Reflections on the song of a riro riro

For 82 million years, since New Zealand floated off the edge of Gondwanaland, its parrots have evolved in directions far removed from their more vibrant and psychedelic Australian cousins. The prime native New Zealand parrots, kea, kākā and kakapo (and varieties), are positively funereal compared to, say, a crimson rosella or a king parrot. Yet ask a kākā  to sing, and, while not quite either Kiri Te Kanawa or even Joan Sutherland, neither is its hymn the Mephistophelian snarl of a sulphur crested or red tailed black cockatoo or a galah. To be honest, given its skills at mimicry, a kākā would soon out-Kiri Kiri.
 
Birders speak of “LBJs”, little brown jobs. The pardalote is a classic, though not particularly drab: it skitters through bushland leaving a trail of scattered song, tantalising the eye but rewarding the ear. To be fair Australia has an enormous range of birds, and many are exquisite songsters (the most beautiful, ironically, is perhaps the butcher bird). Aotearoa has a comparatively limited range of natives, but few fail to thrill the ear. Arguably the most mellifluous of all is, in fact an import, the song thrush, but let’s not let reality get in the way of a good story.

For there is a parable here. The beautiful trillings of an otherwise drab LBJ stir the heart, and, if the heart is godwardly attuned it may be stirred to join the bird, singing in praise of the Creator. The psychedelic flash of a flock of rainbow bee-eaters also stirs the soul, but, while its song is not that of a galah, it’s more Barry Manilow than Andrea Boccelli, and it is the colour, not the song, that moves us.

For me, more than any, it is a tiny New Zealand native called a riroriro that provokes the heart to praise. Only about 10 cms long, this tiny drab bird sings the descant of the forest, and its piping ventriloqual voice can float through a valley like the song of an angel. Perhaps I should stop any trans-Tasman rivalry, for there is an Australian warbler with a very similar song that is a relative of the riro riro, but, while not rare, it is far less ubiquitous and its song is less iconic in Australian culture.

This riro riro, then, is my (flawed) parable. Small, drab, all but invisible, its song rises to the heavens. Surely for those of us who will never paint the forests bright with the psychedelic colours of our being there is a message here: sing the song God gave us and we too can raise the spirits of a frost-encrusted valley. Frost, of course, is not exactly a problem in Darwin (where this was written), but perhaps we can relate from experience somewhere sometime to the oppression of mist and frozen toes? You and I have a song to sing, the notes of life that God has given us. We may not, will not live in neon splendour, but in our small songs we may somewhere, somehow thrill the soul of those who pass us by.

More Confessions: these being of a failed communist

I am a sort of failed Christian commie. I rate myself “failed” because, while the demands of being a Christian are infiltrated with grace and forgiveness and a whole lot more second chances, the ideals of Karl Marx tend to have something of a one chance only flavour to them, and I fail (constantly) that one chance. In fact I think in the end Marx and his system – if I understand it at all – is bound to fail So too is the dry capitalist idealism of the “father of modern economics”, Adam Smith. Both stumble at the hurdle of human greed. Or perhaps at the hurdle of human sin. Full stop. Period. Whatever.

I digress. I am a fan of so-called “big government”, anathema to US Republicans and to the conservative wings – confusingly named “liberal” – parties, in Australia (I am yet to get a handle on NZ politics ... whatever happened to old Muldoon and Rowling?). I prefer to see state-owned assets, and hurt a little inside when governments carve off a little more of a phone company or a mail delivery service or a prison network or a rail system or an airline in which I once had a stake.
That’s not to say that I think the Communist nations were utopias: humanity is corrupt, and the Ceausescus and Stalins and Jong-ils are hardly walking advertisements of compassion and empowerment of the poor. 

Fascism, the political opposite of Communism, is an equally ugly and corrupt system, as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco demonstrated. Extremes of right and left have been visible around the world ever since three amoebae climbed out of the swamp and held a vote. As Christians we have to weave a complex path between the wings of politics; while I have been a member of both National-Liberal and Labo(u)r parties at different times I have long since eschewed involvement.

But I have long been fascinated by something called the “share-market” – of which I have no understanding. The fascination is of the “why?” kind.  I used to have a share in things like railways and airlines and so on, but then my government sold them. At least I still have the ABC and sort of SBS, the military and the police forces – so far. But I am confused by share markets. Admittedly when Phillip Lasker or Alan Kohler come on TV I usually head for the hills, which wouldn’t help (though I admit they each do their best to make the inexplicable interesting). But it seems to me that every time a privately owned company does something that I think is bad – lay off countless workers, buy shares in a Bangladeshi clothing factory – share prices climb, while every time they do something decent – sack an over-paid CEO, decide to buy from ethical suppliers, consider the environment  – prices crash.

So, simply, I don’t get it. But if someone could let me know what Jesus would do (which shares Jesus would buy?) please do.

Confessions of a revolting teenager

In my final school assembly at Kormilda College last year I was asked to speak on “making right choices” (for four minutes!). My role at Kormilda was a funny one: I attempted to address it as a sort of “pre-evangelistic” role, putting out possibilities for life orientation, possibilities to arm everyone from atheist to pentecostal with some basis for navigating through life. Obviously with only about ten minutes per term contact with most students, and that en masse rather than face to face, I am hardly likely to have had life-shattering impact. (Funnily enough I still maintain contact with the chaplain from my secondary school, but he had far more contact with all of us than ten minutes per term).

I am reminded of a story from my atheistic teenage years. My mother was visiting me for the Easter weekend at my boarding school – she was far too poor to stay in a motel or hotel, so she stayed in cabins at the local caravan park (there was no overnight leave permitted). Of course I was a revolting teenager, and of course I found this poverty statement excruciatingly embarrassing – it was bad enough, perhaps worse, that she drove a Vauxhall Viva, parking it amongst all the nice shiny latest model Holdens, Fords and Chryslers and the scattered Daimlers and Jaguars. Oh the shame!

One night as she was reversing out of the cabin parking spot she failed to see one of the caravan power point poles. With a sickening crunch she knocked it over. There was not a soul in sight. She verbalised her angst: “I suppose no-one saw it? No-one would know …” . Though I said nothing I mentally willed her to get the hell out of there, so that I (it was, after all, all about me, for I was a teenager) did not have to endure any further shame. Conscience, though, prevailed, and she went and reported the damage to the park manager.

She emerged from the office chuckling. The manager was tickled pink: in his many years of managing the place he had never before had a driver turn up to confess to knocking over a pole when no one had seen it happen.

Even in the depths of my adolescent solipsism* I was secretly proud of the old girl (as we referred to our parents, of course). Making right choices is not always easy, yet she had battled through and come up trumps. It was 25 years before I ever told her, and when I did she did not remember the event at all. But I think she was kind of chuffed that I did. Oh, and it’s given me a useful four minute reflection for a Darwin secondary school’s assembly.

*Solipsism? Technically in philosophy it is the theory that “the self” is the only thing that can be verified, “all that can be known to exist.”  I use it here to refer to the attitude that the self is the most important thing in the universe, or, as the advertisers woefully express it, “the most important person in the world: you.”

Water with your Jesus, Sir/Ma'am?

Occasionally it is necessary shamelessly to steal from others: the following is one of those observations that probably leaves many people wishing they had made it first, not least me. Under the heading “10 Ways We Water Down the Gospel (let’s admit, we all do it)” Benjamin Corey observes the following:

1.       We water down the Gospel when we invite people to trust Jesus for the afterlife… but not this life.

2.       We water down the gospel when we exclusively use the concept of “penal substitution” to explain the Gospel.

3.       We water down the gospel when we over emphasis sins rarely mentioned in scripture, while conveniently neglecting the ones that are talked about constantly.

4.       We water down the gospel when we explain away the whole nonviolent love of enemies part.

5.       We water down the Gospel when we eliminate the centrality of social justice.

6.       We water down the gospel when we tell people it’s clear and simple.

7.       We water down the gospel when we exclude people.

8.       We water down the gospel when we make it sound like following Jesus is easy (Spoiler Alert ... it’s not!).

9.       We water down the gospel when we make it about changing someone else, instead of first changing ourselves.

10.   We water down the Gospel when we attempt to live it out in isolation, instead of in the context of community.

If you want to see Corey’s explanation of these points visit his blog, at http://www.formerlyfundie.com/watering-down-the-gospel/

It is far more comfortable, I suspect, to revel in a so-called gospel whose focus is no more than the individual’s eternal destiny, than to engage with a gospel that engages us in the whole-of-life challenge of justice, and to which questions of the “hereafter” are an adjunct.

As it happens, after 35 years’ reflection on all this faith stuff, I suspect the “eternal” dimensions of faith are a key component, a logical corollary to the Easter event. They are the logical outcome, if you like, of God in the Jesus event speaking a word of hope that transcends all injustice, even the injustices of bereavement and loss.  There was a brief time when I took the “my salvation = eternal life for me” angle as the core message of the gospel. There was a longer period when I dismissed any sense of personal continuation after death altogether.

 Eventually I emerged into a perspective that says, “Sure, death is not the final word, or God would be smaller, less powerful than death. But there’s a whole heap of sorting out we need to do before we turn somersaults in the aisles of eternity.” It is to this sorting out that Corey is pointing us. God is not my cosy mate, and “salvation” is not in my hip pocket.

Corey reminds us, sternly, that we turn the gospel into a private insurance policy we have somewhat missed the point of Jesus.

A whispered prayer for MH370

One can barely imagine the psychological trauma being experienced, as I write this (Wednesday), by the loved ones of those on board Malaysia Airlines MH370. As is always the case in these terrible situations the desperate search for a media scoop leads to changed stories hour by hour, and anyone awaiting news of an intimate would be less than human if they did not clutch at every tiny sliver of hope amidst the conjecture. A drowning person genuinely does clutch at straws (to the extent they may drown a would-be rescuer). It’s human.

Some of you may have undergone similar terrible experiences to some degree. Almost all of us who were in New Zealand on November 28^th, 1979 remember the way in which sketchy details of the Erebus crash were released as the hours went on, yet the wait for discovery of a wreck that night lasted only a few hours. MH370 has now been missing several days, and rumours are abounding.

While the contemporary use of the word “closure” has been around since the early fifteenth century, the word has taken off in popular psychology in the last decade or so. For those awaiting news of MH370 there neither can nor will be closure for a good while yet, and I’m sure your thoughts and prayers are with them, as mine are. Closure is the least we can pray for, now.

But what when prayers remain it seems unanswered? I’m sure I prayed the night of Erebus. I certainly whispered a prayer when I first heard MH370 was missing. I pray frequently for the people of Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Palestine, and the list goes on until my prayers stutter into apparent nothingness. Is this but wasted breath?

There is a part of me that whispers (and spoke out loud at our Wednesday Study Group) that it may well be that situations could be so much worse without us stuttering what I call the “butterfly wing” of prayer. That of course is unprovable, in rational terms, but for those of us who choose to believe six impossible things before breakfast it may have some significance.

But—albeit equally unprovable—I think there is another dimension. If our God, the God of Jesus Christ, is the God of Easter, and if Easter and Good Friday are inseparably linked, then the Resurrection Hope is greater even than Erebus, or MH370, or God help us Syria or Sudan or the myriad hell holes of human experience. This of course would be cold comfort—probably—it I were fleeing chemical weapons in Syria, or fleeing the extreme hatreds of Sudan, but it is the very heart of all we say and do and believe as Christ bearers. “No” is not the final word. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is not the final word.

Into the darkness of the world’s pain we are challenged to keep on whispering Christ-light. It’s not a rational thing. Rational on the other hand can be so passé, and so hope-denying in times of deep despair. It’s sometimes hard, but I’ll stick to the irrational hope in a resurrection greater than death, and continue to whisper prayers for all those devastated by the loss of MH370 somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

 

Farewell and thanks for the conscience

News this week of the death of Pete Seeger, American activist and singer-song writer, left me in a place of introspection. Seeger (“We Shall Overcome”, “Turn, Turn, Turn” and innumerable more songs) was, more or less, the last of the generation of prophets that inspired the generation of prophets that inspired my generation. Okay: that’s a long daisy chain, and in any case, I’m hardly in the same prophetic league as the singer-songwriters, but we all live in our own shoes, and I guess as a stormy adolescent these were the voices that spoke to my angst, and I hope a spark or two remains in my belly.

Seeger never ceased to prick the conscience of the West. As my generation marched against the Springbok Tour we sang Seeger. Some years later, as we joined massive (but toothless) peace marches in Australia, we sang Seeger. Student protests since Seeger’s heyday have become more and more self-centred and obscure, a sort of devaluation of his remarkable and tenacious vision, but his songs will continue to be sung wherever human hearts long for a more just and equitable world in the face of human corruption and evil.

Seeger’s commitment to justice never failed. His belief in the labour movement in the 1940s, and ’50s, the anti-war movements of the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s and ’90s and … the  fight to clean up the Hudson River in recent decades, his battles against the corrupt and Neanderthal House Un-American Activities Committee … these were courageous battles against popularism, corruption, inhumanity and the dominant paradigm of selfishness. These were fights that put most of us to shame. Where most of us have stayed frozen like a possum in the headlights, Seeger actually had an impact on the world’s thought. His performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at Obama’s inauguration may not have ushered in the Reign of God, but it was a symbolic reminder that we’ve come a long way since the dark days of J. Edgar Hoover.

So we farewell a prophetic voice—like that of Mandela not so very long ago. I personally thank God that there are still around us those prepared to stand in the line of the great Prophets, the Isaiahs and Jeremiahs and Hoseas and Amoses—and Jesus—who dare to speak with a voice akin to the voice of God. Seeger was 94, and that’s probably time to sing somewhere else. But thanks, big buddy, for singing, and for pricking the conscience of three generations.

Being Community: address to a Civic Service

The Napier Inner-City Churches, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican, share in a covenant:

Believing that God is One, and there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; that God calls us to be one in Jesus Christ by the power which the Holy Spirit gives; that we are called to hold together the rich variety of our heritage and of our ways of worship within the one Body; that we are called to venture together in work and witness for Christ, and to commit ourselves to each other and to serve our Church and our City, as we celebrate the presence of God working amongst us to make all things new.

 

When I asked Parish Administrator Margaret to email Deputy Mayor Faye White to invite her to speak at this service we received along with an acceptance a slightly unsettling warning that she had attended these things before and found them distastefully long! I asked Margaret to shoot an email back pointing out that we had done almost all we could to pare the service down, and that the remaining variable was the length of her address!

I lied! There was another variable, and that was the length of my address. However I have promised that I will not exceed four minutes, and one of those minutes is almost gone!

So: two things.

One: I believe most human beings cry out for community. We are not good at community, as disturbing statistics of suicide darkly remind us, and as the horrible tales of citizens crying out for help while on-lookers remain unmoved, the so-called by-stander effect, remind us far more often than we care to admit. Suspicion and hatred of the outsider, enshrined in government policy across the Tasman, but potentially little better here, remind us that we do hospitality only on our terms, and by and large commune with people only if they look like us, behave like us, and don’t mess with our economic or social convenience.

Two: At the heart of the Christian message, almost (but not quite) more powerful than the Christian messages of hope and salvation, is the entwined message of hospitality, community, and compassion. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures boring law after boring law and nail-biting narrative after nail-biting narrative tell the people of God to have compassion, exercise costly hospitality, and to be community in the image of God: “It is not good that a person should live alone” says the narrative of Genesis, so that “male and female” God created us, to live together, love together, practice justice and compassion together in the image of the community God, the inseparable community God, the earth-maker, pain-bearer, hope bringer Father Son and Holy Spirit God who emerges from the stories of our forebears in faith.

Three: okay I lied again: there is one more point. It’s no good talking about this if we do not do this community thing. As bearers of Christ we must be at the forefront of the wider community’s life, rumouring and better still practising the aroha-love, the agape-love, the inconvenient and costly love that is at the heart of God. This love must be at the heart of our mission if we call ourselves (or others call us) Christian. As Colin Gibson puts it: “we are many, we are one, and the work of Christ is done when we learn to live in true community.” Of course John Lennon had something to say too: “Christ you know it ain’t easy.” So we need the help of the Spirit of Christ if we are to be the community Christ calls us to be, ignoring John Lennon’s plea to “imagine there’s no heaven”, but nevertheless working to rumour a foretaste of God’s eternal heavenly community amidst the confusion and loneliness of earth.

We’re under four minutes, so perhaps I didn’t lie after all! Let us stand and sing not John Lennon’s but Colin Gibson’s dream of unity.