Category: Musing

More than a label

Peter HallettLeave a comment

image

I was walking in the sunshine at University of Sydney with my little grand daughter who needed a short break from church in the old Geology building.

We came across a tree (pictured) with beautiful patterned bark, soft and flakey, and gentle spindly branches that were almost silhouetted against the blue sky.

I laid my hand against the trunk and felt its warmth and encouraged Maddison to do likewise. She reached across and rested the palm of her hand on the tree.

I stepped back to photograph the tree which had won my heart and as we began to move on I noticed a tag or label nailed to it.

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Unity and uniqueness

Peter HallettLeave a comment

It’s good to stand together, prefer one another, consider others better, bear one another’s burdens, weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh. Re-digging the ancient wells of your father. It’s good to follow the narrow path, hear the call of God, use the gifts you have, make the most of the […]

I finished a novel and didn’t notice

Peter Hallett1 Comment

I’ve been stealing moments to write my first novel for so long now that when I wrote the last scene I was caught unawares.

Tidying up some spelling and rushed typing I saved the file and then noticed that the pressure to go on, to finish, had gone.

Then I realised. That was it. The place I had always planned to end had been reached. It was over.

So I immediately began re-reading and re-writing….

While the breadth of the novel is complete, the depth and dimension no doubt will require some work.

And in the end, who knows if anyone but me will read it.

Not to worry, I don’t care.

Still, I did submit it to a publisher today.

If you are interested to know more, leave a comment, I could be enticed to share a few details from my secret life of writing.

I’d say 100 comments might be enticing enough….

Robert Kennedy, fighting into positive territory, letter to daughter

Fighting back into positive territory

Peter HallettLeave a comment

Fighting back into positive territory is a cliche associated, most commonly, with the share market where it describes stocks, or indeed the whole market, moving from loss into gain.

Of course shares and markets are not personal beings that can fight back into anything and so it is a pity this phrase is so often wasted on the endless statistical variations of markets.

Where it is truly significant is in the story of human beings all over our planet who, against the odds, deliberatley and intentionally, fight back into positive territory.

An example I heard tonight was Senator Robert Kennedy, who shortly after the assassination of his brother, President John F Kennedy, wrote to his 12-year-old daughter:

‘Dear Kathleen, You seem to understand that Jack died and was buried today. As the oldest of the grandchildren, you have a special responsibility. Be kind to others and work hard for our country. Love, Daddy.’

‘Be kind to others and work hard for our country…’ – fighting back into positive territory.

This is one example among millions where people – confronted with loss, disability, disaster, sickness, suffering and tragedy – doggedly fight back into positive territory in their lives by choosing well on what to focus, on the words they speak, and the memories they entertain, or the perspective they maintain.

These are courageous, redemptive acts, all of them, and follow the great Redemeer at work in the world.

Keep fighting.

Rev Bob Hammond,

Lord’s Prayer reveals divine priorities

Peter Hallett1 Comment

Searching for ‘tweets’ in the writings of iconic Australian social reformer and evangelist Rev Robert Hammond, this comment stuck in my thinking:

‘The Lord’s Prayer does say: “And forgive us our debts,” but first it says “Give us this day our daily bread.”‘

In context, Hammond was suggesting before we worry about someone’s sin (wrongdoing), we should see to their daily needs of survival, in keeping with his commitment to practical Christianity.

This morning I woke early, and was thinking, among other things, of what other divine prioritisation we might see in a form of praying that came directly from Jesus. Whatever you think of Jesus, you would have to agree, understanding how he ordered his view of the world is worth considering.

Here’s a few early morning thoughts.

Our Father in Heaven: Not just God first, but relating to God so intimately that it transcends all of life and reaches to where God exists.

Hallowed (praised) be your name: Our choice to honour God’s identity, character, presence.

Your kingdom come, your will be done: His explanation of how to live purposely and perfectly now.

On earth as in heaven: Completing the circle – intimate relationship that honours the character and ways of God leads to a heaven on earth potential.

Give us this day: Not just ‘forever’ but living for today.

Our daily bread: Be practical about our (individual and communal) whole and healthy life

And forgive our sins: Be accountable for your own choices before God.

As we forgive others: Having the humility to acknowledge our own shortcomings means we might be able to release others from theirs.

Lead us not into temptation: Prepare for what choices we will face today by relying on God’s goodness.

Deliver us from evil: Prepare for the choices of others and the randomness of a broken world by relying on God’s goodness.

Your’s is the kingdom, power and glory forever: Come what may, be wrapped up in God’s completeness.

Amen: So be it.

The Lord’s Prayer, as it is commonly known to Protestant Christians, or the Pater Noster (Our Father) to many Catholics, is not so much a prayer, but a way of praying.

And as we have seen, it is also a way of living and seeing, today and forever.

PH

PS You can follow RBS Hammond on Twitter here.

Good Friday Fashion

Peter HallettLeave a comment

Pockets of unbelief
Some bulging overcoat-size, fit the world in here Doctor Who style
Others faux, stitched, finger-blocking and smug, for appearance
Many inside jackets, back of jeans, silently or savagely stashed

Superior, mildly scornful, more dismissive, of my
Happy Easter greeting, not returned.

Broad swathes of just-believing cloth
But blowing in the wind, somewhat faded, trouser leg
Or sensible dress, unbuttoned sleeve, residual with faith’s fragrances
Pinched and creased and stained by paedophiles and penchants and pus

Didn’t even mention, neither for or against
Unobtrusive, benign, begrudging, slightly bitter? God, it’s Easter.

Collars, cuffs and hidden hems of belief
Heady justification, muddy footslog trailing threads and quick cuffs
Plunged diabolically or deliberately into pockets stirring
Or dipped in sweat of need or heartfelt hidden, hemmed in at home

Not just another day, more than a holiday
The core of my being, nothing more or less, forgive me Easter.

Good Friday fashion eternally of choice and destination
One garment disdained, gambled and divided and sworn
Another devotedly wrapped and wrapped and tears
And what will we wear world, garment of praise, garment of the age?

Lying still, pause for breath if nothing else
It’s a day that defies the pace and my mind turns to, strangely
Good Friday Fashion

…they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
…took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth

PH

photo, mystery, lightening, ultrasound, clouds, xray

Brought to sight by a flash of light

Peter HallettLeave a comment

It’s small in the scheme of things
But significant all the same
Brought to sight by a flash of light
The unseen is suddenly seen

Water surrounds it darkly
Future written in the sky
Brought to sight by a flash of light
Startling momentous life

What is it?

Slim Moment

Peter HallettLeave a comment

Mantel’s Cromwell stands amidst the past like a house burned down

It fattens your thought like cholesterol in your veins
Like tar in your lungs
The past clings to things heavily
And you carry the weight without knowing
Your fastest manoeuvre is leadened, leavened
And you blame the present
Ignoring the heavy metal armour of yesterday
But in a slim moment you glimpse
You – divested of this insulation to life
A sharper, faster, nimbler you
One that was forgotten; no, more than that
One you didn’t know existed.

Can you forego once and for all
This raking of the coals
This teasing of your soul
Your sabotage of certainty and seasons
Ah, of course there is no once and for all
That is what keeps you there, in the past
Unfinished business that can’t be finished
So unfinish it with His “Finished”
Even deadly, devout Cromwell knew as much

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Poetry of rock in motion

Peter Hallett1 Comment

Rock is like water, only slower.

Walking along a rock platform today I saw waves coursing through the stone, swells and surges of infinite patience, little turgid trickles, the splatter of very slow rain, a steady splash and cheeky, rocky streams.

Shapes and forms, pleasing to the eye, that take seconds to occur in water minutes or hours in sand and centuries or millennia in stone.

And yet the rock has its movement, too slow for our perception, rendering it still to our transient eyes.

But for the Inhabiter of ages, for whom a thousand years is a day and moments are a lifetime, all is poetry in motion.

Which is why I walk peacefully on watery rock and Jesus saunters on solid water.

Wakeful words

Peter Hallett1 Comment

Waking this morning, my mind moved to these words even before I was properly awake: thank you.

I can take no credit. Gratitude for answered prayer was awash within me and overflowed into my wakeful thoughts.

A good way to start the rest of life, or just today.

Difference between ‘feeling’ and ‘being’ anxious unlocks an answer

Peter HallettLeave a comment

“…for nothing be anxious.” *

I think there is a difference between feeling anxious and being anxious.

Photo by Jesse Therrien

Anxiety is a normal, perhaps even healthy, feeling when faced with the unknown, the unsafe or the unwanted. Usually this feeling of anxiety resolves when you pass through the situation and relief follows or, if your anxiety was justified, more concrete thoughts, actions and responses are required.

Sometimes it is the psycho-emotional effects of feelings of anxiety that help guide you through challenging situations – heightened vigilance, physical alertness (adrenalin), cautious progress.

But what if it is not so much that you ‘feel’ anxious, but that you are ‘being’ anxious; that you find yourself continuing in anxiety with or without an initial trigger.

Many of us in life can find ourselves weighed down with all the mental and physical responses of anxiety for hours, days or months. We are being anxious and we have forgetten how not to be anxious.

At such times, phrases such as the Biblical epigram for this post, “for nothing be anxious”, can seem infuriating and mindless to the person who would rather do anything but be anxious.

When our friends or spouses or colleagues tell us to ‘get over it’ when that is the one thing we can’t seem to do, we feel even more anxious. That is presuming anyone but ourselves even knows. In most cases, these predicaments are carried with silence, a supreme act of the will considering the turmoil inside.

So when the Bible says ‘for nothing be anxious’ do we have yet another voice condemning and consigning the anxious person to deeper isolation?Read More »

Vividness is in the eye of the beholder

Peter Hallett4 Comments

Some days sights stand out like an artwork or cherished memory. They weave together like poetry and I wonder if this is the result of sunshine, a good night’s sleep or a trick of the eye.

Walking past the sandstone of St Andrew’s Cathedral, a man looking like a troubled disciple urinates against the wall, hidden by a low, non-burning bush. While some find comfort within, he’s found relief outside.

Two pastel green motor scooters sit side by tidy side on Clarence St except one is within the parking area and the other without. A female parking inspector stands upright in judgement like a robot from a sci-fi movie and separates the two on a point of law.

Later an office worker strides down Kent, security card swinging, and a hand held to her face, covering tears. She walks on looking sideways in anguish but not slowing, tears not moving a busy soul.

A young Indian woman with flowing hair sits on the ground in the foyer staring at a water bottle in front of her, lid off. I think she might be hit by the door if someone comes down the stairs but I leave her to her vigil.

Holy relics travel the world and come home to see out their days

Peter HallettLeave a comment

I bought them from a department store for a few dollars four years ago, not the coolest or the most expensive but they did the job.

They’ve flipped through the sand playfully and rested on tiles prayerfully with Bali’s beautiful peopleThey made an accidental appearance at Wimbledon, and may have suffered a dollop of warm cream from my strawberries.

A European summer was a fitting environment for these fine friends and not to be outdown by more practical measures

They tasted the dust of Rome’s ancient paths

Cooled in the light blue waters of Venician canalsStood beneath David’s marble features in Florence, dashing through the piazzas.

Not to be outdown by time and distance, they found their place in India’s complex culturesShopping for sarees on Commercial St, BangaloreA dash of tea near a St Thomas church on a steamy afternoon

The sands of Chennai clinging and the blood of the martyr as close as could be

And then there are the wonders of our broad landCarried along the in the far north during a Cape Tribulation stroll

The sounds of Italy and the smell of garlic down Leichhardt streets

windmill on a Brisbane hill looked down on my friends

The trams of Melbourne could not shake us apart

And many other places

But in the end, after taking eveything I could throw at them

Or even when I threw them at anything, many times

They have been undone by nothing more

Than the little cuts and grinds of wear and tear

And though my trust remains strong

My fellow travellers are approaching their last journey

And will abide as holy relics

≈

 

If God seems far away… he isn’t

Peter HallettLeave a comment

Growing up in Taree from about 1967-72 I was the proud owner of a purple dragster bicycle.

Not indentical, but a close match for the dragster I use to ride. This one, an original, is selling for $2,800...

High-rise handle-bars, a T-bar gear shifter midway along the top-tube (in hindsight, perilously located), and banana seat with sissy bar meant I was the height of late-60s, early-70s bike-riding fashion… something that escaped me as a nine or ten-year-old.

I can still recall riding around Nicoll Cres with my friends singing Bopping the Blues (Blackfeather, 1972 – not that I actually knew who the band was at the time) or pedalling down to the corner store for a 15c can of soft drink. Saxby’s I think.

I can also recall my mother giving me a sheet of flouro pink stickers that had Christian mottos or sayings on them for the purpose of encouraging people to think about God.

When I started riding the bike to school, we attached a bike rack at the back (I’m finding this hard to imagine but I know it’s true because my school case once fell off it in the middle of the road outside Taree West Primary School and while scooping my belongings back in, I found about 15 cigarettes lying there and scooped them in too – but that’s another story).

Anyway, we used to park our bikes in racks at the side of the school and I can distinctly remember two boys, walking past as I was preparing to leave for the day, stopping, reading the sticker, laughing and moving on.

The good news was that they appreciated the humour of the flouro pink sticker and this saved me from a moment of ridicule which I had been fully expecting.

The sticker read:

‘If God seems far away, guess who’s moved?’

Now, in 2012, this is an extremely old line which still gets trotted out. But in the late 60s, early 70s – it was brand new.

And the saying has remained associated with these memories ever since. Of my purple dragster, of my mother’s eager new faith and desire to share it with others, of my own childlike faith and an innocence in putting my beliefs on the line, of wearing green button-up shirts to school, drinking warm flavoured milk in small foil-lidded bottles at recess and falling off the monkey bars and smashing my head open one lunchtime (yet another story).

Forty years on and recently I have paused to reflect on the whole idea of our relative location to God and the reality of him feeling far away.

If I had my time again, and was a wise nine-year-old, I would say to those two older boys, as I say to you:

‘Everyone is moving all the time and often without even knowing it. But wherever we go and how ever we get there, God is never far away, even if that’s what we feel. We may take 10,000 steps away from him but it’s always only one step back.’

The past few years have seen some changes in my life that I could never have anticipated, to do with who I thought I was and what I was doing with my life. A lot of movement occurred, often outside my control, but thankfully the most important things of life – faith, marriage, family, health – have remained true and near. God has indeed seemed distant, often, and yes, it was me who moved in those times.

But if God seems far away to you today, he isn’t. He’s close enough to whisper in your ear and know the longings of your heart.

Psalm 139

Oh, and because I know you can’t get that tune out of your head, here’s Blackfeather with Boppin the Blues…

Unless a tomato falls into the ground…

Peter Hallett2 Comments

Lying forlornly in the dirt, like a yellowing tomb slit open, is the remains of an early season tomato from my garden that didn’t quite make it to the plate.

Sydney’s unseasonally damp summer has meant the vigorous tomato plant this specimen came from is long gone, afflicted by various diseases and my lack of care on occasions when life got too busy.

This shell-of-a-tomato was most likely not picked and taken inside for human consumption because it was marked or damaged or being eaten by a worm… In other words, it was rejected.

I know a Man who takes rejection, accusation and being cast aside and turns them into new life. He did it with his own life, saying, ‘unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone’.

February is late for growing tomatoes but no one mentioned this to my cast-aside tomato and without any assistance from myself, a veritable forest of tomato seedlings have emerged from their yellowing tomb.

With Sydney’s weather finally providing some sunshine and still plenty of rain, the young seedlings are thriving.

It’s not easy growing vegetables in an inner city town house. Pots are used, mainly, and these have to be carefully positioned to find sun and escape birds and the occasional visiting rat. (And Leroy our dog is known to occasionally pluck a tomato or strawberry for his own illegal consumption…)

It also means carrying pots and soil and shovels through the house to get to one courtyard or another, making an exercise such as repotting tomatoes a logistical challenge.

During the process I carried one of my new self-sown seedlings to another courtyard and realised I was carrying life in the palm of my hand. I also realised it was one of those ‘stock-photo-moments-of-hand-with-seedling-depicting-new-life’.

There is something about gardening that is renewing. Or perhaps the renewing comes first and then the energy to garden emerges. A bit of both I think.

As the cricket starts, and the sun bites, I’ve finished my little project and that pale shell of a tomato womb has birthed an array of seedlings, some already flowering, ready to greet the final month or so of summer warmth in Sydney.

There is not a soul among us who has not had at least a moment of being cast aside, left for dead, and lying in the dirt alone.

There is a God who showed himself as one of us, who placed  pictures of death and resurrection among us as reminders and who died an earthly death so he could share a heavenly life with many, many sons and daughters.

No doubt he is enjoying my tomatoey resurgence and if even one of these offspring is as productive as the original (bought from a stall at Leichhardt Public School fete), then we will enjoy a feast of home-grown tomatoes as the seasons approach change.

John 12:24

 

Dear 2012, it’s nice to meet you

Peter HallettLeave a comment

Dear 2012,

We haven’t met yet. My name is Utterance and I’m a blog. Sorry I haven’t said hello earlier but it has taken a touch of insomnia from my mate Pete to get things going this year. Um, that’s you isn’t it. This year that is. Well look, I’ve never talked to a year before so if I get a bit muddled, please forgive me.

Anyway, we have a bit in common, me (Utterance) and you (2012). Being a new year, as you are, you’d be interested to know that I pretty much began when my mate Pete made a New Year’s Resolution involving your colleague 2010. This was that Pete would write a new post on me every day during 2010.

Well he managed 266 posts which is not bad, I think 2010 was pleased, and he reflected on this here. He kept going in your other colleague, 2011, and I had my busiest ever day on August 17, 2011 when nearly 700 people dropped by to read my account of Kate Bracks winning Masterchef. Strangely enough, my most popular post of all time is to do with food as well, with 8632 people dropping in on MasterChef’s seven sins; God’s endless forgiveness.

Sorry to say there appears to be no such resolution this you, as here it is your 11th and we’ve only just met. But I’m sure we’ll get better acquainted as the year, sorry, as you progress and to help I’ll give you a bit more background.

As a blog I’m rather hard to define, deliberately so I think, which is a bit like my writer who has never been comfortable in a box, sometimes to his detriment. You know you can get further sometimes just by fitting in but he’s one of those early sixties babies who was never quite Boomer, never quite Buster and then had three Gen Y kids and so it’s all over the place.

I’m quite reflective at times, possibly a bit sentimental and even a little regretful. Please 2012, give me a slap around the ears if I go to far down that path.

I love the news – bit of the old printers’ ink in the blood  – well that would be his blood I guess as technically blogs have bytes and hits and posts but not so much of blood. But yes he was and is a journalist so there’s a newsiness to myself.

I especially like spotting God in the headlines, little signs of faith and the divine that manage to emerge in the daily dust of the world’s happenings. That’s why I might talk about Tim Tebow or job ads or Ayrton Senna or buggity, buggity, buggity or the Amazing Race.

Sydney’s a favourite, this great sprawling city of broad beaches, tense traffic, drive by shootings and colourful characters. And the occasional dead body, rainbow or pedestrian poem.

And if I try and get a little wise, a little insightful, bear with me, this too will surely pass.

So dear 2012, I hope we get along okay and catch up more than occasionally. For your part, could please slow down a little as it’s hard enough to find a moment without you being in a rush too, insomnia aside.

Oh, and as you are just at the beginning, here’s mine, it might help complete the picture of what I’m about.

Fare thee well and remember the advice I give everyone – breath, speak, breath and don’t forget to jump.

Much love
Utterance

PS Mr 2012, you can also follow my friend Pete on Twitter.
PPS Mr 2012, I’ve heard rumours that you are meant to be associated with the end of the world, something to do with Mayan calendars etc. Anyway, just to reassure you I have much higher hopes for you than that and in any case, the world won’t end until He says so.