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The master sculptor

10/31/2017

I am fascinated with the way someone can take a chunk of stone and a chisel and turn that lifeless stone into a work of art. Michelangelo once said, “I saw the angel in the stone and carved until I set him free.” What a beautiful image – making visible that which was buried.

Stone seems to me so hard and unyielding yet under the hands of the master sculptor it melts into the most intricate detail and astounding beauty.

Sometimes I've stood in front of a statue and wondered how long it took to create … how steady a hand must have held the chisel to achieve such fine detail … what sort of patience was needed to finish the work?

Michelangelo's was just 26 years old and the highest paid sculptor at the time when he created his most famous sculpture of David. He carved it out of one massive piece of marble which had been discarded by two previous sculptors. When Michelangelo finally began his work, the marble had been waiting 40 years for someone capable of turning it into a masterpiece. It took him almost three years and during that time he slept sparingly and took little time out to eat. Three years of patience, perseverance and attention to detail.

It reminds me of Paul's words, "Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives". 2 Corinthians 3:3

Michelangelo spent 3 years chiseling stone into a man. God is taking our lifetime to carve our life into something that reflects him. The deep crevices of our pain and suffering ... the indents of regret and disappointments ... the stresses of failure, along with all the highlights of our love, generosity, kindness and grace, are being worked together by the Spirit to make us into the image of his son.

You are God's masterpiece!

Just had to add this wood carving - the woman in the tree. Making visible what is invisible.

Public domain image.

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A passionate heart

10/24/2017

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I'm meandering through 1 Corinthians at the moment and this morning was challenged by a few verses in Chapter 15. Paul reminds his readers that after Jesus resurrection, he appeared to his disciples, James, and others then he said, "And finally he presented himself alive to me. It was fitting that I should bring up the rear. I didn't deserve to be included in the inner circle, as you well know, having spent all those years trying my best to stamp God's church right out of existence".

Wouldn't you think that Jesus would want someone who not only believed the message, but someone enthusiastic about it, instead of someone who was determined to destroy it?

Of course Paul's conversion itself sent the most powerful message possible; a man turned 360 degrees in belief and life. But I think there was something more, Jesus wanted a man of passion and Paul was certainly that. Under the power of the Spirit, that passion was harnessed to make him one of the greatest evangelists the world has ever known. In the words of FF Bruce, “no single event, apart from the Christ-event itself, has proved so determinant for the course of Christian history as the conversion and commissioning of Paul” (1977, 75).

Public Domain image

Paul was a man of passion and devotion; an all-or-nothing man. By his own confession, he struggled as we all do, but he wasn't sidetracked by the things of the world. His whole life and being were dedicated to one purpose, to live for Christ ... whatever the cost ... whatever the suffering ... whatever it took. Christ was his passion.

I've been asking myself, what's my passion? What's the ultimate driving force of my life? What would I give my life for?

Kenneth Allen (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

In the mid 1990s my daughter was living in Oxford in the UK. I went to visit. They were some of the most memorable weeks of my life in that city of spires and golden stone; a city of living history.

At the far end of the town, just outside Balliol College, stands the Victorian spire-like Martyrs' Memorial. On this spot Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake for their faith, refusing to recant. I stood at the foot of that memorial and wept ... imagining what it must have been like to be slowly consumed by fire, yet remaining faithful to Jesus. I couldn't comprehend the courage that must have taken. It is said that Latimer told his friend, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

I'm convinced that God is not looking for great orators, gifted teachers or even mighty evangelists. I'm convinced he's looking for passionate hearts ... hearts that want a relationship with him more than anything else in this world ... hearts that want to live for him no matter what the cost.

What's the greatest passion of your life?

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Five blessings of friendship

10/17/2017

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When I look back over my life, it's not the things I've done or the places I've been that are most memorable, it's the people I've known. “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin.

I recently caught up with a friend who came to visit me the week I was born. We grew up together, then our families grew up together and we relive a lifetime of memories built around blackberry picking, prawning, bonfire nights and so much more. We remember mishaps and misadventures and can laugh about them now, in hindsight.

To have a rich and enduing friendship is to have one of the most precious gifts in life. If you have one true friend you are indeed blessed.

Friendship seems to have become one of those overused words, in danger of losing it's meaning. Social media has minimised friendship to mere connections, and encouraged quantity not quality. While we might follow friends on Facebook, friendship will only ever grow through personal interaction ... spending time together ... investing in each other's lives.

Who can put a price on the gift of friendship, it is priceless.

A friend is a witness to my life. Someone who has been on the journey of life with me, has believed in me and valued who I am ... who can remind me how far I've come. Someone with whom I can share my innermost thoughts and struggles and not be judged ... who shares my joys and successes and gets excited with me. Someone who truly knows and accepts me.

True friends have been a mirror to me, enabling me to see myself through another person's eyes. They encourage me to be my best self and discourage me from the things that make me less than I can be.

Friendship is unmerited grace. It's a commitment to continually turning up and being there for the other person, through thick and then. Its about continual tolerance, mercy and forgiveness.

A friendship is a commitment of two people to invest in the relationship. There is no such thing as a nonreciprocal friendship. It's a mutual giving and receiving, which is both health giving and nourishing. It keeps you looking out beyond yourself.

Unlike our relatives, friendship is a choice. We are in it because we want to be. And the choice continues, the more I invest into the friendship, the deeper it grows. "Friendship is a slow ripening fruit" - Aristotle.

I’m not only blessed to have had some amazing friends throughout my life but I’ve had the honour to be a friend. I’ve been privileged to share both heartache and victories and to be trusted with innermost thoughts and dreams.

I treasure the tangible reminders of friends ... recipes shared and marked with their name in my recipe book; Molly's fruit cake and Shirley's Strawberry Mousse ... in plants swapped and now blooming in my garden ... in books given with names engraved on the flyleaf. They are happy reminders of rich times together over the years ... of lifelong friends and those just given for a season.

We leave an imprint on someone's life through the gift of our friendship.

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Chinese whispers

10/10/2017

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I'd settled into my room at The Royal Hotel, Hill End, and was ordering my evening meal. "Room number." "Twelve", I replied.
"Oh you're in the haunted room," the chef said.
"Haunted?"
"Oh yes, many people have reported it's haunted."

Fortunately I'm not into haunted, but as I snuggled down for the night I got to wondering about the people who had slept in that room over its 100+ years. Maybe a miner who'd struck gold, a travelling salesman or a government official come to inspect the mines. I wondered about the conversations that those walls had witnessed ... celebration, despair, indecision, plotting or discrimination?

In the 1850s there was an influx of people from various parts of the world, lured by the promise of striking gold. Between 1851 and 1871 Australia's population grew from 430,000 to 1.7 million. By far the greatest number of immigrants were Chinese, in fact by 1861, 3.3% of the population had been born in China.

Life on the goldfields wasn't easy for the Chinese workers. Their culture was so very different to the European way of life. They were viewed with suspicion ... they spoke little English, most were devout Buddhists or Taoists and seen as idol worshippers, they worked in groups rather than mixing with the general population of the goldfield and they preferred alluvial mining using copious amounts of water in a land where water was a scarce commodity.

They were generally left to work over areas that European miners had already worked but because of their tireless and meticulous work, they still managed to find rich sums of gold, which further incensed the other miners. Racism and discrimination was rife.

Just a short distance from the town is a magnificent gorge, called Golden Gully. It's the remnants of an alluvial mine worked by Chinese miners in the 1850s and 60s. It feels like a time capsule ... as if the miners have just left for the day. The years of erosion have beautified the gorge and wattle has soften what must once have been a harsh and unforgiving landscape.

I wandered through the spectacular chasm, under the natural arch that's weathered with the march of time, and felt an affinity with those Chinese miners ... the loneliness they must have felt, separated from their families ... unable to speak English and ostracised for living the only culture they knew. Of course there are many sides to every story, but it made me think about the pressure we so often feel to conform.

Fear so often drives us to suspicion and mistrust of those who are different. We have a propensity to notice the differences rather than the commonalities. How much richer we are when we choose to look beyond someone's outward appearance, see their heart, and offer them the gift of friendship ... where understanding begins.

We are living in times where mob culture thrives, where we are all expected to think the same and dissenting voices are punished. The pressure to conform is enormous. We seem to have developed a fear of individualism; not only thinking for ourselves, but also being willing to accept the person who thinks differently.

Some of the greatest evils of history involved forced conformity and some of the greatest achievements and movements of mankind have come from people who thought for themselves and dared to be different.

The beauty of the gorge belies the hardship and suffering that its walls represent. It's the whisper of history that reminds us that our similarities are far greater than our differences.

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Escaped

10/3/2017

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Six months ago I broke my ankle. In six months I've learnt the skill of moon boot walking, got to know my physiotherapist very well and discovered the frustration of life with limitations.

But probably the most valuable part of those months is coming to understand a little more about the power of acceptance ... a response that receives rather than resists what is happening ... it changes everything. I've now graduated to a sports ankle brace and while I've been told it will be another six months before the bone is back to full strength, I'm beginning to feel the wind beneath my wings.

One of the things I missed most was getting out with my camera into big wide-open spaces and finding unexpected beauty. Last weekend I escaped! It was a great feeling, like the much awaited school holidays had arrived after the long winter term.

I headed for the village of Hill End to soak myself in the history and drink in the beauty of a bygone era. I'd made the bold decision to book into the Royal Hotel, despite reading many less than flattering reviews. I wanted the authentic Hill End experience and there was no better way to do that than to stay in the last remaining hotel which dates back to 1872.

At the height of the Gold Rush there were 29 hotels in town ... now the Royal stands as the last sentinel of the history, and alive with character ... creaking stairs, sloping floors and wallpaper from another century. Now just a faithful few frequent the bar and dining room but it wasn't hard to imagine the hustle and bustle that rang through the walls over its 145 year life and the din from the stamper batteries in the streets beyond.

Now there are just remnants ... reminders of an era that made Australia great. I marvelled at the tenacity and ingenuity it must have taken to survive life on those harsh mining fields. It's a testimony to man's indomitable spirit. But where there's a will there's a way and slowly a town grew. There was a draper's shop, an oyster bar attached to the newsagency, (oysters sent from Sydney - I think I'd have passed!), a dispensary, tobacco and fancy goods store and so much more ... it became a thriving metropolis.

The miners have long gone but their fingerprints are still evident ... in the handmade bricks that once put walls around a family's life, now scattered ... in the century old trees that offer shade from the summer heat, once seedlings planted long ago in anticipation ... and the hand hewn stones that grace the church that still remains today.

The road to Hill End is steep in parts and twists and turns frequently, much like the last six months of my life. I'm glad I've learnt over the years to focus on the journey and not just the end of the road. It's easy to rush to the destination and miss all the good things along the way.

Life is about the journey not the destination and often the detours and byways are more important.

In every twist and turn there's a discovery to be made and I never know what will be just around the corner but there's bound to be another gem if I have the eyes and time to find it.

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The master sculptor

A passionate heart

Five blessings of friendship

Chinese whispers

Escaped

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