I am "sad".

The other day a friend said to me, "I am sad today. ...Do you ever get sad like that?" My answer was, "I am permanently sad", but it was inappropriate and perhaps futile to explore my sadness.

What do I mean by sad? My father died when I was a young teenager. For some time after there was a man around the road whose car had a similar sound to dad's old Morris Oxford van. I would be in my bedroom and hear that sound and think, "Here's dad home!" and sometimes even get up to meet him. Then reality hit and I knew again that it would never be. Years later at my daughter's wedding I still felt keenly the absence of my father. There is a sadness you carry because you know that some longed for reality will never really happen. It is not necessarily a sadness that stops you enjoying life, just a part of your heart that is permanently grieving. I am permanently sad on five counts, I will share with you four of them.

1. Lack of confidence. I am permanently sad because as a child I had a certain confidence in myself sqeezed out of me, and I have never regained that. I am shy and lack confidence in everything I do, even though I know I am good at some things. I have never been able to grow out of that. It does not stop me doing things, it just makes everything I do a lot harder. I forever fear failure and rejection. Teachers, leaders and parents have an awesome responsibility. I suspect I have not helped my children in this way also.

2. I am sad because I was not as good a father as I would want to be. Looking back I regret some of the things I did and didn't do as a father as my children grew, and I can't change that now.

3. I ache for hurting people. Jesus looked over Jerusalem and wept, saying he wished "they knew the ways of peace." In my encounters with people I ache because they so often look for happiness in things that can never satisfy. Jesus said, "If you lose your life, you will find it." I believe that to be part of the essence of life. At two levels I find people unwilling to live by this. (a) We try to operate successful relationships without "losing" ourselves. Often we end up hurting ourselves, the other and others. Often too I notice, a further hardening of heart results and life and love are limited by a greater fear of being hurt. I ache when I see people not finding "belonging", closeness and "a-place-to-be" in their partnerships. Instead they find competing power games, and loneliness. I see this so often and it makes me sad. (b) Secondly our consumer society and materialism fools us into thinking we can find happiness in grasping. I have discovered happiness comes whenever I risk a giving lifestyle. I had a man say to me when he learned of yet another voluntary project I was getting involved in, "You've got to look after yourself first Dave!". I find I have never been able to convince people that in a giving-lifestyle there is an inner unity, a sense of purpose and a feeling of being "connected to the essence of life" that cannot be found by "looking after yourself". I ache for a divided, hurting world where we are all "looking after ourselves" and missing out on life as it could be.(This sadness is a driving force in my life)

4. A church I will never see or experience. I am nearly at the end of my career as a church minister. A career I entered in a search to try to bridge the gap between the world I knew as a plumber and the church I shared in. I have not had the skills or the circumstances where I have been able to experience great success in that search. This post was prompted by listening to Bishop John Spong talking about the "Call of Jesus" on U tube. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJICIGQl0JU&feature=related ) He described a discipleship and a church atmosphere I long to see and be a part of. I am sad because I will never see the church get remotely close to that sort of ideal. In some ways I feel I have spent my life propping up a distortion of what I long for instead of being able to change it... and maybe I should have given up and moved on long ago.

As I say, these sadnesses do not stop me finding deep joy and pleasure in life. It is just that I live with a permanent sense of grief in the corner of my heart. They are part of what keeps me reaching for that "impossible dream" and to try to make this life better for people around me.