Rejoice!

Several Sunday afternoons spent at the keyboard in recent weeks have stalled at the very same sticking-point. No matter which story I begin to relate it always leads back another which I do not wish to tell. Perhaps if I tell the nasty story I will have more success recording the happier experiences of late.

A few weeks ago a medical test returned a positive result.
Which is unheard of!
Innumerable tests of infinite variety have rarely pushed the needle far from normal, which is why almost five years on there is still no diagnosis for my problems.  The test that finally returned a result was meant to have been conducted by a Melbourne Respiratory Service, however they declined to admit me to their programme, and sent me back to the Professor in Wagga who had ordered the test.  The GP raised her eyebrow and remarked that it seemed very rude – not to say irregular – of them to refuse a Professor’s request. Although they offered no reason for their decision I’m quite sure I know why:
…they think I’m mad.

I went to Melbourne in February, with the referral from my Wagga professor requesting a ‘sleep study’, which is a common enough thing.  An admission interview was held in an odd sort of room which was more of an alcove off a busy corridor than a room in its own right.  The doctor I was speaking with was youngish, pleasant, and interested.  Having spent some time reading and quizzing she left me alone for a few minutes and was replaced by a more senior specialist; a woman who I can only think of as brash and self assured.  With very little preamble she asked me if I was prepared to consider that I had a psychiatric problem.

Having, so I thought, seen this beast finally sheath its claws and skulk away almost two years ago I had let my guard down, and her words were an auditory assault for which I was very unprepared.  I reigned in the emotion that threatened to overwhelm, and tried to be objective as I explained that this suggestion had indeed been made in the past (but I think she already knew that); and that I had done my best at the time to consider it and search carefully and for any merit in the idea. I told her that I had completed a thorough Neuropsychology profile and that I been assessed by three separate psychiatrists, and briefly interviewed by the Austin Hospital Head of Psychology; none of whom found any cause for concern.  I can still hear her commanding voice, word for word:

“Well, I have been doing this for 25 years and they are wrong!  We need to tell a psychiatrist that YOU HAVE conversion disorder, now FIX IT!”

I don’t remember quite how it happened, but suddenly she was dragging me along the busy corridor by one arm, kindly allowing me with one walking stick, to prove (I suppose) that I didn’t have a problem at all.

Then I was passed back to the younger doctor who seemed rather apologetic in telling me that there was nothing they could do for me.  I was – for the second time – deemed ineligible for assistance through the Victorian Respiratory Support Service; and that was that.

Thankfully I had planned to visit my cousin later that evening, so I was just a train stop or two away from family, from refuge amongst safe people.

It was, and still is, horrible.  With the benefit of a few days to consider what had transpired I could see the outlandish aspects to the specialist’s verdict; most obviously the fact that she had reached her somewhat adamant diagnosis before having even met me. Then there is her evident disregard for other members of her profession. Nonetheless, these people have considerable power over their patients, and I have an acquired trepidation in all my dealings with them. I’m not sure that I have shaken off whatever it was that happened in Melbourne that day; even after having the ‘sleep study’ in Wagga that yielded the positive result which might hopefully confound my Melbourne nemesis.    I find myself less sure, less able to write or say or even decide exactly what I think.  But that may not be the nasty specialist’s fault: there is something vitally unsettling about relying on a machine to breathe, it feels sometimes as though a tiny wisp of my own soul disappears back up the springy tube with every assisted breath.

The good thing was that I had a wonderful home and family to return to by train the following day; a place where life can be lived well enough regardless of the doctors and their opinions, a home in Paradise where the good times keep rolling on!  And more on that anon.

Rejoice!

Flikka.
What a dog!

Early last year my Favourite Wife had an idea.
“A dog”, she said, more than once, “would be a special companion, and a lovely friend, and a valuable responsibility too”.  Speaking, of course, of our Little One’s interests.

I was slow to warm to this plan, but the plan was forming, with or without my warmth.  By midyear serious investigations into breeds and agencies were being made night by night on the iPad.  And in October a trip was made to Canberra to bring home a five year old Labrador named Flikka, who seemed – as we read her particulars and spoke to those who knew her at Labrador Rescue – too good to be true.

But it was true.  Flikka was everything anyone had said and a great deal more. It felt at times that she spoke English.  Commands such as “pick that up, and take it outside” (for a chew toy dropped in the hall), or “Off to sleep on Cassie’s bed” were simply obeyed from the outset; we never trained her to do anything at all.  She would come when called and sit when asked.  She would sit while food was put her in her bowl, and remain seated – in an agitated, tail-banging, lip-slavering state – until we said “OK”.  She was adorable, and she adored us.  Let’s be honest, she adored everybody! A paw would be placed gently on the knee of anyone found sitting down, drawing their attention to the beautifully seated Labrador with the slightly mournful, penetrating gaze; longing for a scratch.  Scratch under her chin too long and the delicate manoeuvre of double-paws on the sitter’s knee might be enacted; and scratch just a little longer and the whole dog would begin to lean heavily on your leg, and slide ever so slowly sideways onto the floor.  Which just so happens to present the dog correctly for a tummy scratch.  In the extremely rare event of a reprimand (thrice? maybe?) she would immediately hop on three legs with one paw poised to match the painful pity on her face.  Who could be cross with that?

If Flikka barked it was only ever once.  One single, gruff, woof; just enough to alert us to the person at the door; or to her desire to come or go through it.  She had the most adorable wrinkly-Labrador face that made us laugh out loud as we watched her emotions pass through her fur.  She was an accomplished sleeper.  Late in the evening we used to say her name very, very softly and her tail would bang-bang-bang on the wall even while she snored on through her dreams.  In fact, one of her greatest gifts to us came through her aptitude for slumber.  Against every scrap of my better judgement we had told Little One that Flikka would be allowed to sleep on her bed!  This bribe was not only effective in getting our 12 year old into bed on many occasions; but with Flikka on the end of her bed Little One began to routinely sleep all night.  We had been getting up to our daughter in the wee hours every night, sometimes more than once, with very few exceptions for more than a decade.  Thank you, Flikka, for teaching Little One something that we could not.

Back on the END of the bed please Flikka!

By now you have probably noticed that I have written in the past tense: Flikka has gone; barely five months after she arrived. I went to church on my own last Sunday, while the others took Flikka to the vet.  The vet was more alarmed than we had been, and was uncertain if she would come through an operation for a bowel obstruction.  But she came through well, and on Tuesday she came home to our enormous relief and joy.  It was short lived; as was our gorgeous friend.

Today I am completely alone in the house for the first time in months; no occasional woof, no paw appearing on my knee.  I was never keen to admit that Flikka was “good company for you” (me? needing company?  what am I, an invalid?).  I was wrong, and today the emptiness of the house is a very raw wound.  And it’s raining, which never helps my mood.  It hasn’t rained properly for three months; and now the drought has broken I’m glum.  But not so the animal kingdom.  Two green parrots, a pair of majestic red parrots with long blue tail feathers, and fully fifteen green finches have been nibbling at the bird feeder just outside my window – more than I have seen before – and as many Kangaroos have been grazing a stone’s throw beyond.  It feels like the zoo!  Nature lost one of its own and has summoned a menagerie to pay homage, and to remind me there is beauty in the world.

Roos in the Rain

Our sadness is sudden and engulfing.  We have wept a late night vigil together on our lounge several times this week. It seems impossible to believe that one day our memories of Flikka will be fond, rather than anguished.  My distress frightens me.  I am troubled by our unanswered prayers for her life.  I am spooked by wordless notions of my own mortality.  I don’t understand why goodness is fleeting, why the pure things in our world are subject to indiscriminate violence.

As the rain clears away I am reading The Little Prince.  So popular when I was a child, but I guess he can’t compete with My Kitchen Rules.

“Goodbye”, said the fox. “Here’s my secret.  It’s very simple: one only sees clearly with the heart.  What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” repeated the little prince, so as to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important”

“It is the time I have wasted on my rose…” said the little prince, so as to remember.

“The men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox.  “But you must not forget it.  You become forever responsible for that which you have tamed.  You are responsible for your rose…”

“I am responsible for my rose,” repeated the little prince, so as to remember.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

And as the rain clears away I am listening to J.S. Bach, St Matthew Passion.  It is the most beautiful, ordered, deliberate and unsparing telling of human grief; and of the hint of joy that lies beyond.
Sometimes no more than a hint.

Rejoice!

Someone recently pointed out that readers might believe our family to consist simply of myself, Little One and my Favourite Wife; just we three nestled in comfortably in Paradise.  But, there are numerous characters in the story (beside Bugger) whom I have not yet introduced.  The other permanent resident in Paradise is Flikka, the most charming Labrador ever to set paw on the Great Southland. Much could be written about Flikka, and it’s a puzzle that she has eluded the narrative so far.

But it doesn’t end there – far from it! – and this particular Sunday with the youngest of our three grandchildren visiting seems an opportune moment for an introduction.

Family life came suddenly to us, which is a gift of life that I treasure.  We were an ‘instant family’ of five, and for a long time afterwards our 4 year old would point from the car window at “our wedding church where we got married”.  Her words were apt, as we had all stood in front of the congregation, and we were all five of us married as a family.  That wondrous day was more than 20 years ago, and we now number fifteen.  One son, five daughters, one daughter in law, three sons in law, two grandsons and one granddaughter: the smiling bundle of joy at the other end of the house tonight.
So far. Doubtless there are yet more in the wings!

Shortly after Five became One we were offered the management of a poultry farm by friends in our church who had a very large number of birds.   50,000 excess laying hens were to be housed on a farm that would be leased for a couple of years, and we were given the job of making it work.  The leased farm was very old; and our adventures were very many.  The farm was on a steep hillside, which is a startling way to manage poultry.  In fact, it is probably a mistake.  The cottage was in a small house paddock at the bottom of the hill, beside a creek in which we swam and swam and swam.  For many weeks our three children who had never ventured beyond the burbs could barely be coaxed through the first gate!  Then for months they wore whistles around their necks, and when they were occasionally shrilly blown in terror at the sight of a giant spider, or perhaps a snake, I don’t know who was more afraid: them or us.

My first mistake as farm-boss was to systematically eradicate every last member of a dozen strong clan of cats.  I accomplished this in about a month of hunting, mostly late at night, armed with a .22, a torch and a 12 gauge for good measure.  To the untrained eye, (which mine was: a carpenter running a farm) the plague of mice surging thousands-strong along the feed troughs in the beam of my hunting-torch was a worrying sight.  Something to be dealt with once I could rid the farm of these darned cats.  It wasn’t until great long brown snakes started appearing in the chook sheds, shiny and fat on a diet of mice and egg yolk, that the first faint thoughts about the food chain began nagging at the edges of my working mind.

And what a mistake that was!  The snake crusades consumed a great deal more lead than the cat wars had.  We soon had numerous egg-packers working for us, and we appointed one as master-at-arms on the basis that she was a prize-winning large-bore marksman at the local rifle club.  This, also, was a mistake. She froze when faced with a target closer than her preferred range of 500 yards! Especially a slithering, red-belly black target advancing rapidly between the rows of birds.  It was very nearly a catastrophic mistake.

Our old fibro cottage by the river appealed enormously to my (dwindling) bachelor instincts, but must have come as a sobering shock to the other four-fifths of the tribe.  Favourite Bride’s bedside glass of water would quite literally freeze across at night when the mercury dropped to minus 8.  When the wind blew all the curtains in the house would billow, not seeming to notice that the windows were tightly shut.  There was a hump in the floor, making the walk from the kitchen (the only heated room in the house) to the mid-point of the lounge room an up-hill march, with a down-hill run to the children’s bedrooms beyond.  When I eventually drove my Favourite home from hospital with our first born I felt an irrational pang of conscience, and pulled off the dirt road for a moment to explain that there had actually been a snake in the kitchen earlier that day, only a little one though; and also confess that it had evaded extinction with its current whereabouts unknown.
This, also, was a serious mistake.

Our first winter was long, cold and absurdly wet.  Every machine was forever bogged in a deadly mess of mud and wet, slimy chook poo; and the sheds seemed likely to slide straight of the hill and into the creek below.  The tough conditions knocked out 12,000 laying birds – which is not good.  I spent more time burying birds than feeding them; and that too is a mistake. Nothing was easy on that farm, but nothing could have been better for our fledgling family than this nest in the bush.  No neighbours within cooee, acres to explore, tractors to drive, (and a bobcat! and a front end loader!  and a grader!), wood to chop, chores to share, a cow to milk, a horse to ride, and a creek beside which to eat our Sunday bake.
We’ve lived in paradise from the get-go.

Rejoice!

At about the same time that I was writing my previous Sunday post, my brother was dying.

At the top of this page is a picture from the outback. Just to right of centre you can see an old iron-clad hut which is the only remaining structure from the Mission era of Warburton Ranges. Much of our brief friendship happened right there in the “Share-A-Din”; as it is known amongst the Christian workers that share it’s often noisy welcome. Sometimes we met at his home where I would wait at the gate to be welcomed, rather than boldly knocking on the door itself as we do ‘over east’. The discussion often rose from a verse in his ever-present bible, which would lead to other passages that we read aloud in Ngaanyatjarra and English. He was always keen for me to practice his tongue. If we were speaking by phone he would secure my promise to post him the various passages that we had discussed in very large print on account of his failing eyesight. Occasionally we drove to a couple of fenced off acres a short way out of town which were his pride and joy. We would first sit in silent awe outside the gate, and then begin a guided tour – with historical commentary – past a couple of tidy houses, some camels, a donkey perhaps, and bough-sheds that were perpetually under construction for future Christian Conventions that were a part of Livingston’s grand vision. Once we squatted down on tiny concrete slabs in the red sand, all laid out in neat rows under a burning sun, like cheese-toast in a griller. These had been the floors of corrugated iron huts, one per family, in a former colonial era. Not for the first time my friend wept openly as he told me about the suffering of his people. Then we might sit under the welcome shade of a peppercorn tree …and sing. Livingston always led (always, in everything!), and I would follow along in a hymn, a gospel song or two, sometimes in English, sometimes not; and even the odd country and western number. Then came a rambling, deep and humorous conversation that covered all manner of topics but returned to shared joys and concerns in our respective families and churches. And then we would pray. And sing, perhaps; and pray. I think that my status as a grandfather (at only 47!) was just as vital to these exchanges as my credential as a fellow pastor.

We had know each other in the early ‘80s when I lived in Warburton, an isolated Western Desert community roughly half way between Alice Springs and Kalgoorlie, but our friendship proper did not begin until we met in the same isolated settlement in mid 2008. I had returned to Warburton with one of my daughters and some close friends to witness the dedication of Mama Kuurrku Wangka (‘Father God’s Word’, or the Ngaanyatjarra Bible); and to farewell two friends who had made the translation of the Bible their life’s work and were retiring to Alice Springs. The Livingston we met was very changed from the rough and ready young man we remembered; and had become a senior leader in church and community. I had grown up too, and Livingston would introduce me to others with a thespian retelling of my history as the young fellow who had worked with (or perhaps for) his father in the Community Store so many years ago; the very same boy that his father used to speak of, Livingston claimed, “as a son”.

The last time we met was Easter in 2010 when I spent three weeks in the ‘Share-A-Din’ and we journeyed together to an Easter Convention. Back then I was still travelling light, with a manual wheelchair, a backpack and a pair of sticks. I remember the wheelchair was somewhat confronting for Livingston. He made quite a joke about pushing a white fellow around, and the more people we came across the bigger the joke got! On my final morning in Warburton Livingstone arrived at the Share-A-Din puffing and rushing, with only half an hour to spare before the flight. He had been away on funeral business, and I had thought I might not see him again. But he had returned, and there was just time for a cup of tea, and some talk, and – as always – prayer. At the last he stood up, with the wide grin of a person about to giggle at their own joke,

“Next time I see you”, he said, laughing, “we’ll have a cup of tea in glory; we’ll be having a cup of tea at the Heavenly Banquet!”

I was taken aback! But in the next moment I reckoned that he was right: this really was goodbye for us. I trusted him to know this, just as I had come to trust his knowing about many things. Livingstone was something of a rascal; he was never a man to retire in the crowd. He was strong willed and proud; and he well knew the power of his family name and the position of influence he commanded. But in his mid-life experience of a radical conversion to Christ he had seen something so true, so good, and so bright, that whenever he spoke of it I was convinced.

Livingstone, with his wife Connie, in the ‘Share-A-Din’ 2010.

On a second visit to Warburton later in 2008 I made a pledge. This was not a passing undertaking; it was the earnest outcome of prayerful deliberation with my wife after returning home from the Bible dedication. My enduring promise to Livingstone – if he would accept it – was that I would support the Ngaanyatjarra church in whatever way I could; by visiting, by praying, by building bonds of friendship between our church ‘over east’ and his church in the far west.

“They raise their voices, they shout for joy;
from the west they acclaim the Lord’s majesty.
Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord.”                   Isaiah 24.

If you can believe it, I pledged my life to this. I didn’t know then that within three months I would have picked up a walking stick; or that on my return to Warburton in 2009 I would be using a pair of them; or that my final trip would be made in 2010 by wheelchair. How often have I pondered that pledge, and the calling I followed in making it, and the frailty of my fulfilment? Sometimes it feels like a cruel joke; a pointless and hopeless enterprise. But that is merely a human perspective, and I hear Livingstone’s voice laughing it away, and, in the same breath offering his oft-stated resolution; earnest and solemn,

“We’re going all the way brother; we’re following Him, you know? All the way”.

Rejoice!

_______________________________________________

I wrote about my friend before visiting in 2010:
A Ngaanyatjarra Man
and recounted and impossibly moving story he told:
Grace.

Other posts written from the Desert are:
Being and Doing - one of my favourites,
Kurta, Yirringkarra-rni!
Dumbstruck.

Hope deferred, it is said, maketh the heart sick. 

So also with blogging.  It maketh my heart sick week by week when my blogdeadline passeth without post.  I miss the community of readers, and I miss the clarity of thought that emerges when writing for others to read. I’ve long felt that you, reader, keep me honest.

So for this week, just as an appetiser, an attempt to jump-start my former habit, a toe in cold water, a leg over a wall; I have four quick thoughts:

Church.
Nigh on disaster for The Family From Paradise today on our first appearance after Christmas and Holidays.  My nerve failed and I allowed apprehension about the size of my nose* to drive me from the front row of church, where we customarily perch beside our pastors, to the very back of the back-most room.  I regretted my decision to hide as soon as I was hidden; but as with other temptations the deed was fairly irreversible once committed. Right now I am seated at our outdoor bench under its wide umbrella, itself under a cloudless blue sky.  A cool breeze carries the distant conversation of long-lived cicadas lazily recalling a rapidly waning Christmas, with satisfying antiphonal comments from Mozart through an adjacent open window.  In the security and peace of this position I can hardly comprehend the childish posture I assumed just a few hours ago: parked face-first into the narrowest corner of the back room. Meanwhile back on the front row a strange facial expression from someone up on stage had alerted my Favourite Wife to the highly inappropriate acts being committed by our 12 year old (I will say no more). Soon after I was summoned by SMS to the car: Favourite Wife anxious to beat a retreat home, and Little One loudly lamenting the forfeit of her weekly ‘church-strawberry-milkshake’.

Christmas.
An utter delight.  I can’t recall enjoying Christmas more in all the years since I was a little boy, only slightly older than the three infinitely precious grand children who came to our home.  We had sixteen of our family here for a week-long feast of food and fun, life and love.  Amongst the numerous Christmas Improvements we made around our home is the Tall Wall.  It now bears the imprint of the youngsters (and of the old-sters, who insisted on having their heights recorded also); permanent proof that THEY WERE HERE! I drive Bugger past this spot often in a day, and honestly something of their presence lingers there still.  Once upon a time I would have let my theology interfere with an assertion like that; but nowadays I can’t be bothered. Life is too blessed to be spent in fernicketyness. 

Sharon.
You may have seen her name amongst the comments at the bottom of these pages from week to week.  Sharon never failed to respond to anything I wrote, either here or more often with a thought-provoking email.  Sharon was a Catholic Nun on the other side of the globe, and she passed away in January.  She was one of numerous people that befriended me through an online forum, back when I briefly shared their mutual diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease.  I became close to a dozen or so people this way, extraordinary friendships that grew in a clarity afforded by dire circumstance.  Our conversations were nourishing and deep, sometimes practical, sometimes comic.  Sharon was the last one to pass away and I pause now to remember her; and Ann, and David, and Joel, and Dianne, and Pam, and others. 

2013.
I have lived too many of my (slightly more than 50) years worrying.  I was once preoccupied; which is a dreadful way of life.  I pre-occupied the future, mentally taking residence in imagined difficulties long before they arrived, and even when the feared moment finally proved itself harmless I could rarely enjoy it, because by then I had occupied some other concern way up ahead.  I don’t do that so much now, even though there are a variety of rather legitimate concerns at hand.  I probably should be worried; but oddly enough I rarely am.  Especially not in the clear light of a few hours spent writing; at long, long last. 

I hope to see you next week.

Rejoice!

____________________________________________ 

*  regarding nose size, see Does my Nose look Big in This?

In a sequel to my very first blog, An Embarrassing Secret, I have another disclosure to make.  Just as my initial embarrassing secret was a ‘coming out’ of sorts, expressing what I found unutterable; so again my  written words are a deliberate first step towards conquering new ground. The fact that I find it easier to tell the whole world than to tell those close to me is surely a commentary on some peculiar flaw in my character; but there it is.  The closer you stand to me in the intimate circle of family and friends, the more terrified I am of revealing myself.

With this in mind I have begun with Bertha.  ‘Bertha’, as you might recall, is the helpfully disarming pseudonym we give to the bevy of nursing staff who frequent Paradise to assist me with  washing and dressing.  (The collective noun for Berthas could only be bevy, wouldn’t you say?)  So most mornings I am deliberately slow to divest myself of my new embarrassing secret.  I leave it on until the last moment, so that I’m just powering down and shrugging of the tentacle straps as Bertha enters the door.  It’s just a glimpse I offer, but it is public.  It’s systematic desensitisation; but in place of the arachnophobiac’s bugs and spiders I’m using selective exhibitionism to overcome my mortification.  I am hoping to progress from Bertha to a friend or two.  In time. All in good time.

This is how I wish to look:

This is how I actually look:

(Does my Nose look Big in This?)

For just on two years I have relied on a Bi-level breathing machine to sleep; and a fine job it does too!  Once I moved past the initial shock of artificial aeration (A Beautiful Addition to your Lifestyle), it gradually became a delicious, welcome feeling to sleep with lungs full of air.  Around the start of this year I found that a half hour or so with the Velcro Octopus was valuable of an afternoon; and the respiratory specialist said, “Fine, for a while.”  In recent weeks, twelve recent weeks, this has mushroomed from one to two, then three and sometimes four additional daytime hours; and in daylight SOMEONE MIGHT SEE!  So afraid have I been of discovery thus adorned, that I have slept under our doona – right under – for most of two years. Recently I changed the privacy lock on the door to my retreat, lest I be seen by a family member failing to knock!  We live on a quiet dead end road, where virtually the only traffic past my window is our uphill neighbours; but nonetheless I sit with a hat pulled low, and reflexively cover my face if I hear their car.  And she is a nurse!  For goodness sake.

Why?  …I am thinking out loud…  Why am I so afraid?  Elbow crutches and even my first wheelchair were nothing compared to the dread that I feel about being seen mask-encumbered. I’m not particularly afraid of the device itself; which is odd because on the day the specialist first suggested this machine he mentioned that some people need to use them 24/7 – a thought that I found shocking. I’m not afraid of the machine; indeed, it has become a friend. But I am deathly scarred of you seeing it. Why is that?  It might be that this, more than any of the other devices in my not inconsiderable enhanced-living-arsenal, strikes to the core of life.  While I live I breathe; and vice versa. I suspect that my fear is that this step is finally, after four years, too dramatic. I’m frightened that I will frighten you. I’m frightened that your fear for me, or your fear of me, or just fear itself, will distance me from you.  I can’t speak to you while this alien nymph has hold of my face, and that breach of communication symbolises what I fear most: that you and I will drift apart.  Or be forced apart, prised asunder.  Moreover, I dread the reassurance that it doesn’t matter, and that it won’t happen, because I think it already has.

Well, I’m pleased to have got that out! Now we shall soldier on. Or as my Mother would sometimes say, (how odd to only remember this now),
“On our way Rejoicing!”

130 Days to Christmas!

The replies generated by “13” prove that I broke my own promise not to whinge. Worse: it was dangerously close to that antisocial transgression: a miserable whinge! But I won’t apologise, because even if I overstated my own case, there are others who could claim those words. That’s the thing you see; in the Lucky Country (and probably in much of the 1^st world) the language of lament has been expunged, and anyone not ‘Living the Dream’ sounds like a poor looser.

I know, I know, I’m on the downhill yet again! Why is the villain the easiest part to play? In our school days Shakespeare’s good guys always seemed so dull (I played Theseus, or was I Lear?). Far better to be cast as Caliban, or Puck, or Bottom. Or as a Witch! The human trait keeps negativity so close to the surface makes complaint more readily voiced than, ….well, …anything.

This week I want to contradict myself, and say for all to hear that my life is as rich today as it has ever been. My life is as full of pleasure, as textured, as adventurous, and as happy as ever. A bit like Shakespeare’s heroes, this view of my life will be tricky to stage, but I really want you to see it as I do.

130 Days to Christmas!

Spring is living up to the promise in its name: bouncing out of its grey, dank camouflage to startle our unaccustomed senses with the forgotten brilliance of wide blue skies, the intimate kiss of sun’s warmth, and the welcome whiff of wattle. Inside the house another heady thrill is playing out this week with the arrival of a brand new, fire-engine red lounge. Besides comfort and striking good looks, this piece of furniture has its own spring hidden within: an entire queen sized bed, complete with an inner-spring mattress. It’s just a “thing”, a material possession; but it is our first tangible step towards a long-planned Christmas! With four of our children married we now have a biennial Christmas cycle, alternating between the various in-laws one year, and us the next. This year it’s our turn, and in this morning’s early hours our family grew by one, a precious baby granddaughter, bringing the Christmas total up to 16! Hence the fire-engine-red, fold-out lounge.

130 Days to Christmas;
and we are beside ourselves with anticipation. I’m sure a growing number of our friends are heartily sick of our single track of conversation.

Most days, but especially crisp, bright days, have many pleasures.  The first pot of tea, ideally before sunrise, is superb.  We drink our tea together, my Favourite Wife and I, in what we call the Quiet Room; home to the best furniture with a single wide doorway at one end and a glorious, northerly bay window at the other. The theory of the Quiet Room was (and you’ll note the past tense) that it contained none of the electronic gadgetry, plugged in chargers and  glowing LEDs that have strangled every other 21^st century room. Recently though, an inheritance allowed us to fill the Quiet Room (and well beyond!) with music of such quality and volume that we frequently find ourselves stopped in mid-whatever, spellbound by a clarion choir or pounding piano that you would swear was just around the corner in the hall. This is my favourite room, quiet or otherwise. We often light a candle with our morning pot of tea; a wordless witness to the prayers which, depending on the business of the day, we may or may not have time to voice. Sunrise itself is thrilling when first needle-rays slice through gums that string along the ridge above our home.  Like as not that early glow will catch on the twitching ears of a mob of kangaroos browsing for their breaky on the hills. When I call our home Paradise, I’m simply stating a fact. How we came to live here is a long story, layered with extraordinary chance and coincidence, but here we are. This wonder of it catches me unawares time and again, daily in fact, but here we are.

Hidden within the wordy tome of the Old Testament are many gems. One that I particularly love lies in the book of Ezra:

 “No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.”    

After long years of exile, Israel’s Temple was finally being rebuilt. While some rejoiced as the foundations were laid, others wept for their distant memory of Solomon’s temple; the incomparable treasure sacked and burned decades before. The noise was strident, tumultuous; mournful and exultant; a sound that carried both the grief of the past and tomorrow’s hope. This as an aspect of true spirituality: the ability to laugh and to weep in the same moment. If any faith can contain this tension it must be faith in Christ: the God who suffers while promising eternal joy. “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”

Are the valleys which I now walk deeper? Or is it just that the hills are higher? I realise that thought merits inclusion on a desk calendar, but I put the question seriously. People who cheat death of one sort or another often speak of a heightened experience of life; and I feel something akin to that. I don’t know quite why, but small pleasures are often sheer delight; and reciprocally a minor disappointment can be gut-wrenching. As for achievement, I crave the Everest-worthy satisfaction I can derive from almost any endeavour, just so long as it is strictly single handed!  Which leads me to last week’s train expedition to a family gathering, a school reunion, and a flying visit to our five day old granddaughter; but that will all have to wait for another time.

 P.S.  You won’t let the fire-engine comment get back to my Favourite Wife, will you? She’d be mortified.

P.P.S. The maths around our little new arrival’s age won’t work (if you read closely) because I began writing in one week, and finished in another.

P.P.S. On the same basis there are now only 93 days till Christmas. I can’t wait!