Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

crossing the liminal space

4/17/2022

image: Psit Heng on Unsplash

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb”

I want to teach any children here today a special and perhaps unfamiliar word – the word is ‘liminal’.
Any ideas what it means?...

I checked the dictionary, and it means, “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold”. Let me show you what that means. If you come forward here and put one foot on the step of the platform here at the front, and keep one foot on the floor, then you are standing on the threshold – right on the boundary – not on the platform, and not still on the floor either. You are in the liminal place...

singing the song of the mother hen: listening for the 'hidden ones'

3/9/2022

God the mother hen, the chicks, the fox and the cruel city - that is quite a Gospel reading (Luke 13.31-35), isn’t it?! And, without hopefully sounding too much like children’s entertainers, we know a song about it too, don’t we Penny?

Well, sort of – I guess most people know the song as about five ducks, not four chicks, with ‘quacks’ rather than ‘clucks’, but it is very similar. Maybe we can sing it, and others might like to join in, at least with the clucks? Shall we do that? Let’s try it. It is called ‘four little chicks’:

Four little chicks went out one day
Over the hill and far away
‘Cluck’, said the Mother Hen, "cluck, cluck, cluck"
But only three little chicks came back!
Three little chicks went out one day
Over the hill and far away
‘Cluck’, said the Mother Hen, "cluck, cluck, cluck"
But only two little chicks came back!
Two little chicks went out one day
Over the hill and far away.
‘Cluck’, said the Mother Hen, "cluck, cluck, cluck"
But only one little chick came back!
One little chick went out one day
Over the hill and far away
‘Cluck’, said the Mother Hen, "cluck, cluck, cluck"
But no little chicks came back!
Sad mother hen went out one day
Over the hill and far away
‘Cluck’, said the Mother Hen, "cluck, cluck, cluck"
And all of the four little chicks came back!

That, my friends, is our Gospel for today…

how do we relate to the Earth?

9/4/2021

When you step out of your door in the morning, do you feel that you are stepping into a world of wonder in which you are intimately connected? Or, are you simply stepping into mere location? Is it just dead space which you are crossing so that you can get to where you need to go? Or, do you believe you are walking into a living universe? Those are questions which the great spiritual writer John O’Donohue used to ask and they lie right at the heart of the Season of Creation we have just begun this month. For it matters vitally how we view the world and where we locate God in relation to it. So much of our politics, our business and trade activities, and our lifestyles, are affected. If we believe that matter, material existence, doesn’t really matter to God, then we will end up acting in problematic ways. Or, as John O’Donohue used to say, if we do believe that when we step out we are walking into a living universe, then our walk ‘becomes a different thing’. So let us explore some of the theological paths which can underpin more loving and sustainable ways of living together on the Earth…

living as parables and artists

6/12/2021

Today’s Gospel lectionary reading (Mark 4.20-34) invites us into Jesus’ way of communicating, which is not just about speech, even accompanied by silence and action. It is a way of being, a way of living: a way of living as parables, a way of being as artists…

pentecost imaginings

5/22/2021

(Jo) What an abundance of rich spiritual images we have in our liturgy today – all trying to capture just a hint of the richness of the Holy Spirit. I wonder which speaks most vividly to you – is it the fire, the wind, the breath, the dove, the tongues, the living bones? Or is it the breathing, the blowing, the swirling, the burning, the dancing, the prophesying? For somehow nouns are never enough for the Spirit – we need the verbs, the present participles that suggest movement, motion, dynamism. One thing is certain, without the Spirit, we as individuals and the church would be stuck – it is the Spirit that moves through our ‘stuckness’ and constantly invites us to the new.

We’re going to explore just a few of the pictures of the Spirit, acknowledging that no one image can ever come close to the fullness of this animating force of the divine. So, where to begin Penny?...

by another road

1/2/2021

Journey of the Magi by James Tossit c.1894

What jumps out at you in any Gospel story? Asking that question is part of the practice of Lectio Divina – divine reading of the scriptures. If you are not aware of that spiritual pathway, do speak with Penny afterwards! Approaching scripture that way, today it is the phrase ‘by another road’ which springs out for me from the text. Now I know that is partly because, in returning to Sydney very soon, I am taking ‘another road’ in my life and ministry this year. Indeed, this Gospel passage came to mind vividly when I came to accepting a fresh calling in the Uniting Church. What I have to say today is linked to that reflective unpacking. Yet isn’t ‘by another road’ a great phrase for most of us in our world at this time, as we emerge from 2020 where old roads (literally and metaphorically) were difficult if not impossible, and as we begin a new year? Let me suggest three ways in which this may be so, drawing on the story of the Magi. For there are at least three great questions which the Magi pose, and embody, for us all. How, that is, will we learn, love and light up our world, so that we too journey home ‘by another road’?...

rest in stillness

8/29/2019

Some of you know that this week Jo and I have been lucky enough to have our three grandchildren to stay, aged six weeks, eleven weeks and two. It has been, to say the least, a lively household. I mentioned to one of my daughters the theme for tonight, and she jokingly said, ‘That’s excellent – I’ll bring the children along then shall I?!’ You can all relax, because she was joking. But it set me to thinking, what do rest and stillness really mean for us, for they have to mean more than just ‘me’ time, away from the busyness of our ‘real’ life...

queer holiness and human longing for transformation

2/1/2019

a reflection for Midsumma (Melbourne LGBTI+) Festival, on the feast of Brigid & Darlughdach

First of all, may I thank you for the invitation to speak today, and, as an incomer, may I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land: the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation and pay respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. Our struggles and joys are bound together.

A ‘queer’ saint?

Is Brigid a queer saint, do you think? I don’t just mean as a likely LGBTI+ sacred forebear, but in the sense of being a figure who challenges and transforms our conceptions and ideas of holiness. Of course the word ‘queer’ is highly contested, and also disliked, for good reasons, among some sexually and gender diverse people. Yet among the broad range of its meaning, ‘queer’ does, I think, have its value. As we meet on the feast of Saint Brigid, it is certainly one way into reflecting on what she has to say to us as we celebrate Midsumma Festival, and the lives and contributions of sexually and gender diverse people. For, on the most obvious level, it is certainly apposite to remark on Brigid and her relationship with her intimate companion Darlughdach, with whom she shares this saint’s day, as she shared so much of her life, including her bed. Whilst so much about Brigid is cast about with legend, it seems reasonable to me therefore to place her, and Darlughdach, high in the pantheon of LGBTI+ Christian saints. Even if some might contest that however, Brigid undoubtedly offers us distinctive, transgressive, and mysterious paths into life and God: vital and vibrant queer ways, into holiness and transformation…

on John O'Donohue: contemplate, connect, create

4/2/2017

‘There was an ancient music on the earth before humans ever came here. Imagine what the first music of the wind was like when the earth was born out of nothing. Imagine the wind being released for the first time, and finding itself running into silver mountains, dark mountains, skimming over boiling oceans. And if you enter into the dream which brought you here, and awaken its beauty in you, then the beauty will gradually awaken all around you.’

- so begins the introduction to the film ‘Celtic Pilgrimage’ which shares much of John O’Donohue’s life and work. And, in a way, like many of his sayings, those gorgeously fashioned few words alone might really be enough for us to ponder tonight. For the heart of much of his insight and encouragement to live is contained in them: the vitality of creation and the landscape; the call to imagination and to enter into the dreams of our life; and the centrality of beauty and of wonder. John O’Donohue’s life and work was an invitation and example of how to attend to such presence and to travel as adventurous pilgrims into them…

come as you are

6/11/2016

Come as you are; that’s how I love you;
Come as you are, trust me again.
Nothing can change the love that I bear you;
all will be well, just come as you are.

- the words of our opening song today express the heart of our God and our Faith: that love is what truly matters, for this is the heart of God, and true Faith; not law, or conventional morality, nor who we are, or what we have, nor who or what we know, nor what we have done, or not done, nor what race, face, space, colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, politics, taste in music, ability to sing and dance, food allergies, beauty, quirks, height, width, shoe size, dress size, hat size, nor anything else we may have. Honestly! It really does not matter to God: the God of Jesus, the God of inexhaustible and unconditional love. Just ‘Come as you are; that’s how I love you.’ Do we believe that? Do we really believe that? For it makes all the difference, to us and to others, whether we really do. In fact, I would go so far as to say, that the very future of our church and our world depends on whether we do. Will we shape our lives, our church and world on this amazing grace of God’s hospitality? Or will we settle for loving ourselves and others in ways which do not reflect God’s love for us and for all of God’s Creation?...