Category: Musing

Speechless of late

Peter Hallett1 Comment

I know I’ve been speechless of late
Without utterance
It’s what happens when your ears are full
Your mouth is empty
And your heart is silence overflowing

I still see things and wonder and create
Small chains of ideas
But the energy to bother has been cruelled
Slipping through cracks
And running down the dirty city gutter

It occurred to me as a small example –
Our life addiction
How we settle for many impoverishings
Because we at least
Are alive to breath and remember

Or to notice the man with maddened hair
Dark tanned cracked face
Sitting on a shady step on hot King St
Counting his coins
Black eyes catch mine before we separate

Or to feel tears swell when crackly speakers
Come to life and bid
Us all stand and silently remember
I saw just a boy’s name
And recalled the worth of two quiet minutes

Here’s to all the dreamers and lovers and stealers
For the ‘sparks soul’
Where ‘love is the only art’; so mention
It again to yourself
And open wide your flailing utterance

Hope against all hope in the midst of change

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It has been a year of unprecedented change for our family, some if it chosen, some of it not – and it’s not over yet.

Change, whether initiated or imposed, is often challenging – especially when it affects the deep things of your heart and your future.

In the midst of some difficult moments this month, I had a speaking engagement where my theme was to be hope. Having been planned long before, it almost seemed laughable that I would contemplate hope when I was more prone to panic.

Of course, God has a sense of humour and that is good reason to be hopeful – it helps not to take yourself too seriously.

There is something unique about the Bible that when you turn to it to prepare some thoughts for others, it has an amazing power to instead prepare you.

And so, for all those pondering their future, wondering their past and wandering right now, let there be hope:Read More »

To find God and yet pursue

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Love Liberty Disco
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There are some days in which Love Liberty Disco is just the thing. Not quite sure why, certainly not the white suits on the cover. Perhaps it’s Peter Furler’s falsetto.

Helpful also to find a reference to AW Tozer’s The Pursuit of God in track one, Beautiful Sound: ‘To have found You and still be looking for You, it’s the “soul’s paradox of love”‘.

The original quote reads: ‘To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.’

Just let our hearts burn God, we are nothing but children.

Walking at the precise speed of menace

Peter Hallett1 Comment

We were all just waiting for the bus, of no great stature or intent. He came prowling down the footpath, walking at the precise speed of menace and power. Black shoes and trousers, dark brown leather jacket and impenetrable sunglasses. Tanned face and pony-tail, probably taut muscles beneath his impeccable attire. He put the cigarette to his mouth with his fingers making a crooked V across his lip, and paused, as if the whole world depended on his inhaling. He stalked through the bus mortals, studiously ignoring our existence, not even props on his stage. The bus arrived and I clambered on board, watching him appreciate his reflection in the window. As the 438 pulled away, I caught a glimpse of him turn sharply and shout. Despite his glory, he’d missed the bus.

‘Are you there yet?’

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She only asked if she could go home once, and was quickly distracted by a passing motorbike.

‘Are you there yet,’ she asked often, as if her presence was barely of note.

A song came on, and I sang along quietly, ‘better than a hallelujah’. A stillness joined us, and a deeper Presence.

‘You’re a champion I said,’ when we arrived. And her smile of acceptance was worth the journey.

Pine from ancient world via Big W to our place

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The Wollemi Pine (and I may also qualify)  is often referred to as a ‘living fossil’ and one of the greatest botanical discoveries of our time.

In September 1994, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service officer and canyoner David Noble, came across some trees he didn’t  recognise in a deep canyon of  Wollemi National Park. They were what we now call Wollemia nobilis or the Wollemi Pine.

These tall and striking trees were thought to be extinct and grow only 150 km from Sydney.

We found ours in the plant nursery of Big W, Erina, and it has had a noble life in one of our inner city courtyards for the past three years. Secretly I have come to believe that Big W stands for Big Wollemi…

Anyway, as if responding to increased rainfall and no doubt a recent influx of new soil and fertiliser, Big Wollemi is becoming even scruffier and confusing by spouting new growth off very old branches which sometimes form at unusual angles to the original branch.

At the same time, it has developed a large waxy protuberance in the centre at the top which has made me quite nervous, especially since I watched Day of the Triffids last night. Which reminds me to ask, did anyone else devour John Wyndham novels as kid or am I the only one…

I’m certain the protuberance is nothing sinister, but giving the rarity of these plants, and the relatively short time they have been bred in captivity (if that’s possible for a plant) I’m hoping it is going to bring forth something truly pre-historic, such as a baby pterodactyl… but more likely just new branches…. If you don’t hear from me again, presume it was the former. (I also watched Jurassic Park 2 and 3 recently. Sorry.)

More head miles than my legs can cope with

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My New Year’s resolution to post to Utterance every day in 2010 has hit its biggest challenge recently thanks to a condition a good friend describes as ‘head miles’.

I first heard him use the phrase when I asked him why it was he stayed awake all night, most nights, walking the streets.

‘Oh, I just walk around and do lots of head miles,’ he replied calmly. He put it down to a combination of schizophrenia and the drugs used to treat his condition. I can claim neither as contributing factors for my mental mileage.

Unfortunately I also cannot claim the same positive side-effect of doing lots of walking. The phenomenon has dried up quite a bit since the City to Surf although I have turned to cricket in an attempt to stay fit. That, and about a kilometre quick-march as part of my journey to work each day.

Having watched a great deal of the big game of cricket on a small box in recent years, I was clearly lured into a false sense of my own ability. In a team made up of much younger men, including my sons, it has been somewhat embarrassing to discover my body simply won’t cooperate.

During the first game, not only did I manage to go out to bat with my pads on the wrong legs, wearing left-handed batting gloves and with my helmet in an oddly sight-reducing position, but I pulled my ham string fielding in the slips.Read More »

Suffer into Freshness

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I wrote this poem on my phone, hence the short lines and meter. Clearly some angst on this particular day…

Suffer into Freshness

Is there a faith that is safe
From fading vacuous jargon
And well-intentioned simpletons
Who trample through the garden?

The further I remove myself
From religious ways of thinking
The more I notice emptiness
And sentiment that’s sinking.

Is this a sign of my decline
Into a heart that’s hardened?
Or a clearing of my sight
To metamorphing pardon.Read More »

Jesus is still a dangerous idea…

Peter Hallett4 Comments
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...
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The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is on again at Sydney Opera House on October 2-3 covering everything from The Right is the New Left through to that most important of questions, Are All Men Fakes?

But before we take a closer a look at the festival (tomorrow), I recall discovering a dangerous idea when I was at university studying humanities back in the early eighties.

That was a time when Australia still had an active communist party and I think most of its members were either studying or lecturing in my course.

It might also explain why one of the subjects on offer was Studies in Rebellion and I was just rebellious enough to take it.

Then while most of my comrades where sliding to the left politically or dallying deeply into capitalism, I became a Christian and began volunteering in a soup kitchen.Read More »

Chattering and tractoring classes worlds apart on election day

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In the inner Sydney seat of Grandyler where I live we have as a choice of candidates, starting on the left:  two varieties of socialists, the Greens, a rare Democrat sighting, the sitting Labor member and a Liberal candidate who is so young that the picture of youths being sent off to war as canon-fodder comes to mind.

Compare this to, say, the rural NSW seat of Riverina and you have, starting at the right: One Nation,  Independent, Christian Democratic Party, Family First, Liberal Democrat, Nationals, Liberals, Labor and Greens although there may be some discussion as to the relative ‘rightness’ of some of these candidates.

In other words, we have remarkably different worlds just a few hundred kilometres apart. It’s a common divide between the city and the bush and grows wider with relative distance from major city CBDs.

While there are overlaps and exceptions, we would do well to understand and respect the differences in priority and perspective between the inner city ‘chattering classes’ and the rural ‘tractoring classes’. 

One lesson is that the Greens have taken a step up from being a minor party that falls into an organisational hole when elections drawn near. They are mobilised even in electorates where they have more chance of being mistaken for a vegetable than winning.

If parties such as the CDP or Family First aspire to real political influence they must find their support base, represent it powerfully and broadly and do the hard yards of political foot soldiering.

As for making sense of it all, an election article of mine has been published in Sight Magazine or visit my Australian Christian Voter blog to find a link and vote in an election day survey – what’s your tip for election day?

Discovering why we do what we do and the guts to change

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Most of us spend some time wondering why we do the things we do and not always finding answers.

There is an ancient Christian spiritual discipline that I know of as ‘examine’ in which the believer is encouraged to take time out during the day, consider the activities and emotions they have been experiencing, reflect on them with the assistance of God’s leading, and hopefully receive insight and awareness into why we do what we do.

This is in keeping with the Biblical imperative of 2 Corinthians 13:5 – ‘Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves…’

I am always fascinated when I find concessions to a deeper or spiritual life in unexpected places. Such as a marketing blog on the internet. While Seth Godin is not your usual marketing writer in any case, it was still a surprise to discover his recent blog ‘The places you go’ which I’ve quoted in part below:

‘Occasionally we encounter emotions at random. More often, we have no choice, because there’s something that needs to be done, or an event that impinges itself on us. But most often, we seek emotions out, find refuge in them, just as we walk into the living room or the den.

‘Stop for a second and reread that sentence, because it’s certainly controversial. I’m arguing that more often than not, we encounter fear or aggravation or delight because we seek it out, not because it’s thrust on us.

‘Why check your email every twenty minutes? It’s not because it needs checking. It’s because the checking puts us into a state we seek out. Why yell at the parking attendant with such gusto? Teaching him a lesson isn’t the point – no, in that moment, it’s what we want to do, it’s a room we choose to hang out in. It could be something as prosaic as getting involved in a flame war online every day, or checking your feeds at midnight or taking a shot or two before dinner. It’s not something you have to do, it’s something you choose to do, because going there takes your emotions to a place you’ve gotten used to, a place where you feel comfortable, even if it makes you unhappy.

‘…you realize that there are some [emotional] rooms you’re spending way too much time in, that these choices are taking away from your productivity or your happiness. Why are you going there again?

‘Every time you go to that room, you get unhappy, and so do we. Every time you go to that room, you spend more time than you expected, and it stresses out the rest of your day. Every time you go to that room you short-circuit the gifts you give to the rest of the team.

‘Once your habit becomes an addiction, it’s time to question why you get up from a room that was productive and happy, a place you were engaged, and walk down the hall to a room that does no one any good (least of all, you). Tracking your day and your emotions is a first step, but it takes more than that. It takes the guts to break some ingrained habits, ones that the people around you might even be depending on.’

Go for it Godin. This is the beatitudes of Jesus packaged in a 21st century medium and preached by a secular prophet.

‘You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.’ Matthew 5:8 The Message Bible

City to Surf audio posts here tomorrow

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After walking and jogging a couple of hundred kilometres in the past few months, Jeremy and I are ready for the City to Surf tomorrow.

We’ll hop on the 440 bus just before 8am in time to join our exclusive back of the pack starting group in the city. Due to the large crowds expected to watch our special orange group, we won’t get away from the start line until about 9am.

But our times will be carefully synchronised thanks to the start of the art shoe lace chips we’ll be wearing so our spectacular times will not be interfered with.

For you, the listening public, we will phone in breaking news blog audio posts direct from the race. So watch this space tomorrow morning (not during church though…) for a starting summary, a mid-race review, and a eulogy at the end. Did I say eulogy? I meant wrap-up.

If you are watching on television (and checking out this blog at the same time of course) you will probably spot us, notable for our orange bibs, my Jesus Saves goalkeeping t-shirt (thanks Bek) and Jeremy’s huge stature. If you see an ambulance, that also may have something to do with us…

I know various other people completing the event and have decided to let them all beat me in the spirit of self-sacrifice. On the day, the City to Surf will be the winner…

My secret preparation tip was a carbohydrate-laden Pad See Ew, purchased on the way home from the Swans v  Hawks game, from official City to Surf Thai restaurant, Thai La Long. (I just made up the official bit.)

My other secret weapon was to work night shift last night and have just three hours sleep this morning as I plan to sleep through the last half of the race tomorrow so as not to notice the pain in my curly toe.

I know you don’t believe me about the curly toe but it’s the stuff of legend in my family and I have learned from my mother that she gets it too and so did my grandmother. We come from a line of curly toed people…

I have just realised my sleep deprivation may be becoming obvious in this posting so will say farewell and go upstairs to see if I can make out what Jo is singing in the shower. PH

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Relentless, restless reading confessions

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People with blogs often tell other people, with or without blogs, about what they are reading. This may be to come across as a clever, readerish type or out of a genuine attempt to stimulate reading and discussion.

In my case I’m going to tell you what I’ve been reading because the litter of books next to my bed could be ignored no longer. I suddenly noticed it one day and thought, mmmm.

Anyway, here’s what I’m reading and feel free to use the comment facility with this post to inflict on me what you are reading. No, seriously, I’m generally interested! By the way, this reading does not include the portions of novels I am required to read for the publishing and editing courses I am doing which so far has included Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, James Bradley’s The Resurrectionist and Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park (and that’s just the first week…). And then there is the constant noting of books other people are recommending in my lectures so that I now have a list of about 37 books that simply must be read…

But back to the leaf-litter around my bed:

Read More »

To be beheaded, and satisfied…

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Back in the early 1990s when I started out in pastoral ministry and church leadership there was a popular teaching used to inspire Christians to greater heights of service and vision.

‘There came a man sent by God, and his name was John’ reads John 1:6, speaking of John the Baptist.

We were asked to replace the name ‘John’ with our own to encourage us to believe we too had been called by God to do great things. Just as John the Baptist strode out into the Jordan and Judea in response to the call of God, so to we would make our mark on the world.

Of course there is a fine line between an ultruistic desire to change the world and egotistical need for recognition and I’m not entirely sure which was more developed by this reference.

That is not to say that God does not call people and that we should not have an unaffected, humble and life-changing sense of the purpose of God in our lives. Each one of us is significant beyond our comprehension, in terms of our seen and unseen influence on others but mostly because we matter to God.

But I don’t recall us, as we discussed this verse, following on from this starting point with John the Baptist through to the outcome of his call. John lived in the desert, wore animal skins, ate locusts, languished in prison, watched his finest disciples leave to follow another and was beheaded.

While Jesus called him greater than any Old Testament prophet, his entire ministry was designed to make way for another. One of John’s best known statements was that Jesus should become more, and himself less.

Serving God is ever the selfless act and if we substitute our own ambition for his glory we cross over into something different.

None of us carry off selflessness to perfection – even John the Baptist acknowledged a gradual retreat of his own name and a rising up of Christ’s. And many of us forget selflessness altogether and pursue ministry for selfish gain, cloaked in a spiritual mantle.

The telling will be in our ability to lay it down and celebrate its picking up by another. To be beheaded and satisfied that we have done well is the mark of Christian greatness. Now there’s a line we don’t see too often in leadership classes… PH

PS There might be something in this post for Kevin Rudd??!!

Love enemies or become one…

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I think I’ve worked out why (apart from the obvious world peace and so on) Jesus told us not to hate our enemies, but to love them and pray for them.

If you hate your enemies, you will become like them. And then one day you’ll realise you hate yourself.

If your love your enemies, and pray for them, they might just become like your friends and love you back. Or if not, your still in front because you will still find it possible to love yourself and hopefully you will have spent a fair bit of time talking to God. Simple, isn’t it.

Are we missing the very frontline of faith?

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The Australian community is engaged in an extremely active and vigorous debate about the reality of God and I’m not sure the church at large is even aware it is going on.

While we faithful pray in our services and gatherings that God would move in our land, we may be missing the very answer to those prayers. (Try and stay with me my atheist readers, I know your blood pressure just rose at the mention of answered prayer.)

One of the first signs of spiritual revival might well be that people are even thinking about first order issues such as the origins and nature of life, is there supernatural or spiritual reality or only a material universe, and if religious claims are true how do we deal with many apparent contradictions and problems.

These kinds of questions are often and vigorously debated mainly in online forums and often in response to an increasing number of articles in the media addressing these questions from one perspective or another.

I can assure you this was not the case 10 or 20 years ago when most Australians didn’t want to discuss faith at all and where apathy and materialism (in this sense of material gain) seemed far more important.Read More »

Audio/Photo Post: Art, death & everything on Kensington St

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Kensington St Broadway is a handy shortcut if you are heading to Redfern or Cleveland St. Turns out it is more than a little interesting with food, art, education, death and development all delving into this Sydney back street.

Turn off Broadway with the shadow of the UTS tower on your back and walk steadfastly past curious artefacts and digging developers to come face to face with your mortality. Listen to my impromptu description:

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MasterChef’s seven sins; God’s endless forgiveness

Peter Hallett6 Comments
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Gluttony (1558)

Australia’s MasterChef’s contestants were tonight [July 11, 2010] asked to cook dishes in keeping with the ‘seven deadly sins’ of  wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.Read More »

Even men who think they’re Jesus respond to kindness

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Came across this old song that first appeared on the Strawbs self-titled album in 1969 and was released as a single.

It reminds me of a few people I know and what I like most in the lyrics is the simple invitation of hospitality given to someone who is quite delusional. Kindness matters, even to Jesus.

Not sure about the pint of blood reference – maybe a beer too many. Oh, and the song was banned by the BBC… how times have changed.

The Man Who Called Himself Jesus
Dave Cousins

He came into the shop and looked me straight between the eyes
And said ‘You know I’m Jesus’, and I must have looked surprised
Because he said ‘Please don’t be hasty, no-one understands
But I’ve got a way to prove it’ and he lifted up his hands.

He was the man who called himself Jesus.

Read More »