Tag: life

Dislocated: A country dance


Dislocated

There was a two-roomed school in Moorine Rock, and an old weatherboard hall. There are a few other buildings, including a newly restored hotel, but there is nothing big about Moorine Rock. It’s not a town, just a tiny string of buildings along the Great Eastern Highway 400 km from Perth on the way to Southern Cross.

I was there to collect a ute. Each month for 18 months or so in the mid-1990s, I took the Prospector train to Southern Cross to lead worship in two or three centres and mentor the two farmers who were studying in the parish-based TEAM program.

The parish would organise a car for me. In an average Southern Cross weekend, I would drive several hundreds of kilometres along lonely roads, huge flat paddocks of wheat or canola my only company, in order to take services in Southern Cross and tiny settlements like Bodallin and Mount Walker, each with a half-dozen worshippers.

And on this night, a parishioner had brought me to Moorine Rock to collect my transport. It was convenient because there was a party in the hall, and I could meet some new people who weren’t churchgoers. In theory, a good idea. I thought I would be up for the social challenge, but it didn’t turn out that way.

I was nearly punched.

A line-dancing troupe from Perth had visited the school that afternoon. It stayed on to provide the music for the evening. The Principal chatted with me. Her 12 pupils were lined up on the dance floor to show their parents the moves they had learned that day.

I knew no one. I looked around the hall. There were a couple of dozen mothers chatting in twos and threes. A few of the men lounged against doorframes their fists grasping cold cans of beer. Other men were outside, all in earnest conversations. I overheard ‘wool prices’, ‘canola harvest’, ‘sheep sales’. I thought I was at home in a farming community. I thought this was like the little town where I grew up. But I knew that breaking into tightly knit conversations as a stranger was always hard. I thought I was up to the social challenge.

The music started up again after a break. The Principal called for everyone to get on the floor and join the line dancing. Two or three of the women joined in. They’d done this before. A young man from the Sons of Gwalia mine, an outsider, merrily drunk and hyperactive, took himself to the floor energetically. Not one of the farmers made a move towards the dance floor.

The Principal dragged me onto the floor. Elbows linked, we jigged in our line. The dancing was quite fun, but I noticed that the young miner and I were the only males on the floor.  It seemed men didn’t dance.

I scooted back and forth for 15 minutes or so until the Principal released me. I thought I would join a conversation outside in the black night around the barbecues. I stood outside two of the groups waiting for the opportunity to jump into the conversation, either verbally, or physically. I wasn’t there it seemed.

I thought of Tambellup. It was many years since I had seen such strict apartheid: women inside, men outside.

I wandered back inside and tried to join the women’s talk. One group was more inviting and allowed me to move into their circle. But I could find nothing to contribute to their talk of babies and home duties and being a woman on these vast farms. It was on that night I learned that many women in their forties with growing families and solid farm responsibilities were not allowed access to money. Their fathers-in-law insisted that he had sole control of the bank accounts. The women were welcome to shop, but every little item had to go on the farm account – and then be accounted for.

Moorine Rock was in no danger of being liberated, it seemed.

Pretty soon, I gave up trying to socialise. I grabbed a can of Sprite and leaned against a wall: an involuntary wallflower. One of the farmers’ wives took pity and asked me who I was and what I did. The usual small talk. Very soon, we were into her rare trips to Perth. I told her about my travels. She had cruised in Europe and around Greenland. Suddenly there was a man between us, his face red.

‘Let me have my woman back.’ He said it quietly, but I could hear the menace in his voice.

‘Sorry about my husband,’ she said as he led her away.

I assumed that he was drunk and that this was a one-off situation. I still thought I could handle the social challenge.

I repeated the very same mistake five minutes later. This time the angry husband was about to hit me, but his wife restrained him.

I decided it was time to leave. I didn’t fit in. I couldn’t meet the social challenge. I headed for the front door of the hall and out into the night. I had to find the ute. I had to be able to locate the ignition. If I couldn’t succeed in those two challenges, I would have the humiliation of having to go and ask one of the men for help.

I quickly picked out the only ute. I slid into the dark cab, felt for the key slot, started the motor and flicked the headlights on. Three challenges in the pitch dark, really: one, find the ute, two, put the key into the ignition slot, and three, find the headlight switch. Three challenges met. Much easier than the social challenge.

I followed the dirt track from the hall to the highway and piloted the rattly ute to my accommodation in Southern Cross.

I was glad to be alone.

On Monday, back in Perth, I visited my physio. The boot-scooting had put my back out . Dislocated – badly.

ooooooooooooo

Photo credit: jjparsonsphotography

The house was filled with the aroma


Sermon

St Brendan’s-by-the-Sea, Warnbro

Audio. Click here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgoC2q3M9ML7803XvIWbhWu5p3Rq?e=u9KBHk

Lent 5, April 3, 2022

The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.

Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

John 12:1-8

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them[a] with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 ‘Why was this perfume not sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor?’ 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it[c] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

Hear the Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.


In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

One of the amazing things about dogs is their sense of smell. Some scientists say that their smell is between ten and one hundred thousand times more sensitive than our ability to detect odours. A vast portion of a dog’s brain is given over to interpreting smell. By contrast, our dominant sense is sight. We make a picture of the world based on what we see; a dog’s world is constructed from smells.

You can tell I’ve been watching the program on ABC-TV about dogs!

Even so, for human beings, smell can be overwhelming If there is a strong smell, it seems like it is everywhere around us. As a child, I remember the eggs our chooks laid on the farm. We couldn’t use all of them at once, so we smeared them with Ke-Peg and put them aside for later… sometimes too much later. When you crack open a rotten egg, that nasty smell of hydrogen sulphide, rotten egg gas, fills the whole space. You can’t get away from it. And molecules of hydrogen sulphide stick around in the nose, and even when the rotten egg itself has long gone, hours later you can still smell the gas.

An all-pervasive smell like rotten egg gas gives us a little idea of what a dog’s smell is like.

This morning’s gospel begins and ends with the stink of death. One thing we remember from when Jesus arrived to raise Lazarus from the dead, he had been dead four days and ‘there was a stench.’ (John 11:39 NRSV)

The smell of death, of decomposing bodies, is one of the smells that you can’t escape. It’s everywhere in the place where you are. It sticks to your clothes. It lingers in your nostrils for hours. It is a distressing smell. To add to the nastiness of the smell, the circumstances when we experience that smell are likely to be disturbing in themselves. This smell is an occupational hazard for palliative care nurses and first responders – and clergy too!

We all obviously want to stay clear of that smell. We bury or cremate the dead before they begin to smell. It’s hard to stay in the presence of the stench of death. It’s hard even to talk about this smell – or to listen to me talk about it! And it may have been hard for Lazarus’ friends to stay near the resuscitated Lazarus – they would recall that smell.

At the end of the gospel reading, we return to the smell of death – Jesus’ death. The place where the Romans crucified people must have smelled like an abattoir. There was blood and gore, fear and vomit. There were the bodies of those crucified in the preceding days. Gruesome, awful. A place to stay away from, to avoid at all costs.

It’s difficult enough to think about it, let alone be there, as were Mary the Mother of Jesus, and John, and the other Mary and just a few other disciples. Only a few could stick it out. Death produces a horrible stink.

But could there be a perfume, a pleasant smell, strong enough to counteract the smell of death? Mary thinks so. She spreads half a litre of spikenard, Sweet Cecily, some call it, on Jesus’ feet. It’s a huge amount of perfume, costing about $60,000 in our money, a year’s wages. And scholars think Mary and her family were not rich. Martha herself is serving the meal, not a slave. They couldn’t throw money around. 300 denarii was a lot of money.

She rubs the ointment into Jesus’ feet with her hair, releasing even more aroma. John tells us, ‘The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’

It’s an extraordinarily generous gift.

 And think too about foot-washing at a dinner. Mary could get to his feet because Jesus was reclining Roman style; his bare feet were sticking over the end of the divan. But people in the Middle East washed their own feet. Only slaves would wash someone else’s feet.

So, Mary washed Jesus’ feet, taking the part of a slave. She washes them with a hugely expensive ointment and wipes his feet with her hair. So, Mary’s love for Jesus starts so close, so intimately, and expands to fill the very air itself.

Because that’s what this story is about. The extraordinary story of a man raised from the dead, and the extraordinary love of the man who raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus really does bring life. And Mary, for one, gets it. She realises how extraordinarily generous Jesus is as he shares his life – with Lazarus, with Mary, with everyone. Life is a precious gift, and the one who gives life in abundance is a precious giver.

In that light, Mary’s anointing of Jesus with expensive perfume makes sense. Mary responds to Jesus giving life to her family by pouring out to Jesus her love and gratitude.

This morning’s Gospel recalls Moses saying there is a choice. We can choose life, or we can choose death. (Deuteronomy 13:19).

Think of Judas. John paints him as greedy, a liar, a traitor and a hypocrite. Judas’  thinking about giving is back to front: Judas thinks that giving money to the poor proves you love them. It doesn’t.

But loving the poor and expressing that love by giving money or clothing or food or opportunity, that’s the way to life. That’s the choice that Jesus affirms.

Mary, unlike Judas, chooses life. She thanks God for his goodness by spreading love around; love for Jesus first; love that comes from the depth of her heart, love that tries to match the overwhelming generosity of Jesus towards her. We can choose life. We are one of those at table with Jesus, sharing communion, so our choice is clear.

We love.

Our culture teaches us to hold back, not to give too much of ourselves away. It teaches us to hold back by judging others, instead of just letting them be themselves in Christ.

Our culture believes there is a finite supply of love and if we give away too much love, we will run out. But Mary shows us that the opposite is true: that if we give love, it will spread and multiply. Like Mary we can love generously, love from a full heart, love without borders, without judgement, just let our love for Jesus spread and ‘fill the whole house.’

Saint Paul writes, ‘And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’ (Ephesians 5:2 ESV). Just imagine the combined aroma of our grateful generosity to Christ. This church would become an even more beautiful place, a beloved community…

 ‘For we are the aroma of Christ to God…’  Saint Paul again. (2 Corinthians 2:15 ESV)  We are already that aroma, so let us continue to spread love so powerfully that not only dogs can detect it, but human beings cannot help but experience our love, God’s love, permeating the world.  

****

The print of Mary anointing Jesus comes from the
Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

God’s Stubborn Insistence on Life.


Lent 5 (March 29) 2020. Reflection on Ezekiel 37:1-14, ‘The Valley of Dry Bones’.

I grew up on a farm and remember being able to wander far from the house. Often, I would come across old bones. They intrigued me. I would wonder whether they were bones from sheep, which was most likely, or from kangaroos or dingoes. I would try to picture where the bones had fitted into the animal when it was alive. I found this hard to imagine: the difference between the bone in my hand and the living creature was too great.

Holding the bones, I felt how dry they were. Bleached by the hot sun, the smooth bones were made even smoother by the drying-out process. Even though I knew it to be the case, I couldn’t imagine how these bones were once alive, part of a creature that knew hunger and fear, vitality and the cool taste of water.  

It amazes me when I hear of scientists who extract DNA from old dry bones, much older than the sheep in our paddocks. To measure the life in the bones needs extraordinarily sensitive equipment.

So Ezekiel’s question of the Lord, ‘Can these bones live?’ is perfectly understandable. The common-sense answer, even the scientific answer, must be that life from dry bones is impossible. But in his vision, Ezekiel sees God choreograph the resuscitation of an army of dry bones. Ezekiel describes a drama of rattling, the sound of the four winds, the bones being covered with sinews and skin, then rising in their ranks.  He then pictures God breathing into them and making them again living human beings.

Ezekiel is in exile with the people of Israel, a captive with them in Babylonia. Many of them believe that Israel is destroyed. The Israelites will assimilate into Babylon and lose their identity altogether. They will become a footnote to history.

But Ezekiel becomes their comforter. He is disgusted by their ‘shepherds’ who have no vision of the future. He insists God will put a new Spirit into the people of Israel. Even if they seem as dead as dry bones in a valley, God will breathe life into them, just as God did for the first human, Adam.

In the midst of death, Ezekiel is a strident voice of hope.

Ezekiel speaks into the guts of this pandemic, where death is stalking our community, tearing loved ones away from each other. He reminds us that God is Creator. Where there is death, God insists on creating life.

The impact of Covid-19 will fall disproportionately on the poor in our community and the poorer nations of the world. We see the sweep of its story in Italy and China and know we will see something similar here. We have work to do caring for each other in the valley.

Yet Ezekiel reminds us that there will be an end to the scourge of this infection, and there will be new life – new, surprising life.

Our task as Christians is to speak that hope. We are to be Ezekiels, prophets, who speak our hope into the valley of dry bones and affirm, ‘Yes, Lord God, these bones will live!’