Quit excuses, live by reasons . . .

As a boy there were times (quite often actually) I would seek to get out of “potential for discipline situations.” My default mode of communication was to offer my ‘ever loving father’ an excuse. It was a common move by me; just not a good one.

He also had a default mode, (a speech actually) which went . . . 

“Johnny, don’t offer me an excuse; an excuse is merely the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie. Offer me an explanation of the truth; it might work.”

So often robbed of excuses and searching for reasons, some of Isaiah’s Easter words (53:7 c.f.Acts 8:32) ‘reflected my reality’ . . .

". . . as a lamb before its shearers is silent, so  he did not open his mouth”

Silent as I searched for reasons (which had seemed good at the time of my actions), ones I just knew would not survive parental-inquisition. They got me into situations; but they would not get me out. I began to learn two truths; live life by reasons not excuses, and silence is a prerequisite for truthful speech. Truths Jesus modelled.

It’s Easter again, and I’m ruminating . . .

In Easter-season we give renewed focus to Jesus and His sacrifice for human sin. Jesus as an eternally-dynamic member of the Trinity was a participant in the creation of humanity, yet did not make excuses for His action in our creation or our repetitious failures. With the “rationale of the Divine” Jesus lived, died and rose again. Jesus lived by reason.

Here’s some of the things I’m chewing on this Easter . . . 

• In silence and reflection, I can engage in the processes of truthful reasoning

•  If I have clear reasons, I can be silent in situations as I structure truthful reasoning and reason 

• With silence-formed reason I break silence for the reasons of truth 

• “Johnny, don’t offer excuses; an excuse is merely the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie. Offer reasoned explanations of truth; it works” 

• Yes Dad, I still hear you . . .

Awake in church (again) and thinking . . .

Last Sunday, I was awake (again) in church. It happens. The preacher was graciously encouraging us how Christian people shouldn't only behave well, in many cases we ought to behave differently. No argument from me on that one; both Scripture and my “allegedly-renewed conscience” understand there are still many enduring-oughts.

So I’m awake and also into ruminating; no surprise.

I’m still listening to the preacher, but now it’s “through my ruminations.”

It’s a good sermon, its short, and good sermons generally have three points.

Well, at that point methinks; “having a good rumination here.” Its short, good ruminations can be done in three points.

So . . . here’s the chew . . .

• Recognise your behaviour is a product of your thinking, so

• Don’t merely stop your behaviour, change your thinking . . . 

• In short - "Perspective frames performance"

So . . . now I’m thinking . . .

• “What people see of our Christian behaviour performance is formed by our perspective of what my being a Christian is about.”

Oh, in case I forget, the preacher addressed a text;

“Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is. As God's messenger, I give each of you this warning: Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you.” Romans 12:2-3 (NLT)

My additions to an “if you’re 'way-over 35+' list” . . .

Recently I received (yet again) one of those “in-our-day-type-lists” forwarded emails  . . .

The headline stated; “Anyone over the age of 35 (methinks it ought to say 50ish+) should read this” . . .

So, being just on “twice over the limit” I had a sober read . . .

My thanks to the writers (or posters) Sean and Gaasedal, it’s good to qualify to read your post/blog . . . 

You’ve inspired a few additional ruminations from my world towards your “admirable reflections” (or are they responsive reactions?) . . . 

• We only took the bus if it was more than two miles (3.2km) 

• Boys in my neighbourhood didn’t wear many hand me downs, we had new clothes, but the colour always seemed to be “kaki” (long live the military production surplus of 1942). 

• Yes, we returned pop and beer bottles or collected them in “bottle drives” to raise money for others to get Boy Scout uniforms. But milk came to the house and was “ladled” into your own milk billy-can – “what’s a milk bottle?” 

• Mum didn’t provide a taxi service, she used one – I still hold open the car door whenever a “non-male person” is getting into a vehicle. 

• By the way – “what’s a plastic bag?” 

• Oh, we didn’t live in the country – we lived in Devonport (made and born there actually). 

• Only houses with a flushing loo had a TV (toilet vent) – our neighbourhood was fairly “posh”, so TV’s were everywhere! 

• The grass was green, paper bags and clothes were brown, the sky was blue, the bank balance though small was written in BLACK, and the New Zealand Herald newspaper was read daily – but not at the breakfast table! 

• When needing to access knowledge and data we had two 24/7 sources. A set of encyclopaedias, and a real live international consultant with unlimited/ un-challengeable, reflective, stored knowledge and opinion – my Australian mother!! The second data source had an under-pressure-default-setting, “go ask your father!” 

Cheers - JD

By the way, if you are looking for the deep reflective significance of this blog, don't!  There is none. I'm posting on a holiday (Auckland anniversary) and enjoying myself before going for a walk with my post-young girlfriend and eating an ice cream.

Reflection . . . “Decisions in the Darkroom”

A few years back (earlier this century) my elder daughter began to pursue her professional and artistic development vision as an art-photographer.  She is doing great. 

She began to ask questions, daughters do that with daddies; so we spent time talking and thinking together back into one of my former lifetimes – professional photography  . . . 

We got to reflecting; the following reflections arise in part from our times over these last few years, as I have interacted with her questions into past “photographic development” - especially my years of darkroom experience . . .  and learnt from her growing artistic professionalism and creativity with darkroom-processed media . . . 

• Reflection, thinking about our experiences, is the key to life and professional learning . . . 

Reflection allows us to analyse our experiences, make changes based on our mistakes and fresh appreciations of the profession’s principles we violated (aka did wrongly), keep doing what is successful, and build upon or modify past knowledge based on new knowledge.                              

Our conversations keep the “visualising/interpreting artist in community” alive in me ... nowadays my image developing work is as a counsellor to others in my vocation as a spiritual director – while the “media” has changed, the principles and transferable wisdom’s dynamic . . . ruminate with me . . . 

• Deciding in the dark means you firstly have creative-vision from the light ...

• Achieving what you envisaged seeing when you took the picture in the light requires the making of “decisions in the altered light of the darkroom”, then coming back into the light to “check the image being achieved” ...

• Shining light on a picture is different to projecting light through a negative ...

• Creative insight captured as image through the moment of the shutter’s release, journeyed through the darkroom’s environmental processes, yields a positive result which the artist may not be as positive towards as their perception in the “click-moment” ...

• Best images still come through the skilful use of negative media ...

• It is only by the balanced projection of light through a negative can a positive image find its objective existence ...

• To see things in detail like the embroidery on a white bridal dress (burning in), the light on the face often needs to be “held-back” (dodged).   To just focus on the face compromises the fullness of the image ...

• The good technician must firstly be an artist, not in isolation; a facilitator in a community of artists ...

• What you project in the dark, must be developed and “fixed”, before it can make the transition back to the light ...

• In the creative-pursuit of a good print you will make more than a single processing-visit into the darkroom ...

• You can alter the negative, etch the negative, touch up the negative, but destroy the negative and you will never get the positive image ... get the picture ...

• Skilful work in the darkroom creates a finished image from the negative of greater clarity than the raw negative initially seems to promise ...

• Note, the most sophisticated computer is a limited and crude copy of the human brain and a mere makeshift mind for the image maker ... bypassing the negative for the polished positive ignores the creativeness of the “dark-side of the process.”

The pictures are over 40 years old ...  both of us are older ... both of us are still working at growing wiser, not just older ... growing older just happens if you keep getting out of bed and having birthdays . . . 

See Solutions . . .

Been thinking about some of the “dumb” things, ideas, beliefs, actions, and attitudes I see and hear in my physical world and social community  .  .  .   “at my age, shouldn’t I be telling folks a thing-or-two?”

Throughout life we constantly see things that just aren’t right . . . things, ideas, attitudes, beliefs or “alleged truths”’ that just won’t work!!! Often they are simply wrong.

By-the-way saying after the fact; “I told them it wouldn’t work” is not all that helpful . . . 

• Any fool can tell you what’s wrong; it takes wisdom to see solutions . . .

• Wisdom to know what’s right, and courage to do it regardless of “personal-ego cost!”

THOT:  "When we honestly identify or oppose wrong, we also commit to a long-term engagement in doing the compassionate right.”

• Opening your mouth doesn’t close the matter . . . 

Chewing on a book or two . . .

There’s a common factor in thousands of my library’s books; all have been acquired as tools.

Embarking into Christian ministry in 1971 my early mentor, Pastor Marcus Goulton said;

• “John, you had a trade/craft as a typographer. Each week you worked at ‘the trade’ among your wages your employers paid an amount designated ‘tool-money’. Money above earnings to enable you to buy the personal tools needed in the ongoing pursuit of that trade/craft. Not extra cash for discretionary spending, it was dedicated to your profession.  Now you are joining in a new trade/craft. This new trade has different tools; books. You will be paid tool-money (we may call it an educational allowance) along with your salary. Buy books that will serve as tools, ones that won’t just sit on your shelves; they perch there, coming ‘on-and-off’ many times.”

I took his advice on-board. For over forty years I’ve sought to spend my tool-money in that vein, acquiring ‘literary-tools’ on a one per week average. 

Some years ago I picked up a second-hand copy of Art Gish’s s book “Living in Christian Community.” (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1979.)

Art’s book has long had its place on my library shelves, many times over the years its “come on-and-off” that shelf. This year on a February morning it came off again, and as I scanned several points “relevant to what I’m writing in a dissertation,” a thought struck. “Is Art still alive?”

Both Google and my internalised-theology answered my question. They said; no and yes.  Sure I read about a tractor accident fatality in July 2010, but I’ve read in Art’s book too many times to settle a straight no to my question. Art’s book is a “tool forged in Christian community;” the ongoing community of my trade/craft’s pursuit. Art’s theology of community is alive, relevant, challenging, and replicating.

Just as Christian community exists in time and transcending it, so also its members.  What they have done, written or said still speaks.

The writer to the Hebrews resonates this into me (12:18-29). In that morning’s research writing, I found the longer-than-life strands of Art’s personal manifesto for living in community weaving into the argument that, “Christian spirituality is a social behaviour” – Yes for me while Art’s writing is a paper source, his words are living-source; incarnated-words in concert with the general assembly and the church/community of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.

NOW - it’s ruminating time . . .

1. While good tool-books contain theology, what processes am I allowing for their theology to be internalised?
2. How is my life developing as a “tool forged in community for others to use?”
3. When I die will the answer to “are they still with us” be no and yes?
4. What books are coming on-and-off their perches in your collections? . . . Oh, don’t say the Bible; that one lives on the desk, not the shelf!!!  . . .  Selah . . . 

Made an intentional journey through the desert yet?

Lately I’ve been reading, thinking, and chewing-over the journeys of the “desert fathers and mothers.”

Interesting stuff . . .

The desert has long been part and context of Judeo-Christian experience, encounter, and spiritual formation. It’s a place of significance in the Christian imagination, and its role within Christian spirituality complex.

• In biblical and early Christian experience it’s an actual geographical locale within which crucial experiences of encounter with God occur.

• It is also a mythical place, a place of dreams and fears that has come to occupy a central place within the religious imaginations of Christians.

As I mull over foundational desert encounters in Jewish and Christian experience such as; Moses and the burning bush, John living in the desert, Jesus and the forty days in the wilderness, Paul in Arabia, the early Christian monastics (I.e. Anthony, Gregory, Cassian, Benedict, Syncletica, et.al.,) in the deserts of Egypt and Judea, I begin to appreciate that the desert is both an actual place and a rich ambiguous metaphor.

These people did not merely wander-off into the desert, their journey was intentional; a focused encounter with God and their inner selves.

As they grew in resolution with their innermost selves, they “blossomed” in their serving and knowing the God of their encounter. Actual encounter in a desert landscape stands at the heart of one’s experience, but the religious imagination makes the desert into something that can continue to feed the soul long after the desert itself is a distant memory.

Methinks one does not escape-to-a-desert; you choose to enter into, pass and grow through desert journey experiences.

How come I’m thinking this stuff?

Well, in sixty years of my Christian pilgrimage I’ve listened to a lot of preachers mention how, “people ran of into the desert and became irrelevant to life” implying; “choosing a desert sojourn was a waste of time.” But these last few years in reading for myself the life of the “runaways” - not just listening to “abbreviated-history” through preacher rhetoric, I get a different emerging story; I find that from Moses on, significant leaders and Christ-servants bought the memory of the desert back into the marketplaces of their time.

They went to the desert in order to come back to town.   In the desert through serving God they learnt how to serve others.

Thot: To experience God in the desert I intentionally go there with Him, not looking for Him.

PS: Not every desert has sand or looks sandy . . . Selah!