A God-Awful Day!

I don't really know how to blog about my day, without sounding either whingey, or really trite and twee - plus it involves exposing my (hopefully temporarily) tatty financial state & probably poor management of some things, to the blogosphere.  Nonetheless, I want to share - because right now, I'm just boggling with wonder!

Let me begin with our recent "series of unfortunate events".  (I was hoping the superstition that "bad things come in threes" was true... unfortunately if it is, our run of "bad luck" is not over yet - we've begun again - so I'm dropping that idea!)

The Furore (about Mars Hill and "that" viral video)

Seems my ruminations on control in relationships were quite timely.  A couple of things seem to have really stirred up the blogosphere this week, and in my mind they both relate.

Since the blogosphere is largely American, and the fuss may not have filtered through to all my Aussie readers ...  I will briefly repeat what is now "old news".  A large and influential mega-church in the States has come under fire for the abusive use of "church discipline" towards one of its members.  At the same time, a video has gone viral, in which a young man explains passionately in poetry why he loves Jesus, but hates "religion".

The whole story on the church abuse thing is very well documented here, and the viral video can be found here.  (And thank you, Winn Collier, whose thoughtful post first got me involved in this conversation)

The church abuse story, to me, just smacks of everything that is wrong with "religion".  Rules over people, control, judgment, blind adherence to some kind of "formula" at the expense of human lives.  And following Jesus, and avoiding "religion" has been a bit of a mantra of mine, for some time now.  Yet Jeff Bethke's video sat uneasily with me.

Letting go...

This post is probably going to be more questions and ruminations than answers or great wisdom...  but some thoughts on love and friendship have been rolling around in my head, and I thought I'd let them out for some air!

I truly believe that love is everything.  Relationships are what matters.  The rest is secondary.  But every human relationship is an interactive dance...  finding that beautiful and delicate balance between you and I, between desiring and controlling, between freedom and obligation...

Our relationships with one another can be the most sustaining, or the most damaging forces in our lives.  We are designed to relate to one another.  We are each of us part of a family, a community, and a society.  Beyond that, we belong to the complex interweaving of life that is our world.  We are not simply individuals.  Our relationships are part of us - and when they are broken, part of us is broken too.

So.

How do we dance that delicate dance, without treading on toes or forcing others in directions only we want to go?  How do we sustain healthy relationships without being pushed, coerced, or shackled into heavy and unsustainable obligations? 

Just Breathe

So now, in sunny Australia, we are having our summer holidays.  I have to tell you, I truly love January.  Christmas and New Year rush is over, and we have nearly a whole month where the pace slows, the pressures of work and school disappear, the weather is generally gorgeous....  and I can finally breathe. 

There have been a few really significant moments of clarity in my otherwise muddled and messy life.  I think it's safe to say that all of these moments followed a really significant amount of "breathing space", of one kind or another.  In 2010, 6 months or more of being unwell and out of work turned out to be the greatest gift I could receive.  I found myself again (not that I was looking - I didn't even realise I'd lost me, I'd been so busy!). And other really important realisations - and I mean realisations of the mind-blowing, paradigm altering, life-changing kind - all seem to have arrived after a period of quietness and inactivity.