Of course, having time is only a tiny, tiny part of the writing equation. More importantly, there have to be words – and for me, as an introvert, they have to be words that aren’t already spoken; and for me in this new role, they have to be words that are mine to tell. I must have deleted twenty posts in the last few weeks, because they broke either or both of those rules. Hence the silence.

–

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

from Before you know what kindness really is by Naomi Shihab Nye

My new year’s resolution was to be kind. It’s going the way of all new year’s resolutions: I am failing, but at least now I remember I’m failing.

I chose kindness. I didn’t realise then that with it I would be choosing sorrow. Sorrow didn’t come by way of a resolution.

I didn’t connect the different meanings of resolution before I wrote that sentence: I resolve to live more kindly; I want sorrow to be resolved.

I woke up this morning with this line running through my head, picturing eggs being wrapped in spider-web like threads, and hidden in a corner away from tramping feet and the harsh glare of daylight.

This was a christmas of unexpected, quite unbelievable miracles – some were big, life changing discoveries for people around me, others seem in comparison quite tiny but were nonetheless just as miraculous – a text from a someone whose silence for months had been deafening; a tiny, tiny step towards restoring friendship.

The thing that held these miracles in common is that no-one involved believed they could ever happen, but they chose to live as though they might.

i will let myself have hope, but only if i can survive without its fulfilment…

My favourite poem last year was Padraig O’Tuama’s ‘Facts of Life’, which he told at Greenbelt. It ends with these lines:

… that you must accept change
or die
but you will die any way
so you might as well live.
and you might as well love.
you might as well love.
you might as well love.

I’ve been wondering, since being in the prison and being told i had too much hope [!!], about the role of a community in hope. i have some friends holding hope for a situation i’m on the edges of – nothing big or dramatic, just some sadness that could do with some resolution. i mock them for being too idealistic, because those of us involved know full well that this situation is too complex and difficult to turn out happy ever after… but i have to admit that something has changed in me because of this community of friends who take responsibility for believing that it might one day be different. They don’t tell me that one day everything will be alright, but because they believe it might, they insistently push those of us involved to always choose the path of love. And them doing so has meant i am choosing another way of being in this situation to what i would ever have chosen before.

I think that’s what having a community of hopers around me does. It makes me live with love, even though i know that won’t make things alright. I’m not stupid; i’ll keep wrapping my dreams in cynicism and putting them in the dark for safe keeping. I’m just counting it as something of a miracle that i have the dreams to begin with. And i’m so grateful for those who hold them for me in their hope.

I have no resolutions, just lots of hopes that this year will be different to the last – and a commitment to living as though it will be.

Christmas in the prison was hard. It’s a sad place this year, sadder than normal, but the service was lovely and the men were appreciative. We needn’t have done the service really – they just loved that people were in there on christmas day, and that they could talk to someone about who they missed or the difficult phone call they’d just had with their mother or their children. Guided meditation worked best with this year’s group – i suspect because it meant there was enough silence for those who couldn’t understand what we were talking about. Every year I remember that creating silence is actually one of the hardest tasks when curating spaces – how carefully we have to shape it in order for it to be safe, and how every word that surrounds it has to be crafted to not expect too much from those we invite into it.

One of the men told me during advent that i was too hopeful, which i’m sure will amuse many of you…

On my desk when i returned this morning was this gorgeous book, that i first heard about through this website, which i think was far and away my favourite website for 2011. The book has given me a first idea for the fringe festival space we’ll do this year… and another idea for the commission for mission staff gathering, and still one more for our communication strategy this year… it’s been worth it’s price already.

i so hope this will be like this too.

I’m changing jobs at the end of the year – i’ll still be with the UCA, still working from the same office, just changing titles and some tasks. i’ll no longer be part of the culture and context unit [for which i feel a deep sadness], though I’ll continue working on basement spaces and spirituality, and i’ll be taking on some broader responsibilities. The title intimidates me, just a little: Associate Executive Director of the Commission for Mission. It’s an unexpected move, and certainly not one i sought. But i’m here, i’ve said yes, and i’m grateful.

I’ll be in the prison again tonight and on Sunday. I’ll put up the services early in the new year. And hopefully next year there’ll be time to collate all the resources for prisons into some kind of printed collection…

Until then, this is a prayer for the start of the space on christmas day:

We light the Christ candle:
our act of faith
that love is born into the world today,
lighting the darkness of our story
with its justice, hope and peace…

I’ve just spent two days in Hobart doing some planning around an event that we’re going to run next year, based on rekindling imagination.

I spent hours at Mona, which was better than ever… The Wim Delvoye exhibition is startling and marvellous [his website is great - click on the link]. He’s most famous for his living art – the tattooed pigs, tattooed Tim, which were quirky and fun. I thought his more startling stuff was the religious iconography – the stretched, twisted and distorted cathedral tower, the twisted helix crucifixes, the stained glass windows.

The Anselm Kiefer Sternenfall is also new since I was last there. It’s a lead and glass construction of a bookcase and books, which is in a state of destruction [google it - there are images a-plenty. Mona are clear on their 'take photos but don't put them in websites' policy, so i won't add any here]. It’s in a light-drenched room on the bottom floor, and at the very end of the gallery. It’s one of only two artworks in the gallery that interact with the outside environment – Tattooed Tim, Wim Delvoye’s living artwork, is the other. He sits in front of a window that overlooks the river.

I loved this section of the ‘art wank’ curator’s notes about Sternenfall, which includes a quote from Kiefer:

‘People mustn’t try to understand what I am saying through my works. People should try to see something in them. They must see with their own way of thinking, their own history… In a way, each viewer “finishes” the work with their own vision, their own stance in relation to it.’ You do not need to know what Kiefer knows, or to study what he has read; indeed, he says, ‘many know better than the artist what he has done’.

The imagination event will be held in October next year. It will involve some structured input and conversations, but much of the time will simply be a chance to use a different part of our brains and find connections and as-yet-unimagined spaces for newness. We’re still working on details, but they’ll be up here as soon as things are finalised.

I spent a lot of time wandering Hobart, looking at potential venues and accommodation sites – one of the things i love about Hobart is that it’s easier to walk and catch the ferry than to hire a car. Walking a city means there are always some lovely unexpected moments – like these… the installation of crocheted, polymer trees, hidden behind the wall in Salamanca:

the poetry on the wall just down from the trees:

which both contrasted rather dramatically with the sign on the church noticeboard just down the road:

I came away so grateful that even if the church is unable to grasp the opportunity, at least graffiti artists, hidden art spaces and entrepeneurial gallery owners are offering public moments of resonance, grace and transformation… and i can’t wait for october next year to see how more of us might begin to do that.

The story tells us that this is all it takes for love to be born:

you listen to the voice of improbable angels

you dare to believe you might have a part to play in their story

you say yes to the idea of the impossible

you give up the future you thought was inevitable

you defy the protocols and social mores of the day when they get in the way
of what you know is true

you dare to say to those who would deny your value and your role
that you just might have what’s needed, in this moment

you search for your allies and trust them with your dream

you devour the moments of joy when they come

you demand truth from yourself and those around you

you give up the things you are comfortable with

you travel long journeys in inhospitable conditions

you stand up to be counted

you take whatever shelter you can get

you aren’t afraid of darkness or dirt

you do whatever it takes, even if you’re lonely, scared, a laughing stock, intimidated, overwhelmed, lost, uncomfortable

you accept gifts of wisdom from strangers

you honour those who put their gifts of love, however small, alongside yours

you risk everything, even your life, to give it breath

that’s all it takes for love to be born.

On Christmas day each year I go into one of Victoria’s prisons to spend some time with some of the men in there. The unit I go into houses some of the more vulnerable men in the prison – most have acquired brain injuries or intellectual disabilities. After my first visit a few years ago, I recall thinking it was the most godforsaken environment I’d been in, and Christmas day only makes it more so. The day is as lonely and desolate as you can imagine, and then some.

Their regular chaplain and I offer those inside some meditation and the chance to light some candles. Last year the men requested that we sing carols. Musical accompaniment isn’t possible in this part of the prison, and I doubt that any of us were used to singing in a group, but we handed out the lyrics to some carols and tried our best. The words were of use only to those who could read, but those who didn’t sang the first verse of Away in a Manger three times over, and hummed along to Silent Night, joining in the occasional familiar line when they recognised it. ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’, we sang, discordant and tuneless. I swear it sounded like angels.

‘It’s good of you to go in there’, the woman in the café told me this morning, as she made my coffee and we talked about our Christmas day plans. Without thinking I responded, ‘It’s good for me to go in there’. It’s not that going in makes me appreciate the friends and family who surround me for Christmas  - that would come uncomfortably close to pity or charity; it’s not that I discover the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas in there, because there are many real meanings to Christmas. It’s that in the prison, like no other place, I recognise my own fear and darkness sitting alongside that of the men, and I find it transformed. It seems that in honouring another’s humanity in the most godforsaken places, I’m given the chance to discover my own.

And at Christmas, if the stories of the Christian faith are anything to go by, finding our humanity becomes the most divine task. I love the stories of faith, if only as beautiful mythology, where we are invited to believe in the possibility of love that pulls us into our human-ness – not away from it – and then transforms it into something beautiful. That’s the miracle of Christmas in the prison: it gives the gift of human-ness. It says that the most divine act is to live with the degradation and shame of being somewhere and someone who is abhorrent to all that is glamorous and beautiful. And it’s only when we live with that, in the midst of desolation and desperation, that something of glory is given the chance to be born.

We confess that there are times
we find living with hope
is simply too hard,

when it seems easier to focus on miracles of virgin births, shining stars
and wise men from the east
than it is to have faith that love might come
into even our broken and shamed lives

we think of those places where love is beyond our hope:
in our broken relationships
in the people we have hurt
in the systems that damage and oppress us

we name them silently,
in an act of desperate faith
that this will be enough
to make the space love needs
to be born again.

I have the feeling this will be the hardest year we’ve done. The make-up of the unit is completely different to the last few years. There’s been a big changeover of population in the unit and the whole feel of the place is different. In my notes last night I wrote down that we need to use language we’d use with 6 year olds. Which is tricky of course – there’s not much language i’d use with 6 year olds that makes sense of the most complex human and theological issues that we can grapple with. Though i guess there’s not much language i’d use with 36 year olds that makes sense of that either… The group also seem to be mostly non-readers, and very concrete thinkers [most are on medication that would make it difficult to hold a thought for more than a sentence]. And among them they’re dealing with massive issues: the illnesses of people they love, who they quite probably won’t see again; the vagaries of a welfare system that means post-release housing is oppressively hard to come by; the breakups of their most significant relationships; the movable feast of truth and justice… All of those practical issues are tangled with shame and grief and fear and anger. The group seem more vulnerable this year. I certainly felt more vulnerable alongside them.

Funny, with all of that, how it seems so right to be back there. It’s good to be taken beyond myself; and very good to be with those so desperate for hope that they won’t let me give up on it.

I have, however, been on a desperate search for new inspiration. My job is changing shape at the beginning of next year, and i’m at an awkward ‘finished and not yet begun’ point with much of my work. We have been trying to create a balance in the new position which will mean that i continue to do some of the creative parts of my job – I’d agreed with the board that this was important, because i know that the imaginative stuff is fun, and it makes me want to come into work each day. What this last few weeks has reminded me is that I actually need the projects in which i use my imagination, in order to know how to do the other stuff i do which doesn’t need imagination. None of my brain seems to work if i’m not using part of it to push beyond what i already know. I have to use my imagination, even in order to be able to do things that don’t require imagination.

I’m heading to Hobart for a couple of days next week, to put some flesh on the bones of an event I hope to run next year, which will be a space for people to rekindle their own imaginations… and I’m also putting some space into thinking about Lent next year – the current idea is a weekly space, called Relent. I feel ridiculously excited about both these things. And this afternoon i’m heading back into the prison to begin preparing there for Christmas – always a favourite part of my work.

And in the interim, as part of my search for inspiration, I’ve been watching Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides. It has a lot of gasp-out-loud moments – for sheer beauty, of course, but also because of the unexpected moments of resonance. I actually cried this morning while watching an excerpt where he was making a sculpture of sticks that hung like a cobweb from a tree, while talking about fragility: When I make a work I often take it to the edge of its collapse. It’s a very beautiful balance. As if on cue, the wind came up around him. He desperately tried to hold the cobweb together, but it disintegrated completely, and its beauty, made possible only because he was willing for it not to last, disappeared and became simply a pile of sticks.