Because every yes is also a no…
Some throw away lines stick. I was listening to an interview with Richard Foster of Celebration of Discipline fame and when asked why he declined most speaking invitations he said,”Because every yes is also a no,” and then elaborated that each engagement he said yes to was a no to his wife and family, a no to time alone with God, and a no to the contemplative, reflective person others wanted him to be. Every yes is also a no. My yes to comfort food is a no to my healthy body; my watching one more TV episode is a no to waking early enough for prayer; my yes to a spurious invite is...
Read MoreThe Voice
You have probably heard that on 14 October Australian voters will take part in the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum to approve an alteration to the Australian Constitution to create a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that “may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government … on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. While I am conscious that half the readers of this blog are not from Australia, the question of justice for First Nations Peoples impacts us all, and requires...
Read MoreBeyond distance and difference
In his profoundly insightful book Not in God’s Name, Jonathan Sacks asks how it was that Joseph’s brothers planned to kill him. Fratricide is a pretty extreme response, desperately over the top even if Joseph was a tad irritating, so how had it got so badly out of hand? Reflecting on Genesis 37:18-20 Sacks notes that the brothers’ murderous conversation starts when they see Joseph at a distance, and their talk soon dismisses him as an arrogant dreamer, someone very different to them. Goodness, his colourful coat emphasised that. What a pretentious prat, wearing that cloak...
Read MoreThe arrogance of procrastination
It was a perspective I hadn’t thought of before, and it struck me as insightful. She said it with some emotion. “People always think that procrastination is about being lazy, or uncertain, or non-committal, but it isn’t. It’s about being arrogant. It’s about assuming you will always have tomorrow. It’s about thinking another time will come around.” For her it was tinged with sadness – a sudden death, with so many things left unsaid. “It’s never the right time, is it? So you just keep waiting until it is, and that perfect moment...
Read MoreIs church working for you?
He is a very committed Christian but recently said to me, “This church thing, it’s just not working for me. The kids are bored, I’m bored, a lot of what happens is silly, and I experience God a lot more when I’m out in nature than when I’m forced to sit still and listen to endless jabber from the front – all in that rather drab building.” My instinct was to tell him why he was wrong, and to think of a way to help him reframe things. But even as the shape of a few rebuttal sentences formed in my head, I remembered this wasn’t the first time I...
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