"But that day ain't here yet"

Last night a mellow but merry crowd filled the Palais Theatre in St Kilda to celebrate what folk-singer M Ward was presenting as the "2nd anniversary special" tour of his album "Hold Time", probably his best album to date. Performing entirely by himself, with only a guitar, harmonica and piano, the sound was much more stripped-back than is typical of "Hold Time", which contains some of his most lively and experimental songs. But the sound worked. Some songs became much slower than you would expect, but the pace encouraged you to slow with it, to accept the gentleness and peace of the music instead of wanting it to rush along with you.

Of my five or so favourite songs of his, he probably only played two or three. My three absolute favourites did not get a look-in, possibly being too upbeat to fit with the mood of the night. But, knowing all of his albums fairly well, I found many of the songs feeling comforting and familiar, having been gently in the background of my life at so many points. This meant that it was a show with few standouts, but carrying with it a general feeling of consistency and beauty.

I was particularly impressed by his humility and professionalism. When one of his fold-back speakers started playing up towards the end, he continued playing the song with barely any hesitation, and ended up finishing the song with his acoustic guitar unamplified. We could still hear him where I was sitting. There were no prima-donna antics. He was quiet but not aloof. He joked occasionally with us, and in the second encore invited any member of the audience who could play piano to join him for a lovely rendition of "Rollercoaster". The man who volunteered the loudest was then given a chance to finish with a laid-back solo. M Ward left the stage quietly and unobtrusively, and gave his audience member the final limelight.

Of course, one disappointment for me was that he did not play my absolute favourite, "Fisher of Men", from the Hold Time album. That song has special significance for me. But the subtly Christian side to his music was still there in a beautifully simple piano rendition of "Here Comes the Sun Again", a gentle and worshipful song that I had not really listened to before last night. I will return to it often now, I'm sure. But the words to "Fisher of Men" seem to sum up something about M Ward for me - that he is a musician without pretence, a musician that so often seems to sing, whatever the content of his lyrics, to a higher song:

"He put his name in my chorus

And his dark before the dawn,

So that in my hour of weakness

I'd remember it's his song."

His music also occupies a time of quiet longing: waiting for a day when "weak will not be weak any more", but searches for ways to deal "with the pieces of a broken heart". Last night his songs were a beautiful accompaniment to our own longings.

Urban renewal

When I first began this blog, a few years ago now, the title and general theme reflected the fact that I was thinking rather a lot about life, work and ministry in inner-northern Melbourne. I had just moved to Preston and one of the topics that occupied a number of posts was the issue of finding a church in that area. One thing I found as I searched was that the inner-north, compared to, say, the eastern suburbs, is quite church-hungry. Churches were often very small, or very stagnant, or a bit on the odd side. I was doing a lot of thinking at the time about the so-called "emerging church" and how churches should engage with culture and be part of the community. But I didn't see any good examples of inner-northern churches doing that sort of thing effectively, well-meaning as a number of examples seemed to be.

I can't say I've thought terribly much about those kinds of issues in recent years. I found a church where I was happy, then I moved to Malaysia, then I left the north. Now I'm back, in Brunswick, and am finding myself, quite unintentionally, at a church that is about to move a tad further north for the purposes of mission.

Strangely, I am finding myself feeling much more ambivalent about this move than I would have years ago. Part of this is due to the general feeling of exhaustion that I have had in this period of post-Malaysia burnout (not necessarily something that would have been reflected in this blog, but which has been quite a present feature of my life since the middle of last year). Yet I do find myself growing somewhat excited at the thought of the inner north's "spiritual renewal", something that my new church family is keenly focused on.

The task seems a large one. Some might say insurmountable. Melbourne is one of the world's most secular cities. The inner north is one of the most secular parts of the city. How, you might ask, do we hope to renew the city? We could try to renew the way that everyone does urban renewal - through more community events, through city garden projects. These are all important. But do they renew the spirit? Truly renew the spirit, in the way that only God can?

But that's the thing. Only God can do it. So, if we succeed, it will only be through God's strength. This should bring a sense of relief. It isn't really up to us. But it's also scary, because it requires submission to God. It requires losing a sense of control.

One thing's for sure. If we plan on doing it properly, it will be quite a journey.

Some of that journey, I imagine, will be documented on the new church blog, and some of it will be documented here. It will, I'm sure, be a process worth documenting.

Watch this space.

Happy Palindrome Day

Because today is a palindrome day (11/02/2011), I decided to write a poem in honour of the occasion. So here it is:

Palindrome

Fall back, flow forth,

Palindrome, chiasmus, sway

From end to end,

Distended, pure.

May I, small atom, sit between

These equal walls of symmetry,

A point of stillness fixed amid

The sameness and the mirrored grace

Of what once was, now once again.

(M Pullar 2011)

The holiest day of the year?

More businesses, it seems, will be allowed to trade on Easter Sunday, if the Government has its way. And, naturally, some people are upset and others don't care. This is no surprise. What strikes me about it all is that, once again, we seem to be missing the point. There's a phrase that gets used regularly for days like Easter Sunday (ironically, it seems to get used about a few days, including Christmas too) - "the holiest day of the Christian calendar", or something to that effect. Now, I don't know what this phrase is in the original New Testament Greek, so some of you might have to help me out there, but I don't think I've seen it in the Bible. Naturally I believe it's essential to remember Jesus' death and resurrection. But the only time that Jesus actively said to His followers, "Do this to remember me," He was referring to a regular act of remembering, a reminder that came with bread and wine, two staples of every Middle Eastern meal in those days. In a sense, every time you ate and drank together you reminded yourselves, "This is why we come together: because of Jesus." So no particular day (except the Sabbath) was to be special or holier than other days. Holiness was much more about where you stood with God and how you lived your whole life rather than a particular observance on one day of the year.

Now, I never normally agree with Father Bob McGuire, but I suppose he has a point when he says that now employers will have another chance to overwork their employees. But I'm no more comfortable with non-believers using Jesus as an excuse for a holiday than I am with businesses capitalising on the chance to make an extra buck out of the celebration and good will He creates. The question shouldn't be what we do about Jesus on Easter, but what we do about Him every other day of the year. I hardly think the Bible would say, "It's fine to worship consumerism 364 days of the year but for God's sake don't do it on Easter." If consumerism runs counter to the Easter spirit once a year, it runs counter to it all the year. Perhaps we need to look at our hearts, not our trading hours, to see where the real issue lies.

Miracle on the River Kwai

Two sick days this week have allowed me to watch David Lean's WWII epic, "The Bridge on the River Kwai". Yes, I had to watch it in two sittings, mostly because I was too tired yesterday to sit through all nearly-three-hours of it. But it was worth the effort. Films like that are considered classics for good reason.

But, when I got to the end, and those stunning closing lines - "Madness! Madness!" - I couldn't help feeling that we were being told the wrong story. You see, I had already read another story of the River Kwai, the story of Ernest Gordon, another British officer imprisoned at Kwai, and a man who struck me as quite a bit more heroic than Colonel Nicholson (portrayed, with impressive restraint and gravitas, by Alec Guinness, above). Nicholson, while a fascinating character, seemed rather misguided in his efforts. Yes, he achieved a number of victories, but I'm not quite sure that they were worth fighting for. And, in the end (no spoilers), it's hard to say what he achieved overall, being quantified as it was in human efforts which were easily destroyed.

You'll know Gordon's story primarily because of one famous anecdote coming from it: the story of the British soldiers summoned by the Japanese because one of them had allegedly stolen a shovel. All would die if no-one confessed, so one stepped forward and took the blame. He was killed: brutally, according to Gordon's account. But that night it was discovered that no shovel was actually missing. The soldier had taken the blame to protect his friends.

This event apparently started a change in the prison camp, a change that you won't see in Lean's film, which is more concerned with the positive impact of the bridge-building project. It wasn't a change that will sell tickets to Hollywood movies, but it was a change, I like to think, that was less easily destroyed in the end. You see, according to Gordon's story, men in the prison camp started to value human life more, and started to ask ethical questions, about life and honouring the dead. They stopped living in a world of survival-of-the-fittest and started looking higher for meaning. Gordon, who had not really bothered with God since childhood, began to think much more about Him, to the point of becoming the prison camp's unofficial chaplain and philosophy professor. His experience at Kwai changed him so much that he even became a Presbyterian minister on returning from the war.

What grabs me most about that story is its eternal impact, an impact that goes beyond who is in power at any particular political moment. Nicholson was concerned with temporal victories, victories that had much more to do with British military spirit and dignity. Gordon was changed by a victory that was not his own, and helped others be swept up in the thrall of that victory.

That, I suspect, is a battle worth fighting. In the light of that battle, everything else seems madness. Madness.