Category: Musing

Gretel, Gillard and ‘god’ in an age of convenient Christianity

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Gretel Killeen is now a columnist for The Sun-Herald and, I believe, we did the same communications degree too long ago to remember. Known to most as the host of Big Brother for many years, she is actually an acclaimed author in various genres and did time as a stand up comic.

She counts her most important achievement as being a single mother to her two children and apparently believes in a small ‘g’ god, whatever that means.

Gretel made a fairly intelligent contribution in Sunday’s column to the commentary on Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s declaration of non-faith:

‘And despite the fact I do believe in a god, I’d like to give praise… to Prime Minister Julia Gillard for declaring her atheism last week. In a hypocritical world, it’s not uncommon for allegedly God-fearing politicians to treat the Ten Commandments as though they were a smorgasbord rather than a set meal, choosing their own custom-made combinations to both impress others and serve themselves. It’s therefore thrilling in this age of convenient Christianity to hear someone tell the truth on an issue that could actually lose them votes.’

If she was seen wearing sackcloth and ash and saying some of those things, especially ‘Ten Commandments as… smorgasbord’ and ‘impress others and serve themselves’ we might easily mistake her for Joan the Baptist.

It is possible (and not mutually exclusive) to respect the honesty of a Prime Minister and the measure of faith of a newspaper columnist while still earnestly praying that they would both encounter the living Jesus. PH

Nature, nurture and the spiritual life

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Nature versus nurture is an ongoing debate in the scientific community but what implications does it have for the spiritual life?

Is our identity, personality and behaviour fixed by our genes or is the raw material of ourselves molded by the environment into which we are born – our family, parenting, experience.

Likewise does a person’s spiritual origin determine what they look like or is it more to do with spiritual environment in which they live?Read More »

God purposefully stringing me along

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God had me on a string today, I thought. Everywhere I went, seemingly by chance, I met people, seemingly on purpose. I arrived at Lunch just in time for the Young Woman to ask me about her mental health. ‘I don’t want to be kicked out on the streets or get locked up. How do I seem to you?’ My answer was sweet and sour like the steaming bowl of food before me. ‘You have been more unwell than this but you were right to say the best thing is to see your doctor as you are not quite yourself.’ She was reassured and I left Lunch just in time to see the Old Woman exit the building opposite, heading for the bus. I walked up beside her and gave her the gift that was tucked away in my bag. She kissed me with delight and yelled thank you as we parted. After eight kilometres walking with Tall Boy in misty rain around Blackwattle Bay, I considered my next move and headed for a hair cut. Crossing the road I saw the Owner, who I had just been thinking off. He spotted me and came over with friendly smile and clipped accent. We chatted and he offered me a job and I said for us both, ‘It’s in God’s hands.’ Young Man appeared as we continued talking in the street, also heading for a haircut, which he beat me too. It has been some time and at least we locked eyes and I was able to find him in the barber’s seat and grip his shoulders. The Iranian was all smiles and curls and pleased to see me. I said I would return tomorrow and headed for the bus. Waiting at the lights before the River of Traffic, I spotted the Older Man, on the other side. We waved across the rapidly moving, and I let my green man go as Older Man crossed over. We shook hands, and affirmed friendship and there was more deep eye contact, much-needed assurance. As we spoke, Woman Carrying Box appeared next to us and so as the green man appeared again, we farewelled Older Man, and I switched conversations once more. ‘Growing in confidence’ I thought, as we talked at the bus stop, with women looking on it seemed. She asked a question or two and the red 10 arrived to deliver me from the enjoyable relay-conversation in which I had just featured, all on a city corner. Later, having left Something, I was driving back when I missed Someone’s call. I was not surprised (considering the day) upon reaching my destination to see him parking too, as if we’d planed a rendezvous. We talked in hushed tones and found the Walker sitting cross-legged on the floor, but that is one story too many. As I prepared to leave, having intended to ‘slip under the radar’, Woman of Art arrived but I left with a wave, thinking that if this piece of string continued, I would never get home. But I did.

What drives you – plot, character or both?

Peter Hallett5 Comments

In literature, stories are said to be either plot-driven or character driven, but what about life?

Some novels are all about the plot – the unfolding of action and drama – while the development of character is less important. A Matthew Reilly novel would be an example – we don’t really need to know his characters other than have a vague sympathy or antipathy for them, as long as something blows up every few paragraphs.

Some novels are character driven – the characters are highly developed and the plot flows out of who they are. Jane Austen meticulously crafts her characters and we watch and see how they negotiate the life that unfolds from the authentic decisions they make.

Of course no story can be one or the other – plot requires people and unless we replace them with plankton, some degree of characterisation is required. People do things and have pleasures and problems and so a plot will develop. If all we had were just endless descriptions of people, we might prefer they were plankton.

For me it is the issue of starting point, of emphasis. One emphasises things happening more than the people to whom they happen. The other wants us to see inside people more fully as things happen.

I can’t help but draw a line to real life, our lives. Is our life more about plot – what’s happening next – or more about character – who we are as things happen?Read More »

Trouble with trust except where it belongs

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Sorry, but I don’t trust the Israelis and I don’t trust the Palestinians. I don’t trust the activists and I don’t trust the media. And that’s just one issue.

I don’t trust the miners and their crying poor, and I don’t trust, but less, the unions and politicians pushing the super tax.

I don’t trust the scientists who advocate climate change and I don’t trust those that deny it and I don’t trust myself to know the truth if I heard it.

I’m struggling to trust all the books claiming new-ancient ways of doing church because the next book always qualifies the first and starts to sound like what we are already doing.

I don’t trust high-profile Christians in the marketplace to always do the right thing because I can’t always do the right thing and I probably face less pressure than they do.

I often don’t trust journalism (sorry my friends) today because opinion has taken over and whose opinion is it anyway.

I do trust Tony Abbott when he tells us that some of the time he can’t be trusted but I’m not sure if that leaves me ahead or behind.

I don’t trust the next great big thing that’s going to change the world, even those with a Christian veneer, because humans have always had the next big thing and the first was called Babel.

It’s no surprise or tragedy that trust is so often unwarranted. We are all so easily swayed by our own gain whether it be for wealth, warmth or welcome.

Strangely, I do trust a God who I have never seen or heard, who leads me beside stormy waters and quieteth not my soul. Because just when I think I’ve had it, the storm abates, the peace comes and I see and hear him in some way deeper than my senses.

I trust Jesus, and even as I write these words, I feel his goodness pervading in a way that warms my soul and encourages me to love this world anyway.

I trust my wife, the truest heart I’ve ever met, and I trust my love for her and our children, and them for us, trust to die by. And when I think about it there are many family and friends I trust deeply.

Perhaps I’m more trusting that I realise. Knowing helps trusting but knowing is more elusive than ever.

As for the big, wide world out there, it’s not that I’m untrusting, but I’m learning that we don’t need to trust to love and have faith. They are a sacrifice of a different kind… PH

Utterance hits 6000, blogs top 110 million

Peter Hallett3 Comments

Today Utterance ticked over 6001 hits, after my somewhat reckless New Year’s resolution to attempt to post every day.

Like most bloggers, once I got into the habit of regularly recording my thoughts for the benefit (or otherwise) of others, the issue becomes having too many things to say, and not enough time.

It’s interesting to consider that there are more than 110 million blogs in the world today but blogging only began in 1994, with one of the very first being  by Chicago-born Justin Hall, sometimes described as ‘the founding father of personal blogging.’ That’s some growth rate…

At the same time as blogging had its meteoric growth, the genre of creative non-fiction also increased rapidly in popularity and today is one of the most successful forms of literature.

Creative non-fiction is the presenting of substance in a literary style, or applying the technique of story to facts.

We all know instinctively that people love to tell and hear stories much more than be confronted with flat slabs of information. (How often have you found yourself re-telling a true-life illustration a preacher gave in a sermon, and not recalling much else?)

The idea is not new of course and the Gospel writers, if not inventing the genre, certainly perfected it as they told the factual story of Jesus’ life in a way that continues to compel, thousands of years later.

Would Jesus have blogged? Not likely, he gives his life and his Spirit, something much greater. But Matthew, Mark, Luke and John almost certainly would have been bloggers. Hopefully I do them justice. PH

PS. To celebrate 6000 + hits I’ve introduced a new theme for Utterance – quite a departure from the very neat and today theme I’ve been using. But then again, my life has got rather more loose ends than it had a few months ago, so it’s probably fitting!

Thou, our and thy but no me, my and I

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation
For thine is the kingdom, the power and glory
Forever and ever, Amen.

So reads the Lord’s Prayer or the ‘Our Father’ as I learned it as a child. It was not so much a single prayer that Jesus taught his disciples but a way of praying (see Matthew 6:9-13). Nevertheless it is a much-loved Christian prayer that has been prayed hundreds of billions of times.

I was using it as a way to guide my praying in the middle of the night recently, pausing on each phrase and thinking and praying around its intent, when something simple and profound stopped me.

I realised, as I must have already known but forgotten, that there are no I’s or me’s in the prayer. The only pronouns refer to God (thy/your) and us or our.

Which reminds us that the heart of prayer is to focus on God and to see ourselves as part of a community. Prayer, and the Christian walk, are not solitary occupations.

When Jesus taught prayer he lived and moved with 12 disciples and numerous other close followers, both men and women. He visited homes and families and turned strangers into friends. He called out to God as father and sought not his own will, ‘but your will be done’.

For this reason, it was natural he would prayer ‘our Father’ rather than ‘my Father’ and ‘give us’ daily bread and forgiveness and guidance, not ‘give me’.

The one time he did cry out ‘my God, my God’ was when doing something unique – carrying the world’s sin and shame solely in his own being on the Cross. How lonely he must have been to do so. Perhaps we too are more inclined, but from a less holy position, to focus our prayers on ourselves when we feel lonely, isolated and despairing.

Maybe the antidote is not more self-focused prayer, but to break out again into community and find the reality of praying ‘our Father’. PH

Dear CheapBranded, thanks for your caring email…

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My computer makes a doorbell sound, ‘ding-dong’, that used to be associated with Avon calling but is now better known as Windows default for a new email.

A shadowy preview of the new message appears in the lower right of my laptop screen and tells me it is from someone called ‘CheapBrandedViagra’.

(Just mentioning the word Viagra in my blog will send the spam protection software for this site into overdrive, such is the inter-connectedness – euphemism for lack of privacy – on the internet.)

A train of thought begins, thanks to my new friend CheapBranded, and I wonder if many of us realise how often we turn to the latest email, Facebook status, Twitter tweet or blog comment to fill deep emotional needs and stave of dreariness.

If our dearest friends are those who connect with us electronically, I have an amazing friend in CheapBranded as he has shown incredible determination to bypass not only my own spam protection, but that of my internet provider.

(I thought you should know I have worked with great commitment to avoid any unfortunate Viagra puns in this posting…)

But wait, perhaps CheapBranded is just that, not a caring friend who searched me out today with a loving email as my life faces precipitous change, but a cheap charlatan hoping to profit by pushing his brand at some perceived need.

Read More »

Get the jump on hairy panic

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It used to be the respectfully named Umbrella Grass that rolled in on a westerly wind and stacked up against farm houses like a dusty, dry dump of snow.

But a new wispy villain is covering the land, and it’s a grass aptly known as Hairy Panic. While there is some evidence that its seeds were collected and ground for food by the Wemba Wemba people of the Murray River, today it is better known for covering houses and highways and giving over-indulgent sheep the often fatal Yellow Bighead disease – no further details necessary!

Enjoying the west of NSW for a few days, scenes such as the one pictured above are commonplace. And while rural NSW has experienced the best start to a growing season for years, it has now been some time since the refreshing rains earlier in the year and perhaps there is just the first itching of the old hairy panic creeping in for some farmers.

When a big part of the success of what you do is completely outside your control, panic can quite easily roll over your life, cover familiar landmarks and stow away in hidden corners.

Of course, city folk are just as prone to the hairiness of panic and all of us often respond by strictly controlling what we can to help us cope with what we can’t.

Another option is a spiritual and emotional trampoline to put our feet above the panic and provide the joy and freedom of trampling on our hairy foe.

Faith in God is many things and it may just be the trampoline we need to jump-start an overcoming of panic, anxiety and worry, making it small and opening up the sky to hope and possibility. PH

Resurrection or the spider web

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The offer is resurrection. The cost is everything. The alternative is a different kind of more of the same; a spider web of possibility in which the more you struggle the less you become.
The worse thing you can do is choose comatose and linger on in a half life, rallying your machines to stave of the change that matters. Death in all its living forms is never easy, we find life just so ingrained.
If there was another way, He would have said so. He searched for it in the garden, but found what He knew already, ‘Unless a seed…’.
You and I know it too but pride and fear gather in shadows around our thinking, fighting hard for they would die also. Be done with the troublesome pair!
Death is not disappearance. He doesn’t want us vanished any more than veneered. It is, in life, a complete laying down, patiently done, in readiness for a magnificent bestowal, undeserved but gratefully and gradually received.
It will take the ‘right to say I’m wrong’ and the ‘weak to say I’m strong’, but either way, today might just be the right time… for our resurrection (‘back where we belong’). PH

Another falling person in Lambert St

Peter Hallett4 Comments

P: ‘He was tall and thin with black fuzzy hair.’

C: ‘That’s right, his name was Hawk and he was visiting someone on the ninth floor.’

He didn’t fly like a hawk this time, unfortunately

P2: ‘You know he drove to the flats before jumping. Who does that, drives somewhere to jump?’

Too many

Read More »

Today is a metaphor

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Today is a metaphor…
I’m in transit. I’ve risen early while most still sleep. I’m tired. It was a late finish and an early start with little rest in between.
I’ve carefully packed my things, confident I haven’t forgotten anything. I’ve packed light, just the essentials, as I don’t want to be slowed down by baggage.
I scribble some farewells and leave them in the dark. They seem under done, but they are strong in my heart. Farewells can never really cover the intensity of longing, of love that comes with separations, with endings and awaited beginnings.
I creep outside with dawn still to approach and it’s cold. Not bitterly, but brisk. The freshness of morning breaks through my fatigue; the cool air and faint glimmer of light cast some hope on the day, despite the uncertainty of it.
The taxi arrives right on time and the older Vietnamese Australian driver calls me sir and says the meter is not working and would $35 be ok. I know that’s fair but I wonder if I’m actually in Denpasar or Shanghai or Trivandrum where I have worried about taxis without meters overcharging.
If I thought I had troubles, and I had been, the driver tells me he came here on a boat after the war in which most of his family died. ‘Everynight we go down in a cave because of bombing,’ he says with a clipped accent. ‘Most of my family died in a cave when bombing dropped on top.’ He suddenly grabs his throat with his hand and groans, ‘Ah I don’t want to remember this, it was long time ago.’
There is much to remember and to forget. We can’t choose our feelings but perhaps we can choose whether to live in them or allow them to recede, and move forward.
The decision to pack light pays off, allowing me to glide straight through to the departure gates.
Soon I’m seated on the plane but feel like I have been on automatic pilot, although I believe the plane has a real One. The seat beside me is empty and I realise many trips in life are taken alone, even when surrounded by many. The extra space can seem preferable but then I imagine my wife beside me, and I’m lonely.
Fatigue over takes as the journey continues, it seems I’m so tired that nothing can stir my enthusiasm.
But somewhere over the green blanket which is south east Australia, the ideas and thoughts begin flowing and suddenly I must write these thoughts down. Which I’m doing. Do we take note of those things that strangely move us? They say more about us than we often stop to recognise.
I’ve been to Melbourne airport many times but this arrival is unfamiliar, and so is my destination in Scoresby. Something new, and yet almost to my surprise, everything goes smoothly and I arrive safely. It seems I’m not as directionally challenged as I tend to believe about myself.

Love flows

Peter Hallett1 Comment

Fixed someone up with a new set of clothes
Managed not to step on gangrene toes
Helped two friends avoid coming to blows
Some conversation about nobody knows
Marvellous it is how God’s love flows
PH

Escaping the ‘once I have time’ fairytale

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I read somewhere recently that for modern people, saying you’ll do something ‘once I have time’ is as much a fairytale as saying ‘once upon a time’.

The reality is that if we wait for ‘enough’ time to do that heartfelt, significant, deeply true thing, we’ll never do it. It will remain a fairytale of our existence, but not a true story.

Perhaps part of the problem is we are always busy pursuing our own unscrutinised opinion of what is important, or preparing endlessly for that great opportunity around the corner, or worrying what others might think, or even worse for us, worrying that they may not notice at all.

‘Readiness means a right relationship to God and a knowledge of where we are at present,’ says Oswald Chambers. ‘A ready person never needs to get ready.’ If we are trying to act without God’s reality in our life, not only will we struggle for time, we’ll struggle for identity, clarity and honesty.

Another problem is that we complicate action, losing sight of the simplicity of ‘obedience’. More wisdom from Oswald Chambers: ‘Our Lord must be repeatedly astounded at us – astounded at how unsimple we are. It is opinions of our own which make us stupid; when we are simple we are never stupid, we discern all the time.’

Oswald Chambers quotes taken from My Utmost for His Highest, April 18,21.

On getting off drink and closer to God

Peter Hallett1 Comment

Walking away from the small community centre, past the sitting smokers, down the path in the warm sunshine, he stops and calls me Pete.

‘Pete, there are a lot of people on the streets who could get up if they wanted to but they don’t want to.’

I nod in agreement, ‘None of us make any changes in our life unless we really want to, so I guess that applies to people on the street too.’

‘I was homeless you know Pete,’ he says. ‘But I got myself up. Drugs are the real problem. Drugs and alcohol. I’ve never used drugs but alcohol was my problem.

‘But after I did 15 years straight of a 20 year sentence, the last thing the parole officer said to me was, “Are you going to give up drinking?” and I said, “Yes.”‘

And I haven’t drunk for 34 years.

‘That’s an inspirational story, you’re a great example,’ I say.

He chuckles, and fixes his ebony eyes on me and I feel privileged that this elderly man who carries a remarkable sense of wisdom and dignity, chooses to tell me his stories, week after week.

‘There was one time when I was drinking that I got picked up on the street by three policemen and put into a police van with three deros. When we pulled up at the station we all got out of the van and the police each took one of the deros into the police station and I walked straight across the road and into the Oxford Hotel,’ he says with a chuckle.

He talks about people in prison who ‘became’ Christians to get out of the big house. ‘I’m not a Christian, never will be, but I wouldn’t do that, just put it on.’

He recalled the advice of his mother. ‘She told me that God keeps way off in the distance and always has his eye on us. He’ll get them…’

Might not be great theology but I can feel the faith in this man, I can feel that he has a closeness to God that is born of respect, honour and honesty. One day I might just get to help him see it. I am encouraged. PH

My hair like Jesus wore it, hallelujah I adore it

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God-spotting, yeah man.

I’ll admit I’ve never seen Hair, the musical. Too young for the sixties, too old for the remakes. So I’ve never come across these lyrics from the musical:

My hair like Jesus wore it,
Hallelujah, I adore it…
Hair, hair, hair, hair…
As God can grow it, my hair 

I do know that you wouldn’t usually describe Hair as a musical encouraging  belief in God so it is nice, all these years later, to notice that He made an appearance and did receive credit for growing hair. As I recall, His Son also said that he even knows the ever-changing numbers of hairs on our heads. A sign of His care for us.

This all started when I saw ‘my hair like Jesus wore it…’ as a link and heading to an article on body image in various newspapers. Oh, and it was spotting Jesus in such a context that got my attention, not the body image topic, as important as that is…

Anyway, I’ll quit while I’m ahead (or, more correctly, while I still have a head of hair…) PH

One year on, a fresh look for Utterance

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I wrote the first blog post of my life on April 27, 2009, nearly a year ago, but it wasn’t until a hastily conceived New Year’s Resolution that I got serious about blogging (nearly) every day.

Utterance’s first thousand hits took about 10 months and the next two thousand just two months – I still marvel at those sites that have millions of hits in a day!

I’ve had some amazing feedback in that time, learned a great deal and rediscovered the joy of writing (if not, perhaps, the skill). I have even at times felt like a journalist breaking news – it’s hard to get the printer’s ink out of your blood (sorry, old journo saying…)

The full version of the Utterance header photo

To celebrate a year of Utterance, and to reflect the change of seasons, I’ve employed one of WordPress‘ favourite themes, Misty Look. The photo in the header was taken by myself at Hawkeshead in the Lake District, England. It shows a gate, a tombstone and a rather shiny clock on the old cathedral. Quite symbolic I think, but I’ll leave you to consider the conjunction of these elements. Happy reading and don’t forget to breath – speak – and breath again…PH

 

Between our worst and his best…

Peter Hallett1 Comment

Between the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ there was an agonising pause for his disciples.

Faint memories of a promised return battled with abject shame, guilt, confusion sorrow and fear.

This pattern is often repeated in life. The despair of our worst is tested by time – the wait, the replays, the not knowing, the what-ifs, the wondering if God might still intervene.

If only we knew that amidst the dark soil of our worst is the good seed of God’s best. Like all seeds, it is a few days before the first inkling of new life, new hope, is evident.

Somehow stay in reach of his resurrection. Be a Mary Magdalene approaching the tomb; be a Peter or John grieving together; be a Thomas, wanting but doubting; be an Emmaus pair walking and talking, if not understanding.

Between our worst and his best is a wait. God never said it would be pleasant, only that it would end well. PH