In Anticipation

The famous Australian cartoonist gave this speech last year at The Disrupted Festival of  Ideas at the State Library of WA. I think some of his observations about the state of public discourse in Australia are on the money. Here’s a sample:

In a land that worships winners, doles out awards, trophies and medals for even the most dubious achievements, and has discomfort with the acknowledgement of loss and grief, negativity is often repressed from conversation – perhaps for fear that the barbeque will run out of gas, or the beer will go flat. If we express sadness, we are often told to cheer up. If we express joyfulness about beauty, we are told to calm down, particularly if we are male.

Does Australia have a problem with introspection, joy, sadness, or beauty? Is there the sufficient cultural humility, openness or courage required to enter into these personal matters? Publicly?

It’s as if we are becoming constricted by our rampant materialism and secularity, and more adverse to soulfulness or the negative capability required to access the profound mysteries of existence. We have become timid and embarrassed about this eternal frontier.

…

We seem addicted to factual certainty and a vehement secular hope in the promise of science. Being right, even about trivial things. has become very important We rush too quickly for answers or a diagnosis of our social ills; we are wary of the unknowable, we turn away from lyricism, metaphor and poetic truth in our existential insecurity, we embrace the clinical language of law and statistics to explain our human condition – and in so doing, define our identity too narrowly, too technically, too starkly in a new form of modernist fundamentalism. We limit ourselves. We are a nation that appears to be afraid of the darkness – the fertile darkness, and in that sense we have an infantile or immature streak.

…

Alas I have found it is the more soulful or spiritual expression and the sincerity of the idiosyncratic or visionary intelligence that gets too much persecuted and mocked. That’s what is declared irrelevant by those who presume to ordain the nature of reality. The fact that intelligent personal truth can be so intolerable and forbidden in the public domain, would suggest that the nation is either becoming a huge committee of cautious, if not insipid and frightened individuals – or else a lynch mob of egotistical, brain ridden fanatics projecting certitudes and opinions most forcefully and fiercely through mainstream and social media in a delusional quest for power. How bitter, fast and unloving is the cult of cleverness. How arrogant and vain.

It seems to me a great pity, that people should withhold their convictions and wisdom through intimidation and fear of the mob – be it an educated intellectual mob or a mob of brutes. We are impoverished as a nation by this cultural inhibition and shaming of our true nature, with all its benefits and genius that should be feeding into the life-blood of society as a regenerative stimulant and nourishment. It happens as much in art as it does in politics or public discourse.

Last night was a significant night in the history of St Paul’s!

Over the last 3 years, the Parish Council (elected leaders) have been considering the future of St Paul’s, especially in the light of growth that God has brought to the congregations and the pressure that has put on space on our site. This led them to consider all the alternatives, summarised nicely by this little video.

Over the last few months, a vision has been shared with the congregations for a redevelopment of our site, culminating in a new purpose built auditorium along with attendant car parking and spaces for ministries to function (see the 6 stages proposed here).

Last Sunday, Pastor Oscar Muriu from Nairobi Chapel (in Kenya, a partner church of ours) challenged all of our congregations to think about the legacy we would leave and to “be brave, not safe” as we though about heading into the future.

Last night, more than 300 people gathered into the church building to consider the a motion to commence with Stages 1 and 2 ‘as soon as possible’.

This would mean expanding the current building to 750 seats, building new mothers and toddlers rooms, constructing new meeting spaces and offices, along with other bits and pieces to prepare for future stages; it would also mean committing ourselves prayerfully and financially to the project, to the tune of $5.8 million dollars.

The motion was put, and a secret ballet taken, with the options of ‘yes’ (I support and will commit) or ‘no’.

The votes were counted in public view, and the tally was:

330 votes collected

4 informal

17 no

309 yes!

That means 94% of those gathered said yes to going forward with the plan, and committing themselves to seeing it happen under God’s good hand. Amazing!

This means we have committed ourselves to continue pushing to reach the least, the last, and the lost, with even more fervour as we think of the train line opening in 2019 and the predicted 100 000 extra people moving into the Hills after that time.

Exciting and challenging days are ahead! Praise be to God!

A wonderful expression of Easter, by Carl Leggo, a University of British Columbia Professor

Empty Tomb

Jesus lived the earth’s experience
of womb to tomb, but the womb
was not the beginning, and
the tomb was not the ending

the Gospel of John begins:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.

the Christian story is a murder mystery:
the Word is murdered,
the world murders the Word,
the Creator is crucified
by the created, an act of heartless
ingratitude beyond imagination

the same wise Word that spoke
the world into creation is murdered
by the world’s noisy sin-bent
heart-breaking imbecilic betrayal

while the Word knew the world
the world did not know the Word

and with the death of the Word
poetry died, too, and darkness
and despair filled songs with
such steady sad silence, joy and
hope were choked, suffocated

but no tomb could hold the Word for long,
the empty tomb is really a tome without end,
a story that defies definitions, all the words
in all the languages in all the dictionaries
ever invented to tell it true, like it is

and so on this Easter morning,
we call out in our many languages,
our many voices, our many words,
the tomb is empty, Jesus is risen,
the Word is both lively and lovely

the Christian story is a rollicking romance:
the Word who loves us with sacred abandon
is the author of faith, salvation, life, our rock,
redemption, righteousness, our resurrection,
words with rock and roll rhythms that
call us to dance our loose-limbed joy

even the torturous cross blooms
with a wild earth heart bouquet,
chants a meadow of wildflowers

on this new Easter morning
let us dance in the meadow
as we remember the empty tomb
and know the meaning nobody knew
on the first Easter morning, long ago,
how the hole, the empty tomb,
is like the zero in mathematics and
spells the fullness of other relationships,
connections, and possibilities

everything makes sense finally
because of the hole, the tomb’s
emptiness, the zero’s nothingness,
which opens up all hopes and beginnings

so we can know the fullness of life,
now and forever, know the Word lives,
know the Word loves you and me, all of us

the Gospel of John ends:
Jesus did many other things as well.
If every one of them were written down,
I suppose that even the whole world
would not have room for the books
that would be written.

on this Easter morning,
let us belly laugh with the angels, sing
to the creation from the soles of our feet
as we dance with the Creator who loves us
beyond all our words with the perfect love
only the Word can write in poems for filling
us with the lyrical light of his morning star