Blog Archives

Why wait

11/27/2018

A friend of mine died recently. He was 91. He was an active man right to the end. The day was exceptionally hot when he went to his veggie patch to pick fresh salad greens for lunch, something he did each day. When he didn’t return, his wife went looking for him and found he had died right there in the patch. Of course it was a terrible shock for his family, eased only by the fact that he died doing what he loved best. He’d been growing vegetables since he was a boy and the joy of sowing and harvesting his crop had been a constant delight to him.

Several months ago we buried his brother. I wondered then why it takes a death and a funeral to reflect and verbalise what we appreciate about the person who is no longer able to hear how they were valued. Most people would be surprised to hear their eulogy.

I’ve never heard a eulogy which spoke unkindly of someone. Its as if the finality of death brushes away the dust of dissatisfaction and brings the person’s goodness into stark reality. Things that might have annoyed us in life seem strangely irrelevant. Maybe we suddenly realise the things we’ll miss about them; so often we don’t value what we have until its gone.

I sometimes wonder what will be said at my funeral, what will be remembered, what of my life will be seen of value? How will my life be viewed?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could hear in our lifetime what others think to say in our demise, to get to experience other people’s perspective on our life?

Someone said we should all have our wake before we die so we can enjoy the reminiscing, but how much richer life would be if we made a practice of reflecting and verbalising our love, appreciation and the way we value others right here and now while we have them with us. Not just to value what they do but who they are.

I love to tell my grandchildren what I love about their individual characters. There’s something powerful about words of affirmation spoken into our lives.

What do you value most about those closest to you? What haven't you told them that one day you will wish you had?

I think I might start to write some eulogies and give them to the people I love most while they are still around to know how I feel.

0 Comments

Beyond the door

11/20/2018

1 Comment

Every door has a story, a history, a reason for being. Its weathered the lives of those who've gone in and out, protected and sheltered them, become a part of their story.

My friend has just moved house, leaving farmlands and the drone of the harvester for life in the city. It’s an emotional journey closing the door behind you, leaving all that’s familiar and opening a new door to the next chapter of life. Strange how a door can be both a symbol of endings and beginnings, of loss and gain, pain and joy.

Its what’s behind the door that’s important, whether its a door into a home, a relationship or a career.

Doors come in all shapes and sizes … I’ve seen them all, ornate and opulent, elegant and refined, plain and ordinary or basically practical and often the deepest warmth is found behind the simplest door.

I found it in a tiny mud brick home in the middle of the desert in Burkina Faso, kindness, generosity and joy … a door of hospitality opened as wide as the ocean, by folk who had precious little other than a dwindling store of grain.

I’ve experienced it in relationship when someone has opened the door from the inside and poured themselves into my life sacrificially, not counting the cost, and I’ve felt loved and nourished.

Ralph Waldo Emerson encourages us to “Be an opener of doors” ... to invite people into our home, our life and our heart ... to be hospitable in every sense of the word.

But then there are broken doors that let in the cold and leave us feeling insecure. Doors that need fixing but no one seems to care, and doors that appear to go nowhere and we’re left wondering why. Why infertility, singleness or relationships with rusty hinges and shattered latches? Why retrenchment or debilitating disease?

Someone said, “Life is a house of a thousand doors”. A child is born and we discover a door into the most difficult and joyous adventure we could ever have imagined; a loved one dies or a relationship breaks down and we walk through deep grief, heartache and despair or like my friend we close one door and open another and with it a whole new beginning … each in its own way is an invitation to know ourselves more intimately.

I love doors, they are full of potential and undiscovered wonder. And so are our lives. We have the choice to open the door wide and let people in or protect ourselves behind closed doors, but we will never know what we've missed if we are unwilling to open the door and walk through it into the uncertainties and challenges that open us up to rich and rewarding relationships.

The door into my favourite restaurant in Rome where we had the most sensational cannelloni I've ever tasted.

I can only imagine the stories this door has to tell of students coming and going over all those years.

1 Comment

Love is in the detail

11/13/2018

0 Comments

Our lives are at the same time ordinary and miraculous … identical and unique. Every one of us began life in a womb … had to learn to walk and talk … have all encounter pain and suffering, love and loss.

We each have a miraculous heart that pumps on valiantly through the summers and winters of our lives, and a brain more complex and unknowable than anything man has ever managed to invent. Rich or poor we all depend for life on the next breathe. So what makes us unique?

Details.
Details encoded in our DNA, that intricate combination of genes that make you a once in a lifetime creation, with a fingerprint unlike any other person in the universe. That amazing mix of complexions and complexities, gifts and talents that distinguish you from me and enable you to offer something to the world that no one else in all of history can offer.

Details of our experiences that have made us who we are … the highs and lows … the successes and failures and the memories … your childhood home with the broken doorbell, the taste of your grandmother’s apple pie and the old blue VW that became your first ever car.

Each detail of our life is as unique as we are.

There have been those who’ve cheered you on and believed in you, those who through their awkwardness caused you to rethink life and maybe stimulated you to grow in soil you wouldn’t have chosen. Together you’ve written the details of your life, through tears and hallelujahs.

We are a product of the trillion details of our individual lives.

“Apart from the before, the now has little meaning. The now is only a thin slice of who I am; isolated from the rich deposits of before, it cannot be understood.” Eugene Peterson.

From the moment God formed me in my mother’s womb, he has been intimately involved in the details of my life. He is the master of detail. Nature is testament to that. The minute detail in a bird’s wing, the intricacies of a flower’s markings and the seemingly never-ending diversity of creation that’s splashed across the canvas of the landscape wherever we turn. Is it any wonder that he’s involved in the very details of our lives?

If I’m noticing, I see his fingerprints woven into the fabric of my existence. He is not just a big picture God, but a lover of small details, like a sparrow’s death, a lily in the field and us in the midst of the glory and the grime of our days.

A few years ago I was to take a friend out for lunch and money was tight. That morning as I neared the end of my daily walk, I found $20 on the pavement. After we’d both chosen lunch and I went to pay the bill, it came to precisely $20. There’s an endless stream of moments like that and it’s those small things that grow my faith as I see the sovereign God of the universe stoop down to care for the intimate details of my life.

It seems to me that it’s his purpose and design for us too, to be the carer of the small details of people’s lives. In this increasingly impersonal world that is incapable of satisfying our deep longing for personal connection, valuing and being truly known, it's often the smallest detail that says, “I care”, I see you”, “I understand”.

Love often shouts loudest through the small details.

0 Comments

Across the kitchen table

11/6/2018

0 Comments

We met 48 years ago. She was a young mum with two boys and I was pregnant with my first child when she moved in next door to my parents. Straight away I knew she’d be a kindred spirit. She had a creative flair, a passion for gardening and a wild enthusiasm for life.

She celebrated with me the birth of my children, their first steps and their childhood achievements. Our children navigated billy carts and grazed knees together. She came to their weddings.

We've weathered the unpredictability of life, her breast cancer and the breakup of her son’s marriage, the death of both my parents, the birth of our grandchildren and all the everyday stuff in between. Our friendship grew and grew.

After my parents died, I became her neighbour. We gardened together, sharing plants as we shared life. We swapped recipes, borrowed the odd cup of flour and laughed our way through our failures and mishaps. We explored and adventured, walked beaches, bush tracks and country lanes with our mutual love of nature and passion for life.

We made a garden path between two open doors.

Her loving care reminds me of the story Jesus told when asked, “Who is my neighbour?”

When my first attack of vertigo hit and the room spun wildly with vomit inducing velocity she was there holding the sick bowl. She rushed me to the doctor when I broke my ankle climbing cliffs and didn’t chide me for my foolishness, as others did. She didn't cross to the other side when the tough things happened.

We’ve been a witness to each other’s lives, to the good, the bad and the mundane. There’s no pretence, we see each other at our best and worse, bad hair days, messy house days and weepy sad days. There’s very little of life we haven’t shared.

It’s difficult to believe she is in her 80s now and where we once climbed mountains together now we sit across the kitchen table and navigate the hurdles of life. There’s something comforting about pots of tea and kitchen tables, something very down to earth like the raw realities of life.

Maybe the Hebrew word, oheb, says it best, “one who loves”. Friendship is love in action; it’s not a noun but a verb. It’s letting go of self for the good of another, letting what’s important to you become important to me. Making time and space in my life for you. It’s not wide and shallow but deep and time consuming and messy and more precious than gold.

I'm convinced that friendship is one of the most beautiful experiences of life, to be known heart and soul and accepted as we are. But knowing can't be hurried. It takes time, commitment and perseverance; getting alongside someone and staying for the long haul. It requires me to be vulnerable, non judgemental and open to truth and that's hard, but it allows "steel to sharpen steel".

For me, friendship is one of the greatest gifts we can give another human being and as Isabella said in Jane Austin’s Northanger Abbey, “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

I was right all those years ago; she has been a kindred spirit. She still has a creative flair, a passion for gardening and an enthusiasm for life, and while the years have whittled away the physical strength and brought limitations that she’d rather be without, the conversations continue and the years haven’t lessened her wonderful sense of humour, and the laughter is loud and life-giving over the cups of tea across the kitchen table of our lives.

0 Comments

Why wait

Beyond the door

Love is in the detail

Across the kitchen table

Author

Archives

Categories