Kākā Cam

In recent weeks I've been greatly enjoying watching kākā cam: a live stream of a kākā nest.  It's a project of Wellington City Council - one of a 'halo' of nesting boxes they've set up around Zealandia.

When Sarah first introduced it to me a couple of weeks ago, the chicks were just (highly active) balls of fluff.  Now their wings seem to be almost fully fledged and they have distinct parrot beaks.  They keep trying to flex their wings and to (presumably) sharpen their beaks on the wooden walls of the nest, although their main activities continue to be standing on each other and wrestling :-)  Yesterday I noticed their mum grooming them for the first time, and she seems to be spending much greater periods away from the nest now than she used to.  They're not changing so much day-to-day as they were earlier, but I'm still finding it fascinating.  I've never been able to watch a nest like this before and I'm loving it!

PS It seems to use very little bandwidth, so you can leave it on for long periods of time without chewing through your monthly allowance :-)

Human selfishness/sinfulness

Update: a video of me sharing this story at my church is now available here.

Recently, a friend came over for a cuppa.  There'd been a story in the news about some restaurant owners who'd been paying their staff well under minimum wage and making them work huge numbers of hours per week.

My friend was flabbergasted by the situation.  She kept saying she couldn't understand it, and struggled to understand 'man's inhumanity to man'.

Her reaction surprised me: it didn't seem that difficult to understand.  To me, it was yet another example of the selfishness that runs deep in all of us.

I felt I didn't respond to her comments very well at the time: I kept on referring to other 'distant' situations so kept the focus on 'those terrible people', rather than on how we all do this kind of thing.  But I kept thinking about it and came to feel that God wanted me to raise it again with her and tell her how I saw the situation.  I've been praying for some years that my friend will come to follow Jesus, but one of the main barriers to her doing so seems to be that she doesn't realise she needs him.  She doesn't lie and steal etc., so she doesn't see herself as having anything she needs to be 'saved' from.

I thought I'd have to store these ideas up for a while (I'm not having visitors at the moment as part of my current resting regime), but then I realised I'd actually be seeing her twice this weekend!  Martin's away on respite at the moment and this friend will be bringing me my breakfast twice while he's gone.

So, yesterday, I spent a lot of time thinking through what I wanted to say to her.  What I came up with is basically this:

I've been thinking a lot recently about the story you were talking about with the restaurant owners who were paying their staff next to nothing.  You seemed to find it really hard to understand how they could do that, but it didn't seem that strange to me.  You see, it seemed that they were doing something not that different from what I do far too often.

They were basically being selfish.  Getting all the money they could by paying as little as they thought they could get away with.  I haven't done that exactly, but I do other things that are just as selfish.

For example, the other week someone wanted to spend some time with me.  It turned out that they wanted to spend most of that time complaining to me about a situation they're finding really frustrating.  I didn't really want to listen to that, so I kept saying to them "you just need to do xyz" and then changing the subject.  It wasn't until quite a bit later that I realised what I was doing was being selfish.  I was telling myself that I was helping them, but really I was shutting them up because I didn't want to listen to them.

Maybe those restaurant people were even doing something like that: it's obvious to us that they were being selfish, but they could even have been telling themselves they were helping their staff (like I told myself I was helping my friend) - after all, they were giving them a job, helping them to be in NZ etc.

And that selfishness is what I think Jesus came to save us from: from doing what works for us and not thinking (or caring) about what happens to other people.

He doesn't get rid of that tendency all at once: I've been a Christian for ages and I still have it!  But, bit by bit, he roots it out.  I can see in myself that it's getting less over time - although in some ways it feels like it's getting worse, too, because I'm more aware of it!  And one day it'll all be gone and I'll be who I was made to be :-)

So this morning, after my friend had brought me my breakfast, I asked her if she had time for a chat.  She brought a cuppa and sat with me and I said what I'd prepared.  It went remarkably naturally, and she was interested in what I had to say.  We carried on talking for another 20 minutes or so, and she and I both came back to the ideas I'd raised several times.

I certainly haven't convinced her that she's a sinner in need of saving (that's God's job, anyway!) but I felt she heard and understood what I had to say and was interested in my perspective :-)

Christmas presents done!

I can't quite believe it!

I set myself a target of finishing our Christmas presents and Christmas letter two months before my brother and family arrive, in order to give myself a good opportunity to rest.  It didn't really feel possible, but I found a bunch of ways to simplify what I normally do and gave it my best shot.  And now, right on target, all the presents (except for perishable food ones) are not only done, but wrapped!  I doubt the Christmas letter will be finished by the end of today, but I've still done much better than I really believed possible :-)

Yay!

Heather with Christmas and October-December birthday presents

Kelly Tarlton's

On Tuesday we visited Kelly Tarlton's.  It's been in the planning for around a year, and we were delighted to finally make it reality!  My recent cold and ear troubles meant I wasn't as well-rested beforehand as would have been ideal, but we managed to spend around four hours there (including lunch and two substantial rest breaks) and got around the whole display.  It was great!  Very tired now, though :-(

A very happy Heather viewing the sharks in the main tunnel

You can see more photos from our visit on flickr, here.  Click on each photo for a description of what's going on.  Make sure you mute your computer's audio before viewing either of the videos: our camera adds horrid sounds to all videos...

The next two months are now blocked out for resting: my brother and his family will be visiting in December/January, as will Martin's Thai sister and her husband.  No more fun outings till they arrive, and no more seeing my friends till well after they've gone.  It was great we got to sneak this in first :-)

Confronted by the things I've lost

The other day we drove to my parents' place (about 25 minutes across town) to stay with my parents for a week over my birthday.  As we went along the motorway, I became more and more sad.  Seeing people briskly going about their business, seeing how expansive the world was, confronted me and filled me with sadness.  I can't interact with that big world: it's too fast and too overwhelming to me.  But once upon a time I was part of it.  Mostly, I manage to kind of forget that it exists.  Seeing it yesterday (and perhaps seeing it when I'm run down, dealing with a cold and perforated eardrum) somehow made me have to face that it's still there but it's no longer something I can be part of.

I think I mostly manage to 'pass' as normal.  I've constructed my life such that, when people see me, I have enough energy to interact with them.  I think few people realise how little energy I have.  I've filled my life with fun things and useful work - so I guess it takes a bit of looking to notice how small my life is, and how little I actually accomplish.

I don't want to belittle what I do.  I'm actually quite proud of how well we manage my illness - and deeply grateful to God for the grace he's given me to do that, and to the many people who help make it possible.  But that doesn't mean there aren't deep losses for which I sometimes profoundly grieve.

By far the greatest of these is children.  Perhaps we never could have had biological children anyway: I think one couple in six can't conceive without medical intervention, and a sizeable proportion of those can't conceive at all.  But we, even though we long for children, have put considerable effort into preventing conception.  My body almost certainly couldn't carry a child to term.  Even if I did manage to give birth to a viable child, that child would largely be cared for by others (after all, we can't even care for me without Martin working reduced hours) and that hardly seems fair to that child.

Now we will almost certainly never have biological children.  My specialist has told me that, should I get well enough for us to think about trying for a baby, we should wait six months to make sure the improvement is reasonably stable before starting.  I turn 39 tomorrow.  So that means, if I miraculously recovered tomorrow and we instantly conceived once we started trying, I would give birth at the age of 40 years and 3 months.  That's pretty old, and comes with a lot of risks.  If I did get better soon, I think it's unlikely we'd go down that route.  Adoption, though, is something I think it's likely we'd consider.

There are so many other losses, too.

One big one is human contact.  I love being with people, but I can handle only brief and infrequent visits these days.  I never ever see most my friends these days, and there's only a rare few I see more than once or twice a year.  I never go to church or concerts or the theatre or other places where there are lots of people around as they're too bright and noisy and have unpredictable things going on.

I miss understanding things.  I know I still pass as intelligent (mostly because people only see me in controlled environments) and, underneath, I still am.  But my brain works so slowly and I miss so much!  Whenever I'm telling Martin about a story or radio programme I've enjoyed, at some point I'll inevitably say "I didn't get this bit" or "I missed how that worked".  I wish I could follow all of what was going on - especially in live conversations.  I wish Martin didn't have to explain so many things to me after the fact.  Even more I wish that I had the strength to engage with people on difficult issues, as I feel I'd have a lot to give there.

I've lost much of my privacy and that illusion of independence so dear to us Westeners.  I can't do my own shopping, cook my own food or take myself to appointments.  In the evenings, I can't even go to the toilet or change into my pyjamas without assistance.  I'm grateful for the assistance I get, but sometimes I wish that half the women in our church hadn't seen me naked!

I'm sad I don't get to do big things that feel significant.  Everything I do has to be broken down into small steps, and for really big things that's just not practical.

I miss being spontaneous.  From my leisure activities to what I eat, everything is planned in advance and much follows strict formulas.  I appreciate these, as they enable me to actually have leisure activities, and the 'rules' by which I live keep me in much better health than I would be otherwise.  But they grate all the same.  So often I'd love to be able to keep doing something I was enjoying rather than go rest because time's up.  I'd love to be able to talk with people late into the night - or even into the afternoon after lunch ;-)  And I'd love to be able to just go for a bike ride or a walk to clear my head when being so cooped up was getting to me :-(

I miss being alone outside.  I miss seeing night-time.  I'm sad that I rarely see a big sky (not a big sky like you see in the country, although that would be nice - but just one like I saw from the motorway yesterday, when I wasn't boxed in by houses).  I miss gardening.  I miss playing my violin, and often think that we really should sell it so someone else can enjoy it, but I can't quite bear giving up on it yet.

I wish that I, like Martin, could have a quarterly respite from dealing with all of this!!

Don't get me wrong.  My life is good. I'm grateful for that (and very protective of the routines and patterns that make that possible!).  But everyone has things they're sad about and these are some of mine.  I don't want you to pity me.  I'm grateful if you enjoy my company and celebrate what I do achieve; I love it when you notice how God is shaping me through this and are excited by what He's teaching me.

But I do also want you to know that it's hard.  I live with an illness which has a high suicide rate and I'm more severely affected than most.  So give glory to God that I live a good life despite the odds, but know also that sometimes it's hard and sometimes I can get blindsided by something as simple as seeing the great big world outside.

Spring has sprung!

Our neighbour's kowhai in stunning bloom this morning :-)

Marriage in the context of 'calling'

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the purpose of marriage.

New Zealand has recently allowed marriage between same-sex couples.  This has led to the national body of my Christian denomination, the Baptist Union, to establish a working party to determine whether or not Baptist pastors should be permitted to perform such marriages.  Our church has also been running a sermon series on relationships recently, with last Sunday's sermon being on marriage.

The debate I've heard has mainly centred on who Christians/churches believe should be permitted to marry.  However, a blog post by Tim Bulkeley made me think about the broader question of 'what is marriage for'.

Tim is an Old Testament theologian and former lecturer at Carey College, the institution that trains most Kiwi Baptist pastors.  His blog post explores his concern that we 'lack a theology of marriage and sex' and thus fall back to tradition when questions (such as the current ones on gay marriage) arise.

I don't feel equipped to contribute much to such a theology, but it's got me thinking.  I've decided that our current 'Christian' concept of marriage is deeply influenced by two strong threads we've adopted from our surrounding culture.

Firstly, I believe that the dominant Pakeha Kiwi culture is strongly hedonistic: many people live by 'if it feels good, do it'.  We've adopted this value in our concept of marriage: the purpose of marriage is seen as providing the various pleasures of marriage.  Whilst I'm sure marriage has always been enjoyable for many (and sex is certainly designed that way!) other cultures and eras haven't always seen this as its primary purpose: the focus has instead been on things like procreation or family advancement.

God desires good things for his children, so I'm sure that he desires people to enjoy being married (and I know that I do), but the primary goal of Christian life isn't having fun.  It's things like worshipping/enjoying God, getting to know him better, increasing the prevalence of his way of living (his 'Kingdom') in the world and so on.  So shouldn't the primary purpose of Christian marriage have something to do with those things?

Secondly, I see the dominant Pakeha Kiwi culture as deeply individualistic.  My school's motto was even Individuality with Responsibility.  I see this value in our common concept of marriage, too.  The small unit of a married couple, along with any children that may come, is encouraged to value itself very highly.  We seek what is best for ourselves, our spouse and our children and only then are willing to look beyond that unit to what is good for those around us.

And yet God calls us to love our neighbour as ourselves, so is it right to privilege the well-being of our spouse and children over that of other people?

I have come to see this as one of the great temptations of parenthood: to provide the best for your own children and so unwittingly hurt other children or people you simply haven't noticed.  Just one example.  It's back-to-school season in the Northern Hemisphere and a Canadian blogging friend was reflecting how it hurts her to see people spend thousands on their own kids at this time when so many other children are in dire need.

These two strands in our conception of marriage (hedonism and individualism) are probably at the root of of the Western world's astonishing divorce rate, from which the church has been only somewhat protected).  But they also lead, in my opinion, to one of the greatest temptations to sin that marriage presents: an over-inflated desire to protect those you love.

You see, in my experience, the life that God calls us to is not 'safe'.  God calls all Christians to worship him and to work with him to advance his Kingdom on Earth.  That can seriously get in the way of enjoying time with your spouse and family and showering them with the best of everything that is accessible to you!

But, if marriage isn't about enjoying its pleasures and seeking the best for yourself and your immediate family, what is it about?

Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship (of which Martin and I were a part whilst at university) has recently held its annual student leaders conference, Summit.  The plenary talks from the conference are up on Youtube.  I was deeply struck by the fourth talk by John Stackhouse on 'Why God didn't make you more beautiful than you are'.

In it, he spoke about how we each have a calling from God, and God will give us what we need for that calling.  Our relationships, amongst other things, will be guided by that calling.

It occurred to me that, for many callings, being married is helpful; for others it is not.

For most Christians (although, it seems, not for us), a significant part of their calling is bearing and raising children.  This is certainly most easily done in the context of marriage.  And a significant calling to hospitality, for example, is quite likely to go with a calling to marriage.

For me, being married has enabled me to fulfil my calling to reflect on life and faith and to encourage and mentor other women in following Christ.  Without significant support, I can't even take care of my basic needs.  Through marriage to a man who sees supporting me as a significant part of his own calling, I've been able to fulfil mine.

However, for some callings, marriage is distinctly unhelpful.  If your calling involves a highly peripatetic lifestyle (as was the case for the apostle Paul), that'll be easier to fulfil without a spouse and kids in tow.  If your calling is primarily to intercession, singleness again seems an advantage.  In common with others, I've found it's easier to find time to pray without a spouse around: I guess that's why monks and nuns are traditionally celibate :-)

So, alongside speaking in church about the joys of marriage (and the importance of protecting it by avoiding pornography etc.), I'd like us to speak about the work God calls us to, and about how some kinds of work are easier to carry out in the context of marriage and others in the context of singleness.

That framing returns the emphasis to the issues at the centre of Christian living and, as a bonus, doesn't exclude single people the way so much of discussion of Christian marriage tends to do :-)

PS I've really appreciated all of Prof. Stackhouse's talks from TSCF's Summit.  If you'd like to check them out yourself, here are links to talks 1, 2 and 3.  Prof. Stackhouse is a systematic theologian and church historian who has recently retired from Regent College and he was one of Martin's favourite lecturers during his studies there.