An old photograph...

I thought I would share an old photograph. Me and my two friends Jeff & Ian after a the graduation service of the Melbourne College of Divinity in 1975.
Exercise report....
I am still exercising... this week so far... a run, a bike ride, a run and a gym session. Even when I was in Australia there were a few runs, lots of walks and a gym session. The track I ran in Australia was along side Semaphore beach. Beside the track was a lot of scrubby stuff before you got to the sandy beach. For a kiwi it was a bit unsettling to see heaps of signs up saying "Beware of snakes". Yikes!!! There are some advantages living in NZ. All the exercise does not seem to change much.... I am still overweight and still have blood pressure medication... Oh well.

Love hurts again...

I have been a cry baby in the last week, and I don't know why. Me, David Brown has cried. I never cry! When I was at school and got the strap or the cane from my teachers I would purposely hold it together. I would grimly accept the punishment, eyeball the teacher and put a grin on my face.... never cry. This tactic made one poor teacher lose her cool and strap me around the legs in an angry frenzy. Even on ocassion when my dad or mum hit me I would never cry in front of them, never show they had beaten me, just glare coldly at them.  Mum broke a series of spatulas on us, dad used his army web belt (until we hid it under the bath) and then it was any stick he could grab.... one of granddad's old walking sticks came in handy. But me cry? ... nah. I have cried a couple of times after taking a funeral of people I have loved... once it was compounded with grief from my mum's death at which I never cried. But with the death of my friend Ian I have cried more than at any other time. When I arrived in Adelaide and my other friend Jeff met me we hugged and cried! Two men? When I was preparing for the memorial service and running over the lines, I choked up. Alone in bed, thinking of the journey Ian and I had come, the discussions we'd had, I choked up.  When Ian's daughter started the funeral by singing "the Rose" I was watering up and choking by the end of the first verse. Doing my part in the funeral, I struggled to hold it together. Saying "goodbye" to Jeff at the airport, I choked up and virtually had to text him with what I wanted to say when I sat in the departure lounge. 

I have been trying to figure out why it hurts so much? Maybe my tears are a build up of all the sadnesses I experience?? I loved Ian, but he could be such a pain sometimes .... very controlling.  And if having friends hurts so much when they are gone, why have them? 

I am a bit like that. When I was a child there were some things that happened that made me not trust adult people. ... nothing big mind you, but big and formative for a little boy.  Then I was just starting to enjoy relating to my father as a friend and he up and died on me. I know that because of these events I find it hard getting close to people or allowing people to get close to me. Since then I have had two close friends in my life who I have had a disagreements with and our friendship has broken up. Each time it has hurt! I have got close and allowed people to get close but they have (from my perspective) turned on me and dented my self esteem and confidence in a big way. So I tend to be a loner.... lots of friendly acquaintances, but few real friends. It is safe that way.

When I first met Ian 37 years ago I was turned off by him. He seemed to me to be dogmatic and conservative theologically. Jeff was more my type and he lived in the same building, so we chatted more often. Then I think I was drawn to Ian because at least he was "real". He was prepared to think. He was also fun to be around with a ready laugh.... though often as a kiwi I was the target of his joking. Over the years we have evolved together. We had just started skyping together and that made me feel less alone.... then he up and dies! 

I value the friends I have. I hope I am a good friend. I hope I do not get more "stand offish" because of this loss.

Journeying with others.

I was looking for some bedtime reading last night (my current book was still in my luggage) and in my bedside cabinet found a book of reflections by Charles Ringma.  (Wash the feet of the world with Mother Teresa) I opened it randomly and came across this passage which expresses what I was struggling to say in my last post.

And in serving others the greatest blessing we can bring is often not the giving of things, but the gift of ourselves.

Mother Teresa underscores this in her words to her sisters, "Do not look for spectacular works. What is important is the gift of ourselves."

This may initially sound surprising. Don't the poor need food, housing, and health care? Should we, therefore, not give them what they most basically need? The answer is, of course, we should give as much as we can. But others can't be the recipients of only our welfare and generosity. They are people who need to be loved and known. They welcome our interest and friendship, not simply our giving. Journeying with others through the highs and lows of their daily realities is the great gift we can give. ......

To journey with people, rather than simply to give them things, has important implications. The most important of these is that we are invited to be an incarnational presence to the poor.....

While we may always want to do do more, we should not withhold the greater gifts - the gifts of companionship and solidarity.

Sometimes it is affirming to realise that someone agrees with your thinking, and can express it better than you can. :-) 

Serving with respect...

I am back in NZ after taking part in my friend's funeral. One of the parts of his life that we celebrated was a ministry he had in the Kensington area of Melbourne. This area had a lot of high rise flats in it and people with a lot of problems. Ian and his wife Curly set up the "Kensington Christian Network". It was a pioneering ministry. 

They had a house in the Kensington area close to where the flats were. They moved there on a salary that was the same as they would have got on an unemployment benefit, Ian did not want to be living on more than the people he was ministering to were on. He worked in the community on a number of projects, networking with various agencies in the area. There were too many to mention here. But their house operated virtually as an open home, there were always people staying there and always extra people there for tea. Their house seemed to have expanding walls, it was mind blowing, gutsy and generous ministry. At the memorial service I recalled being given a baby to feed, it's mother was having difficulties and was at Ian & Curly's for support. There was another woman who sat down beside me and talked for a while. She was partly intoxicated, and leaned across me to play with the baby. She smelt so bad that my nose twitched involuntarily. Yet Ian, and Curly showed nothing but love, friendship and respect for this lady and the various people who came into their lives. As Ian and Curly related to them they did so with much laughter, joy and just one on one connection. Their were heaps of people at the service who attested to the impact of the Corlett's love on their lives.

I got to thinking about this. There are people who will do "stuff" for poor people. That is all well and good. But there is a big difference between doing stuff for people and doing it with genuine friendship and respect. I have found this with Christmas dinner volunteers. Some want to come and dish out food to the poor etc. But when we invite them to eat with them, they say, "Oh no I don't want to do that!" I recall asking Curly while at Kensington how she managed, and her reply then was, "I remember that these are people who Jesus loves, just as he loves me." It was said of Ian that he had the ability to see the treasure in the people others would consign to the scrap heap of life. I try to exercise this sort of genuine friendship in our drop-in. As I headed out to Australia last Friday, I called at the drop-in on the way to the air port. I was quite moved by the friendship and warmth extended to me in my loss.  These people treated me as a friend. Each one has a precious personality and something to treasure and celebrate. My task is to see that, enjoy that and respect and value them as a person.  If I do that I am representing God to them. Basic respect is so important, affirming and will lift people up.

People and cultures..the same but different.

Because of my friend's death I now find myself in South Australia for a few days. I am to take part in his memorial service tomorrow.

I flew to Auckland on Friday night arriving at around 10:30 p.m. after a very busy day. I was to be at the air port again by 6 a.m. so I decided just to walk from the domestic terminal to the international terminal and spend the night there trying to get some sleep somewhere. I did not get much sleep..... but what an interesting place a terminal is! It was interesting watching arrivals and departures. The tearful farewells and the just as tearful welcomes. It was so interesting seeing a great variety of different races coming through, watching them trying to work out systems, relating to loved ones and saying their hellos and goodbyes. You could see familiar feelings of love and human ties. It does not matter who we are, we have similar human relationships and connections and I could feel for and identify with these unknown people I was watching. I flew to Adelaide next to a delightful little boy from America. We chatted from time to time. He was a young perhaps 8 year old boy from America, I was an "old" man from NZ, yet we discovered an enjoyable fun short term friendship. I recall seeing a photo of some remains of a mother and daughter from a civilization about 100,000 years ago. I thought "That mum probably had similar feelings toward her children as mums have today, yet a very different world." We are the same.

But......Even though it is a sad time I have enjoyed catching up with families and friends of my two special friends, Ian and Jeff. People have been lovely and welcoming and I have felt at home.... but also not at home. There is a difference between Australians and New Zealanders, don't ask me to define it, but there is a different "culture". When I spend time here, as friendly and as welcoming as Australians always are, I find I feel a bit like a fish out of water. In NZ I know how to relate. I know familiar and expected patterns of conversation and have a common heritage and history when in New Zealand. But somehow its different here and I become more awkward when visiting here, because that unseen familiar stuff we take for granted is not there. As close as NZ and Australia are, there is a difference in a different culture. We need to remember that. We are "the same" but "different". (An example... Jeff is a hospital chaplain... I am in his office doing this. Today Jeff and his male colleague are wearing jeans. I have never seen a hospital chaplain in NZ at work wearing jeans.)

I had a man once suggest I should go preach and teach in Vanuatu. I said, "I have no right! I do not know their culture and their life.... until I understand that and "be" there, I cannot be telling them what to do." I would stand by that. I have even found it in different workplaces I visit. The culture of the fire brigade is different from that at the brewery and that of St John Ambulance... and if I assume that they are the same I will make some big blunders. At all times, in new situations we need to sit and listen to where people are and what makes them tick, and not too easily assume that "we are the same". People are people, similar with similar feelings etc. but also so different. That's what makes the world we live in so interesting.

He has gone...

Just an update.... my friend Ian died. I have been asked to take part in the funeral with the other member of the trio, Jeff and another of his friends. Jeff and I were pretty choked up when we were talking on the phone last night... don't know how we will go at the funeral. I may have said it before... sometimes life sucks. But I guess grief and sadness is the price you pay for the friendship we enjoyed.

Photo: (1) Ian and his incredible wife Curly and their special daughter Becky (Who turned 20 the other day) They have 4 other kids who are all adults with families of their own. (2) The trio... Jeff, Ian and I as we dressed to go to the centenary dinner of our theological college in Melbourne.

Bugger!

Please excuse the expletive. I had a phone call from a friend (Jeff May) last night to say that a mutual friend (Ian Corlett) in Adelaide had had a massive stroke. It is very serious apparently. The prognosis is not good. The three of us went through theological college together in Melbourne from 1972 - 76. We argued, played jokes on each other, sorted out our beliefs and shared four years of accelerated personal growth. I recall the principal calling us into his office telling us that we should split up and spend more time with other people, that we were too close. We won an award together. The three of us at the prize giving went forward to receive a prize. They could not split us up in choosing which one deserved it. Since then we have gone our separate ways and lived in different places, but in a sense still "been with" each other on life's journey. We have been as close as close brothers. When we have contact we go from hello to in depth sharing fairly fast. We have kept up with each other's changes, wept with each other and laughed lots with each other. One special time for us all was when we got up before dawn and as the sun was rising we jogged around Ayers Rock (Ularu) together. I have told these friends stuff about myself few others would know. Recently Ian discovered the joys of skype and hassled me to line up a camera. We have had a few conversations in the last couple of weeks. Now it seems he wont be doing much in the way of communication any more. I am saddened. Friends like this are hard to come by.

My first reaction on first hearing the news was walking around the house saying expletives. I am still doing that as he and his family come to mind again and again. I am "with them" in thought and kind of distracted.

Secondly I want to be there, but how? And what good would I be anyway? They have heaps of friends. I have a massive "to do" list here over the next few weeks, I'm not rolling in spare money and it is so uncertain at this point. But I want to be beside them.

Thirdly it is a reminder of your own frailty and the ticking away of time. He is about three years older than me. We are in "that" age grouping when stuff like strokes and heart attacks happen. You know that the time left in life to do stuff you would like to do and achieve things is getting smaller.

Fourth... It is so hard to concentrate on work when things like this happen. Your mind is continually going to them and their situation. I better go and try to do some but I had to blog about this, for my sake.

Photo: Ian on his vintage bike. The three of us, Ian on my left.