"Yeah gidday... how's it going?" ....WOW!

Any faithful readers of my blog probably get annoyed with my negativity. Well today there is none of that. I just strolled back from doing my workplace chaplaincy visit to the brewery. As I walked back along town in the sun I was thinking (to mutilate the words of a song) "I'm the luckiest man in the whole.... country!" I went along there and talked to different guys, and came away with a sense of the holy. It happened on Tuesday this week during my visits to St John Ambulance and at the fire stations. I can't tell you what people talked about in specifics, but just the events of their life, their health, their kids,... just "stuff". There were no big counselling issues or problems, but just significant interesting "stuff". After each session of chaplaincy this week I have come away thinking, "Wow! What a privilege to be a part of that!"

There is something precious and indeed sacred in conversation where one person meets another person and is "real" with another. I find it special to go to these places and people actually want to tell me about duck shooting, their projects, their kids etc. I think it is a great privilege to be allowed into their lives. I once said to a friend, "There is something sacred in 'hello' and 'have a good week' can be a heartfelt prayer". Never underestimate the power for support, affirmation and change in the normal conversation. "God" is somehow within the interaction.

Another song says, "I see friends shaking hands saying 'How do you do?', ...they're really saying 'I love you'" I think that is so right! Two friends at the brewery are always giving cheek to one another and they were in full flight this morning... they're really saying..."I love you". I love watching people interact in friendship, it is like watching God move. Once when I was a young minister at Palmerston North an elderly lady came out of the church after the service tut tutting away to herself. I asked her what the trouble was. Quite agitated she said, "Listen to them! Church is just finished and they are all talking! That's a sacred building! Can't they wait till they get outside?" I can't remember what I replied but these days I would want to say, "And that conversation is sacred."

I often hate my job and feel like a square peg in a round hole. But I stick at it because I very often just love my job. To murder yet another song, "People who meet people, are the luckiest people..." and I get paid to do that!

Theology??

I have been thinking about starting another blog. I want to begin to write out my theology and do some heavy thinking. I prefer these posts to be short and light. Yesterday I met a guy who made me think about what "theology" is. He is a very intelligent and thoughtful man who used to come to our drop-in centre some years ago. He is a published author, so quite accomplished in his own right. I bumped into him at a bus stop and chatted briefly before he hopped on his bus. He asked me if I was still doing my thing up at the church. He then asked if they still move ministers on regularly and how that happened. He suggested that I might get invited elsewhere. I told him that my "theology" probably does not make me an attractive option for a lot of churches. "Theology?" he said, "Your theology is that you're a man of action, always have been... that's your theology!"
What is theology?