Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

the strangeness of callings

1/14/2024

Spiritual callings are typically strange, don’t you think? As our scripture readings today attest, they often occur to the strangest of people, and/or in the strangest of circumstances. Most importantly of all, they are frequently strange in character. After all, they come from what we call divinity, which, to our ordinary ways of the world, is typically strange or slant – even, if you will, queer. Our own experiences, as well as today’s readings, bear this out, just as they invite us to listen and respond to further strange calls of our strange God in our own day. For as as recorded, in regard to the faith tradition he began, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, put it well in saying that: (Faith)… began as something strange and it will return to being strange, so blessed are the strangers.[1]...

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…

repairing the breach

3/6/2022

Today I would like to introduce you to an old friend. Do you like their orange flowery skin and scrunched up green and other patterned ears? I call them Angell – with a double ‘l’. They come from my first year at theological college, in some of the darkest days of Margaret Thatcher’s time as UK Prime Minister. For I brought Angell home from a church fête stall during a formation placement. This was in Brixton, the scene of two (in)famous ‘uprisings’, or riots – depending on your outlook – led by Black British people. The immediate cause of the first of these, in 1981, was a response to extraordinary ‘stop and search’ laws and police brutality. Tensions were particularly high after a suspicious fire in which 13 black teenagers and adults had died. The final straw was the so-called Operation Swamp 81, named after Mrs Thatcher’ speech in which she claimed the UK ‘might be swamped by people of a different culture.’ The 1981 Brixton Riots lasted for three days. They triggered similar ‘uprisings’ across Britain’s inner-cities, and led to the landmark Scarman Report, which began the long journey of addressing racial injustice and police reform in the UK. It was fuelled by a powerful cocktail of poverty and deprivations of many kinds, as well as race. In Brixton, the large African Caribbean population were at the centre. And it is out of this background that Angell comes, so called after Angell Town, a particularly challenged and challenging housing estate, after which the Church of England parish was named. So Angell reminds me always, both of the very real violence involved in today’s Gospel in the Temptations of Christ, and of the continuing struggles for what Martin Luther King called ‘the beloved community’…

test or gift?

3/1/2020

Who likes tests? When I was at junior school I did – that was because I was a smarty pants and enjoyed getting all, or at least most, of the answers right. I even enjoyed testing myself. I was probably really annoying to some of my peers! Time goes by though and the tests get a little more exacting and sometimes even scary. Academic tests are one thing – or even exams in music or dance – but life throws tests at us that we had not expected and for which it is much harder to prepare – sickness, unemployment, the break -down of relationships. These test our character and the strength of our relationship with God.

One of the meanings of the word temptation which appears in our reading today is ‘testing’. But just what is being put to the test and why?

I am, You are, We are... Beloved

3/10/2019

If you have ever been to St Luke’s church in Toowoomba, you will know it has wonderful stained glass windows. These include, above the high altar, a replica of the famous medieval ‘Blue Virgin’ window from Chartres cathedral. Another outstanding feature, at the west end, above the baptistery, is a beautiful modern Australian stained glass window; which, almost like an Aboriginal dot painting, plots and celebrates so many aspects of Creation. There are several other windows too which command attention, including one with St Peter and girls from The Glennie School; a rendering of the meeting of Mary Magdalene with Jesus at the Resurrection; and a moving portrait (in the Warriors Chapel) of a dying soldier reaching out and touching the crucified Christ. All speak powerfully of Christian faith, and are, as it were, the Gospel in glass.. Over the years I ministered there however, the window I was surprisingly increasingly drawn to was one of those which are easily passed over: namely a stained glass window representing the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. As time went on, I would indeed particularly point this out to those who came for baptisms. For the message of that window goes to the heart of the good news – the Gospel – we all need to hear today: the good news which lies behind Jesus’ responses to the great human temptations in our Gospel reading today. To flourish beyond such temptations, we, like Jesus at his baptism, need to hear, for ourselves, the words of God ‘You are my Beloved, in you I am well pleased’…

on the threshold of Lent

3/5/2019

I cannot really think of a better verse with which to stand on the threshold of that amazing annual journey we call Lent than Psalm 50 verse 23: “Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice, honour me.” . Tomorrow we step over the threshold and the journey will begin. But today, we stand on the threshold. We’re about to clear our fridges, make pancakes and make space for something new. I wonder how you’re feeling?...

belovedness and the wilderness

2/14/2018

apophatic Christ by Peter Klein, Lenten artwork for the Chapel of the Holy Spirit Milton

When we first came to Australia on a permanent basis, we lived and worked in the Anglican Parish of Gosford. One of the very lovely things about the parish, and its main church building, is its baptistery. This includes some modern stained glass windows, with words from the Gospel story of the baptism of Jesus strongly and beautifully emblazoned: ‘This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ It is such a joy to see and take to heart. Indeed, increasingly, I have come to believe that this is at the very core, not just of the baptism of Jesus, but of the baptism of every Christian. When we baptise a child, we are helping to share with them, and with those who love them, the message of God for us all: that ‘you (too) are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ What an amazing truth that is if we could but all believe it. Surely, this is a gorgeous message of love which Christians should be able to share with every person. For everyone is a child of God and everyone is created as beloved, in whom God is well pleased. Imagine if that was the main message, the heart of the Gospel, the truly good news, we shared as Church with others. After all, this love - not sin, nor judgement, nor moral concern – is the ultimate reality of all our lives. Yet this astonishing love for each one of us comes at a cost, and with a challenge…

Transfiguration as an icon

2/26/2017

It is said that the poet Alfred Tennyson was walking one day in a beautiful garden where many flowers were blooming. Someone stopped him and asked: ‘Mr. Tennyson, you speak so often of Jesus. Will you tell me what Christ really means to you?’ Tennyson thought for a moment, and then, pointing down to a beautiful flower, he said: ‘what the sun is to that flower, Jesus Christ is to my soul.’ That, my friends, is at the heart of the feast of Transfiguration...

a generous, genuine, and gentle offering

3/11/2016

This Sunday's Gospel story is about self offering. It invites a question. What is the quality of our offering to God?
Indeed we can ask about any offering we make to God three questions - is it generous? Is it genuine? And is it gentle? Mary's offering in this story is all three...

desire like a mother hen

2/27/2016

"How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing"

Desire - longing - this is what is at the heart of the spiritual journey; of the relationship between any one of us, and God. This is what it is all about. This is why we have our Lenten programs, and our great festivals and our Eucharist.

God desires us. God longs for us and for every living thing that God has made. God longs for us with passion and intensity and single focus. But much, if not most of the time, we live as though that were not the case. The great Saint Teresa of Avila was spot on when she wrote, "All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause; praying as if God were absent."

God longs for us to spend time in silence and stillness and presence. God longs to gather us, to protect us, to nurture us as a mother hen gathers her chicks. Now when we hear that beautiful feminine image for God, two things happen. The first is that we reject it out of hand, because we are so used to hearing God talked about in exclusively masculine terms, that even today we still tend to brush the picture aside. The second thing that happens is that we tend to think, 'oh how sweet. We are like little fluffy chicks and God is mothering us and looking after us and it's all really lovely." Well yes - and if you have never thought of yourself as a little vulnerable fluffy thing in need of God's tenderest care then that is the challenge of that picture for you to take away and pray with this week. But there is yet more to that image...