The Gospel of the Kingdom

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Hamo

I picked this up at Scot McKnight’s but its actually by Ben Irwin - the gospel sketched for kids. I have to say I think this is one of the most helpful articulations for adults who need to have their understanding fleshed out to see the gospel as the whole story of God’s work in the world from the creation to the new creation rather than the truncated version that often gets preached in evangelistic messages.

I have read it a few times and love its simplicity. I might read it to my kids, but as an adult who didn’t ‘get’ this framing of the gospel for a long time I think it might be of value amongst us older folks as well. Ben wrote it after reading McKnight’s King Jesus Gospel

The King Jesus story

It all began with God.

God made everything you can see.
(And even some things you can’t see!)

God made the world to be his home.
Then God made the very first people
so he could share his home with them.

God gave them a beautiful garden to live in.
He gave them a job to do:
take care of God’s good world;
rule it well on his behalf.
But they didn’t.

They didn’t like doing things God’s way
and not theirs.
So they took what wasn’t theirs,
and tried to rule the world their own way.
They tried to be God.

So the very first people
had to leave the garden.
They had to leave God’s presence.

Without God,
they began to die.
But God never gave up on his people.
He still loved them.
He promised to fix the world
so he could share it with them again.

But it wouldn’t be easy.
Everyone who’s ever lived,
from the very first people
all the way to you and me,
have gone the same way.

We’ve all taken what isn’t ours.
We’ve all tried to do things our way.
We’ve all tried to be little gods.

Things kept getting worse.
But God had a plan.

God chose a man named Abraham.
He gave Abraham children,
and grandchildren,
and great-grandchildren.
God turned Abraham into a great nation
and called it “Israel.”

God made Israel his chosen people.
They would help him fix the world.

God went with Israel
everywhere they went.
When they were slaves in another country,
God remembered them.
When they were treated badly,
God rescued them.

God gave Israel a home.
He gave them a job to do:
show the world what it’s like
to be God’s people.

God gave Israel priests
to teach them how to love God.
He gave them laws
to teach them how to love each other.

God told his people,
“If you follow me,
you’ll have a good life.
You’ll get to help me fix the world.”

But Israel didn’t listen.

God’s people didn’t want God
telling them how to live.
They wanted to do things their way,
just like the very first people — just like all of us.

God’s people didn’t want God
to be their king.
They wanted a king of their own,
a person just like them.

So God gave Israel a king.
Then another king.
And another.
Some were good. Some were bad.

Mostly, the kings did whatever they wanted.
They took what wasn’t theirs.
They ruled Israel for themselves, not God.
They tried to be little gods.

So God sent prophets
to tell the kings and their people
that there is only one true King;
there is only one true God.

But the kings and their people wouldn’t listen.
So they had to leave their home.
Other nations came and conquered Israel
and carried God’s people off by force.

Israel lost everything.
Then there was silence.

Years went by.
No one heard from God anymore.

Until . . .
something new happened.
God sent someone:
a person just like us, yet different.
Someone who could rule the world
the way God wanted.

God sent Jesus,
his chosen one,
to rescue Israel
and fix the world.

Jesus did good wherever he went.
He healed the sick.
He fed the hungry.
He rescued people from all sorts of problems.

Jesus did everything God wanted,
but it wasn’t what God’s people wanted.

They didn’t want Jesus to be their king.
They didn’t want the kind of kingdom he would bring.

So one day, some powerful people decided
they’d better put a stop to Jesus
before he took their power away.

So they arrested Jesus.
They stripped him naked.
They nailed him to a cross
and watched him die.

Jesus didn’t fight back.
He didn’t raise a sword;
he didn’t even raise a finger.

And so the powerful people
thought they had won.
They thought they had beaten
God’s chosen one.

But there was something they didn’t understand.
They didn’t know that Jesus died
not because he had to,
but because he chose to.

They didn’t know that they,
like all of us, deserved to die
for all the times we’ve gone our way
and ruined God’s good world.

They didn’t know a servant’s death
was the only way to live.
They didn’t know a servant’s cross
was the only crown worth having.

The one true King had come
and given his life for the world.
But they didn’t even know.
No one did.

But then God —
the one who made the world,
rescued Israel,
and sent Jesus —
raised him from the dead.

Lots of people saw him alive
before he went back to God.

But Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead.
He defeated death,
so it wouldn’t have power over us any longer.

God gave us the King we needed,
a King who loves, forgives,
and changes everyone who comes to him.

This King gave us a job to do:
love each other with all we’ve got.
Because that’s how we show others
what it’s like to be loved by God.

That’s how we show others
what kind of King we serve.

For now, the world is still broken,
still waiting to be fixed.
But someday, our King is coming back
to rescue us and share his home with us again.

Never again
will anyone take what isn’t theirs.
Never again
will anyone ruin God’s good world.

God will live with us,
and we will rule the world for him.
Forever.

(For Elizabeth)

On Wittenoom

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Hamo

I’ve found Wittenoom a real curiosity since going there last week. So tonight Danelle and I spent an hour or two googling and reading stories, looking at pictures and watching a video that gives insights into the lives of the 7 people still living there.

I won’t throw all the links down here but you might like to watch this great little video that is a doco on the lives of the remaining residents. What’s interesting and rather tragic is that (according to the video) the 7 who live (the video shows 8, but ‘Les’ has since died) there don’t actually get on with one another.

Wittenoom from Caro Macdonald on Vimeo.

I guess you’ve got to have some kind of quirky, hermit like tendencies to live in a spot like that, but how bizarre to live with 6 other people and not engage…

Its a well made video and highlights some of the oddities about the place as well as a little history. There is also a great collection of images here where I have taken the two images above from.

Beaches, Bulldust and Back to Reality

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Hamo

We left the northern Gascoyne river free camp on yesterday morning headed homeward. It was sunny, warm and beautiful as we packed up, but within two hours as we pulled into Meekatharra it was cold, cloudy and drizzling… We were all reaching for jumpers and warm weather clothes – which were mostly still tucked away in the camper. The contrast was huge.

The last 4 weeks have been spent between beaches and bulldust, as we have alternated between coastal camps and inland gorges and rivers. It’s been an awesome time and a reminder that 4 weeks is just enough to really unwind and clear the head.

The kids spent half the day up this mango tree – Sam fell out once…

We went to Broome not sure how long we’d stay and ended up being there a week. On the second day there another family of 5 pulled in next to us. Also towing a Jayco Eagle and half way thru their big Oz trip. We had a bit in common already and got chatting. We connected well with them and the kids got on really well too so it made it easy to hang around and go places together. They turned out to be God botherers too – Baptists even – so we had a bit more in common than just the same caravan. Nice folks and we’re hoping we might catch them again either for a coffee or a night or two when they hit Perth.

The sun puts on a show in Broome – quite the crowd pleaser

The day we left Broome saw the kids back in moping mode. No friends… Just wanting to go home… ‘How far can we drive today?…’ it stretched my patience just a bit. I’m feeling like a man eating his last meal and savouring every bite and they are sighing and whining like I’m making them eat gravel. Now I’m grumpy.

At this point I begin to contemplate holidays without kids…

But only for a while. Our first stop at De grey river was nice. A fire and a swim changed the mood a little. The kids had hit the grumps even more when they realized we weren’t staying in a van park, with real showers and toilets and electricity. This does not impress me…

We were running short on power as we discovered just before Broome that the deep cycle battery that serves the camper had carked it. So we have been using the car battery for lighting at night while being careful not to drain it. I could have bought another in Broone but it could be 12 months before it gets really needed again, so best to wait until just before the next major trip.

We left De grey and headed for Wittenoom. There was a shop stop at Hedland to appease those needing a civilization fix and then we drove down the highway to Auski (Munjina) and turned right. There was only 15 ks of dirt into Wittenoom but it was as dusty as we have seen, with heaps of trucks back and forthing to the Solomon mine. The duct tape kept us pretty dust free this time round, unlike the Millstream debacle.

The old convent in Wittenoom, with a potential new sister…

We entered Wittenoom expecting to see abandoned houses and no life at all. (I think it was 1985 when Wittenoom officially closed the asbestos mine and tried to move people on.) Instead there were 10 or 15 houses clearly inhabited by people who had either refused to leave or who had come in when everyone else had gone. They live there as permanents.

It is an unusual place and interesting to poke around. As we slowly trundled around the streets we were approached by a local, clearly concerned as to what we were doing there and ‘what our business was’. A spate of vandalism and crime had stirred her sensitivities. She was a tad ‘odd’, as maybe you need to be to live in a place like that…

It seems people there survive on bore water, solar power and gas bottles with drives into Tom Price as needed. The town itself is a curiosity and one I’m glad I had time to see as I doubt it will be there in 20 or 30 years time when the final residents either sell up or die.

There’s something about a campfire

But the beauty of Wittenoom isn’t the town. Rather it’s the camp spots in the gorge that lies about 7 ks out of town and back towards the old mine. We found 3 or 4 really nice spots where you could camp (free) next to fresh water and probably not see another person. We saw 5 or 6 cars in the 3 days we were there, but I’m guessing plenty of people are still frightened of the asbestos risk. The resident we chatted to advised us that air studies done 10 years ago showed the air to be fine and that people were still being deterred from going there more because the Gov wants to shut it down rather than because of any danger. Apparently in the bad old days the town often had an asbestos cloud over it from the mine, which couldn’t have been all that good for the lungs. We asked at the Newman visitors centre for Wittenoom info and the previously chirpy advisor went cold and told us there was no info, Wittenoom was out of bounds and no one was to go there…

Make you wanna go hey?..,

There are some beautiful remote camp spots in Wittenoom

I reckon we found a little piece of paradise there and will certainly be back again. Our ‘camp-site’ was on an old bridge no longer in use right next to some flowing water, but in our exploring we found two other spots that looked even better.

Leaving Wittenoom was hard as it was idyllic for those of us who love remoteness and seclusion. I’d love to add ‘silence’ but the racket of frogs and the noise of the water made it anything but quiet!

We took off out of there on Sunday and drove steadily to our camp at the Gascoyne river where it became all about navigating the weather to try and get home without getting rained on because the red dust in the camper would quickly turn to mud and not be fun to clean up.

So last night, after four nights of free camping I relented and we stayed in a van park in Dalwallinu. We arrived at 4pm – and were tempted just to put our heads down and drive on thru – but stopping was definitely the better decision. It was hot showers all round and all were happy. The solar shower I knocked up in Broome was working well in the warmer weather so long as you aren’t too precious about getting your gear off, but I reckon it wasn’t going to cut it last night.

Sam tries out the solar shower Mk 1 – a few mods and it’ll be sweet

From there it was off to the pub for a big feed to celebrate a great month of holidaying. We covered 7000ks in the last month – the equivalent of driving to Melbourne and back to put it in perspective – a hell of a long way! My Kuhmo road venturer tyres which I put on just before the big trip in 2009 are coming up for 97000ks which I reckon is pretty amazing, and they still have a good 20000ks left in them before I choof off to buy another set.

Interestingly on the drive from Hedland to New Norcia we had mobile reception once – in Newman – pretty poor really! Time to lift your game Virgin.

We rolled into Perth before lunch this morning and as we drove down the Two Rocks road the rain pelted and the wind blew… We remembered why we had headed north. I guess if you have to come home then Yanchep is as good a place as any to return to, but I could have kept going for another month or two with very little trouble.

This afternoon the Patrol had a birthday and now looks good enough to sell. The kids watched TV and Danelle washed everything she could get her hands on.

Reality… hello…

Being Baptist

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Hamo

Being Baptist

We went to church on Sunday, not something we always do on holidays, but we both felt it would be good to gather with some others for the morning so we choofed off to Broome Baptist church.

It wasn’t the only choice before us, but it was where we finished up. Before we left I was pondering why we would make that choice – instead of gathering with the SDA church on Saturday, or lobbing in with the Pentecostals just down the road… Why are we Baptist?…

So (as I do with all tough questions) I asked Danelle… ‘honey why do we go to a Baptist church?’ And in typical Danelle fashion she replied with ‘because we always have?…’ That was what I was thinking but it just seemed a bit lame… However for reasons of history and longevity and familiarity this seems to be our tribe or our clan. I was hoping it might be a theological claim or a particular inspirational aspect of our identity but I think if we honest it’s really just that it’s what we know best.

And it’s not that I like everything about who we are. I don’t. I see many ‘Baptist blind spots’, but it’s still my tribe. I did jump ship once back in the 80s when I started teaching and found myself in a small country town (Wagin) where I ended up joining the Uniting Church. Seems odd – and I think it seemed odd to some of the local Baptists who knew me and thought I would head their way. But I made a friend in the Uniting church who is still a good mate today and that was what landed me there. Good people in that church, but since then I’ve been a ‘Baptist’ for 26 years. (I even got invited to be a youth pastor at a Pentecostal church at one point in that time but I was only two years into teaching and it just didn’t feel right.)

Back to being Baptist though…

If I had to choose words that would describe most Baptist churches they would probably be words like ‘quiet’, ‘reserved’, ‘orderly’, ‘predictable’. The ‘upside’ of these qualities is that we don’t trade in hype, but the downside is that we can often appear lethargic and dull – uninspiring even – and sometimes we are. I don’t like that about us. In fact it irks me badly. There are days I wish we could express some excitement visibly and spontaneously without it feeling forced or odd. But for some reason when it gets announced in church that someone in the church is healed of cancer (or similar) we sit there sedately as if we had just heard that there was a change in the morning tea roster.

As an introvert by nature I find a lot of our qualities appealing, but I would hope we could express more energy and passion in our gatherings and relationships. Actually as I consider it more closely it seems that it is primarily our worship gatherings that carry this reserved and steady (absence of) energy.

There is a cerebralness to Baptist churches that seems to typify our DNA. I am probably a typical example of that. I could sit thru the most awful singing and music week after week (and I’m not saying I do!) if I knew there was a decent bit of teaching to follow. I think that’s pretty typical of most Baptists – get the preaching right and you can keep a lot of people very happy. Which isn’t to say that doesn’t matter in other traditions, buy for us a well developed expositional sermon really is the ducks nuts.

I imagine I could ‘jump ship’ if I had to but I don’t think I could jump far. I couldn’t settle easily into a pentecostal church theologically or culturally. I wouldn’t feel at home in Anglicanism although there are aspects I like. The Salvos?… Good people but funny clothes… There are some closer to home – Vineyard and Churches of Christ that would fit us better but for better or worse I seem to be a Baptist.

Ironically there is much to like in our distinctives (even we don’t always adhere to them). The priesthood of all believers is a biggie – but still bigger in theory than in practice. I think the more paid staff a church has the harder this one gets to maintain.

Congregational government in its best form (discerning together the will of God as opposed to ‘voting’/democracy) is something I can cheer for and hope to see more of, but it is an unwieldy method of decision making in a larger church. (The easy solution here is to keep churches sufficiently small for it to be possible and I think that deserves some serious thought.)

Freedom of conscience – allowing one another to differ on our position on various issues – is another one I can say ‘yeah baby’ to but it has it’s challenges too as we enter contentious areas. Churches – especially conservative ones – seem to feel a need to ‘mark their territory’ so lines get drawn and people get hemmed in when it isn’t always appropriate. I’m not sure if Baptist churches allow ‘freedom of conscience’ on the issue of gay marriage, as it seems that in the debates around the place the denominations are tending to draw boundary lines and defining some as ‘out of the tribe’… Which seems just a bit ‘unbaptist’.

Then there’s believers baptism as a distinctive and ironically this is one I am less concerned by. Theologically I see it as the preferred baptismal mode, but all those others who have read infant baptism as normative aren’t mugs… So one of us is possibly wrong… Maybe it’s us?

The authority of scripture is another big one, but hardly a distinctive. Of course the question in there is what ‘authority’ means in practice. How does it work in our interpretation and application?

I could go on…

I am certainly ‘Baptist’ because I see value in our core distinctives, but if I’m honest I’m ‘in’ more because it’s where I feel at home – where my family are – and where I feel I belong.

I do sense my life is poorer for not being as expressive and celebratory as my Pentecostal friends. I sense there is something in the sacramental Anglican churches that I miss because I just don’t regularly connect with God like that. And I also miss the warmth and flexibility of simple church gatherings that use homes, parks or wherever they like to get together.

So I’m not about to change seats at the table (‘change teams’ is a bad analogy) at this stage, but I do hope we will be able to find ways to enrich the culture of our own church so that we aren’t ‘typical’ Baptists, but rather can learn from the best of all traditions while retaining our own uniqueness.

I used to hold my ‘Baptist’ identity lightly, and in one sense I still do – (‘Christian first – Baptist second’) but I can’t deny that this my mob and I’m ‘in’ for better or worse.

Just some reflections from under the mango tree on a balmy afternoon in Broome…

More Than ‘A Holiday’

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Hamo

You could just call it ‘holidays’ but that would be missing the significance of what we do when we take a break from the routine and head off as a family.

If its just about catching your breath / R&R then I reckon we can lose out on the opportunity to create fantastic memories and to better define who we are as a family.

It has occasionally been asked of me if I am preparing adequately for retirement, if we are ‘looking to the future responsibly’ and other questions of the like because we enjoy taking holidays and make them a priority. It’s true I could probably save $10-15k every year in lost earnings and money spent when we take holidays, but I am of the opinion that our lives are much much richer for the time we take out together than they are for the financial bottom line.

Of course it’s not am either/or equation but when I consider the fun we have and the connections we make in the time we spend away from home each year I’d never trade it for another bit of the mortgage paid off.

As I look back on my own family holidays as a kid I remember them with great fondness and I hope our kids do the same – times when you get to do some things that will possibly be life long memories. I remember surfing at Ocean beach in Denmark as one of those great holiday events – and I would pester my parents to take me there every day (and twice if we’d been once!) I remember our UK holidays pre Oz – as cold and wet as they were…

I don’t remember many families after the age of 15 – perhaps because I no longer wanted to go on them and did my own thing. I’m aware we have a small window with our kids to create memories and shape their attitudes towards life so I’m hopeful that the type of holidays we take, the frequency with which we go and the stuff we do on them, helps them to have great memories, but also shapes them into better people.

I write this in Broome, a place that has become a favourite for us (despite what the knockers say), while we are camping and enjoying being outdoors and doing it rougher and while we are meeting people and exploring, yet also taking moments to spend lavishly and have fun we wouldn’t often have in everyday life. The pic above is my first attempt at SUP (stand up paddle boarding) harder than it looks!

Gilead – Sneaks up on You

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Hamo

I haven’t read a lot this holiday. I re-read Cloudstreet yet again after watching the DVD series and thoroughly enjoyed seeing new angles I had previously missed. I finished ‘Falling Upwards’ by Rohr – another excellent book (see previous post) and today on the drive into Broome I finished Gilead – yes – Danelle was driving

It was the very first book I purchased when I got the kindle back in December, but I could never seem to get into it. I’d start it then lose interest, restart it and then give it up again… It is slow to ignite. But I decided to press on with it this holiday and see if it had more to offer.

It did.

But it is a book you need to stay with for at least the first half to appreciate the second. If you can get thru a fairly slow start then the rest of the book is engaging and compelling and beautiful both in its story and language.

Gilead is the name of a town in Iowa – a small town – insignificant even and that is part of the appeal of the story. It is story apart people who don’t ‘change the world’, but who live faithful and good lives, who raise their families, do their jobs and go the distance.

The narrative is essentially the writings of an elderly minister close to death recording his thoughts for his young son so he can know him after his impending death. The minister is in his 70s with a bad heart condition while his son is 7, the result of a second marriage to a much younger woman late in life. (His first wife and child died in childbirth.)

Much of the story revolves around the relationship between John Ames (the minister) and his elderly friend Boughton – also a minister and also near to death. These two have been lifelong friends in this one small town and their friendship is one that has stood the test of time. That relational dynamic alone is worth the price of the book.

The story gains steam when Boughton’s ‘prodigal son’ comes back to town. As a kid he was more than a larrikin – he was mean – and seemed to enjoy upsetting Ames. And now the old minister is convinced he has returned to town just in time to see him die and sweep his grieving widow off her feet.

The second half of the story revolves around the relationship between Ames and Jack, the attempts by both to make connection albeit for different reasons and the conclusion is both surprising and powerful.

I won’t tell more of the story as this is where it gets interesting

But it’s a great story for men especially. It tells of healthy long term male friendship, of a father’s depth of love for a son, of redemption in curious places and of finding peace in the final stages of life.

It is a reminder that your life doesn’t have to be ‘big and noticed’ for it to be significant.

I have started reading it again as I already realise there is much that I missed first time round. So if you pick it up I’m sure you will enjoy it if you give it the time to catch fire.

Rolling on

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Hamo

After a wonderful time in Exmouth with the QBC crew (and a few other ring ins) we headed north with the intention of going to Millstream National Park. It was great to spend a week with good friends and always makes me wonder about that piece of advice ‘young pastors’ are given to ‘make sure you take holidays away from the people in your congregation’. I do understand the wisdom of the statement, but when your church are some of your good friends then it doesn’t always hold up that well.

So we headed north and made it to Pannawonnica – a nice little town really, with a ‘caravan park’ at the local footy oval and an honor box for payment. $25.00 was cheap and we had our last coffee for a few days. There was a free local drive in, but given the kids were pretty tired we decided to pass.

The 100km into Millstream wasn’t too bad but we didn’t seal the rear of the camper and when we got there we discovered it was covered in red dust inside and out… We went to pump some water from the tap and nothing came out… We pumped again and again, and again… Then I got underneath to check the water and somehow the full tank of water we left Exmouth with was bone dry. No water… (Still not sure why as we haven’t been able to refill it). Fortunately Millstream does have some water even if it’s not considered fit for drinking so the 20l Jerry in the back of the car as well as our other water bottles got us by. (The other possibility was that of heading to Red Bluff and that would have been very ugly to arrive there minus water)

So Danelle cleaned the camper while I kept the kids occupied and then we took off for a walk to Crossing Pool. Beautiful walk, icy water, but we all needed a good clean so we jumped in. The next day at Deep Reach only Sam could be tempted…

The Millstream campsite is really good. It is unpowered, but does have some water, bush toilets (or flushing toilets at the homestead for princesses) and a camp kitchen with gas bbqs and hot water to wash up with.

The nights were chilly – very very cold actually – but the days were stunning as we wandered around the old property. The only down side to this place is the constant droning noise of the Water Authority pumps that run both day and night. Not a big deal, but if you are looking for serenity it does take the edge off.

We left there today with the idea of heading towards Broome, but also knowing the caravan parks are fully booked. In my net searching though I managed to find the SDA church in Broome which is considered an ‘overflow’ site so I gave them a buzz and managed to land a powered site there for $35 a night – which is pretty dirt cheap for this time of year.

So today we are on the road for a big drive which we will complete tomorrow. It’ll be another free roadside stop – maybe De Grey river and then more driving tomorrow. Next stop is Hedland for lunch, fuel and a breather before we chug on. We are all grimed up in red dirt and ready for a shower but that might not be till tomorrow now.

The drive from Millstream back to Karratha today was stunning and reminds me why I love the north west. Occasionally in moments of madness I think about living up here. I say madness because while winter is awesome I know I’d be a very grumpy bugger come summer.

We have about two weeks left and so long as the kids can hold it together and enjoy the time we won’t be rushing home. They seem to get homesick before we do, but then they don’t go back to work!

The GQ Whisperer

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Hamo

Yeah… If only…

Our first night on the road was a cold one. We stopped in at North Cliff Head about 50ks north of Leeman and the same distance south of Dongara. There were plenty of others there and for a freebie it was pretty decent.

All was going well until I managed to lock the keys in the car this morning as we were packing up. We have a slightly dodgy central locking system but this had never happened before. I had accidentally flicked the locks on while In the car and the turned the ignition on to charge my phone. I hopped out closed the door and instead of the lock button bouncing back up it stayed down… Instantly I realized we were screwed. Not only were the keys in the ignition, but all my tools were in the boot and inaccessible.

So here’s a lesson in how to break into a GQ Patrol if you ever find yourself stuck in the middle if nowhere

1 Pray – yep we did that – I didn’t see much hope beyond broken glass in the first minute.

2 Hope you have phone reception and then google a Nissan dealer and ask them what to do. I was going to YouTube ‘how to break into a GQ Patrol’, but figured the service guys would know.

3 I was thinking it would be coat hanger down the door or packing tape – neither of which we had. But turns out the best way to get in is to lever the door open at the point where it meets the front windscreen and work from there.

The bloke at Nissan was correct in that with a decent screwdriver (borrowed from another camper) there is enough play in the door to open it about 8ml. Then we had to find something stiff enough and malleable enough to reach in and move the central locking button forward.

Danelle took the tv antenna and unscrewed one of its longer arms then beat it flat with the hammer we keep in the camper.

With the door held open by the screwdriver I was able to get the right angle on the antenna arm to move the button forwards and clunk we were in…

It set us back a total of maybe 20 minutes in all. The next option may have been to send one of the QBC crew to our home to pick up the spare key and bring it to us tomorrow, and a day in Cliff Head wouldn’t have been so bad…

As we drove off we took the moment to help the kids reflect on what you do when you’re stuck. Think – pray – fix and I reckon all matter.

Let The Second Half Begin

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Hamo

Around 5 or 6 years ago I found myself in a really disturbing place in life, a place that has only begun to make sense in the last 18 months.

After 40 years of going hard, pursuing achievement and recognition – often at quite a price – I felt inexplicably demotivated, and not at all inspired to look for the next mountain to climb.

I began to worry. Really worry. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I hadn’t been here before and my strongest impulse was to try and locate or create a project I could set my sights on and get my teeth into. This was what I had done previously, and done well. I figured all I really needed was a ‘vision’ and I’d be sweet – I’d be back to normal – back to my old self…

But nothing came – and I didn’t have it in me to make something up either. I just couldn’t fudge it and hope things would right themselves again. I began to worry that this absence of a compelling sense of purpose and focus might become permanent and I may grow into one of those aging, self obsessed old people I had always despised… You know? People who ‘did their time’ and now were in cruise mode. People who were now ‘thinking of themselves for a bit’?…

The tag line at the bottom of my emails reads ‘life is a daring adventure or nothing at all’. But I felt my life was starting to resemble an old Commodore that had once been a good car, but was now someone’s shopping vehicle.

What was curious was that as I spoke with my close friends several others were experiencing similar kinds of dis-location. Those who were once ambitious, competitive and driven were losing those qualities. We lamented together and laughed at where we were, but we also had no answers for one another. It was just good to know we weren’t alone in our lostness.

It didn’t dawn on me at the time that this could possible be a good thing. I sometimes told people (only a little tongue in cheek) that I was in the middle of a mid life crisis so not to expect too much. The absence of the familiar ‘goal – charge – conquer’ routine certainly felt more like a crisis than the beginning of a new adventure. I couldn’t see or articulate what was happening beyond feeling lost and confused that I was no longer who I used to be.

One of the really odd experiences that occurred in this time was a sense of contentment. I dismissed it as totally inappropriate and just one step closer to complacency and mediocrity. How could you be content not to have a burning sense of purpose and an accompanying desire to change the world? Contentment was a comforting word you used to describe what you got when you lost focus… I told myself..,

But in the last twelve months I have begun to settle and feel more at ease in my own skin. I have sensed God saying ‘this is ok’ and I have decided to enjoy the contentment rather than spurn it as weakness.

This week I have been reading Richard Rohr’s ‘Falling Upwards a spirituality for the second half of life’ and it has been amazing. I am not a Rohr junkie – in fact I got bored in ‘Wild Man to Wise Man’ and gave it up… But this book has been describing what has been happening for me and giving words to theconfusing experiences that are to be expected if we are to ‘grow up’. I began highlighting parts and I think I may have now highlighted most of it.

The basic premise is that there are two halves to life and the tools, practices and ideas that served you well in the first 40 or so years need to be put down, changed and surrendered if we are to pick up new tools for the next half.

Rohr argues that many simply refuse to walk thru the desert of confusion and disorientation, so they end up repeating first half behaviours at a time when they should be growing up and morphing into different people.

It has helped me see why I have much less desire to compete or to be harsh on those with whom I disagree. It has helped me understand why I don’t need to achieve like I used to…or be ‘seen’. It has helped me to realize that I can enjoy being content and that perhaps the best really is yet to come.

Maybe you’ve had similar runctions in your own life and wondered ‘what the heck is going on?’ Maybe the challenge is to enjoy it and celebrate it, knowing that God is re-forming us and growing us and leading us to maturity and life.

Yes – We’ll Gather at The River

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Hamo

One day all will be restored and made new…

The sick will be well, the blind will see and old enemies will be friends…

A day is coming, maybe even sooner than we know when we will see God’s dreams for this world realised. It is more beautiful and spectacular than I can contemplate here. Its that vision that still gets me out of bed in the morning and that fuels my hope. That one day we will ‘gather by the river’…

Until then we soldier on. We keep going and we live with our brokenness and darkness. We find hope and goodness and light but we know all is not as it should be… as it could be.

‘People aren’t born broken.’

So goes the description of Dolly Pickles, wife of the larrikin, gambler Sam and the town drunk. Dolly is one of the less likable characters in Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, and she stays that way until we get to hear of her upbringing and the lack of love that formed her. When you hear Dolly’s story you begin to understand and even feel for her. She got dealt a very bad hand…

I’ve just finished watching the DVD series of Cloudstreet, possibly my favourite ever novel and I found it a beautiful story yet again. It’s a tale of family and of love and of pain and of stickability, but especially of our brokenness and the longing for healing.

Each of the characters are flawed in different ways. What’s odd is that you like them anyway – because you get to hear why they are living the way they are. They aren’t just jerks. They are people who are struggling with life – battling to overcome their failures, and the difficulties. They are doing it tough.

Oriel Lamb is a classic. A woman wounded by grief on all fronts, who watched her family die in a bushfire, then ‘lost’ her son in a near drowning. (“Fish came back – but not all of Fish came back…”) But she is determined to keep going no matter what. We hear Oriel say:

‘Strong people endure because that’s all life leaves you – that and being right.’ So she does – she endures all the pain life can throw at her and despite it making her terse and abrasive she doesn’t quit. In fact she chooses to wage war on badness in every form and she crusades against the evils that come near her world. I think it was CS Lewis who would have described her as ‘good in the worst sense of the word’. Hardly life in its fullness but it’s all she knows how to do. ..

As I reflected on the story it was the resilience of all the main characters that actually saw them find hope in the end – that and the ability to forgive. And I reckon there’s a pearl there. There were plenty of times the families ‘should’ have been torn apart and had the story been set in 21st century australia perhaps they would have gone their separate ways, because its more permissible.

But in a world where divorce was really not an option they hung in and worked it out. They even found healing for one another as they stuck it out. Their lives are at times tragic – but probably not more so than our own. That’s where Winton is so clever. He tells the story of ‘other’ screwed up people but you can’t help but read yourself in the story. Ha… you find yoursel choking back a tear not just because you feel for the characters but because you see your own murky life reflected in their pain.

The spirituality throughout the series is fuzzy and eclectic, but the final scene is a beautiful one. I forget how the novel ends but the DVD concludes with the two families – the Lambs and Pickles – enjoying a picnic at the river. Sam’s hand has healed… Everyone is enjoying being together. Two young aboriginal girls who had suicided in the house play in the river alongside the white kids, Ted (who also died) is resurrected there with his wife and kids and all is well. All is good and what you imagine it would be like in the kingdom come.

Fish takes off for a swim – the swim he has been longing for – and it is good… even though he ‘dies’. He has been waiting so long for this…

Subtly but clearly we hear the narrator tell us of ‘ the river – the beautiful the beautiful the river’ and you can’t help but see beautiful hope as the ‘saints’ gather by the river.

And some don’t seem so saintly and some really don’t deserve to enjoy the river, but then maybe that’s just how it is… Winton grew up in my own flavour of conservative evangelicalism so he knows what he’s writing even if many won’t pick it.

Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river; gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God.

And one day we will…

One day…