Love is action

 Love is action Link to podcast.

So welcome to the first stories of Hope podcast for 2021, my name is Bryce Davies and I am now a Salvation Army officer based in Brisbane which is on Australia’s north eastern coast.  I have just moved here with the lovely Sue and am starting work for half my work week at a place called Maroochydore, which is a holiday destination in what is called the Sunshine coast.  A seriously beautiful part of the world.

2021 is looking promising for the Podcast as the other 50% of my week is dedicated to the podcast and peer support work across Australia.  I have some great Friday interviews recorded - ready for the new year including 17 year old heart transplant survivor Luka-Angel Cairns, Commissioner Janine Donaldson and Andrew Grinsted, a mate of mine from the UK.    

I now have a Stories of Hope website.  https://www.salvationarmy.org.au/storiesofhope/ so check it out and stay tuned for more content as the years activities evolve.  

If you would rather read stories of hope episodes as a blog, then I also have a blog page.  

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/4920090940767614723

You can find these links on the Facebook page and also on the email sign up page. 

It strikes me that authors and performers of some of the most powerful love songs ever written have had disastrous love lives.  The Beatles produced songs like love is all you need, love love me do and Something in the way she moves.  Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you” is a classic.  But like so many great poets and writers about love they often struggled to make their personal relationships work.

The lovely Sue is the love of my life.  And I learnt early in the piece that my words and expressions of love and devotion make little impression on her.  She is interested in action and by that I mean work.  Me cleaning stuff and remembering stuff seems to be the most treasured element of our relationship and the most likely cause of discontent should I fail in this area.  So my capacity to combine the two and forget to clean something is tends to flip the lovely Sue out somewhat!

In 1 Corintians 13 there is arguably one of the most beautiful pieces of writing on love ever penned.  But is starts with the idea that fancy and powerful words without love are just noise.  A clanging cymbal. Or in the Beetles case a strumming guitar and silky voice. 

We all know that words are cheap sometimes and that genuine care and love is mostly about action.  It’s about being there when someone is hurting with time, a coffee and a listening ear.  It’s about helping when someone needs the lawns mowed or a meal cooked.  Its about considering others in prayer and reflection so our responses to them are not trite or simplistic. 

The Salvos Mission statement says we are committed to transform Australia one life at a time with the love of Jesus.  Love in action.

At Villawood every Wednesday we teach a dozen or so local residents in a conversational English class.  We turn up every week and our team carefully and patiently goes over words and phrases and gently corrects pronunciation and sentence construction.  It has become a fun and warm community of people. and we have a terrific time together.

Funnily enough, most of the people in this class speak very poor English; go figure?  So communication is not fully reliant on words.  The message of love is passed on by facial expression, gratitude, sharing of food and the creation of an enjoyable and consistent place to gather.  As the students reveal their inability to speak English well, they are exposed - and open to ridicule and judgement.  Many do not attend groups like this, for fear of being laughed at, or appearing stupid.  Many fear further rejection and discrimination as a result of their race, culture and language differences.

So for the Salvos to provide a fun and safe environment where we enjoy each other’s company over a morning tea and speak English together has been really special.  Over time we have felt the love and connection of this group grow.  Last week I met with these people for the last time at my farewell and it was evident that we would all really miss each other.   The words were imperfect, but the love was real and made all the difference.

I have been practicing a few romantic songs on the Ukulele, and sometimes I play them to the lovely Sue.  She usually gives me a pitying sort of look and I can tell she would rather I didn’t bother, but because I did the dishes, she smiles and lets me keep going. 

Bless ya,

Bryce

The Choice

 The Choice - link to podcast.

I'm a big Jack Reacher fan, but I'm trying to read more widely, so I'm reading the Choice by Edith Eger. It made me cry, but it also helped me grow a bit.

So I lost my phone the other day walking from the spare room to the TV room putting out the rubbish and changing from shorts to long pants.

Yep, its been gone for a week now.  Must be out with the trash.  No idea how, but from this moment of miraculous stupidity, I have now found myself in possession of my the work phone of my co worker, Maryam.  Maryam is widely read and a wonderful human being.

She and I have chatted about what books we read and of course she is completely ignorant of Jack Reacher and how satisfying this action packed rouge ex military cops adventures are.  It is a profound genre.  He stumbles into trouble while hitchhiking, kills all the bad guys, rescues the girl, who then falls in love with him and he then manages to save the world from serious calamity, all with four broken ribs, a fractured skull and the only weapon at his disposal is a blunt potato peeler.   She  seemed mightily impressed.  Anyway its not all a one way street in this intellectual banter and she has encouraged me to listen to an audio book on her phone called the choice, by Edith Eger.  
Let me read the preamble.

In 1944, sixteen-year-old ballerina Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. Separated from her parents on arrival, she endures unimaginable experiences, including being made to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. When the camp is finally liberated, she is pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive.

The horrors of the Holocaust didn't break Edith. In fact, they helped her learn to live again with a life-affirming strength and a truly remarkable resilience.

The Choice is her unforgettable story. It shows that hope can flower in the most unlikely places.

So, I’m about half way through - listening to the part of the story where she is in the concentration camps.  It describes her terrible suffering; starvation, bitter cold and the savage brutality all around her.  She shares about the senseless murders of her parents and the countless other atrocities of her experience.  

Last Tuesday morning I found myself eating a blueberry muffin, drinking hot coffee in a warm bed holding the lovely Sue's hand with tears streaming down my face. 

I was so grateful for that moment.  So sad that such horrible suffering is part of our world.  So moved to stop being so selfish and passive and determined to find ways to be more kind and generous.

I feel like I am a million miles away from most of the suffering in this world and it is so easy to sink into the comfortable easy ways of our modern materialistic pleasure seeking way of life.  After listening to this book and understanding this suffering in a graphic way, something has shifted in me.  It has connected me again to a wider humanity.  To people I don’t know and have never met.  To the responsibilities I have in the small circle of influence of my world. 

So I encourage you to read or listen to a book that will disturb you a little.  Lets make sure our minds don’t get too mushy and narrow. 

I am only half way through Edith’s book and I am looking forward to hearing how she resolves the  terrible injustices within her own spirit. 

I guess there are things to learn from Jack Reacher, like how to kill bad guys with potato peelers, but I will probably learn more from Edith, even if the lessons are hard to swallow and make me face the realities of my actual life.   I have choices every day about the things that happen to me.  Maybe reading Edith's story will help me choose hope and love more often.    

Bless ya,

Bryce

The Prestige

 The Prestige - link to podcast.

To be a person of faith is in some ways to believe in magic. Like, believing for joy in terrible sadness or to hope for change in a person who seems too far gone. Is it all just hocus pocus??

I’ve always loved the cartoons of Michael Leunig.  He seems to share ideas and concepts that often are so simple yet profound.  One sketch he has done is of a man praying to a carboard box.  Some smart alec people come around and blow the box over and say “see completely hollow”.  Then the man rebuilds the box, now wonky and held together precariously with sticky tape and keeps praying. 

This idea has always been helpful to me as I have had to find ways to remain authentic while my understanding about God and prayer changes and matures.

I actually don’t think God or the universe has changed much as I’ve been deliberating about these things, but it is unsettling to have any sort of crisis of faith or disruption to long standing and important personal beliefs and it takes a bit of courage to be honest about it.

The alternative is to stay stuck in a rigid and in lots of ways irrelevant sort of faith.  The sort of faith that just believes stuff that does not actually land in any way in our actual living and behavior.  We can go along with traditions and religious practices for years sometimes, without ever stopping to really examine how these beliefs impact our lives.

When I was a teenager the challenge was put to me one time. If my claim to be a genuine follower of Jesus was put on trial at a court of law, would there be enough evidence to convict me? I was happier to avoid thinking about this too deeply, as I was quite keen on money, chocolate and the pretty young ladies in my life at the time and Jesus didn’t seem to me to be keen on any of those.  He seemed a lot more interested in being humble, the injustices towards the poor and prayer. 

All the same, I did take seriously the challenge of being a proper Christian and often threw myself into church life at the salvos, learning more about living an authentic Christian life and being a good sort of a guy. 

When the lovely Sue and I were young and in love, don’t get me wrong we are still in love, but it’s a bit less energetic and idealistic these days.  We prayed that her short leg would grow into a full leg.  We asked for the God of miracles and healing to bless us with something so spectacular and beyond reason that it would change the world.   

Well Sue still has no femur in her left leg and as we get older this presents more and more challenges.  Either the answer was “no” or it was that God is not quite as powerful as we had hoped or maybe we needed to be better Christians or we needed the right faith healer to come to town or maybe God wanted to use this challenge as an example of His power in the midst of suffering.   Neither Sue or I were ever keen on the last one, but as it turns out that is probably the most realistic out-come.  Sue is sometimes quite frail and vulnerable, but she also shines brightly with love, joy and hope.  People often say she is an inspiration. 

Either way, I was hoping for some magical physical healing to take place and it never did. 

In fact much of what I have expected from God and the church has not come to pass.  But new and often richer pathways and realities have emerged.

My life better than I ever thought it would be to be honest.  I was not confident that I would be able to sustain a healthy and happy marriage, but the lovely Sue is still likes to hold my hand and we  hang out together quite a lot. 

I have a heap of soulful but fun friends who are people of depth and substance.  I read the bible and discuss it with friends and we have honest conversations about what seems ridiculous and what seem to be helpful.  This is a rich sort of fellowship.   

I still get weepy at kids hugging their parents, sunsets and puppies and have a sense of Awe and gratitude about how good it is to just be alive.

There are still fabulous ways to serve as an officer with the Salvos that make sense to me and give me great joy, purpose and fulfillment. 

I am healthy to the point that it has been said of me that it looks like I’ve been in a good paddock for many years. Maybe too good a paddock!

I even have a folksy melancholy side to me now where I strum a Ukulele and hum tuneless melodies in a happy zen like way for hours…………..  until the lovely Sue throws something at me and jolts me back to reality.

So my faith is not what it used to be, but it is still an important, if not mysterious part of my life.  

Magicians often use the words hocus pocus to introduce a magic trick.  These words came from the latin words “hoc est Corpus” and were used by Catholic priests during communion to describe the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Chirst.

This magician theme is worth consideration here.

In a magic trick there are three stages.  The pledge, the turn and the prestige. 

In a coin trick, the coin is presented and shown to the audience and this is the pledge.  It is then hidden in some way, slipped into a sleeve or dropped into a hidden pocket.  That is the turn.  And then it reappears in some amazing way that defies logic.  That is the prestige.

The trick is always done by using two coins.  A second coin is placed or hidden under a cup or in another item of clothing, creating the illusion, but the coin that went missing in the turn is not the same coin that appears in the prestige.  

It just looks the same, and so magicians get away with it. 

 

In communion the bread and wine are presented.  The pledge.

The elements are then consumed and disappear.  The turn

And then the service finishes and we are left with nothing.  However we soon say g’day to our friends and see if they are OK and maybe plan a way to love our community better and “hey presto” the God of love and power we hoped to encounter in the act of communion is amongst us.  

In the same way our faith is a bit like this. 

We perceive God as best we are able with what we can see and understand and then, He seems to either disappear or change so much we cannot believe it.  But as we stay with the journey, He reappears, and we sense Him amongst us and around us in often surprising ways, in essence, the same, but also different.

One could even describe the feelings of love and awe experienced at times like this as prestigious – even magical. 

Some say it’s all a load of “hocus pocus”, and maybe they are right??

Bless ya,

Bryce

Fear and Trauma

Fear and Trauma - link to podcast

When I saw the movie Jaws when I was 11 years old, I ended up being afraid of the ocean for decades.  Lots of us have been traumatized by something. We may need professional help, but we will also need some good friends, who help us feel safe. 

When I was a child, I was quite fearful about being in the dark, alone in the middle of the night.  I imagined evil forces lurking under the bed or behind the wardrobe door.  I always wanted the light on if I needed to move about and was quite genuinely afraid of two irrational but very powerful ideas in my young mind.

Firstly when I was about 11, I snuck into an M rated movie with a mate and watched Jaws. This was a bit much for my urban, land based experience of the world to absorb, and I became afraid of anything to do with water.  I felt afraid in the swimming pool and felt like a shark was after me as I swam.  I was even checking the toilet as it had water and I couldn’t see what was down there at all times.    But my most intense fear, of course, was the ocean, and I was afraid of the ocean for years – even into my 20s.  I much preferred to stay in the shallows, as I imagined a shark attack waiting at every turn.  I recall one time when I was snorkeling in the ocean as an adult, when a large shadow came across me.  A blood curdling chill ran though my whole body.   I turned, fully expecting to see a massive mouth with jagged teeth about the rip me to shreds, only to find a school of little fish swimming past.

My other intense fear came from watching the movie Poltergeist in 1982 when I was 18.   In this movie at 3.14am every night the guy would suddenly wake up and start wandering about the creepy house and discover his little daughter in front of the static of her TV screen communicating with the evil poltergeist.  It never ended well, and someone inevitably was chopped up and killed is a seriously gruesome way.  From then on, If I woke up at 3.14 or even near this time, I would get the creeps and have to deal with my fears.

I guess we all have scary experiences that are hard to accommodate in our minds.  Many are not just fears of the imagination like the ones I have described, but very real life experiences that were in fact traumatic.    The feelings from these traumatic experiences can be triggered in ways that can bring the fear back to us in random and disturbing ways.

A big part of any recovery journey these days, is a concept called trauma informed care.  It invites people to consider deeply the impact past trauma has had on a person and to avoid simplistic responses to the profound impact the past may have on the way people behave and respond in the here and now.  

For many people fear and darkness contributes to debilitating depression and anxiety and this is a complex and challenging experience. 

I am no psychologist and if you have experienced trauma, obviously professional help is a great idea, but it seems to me, that like so many other challenges we face, it is often helpful to have friends we can trust and who will not judge us, but rather offer us what the professionals call unconditional positive regard.  

This does not mean we need to sit down and discuss the deep meaning of life or try to make sense of complex behaviors.  What it does mean for most of us, is that we do well to continue to find ways to be in community with people who are struggling and to help them feel safe.  Maybe share a meal or go for a walk.  Go to the movies (maybe not a scary one)  and catch up for coffee.  Check in with a call or a text.  Basic acceptance and friendship is so important for healthy well being.  Let’s do what we can to make sure our friends don’t have to add loneliness to the problems they are facing.

So why not pause for a minute today and consider who has been placed on your heart.   The love of God is not just a fuzzy sentiment, this love needs our hands and feet as active partners.  

1 John 4:18 says “perfect love drives out all fear” so it seems to me, we have a role to play as we team up with God to spread the love and maybe calm some of the fear. 

We cannot provide perfect love and often what we have to offer seems inadequate, but we may be able to offer a little reminder that it is real.  

You never know, you might be the little ray of light and hope that breaks into the darkness, just when someone needs it most.

Bless ya,

Bryce