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.