my ears. Not even an inner voice with a running dialogue in my head. But a sense that God, the hidden animating force of the universe, the person woven into every moment and every molecule, was somehow imparting and transmitting to me a sense of love, of peace, of strength to live a certain way, of clarity. God does speak in many times and in many ways, and we should attune our ears to hear it in all these ways, not just when we have a bible open.

But, having said all that…

I’ve recently been drawn back into the bible.

It started because our family life has been exhausting, and I’ve been feeling depleted. And a phrase I knew from the bible was ringing around in my head: “enter my rest”. I remembered there’s this whole bit in the book of Hebrews where it talks about entering God’s rest, a “Sabbath” rest, and some people enter it, and some don’t, and we should try to be those who do. I couldn’t shake it from my head, so I wanted to read it. (I had to ask Anna where our bible even was.)

And so I picked up the bible, and have been reading Hebrews, and have been drawn into it. All the ways I described “God speaking” and sending me love and peace and strength and clarity – I found again as every day or two I picked up the bible and kept reading.

And it didn’t feel transactional, like I was coming to check some facts or prove a point. It was different, like I was coming to it open to what it might say to me, what it might do to me.

My Dad also has a blog, and earlier this year he posted something which resonates with what I’m experiencing:

In the age of the printed book and of the internet, modern writings whether blogs or learned tomes are ephemeral, read, perhaps noted, and then discarded. They have no particular authority and different readers ascribe different value to them.

Religious reading, on the other hand, is different for the texts are treated with reverence as an ‘infinite resource,’ as a treasure house of wisdom, etc. As such, the words are read and re-read over and over and in time, tend to be committed to memory. “And as a reader memorizes a text, he becomes textualized; that is, he embodies the work that he has committed to memory”:

“‘A memorized work (like a lover, a friend, a spouse, a child) has entered into the fabric of its possessor’s intellectual and emotional life in a way that makes deep claims upon that life, claims that can only be ignored with effort and deliberation.’ … A memorized text has a peculiarly character-forming effect on the memorizer. The text becomes part of his character; he lives in it and lives it out.” (Wenham, Psalms as Torah, 53, citing Paul J. Griffiths, Religious Reading, 46-47).

On Reading and Memorising Scripture by Michael O’Neil (my Dad!)

And that’s been my experience. Reading and letting it change me, and form me. Chewing on the sentences and the phrases in my mind like you chew on gum, slowly letting its flavour out. Treating it as an infinite resource, and approaching it with reverence, and openness to its character-forming effects.

Some of it engaged me on my usual intellectual-theological level. Some of it felt like a lifeline of support and promises to hold me fast with the life challenges I’ve had going on. Some of it inspired me to carry a different attitude in my approach to life. Some of it was personal, and some of it I want to share. I’ve written down about 14 or so things that stood out that I think would be interesting reflections to share on this blog. So: I’m going to do that, starting with this: God speaks at many times, and in many ways.

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Blogmarks Personal

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on the scriptures in Leviticus used to justify homophobia

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has been one of my favourite religious teachers for a few years now. Recently she’s written up two posts exploring what she calls “clobber” texts: verses in the Bible (Hebrew Bible in this case) that are used to clobber the LGBTQ community and justify homophobia / transphobia.

Links to the two articles:

Her analysis is useful (and entertaining) and I imagine I’ll be coming back to these if I ever find myself in a discussion with someone trying to justify homophobia based on the Bible.

Beyond her unpacking of these verses and ways to interpret them, two things stood out to me. First: the role of scripture teachers in a world where religious fundamentalism is taking hold again. She lives in the USA where fundamentalist Christians are gaining significant political power and shaping laws to force their worldview onto others. The reality in Australia’s politics is different, but you see the same religious fundamentalism play out in power structures at the level of families and schools and communities.

Because in the days when drag bans are getting passed and gun bans aren’t, knowing your text inside and out matters.

We have to fight against the encroaching theocracy in many ways at once. One of those ways includes disemboweling bad readings of sacred texts—especially the bad readings that are used to harm people—at every available opportunity.

The other thing that stood out was her willingness to criticise the patriarchal and homophobic ideology when that’s what is in the text. Growing up evangelical, I had been taught “all scripture is God breathed”, and when something in there was completely out of step with our contemporary values, we either tried to change our values to match, or tried to reinterpret the text in some way that downplayed the parts we disagreed with. The Rabbi on the other hand isn’t afraid to question and criticise the scripture itself and the major rabbinic commentary through history – acknowledging it as tainted by human prejudices – even while somehow approaching it with care, treating it as sacred, and allowing it to speak.

As much as I love to hold up the more optimistic texts in my corpus, it’s still a very patriarchal tradition and we have plenty with which to reckon.

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Faith Personal

Imagine believing in the resurrection

It’s a bit of a “clickbait” title, and if you heard someone say it you’d probably imagine them being incredulous, dripping with cynicism: “imagine believing in that! I can’t even imagine how your brain gets to a point where you think a corpse coming back to life and walking out of a tomb isn’t ridiculous…” At some points of my life I’ve been convinced it’s true, and some points not, and well, eh 🤷‍♂️ That’s not what I’m thinking about today.

Instead, imagine, actually think about what it would be like, when someone believes and internalizes the idea that Jesus came back to life, never to die again. That there’s a life beyond this one, overlapping with this one, that means death is not the end. That those who mean the world to us who passed away we will see again, laugh with, eat with, embrace again. That this life isn’t the final life and so the end of this story isn’t the end of the story. Imagine that resurrection means there’s a chance for justice and restoration and hope even when this life has only been injustice, neglect and despair.

What would be different if someone really believed that? If you really believed that?

Imagining in this way isn’t an exercise in futility. One of the books that most impacted me is “The Prophetic Imagination” by Walter Brueggemann, which drove home the point that if you can’t picture a different future, if you can’t imagine it, then you can’t find the energy to start moving toward it. “Without vision the people perish”; but when you can imagine something new, an alternative future with new possibilities opens up.

So what alternate future is unlocked if people really believe in the resurrection?

As a start, the despair of losing someone to death is gone. The death of a loved one is always going to be painful, and life after will hold a sense of loneliness and loss, but “death has lost its sting”. When you believe they’ll live again, and you’ll see them again, and when you do it will be different, a life without the same suffering… then even though it’s hard, there’s an anchor of hope, both hope for you and hope for them.

Then there’s your own fear of death. You might still fear the fate of those left behind – even Jesus on the day of his death was asking his friend to care for his mum. But your own fear of death wouldn’t be the same. Instead of fearing the unknown, or fearing nothingness, if you believe wholeheartedly that after death comes life, and life without the same suffering… then there’s no fear in that. Instead hope, maybe even longing. That side of death looks “better by far”.

And if you don’t fear death, then you’re harder to control. Think of how much evil in the world is sustained because those in power can threaten to kill anyone who tries to stop them. If you don’t fear death, and even more, if you don’t fear missing out on your dreams for this life – because you trust your life will continue and be made new and right after death – then you’re free from that fear and intimidation, and you can act according to your conscience and your sense of justice. If a whole community believes that, it would be impossible to subdue them without eliminating them. They would have so much courage in the face of injustice and persecution… and courage can be very contagious.

And imagine you believe not just that there’s life after death, but you also believe the full good news message: that all will be set right. That those who weep now will laugh, those who are hungry now will be filled, those who have lived in poverty now will inherit the kingdom… all of a sudden you would see so much more dignity in the lowly parts of life. Any suffering, any wrongdoing, any injustice… you could filter it through your understanding of an eternity set right, and all those unbearably hard things would seem “light and momentary”. You could find hope to endure all of life’s hardships, and probably do so with joy.

And because your perspective has shifted and you know those who are suffering are destined for better things… you would feel compelled to bring that future forward, and work hard to help them today, not waiting for the final act to set things right.

(This is not unlike the stories I’ve heard of the first few centuries of the Christian church…)

So, ignoring the question of if it’s true… can you see the impact on the world if you were to believe the resurrection, living like it is true, and embodying resurrection as a driving force in your life?

So, this morning on Easter Sunday, when I stand with hundreds of other people and sing “Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me” – I am encouraged. There is a way of life that stands in defiance of fear of death. The resurrection story frees us to imagine an alternative future, and pulls us forward into a new life, a resurrection life. And that life offers not just a bright hope for tomorrow, but strength and courage and clarity for today. And this morning as the voices of my church sang out and claimed this resurrection to be real, not just as history but present life and power, it helps me believe too.

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Faith Personal

Pendulums and Paradox

I’ve been back at church and this week a line from one of the songs got my brain thinking:

You will always be holy, holy forever

From the song “Holy Forever“

Holy. It’s a word used all the time, especially in church, especially in church songs. The meaning is something like “apartness, holiness, sacredness, separateness” or “revered, set apart for God”1.

Singing about and meditating on God as “holy” is a reminder of how separate God is from us. There is something about God entirely different, foreign and “other” than what we experience as humans, and sometimes its good to remind ourselves that God is set apart, and take on a posture of reverence.

God is holy.
God is set apart.
God is separate from us.

But if there’s a scale from “separate” to “united”, or perhaps from “sacred” to “everyday”… then God is at the other end of the scale too. God is close, the name “Emmanual” that we have on Christmas cards means “God with us”. Yes, God is separate and different to us, but we’re also united with God. Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” over a hundred times, more than any other phrase in his writings2. We can hardly be separate if we are in God.

The same phrase is often translated “united with Christ”. There’s a deep sense that our goal is not separation but unity. 2 Peter 1:4 even talks about us being given promises through which we can “participate in the divine nature”3.

God is holy.
God is separate from us.
God is also united with us.
God is close.

So when I hear a song celebrating the separate, the sacred, the holy nature of God – have we got it wrong? Are we revering separateness when in fact God is close? Is it time for the pendulum to swing the other way – for us to celebrate the nearness and the unity of God?

A pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another like our interest rate cycles or political climates… perhaps eventually finding a stable middle ground… is that the way we should be thinking about God?

Instead of a swinging pendulum, let’s think about it as a paradox.

Something where both ends of the scale are true. Instead of insisting only one side is correct, or instead of feeling we’ve gone too far one way and pulling hard toward the center again… what does it look like to embrace things, and explore how far we can stretch both ends?

But even the metaphor of stretching out something elastic in two directions still implies it will come back to a single middle point. This is a classic example of dualistic thinking – that there’s a clear true and false, and so if we are stretched in two competing directions, it will one day resolve to a single point.

But paradoxes aren’t like that – we could explore both ends of this scale and discover new and transforming ways of thinking about God and knowing God – on both ends of the spectrum.

Instead of a pendulum that swings between two points, or an elastic material that stretches but snaps back to center, we could think of paradox as a national park to explore. We start at our camp site. We don’t know if its in the exact centre of the park… it doesn’t really matter. We can set off walking in any direction, and explore what we find. Be amazed at what we find. Maybe we’ll come back to our original camp site, or maybe we’ll find a new place to camp – or many new places.

The paradox is not here to be answered or resolved. Its here to be explored. To be lived in. To be wandered and to bring wonder.

God is separate and holy. God is near, and united with us. Yes, to both. Let’s explore that.

You’ll do yourself no favours if you pick a side and try hold it, or if you reflexively always swing back to a middle point that doesn’t challenge your thinking too much.

There’s a bunch of paradoxes that are part of Christian faith and life. Jesus as fully human and Jesus as fully God. Fear God and have no fear. Free will and an all knowing God. Doing good to “let you light shine” and doing good in secret.

When faced with these, instead of trying to resolve the contradiction, or trying to find the middle ground, maybe try exploring. Paradox is an invitation to curiosity, to wonder, to humility, and to God changing how we think and how we live.

These are the irreducible mysteries that no systematic theology can logically explain, and it’s best that we imitate Moses when confronted with paradox. When he stood before the bush that burned and was not consumed, he did two things: drew closer for a better look, then removed his shoes.

Jen Pollock Michel
Footnotes
  1. I got these definitions of “Holy” from the website Blue Letter Bible, which has some free tools to look up the original language for a verse and see where else those words are used and get some of the feeling of their meaning. Here’s the link for Holy in the Hebrew bible (“קֹדֶשׁ” / qodesh) and in the greek parts of the bible (“ἅγιος” / hagios). I think I’d enjoy learning to read these languages properly one day.
  2. I first came across the importance of this phrase “en Christo” / “in Christ” in Richard Rohr’s book “The Universal Christ”. The same idea is adapted and shared as a meditation here: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/in-christ-2019-02-27/
  3. In The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware talks about the eastern orthodox idea of there being the “essence” and the “energy” of God, and we’re destined to join in the energy but will remain separate from the essence… which is an interesting way to think about it. But in line with this post, I wonder if there’s value to be found in not trying to resolve this contradiction but embrace both ends as true.
Categories
Justice and Politics Personal

Derrimut

Content Warning: Jan 26th. This post talks about 26th Jan, European invasion/settlement, systematic oppression, racial abuse, and is generally pretty heavy. But the person we’re talking about was an incredibly strong resilient leader who I find really inspiring.

2023 Note: I wrote this originally in January 2017, but am only recently found the draft, and have tidied it up to publish now in 2023. 6 years later I still find this story gut wrenching, challenging and inspiring. I no longer live on the lands of the Kulin nations. Now I’m on Noongar land, and I pay my respects to their leaders, past, present and those emerging.

January 26th goes by different names in Australia. “Australia Day”, “Invasion Day”, “Survival Day”. On the 26th I saw people posting respects on social media to the traditional custodians of the land, the Aboriginal people who have been here for over 50,000 years.

I wanted to do the same, but realised I know very little of the people who lived here in Melbourne before 1835. So I set out to learn.

I live in Williamstown, one of the oldest suburbs in Melbourne, and one of the first places Europeans tried to settle back in the 1830s.

Before their boats landed, there was already a nation here – the Kulin Nation. A collection of 5 tribes, who had lived in the land for 31,000 years. One of the tribes was the Boonwurrung people, and the clan that hugged the coast from the Werribee River, through to Port Melbourne, Albert Park and St Kilda was called the Yalukit Willam.

This blog post is me sharing what I’ve learned about the Yalukit Willam, and one of their leaders. I pay respect to these people, the traditional custodians of the land I live in, and their leaders past, present and emerging.

A photo of a field with low lying grass. Some trees on the right hand side. The left hand side has no buildings or trees for miles, you can see the Melbourne CBD in the distant background, it looks tiny.
A large field near Werribee, with a beautiful sunrise and the Melbourne skyline in the background.
A map showing Williamstown on the left side of the bay, Port Melbourne and South Melbourne on the North, and St Kilda on the east. There is big text labelled Yalukit Willam overlaying the land all around the bay. There's a number of triangles representing camping areas and meeting places used by the Yalukit Willam people.
A map showing the Yalukit Willam land, and known meeting places at the time of European arrival.
A photo of the bay at sunrise. There's beautiful clouds, some wild bushes and rocks on the shore, and you can tell the water is shallow because there are people and dogs standing 100 meters out and its only ankle deep.
Hobson’s Bay. The water is shallow and you can see people and their dogs standing out in the water.

Ancient History

During the last ice age, there was no Port Phillip Bay, the water level was low enough you could walk right across, you could even walk right to Tasmania. After the ice age ended, the water rose to a point higher than it is today, the bay filled, and the area I now live in was completely underwater. It wasn’t until 5,000 years ago that the water level receded, and that was about when the Yalukit Willam people moved in.

(Fun fact, that gives weight to their ancient stories: The geological record lines up with their oral history, as a people they preserved a memory of the last ice age, and as a culture they remembered a time when they could walk across the bay. Even crazier, the Yalukit Willam borders line up closely with the high-water level following the last ice age – they moved in as soon as the water line receded and the land was available to walk on).

Introducing Derrimut

At the time of European Arrival in the area, one of the leaders – an “arweet” – of the Yalukit Willam people, was called Derrimut.

He’s a complicated and sometimes controversial figure… I’ll mention why in a minute, but for me though, in reading his story I’m filled with incredible respect at his strength, and sadness at how much he suffered.

An old painting / portrait of Derrimut. He's a serious looking aboriginal man with a great beard.
Portrait of Derrimut by Benjamin Duterau, painted in 1837 during a visit to Hobart. Found on Wikipedia, public domain.

One of his first experiences with European forces was before any of them had attempted to settle down in the Melbourne area. It was a band of seal hunters, who came on to the shore and kidnapped several of the local women and took them as slaves. One of the women was Derrimut’s wife, Nandergoroke, another his sister in law, and one the wife of his nephew. When I think about the family close to me… I can’t even begin to imagine the pain.

Even with such a painful personal history to carry, he continued to lead his people with honour and courage. When a small group of Europeans landed and tried to settle, rather than responding in hostility and violence, he remembered the law of his people.

Tanderrum Hospitality: Freedom of the Bush

“This land will always be protected by the creator, Bunjil, who travels as an eagle, and by Waarn (Waa) who protects the waterways and travels as a crow. Bunjil taught the Boon Wurrung to always welcome guests, but he always required the Boon Wurrung to ask all visitors to make two promises: to obey the laws of Bunjil and not to harm the children of the land of Bunjil.

Ms Carolyn Briggs, a Boon Wurrung Elder, http://www.yarrahealing.catholic.edu.au/stories-voices/index.cfm?loadref=87

One of the customs of the Kulin people was to grant access to strangers and wanderers who came to their land, to welcome them and offer protection.

In June 1835, John Batman came with the intention to set up a village in what is now Melbourne. (Hilariously, if Wikipedia is to be believed, he wanted to call it Batmania). He met with the locals, and sought to organise a treaty with them, offering to pay them annually with a range of goods.

It seems likely this was misinterpreted by the Yalukit Willam leaders to mean Batman was participating in a Tanderrum ceremony, asking for temporary access and protection as a visitor, and offering gifts in return. The access rights

gave visitors who had no familial ties to the country the opportunity to seek formal permission from clan-heads for temporary access. The safety of all approved visitors was guaranteed.

As wikipedia notes, it was “a diplomatic rite involving the landholder’s hospitality and a ritual exchange of gifts, sometimes referred to as Freedom of the Bush.”

For Derrimut, he was a local leader, and a good man, and it was now his responsibility to care not only for his clan, but for the visitors that had arrived on his shore. (It makes me think about how poorly we treat those who come to our land, seeking our protection, in this day and age.)

Saving the settlement

So when word spread in October that year that a tribe from the North was intending to come and wipe out the new settlement, Derrimut raced to warn the European colonists, so they had time to arm themselves and fend off the attack.

This is where some of the controversy in his legacy comes in – in giving warning to the colonists, the colonists were able to arm themselves, and presumably kill/hurt/harm the people who were coming for them.

To me this feels like an ethically wrought and morally messy decision. It’s not straightforward and calling him a “hero” or a “traitor” for his actions in this moment skips over just how human this moment is – facing no good options and needing to decide what you will do. It’s not as simple as “picking sides”, especially once you count his own moral framework.

When I read the accounts, I suspect Derrimut saw it as his duty to protect them while they were on his land, and he did that by warning them of the oncoming attack, knowing what the consequences would be.

Values mismatch

Everything I’ve read about Derrimut shows me that he was exceptionally strong. Not in an angry, violent way that attacks and lashes out, but in a persistent, courageous, peaceful and moral way. He lived out his beliefs and tried to protect his people and co-operate with the European arrivals.

The Yalukit Willam had a culture that celebrated peace.

The culture he was dealing with though, the European settlement, did not recognise the same principals. The governor refused to recognise Batman’s treaty, and stuck to the arrogant belief that the land was empty when they found it, and therefore belonged to the Queen.

These people, coming to Derrimut’s land, in ever increasing numbers, were not temporary visitors, but invaders.

Fear and cruelty

As European settlers arrived and set out farms, they would fence off areas and claim them as their own. The land the Yalukit Willam people had walked on and hunted on and played on and celebrated over, for 5000 years, was now not in their control – and they were now told they were not welcome.

As the settlers expanded, they new arrivals viewed the Yalukit Willam suspiciously and fearfully. Land management rituals like burning out the undergrowth (without which Victoria’s horrendous bushfires will occur) were how the people kept the land flourishing, safe and sustainable, but Europeans believed the fires were meant to burn their farms and their families, and so responded with violent force.

The Boon Wurrung were known as a very peaceful people and if actually hostile, they would hardly have been deterred by one ‘old sailor’! This was likely a Yalukit Willam party engaged in their regular burning back of the lands during cooler weather necessary to stimulate pasture for kangaroo, reduce undergrowth and promote fire-tolerant food plants. Settlers however strongly discouraged ‘fire-stick farming’ as they were unfamiliar with the role of fire in regenerating Australian flora. This change in land management may have contributed to the Black Thursday disaster in 1851 when a quarter of Victoria burned.

Yalukit Willam: The River People of Port Phillip. By Meyer Eidelson. Page 25

These fears meant that as the farmers kept expanding their borders, they kept pushing the Yalukit Willam people further and further away. They were not subtle about this, they were brutal. I’ll quote a few paragraphs from “The Yalakit Willam: the First People of Hobson’s Bay”:

In June 1846, on government orders, Thomas [a government officer charged with “protecting” the Aboriginal people] removed the valuables from the willums (bark huts) of the Boon Wurrung camp then wrecked and burnt them. He ordered 51 residents to disperse. Thomas lamented that he had to order them to move every time a European objected. ‘Poor fellows, they are now compelled to shift almost at the will and paprice of the whites’. Their hardship was intensified because there was no bark left in the district and they were now compelled to build ‘mud huts’.

The Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung increasingly had trouble obtaining food in the vicinity of Melbourne, and they were suffering from introduced diseases. Europeans objected when Aboriginal people entered fenced paddocks to hunt, and, consequently, they were forced to subsist by begging and cutting firewood for the intruders.

The breaking up of camps continued unabated in the latter part of the 1840s. In January 1849, at one Boon Wurrung camp, Thomas was asked ‘where were they to go, why not give them a station’.

The Yalukit-Willam: The First People of Hobson’s Bay. Page 12

(Side note: the disparity between Thomas’s compassionate thoughts and cruel actions is why I think civil disobedience is vital for a just society. If you think something is wrong – don’t do it! Even if it is your job! Even if it puts you on the wrong side of the government and law-enforcement!).

It’s hard to comprehend just how unjust this is.

These people had successfully cared for the land sustainably for 5,000 years. Their first contact with Europeans involved family members being kidnapped. They still did the honourable thing and protected the first white immigrants, working with them cooperatively and peacefully. But the arriving settlers stole their possessions, and burned their homes, because they were prejudiced and afraid, assuming that land management practices were attacks. They banned them from hunting and from their traditional land management practices, and forced them into subsistence, reduced them to begging.

The Yalukit Willam people asked Thomas for a station, a section of land they could care for and continue to live on as they had always done, but free from European encroachment. Benbow, one of Derrimut’s fellow clan leaders, and even an employee of the government, tried to meet with Governor LaTrobe to make the request. LaTrobe left him waiting outside all day and refused to see him.

In March 1849, Benbow resolved to see Superintendent La Trobe to ask for a country for the Boon Wurrung… Benbow stood outside all day but was not admitted.

The Yalukit-Willam: The First People of Hobson’s Bay. Page 12

Resignation, persecution and tragedy

The last time I saw him was nearly opposite the Bank of Victoria, he stopped me and said, “You give me a shilling, Mr Hull.”

“No”, I said, “I will not give you a shilling, I will go and give you some bread”, and he held his hand out to me and said

“me plenty sulky you long time ago, you plenty sulky me, no sulky now, Derrimut soon die”, and then he pointed with a plaintive manner, which they can affect, to the Bank of Victoria, he said “You see, Mr Hull, Bank of Victoria, all of this mine, all along here Derrimut’s once, no matter now, me soon tumble down and die very soon now”.

The Yalukit-Willam: The First People of Hobson’s Bay. Page 13

Forced into subsistence, being told he’s not welcome on his land, Derrimut soon began to lose hope. The people he had welcomed onto his land, the people he had protected and co-operated with, had taken everything from him, and treated him cruelly.

(You can even feel the racism dripping in the sentence: “I won’t give you money, I’ll buy you a meal” – I’ve said that too! It makes me question how I respond to people on the streets who approach me for help. Did they think Derrimut was not capable of using money wisely? He was a capable and smart leader).

In July 1863, the very last of their land was sold to white settlers; they were now not allowed to live anywhere on the land that had once been their nation for 5,000 years.

They were moved on to a reserve at Coranderrk, North-East of Melbourne. On the day they had to leave, Thomas, the government officer enforcing the rule, wrote:

Poor Derrimut cried & so did Mr Man who hung his head on the breast of Derrimut like Esau and Jacob, I was forced at length to separate them.

Yalukit Willam: The River People of Port Phillip. By Meyer Eidelson. Page 69

Their connection to the land was more than just sentimentality and familiarity. I believe there is a spiritual element to it, and when Derrimut was forced off his land, despair set in. He died the following year.

Derrimut became very disillusioned and died at the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum at the age of about 54 years in 1864. In his honour, over his body, interred in the Melbourne General Cemetery according to European rather than Aboriginal rites, a tombstone was erected.

Wikipedia

The tragedy continued after Derrimut’s story ended. His clan, resourceful as they were and with their knowledge of the land, used the station at Coranderrk to farm and run a successful business. They were so successful that they started winning awards, and then the oppression started once more, with neighbouring European farmers believing it was not the people and their farming practices that resulted in the high quality produce, but merely that the land was more valuable. Because of this they started moving the Yalukit Willam people off the reserve, and caused the business to collapse.

Coranderrk Station ran successfully for many years as an Aboriginal enterprise, selling wheat, hops and crafts on the burgeoning Melbourne market. Produce from the farm won first prize at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1881; and other awards in previous years, such as 1872.

By 1874, the Aboriginal Protection Board (APB) was looking for ways to undermine Coranderrk by moving people away due to their successful farming practices. Neighbouring farmers also wanted the mission closed as the land was now deemed ‘too valuable’ for Aboriginal people to occupy.

Wikipedia

The level of abuse and repression they suffered is hard to swallow. I’ve often felt a sense of shame at our national history, but seeing these details of specific incidents, the cruelty of it, it hurts to know that it was my culture inflicting this on good, innocent people.

My reflection

Most mornings I ride my bike along this land, around Hobson’s Bay and through Point Gellibrand, along the river and bay and wetlands where Derrimut once lived freely.

There is a beauty here that is breathtaking. It is also life giving. There is a spirituality to this place. I can only imagine how strong that sense is for the people of a culture that have lived here and sustained the land, and been sustained by it, for thousands of years.

That same respect for land also gave him a respect for other people, even foreigners from a culture he did not understand, and as I read his story I am so inspired by his kindness and decision to honour his commitment to hospitality and protection of visitors, even when it put him in opposition to some of his own people – he stood up for the visitors in his care.

And yet he was crushed by a cruel invading culture, and that is the culture I’m part of. It brought me to tears realising how horribly we treated such a good man, and all his people.. And to think of the generations of pain caused to countless Yalukit Willam people who lost their connection to the land and have been repressed for over a century. And people of nations all over this continent…

It gives me so much more respect for Indigenous people across Australia who are still here, still fighting to be heard, fighting to have their culture recognised, fighting for a positive future for themselves and for their children. The cruelty they have suffered is so significant, to continue on shows such courage.

Learning this history has also been a big reality check for my own privilege, helping me see the systematic racism still at play, and start thinking about what my role has been in it, and what my role needs to be in reversing it.

Your own learning

If you want to learn more, I recommend you look up the history from your local council. Most local governments in Australia will publish some history of the first inhabitants on their website. Take a look, learn about the leaders, past and present, who are the traditional custodians of the land you now live in.

Here are the articles I read in writing this post:

Yalukit Willam: The River People of of Port Phillip by local historian Meyer Eidelson

The First People of Hobsons Bay

“You have all this place, no good have children …” Derrimut: traitor, saviour, or a man of his people?

What to do?

2023 Update

This list from Pat Allan feels like a good start:

• donate to https://dhadjowa.com.au
• contribute to https://paytherent.net.au
• show up to your local Invasion Day rally or similar events
• subscribe to Amy McQuire’s newsletter: https://amymcquire.substack.com
• read Chelsea Watego’s book Another Day in the Colony

I’d add to that… with an upcoming referendum on giving an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, have a think about who you know, who you’ve got a trusting relationship with, and who will or might vote against it. And have a heartfelt conversation with that person, try to change their mind.

Categories
Faith Personal

Christmas 2022

A photo of a small candle in a mosaic glass jar, with a christmas tree lit up in the background.

For the third year now, I’ve been following Advent readings from the book “Watch for the Light“. One of the readings was this poem by Jane Kenyon, it’s titled “Mosiac of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993”:

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.
Jane Kenyon, “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon.

This poem hit me hard this year. Particularly with the invasion of Ukraine this year, the second verse of the poem reminded me of the bombing of the Mauripol theater that women and children were sheltering in, one of many atrocities that we’ve seen.

The scale of human suffering, so much of it that we inflict on each other, is unbearable. And what does God do with all that?

“God thinks Mary into being… and inside her the mind of Christ, cloaked in blood, lodges and begins to grow.”

Is a baby really going to be enough? Enough to get humanity off an evil course and back on track? What possible difference could a baby make? It reminds me of this line from the song “Seasons”:

You’re the God of greatness
Even in a manger
For all I know of seasons
Is that you take your time
You could have saved us in a second
Instead you sent a child

Lyrics from “Seasons”. Words and Music by Chris Davenport, Benjamin Hastings & Ben Tan. Published by Hillsong.

This contrast perhaps says something about God, and about the gift humanity wanted vs the gift humanity needed: power vs vulnerability, force vs weakness, hard logic vs trust, quick results vs patience.

Considering our need, the gift most of us would ask for would be the forceful intervention. And yet at Christmas we Christians reflect on the fact that’s not the gift God choose to give us. Instead, God sent a child.

In what areas are you praying for God’s forceful intervention, and instead God is doing something small and fragile, slow and vulnerable?

Where are you using your own power and influence to force a quick solution, when perhaps there’s a less expected approach God is initiating?

Advent is about making space for God to come.

And its quite likely that the way God comes among us now will be in a gentler, slower, easier to ignore, less obvious, more vulnerable form than we want.

The work of advent isn’t for us to take the initiative and plan how God will come, but to make space, to wait, and to commit to that way.

To respond as Mary did, “May it be to me as you have said”.

Merry Christmas.

Categories
Faith Personal

“What about those who never got a chance to hear?”

One of the awful recurring conversations of my teenage and early adults years as a young Christian usually began with a question like “what about all the people who never heard of Jesus because of where and when they lived?”

The reason that I find this an awful conversation, in retrospect, is because a bunch of the assumptions behind it. For example: God is the only meaning in life, so if you don’t have God, your life is meaningless. Worse still, hell is a thing, and that’s the awful default choice for where you go if you’re not connected to God. And you get connected with God when someone tells you about Jesus and you respond in a certain way. So what if you live in one of the many, many times or places where no such opportunity arises? That hardly seems fair!

Here we were, as young Christians, responding to our own spiritual experiences of love that meant the whole world to us, and that pushed us to want to love all people, and yet the belief system surrounding those beautiful experiences was one that assumed a whole bunch of people would suffer intensely and unendingly for something they had no control over.

Now, the conversations weren’t that awful, because for the most part, we were trying to find ways to morph the beliefs back into something more loving, that more closely matched our experiences of love.

I remember clinging to the story of a guy’s near death (or actual death?) experience which apparently involved a supernatural deathbed opportunity to connect with God despite being an atheist until that point. Maybe everyone gets a chance and no-one goes to hell unfairly after all!? Eventually we’d start hearing rumours that maybe the “hell” story isn’t as clear cut as we thought, and when Rob Bell wrote “Love Wins” a bunch of people felt relieved to hear someone articulately argue that we don’t have to believe in the punishment thing. (Disclaimer: I haven’t actually read the book, and many people said he’s a heretic for it, but I love Rob Bell. Any “heresy” he’s pushing I’m likely to agree with him on!)

But even aside from the question of hell, do we really think God is completely absent from humans, except through some of the organised religions?

Back then I studied the bible a lot, and over time some verses that aren’t commonly talked about in evangelical circles started standing out to me, like this little aside from Paul in Romans 2:

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.

Romans 2:14-15 (NIV)

So there’s the most prolific writer of the early church, Paul, acknowledging that sometimes God is interacting with people who’ve never had any conscious interaction with the visible religions that are officially representing God. God just gets in and connects with them anyway, and doesn’t wait for the religion to make its way across the world first.

Eventually, I found myself paying attention to Paul’s sermon to the people of Athens, recorded in Acts 17. After a few years away from church, and when I was not even sure if I’d call myself Christian, this sermon felt really compelling to me:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

Acts 17:24-28

For any century you could be born in, for any country you inhabit, “Got is not very far from any of us”. And God’s whole motivation in placing us here on this world… that we would seek God, perhaps reach out for, and find God. God desired relationship, and thats been available – “not far from” – all people in all nations at any point in history.

And this rings true for me: the same God I’ve known, I’ve seen showing up in other parts of the world which hadn’t had exposure to the same Christianity I had.

I remember learning about the Boon Wurrung people in the Kulin Nations, what is now called Melbourne. Their creator taught them to always welcome guests and care for them as for their own, and that duty of hospitality is a key part of Derrimut’s story in protecting early European arrivals. That teaching might sound familiar to people who’ve read Leviticus: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself“. There’s so many examples like this. The golden rule wasn’t unique to Jesus.

A few years ago I discovered Karen Armstrong’s book “The Case For God”, which does a beautiful job depicting how cultures across the world have tried to reach out to “the unknown God”, and showing common threads of mystic encounter and a deep ethic of compassion emerging from all different parts of the world.

She’s gone on to start the Charter For Compassion, and perhaps that’s a fitting place to end this post. The love that me and my friends felt so strongly, that made us want to question any belief system that sent innocent people to suffer, that love was the real deal. And that same love is emerging all over the world, in all sorts of communities, religious or not. Making sure your religion – both the spiritual experiences and the belief system – drive you towards love and compassion is absolutely crucial.

We therefore call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

Charter for Compassion

Edit: 15 Dec 2022: I’ve since discovered the name for this topic: The Fate Of The Unlearned. There’s even a wikipedia page, which explores the same passage in Romans 2. The page lists a range of viewpoints from Christianity and Islam, and my upbringing probably sat on the “harsher” side – many traditions do have theologies that are more inclusive for those who outside the formal religion. Even with that though, I think there’s a lot of the behaviour I described us also doing: trying to find justifications to drag their beliefs back to the reality of the love they’ve experienced… but the starting point for the beliefs is often still out of line with the experience of infinite love. I think our theology can be better than that, we can have belief systems that are more reflective of our experience of infinite love. We should strive for that.

Categories
Faith Personal

Following over believing

I’ve started participating in a local church again lately, after a few years away.

In that time away my beliefs have continued to evolve (there’s never really been a period in my life where they haven’t), and now I find myself standing in a gathering of people signing songs whose lyrics often make me cringe, and bring on a sense of cognitive dissonance for me – there’s parts of this I do believe are true, parts of this I want to believe are true (but probably don’t, if I’m honest) and parts that I think are downright unhealthy, regardless of their truth.

So what am I doing here?

Well, I want community. And being part of a regular weekly gathering is a way of building friendships that I know works, and that I’m comfortable with. Even if there’s a little dissonance.

I also want a spiritual practice – I’ve never stopped believing in God (if you’ll let me define “believing” and “God” on my own terms at least!) and have wanted to maintain a connection with the spiritual reality that permeates everything. And while I’ve experienced this same connection in music festivals and yoga classes, something I’ve appreciated about the church I grew up in is the absolute insistence that this divine spiritual reality isn’t an impersonal energy, but is a person, and is a person who can be known, and a person who wants to be known. I want that.

But probably the biggest thing is that for all my questions about the meaning of Jesus’ life, I still find his example and his teaching incredibly compelling, and to this day haven’t found anything else that I’d want to have as a foundation for building my own life on, a story to orient myself towards, a starting point for choosing the way I want to live.

I guess that’s what I think of as discipleship. Following the way of the teacher. Regardless of what I intellectually reason to be truth, I can still listen to teachings, learning from the example, and choose to live that way.

This morning at the church gathering, there was a song I felt no awkwardness singing, so I sang it loud:

I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back
No turning back

A hymn by Sadhu Sundar Singh
Categories
Culture First Engineering Front End Development Personal

Li Juen Chang

3 weeks ago I heard the incredibly sad news that my friend Li had passed away. I was his manager for a few years at Culture Amp, and to remember him, I want to share a few stories of conversations we had during out time working together that I think speak to the quality of his character.

Talented, but humble

Li was a remarkable front end engineer. He was quietly productive, building high quality user interfaces faster that almost anyone else around. It wasn’t uncommon to hear feedback that he’d finished building out an entire interface on his own while a whole team of back end engineers were still working on making the data available for it. Eventually people started to notice, and Kevin Yank, our Director of Front End Engineering, asked: how do you do it? Is there some secret the rest of us could learn too?

His answer still makes me laugh. “I’ve got my code editor set up really well.”

To this day I don’t know if he was just trying to deflect the compliment, or if he really thought that was his secret advantage. Tool sharpening is definitely a thing in our industry – we like to quote the proverb “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Li’s editor setup was simple, it wasn’t something he wasted time tweaking over and over, but it was effective. When I watched him work he spent his time thinking about the problem at hand, not trying to remember where a file was saved or trying to remember what a keyboard shortcut was.

Remembering it, I love the humility of his response – he didn’t boast, he wasn’t proud. He knew he was good at what he did, and was happy to share the things he found helpful.

Learning, to share

I remember a point where Culture Amp had just acquired a smaller company, and we were looking for some senior engineers to transfer in and join the team we’d just acquired to help them integrate their product into ours.

At first Li was interested in exploring the opportunity, but then backed out when he realized the move would be permanent, not a secondment from his current team.

We had some conversations to explore the opportunity, and he surprised me with his biggest motivation not being the desire for a lead role, or a high visibility project, or the desire to work with a team based in the US, but instead the chance for mutual learning. He wanted to work with an established team, see what he could learn from them, see what he could teach them, and bring that back to his existing team and work, sharing what he had learned. Which explained why he was interested if it was a secondment, but not permanent.

Throughout our time working together I was always impressed at his willingness to learn, be curious, do deep dives into a problem, and then to bring what he’d learned and share it back to the team around him so we would all benefit.

Contentment

I remember wanting to understand some of Li’s long term career aspirations, and I asked a question I learned from Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor: “At the peak of your career, what sort of work do you want to be doing?”

Most people have a few different answers to this, sometimes its a job title (“director of X”) or a specific role (“I want to be focused in Application Security”) or an ambition outside the industry entirely (“I want to run a small business, maybe a food truck”) or a personal goal (“financial independence, then volunteering”).

It was hard to get a picture from Li of a specific goal he was working towards, and the reason I eventually learned, is that he was content. He really liked the kind of work he did, and found it meaningful. He really liked the people he worked with. “I’m actually really happy in my current role” was something he’d say if I kept asking.

Contentment is rare. Especially in the high-growth software industry. When I think about Li’s good-hearted approach to work and life and his ability to actually enjoy the place he’s at, without longing for more, I think of this quote from the bible:

godliness with contentment is great gain.

Li found contentment, and I admire him for it.

There was a whole lot more about Li I never got to know that well – perhaps because of the manager/employee relationship dynamics, perhaps because we worked from different cities, we didn’t share much of our personal worlds with each other. There was a little bit – I’d hear about an upcoming dance congress he was excited about. Or how a lunch we shared reminded him of Sunday lunches after church with his family when he was growing up. Or about the ups and downs of buying, owning, renting out, and selling an apartment. I had no idea he could speak Spanish. I wish I’d had more time with him, and asked more questions, and shared more of myself too. But even without that, I’m grateful for having crossed paths, worked with, learned and laughed together.

I’ll miss you friend.

Categories
Faith Personal

Great love and great suffering

There are only two major paths by which the human soul comes to God: the path of great love, and the one of great suffering. Both finally come down to great suffering—because if we love anything greatly, we will eventually suffer for it.

When we’re young, God hides this from us. We think it won’t have to be true for us. But to love anything in depth and over the long term, we eventually must suffer.

Richard Rohr – Life Coming to a Focus Daily Meditation

I’ve often remembered this thought from Richard Rohr – said in different times and different ways, but basically: the path to transformation is either great love, or great suffering.

I used to hear it and struggle to imagine the great suffering. My life has usually been pretty comfortable.

But he’s right, if you open up enough to experience love, then you’re opening yourself up to suffering too.

Parenting has been that journey for me.

A greater love than I knew was there. More pressure than I knew I’d face. More resilience than I could have imagined I’d had, and more than I thought I’d need. More awareness of my own fragility. More delight too.

Our family is definitely still in the pressure cooker. Its hard to say what the lessons learned will be, what the transformation might look like from the other side. For now, it’s hard to get through, and not much sense of hope for change.

Remembering this thought from Richard Rohr gives a glimpse of purpose to the love and suffering of parenting. Maybe this is one of the paths to God.

  • A photo of me holding Louis when 1 day old
    Holding Louis as a newborn
  • A photo of Louis dancing in front of a mural of a bird
    Louis on our outings to Perth CBD
  • Hugo (4 months old) asleep on a hospital bed with a cord in his nostril
    Hugo in hospital
  • Hugo (17 months old) standing on a park bench outdoors with a rain coat on
    Hugo now at our local park
Categories
Personal Reflecting

Examen 2020

At the change of the year I want to engage in some reflection. A reflective exercise I’ve began using in 2020 is a daily prayer called “The Examen”. I believe it’s a Jesuit practice, and I’m following this format shared by Xavier University. I’ve mildly adapted it here to make the language about the year not the day.

The Examen: A Daily Prayer

St. Ignatius Loyola’s Examen is an opportunity for peaceful daily reflective prayer. It invites us to find the movement of God in all the people and events of our day. The Examen is simply a set of introspective prompts for you to follow or adapt to your own character and spirit.

Begin with a pause and a slow, deep breath or two; become aware that you are in the presence of the Holy.

From “The Examen: A Daily Prayer” via Xavier University

Thanksgiving

What am I especially grateful for in the past year…

The gift of another year…

The love and support I have received…

The courage I have mustered…

An event that took place this year…

From “The Examen: A Daily Prayer” via Xavier University

The biggest news of the year came in the final month. On December 4th in the early hours of the morning, Hugo was born. We’d been holding our hopes for a healthy baby and a healthy mum – and both came to be. We’re now a family of four, and I’m so grateful.

Christmas Day 2020. I’m 33, Anna is 30, Louis is 2 and Hugo is 3 weeks old.

One of the other things we’ve been hoping and praying for through 2020 was about making the most of our time with Louis at this young age and while before his brother arrived. He learned so much about the world, and we learned so much from him, and my love grew more than I knew my heart was capable of.

2020 for most of the planet was defined by the COVID19 pandemic. I lived in Western Australia, one of the safest places on earth this year. Safe in a pandemic, locked down in a big home with Anna’s parents who we love. Grateful to have spent this year safe, and for the proximity to family, and for the support we gave each other.

I’m also grateful to be writing this from a beautiful house that’s now our family home. After living in 9 houses over 5 years we were keen to settle. We tried to sell our little unit and buy a family home, but the finances just couldn’t work. We’ve found a rental though that is perfect for our family and our stage of life.

This year we also found a spiritual community where we felt most authentically ourselves since our small Melbourne church closed down. A small group of friends (we know each other mostly from Riverview) started gathering, at first on Zoom, and then face-to-face once it was safe, and sharing our journeys, and finding ways to hone our spiritual practices together. We used the resources at https://practicingtheway.org/ to lead us in growing in two practices in particular: Silence and Solitude, and Sabbath. I also made some small progress in finding words and courage to share where I’m currently at with friends and family whose journey and beliefs now look pretty different to mine.

The first practice our Sunday group worked through was “Silence and Solitude”. I’d highly recommend this series (if you’re up for the church teaching style and the assumed Christian background anyway)

I was grateful for the courage Anna had in writing this post and releasing this song. This has been a big part of our story that we’ve carried privately for a long time. Sharing it took courage.

This song took 3 years from writing to release. And the story behind it spans an entire life.

I felt like this year I had courage at work and have grown as a leader, taking on new teams and harder tasks and speaking up when it’s not been comfortable. The support I’ve had from my co-workers, and my managers in particular, has helped me grow so much.

There’s other places I started to show courage, but wish I had better follow through. After the devastating Australian bush-fire season I reached out to local politicians to discuss an idea for community volunteering in the face of climate change, but dropped the ball when COVID19 took over the world. Similarly I was exploring doing a DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) talk at tech meet-ups, exploring how privilege has shaped my own journey, to help other people recognise their privilege and work to share it. This also dropped off the radar during COVID19 lock-down. I also made efforts to help people affected by Culture Amp’s layoffs. Not sure if it really helped anyone. And lately I’ve been volunteering to help a small group build a site for collecting stories about those with disabilities and their experience of being Locked Out during lock downs. Hopefully I have better follow through there!

Finally, I’m grateful for this book: “Watch for the Light“. These readings for Advent have been a beautiful way to connect with my faith, and has helped me move beyond what I struggle with intellectually, and into the experience and the politics and the hope of the Christmas season. I’ll be rereading this again next year I suspect.

Book cover: Watch for the Light | Readings for Advent and Christmas.

Petition

I am about to review my year; I ask for the light to know God and to know myself as God sees me.

From “The Examen: A Daily Prayer” via Xavier University

Review

Where have I felt true joy this year?

What has troubled me this year?

What has challenged me this year?

Where and when did I pause this year?

Have I noticed God’s presence in any of this?

From “The Examen: A Daily Prayer” via Xavier University

Where did I feel true joy?

Most days this year when I tried to reflect on where I felt true joy, the first thing that popped into my head was Louis. The wonder of seeing a small person grow and learn and experience things and imagine.

Louis loves the playground swing. And he loves his picture books, including some which talk about space. He recently started closing his eyes on the swing and imagining his extraterrestrial journey.

Also, in November we celebrated 10 years since Anna and I met. Reflecting on a decade together has been sweet.

One moment of happy tears I’ll remember: receiving news that some of my favourite friends were moving to Perth. We’ve missed them, and haven’t built friendships quite the same back here yet. So glad to have them near again.

Where was I troubled and challenged?

On that note, something that has troubled me this year is noticing how I don’t actively invest in many friendships beyond those people I see regularly by necessity (family, workmates). In particular there was one friendship that has atrophied over the years and at the end of this year, it was heart-wrenching to realise just how dead the relationship now was. I felt awful – for my own sake, and for realising the pain I’d caused by not returning the friendship offered. One of my resolutions out of this is to get counselling and do the “inner work” that is part of repentance. (Shout out to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg for helping make this clear to me).

Another thing that has troubled me is the work culture at my work. Our company is called Culture Amp, and the thing which attracted me to the company was the mission to be successful by being a company that puts people and culture first – being a great place to work. I’ve been there three years and most of that has been great, this year has been hard though. As well as the lay-offs, there has been an unrelenting period of change, and it’s been hard. I’ve seen plenty of decisions I disagree with, and seen people I like a lot negatively impacted by them. I’m still hopeful we can get back to being a place we’re proud to work but it has been a hard year.

I was also troubled by the amount of time I was glued to my phone. With a constant stream of worldwide drama: bush fires and impeachment and a pandemic and elections – and the addictive nature of an infinitely scrolling social media feed – I spent way too much time staring at my phone (after being on my laptop 8hrs a day for work). Most weeks I’d have an average daily screen-time use of between 1-2hrs. I am troubled that it’s so addictive I do this even while hanging out with my kids. And I’m troubled by the opportunity cost – I don’t have time for friendships, for writing, for reading, for richer things, because of this.

I read this reading from Thomas Merton on December 31st 2020 in “Watch for the light”, and it felt like a perfect description of my addiction to the new news in this eventful year.

Nor are the tidings of great joy announced in the crowded inn. In the massed crowd there are always new tidings of joy and disaster. Where each new announcement is the greatest of announcements, where every day’s disaster is beyond compare, every day’s danger demands the ultimate sacrifice, all news and all judgement is reduced to zero. News becomes merely a new noise in the mind, briefly replacing the noise that went before it and yielding to the noise that comes after it, so that eventually everything blends into the same monotonous and meaningless rumor. News? There is so much news that there is no room left for the true tidings, the “Good News,” the great joy.

Thomas Merton. From Raids on the Unspeakable, 1966.

One way of bringing together all of these challenges: I live a comfortable life in an uncomfortable world. I benefit from a mix of luck and hard work and systematic privilege. And I’ve become more aware of that privilege this year. And seeing the sharp contrast between my comfort and a world in pain can be… challenging. Am I doing enough to change things? Am I there for those who need me? Am I even there for those I consider friends? Is my busyness (from work) and mind cluttered-ness (from screen time) numbing my willingness to see, and to act? Is this just part of the early-parenting stage of life? How might I get less comfortable? How might I do less sympathising and more compassion, more help? Can I love “the storm drenched“? These thoughts have been building into a challenge to myself.

Where did I pause?

I’m glad to have explicitly worked on some spiritual practices that led me to pause. The few minutes of savasana at the end of yoga, a nightly “examen” to pause and reflect, setting aside Sunday as a Sabbath day of ceasing and rest and worship, and this book of readings through Advent. None of them I followed perfectly or consistently, but between them, I did learn to pause. For longer breaks, I only took one small holiday this year, but it was a good one for pausing: in a cabin on the edge of a Karri Forest in Margaret River.

A view of the sun rising over a hill lined with tall Karri trees.
This was looking at the window one morning during our holiday stay in Margaret River.

Where did I find God in all of this?

I’ve found God in little ways, new ways, this year. As my image of God becomes less “in heaven above” and more “over all and through all and in all” I’m adjusting where I expect to find God. Less often in a religious service or book. More often in people. Or in nature. Or in silence. A new little life. The night sky. Someone willing to give up their health and freedom-of-movement to be a COVID-19 chaplain. The support from family in a time of need. Nursing a newborn in the middle of the night. And then sometimes still in the services and books from before.

Most days that I prayed the Examen, I found the Spirit of God somewhere in the day. It was usually subtle.

Response

In light of my review, what is my response to the God of my life?

From “The Examen: A Daily Prayer” via Xavier University

I’m going to leave this out, keep it private.

A Look Ahead

As I look ahead, what comes to mind?

With what spirit do I want to enter the coming year?

From “The Examen: A Daily Prayer” via Xavier University

The big thing in my mind is 2021 will be us parenting a newborn and a two year old – we’re not sure how we’ll balance it! As well as that I’ve got some challenges and opportunities at work (some predictable, some not), I’ve got friendships I want to strengthen, I want to keep seeking spiritual community, and I want to get some counselling to work through some of my challenges mentioned above. There’s a lot to do.

But in all of that, the spirit I want to carry, is one of having space. Creating space, and expectation, waiting to find the moments where the Spirit of God might interrupt my days. To notice the places where grace appears. Or to be willing to look on the places where inequality and injustice still dominates. Leaving capacity in my days and in my task list to look beyond my own concerns and to see the need of others, and rather than looking away, finding ways to partner with the Spirit of God to bring grace into the world. To live the kind of life that brings both justice and peace.

It’s hard to do that when rushing between zoom calls and filling spare moments with social media feeds. I want space to notice where God is at work and where grace is forming, and I want space and energy to join in and be part of it. Be that in my family, in my work, in my friendships, or the wider world.

Categories
Faith Personal Reading & Inspiration

Reading Notes: “Christianity After Religion” by Diana Butler Bass

(Still some TODOs in here, but I’m posting anyway and hope to get back to them) I first came across Diana Butler Bass on her Twitter account. I can’t remember how I came across her, but I’ve appreciated her voice, her tweet-thread-sermons, her perspective on current affairs and more. So when a family member gave me a book voucher to a local Christian bookstore that didn’t seem likely to stock much I was interested in, I was stoked to see they could order in one of her books. And that’s how I ended up reading “Christianity After Religion”. When it arrived and I read the praise on the cover from Richard Rohr and Rob Bell, I hoped I was in for something good.

The main point

Since the 1960s the USA (and other western nations) have seen a massive change in how they’d describe their religious/faith life. A common line has been “I’m spiritual, not religious” and rather than being a thoughtless throwaway line, this actually captures a big part of what this shift is about. Rather than viewing it purely as a move toward secularism, DBB argues this is an awakening – in the spirit of America’s past great awakenings. This is faith evolving, not faith disappearing. By changing the way kinds of questions we ask when we approach a life of faith, and by changing the order in which we ask them, we can participate in this new awakening – an exciting evolution in what it means to be Christian, or even what it means to be human – and some would argue, an exciting movement of God.

Overview

The “spiritual vs religious” dichotomy isn’t describing two opposites, rather it’s a lense to understand how our people’s experience of their faith is changing. We can broadly break experience of religion of spiritual life into three categories:
  • Belief – how we understand the world and it’s meaning
  • Behaviour – how we choose to live, and the habits which make up our life
  • Belonging – the sense of community and shared purpose
For each of these categories, DBB looks at how Christianity (and American Protestantism in particular) has approached this category, and the questions it has deemed most important to ask. These are the “religious” questions. She then offers alternative “spiritual” questions: ways of revisiting the same category with a different approach, focused on lived experience.

Belief

Often when we think of “belief” in the context of religion we think of doctrine. Belief in a god. Belief in the Christian bible as an authoritative text about God. Belief in the resurrection, or the virgin birth, or the 7-day creation. Some things are easy to believe in – we’re pretty sure a person called Jesus of Nazareth existed – but many are increasingly hard to take literally. TODO: copy the questions asked This chapter concluded with some amazing examples of Christian communities writing their own creeds. Creeds were written by communities at points in time – a point DBB made in this twitter thread that I found memorable. After reading this section of the book, I journal led and wrote out, for the first time in a long time, not a description of what I no longer believed, but a description of what I still believe.

Behaviour

When we think of “behaviour” in the context of religion, we often think of moral guidelines. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t drink, don’t look at porn, don’t charge interest on loans… Do look after the needy, do love your neighbour, do attend a religious service etc. Beyond this though, a lively faith usually consists of habits, or spiritual practices, that make up the day-to-day of our life. When the purpose of such habits isn’t understood, they lose meaning, they become meaningless rituals. But when learned carefully, many habits and practices have a transformative impact on your life. DBB uses floristry as an analogy. Her family were florists for generations, and she learned the craft by sitting in the workshop with her dad, gradually gaining the skills herself. This kind of gradual exposure, where an experienced practitioner shows you, guides you, and gives you increasingly challenging work until you are fully competent – is similar to many spiritual practices. Another thing we can learn from this analogy, is that people are less like to simply do what their parents did. Where successive generations in her family had all been florists, she has chosen a different career, because these days, you have options. When it comes to our spiritual habits and practices and rituals… this is even more true. TODO: copy the questions asked

Belonging

For a long time, belonging meant having an identity tightly linked to the religious community you are part of (and probably grew up in). “I am baptist” or “I am catholic” or “I’m part of Riverview Church”. There was an assumed stasis in this model: you’ve always been one of us, you are one of us, you will always be one of us. You’ve always been here, you are here, you will always be here. But most stories of faith are journey stories: Abraham leaving the land he grew up in, Moses leaving Egypt, the fishermen leaving their nets to follow Jesus. We need to craft a different identity that respects this journeying nature of faith. And a way of belonging that allows growth, change, pilgrimage and exile, and still offers community, acceptance and love. A traditional approach to identity asks “who am I?”, and Christianity has encourage you to ask “who am I in God?” One of my favourite moments in this section was reframing the question: “who is God in me?” Where and how does God act in the world through my life? How can people I interact with experience God through my actions? TODO: copy the questions asked

Reversal

After examining these three categories and asking how we can revisit them through a “spiritual” lense, DBB did my favourite thing in the book: she suggested we reverse the order we tackle these questions in the faith journey. Rather than beginning with “belief” (you must believe in the trinity, and creation, and the resurrection, and the virgin birth, and whatever other doctrine is hard to literally believe), then progressing to behaviour (follow these moral guidelines and adopt these habits) and then being able to experience belonging, DBB suggests we approach it the other way. Begin with belonging: unconditional acceptance, loving community. From there learn the way of life: the habits and the choices that shape your faith (behaviour). And from here, you will begin to find your beliefs changing. You might find you believe in the resurrection after all: but it is coming from having experienced yourself countless ways where life overturns death. By reversing the order we no longer have as our starting point adherence to a religious doctrine. Rather, we have as our starting point an experience of love and community, and the entire faith journey now takes that approach. And when people say “I’m spiritual, not religious” – this is part of the distinction. The starting place is experience, and the whole journey is lived experience.

Awakening

The book ended on a real message of hope. DBB looks back at the three great awakenings of the past, and in the debate about if there was/is a fourth great awakening, she joins the group who sees the social and religious change beginning in the 1960s constitutes a new great awakening. People began exploring new ways of experiencing faith, experiencing God, and this came out of, and fed back into, massive cultural changes. She describes her college campus in the late 1970s having multiple thriving communities and chapters of people taking their faith and discipleship seriously, resulting in a bold vision for what could be in the world. It certainly felt like a religious awakening. Something new and bold and exciting was happening, and it felt like God was very active in it. But then she returned to the campus in the 1980s, this time as faculty, and the life was gone, the diversity was gone, the experimentation and bold visions for change were gone. Replacing it where some standard Christian groups pushing a standard political/conservative agenda. DBB paints the growing political power of the “religious right”, the “moral majority”, Ronald Reagan and co, as a pushback against the awakening – and describes how similar pushbacks have happened in past awakenings. This time however, something that began in the 1960s is continuing over half a century later… the pushback was significant, and so the change is drawn out. In describing past push-backs, she seems to describe the rise of Donald Trump. (The book was written while Obama was still president, but the rise of tea party conservatism was evident). It’s interesting to frame the success of conservative evangelicalism – in political power, in megachurch attendance, in mindshare – not as the awakening, but as the pushback on the real awakening. Though it uses the language of revival, and the metaphors and service structures of past awakenings, this is actually by now the old thing, and the comfortable thing, and the thing some are trying to protect from change. But as she describes this tension between the “old lights” and the “new lights”, she describes the new light in ways that I completely identify with: for all of the struggle I’ve had with the church and structure and faith I’ve grown up in, she describes exactly the bits that I’m still holding onto, the values I hold most dear, and the hope and vision I have for what a renewed world might look like. In reading this, I suddenly felt less like I (and those like me) are stepping away from our faith, and more like the steps we’re taking are part of a journey of renewal. It does feel like upheaval and uncertainty, but it’s not an abandoning of faith, it’s faith finding a new form to match the world we now live in. And the world we now live in is globally connected, and past modes of tribalism over religious dogma no longer make sense when we can see the other tribes, and see that they too are human, and we can see that despite our differences the fruit is good, and so we’re learning that our religion isn’t the only way to meet God, our tree isn’t the only tree that produces good fruit – we can learn from each other, and perhaps we can discover that God has been showing up to all people in all cultures and religions. And perhaps this acknowledgement that God can show up to anyone in any culture or religion should have been more obvious to us from the beginning:
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

Acts 17
And so every religion worldwide seems to have up-shoots of renewal at the moment. We’re seeing up close people who we’d used to consider “other”, and discovering they’re not so different. And there’s a tribalistic pushback, but in many ways, this renewal is underway and somewhat unstoppable. Any way of faith which defines at the outset that only some experiences are “valid” and “true” is brushing up against our lived reality that we’re finding God in all aspects of life, on many different and intersecting paths. And this is where we can join in. By joining (or forming) communities. By embracing spiritual practices that lead us to experience God, to love others, and to grow in maturity, and by allowing our beliefs to be formed by the experience of God among us – we can be part of this renewal. It won’t be the last time humanity’s relationship with the divine God needs to adapt and evolve. It’s not the last awakening. It’s not necessarily the greatest awakening. But it’s our generation’s awakening, and our chance to be part of it.
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Faith Personal

“You are welcome here”

“God, you are welcome here”

It’s a line often sung in churches, and often prayed. But for people who believe in an omnipresent God – present everywhere at once – what does it mean? What’s the point in welcoming someone who is already here?

Well, there’s a difference between being present, and being welcomed. It’s an attitude thing. Are you acknowledging the person who has come, or ignoring them? Are you engaging with a defensive attitude, a judging attitude, a cautious attitude, an open attitude? Open to them being who they are, which might be different to what you hoped. Open to their thoughts, which might be different to your thoughts. Open hearted to ways their story might change you… that’s vulnerability. And the hospitality of welcome does require vulnerability. You might just come out of the encounter different.

So when you pause in a worship service to “welcome” God, it’s not about letting Holy Spirit in… that’s already happened. It’s about preparing the state of your inner world so that you’re actually open to genuine connection, even if it pushes you and changes you.

“You are welcome here”
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me”
“Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me”

And perhaps, we can’t welcome God unless we also welcome all God’s children. You soften your heart towards the Spirit when you soften your heart towards the people near you.

Welcome them, even if they’re not who you hoped, even if they think completely differently to you, even if it means making yourself vulnerable to connection and to change.

And don’t claim to welcome God if you’re not willing to welcome fellow humans.

Categories
Faith Personal

Confusion over the cross

Lately I’ve been confused by the cross, and confused about why I’m confused.  As I went through Easter this year I still was moved by the idea that God somehow loved us enough to die – but I couldn’t explain what it all means, and I couldn’t verbalise what it was about the traditional explanation that made me so uneasy.

So I watched a few lectures online, including this one by Tom Wright, and have picked up a copy of his book “The Day The Revolution Began” and started reading it, hoping to learn more.

I haven’t made it past the first chapter yet, but by setting apart time to think about this, I think I finally (subconsciously?) was able to piece together what I want to believe, in a way that draws contrast to my understanding growing up.

My understanding growing up:

God is love, and he loves you, but he’s also “just”, “righteous” or “perfect”, and can’t stomach your disobedience (sin), it’s because he’s perfect, and that perfection just doesn’t mix with sinfulness, and a blood sacrifice was needed to make things right for some reason.  Animals weren’t enough.  Jesus died so it didn’t have to be you.  That was enough for God the Father.  Now when he looks at you he doesn’t see sin, he’s just full of love again.

What I don’t like:

If Jesus is the image of the invisible God, then we should get a good idea of what God is like by looking at what Jesus is like.  A person with uncontrollable anger problems that needs satiating when people don’t do what they want… is not at all the type of person we see in Jesus.

Most (admittedly not all) of the anger I see the bible describe God as having, is the same kind of thing you see Jesus get angry over: injustice, caused by some humans, that crushes other humans.  This pattern seems to be well in place by the time you get to the prophets in the Hebrew Bible.  The “lash out” kind of anger is admittedly seems to be more present in earlier books like Joshua, and occasionally in later places like Ananias and Sapphira… but it seems the overall thrust is that God’s anger / anguish is about humans hurting each other, rather than about us offending his righteousness.

What I finally realised I want to believe:

Jesus was killed by humans.  It wasn’t God’s anger that put him there, it was ours.  We have the human condition, a tendency to lash out, to scapegoat, to viciously attack anything that exposes our frailty, futility or hollowness.  Jesus exposed how hollow the power structures of the day were, and showed very clearly how the actions of the religious powers and the actions of the political powers were not the actions of God – these people did not represent God.  He exposed the leaders, and like most humans, they lashed out.

But rather than fighting back and perpetuating the sinful violence of humanity, he took it and did not return it, in fact, while they were still killing him, expressed forgiveness and love.  To apply MLK’s famous truth: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

On a physical level, the power-structures of Rome and of 1st century religious leaders killed him, because he threatened them.  On a sociological level, his non-violent response changed the game in a way where his followers continued to subvert the brutal power of Rome despite intense persecution.

What about theologically or spiritually?  Is there any meaning to it?

If Jesus really is God-incarnate, God-as-a-regular-human-being, (which I should clarify I want to believe), then him suffering the same wrath of humans as the rest of us shows that that wrath is from humans, not from God.  The angry and violent human condition that causes us to crush each other (which I feel sums up most of the concept of sin) is actually from us, not from an angry God.

In other words, what I want to believe: God was never angry that we’re not perfect.  That anger was always ours, that violence was always ours.  It took God himself suffering under that violence, as Jesus on the cross, for us to understand that the violence wasn’t coming from God.  The anger was never his.

So in a bizarre way, the cross is a sign that God is not angry: it shows me that he always loved and was not the one who was angrily lashing out.  And it is a sign that God is not leaving us to suffer alone: that God himself would suffer under our angry violence, it shows he knows our suffering and is not keeping his distance.  And it is a sign that God is working at a rescue plan: that he overcame hatred with love, darkness with light.  This is the butterfly effect – where one small act of love overcoming hatred is cascading and rippling outwards until hatred, violence and even death is overcome by love, and that the God of the universe is putting his full weight and power behind this plan.

And so, when I look at the cross, I do realise that God loves me and is not angry.  And I do realise that he loves me enough to enter into that suffering.  And I do realise that he has a plan for salvation, the rescue of the world – to transform this suffering through redemptive love.

Just because I want it doesn’t mean it’s true.

So that’s what I want to believe, I can finally articulate it.

But I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Tom Wright’s book, because admittedly: this is just the worldview that sits well with me, given what I’ve experienced and what I’ve learned and the cultural leanings that go with that.

Tom’s book looks like it will go through it in a more rigorous, systematic way: examining early evidence and early texts, examining the changing understanding of the crucifixion event by two millennia of theologians, and generally being a little more grounded than my “this is what I want to believe” write-up.

But, it’s good to be able to write down, as a product of my life and culture and upbringing and current understanding, what it is that I most want to believe about a loving God who had to die.

I’m looking forward to seeing where I land.  If you’re wondering any of the same things, asking the same questions, or exploring the same topics – I would love to hear about it in the comments!

 

Categories
Faith Personal

Painstaking Love

When I type the word “painstaking” in my phone, it automatically suggests “work” as the next word. Do you ever hear it paired with any other word?

Painstaking work is often necessary, even good. We know this and brace ourselves for it, muster our endurance and strength and willpower.

But painstaking love is something we don’t give much thought to. But maybe we should. Let me try this definition of love: improving the life of another person, regardless of the effect on your own life. When you define it like that, love is sometimes going to get painstaking: really challenging, pushing us to the edge of our capacity, more than most people are willing to undergo. Much like painstaking work, painstaking love achieves the strongest effect.

Categories
Faith Personal

Is God so angry that he has to kill his child? Probably not.

It’s Good Friday, and my faith is changing.

One key thing that’s changing: my view around why Jesus died. There’s a cognitive dissonance when you speak of a “God of love” who loves you so much that he will punish another to satisfy his own rage, or to satiate his sense of honour. We condemn honour killings, but it’s okay for God?

I still believe in God (though, what I mean by that statement, is also something that is changing). But if it’s Jesus that I’m attracted to, and it’s Jesus that showed us what the god behind the universe is really like as a person, then I don’t think God is the sort that wants to kill people to defend his sense of honour and justice. In fact, one of the stories I like most is of Jesus non-violently de-escalating a situation, saving a woman from being the victim of an honour killing.

So what did Jesus death on the cross mean?  It’s something I want to learn more about.  I want to read NT Wright and I want to hear about the “new perspective on Paul” that is actually decades old.  But I read an article today that had good food for thought.

He became the lightning rod where the pent up oppositional energy of the powers that be (the world) became focused. In bearing the hate, evil and animosity of the world, he exposed it and exhausted it, thus overcoming it..

We, too, are called, on behalf of the kingdom of God, on behalf of mercy and justice, on behalf of what is good, right, true and just, to be lightning rods, to bear the hate of the world without returning it, so that it might be exposed and so that forgiveness is given a chance.

Here it is:

It’s time to end the hands-off attitude to substitionary atonement

 

Categories
Personal Reading & Inspiration Work Habits

What I learned from “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky (Book Review)

Making Ideas Happen Book Cover

On Sunday I finished reading “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky (founder of Behance).

7696135I’m the sort of person that has ideas.  So many ideas.  Some are ideas for apps or products, side projects or start-ups, cool programming libraries or fun creative projects.  When I look back at my work history, I am proud of the things that I have “shipped” and finished, or if not finished, at least gotten it “finished enough” that other people could start using it.

But there is definitely a graveyard of good ideas that I was very excited about at one point in time, that I even thought were game-changing, and maybe even started work on, but never managed to finish or get out there.

Gravestone reading "RIP: A Great Idea"As I was wrapping up 2016 and planning for 2017, I realised that I have several ideas that I actually want to see become reality.  Two ideas in particular (tentatively named Enthraler and Model School) I’ve wanted to do for at least 5 years, and have kept not doing.

When we finally launched Today We Learned I found out the pain of launching a good idea too late, and seeing someone else carry a very similar idea to success.  If I wanted 2017 to be different, and if I wanted to be part of these 2 ideas becoming reality, I had to get better at executing on ideas, pushing them forward and getting them out there.  And all of this while having a full-time job that I really love and am already feeling stretched in.

So when my my sister Clare and her husband Zac gave me a book for Christmas that promised to help me “Overcome The Obstacles Between Vision And Reality”, I was eager to get stuck into it.

Disclaimer and caveat: It’s worth pointing out that I’m viewing this book as advice on creative projects, which I’m viewing as distinct to start-ups. Both of them involve ideas, innovation and execution, but there’s a crucial difference.  If you want a start-up to succeed, you should probably not start with an idea.  You should start with a problem that real people hate so much they’ll pay someone to solve it for them.  Find a gnarly problem first, then let your ideas develop around that.  Creative projects on the other hand, start with your idea.  It’s a work of art, as if inspiration has visited and requested that you make an idea real, and it’s your job to make it.  It’s as much about self-expression and creative fulfilment as it is about business development.

Overview

The first half of the book (“Organisation and Execution”) is all about getting it done.  It’s full of practical tips to stay organised, stay focused, and keep pushing ideas forward until they’re ready.  These have made a massive difference for me so far.  The second half (“The Forces of Community” and “Leadership Capability”) focus on the relational aspects of ideas.  Ideas feel their most exciting, and most pure, when they’re in your head.  The moment you start sharing them, and inviting other people in to participate, things change.  This might feel like your idea is losing potency as it gets diluted by others, but it’s only with their help (and with the new aspects they bring to the project), that your idea is going to be successful.  How well you utilise these forces has a massive impact on your ability to consistently bring ideas into reality.

Organisation and Execution

  • The competitive advantage of organisation
  • The action method: work and life with a bias towards action
  • Prioritisation: managing your energy across life’s projects
  • Execution: always moving the ball forward
  • Mental loyalty: maintaining attention and resolve

I was really surprised by how prescriptive Scott is in this first section.  His basic argument is that they key to creative success is actually finishing your projects and getting them out the door, and doing that as often as possible.  The trouble is that ideas are exciting at the start, boring in the middle, a hard slog near the end, and then only get exciting again right before you launch.

A graph depicting energy levels for an idea decreasing during the middle, and new ideas starting and seeming more appealing during the low-energy plateau.
Ideas are exciting at the start, then get boring and hard in the middle, for a long time until you’re ready to ship – and only then does it get exciting again. Beware the temptation to start a new (and exciting!) idea during the project plateau.

So the key to all of Scott’s advice is to just keep you moving forward, one small step at a time, to get you through the trough and out the other side where your idea is finally a reality.  To do this, it takes dozens of small actions.  Focusing on these actions is the key principal in “The Action Method” – Scott’s big idea on how to do this.

Most other productivity books I’ve read have talked about the motivation and less about the mechanics of getting it done, but Scott is quite prescriptive. For example:

  • Organise your whole life into “Projects”.  Not just work projects. Not just side projects. Even mundane things like “grocery shopping” and “remember to call mum” go into a project. He isn’t prescriptive about where to store your projects, but I’ve used Trello.  I have one Trello board for my whole life.  The lists I use are “Home Admin”, “Personal and Social”, “myEd”, “Enthraler”, and “Model School”.
  • Each project has 3 types of things you can store:
    • Action Steps – literally, a specific action you can take to move the project forward.  The first word should be a verb: “Create nice styling for multi-choice component and upload to Github”.  Or “Read through things Cassie sent me and send through feedback”. My friend Stephen had an interesting take on this, going one step further and having a super specific first step in the action.  “Open gmail, read through the docs Frank sent me…”.  The trick here is to make it so obvious what the next step looks like, so whenever you have half an hour to work on something, you can easily pick an action step, start it, and push a project forward.
    • Back-burner Items – these is where you keep possible future action steps that you’re not ready to commit to yet.  Maybe they are ideas for much later in a project, or maybe they need some more thought before you commit to starting them.  Keeping them in a separate place, where you can come back to them, but where they’re not confusing you as to what the next steps should be, helps hugely.In my “Enthraler” project I have 8 ready-to-go Action Steps, and 29 items in the Back-burner.  That goes to show that when I start a new project, I’m excited about the possibilities and I keep thinking them up.  But I know if I want to keep moving the project forward, I just pick one of the Action Steps I’ve already committed to, and all of the exciting future ideas are in the “Backburner” list where they won’t distract me.
    • References – this is for things which you want to remember but they’re not actionable.  An example is finding a colour scheme I really liked for a project.  In the past, I may have taken a screenshot of the colour scheme and added it to a task.  But it’s not really an action I can take!  It’s just something I want to store so I can look back if I need to.  Now I keep things like this in references.  Also helpful: meeting notes, contact details, etc.  Keeping all these things in one separate spot helps keep the clutter down so you can focus on your next action steps.
  • Have a regular “review” session, say once a fortnight or once a month, where you go over your projects, see if the actions are still relevant and clearly defined, check what’s in your back-burner and references, and update things as necessary.  He recommends doing this some place nice, like your favourite coffee shop.  This is a part I haven’t had much practice with yet!

Screenshot of Trello
A screenshot of my projects in Trello. Each list is a project, each card is an action. (There is also a References and a Back-burner card in each list).

The Forces of Community

  • Harnessing the forces around you
  • Pushing ideas out to your community

One of the headings in this section is “Seldom is anything accomplished alone”,  and I find it a perfect reminder.  Some ideas are small enough that they can be accomplished alone, but even something like writing a song will benefit from collaboration.  Not to mention the help you would need in producing, mixing, mastering, distribution and release strategy.  And every project is like this – if you want it to become more than a hobby, you are going to have to bring other people into it.

A key part of this is overcoming the fear of people judging and criticising your work.  Overcome the fear, then get feedback early, and get it often. You don’t have to listen to what people say, if you want you can hold on to the exact vision you have.  But if you overcome the fear, and get the feedback, you will probably hear things that will make your project better, so it’s worth putting yourself out there.

There was a beautiful story in here about a story-telling course Scott went to, where people practised sharing a story, but the audience were not allowed to give “constructive criticism”.  Instead, they were only allowed to share what they really appreciated, what made the story come alive for them.  He found that as people iterated on their stories, this approach helped the “alive” pieces of the story shine even more, and somehow, the weak parts of the story began self-correcting with each iteration, but without losing the strength of the parts that really shone.  I loved that!

One of the things that challenged me the most in the section was to actively self-promote what you’re working on, and to build an audience of people who care about what you’re working on.  If you’ve ever read case studies on a site like “Indie Hackers”, you realise that a common story in side-project success or start-up success is that the person starting had an audience who really cared about what they were working on, so when they launched a new project, they had someone to launch it to.  So don’t be afraid to self-promote and build an audience, and show them what you’re working on regularly.  The fear you have shouldn’t be that you’re inflating yourself in front of others, it should be that you’re not giving your idea any air, and it might die in your mind without ever becoming a reality.

The way Scott consistently reinforced this was a wake-up call for me.

Leadership Capability

  1. The rewards overhaul
  2. The chemistry of the creative team
  3. Managing the creative team
  4. Self leadership

I’d been reading the book thinking primarily about my side projects, which are solo-shows for now.  Scott offered distilled wisdom and advice from his experience and from the research conversations he conducted, and while it’s not immediately applicable to the projects I’d been thinking about, I can definitely see how it ties into my work at myEd, and how it will be important to attract more contributors for any project I do going forward.  It identified a weakness in my approach to executing so far – the tendency to do it all myself.

Much of the advice given in this section was focused on character.  So not so much “how to run a meeting”, but “when in a meeting, let other people talk first and make sure you actually listen”.  Things like that.  I really do believe that humble leaders attract talented collaborators, but more importantly, their humility and strength of character breeds loyalty – which you just don’t see as clearly when it is obvious the leader isn’t paying attention to your input and your ideas.

The difference it has made for me

Reading this book came at the perfect time for me.  After closing down Today We Learned last year I began working full-time at myEd, but found I was still swimming with ideas for outside projects. By the time the new year rolled around, I had multiple projects I really wanted to run with, but was just not convinced I could push them all forward while still being effective at work 5 days a week.

This book, especially the focus on the action method, has helped me dramatically – and people have noticed.  Most significantly my wife Anna – who keeps commenting that she can’t believe the change in how I work and in my energy levels, and in my ability to keep things moving – not to mention staying on top of things at home more effectively.

On a practical level, it has meant that I’m staying focused and effective at work, not getting stressed out by home administration (keeping track of finances, bills, investments etc) because I know I have everything tracked, and if I sit down at work, or sit down to do some home admin, or to give time to a side project, the next actions are right there for me to continue with.

Because of the stage of life we’re in – we moved across the country to focus on our work and our creative pursuits, and we don’t have young kids to care for and hang out with – we have a fair amount of spare time.  I try to give 1 hour each weeknight to push a side project forward, and then a few hours of blocked out time on either Saturday or Sunday.  With this rhythm I’ve been able to push forward my two main side projects to the point where both are almost at MVP (minimum viable product) level.  And this has been during one of the most incredibly busy and stressful periods at work – coming home and having a different project that I can get into has in many ways helped me maintain my energy and positivity during some of the more stressful moments at work.

The challenge to think about how the community around me has also been incredibly helpful.  As well as the two side-projects I’ve been pushing forward, there were another two ideas that I couldn’t shake, and that I wanted to help become reality – but you can only stretch yourself so thin before you stop being effective.  By reaching out and sharing these ideas with friends, I’ve actually found other people working on similar things, and have been able to support them rather than carry it forward myself, and I’ve found this incredibly rewarding, while at the same time satisfying the creative urge that demands I be part of making that particular idea happen.

It’s been an incredibly timely book to read (thanks Clare and Zac!) and has helped me hugely so far.  To anyone who has ideas but can’t seem to get them off the ground, I recommend it highly.  I’m excited to see how the rest of my year pans out as I continue pushing things forward one action step at a time.

More Info

To follow Scott Belsky: website, twitter
To buy Making Ideas Happen: amazon, goodreads

 

 

Categories
Faith Personal

The old men used to say

“The old men used to say that we should each look upon our neighbour’s experiences as if they were our own. We should suffer with our neighbour in everything and weep with him, and should behave as if we were inside his body; and if any trouble befalls him, we should feel as much distress as we would for ourselves.”

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

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Faith Personal

The best defence is a good offence

You’ve probably heard people say

The best defence is a good offence!

But actually, Jesus said that if you live violently you’ll die violently. The best defence is probably nothing to do with fighting your adversary, but rather loving them. As a best case scenario, they’ll return the favour – and you both win. Worst case scenario, you love them, and they take advantage of you. Which sucks, true, but at least you’re behaving like God, and that is probably more important than winning anyway.

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Faith Personal

“Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”

My favourite blog post ever (big call, I know) is titled “An Unexpected Ass Kicking“. You should read it.

A freelancer sits down in a coffee shop in Portland to get some work done, and finds himself distracted by a senior citizen wanting to talk about computers.  At this point I groaned, but, (spoiler alert), the old man turns out to be the most remarkable person this freelancer has ever met.  This old man was Russell Kirsch, whose team built the first internally programmable computer.  Him and his wife used to program the computer while standing inside it.  This man invented computers as we know them today. (He also invented digital photographs and the idea of a pixel. What a boss!)

When Joel the freelancer realized just how impressive Russell is, this conversation took place:

“You know Russell, that’s really impressive.”

“I guess, I’ve always believed that nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do. Most people think the opposite – that all things are withheld from them which they have conceived to do and they end up doing nothing.”

“Wait”, I said, pausing at his last sentence “What was that quote again?”

“Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do.”That’s good, who said that?

“God did.”

“What?”

“God said it and there were only two people who believed it, you know who?”

“Nope, who?”

“God and me, so I went out and did it.”

What a life changing exchange!  Unbelievable.  When I read the blog I wanted to know if he was imagining God talking in the spiritual, pentecostal, voice-in-the-head sense, or something else.  It turns out he was quoting the story in Genesis 11 about the Tower of Babel.

The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

In the creation story, whether literal or metaphorical, there had been a flood, Noah’s family survived, and God had commanded them to spread out and fill the earth.  On the way they began developing culture and technology, songs and tools, and when they found a nice place, they stopped spreading.  Instead they settled and built a city.  In their pride they wanted to build a tower so tall that the world would always remember them.

The tower they were building was probably a Ziggurat, and the story of a giant tower in the area of Babylon (modern day Iraq) seems to be shared with other ancient cultures.  To me the confusing of languages could easily happen in the modern day world – a giant corporation or city gradually has multiple cultures rise up in it, they drift apart, can no longer work together, and so abandon the project to go their own ways.  It doesn’t necessarily seem to me like a divine punishment where they spoke one language one minute and all spoke different languages the next.

Let’s look back at God’s words: “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”.  The 400 year old King James translation swaps “plan to do” for “can imagine”: nothing they can imagine will be out of their reach.  Nothing they aspire to and plan for and set their mind on is out of reach.  God acknowledges the amazing potential of human creativity and ingenuity. They like to create new things, do things that have never been done before, and they’re good at it. In that way, they take after their creator.

I always used to read the story of Babel in a fairly negative light – God didn’t like the ingenuity, or saw it as a threat, and so shut it down. John Stott points out two things God may have been offended by: the disobedience of settling rather than spreading out to “fill the earth”, and the presumption that they could reach into Heaven, and be like God – the same as the original sin from the Adam and Eve story. So there’s the failure to explore the earth and develop it’s potential.  And there’s the pride and hubris, being concerned about our fame and wishing ourselves to be like God.

It wasn’t until reading Russell’s conversation that I began to read this statement differently.  Maybe it wasn’t the ingenuity God objected to, maybe he isn’t threatened by us building amazing things. It is, after all, part of our nature as creative beings. But our resourcefulness can be twisted and our inventions result in a world worse-off, not better. (Read the story of the Gatling Gun or Dynamite for examples). And this is all the more likely if we’re acting in our own self interest, for our own fame and power and comfort.  But if we were to instead align our efforts with the command of God – to fill the earth and subdue it, meaning to manage it responsibly and for the benefit of all – then perhaps our efforts would align with God and we could see truly astounding things accomplished.

It can go either way: jets for transport and jets for bombing, nuclear power or nuclear weapons, curing diseases or inventing new ones, programmable computers and systems of government. Humans have the creativity and the resolve to build incredible things. And that can work out really well or really horribly.

There are two questions to consider then: do you, like Russell Kirsch, believe God that what you can imagine and resolve, you can do? Because if you do, maybe you’ll go out there and do something that’s never been done.

The second question is, are you working towards your own fame, power and comfort, or towards the mission laid out by God: to responsibly manage and care for the earth we’ve inherited, and to care for the people we share it with?

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Faith Personal

Preaching about the undead

Preaching about a man who died and then began showing up again, evidently no longer dead, with a new evolution of the human body, and claiming this resurrection as validation of his claims to be king of his nation, saviour of humanity, and founder of a new world order where humans live empowered by a supernatural spirit to live an entirely different style of life which occasionally ignores the realities of physics or biology or politics…. I feel it should carry a whole different level of energy, challenge, hope, discomfort and urgency than it normally does.

And yet if I was preaching, I have no idea what that would look like.

Maybe I need to explore the reality (or unreality) of this story in my own existence first.

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Faith Personal

Get Analoguer This Advent

(Disclaimer: My startup journey and my faith overlap in this post. For those of you who want to avoid the theology stop reading now!)

I’m almost at the end of PhDo, a 6 week startup night class that I have been LOVING. One of the key lessons has been about getting your idea started in the quickest, cheapest, fastest way possible.

The idea is that if you wait too long, you work on your idea in secret, you never put it in front of customers, it’s just an idea. You don’t know if it’s something they’ll want or need or appreciate. Until you reach out and touch a human being, you might as well not have done anything.

Sam, the guy running the course, coined a word. Rather than planning a digital masterpiece of an app that might take years to build, is there a simple, manual, analogue way you can solve the same problem for the same person, now.  Not once you have all the resources and the app and the staff team and investment and… No. Can you help meet a need today? Start meeting a need now, help someone out, see if it’s well received, then worry about scaling the solution up for more people.

Get analoguer. Get dirty. Get doing – solve a problem today. Scale later.

I did this wrong with my School Management System app. I never met with the staff, and completely underestimated how complex the problem of tracking student attendance is.  My solution was way too simplistic, and would never be adequate. The project blew out by 10 months and caused a lot of frustration as a result.

I tried to be a messiah and solve this problem, thinking it would be easy.  But I never entered in and felt / understood the pain first. How can you offer help if you have not stood with people and felt their pain and understood the complexity of the problem first?

This is the difference with how Jesus chose to work. He could try solve the world’s problems from in Heaven. Or send some prophet to do the dirty work. Instead he chose to get dirty, get personal, and get in touch with those he was trying to help. Understand their pain and show his solidarity, feel the full weight and complexity of the problem, and show those facing it that you are eager to help, in any way you can, even if you get dirty doing so. Even if it means suffering with them. Even if it means dying with them.

Jesus left the ivory tower of Heaven. He was God, but put his rights as God and abilities as God behind him, he became an ordinary human, wrapped in ordinary human flesh. He got analogue.

Today is the first day of Advent – the season where we anticipate the coming of Jesus to earth, culminating in Christmas.

We join Mary in expecting the birth of the baby Messiah, the God who gave it all up to come and understand our problems and join us in this often-painful world, and resolved to help us in any way he could, no matter the cost.

And we join with the people of faith around the world expecting the second time Jesus will come, having grasped the full complexity and pain of the human condition, and having felt it for himself, he’ll be back with a solution that scales.

Until then, let’s get analoguer and show love to people, not waiting for the perfect plan, strategy or opportunity, but starting right now in a way where you get as close to the problem as you can, and give what you can today, even if it’s not a full and perfect solution.

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Personal Work Habits

Loved it, Loathed it

I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I’ve found Marcus Buckingham’s Standout profile and website really helpful.  The profile for me was accurate and insightful, and the tips I get sent each week are great.

One of them encouraged you to log the things in a week that you love (that leave you energized, strengthened) and the things that you loathed (that leave you drained, weakened).  This wasn’t about what other people do to you (a police officer gave me a fine – I loathed it, my boss gave me a pay rise, I loved it).  Rather this is about the work you’re doing, and what parts of your work energize you and what drains you.

Here’s my list.

Loved It

  • Working on new business strategy, or figuring out the brand/story that makes a new product have meaning.
  • Writing code for new APIs or frameworks that will be well designed, get use by many people, speed up development.  While I’m doing this I’m engaged, I’m learning and tweaking my skills, and I’m making something for that benefits both me and others.
  • Delivering a feature that has immediate customer benefit
  • Meeting people, getting them on board with a new idea.  This week it was a friend (and possibly future business partner), a learning support officer (who is an aspiring entrepreneur) and a friend who is wanting to get into graphic design.
  • Trying to consider how my faith world mixes with my business world.  Particularly this week: how can I see people as people, not resources or assets.  How can I help them find their particular spot in the world, and help them grow into it, rather than “how can I get you to do what I want”.
  • Wireframing, prototyping, design reference scouting

Loathed It

  • Maintaining old projects. Especially if it’s something I didn’t care for to begin. (For me this week, that includes Koha, Canvas, and Moodle to a lesser degree)
  • Being apart from Anna for too much of the week
  • Working on projects that feel like they will never end or progress.  I need a sense of momentum and an expectation that one thing will finish so that new things can start.
  • Having to report to (and problem solve with) a group of people who don’t understand the technical nature of the problem.
  • Having to answer questions where the “correct” answer is “drop quality, deliver faster”
  • Avoiding answering / helping people, because other deadlines are too heavy
  • Having to pretend something is good/ready when it’s not. I’d rather be honest. Drop projects if they suck, or at least admit it.

There’s my list for this week.  I’m in the middle of an extremely busy work season, so this is mostly focused on work and doesn’t touch much into my family life or faith life – both of which also have strengthening moments and weakening moments.  Still, a great exercise.

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Personal

Unsolicited Emails from Australian Labor

I just sent an email abuse report to MailChimp, documenting the unsolicited emails I have been receiving from the Australian Labor party.  I understand that one of their members may have accidentally entered the wrong email address once, but it is unfair that they have subscribed me to 8 separate email lists so far, and I have to take the time to unsubscribe from each one – when I never subscribed in the first place.  This is illegal under the SPAM ACT 2003.

Here is the email I sent them:

Hi

In Australia we have 2 main political parties, one of them being Labor. They’ve recently been voting for a new leader. I’m not a member of the party, but I’ve received an email from Labor people almost every week for the last month – all from different lists, and I have unsubscribed every single time, choosing the “I never subscribed” option.

5 of the 8 lists I received unsolicited email from were hosted by MailChimp, the remainder by NationBuilder (good luck competing! As a web developer I like your product better)

EMAIL 1
Subject: Party. Policy. People.
Sender: MailChimp
X-campaignid: mailchimpd1d04c8e8a8375877ba044bc4.be6aae17ed

EMAIL 2
Subject: Why I’m Standing
Sender: NationBuilder

EMAIL 3
Subject: I want to make a difference
Sender: NationBuilder

EMAIL 4
Subject: Join Bill Shorten for a conversation with country members tonight
Sender: MailChimp
X-campaignid: mailchimp2a0336f66d93a2c444ff3d779.ed092fdc95

EMAIL 5
Subject: Make your vote count
Sender: NationBuilder

EMAIL 6
Subject: I’m supporting Bill
Sender: MailChimp
X-campaignid: mailchimpd1d04c8e8a8375877ba044bc4.1636a97be2

EMAIL 7
Subject: Labor eNews
Sender: MailChimp
X-campaignid: mailchimpb6a6fa942a4870ed76b06bc02.4f94c686b5

EMAIL 8
Subject: Thank you for your support
Sender: MailChimp
X-campaignid: mailchimp429f4375fe72549c8e09fe0fd.53fef0c08a

As you can see, the Australian Labor party is creating many different lists, and is subscribing my email address to each of them without my permission. I am assuming another Jason O’Neil entered an incorrect email address (this happens often), but as it stands I can only assume the Labor party is importing a bulk list of email addresses into MailChimp, and while I can unsubscribe from each individual mailing list, they will just create new lists and re-import my address.

Unsolicited email is illegal in Australia under the SPAM ACT 2003. I have attempted to contact them but was unable to resolve the issue, and I have received multiple emails since then.

I guess what I am asking:

– Can you contact the owners of these lists and remind them of their responsibilities under law and under your terms and conditions?

– Is there a way to prevent my address from being imported into new lists during a bulk import?

Thank you for your time!
Jason

Categories
Faith Justice and Politics Personal

Human Faces

When I see the human face behind a political issue, the emotions of apathy, indignation or anger become less.  Then empathy (understanding their suffering), sorrow (grieving with them), remorse (that collectively, the humans in my country did this to other humans) – these emotions become stronger.  Finally, there is hope – these people have courage, and see a better future.  They want to fight injustice, and fight for the rights of those who follow.  I hope, at the end of my life, I can say that I partnered with these guys, not the powers that locked them up and stole their childhood.

Refugee looks back on ordeal of seeking asylum and being detained in Nauru

(God, have mercy, do not treat us as our sins deserve.)