up to the knees

Hello. I wrote the below (minus a few edits) in August and then of course abandoned it. I’d very much like to write about a host of things I’ve thought and done over the past year but am a little overwhelmed by the task, so my brother advised me to start small. Here is me starting really small, hopefully more little thought farts will join it later and make a sort of story of my one-thirds-minister-ship, for any that are interested.

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I wrote a really terrified confession over 6 months ago, secure in the knowledge that I would be updating my blog regularly and you would all benefit from my learning and from my finding of everything to be marvellous and from the stories of my Wonderful New Life. It’s comforting I guess that I continue to overestimate myself.

I was starting my formation as a minister and was- rightly it turns out, but more about that later- a bit apprehensive. Mainly it was the unknown that so concerned me, but my propensity for laziness and the fact that I’ve never once had a Direction or thing that I was properly aimed for but have changed my mind and floated around etc etc were playing a part.

After I wrote the confession I went off and met the rest of the candidates and had a few days away with them. Which I hated. I had a very mediocre time. Not, thank God, because the others were horrible, but because (in part) they were new, it was all new, and all around me, and I need a bunch of alone time to not be a huge cow it turns out. I heard people laughing companionably or saying ‘no after you’ and like, getting along, and I felt my lack of the desire to be constantly polite as an inditement on my spirit. I felt, too, my lack of experience walk up beside me and place its arms elegantly around my neck, felt my fear that the whole year, three whole years, would be unfulfilled self examination, missed messages and the hiding of my cynicism.

Then I came home and saw my friends and breathed a bit.

The semester started in earnest and I found myself startled by an ocean of knowledge I had been granted access to, by the humour and goodness of my classmates and teachers, by how much I could be myself.

But you see, as much as the feeling of a gorgeous architecture of belief and passion filling up and out in my mind was and is wonderful, going through the motions of becoming a minister is, frankly, super weird, and the stubbornly present, slight but heavy self-doubt which had moved in the moment I met the others and asked myself if I was as clever as them, hung around for longer than I wish to admit.

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Note: This is not a story about me disliking myself, or my time at college. Far from it. But it is a story about all of it, and all of it includes the times I fumble, doubt and have to talk sternly to myself. And the only way I can get to the cool, shiny parts are by starting small, with the parts that made me go to Sufjan Stevens for healing. Bear with me.

 

Confession

Tomorrow I go to a college up the road and meet with some other students, some teachers and some others and we begin a little journey together. We will learn a little more about what it means to be candidates for ministry, go away for three days, get to know each other, begin our year. And maybe sing? Probably we’ll sing.
I decided to do this whole ministry thing around a year and a half ago, and my church decided that was an ok idea last September. I have known this point in time was coming. I organised a desk, because I will be studying, I ordered text books, because I will need to learn things, I quit my job because I will need my time.
I have known this was coming but also not known much at all. I still don’t know what my year will look like, what the blood and bones of it will be, how I will have to function to make it, if I can learn all that I need to, if I can do it.
I am very scared. Partially because I still carry a childish fear of Christians, which is stupid for a lot of reasons, partially because it is new and and I’m alone and partially because I am worried I won’t be the sort of person needed.
I have heard much (so, so much- I am very blessed) from people who love me that I will do well, that I am the type of person who the church needs, that this is a good great thing, that I can do this. Often I believe them, and often I know I’m just one person going off to college and it’s not a big deal and often I’m so excited because I miss the feeling of New Things rolling around in my head, and my mind is eager and I am thrilled at the thought that come three years time I might know how to love people better and to not be such a large spaz. But there are other times when I know who I am and how good I am at sitting in front of a laptop watching sci-fi shows and I worry that the time will come when I will look back and realise I’ve not changed my life at all, I’ve just stuffed some classes in.
These are the quiet fears of someone used to doubting herself, and who has never been trusted with so much faith, so much opportunity.
I really want this to take.
I really, really don’t want to look inside and realise deep down I’m just lazy.
I want to honour whomever gave me this chance.
Let’s hope I do.
I’m going to do it anyway, obviously. I’ve already got the desk.

Dear Facebook, I don’t love you.

Hi. I know you’ve probably not even noticed that I’ve been gone, but it’s actually been a whole month since I’ve seen you. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I’ve not really missed you at all.
Look. It doesn’t have to be personal. A lot of people love you, I certainly think you’re really helpful, in the right circumstances. I’m really really grateful for the opportunity to tell a close circle of 400 plus people that I’m a bit peckish, tbh but it got too much. I just found myself wondering what sort of person I appeared to be, how I would look to someone who was leafing through my online photos. I was scrolling through others’ profiles and wondering how they got their lives so neat and cool. I don’t need that sort of help to be insecure. I’m pretty adept already.
And you know, I deleted Insta as well. It’s not just you. I’ve not even been on Twitter. I’ve just been… thinking my thoughts, and not caring if I told people. And messaging my really good ones to my friends, obv.
It’s actually been really nice. I have been watching some Netflix, and staring at screens a little, but I’ve also been pausing and thinking and not being able to distract myself from the present and reading books and being alone with whatever’s going on in my head. I’ve sat on public transport and looked at people, relished the fact that I was going somewhere. I’ve taken less photos, and I’ve really, really, loved the stuff that I’ve seen and the moments I’ve seen them in.
Every now and then I was a bit tempted. I’d think a Cool Thing or see something hilarious and ask myself: Don’t the people need to know?? But the answer was always no, they frigging don’t. They don’t need my (attempted) wit, or to know how I felt when I had a coffee the other day, or for my outrage to be added to the whirling cesspool of inflamed opinion. I need that, not anyone else.
I just changed my life significantly you see. I am wallpapering a lot of myself anew right now and trying to figure out if I’m the cream and paisley or the floral and I felt like there was no better time to extract myself from a portal where I can pretend to be whatever sort of person I’d like to be, where everything can be a performance.
So, as much as I appreciate your eery, personalised greetings and promptings to tell all my peeps about my feelings associated with public holidays,  I’d love it if we could see each other casually from now on. I don’t mind what you do with other people, I’ll just pop by every now and then to invite people to things or to brag about seeing Sufjan again. Also we all know you’re just a collection of algorithms designed to market people’s private lives, so.
All the best,
Carlynne Nunchuks
(this is not my real name, just while I’m being honest)

Love me tinder

I wrote the majority of the following over a year ago, and didn’t finish it and forgot I did it and obviously writing about Tinder is pretty redundant now. Stay tuned for my novel thoughts about the ebola virus or girl group Bardot. Mainly posting because the title made me laugh out loud; I am not the sharpest.

Spoiler alert: I’m off Tinder now, ‘Tis a hell-scape.

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I don’t date a lot? Like at all really. I have had relationships in the past (two of them!) and once I thought I was dating a guy (I was not) but not a lot of dating goes on around Carlynne-town. Which is fine really. At a lowish “I don’t need anyone! I’m amazing!” point of last year I inexplicably joined OKcupid and spent too much time talking to inconceivably ill-suited boys. Twice. Then I left and that’s all fine now.

I was first introduced to the idea of Tinder when a much younger friend told me they were on it. I thought that was dumb as they are of sound mind and no small amount of wit and should be meeting real people in the real world and talking with their real face but apparently this is how it’s done now. And who am I to judge, I feel like I don’t meet people who want to date my face either and have been known to talk about being on fire with guys I find cute.

Recently I was talking with a newly gay friend about his Tinder experiences. It was going really well for him, he was two dates in with a really sweet sounding dude. I expressed my standard Tinder opinion- that people making decisions about another person largely based on what that person looks like is some sort of nightmare from my individual hell- and then in the course of about forty minutes was somehow convinced to sign up.

The first thing I want to say is- Tinder is HILARIOUS. Secondly, I wish the ego boost that comes every time you ‘match’ with someone (a term preposterously misused in this context) wasn’t a really solid and gratifying thing but unfortunately it is.

How it works: you sign up and pick five photos from your Facebook cache. Some people find this part difficult and a lot of folks on Tinder repeat photos of themselves twice or even thrice in the course of a five photo viewing which is baffling to me. Or, they choose a series of five photos of their face, at four different angles and one with a hat on. So illuminating! Thank you for thinking about how I might better judge you based on the left side of your nose.

Anyway, you do that, you write a wee bio about yourself (I opted for short and witty, counting on mystique to get me places my painstakingly crafted lists of likes and dislikes on OkCupid didn’t) and then you go to town. People’s photos come up based on your decisions about age range, gender and distance from your location and you can swipe them away and into the pit of men who think posing on cars is still cool (left for no) or swipe them into your hopeful -often bearded- pile (right for yes) OR look at their photos and read their little thing in the vain hope that you will somehow be able to make a decision about if you would like them to be a part of your life based on the fact that they’re all about 420 bitcheeees. If you both pick yes a delightfully well fonted message appears, telling you that you are a match and you are free to message, fall in love and be wed within weeks.

So at first, an average Joe like me can find herself seemingly swimming in a sea of possibilities. Over a week I quickly built up a collection of around 50 matches, a lot of whom I messaged. I know what you’re thinking, Kim Carl-dashian, right? I’m so sorry. That was awful. But- if you think someone swiping right on Tinder implies they have any desire *at all* to converse with you, you are sorely mistaken. I anxiously look at my match list, having the same feeling I get from an out of order inbox, wondering what about my carefully chosen Beastie Boyz lyric says “I can’t carry conversation” and if dudes on Tinder just what- try and like every girl in the world? To what end? WHAT GAME ARE YOU PLAYING, MR DENIM NECK-TATTOO?

I’m not immune to being heartless, obviously. Tinder is a game and you have to treat it as such. I have compiled a fairly stringent list of immediate swipe left offences:

  • photos of or with cars/motorbikes
  • Photo of you giving me the finger
  • The classic, and widely loathed, pose-with-drugged-tiger
  • Life advice in place of a bio. I do not come here to be told that today is a gift and that’s why they call it the present
  • Looking bored in front of five different monuments
  • Speed dealer sunnies
  • You have forgotten your shirt
  • You have forgotten your head
  • You are in a drum circle (I am not a perfect person)

I have got some messages, relatively few containing pictures of penises! Some have been polite, others are a delightful escape into a world of completely superfluous lols:

‘jus finished work lol you’

‘not much on this weekend just the footy lol’

‘Hi how are you lol’

Ugh. Hilarious. These will lead to a. a feeling of being a world in which I do not belong, and b. the inevitable unmatch.

As much as I judge these people (these poor people, trying in their own horrible, grasping way to find a human connection) and as demoralising as I found my most recent experience of Tinder (the web really does not like chubby, growing-out-hair-Carlynne), it’s not all bad- I even went on a real life date with a lovely girl* I met on Tinder. The main problem I have is me, and that inevitably I feel disconnected from reality in a damaging way when trying to clumsily force connections with people I just don’t know in one of the most contrived ways I can think of.

I may eventually change my mind. Maybe future Carlynne is super pumped about her online presence and ready to mingle. Maybe there’ll be a drugged tiger at my wedding.

 

*oh yes, that’s not a typo, I’m into girls sometimes.

She’s over there

Some nights I sit and I swear I feel like an old lady, as if ageing stretches itself in my limbs.

Today I wanted to talk to everyone. Today I saw them move and speak and touch their hands to their hair and make themselves a drink and I loved them all a bit at least and wanted them to tell me things.

Today the sky was full of soft fire and made my windows shine pink.

Today I cooked a meal slowly.

Today I ate a half a piece of cake. Actually two thirds.

Today I was pleased with myself.

Today I was not sad to be alone.

 

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I wrote this in February of last year apparently. I don’t remember the specific day I’m referring to, but I do remember many instances of the desire to know people so well and so silently that you live in them. I hope I was writing about the good folk of the Olive Way.

What I read in January

10965432_10152708151736313_1496209159_nYes, I have not blogged (what a horrible, pasty skinned verb that is) in like,1.5 years or some shit. Yes I’m just going to gloss right over the pause like it didn’t happen, cool?

I did not read enough last year. I watched a lot of television shows. I hosted nights in my home for folks to read aloud to each other from books and I did read some really great stuff (oh my Lord, read Blindness by Jose Saremago), but mainly I kept looking at my shelves and shelves of bought and borrowed books and wondering when I was going to read them. I kept wondering too, how to stop myself buying books. The answer came to me part way through the year, when I started pulling books off my shelf and delivering them to my bedside table as if new. Oh look Carlynne! That’s a book there! Isn’t that so cool and exciting?

It worked a bit. But I still kept watching TV shows while playing tetris on my phone and finished the year feeling unmotivated creatively and decidedly syrupy in the brain-tank. Watch me try and change!

January.

Wildwood Imperium– purchased last year.

The last in the YA Wildwood series by Colin Meloy. Unlike other young adult fiction around this series harkens back to a time when stories were about the hidden worlds we spent years aching to find. Set in modern day Portland (and featuring a duffel coat and Keds wearing heroine who leads a revolution on her pushbike) where a magical wilderness exists invisible to normal human eyes. The final instalment was every bit as charming, surprisingly funny and full of unassuming yet very relatable characters (a lot of whom are talking animals). This chapter in the Wildwood saga saw the fight for the wildwood extend to Portland and the world beyond, but I couldn’t help but feel like as a finish to this winsome and transporting series it was a little rushed. I do still highly recommend these three for youngins and actually all those who remember gazing into the underbrush at the back of your house and feeling the longing for some friendly eyed beast to take you by the hand and lead you into a world enchanting as something nearly tangible. Seven stars.

Lila– purchased with gift voucher

I had been twitching and mooning about this novel for months before reading. Anyone who has heard me talk at all has probably heard me dreamily affirm author Marilynne Robinson as one of the world’s greatest living novelists, an opinion I share with the Sunday Mail (quoted on the cover). Her latest novel is set in the same small American town as her previous two, Gilead, but is this time from the perspective of Lila, the softly spoken wife of Reverend John Ames. We know her from Gilead the novel, but not well. We know of the Reverend’s love for her and of her mysterious prior life and of her being much younger than her husband but not a lot else. Lila takes place at her entrance into Gilead as an itinerant drifter, chronicling her meeting of and marriage to Ames but flitting into and out of sharp recollections of Lila’s past beginning with her abduction/emancipation from her parents as a very neglected child.

Once again Robinson’s prose leaves me nearly speechless, or at least very aware of the soft and elegant way she has of carrying you through someone else’s journey, someone who now seems as real if not realer to me than people I have known for years. I ate this book altogether. I was consumed and read it basically all in one day- which for the record is not the way one should read this author- expedited by the form of the novel, in which there are no chapter breaks whatsoever. To read it is to be inside Lila’s grave, wild and rare mind, to walk where she walks, to slide painfully into the past while trying not to fall down in the present. To try to make peace with a God who was unknown to her in her time in the wilderness and with a man who she can’t trust but loves almost immediately.

Please read this book. Read all of Marilynne Robinson’s books. Read them slowly, over days and weeks, or read them twice and three times through, but please read them. She makes me want to marry words and devote myself to them for the rest of my life. 8 million.

The Handmaid’s Tale– borrowed

I had meant to read Margaret Atwood before now, but somehow found myself assuming she would be unapproachable or stale in some way. I think I must have looked over an excerpt in a class at uni and decided she was standoffish. Anyhow, I picked up the Handmaid’s Tale at Jessie’s house one night and am glad I got to finishing it last month. Firstly, on a super creepy note THIS BOOK IS ALSO SET IN A PLACE CALLED GILEAD. WHAT. Secondly, it’s really good. Atwood’s mega-dystopia is a world at war, and dying out. You only catch glimpses of the wider problems plaguing the Republic of New Gilead, as the handmaid who is telling us her story is a very small cog in a tightly wound and controlled machine where women are possessions, prized only for their ability to help repopulate the world. Atwood’s words are kind of brutal- softly beautiful, harsh and despairing all at once. It’s a pretty bleak world but the fragmented humanity still given our heroine- small pieces; a glimpse of a forbidden word, the feeling of movement under restrictive and forbidding garments- are like crumbs you must keep following. Will be reading more Atwood for sure. A+

The Goldfinch– borrowed

I have a few feelings about this book. And I think that’s to be expected because it’s like, so so big. Shit. 771 pages man. First off, to have put together a reasonably complicated story spanning around fifteen years with the level of detail, character and plot development Donna Tartt has is pretty damn impressive. I liked the thing most of the way through. I liked Theo all through his sad and complex childhood, found him beleaguered and sweet and understandably consumed in the chief problem of his life- a painting of a goldfinch. The people Theo meets are real people, who you love or hate in turns. Even the doormen at the apartment building he shared with his mother are so vivid you feel like you know what they’re like at home and are halfway to imagining another story where they are the protagonists. Theo’s likability fades considerably about two thirds of the way through at the jump to his mid-twenties. His problems say a lot about what happens to an unsupervised and understood kid left alone and grieving at a key point in his life, but this failed to keep me interested. I just wanted him to allow his friend (and saviour, in a lot of ways), the delightful and charming Hobie the benefit of trusting him with his whole complicated mess but Theo is at this point so stuck in himself he can’t see his way to do much right at all. I should say here that I like the literary style for the most part, up until this point. It was really immersive and quite moving and lovely in points but I just got sick of it all. By the last chapter- a largely sentimental mush of thought and observation that seemed out of place and barely cogent- I just really needed to not be reading about this guy anymore. Basically, I think this story could have been told in half the time. This amount of detail needs to lead somewhere more concrete than I feel Tartt got to. But what do I know. Maybe I missed the point in my quest to just… bloody… finish. She apparently won the Pulitzer prize for literature, so- who you going to believe? I give this two old rugs and an ok looking lamp.

Thanks for reading,  I don’t know why anyone would care what I think of books particularly well received ones or ones that everyone has read already, but it’s keeping me off the streets. Stay tuned for more Uninformed Literary Opinions in February!

I know it’s been a while but please read this

So hi, it’s been over a year since i posted anything on here, and I’ll get to my trivial shit at a later stage. Here, though, i have the words spoken at the funeral of Leo Seemanpillai. I don’t need to say a lot more- it was a catholic funeral, it’s obviously aimed at a religious audience, but it speaks i think to our nation as a whole.

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At Tamil asylum seeker Leo Seemanpillai’s funeral at St Mary of the Angels Catholic Parish in Geelong last week, Tamil Dominican priest Father Pancras Jordan of Pax Christi, flew down from Brisbane to lead the service. He received spontaneous and resounding applause during the funeral service for his powerful, profound and very moving Homily which he has kindly agreed we can share far and wide. See attachment and below. With thanks, Father Pan, for your strong compassion and courage to speak out so strongly at Leo’s funeral. May others follow your example.

“Dear Friends This afternoon we are gathered to say thank you and to say good bye to our beloved brother and friend Leo Seemanpillai who was killed by the harsh, unjust and cruel policy of our government. We are also gathered to pray that our brother, who shared in the sufferings of Christ, may rise with Christ in his resurrection.

Penitential Rite- Lord, we ask your pardon for our ignorance of the plight of the refugees in our country. Lord have mercy.

Lord, we ask pardon for the way in which our country has contributed to the wars in other countries that have produced so many refugees. Christ have mercy.

Lord, we ask your pardon for our poor response to those children, women and men locked in detention centres within our country. Lord have mercy.

My dear friends, We find ourselves, again and again, heartbroken for the individuals and families destroyed by our political games: a political game whereby people are slowly broken in a system of indefinite detention that dehumanises and disempowers; a political game whereby people are locked in the limbo of legislated poverty that is life on a bridging visa. We find ourselves, again, despairing for the Australian character, being shaped by leaders who normalise cruelty, vilify voiceless people and rob the world’s most vulnerable people of not only their rights, but their dignity. “The current Government Policy has about it a cruelty that does no honour to our nation,” The Australian Catholic Bishops announced in their May statement on the issue of Asylum Seekers. They proceed to say It is a policy of ‘dehumanisation’ and ‘institutionalised cruelty’. There’s no doubt that Australia’s clear message to people fleeing tyranny in our direction is “You are not welcome here.” This is unambiguous. Current policy is not about creating an “orderly system” or “saving people from drowning”. Billions of dollars are being spent on making people’s lives in detention centres and in our communities – as miserable as possible, in the hope that they will return home and convince others not to head in our direction.

Our government is actively inhospitable, proactively brutal and intentionally determined to break the spirits of people like Leo who once imagined they might find protection from oppression in our care. In a nation committed to unwelcome, with a government committed to cruelty, compassion is protest and welcome is rebellion. So, during this Eucharist I imagine that Leo would be calling us for an uprising of decency, an insurgency of hospitality, an insurrection of humanity, generosity and kindness. I am sure Leo would be inviting us to mutiny. To disobey the order to fear, unwelcome, rejection of asylum seekers and to oppose the wishes of our leaders. But this isn’t a call to arms, to take over the streets with righteous anger and clever placards. While our leaders have determined to hurt asylum seekers until their spirits are broken, and to convince every persecuted person on our planet that asylum seekers will not find safe refuge here, then every act of compassion is protest. A message of welcome is rebellion. It’s time to make a stand. It is time to consider the Australia we want to live and the values which we wish to exemplify. It is time to not merely march against brutality, but to embody hospitality and kindness. To not only rage against injustice, but to model welcome as a lifestyle. We are all called to live as the embodiment of an alternative future for our nation. A future where leadership is measured by the enhancement of human dignity, where diversity is celebrated and every human being is considered equal and deserving of fairness and freedom. Every time you welcome an asylum seeker in your community, every time you make a new friend, or help someone settle into their empty house, or write a postcard to a child in detention or help someone learn English, you’re defying the vision and instruction of our leaders. You’re saying, “welcome” to those they wish to reject – and you’re combating the insidious invasion of heartlessness into our character and communities. And so, in this nation where compassion is protest and welcome is rebellion, we’re asking you who are here, to join us by spreading a simple message of welcome through every suburb, street and home.

Most recent public opinion polls show that a significant majority of Australians support the harsh policies of the present government towards asylum seekers who come on boats. I know of no recent survey of attitudes in the Australian Catholic or Christian population towards the same issue, but it cannot have escaped us that the current policies have been put in place by a government led by a Catholic (and former seminarian) who wears his faith on his sleeve, and that the Minister for Immigration lists “Church” as his favourite hobby in “Who’s Who”. An Australian MP, making his maiden speech in Parliament in 2008, said, “From my faith I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness, to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider the welfare of others…’ That MP was Scott Morrison, the architect of Australia’s present inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. His words were an accurate representation of Christian teaching; his current actions betray that teaching, whatever he might claim. This same Scott Morrison, so insistent upon compassion and kindness in his maiden speech, is the same Scott Morrison who in 2014 chooses to ignore his faith’s values, when announcing Leo’s death at a recent press conference, by choosing not to refer to Leo by his name, but as an illegal maritime arrival (IMA).

Let me reflect what went wrong with Leo. He wrote notes about visits to doctors and counsellors. He wrote reminders to take his Olanzapine (an anti-psychotic) and Fluoxetine (an anti-depressant). In September, he detailed part of one bad week: ”Thursday – I have no sleeping Friday – bad dreams, darkness Saturday – I sleep 3 hours Sunday – my birthday”. This government was in power at that time. Furthermore Leo would call refugee advocates, asking if he would be sent back. In October he learnt what Immigration Minister Scott Morrison had told Australians: ”Anyone who may have come from Sri Lanka should know that they will go back to Sri Lanka.” These words of Morrison made Leo sick in his soul. Later in his journal he wrote: ”If I’m deported back to Sri Lanka, torture is certain because I’m a Tamil” and ”In the midst of rejection stand tall. Life is hope.” Over the summer of 2013/14, he struggled. In February he checked into a mental health facility and, while there, he tried to hang himself with a towel. In March he moved into a flat above the Barwon River, and chose the small back room because it had the best natural light. ”He was afraid of the night,” said Cathie Bond, a volunteer and de facto mum to Leo. ”I gave him my grandson’s little night light. He said it was like a shiny moon.”

Leo fretted about his fate, and joined Amnesty International and the Australian Red Cross believing membership could somehow help him stay. He went to church on Good Friday and kissed the Holy Cross: ”I asked Jesus to bless me, and to bring a resolution to my past struggles and to not have any more struggles in the future.” Outwardly Leo was upbeat, visiting friends and calling people. The day before he died they said he sounded ”happy”, ”brighter” and ”more alert than he had in a long time”.

My dear friends, for us who work in the area of pastoral care we know often when someone is contemplating suicide they appear to be “happy” because in reality, they have made the decision to end all miseries. They feel a sense of freedom and in the case of Leo, freedom from all cruel policy and denial of fundamental human rights. In the Gospel today we heard what astounding and wonderful things may take place when strangers and refugees are welcomed and given hospitality. “I was a stranger and you welcome me” (Mt.25:35). This passage is part of the parable of the judgement of the Son of Man coming in glory. The astonished people who are gathered around the throne of the King did not realise at the time that they showed welcome and hospitality to their Lord himself and they voice their amazement. Thus, the criterion for a Christian believer to enter eternal life is based on welcoming and rendering hospitality to strangers. The Christian believer therefore encounters their Lord in the stranger. It is by the way one treats the poor and the stranger that one’s worthiness to enter eternal life is tested.”

What a magnificent puzzle you are.

I write this late at night, with drooping eyes and in full knowledge that I want to write this better and with more back story and potentially hilarious anecdotes and or stories about dragons. I am also aware that this will seem hokey, and that I strive to keep spiritual speak out of here, usually. But I must write it now, pjamas and hoke or no.

I have been thinking a lot this past year.

A little over a year ago I became a member of the Uniting church, which was for me a very big deal. I wrote a little about why in a letter to the church, and I did so because I had fallen in love with my congregation and the glimpses of the wider church I got when I attended the National Young Adult Leaders Conference.

A year is a long time. I have been thinking a lot.

I decided to start a period of discernment a few months back*. I felt a little hypocritical entering the period at this time, coinciding as it did with my wading into a bog of doubt. I plan to write about the doubting itself at a later stage when I’m not sitting in bed on the nod, but suffice to say I was not exactly like the horse in Neverending Story, but I was close. I hadn’t necessarily fallen out of love with the church, but I had looked for the first time with any integrity at what that love sat on.

It’s been a stark couple of months.

A couple of weeks back, surrounded by gumtrees at our church camp, I met with God again. Truthfully, I had not fully surrendered Her. He was there in the gentle reminders of hope, in the stories of resurrection, in the faces of my church family, who are just about the most guileless and open-hearted people you can imagine.

Tonight, I sit in bed, one leg slowly numbing, weird hair pins lumps in my hair, near sleep, but elated. Today I was at Synod** with a whole lot of my church. Today, and yesterday and the day before, we wrestled with some awful stuff. We met with bad news and we entertained grief, and we encompassed dissent and were not satisfied.

But.

Today I saw people who disagree vehemently with one another co-exist, and even like each other. I saw people change their minds. Religious people. I saw people be heard, and celebrated, and I heard us all reminded of hope, of the extraordinary Love we are drawn around like moths.

And today, I prayed earnestly to a God that I believe in, and that I don’t understand. Today I joined with others and we invoked the sacred name of our creator and that was something that I wanted to do. And whether or not you believe in God or organised religion, believe that this is a little like water to a dying woman.

Today I was a part of a church that wants to do better and that makes mistakes and is a bit of a fuck up but loves each other and more than that, really honestly wants to make you a cup of tea and have a chat and longs to hold your hand as you scream with anguish and wants to say that you’re OK and sorry about the times when the name of our Beloved was used to hurt you.

Today, we were finger painters. We made messes and the paint is in the grooves of our fingerprints and on some of the walls but we are trying our best to make something beautiful, and that is what I want you to know.

To those who hate the church, I’m sorry, we are trying.

To those who are in the church, know that we are trying.

To those who after today have paint on their faces, is it not lovely that we are trying?

To my church: thank you, thank you, thank you. I will keep trying.

 

 

* This is a time through which a person in the Uniting Church can examine their faith and calling with support from the church, to see if they want to enter ordained ministry or just to see where they fit, how they fit, how they are and who they are.

**Synod is the gathering of a particular Synod of the Uniting Church. For instance, my church is part of the presbytery of Port Philip West, which along with other presbyteries is part of the VicTas Synod. We gather to report to one another the things that we’ve been doing, to air concerns and chat about important decisions.

A note to LaTrobe University: we were not really finger painters.

 

Stuff I don’t mind no. 16: Thriftshop and the state of modern music.

I’ll start by apologising for being a little behind the times. I sometimes have opinions about stuff and then forget to write about them for months at a stretch on account of being busy with my growing Benedict Cumberbatch obsession amongst other things. Anyway.

My penchant for a bit of pop music here and there is not news. Actually, nothing I have to say here is actually news, except perhaps if I self published a newspaper titled Stuff That Has Happened or Perhaps Been Thought About By and To Carlynne in which case my listening to LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem on the way to work would be stopping the presses.

I do love a hit here and there. The masses make songs popular because they are fun or catchy or enjoyable in some way (and also obviously because they celebrate grinding against some bird on the d-floor and make us all feel a little bit more dirty). Every now and then, we all need a dance, and a tune to dance to. It’s helpful if the song we dance to doesn’t make its living off kicking women in the face, or rely too heavily on the repetition of key phrases such as “life, oh life, oh life-doo doo doo doo doo”, but mainly we just want a beat that keeps us moving and a fun chorus to wail while doing the dishes.

Thriftshop by Macklemore was first introduced to me by a friend at work. I dug the shit out of it immediately on account of it being just problematic amounts of fun and, delightfully, a hip hop song that scorned the usual brand and status whoring that the genre is known for and openly praised op-shopping. I then proceeded to ‘introduce’ it to all of my friends, completely unaware that everyone already knew this song as it had been thrashed by all stations for months.

I kept enjoying it right up until voting time came for JJJ’s Hottest 100, the yearly countdown of Australia’s (and by Australia’s, I mean Triple J listeners who can be bothered to vote and the few of us who continue to vote despite being hopelessly outmanned in a sea of music we have never heard) favourite songs.

Thriftshop came in at number 1, as voted by… those that voted (including me! Come at me bro). This, though, was apparently NOT OK according to lots of people who thought that this spelt various disastrous things like:

People enjoying songs that they themselves don’t enjoy

Music these days being nothing but awful dub-step and awful hip hop

Folks not knowing that they should only enjoy the lyric heavy, heady-theme laiden alt music and not the poppy fun stuff involving hooks and swears

Presumably folks relishing the idea of op-shopping, which is a gateway shopping and will lead to the purchase of both infants and ivory on the black market

There was such aversion to this song arriving at number 1, despite the fact that it getting there meant that a lot of people must actually have dug it. It seemed a portent of an apocalypse of Bad Music, that would sneak into our homes and give our children terrible haircuts and lower our IQs by repeating lines like “This is fucking awesome” in our ears as we sleep. Heaven knows most things I utter on a daily basis are Shakespearian as compared to that gutter-esque filth. I will not be debased, Macklemore! Take your gleeful and entirely dance-able espousing of the benefits of thrift elsewhere!!

I think perhaps that what Thriftshop’s success actually spells is that a lot of people liked the song, for the very plausible reason that they liked it. I think perhaps also a lot of these people could have been people like me who enjoy a variety of different musics, some of it theme laiden alt business with the dramatic synths or the seventeen part harmonies and some of it the fun stuff with the catchy hooks that make us want to flap and twirl by the sink.

I feel OK about the state of modern music because I know (just like most other people do) that when I want to find new and exciting artists I need only ask my friends and there they will be, waiting to be laid bare inside my ears. There is a crap-tonne of wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking and ear blistering music floating around, and if some of it is dub-steppy or hip-hoppy or not your bag in other ways, common sense would suggest you steer clear of that stuff and look for what makes you sing.

And furthermore if as many people are dissatisfied with the state of modern music around the globe as claimed to be on Facebook post Hottest 100, then odds are some of them are musicians who can put their accordions where their mouths are and make some music that they, and maybe even the masses, will like.

In the mean time, I’ma keep dancing in my kitchen, because music is fun and I feel like that’s sort of the point.

Stuff I don’t mind no.78: Summer pissing off!

Despite what anyone who has heard me complain incessantly and unoriginally over the past two months might think, I am actually a fan of all of the seasons.

This might be considered a bit wishy washy, a bit PC, a little too people pleasing perhaps for the hip, just-pick-one crowd, but to them I say: I’ll calmly enjoy whatever I like thanks, you best believe that.

I love Spring’s over the top sprays of colour, shimmying wildly out of winter with a “look! You can come out again! It smells good!”, hurling flowers and scents in everyone’s faces with reckless abandon. I love the thoughtfulness of Autumn, when the leaves turn and dance to the ground, when the air is crisper on one’s face. I adore the rugging up and settling in of Winter, skies in tumult, greys layered on greys, a sort of poise and gentle solemnity in the air. And I even enjoy Summer, despite the title of this ode to its buggering off. The long evenings, and the feeling of possibility that comes with the end of a year and the start of another, the calm certainty that adventure is a real thing that might happen at any moment, the yawning blue skies that, clichéd or not, are pretty much guaranteed to make me smile; I do get why people dig it. Generally I prefer the colder months, as I tend to run at a higher temp than other folks and also look bitchin’ in scarves, but I do get the appeal.

But not this year. This year’s Summer, the seasonal equivalent of Marty McFly’s guitar solo in Back To The Future- dragging on much too long and leaving everyone very uncomfortable- can fuck right off and keep going.

This year’s Summer was an impolite, overbearing jerk. It had this wonderful mild beginning, where the it cushioned the really hot days between two much cooler ones to make sure we were OK, you know? Just a little dibby dabble in some heat- and then, when it’s supposed to be on its way out, it bumps it up to 5, 7, 12 days straight of Oh-my-god-I-think-that-puddle-was-my-skin hot, leaving Autumn just standing to the side, awkwardly tapping its fist against its leg, waiting for the dickhead to get off the stage. “OH I’M HOT! I’M HOT NOW!! YEAH! I’M NEVER LEAVING AND YOU’LL ALL DIIIIE!!!”.

Ass.

I genuinely don’t understand people that bemoan the end of such a time. I, for one, do not wish to remain swathed in my own bodily excretions for weeks on end, or to flee like vermin from any glimpse of cheery sunlight for fear of bursting into flame. I do not enjoy the pervasive apathy and exhaustion that seems to cover everyone and everything like there’s a big fat sweaty dude that has died and fallen on top of us all and is rotting slowly along with our will to live or even move our limbs and movement of any kind becomes impossible and cause for stupid irritability at everything and leads to irrational hatred of parties one suburb over and becoming convinced in the space of a Tuesday afternoon that the only future you can know involves moving to Alaska tomorrow.

I know people dig it, I know we are supposed to be a sunburnt country, I know we’re like, beach folk that thrive and bloom in the summer sun BUT WE BURN TOO, YOU KNOW, AND THERE IS NO COVER NEXT TO THE OCEAN- JUST BLINDING WHITE HOT SAND YO.

In summation: Hooray for Autumn!

Hooray for having worn actual pants for like, days in a row now; hooray for a cool breeze on my skin; hooray for sleepy time being something to look forward to instead of a nightmare world of too much shit touching me at once.

Hooray!