[ hold :: this space ]

I’ve written for the Age today. i don’t think it’s on line, but it goes like this:

There’s an ancient story about a man, Elijah, who was running for his life. He ran into the wilderness, lost and bewildered, until he came across the shelter of a cave where he prayed to hear the voice of God. Instead, the world fell apart around him. First there was an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake. Then there was a great wind, but God wasn’t in the wind. Finally there was a fire, that destroyed everything before it, but God wasn’t in the fire. And after all that, Elijah heard the sound of sheer silence. And he knew that was the presence of God.

There have to be a dozen different kinds of silences that we encounter every day: companionable silences, where everything has been said that needs to be; awkward silences, where we no longer dare to speak; the resentful silences of non-negotiated demands. I imagine, though, that Elijah’s silence was one that most of us never encounter – that comes as we face the things for which no human thought or experience has prepared us, when we encounter the things for which no words have yet been created. It’s a silence that’s a vast, unending and terrifying wilderness, that makes a mockery of our best theology and philosophy.

I only realised recently that the core of the word ‘wilderness’ is the same as that of ‘bewilder’. In the wilderness of devastation’s making we find ourselves walking in a familiar landscape, but nothing is quite like it was before. The signs have shifted, and the landmarks keep moving. We wander the wilderness looking for something that will make sense; some kind of familiarity – some certain belief, a moment of grace – but the places or words that were guaranteed to bring them are now like strangers. Any talk of hope, here, only echoes off the scarred landscape, like a hollow promise. Everything we know is tested against the relentlessness of the wilderness, exposed to the hard light of the desert sun. The clichés and platitudes, so necessary to the teller, are found unfathomable to the listener.

Elijah’s story doesn’t end with the silence, nor does it end with platitudes. God doesn’t comfort Elijah, instead Elijah is forced to face the question ‘what are you doing here?’. A friend of mine says that in the dark, terrible hours after the fires had ripped through his community on Black Saturday, the question the silence asked him was ‘who are you’?

The hardest questions of faith aren’t about God, they are about ourselves. Faith in the wilderness isn’t defined by belief, it’s defined by having the courage to turn up in the silence of the aftermath, and to trust that here, maybe, we might find something, some way that will allow us to continue. We know we will never again know ourselves as we did before, but perhaps we just might survive.

If words of hope rub raw when we’re walking lonely, stories of survival are another thing altogether. If the wilderness is the only reality we know right now, then it might be the poets who can bring us home:

‘For the heart with no companion’, Leonard Cohen sings,
‘I greet you from the other side
Of sorrow and despair
With a love so vast and shattered
It will reach you everywhere.’

[over the last few weeks the sunrise has been blood red because of the smoke from the fires]

The sun was clean as it rose this morning
in a ghastly clash of pink and orange.

When we turned our eyes away from the glare,
the windows of the city were reflecting its light,
as vivid and garish as the real thing.

There’s no escaping the new day.

And we wondered,
on the slow train ride in,
if it meant we could believe
it just might be alright.

[it seems to me there are two kinds of lent:
the annual pilgrimage of faith
where we create a wilderness to submit ourselves into

and the other,
unbidden and unwelcome,
when the wilderness comes to us
in a lent
not of faith's making...]

And so we must learn to live again,
we of the damaged bodies
and assaulted minds.
Starting from scratch with the rubble of our lives
and picking up the dust
of dreams once dreamt.

And we start there, naked in our vulnerability,
proud of starting over, fighting back,
but full of weak humility
at the awesomeness of the task.

We, without a future,
safe, defined, delivered
now salute you God.
Knowing that nothing is safe,
secure, inviolable here.
Except you,
and even that eludes our minds at times.
And we hate you
and we love you,
and our anger is as strong
as our pain,
our grief is deep as oceans,
and our need as great as mountains.

So, as we take our first steps forward
into the abyss of the future,
we would pray for
courage to go places for the first time
and just be there.
Courage to become what we have
not been before
and accept it,
with bravery to look deep
within our souls to find
new ways.

We did not want it easy God,
but we did not contemplate
that it would be quite this hard,
this long, this lonely.

So, if we are to be turned inside out,
and upside down,
with even our pockets shaken,
just to check what is rattling
and left behind,
we pray that you will keep faith with us,
and we with you,
holding our hands as we weep,
giving us strength to continue,
and showing us beacons
along the way
to becoming new.

We are not fighting you God,
even if it feels like it,
but we need your help and company,
as we struggle on.
Fighting back
and starting over.

Anna McKenzie

[I know I've posted this before, it seemed time to post it again]

I remember, i have a blog!

I’m back from a couple of weeks leave, which were spent, delightfully, doing almost nothing. I had originally planned to be in Italy but we decided it would take much less energy to travel down the road to daylesford for a long weekend, which was interrupted only slightly by the smell of smoke from a bushfire on the horizon, and spend the rest of the time at home - watching The Wire obsessively on dvd, resurrecting a sunburnt garden, and making occasional forays to art galleries and the movies.

The Wire is superb - it’s not on tv in australia yet, which is hard to believe. I really wish Underbelly [which i hate] would disappear and this would be put on instead… though it has been noted that i’m swearing much more since watching it [those who know me beyond this blog may find it hard to believe that's possible].

I went to the Bill Viola video installation, Ocean without a Shore, at the NGV on Sunday.

It’s just been purchased as part of the permanent collection, and it’s just wonderful. I’ve seen a few of his installations, and this one feels like it’s the perfect choice for melbourne. The crude description is that it’s videos of people walking through a wall of water, from clouded obscurity into vivid reality… the real description is that it’s about humanity, mortality, beauty, fragility… I know people will christianise it, and say it’s a great depiction of baptism or resurrection, but it’s also fundamentally human at its very core, and to christianise it runs the risk of diminishing the common humanity that is expressed. Sometimes we forget that christianity doesn’t hold the copyright on every experience of transcendence.

This a youtube video of Bill Viola talking about the installation.

On the movie front, ‘I’ve loved you so long’ was the pick - achingly beautiful.

It seems we’re in the middle of Lent, which has pretty much passed me by completely. The fires here, which were an urgent threat in many communities for nearly 4 weeks have overshadowed anything else, and really will for a long time. It’s impossible to comprehend what it would be like to live with that threat for so long - to be in the ‘now and not yet’ peculiar to this kind of devastation - people living in the aftermath of that first frightful weekend of the fires, trying to come to terms with the loss of people they love, with the loss of possessions, and with the loss of everything familiar both physical and spiritual - and yet having to be aware that there are fires still burning that could change direction at any moment and wreak their devastation again.

Talking about deliberately entering a wilderness, or thinking that any wilderness we could conjure up for lent might actually bear some resemblance to reality, seems somewhat crass this year. The concepts of loneliness, fear, desolation, resilience and mortality have all been ratcheted up a notch, taken to a place that faith is yet to reach.

I’m heading off on holidays… but first, a quick idea for Lent that I would have liked to develop more… so bear in mind that it’s in draft form!

I’ve always liked the idea that the seasons of the church year, like lent, are about helping people practice for the moments in life when they are, for example, in the wilderness - practising putting a story of faith and a way of living alongside those times. A lot of people in Victoria are living the wilderness - if not Good Friday and Holy Saturday - at the moment. Lent this year shouldn’t be about teaching people how to live in these moments, but giving them the space to be allowed to.

The lectionary readings for Lent are woeful this year… do we really need Noah and the flood? promises that the earth will not be destroyed again? or the other passages that all seem to draw a direct connection between sin and the devastations that come upon the earth? I’m sure they can be redeemed [well, maybe], but I’d ditch them, and use a compilation of readings from other years.

I think i’d do a labyrinth each week [thanks jenny for that idea, all the way back at christmas!]. Very simple, and with one station in the centre. One idea might be to put a bowl of oil at the beginning of the labyrinth each week, for people to mark their hands with a sign of the cross, and then a jug of water with glasses at the exit, for when people leave.

ash wednesday:
I’d not make this anything it’s not - i’d just put a bowl of ashes in the centre of the labyrinth, with the traditional words and ask people to mark themselves with a sign of the cross.

week 1:
[I'd place the story of Elijah and the wind, earthquake, fire into the centre - the NRSV translation, which ends with the lines ' after the fire was a sound of sheer silence'. I'd put some writing charcoal out, and black paper, and some words out like this:]

We wait for the silence.
We would rather no words.
Any talk of hope, in this wilderness,
only echoes off the scarred landscape;
hollow promises that deny the truth of this reality.

We long for a silence, God,
that is big enough to hold all the things
we cannot say out loud.

We long for a silence
that does not try to answer them.

If there are things you need to say, for which you want no answer
write them onto the paper here.

week 2:

[print out Mark 1:12-13
put it next to a loaf of bread and these words:]

we wander the wilderness,
longing for glimpses of familiarity
- a roadsign
a playground;
some certain belief,
a moment of grace.

Was your wilderness this unfamiliar,
this disorienting,
too,
Jesus?

We know all too well the temptations
we long for the company of angels…

take some bread
let it be food for the journey
you are not walking here alone

week 3:

[Put a bowl of rocks into the centre, and start making a cairn for people to add to]

Hold a rock, tight in your hands.

Let its sharp edges cut into you
-like the unanswered questions of faith
or the anger that shapes our days
or the grief that doesn’t seem to end.

If you would like, add your rock to the cairn

- cairns mark moments in the road where something significant has happened;
they mark the way across a difficult path -

your story of walking this wilderness is part of the faith of this community.

week 5:
[Put out words to Isaiah 43:19-21, a bowl of dirt and a bowl of water]

If you can’t quite perceive it yet;
if the vision of this new world
is too blurred by your tears,
then write your fear and doubt into the dirt.

If you are able to, let those
who have walked the wilderness before
and found an unexpected spring
hold faith for you…
run your fingers through the water.

week 6:
- this is holy week. I’d put a bowl of water in the middle and wash people’s feet - thinking of the woman washing Jesus’ feet, not him washing the disciples’.

that’s it! hope it’s a useful beginning, feel free to rip it apart and remake it to work where you are…

i’m on holidays for the next two weeks. see you on return…

I was out at Brunswick UCA yesterday and Ray showed me the art / meditations that have been slowly building as part of the church’s engagement with Lent. It’s based around an idea that he took from Cityside’s Desert Files and reworked for the local situation - each week of Lent is given a theme [taken from the lectionary reading from that week], and people contribute artwork based around that image. The artwork is then integrated into worship each week.

The collection is open to the public this Sunday as part of the Sydney Road Street Party.

It’s lovely stuff, well worth going [and the Sydney Road Street Party normally isn't bad either!]. The church is on the corner of Sydney road and Merri St in Brunswick.

are the most terrifying wildernesses
those places which should be most familiar
and yet suddenly, inexplicably, aren’t?

[the other person,

the church,

the faith...]

… there are none to be found on the site, but you did start me thinking about what i’d do.

these are the random thoughts i’ve had - not polished, not finished, not to be analysed or exegeted … just a friday afternoon, 10 minutes to spare, random creative exercise. maybe i’d do it as a labyrinth, perhaps cover the basement floor with sand and mark the labyrinth into it…

i.
too tired to wander

in the relentlessness of this heat,
with the incessant swarming
of flies,
and the itch of ants
that trawl over my feet
i long for any visitor
be they devil or angel

someone who lets me know
i am still alive…

ii.
some end up
in the wilderness
by mistake
- you, perhaps? -
taking a wrong turn
from a street that was crowded
into one that was empty
until you found yourself
in a place where the streetmap doesn’t reach

if lent finds you in a place you longer recognise
in a faith that has no street map
where the crowds left long ago
you will know there is no easy comfort to be found

but if you wait, in the silence

maybe you can hear the stories of those who have walked the wilderness before
whispered in the wind
and the sand
and the silence

what are they saying?

iii.
they say the landscape is harsh here -
resilient, tough, unbreakable.
yet every chasm and gorge tells otherwise

of a story a million years old,
of the world ripping apart
of ruptures and rents
of rock crushing rock

the beauty of this wilderness
is made only through its fragility.

i confess
i would rather not be fragile
and i do not have the faith
to believe that the broken is always made beautiful

or that it is worth the cost.

that may be the step of faith
i need to take this lent.

iv.
is the wilderness everywhere that isn’t home?
everywhere your footing isn’t certain
everywhere you have to measure
water and food
words and thoughts
sparingly
and carefully
because you do not know how long they need to last.

is the wilderness the place
where the easy answer
[the stone,
the temple,
the kingdom]
seems the only answer.

where or what is my wilderness?

what do i need to survive it?

iv.
there are those of us
for whom lost-ness
does not come from not knowing where we are
or from being alone.

there are those of us
for whom wilderness isn’t being away
it’s being with.

there are those of us
in this world
who are always
always
in the wilderness…

jesus is with us for this 40 days.
what do we need to tell him
about what it’s like for us here?

v.
did you know what you would do, god
when you turned down the stone
and walked away from the temple?
did you have another plan?
or did you just know that one wouldn’t work?

am i ready for you to have no answers?
am i ready for your salvation to be different
to every idea i might have had?

[and i'd use this image from ellery creek somewhere...]

i am fasting this lent
[not from chocolate or red wine, let me hasten to add,
or muffins from deganis, coffee, or cut flowers of any description]

i am fasting from knowing.

so in a cafe, yesterday
she, sitting next to me, exclaimed over the headlines:

‘Britney shouldn’t be let near those children, should she?’

and i [deep breath] said,
‘i won’t ever know enough about Britney to know’.

you know - and this is much more embarrassing
than interesting -
this lent, unexpectedly,
i am finding i want to hear Britney’s story
all of it
and i think i might even want to understand.

[could this be compassion?]

it’s much harder than i thought it would be,
this fasting.

kangaroo at sunrise, just outside Alice

[apologies if you saw this up here briefly last week and then wondered where it went - the post i put up to explain why got lost somewhere. A version of this article was published in last Sunday's Age, so I took it down until then]
I was in the middle of Australia last week. A friend and I road-tripped from Adelaide up to Alice Springs, which is a 1600 km trip straight up the middle of the country. It’s one of the quintessential Australian experiences - the dirt gets redder and redder with every kilometre, until it’s almost blood red by the time you get to the centre. For the last 1300 km, there are only towns or roadhouses every 250 km or so. On the second day, we couldn’t get breakfast in Coober Pedy, where we’d stayed overnight. Nothing was open, not even the service station food counter. We drove the 150 km to the next roadhouse where the only coffee we could get involved a teaspoon of Caterers Blend in a polystyrene cup [make your own at the urn, hand over your $2.50 for the privilege].

It’s tempting to think that we were in the middle of nowhere, but more truthfully we were on the edge of nowhere. It’s the vast space to the left and right of the road that is the nowhere: thousands of kilometres of wilderness with barely a tree or a bush or even a track. Australian folklore is full of stories of people who took a turn from the road without knowing what they were doing and have never been found. It is only by miracle that sometimes someone is.

My friend was going home. With every signpost that indicated we were getting closer to Alice Springs, her smile would broaden. We took ‘welcome home’ photos at the Northern Territory border. She couldn’t wait to feel the soil beneath her feet again, the burning heat of the centre’s sun. This was her place, these were her people. This was her life.

I, on the other hand, felt an unexpected sense of alienation. It is remarkable country, made even more beautiful by its ancient story, but I don’t find my own within it. Its beauty for me is in its otherness, not its resonance.

Somewhere after the border, though, I had an almost irrepressible urge to turn left; to leave the road and take a faint track into the immense emptiness that lay on the side of it. The urge was so strong that had I been on my own, I don’t doubt I would have done it.

If that sounds romantic and cliched, it was actually anything but. I knew that if I took the turn I’d not come back. If I turned left I’d lose myself in this wilderness, and, more frighteningly, I would want to stay lost. There’s no happy ending to this kind of lost, though. I had no sense that I would find myself to be one with this place and, as the cliche goes, know myself for the first time. This would be lost-ness of the most terrible kind, where you no longer know the edge of your skin, where you are subsumed by your surroundings. You no longer know who you are. You become nothing to the world’s everything.

I knew without any doubt that if I turned down the track into the wilderness - if I made this my lent - when the 40 days were over, I would not know to return. My survival would not be of my own making, and it most definitely would not be assured.

We throw around poetry of wilderness and deserts at Lent with the blithe carelessness that comes from not knowing how desperate and desolate these places are. We speak of having faith in terms of believing that God will provide the food or water or shelter from the heat. I’m not sure I know anymore what faith really is, but I know it’s much, much more vast than that, and even more important. It’s something to do with lost-ness, survival, and holding on to the edge of my own skin. I’m not sure the wilderness is my place to find it. But I’d really like to know where is.