The decision itself [to resign from the ministry] was a moment of great liberation, and not one I thought about much. Most of my life-changing decisions are made on a whim, and this one was no different. It’s been a long time since I recognised myself in the status, and I haven’t, for years looked for the support or structure it offered. It had become a convenience more than anything. But I was increasingly bemused that conversations within the christian community about my faith or spirituality – particularly conversations that began after people read posts here, or articles I wrote for the paper – would inevitably be focussed around the question, ’so how can you believe what you believe and be in a specified ministry?’, not ‘tell me more about how you’ve come to this point in your life’… I’m only interested in the latter question; the first question defines me by something I’m not.

Long story short, someone was making life particularly difficult for me one day, by demanding things of my faith that it couldn’t give; I woke up next morning and thought, ‘this is not a battle i need to win, and it’s not a battle I should win’, and it seems the decision had already made itself. The sense liberation was unexpected and delightful.

The moment of actual resignation was somewhat more anticlimactic. I wrote a letter to my presbytery. They emailed back to tell me that they used to have me on the roll, but they’d handed me over to another presbytery. When we contacted the other presbytery, they actually had never had me on their rolls. I was nowhere. I couldn’t resign because there was no-one to resign to. My great moment of relinquishment had in fact been pre-empted. It’s a lovely irony which makes me very happy.

I love working with an organisation that demands nothing of me but integrity, and forgives me when i fail that.

–

The reality of being in management hasn’t come easily to me. I’ve been stumbling into this role over the last few months. But even if I don’t know know what to do, at times, I’ve got to the point where I now know what’s important; what I can trust myself to deal with, what I can let go. It’s a good place to be.

Pádraig, on his recent visit, redeemed the idea of management in what was one of my hardest weeks. We were talking about the concept of curation, and he said ‘your management style is about curating space for people to work at their best’. Put like that, why would anyone want to do anything else?

that what he was really saying was
you had to forgive
an infinite number of times
and then still more

After all
who could need forgiving that often?

So I forgave
and forgave again
the smirk
the belittling
the ignoring
the dismissing
of everything that mattered
and made me me.

I forgave
and forgave again
the anger
and the names
the threat of the slap
and the bruise of betrayal.

I forgave the life that got sucked out of me
every day.

I forgave
and forgave again
once more
although I didn’t have it in me
although it used up every ounce of love
and hope
I had for him
and for me
and the world

until there was none left

And still I forgave again.

And then
one day
when I had lost count,
when I had passed all the numbers I knew
and couldn’t add a single one
I had the faith
to listen
to the voice that says

Don’t do this forever.

You count too much.

Enough.

These words

And this thought:

We once dreamt of open sails and open seas
We once dreamt of new frontiers and new lands

because if we ignore the calls of the sky,
who then will draw the maps of the universe

NASA, via Brainpickings

There is a way of looking at the world
which takes great faith to see:

before all time began,
the word love was breathed into the universe,
and in every time since then,
its echo is waiting to be told.

And in childish dreams we long for love
to find us
tightly scripting our hopes by poetry and love songs
never imagining the courage it takes
to make the words of love our own.

Because in saying yes to love -
until death do us part -
we choose that the paper our story is written on
will, from now on, be kindness,
that the ink that writes our next pages
will forever be grace,
and that the words that fill and shape our lives
will be patience
and justice
and forgiveness…

And in the moments – because they will come –
when the ink runs out
and the paper is crumpled
and the story of love feels like it has no words left to be told,
may the silence that stretches before us
be filled with the faith
of the echo
of the memory
of the love

spoken into the world
before all time began.

The glass was smashed
and the wine spread
spilt.

Its stain took the perfect shape
of fear and sadness.

No matter how hard we tried
to get rid of it-
scrubbing with bleach
and tears -

it stayed as a memory
underneath every meal
and every drink
every conversation
and every thought

until the miracle we prayed for had
to change
or we had to throw the whole thing away.

If you cannot make it disappear
God,
may we make it beautiful instead.

I was back at work for a few hours today and in a meeting filled with church people. This particular committee is the first – and currently only – ‘church’ committee that i’ve been involved with for a number of years. Very little of my work is with church people; while i very much like people from the church individually, en masse it’s a bit of culture shock.

A slight diversion: I discovered recently that a distant, much respected colleague described me to the people in the cafe downstairs as being fierce. The people in the cafe have a particular nickname they call me, which is quite funny and lovely. When they told my colleague about the nickname, he said to them ‘I’d never dare call Cheryl that…’. It took me a few days to discover why they were suddenly treating me differently. There was a slight nervousness or apprehension that hadn’t been there before. I was back to being called ‘Cheryl’. Until my colleague made those comments, they hadn’t known that there might be a reason to be scared of me; that they might need to be careful how they talked with me.

So today, I was in this meeting, and someone was telling an anecdote about a group of women who have been doing a particular task. ‘They’re extraordinarily competent’, this person said; to which another male interrupted, right on cue: ‘They just sound scary!’. He was joking – you can imagine the tone of voice – and the required number of people around the room laughed.

It was inevitable someone would make that particular comment. Someone always does. And if that group of women had heard him saying that within that context, there is a good chance that many of them would have come right back at him. But for some of them, for whom standing up and being visible might be against every instinct, I can guarantee they would begin to worry and wonder about how they were perceived; whether they were too outspoken, or too demanding, or too mean, or whatever. I can guarantee that, because I hear their stories – and I know it myself. We do not know the courage it takes for many women simply to make themselves seen and heard within a community, and how much it takes to fight the instinct, when hearing comments like this, to go back to a corner and sit in its shadows.

I’ve had to fight that instinct over the last few weeks. It’s scary enough doing my job, let alone doing it in public. I’d give anything to do what I do without having to do it ‘out loud’.

I know comments like this aren’t made only about women, but those comments are made much more often about women, and they do terrible damage. And I know many of you will think comments like this should just be brushed off – but actually, they really shouldn’t.

I’ve been in my new position for 2 1/2 months now. The most surprising thing has been the extraordinary number of conversations i’ve had with women I work with, who now feel able – because i’m in the position i’m now in – to tell me their stories of inclusion or exclusion. And so many of the stories are made of small comments that people have made: the throw-away, easy line that makes us question our participation – and that makes other people wary or apprehensive around us. And while we’re an organisation that values women highly, and is absolutely, definitely committed to equality in the workplace, we’re also an organisation that has become very lazy with its language, and unable to remember that if we aren’t deliberately including and welcoming women in all our conversations and actions, we’re actually deliberately excluding them.

I am required to do what I do in my job – to stand up for people, to speak loudly and persistently on behalf of the voices that don’t know they can be heard. That’s a major portion of my position description. I’m going to have to learn to be comfortable with being called ‘fierce’ when I’m actually just doing my job, because i’m going to have to be ‘fierce’ to do my job well. And i’m so grateful for the people who work with me closely, and those who love me, who don’t call me fierce, but instead would much rather just say, ‘Thankyou. You do your job well’.

We are delighted to be running this workshop with the remarkable Pádraig Ó Tuama. It’s designed for those working in community development, transformation and justice. Hope you can come. It’s on March 27 and online registrations are here, for more information, download this pdf: stealingstories workshop.

We do not tell stories as they are, we tell them as we are
Anaïs Nin

There is a growing awareness of the power of storytelling as a means for community development, advocacy and transformation. This workshop will explore a number of resources developed by the Irish Peace Centres and the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland – resources looking at storytelling, conflict, revenge, safety and forgiveness. A number of resources will be presented during the day, which practitioners in Melbourne will be very welcome to take (steal) and adapt to local neighbourhood and community needs.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and community development practitioner who works primarily in developing and delivering resources to community groups, faith communities and schools in Belfast.

The workshop is on March 27, 9.30 – 4pm at Solace, 751 Heidelberg Road, Alphington. Register online

–

Alain de Botton was on the 7.30 report last night [I only seem to watch the ABC at the moment. And listen to Radio National. I feel so old.]. He was talking about Religion for Atheists, which he’s in town promoting. None of his stuff was that new – people need ritual and rhythm; we, as a secular community, need to recapture the beauty and ‘beyond ourself-ness’ that religion offers – but he said a great line while talking about what practices can be learnt from religion: Make appointments in your calendar with important ideas. The lovely thing, de Botton says, that religion has offered is that it draws people to reflect on their humanness. We need communal days of atonement, for example; a reminder that seeking reconciliation is simultaneously a basic human need, and something we so often instinctively avoid.

It’s timely, with Lent right here, and me resentful of the dark umbrella of religion, to remember that there might be something I need to own this Lent: something about being human that Lent needs me to discover. I don’t yet know what it is. It’s not discipline. It’s not vulnerability. It’s not knowing I’m human. I’ll have to wait to find out.

–

I cried twice while watching tv last night. Making me cry is not an easy thing to achieve, but an earlier 7.30 story about aboriginal child suicide, and the Foreign Correspondent story on the treatment of Sahar Gul, a young woman in Afghanistan, both did it yesterday.

I am taking up letter writing this Lent. Every day i’ll write a letter or send an email to a politician about a human rights and justice situation I’m concerned about. Those two issues will be my focus. It’s really just coincidence that I’m doing it over Lent, but I like that Lent makes it a discipline rather than a choice. I’m not doing this to do good. I’m doing it to be human.

Wedding dresses
wedding dresses, markers, scissors, needles, threat, fishing line
the opshop poem on the wall
[words: frayed]

‘an opshop of wedding dresses’
[the collective noun for the ghosts of dreams failed]

raw silk
hand-sewn with promises
and embroidered with unrealistic expectations

vows that came dressed in virginal white,
now indelibly stained with wine and sweat
betrayal and disappointment
failure and pain.

floor length hems and six-foot trains,
held up to protect against the world’s unwashed floor,
until they got too heavy to carry,
now marked with grime and dirt.

the safety pin that holds the sleeve in place;
after all, it only has to last one night.

written onto dresses:

dress 1 – ripped dress, fishing wire to suspend from ceiling, needles and thread:
sew the other loves into the dress
the ones that aren’t always recognised
as life-making
life-saving

the loves that have the power
to mend the frayed edges of your life
and the torn heart of the world.

dress 2 – dress, fishing wire to suspend from ceiling, scissors:
cut a piece of fabric from the dress

take it with you
to pray for those who do not know love
or for the love you no longer know yourself

dress 3 – dress, fishing wire to suspend from ceiling, markers:
write the fear you carry
- of loves limits
and hopes end

Mills and Boon
bookcase of M&B’s [I have a box of these in my office as well if anyone wants them...]

Table with books of different Mills and Boon ‘genres’, post-its marking different turning points in the book [eg the argument which is always found on page 86 of a M&B book], the writers guidelines for each genre [found on M&B website] framed above the bookcase

Love – of any form – never comes with template
and can’t be written to a formula.

so here is a place for you to write the story of love
that doesn’t fit the rules
and can’t be defined by genre.

Valentines day dinner table, set for 1
table, cloth, setting, candle, matches, champagne poured for each person

Sometimes the loneliest you can be is with another person
and sometimes being alone is more than enough.

How is it for you, today?

If you would like, light the candle
When you leave, blow it out.

Hanging out the dirty washing
clothesline, pegs, lingerie from op shop
clothes [towels, whatever] to be partially obscuring bits of the line so people have the option of privacy

We’ve all got it.
The mistake, the regret,

the time we could have, but didn’t,
the time we shouldn’t, but did

We’d rather not mention them in public
[don't hang out your dirty washing, and keep your smalls inside!]

But here’s a place to acknowledge
that you are as human
and flawed
and real
as the rest of us

Here you can hang your dirty washing on the line.

Mirror, mirror
mirror, red lipstick, lipstick kisses on mirror

If it’s cynicism that holds you back;
disbelief that it could ever happen to you,
that you simply don’t deserve it,
or that you don’t have what it takes to make it work -

let yourself believe here
just for this moment
that you can.

Betray your fear, with a kiss…

Photos / slides – grief
photos stuck on wall – in frames – next to it, a couple of shattered frames on the floor, photos outside of frames, a shoebox of photos; the following words framed:

I set an extra place for you at the table tonight
and then i remembered you won’t be coming

I should be over you by now.

but everywhere i am
the ghost of you lives too

it’s the smell of your laundry detergent
the cup you always used
your number in my mobile phone

and the sound of a key
in the door
that should be you

rip the absence of love into a photo
and stick it here to the wall…

The first of these is a one day workshop for anyone interested in community development work, and in particular hearing some of the stories and processes used by the Corrymeela Community and the Irish Peace Centres. This is an opportunity for anyone who’s interested in exploring different ways of entering into justice issues and responding to issues of reconciliation, forgiveness, revenge, sorrow, safety… It’s a full day workshop on Tuesday 27th March, at an inner Melbourne venue to be announced very shortly [registration details to come by the end of the week].

The second is an afternoon workshop and evening contemplative space on Wednesday 28th March, down in Queenscliff. This looks particularly lovely… The afternoon and evening focus around the sea as a character in the stories of faith, interwoven with stories of land, shelter and belonging.

The third is an another afternoon workshop and evening poetry performance, this time at Chalice in Northcote, Melbourne, on Friday 30th March. Again… lovely… The afternoon workshop, for writers and community artists, will explore how to give sorrow words. The evening performance will, as the brochure says, give a poetic insight into how life in a post-conflict society continues to reverberate from aftershocks, as well as pointing to the timelessness and hope that is inherent in the heart of humanity.

Details and registration for the last two events – on 28th and 30th March – can be found online here, or downloaded here: Pádraig rego form

Like I said, I can’t wait for this. His visit already feels like such a gift, at such an important time. I hope you can come.