Wednesday, November 30, 2016

I'm OK Because We're OK

“I’m OK because you’re not OK.”
That’s what I reckon I’ve been hearing from certain big voices in the news.    Or in the less blunt form: “We’re OK because they are not OK.”
It’s being expressed in group terms, us versus them.   This collection of “I” individuals over against that lot out there, other than us, beyond the pale.  They are different kinds of people.  They belong somewhere else, not in our place.  They behave badly, against the principles of our who we are.  They are a threat to our security and our identity. 
Because of the group aspect, it can feel that we can’t be wrong.  If, as a group, we’re feeling the same we can’t be accused of being selfish surely.  The argument is that we’re being honest. Honest about how lots of people feel.  Therefore it must be right and we’re justified in being outspoken and absolute.
I’m thinking of the people who have listened and responded with a yes to Donald Trump and those who say Amen to Brian Tamaki, as well as the speakers themselves.
We don’t use the word “primitive” much nowadays, but this is one place where it fits and it helps us understand in a way that makes for better life. It’s deeply embedded in our human functioning to feel good about ourselves by contrasting us with others. It’s a short-cut to clear identity to see ourselves over and against something we don’t like or don’t approve of. It’s much easier to do that than to take the hard self-reflective road of working out who we are as unique human beings.
That needs soul-searching. That needs the hard honesty of being honest with ourselves, warts and all.
It’s a primitive reaction to find identity by defining who we and our group are and exclude others because they are different and therefore a threat.
What we are learning on the journey of the spirit is to find identity in who we are in ourselves and in relation to others – to other people and the whole world around us. Who I am sits alongside who you are and we’re no threat to each other. If we can get to that place, then there is no threat. There is no need for security, for walls of exclusion.
Some use the words of a text, definitely spirit-inspired in its wholeness and its insights, to decree what is right and wrong for two human beings loving each other. But if this text, the Bible, is God’s word, then we cannot use it to claim human certainty.  What’s good with God, only God knows.
I am OK because we are all OK. That’s the journey I’m on. I’ve discovered that my wellness, my security, is enhanced by that of others. I’m not put off by the fact that “others” includes a huge amount of people and things. Focus on what’s in front of you, and keep expanding the view as “we” thinking becomes more and more natural. It is always a work in progress, as long as there are some others, somewhere, who are not OK and something could be done to help.
Rangimārie Shalom Peace, Robyn
November 2016

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Do you feel connected?

We've been talking a lot about making others welcome. It's at the heart of our mission as a parish and our vision for our new building.
What about this question: do we feel welcome?
I know what it is like to be in the midst of a group and feel a bit of an outsider. I get involved in groups that are not really my expertise but I'm keen to extend myself and contribute as much as I can. Often I have the question: do I belong here? Is anybody really interested that I'm here, or could they carry on fine without me? Do they care?
Even family can feel like this. Or church.
And then there's a word or a gesture that tells me I should stop fretting. And just get on with being who I am in the midst of these people. Make the people and the group the focus.
It's important to talk about this because, in relation to churches, I've found that most people feel this way, most if not all, sometimes at least. We all can feel outsiders and think everyone else is fine.
Community, I am beginning to understand, is made through a skill I have never learned or valued: the ability to pass time with people you do not and will not know well, talking about nothing in particular, with no end in mind, just to build trust, just to be sure of each other, just to be neighbourly. A community is not something that you have, like a camcorder or a breakfast nook. No, it is something you do. And you have to do it all the time.
Wendell Berry
There's something here that relates to the old saying that what you get out of things depends on what you put in. But it's not based so much on what we do, or what others do for us, but on being in the midst. Doing and active caring are important to a group – all the valuable things we can do, that some people are really good at, different people for different things. But they are not at the heart of belonging: being ourselves in relationship is; being, and valuing being with the others around us.
Hallelujah I/you belong! Stay well connected.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Water

E kore te wai, e kore te tangata.
If there's no water, human beings can't exist. The life we depend on can't exist. Water is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. Clean water is surely worth more than diamonds and rubies or all the gold in the world. As they say, it is a taonga.
In my mentioning of water, what issues come to mind for you?
The big one is surely managing water resources for the long term, in our regions in New Zealand and everywhere in the world. In some places the management has to cross national boundaries, and the potential for dispute is even greater than it has been over oil.
To irrigate or not to irrigate? Is irrigation a public health risk? Is this something that can be managed with science? Are we able, as local and regional communities, to agree on the fair use and distribution of water?
What can we afford to do? What can we afford not to do? That is, what will be the price of inaction?
Water is essential to individual life, across the range. With climate variability, and it seems that is only increasing, irrigation is a significant benefit and becomes essential in some situations to keep the garden alive, so to speak. Water is also a resource for producing energy, something it can do alongside feeding plants and animals of all kinds. New Zealand does well by international standards in this.
But clean water is a crucial issue too: the rivers we swam in as youngsters, the creeks that once fed all the families in the valley, the lake that didn't used to smell.
I take heart from the combined efforts of iwi hapu and local government which are slowly but surely having positive effects on the Waikato River and on the Rotorua Lakes. Things can be done. Co-operation. Talk it through together and find common ground; respect and affirm different views and realise it's a complex and interconnected task to move from unhealthy to healthy, from dead water to living water.
Funny how the language starts to sound spiritual. It is spiritual. The Spirit of God, the life-giver, is always involved when previously distrusting people with divergent views start acting together with the common purpose of well-being.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

Earth Creature

One of the hidden treasures of the Bible lies in its first few chapters. Sadly the Western Church, European based in its thinking, has cast its own shadow over the Bible with a focus on intellect rather than wholeness, individuals rather than community, growth through progress rather than growth through belonging. Enlightenment, modernist eyes, have missed the insights that are truly biblical – human life lived in community and lived in strong connection with the earth from which we come.
I think therefore I am (or nowadays, I shop therefore I am!), that is the best summary of Western thinking. Individuals looking for freedom and autonomy. The Bible has therefore been read as a source of insights into our salvation as individuals, what goes wrong and how we, and God, can make it right.
But in truth at its heart is a richer message, and remember that the Bible as Jesus knew it was not the Bible as seen through Western eyes. If we want to hook up to the faith of Jesus, we need to look deeper into what the Bible actually says.
In the beginning...the foundation of our being human, indeed the foundation of all that exists actually existing, is a creator. That is, life is a gift and as Genesis tells it comes as wind and breath. Hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2) and breathing into what becomes the human creature (Genesis 2:7).
Every time I stand at a graveside, the spirit of those texts – the Hebrew meaning of them – is acutely present to me. Regularly I share it at the moment of lowering and I see faces turn and listen, I see hearts stirred, particularly among Māori, but not exclusively so. From my own heritage I found these Hebrew origins of the text finally help me make sense of this creation narrative, and find it relevant and powerful for life in our era.
Adam translates into English as “human being” (not “man” except in the now out-of-date sense of “embracing man and woman”). What's more, and this is the heart of it, Adam means earth creature.
The Lord God forms Adam from the dust of the adamah, which means the soil, specifically the nutrient-rich top soil.
That's who we are. Earth with life breathed into it. Earth creature who then, as the narrative continues, finds need for community with other humans, along this belonging with the earth and its other creatures.
So if you take delight pottering around with the soil, and if you find it strangely settles and refreshes you, don't be surprised. Indeed, whenever we feel that connection with world and creatures other than ourselves, and we find it restores us somehow, then we are simply being who we are.
Gifted life in community, with people and with the earth.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn