Underneath
What you are underneath has a way of showing on the outside. Have you ever wondered what someone would think of you if they knew exactly what you were really thinking? Would you be at all uncomfortable at that thought? Our shape, our demeanour on the outside really comes from what's on the inside. From the overflow of your heart your mouth speaks. We may think that we present a good face to the world, but what we really show is a covered-up version of the truths inside - be it good truths or less-than-ideal truths.
Even that tried and tested metaphor of a grain of sand becoming a pearl is an example of a great big cover-up. But a pearl is something beautiful, you say. Ask the oyster that's in so much pain that it spends hours, days, weeks hiding that bit of sand whether he thinks the pearl is beautiful or not. Perhaps his perspective would be slightly different from yours. Sure, the facades we put up can be pretty impressive, but isn't it better not to need them in the first place?
Most of the time we're scared that if people really saw us as we are, no-one would speak to us ever again. But there's better news than that. The amount we hide from others depends on how much we trust them with ourselves. If we don't trust them to love us anyway, we don't show them more. As we learn to trust people, we understand that they will love us, and we are safe open up to them. There's an enormous amount of trust invested in building a transparent relationship. But what about if someone were to know everything you ever thought or did, when you hadn't chosen to trust them. If they somehow got behind or through your defenses, and there was nothing you could do about it. What a weight, what a threat hanging over your head! Before you despair, there is a happy ending to this little tale.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 23/08/2006.
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Healing
I've been thinking about healing. When I was in Germany a couple of weeks back we watched a live feed from two operating theatres; one for a knee replacement and one for an endovascular stent graft. The knee especially got me thinking. First of all, it was so barbaric (sorry, no photos for this one!) - this guy banging away with a big hammer, then chopping bits of bone out with a rotary saw, and every time you thought they were joking they pulled out a bigger spiky tool ... (endovascular surgery is just so much more elegant). Anyway, the delicate bits the surgeon did carefully with a scalpel, and we watched as he scraped away tiny bits of old tissue and left only what was healthy and would heal. And this second bit is where my train of thought really started. We rely on healing. We absolutely take it as given that if we cut flesh, then hold it together, it will - all by itself - merge once more into a whole. No kind of surgical intervention can work without that presumption.
Healing could be classified as one of those processes that 'just happens' when the conditions are right; but it's one thing to begin to understand and endeavour to provide those conditions, and quite another to say that we, humans, are the ones doing the healing. Healing happens because we're built that way - we are built to be alive, and a characterisic of living things is their ability to regenerate, repair, renew. It's some kind of pride in us humans that puts expected 'natural' (ie: automatic) healing, the intervention of medicine and surgery, and God's unexpected healing into three different boxes, as if they were distinct and exclusive. But we would not heal at all if healing were not a part of our design. Give credit where it's due - to the architect! So this is just a general heads up to notice what goes on around you. Call it by its proper name, and see where you stand in the great big whole. Just a thought, K.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 23/08/2006.
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How to rent a house in 30 easy steps:
1) Find one you like
2) Go and see it on the outside (get the wrong house, but like the street anyway ...)
3) Go and see the right one with the house agent.
4) Decide you like it, put down a deposit.
5) Find people to share it with.
6) Hear from the land agent that the owners decided to rent to another couple.
7) Look for other houses.
8) Wait about 6 weeks.
9) Hear from the land agent again - couple's references turned down - conversation ensues:
"Do you still want the house?"
"Yes, but let me talk to the others."
"Others - do we still want the house?" "Yes," "Yes," "Yes" (from someone new) ... and silence from the last one.
10) Look for a final person.
11) Find lots of candidates - Me (send lots of photos) : "Do you want the house?", Them: "Yes,", Agent: "Sorry, we can't let to someone who hasn't seen it in the flesh"
12) Find more candidates, and make times with the agents to see it. Me:"Do you want the house?", Her (Swiss): "Yes," Agents: "You need to pay the year's rent in advance ..". Find another person (Polish) - Me: "Do you want the house?", Her: "Yes," Agents: "We don't like getting references for Russians."
13) &^%$*@
14) Get email from Romania from girl who saw the house the first time round. Me: "Do you want the house?", Her: "Yes", Agents: (silence).
15) Write email presenting 4 girls in full time employment and ask to be submitted for the house. Awat response from agents.
16) Continue with the awaiting thing.
17) Phone the agents just in case the email went astray. "Sorry, agent #1 has gone on holiday." Bite nails, as two of us are going away at the end of the week.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 13/08/2006.
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Blackberries
I was going to write something a couple of days ago about the blackberries. On my walk to work there are hedgerows with hundreds and thousands of green blackberries (you know what I mean). Two days ago I found one that had already turned black, and was out of reach of all but the most agile dogs, so I braved the thorns and picked it. I ate it all the way home. A little tart, but YUM! So I was looking forward to ambling home and tasting all the rest of them once the green turned to black in a couple of weeks. Then, yesterday morning I found a tractor on the walk to work. Not just any tractor, but one equipped with some great hedge-trimming-beast of a rear end that was chomping its way through the lovely (albeit very overgrown) hedges! So much for my plans! Maybe the moral of this story is that I need to appreciate the little I have now? You don't know what you have until it's gone? But I did know, and I did appreciate! So maybe it's just that I should always remember to stop and eat the blackberries before some dirty great tractor gets there before me. Ah well. k.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 26/07/2006.
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Henry in the shower
For a couple of weeks I have had a companion in the bathroom (there is a drought and a heatwave at the moment in the UK, so "Save water, shower with a friend!" and all that). Anyway, his name is Henry, and he is a spider with a span as big as Maggie's hand (Maggie is 1) who lives in a hole behind the toilet. Despite my initial efforts to persuade him that there are better places than a hole behind the toilet to live in, he has remained. Every morning I see him out of his hole next to the loo, and by way of greeting I tap my foot a couple of times, and by way of answer he runs back into his hole. This worked fine until yesterday morning, when I tapped my foot, he ran out towards me waving frantically. Not at all the required response - I thought it a little rude, actually. However, just to teach him manners (perhaps he is a young spider) I reiterated my greeting with an old toothbrush, which had the desired effect. But I did wonder if perhaps it was getting nearer the time for Henry to move on. The trouble is that he is so quick, and I don't have a chance to use any other means to convince him of greener pastures.
Last night when I got home, I got a big surprise. Not only had my toothbrush tapping failed to teach Henry manners; it seemed to have made them worse! He had decided to graduate from a hole next to the toilet (I could have told him there were better places for a spider to live) to my bed! Talk about cheeky! Enough is enough, and I decided that Henry's Big Moving Day had arrived.
Without wanting to startle him from his precarious (my word, not his) perch on the duvet, I went and got the biggest glass baking dish I could find from the kitchen (after all, he is a very speedy spider) and, together with a big green bit of plastic, gently persuaded him that a trip to the wilderness (aka the rubbish bags outside) was in order. Apparently it was, and I closed the door before he could argue with me. Cheap way to win an argument, but it worked on this occasion. So I hope he's ok, and that someone else, somewhere else has a little more luck with his manners. :-) K
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 20/07/2006.
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... case and point ...
So. Cows. Staying in the fields where they should be, not in the marshes where they shouldn't be. Closing gates. Yeah, all that.
Yesterday after putting that post up I walked to work, and on the way I encountered cows - but cows in the marshes, not cows in the field. Someone, somewhere didn't follow the rule, and noone knew any better, so they got out.
They were gone when I went home, so I guess the farmer found them and sorted it all out. Just a funny coincidence! K.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 20/07/2006.
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Rules about cows
I walk to work through fields and parks, some of which have cattle and horses grazing in them. There are gates to go through, paths to follow and offerings to avoid. For the sake of the city-dwellers amongst us, let's recap the the unwritten Rule of walking in the country: "Thou shalt leave a gate as thou foundeth it," (or something). But every time I wonder whether closing or leaving the gate open is the right thing to do. Sure, I myself can follow the rule, but what happens if the person before me broke it, and now I'm leaving a gate open that should be closed? Or closing a gate that some well-intentioned city-dweller shut when the farmer is really about to drive his stock through it? The success of the Rule hangs in every single person obeying it, at every single instance in time. (I do realise that in this particular example, two wrongs do make a right, but we're not going to go there today).
The Rule in this example can at best only maintain; it cannot correct or improve on the status quo. For correction to come, more information is required: we need to know what the farmer actually intends, and then we can use our gate manipulation abilities in accordance with that intention. This made me think about rules in general; they do really only work when everyone follows them all the time. In sixth form in NZ, you don't sit a national exam, it is entirely internally assessed. Each subject is given a certain number of each grade to award based on the previous year's school certificate results, and these are then allocated based a student's relative standing within the class. The top three students in biology get 1s, the next eight get 2s etc. Before very long we realised that the quality or work we did in that 6th form year wasn't going to change the grades that were given out: if we none of us did any work, there would be the same number of 1s and 2s awarded as if we all worked like crazy. So we discussed the theory of all of us not working, thus getting an easy year at no lasting expense. Of course it doesn't work like that - all someone has to do then is a little bit more work that the others, and they secure themselves a fantastic grade that they perhaps don't deserve. These kind of ideas can only work when everyone follows them all the time. As Yossarian says:
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 18/07/2006.
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A yellow house
When I was in St Johns, Newfoundland with Chris, we wandered around the battery houses (so called because there are a lot of them close together; think battery hens) on the side of Signal Hill. These houses are great - they are painted bright colours, and have all kind of ingenious contraptions designed to make living on the side of a cliff possible, if not yet terribly practical. One of these houses stood out, and not just because it was painted bright yellow. At the bottom of the staircase was a notice that read: "Never confuse education with intelligence." A good warning, and one worth further consideration. We have all met or all know (or can all imagine) people well educated but lacking intelligence.
I think I have a good memory. I am good at memorising lists of things, strings of numbers, music, etc. Revising for exams was, for me, predominantly an exercise for the memory. Other people I know take another approach, that once a concept is understood - properly digested and broken down - then there is no need for further memory, as a problem can be thought through and worked out from the knowledge of the concepts. While the purpose of this little note today is not to discuss different learning techniques, I am convinced that the better method is the latter - it is better to know well what you are talking about, than to know well what someone else has said on the subject. This could be an example of the difference between education and intelligence, as intelligence and useful knowledge is only gained by the understanding of concepts; and even though just memorisation may have gained me the higher exam grades, in the long run I am the one worse off.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 16/07/2006.
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Once upon a tree ...
... there was a branch, and on the branch were leaves; familiar shaped green leaves. But the branch was not happy, and the tree was not happy either. Every summer it watched the trees around it have small buds, which were followed before very long by white flowers. Then, a little while later, the flowers would wither, but the small green apples underneath them got bigger and bigger and redder and redder. Soon all kinds of people would come and pick the apples, taking them to make jam, or pies, or just to crunch into on the way home. The tree watched the other apple trees, and all the time wondered, "When will it be my turn? When will I get the buds and the flowers and the apples? When will people come and enjoy me?". The tree wondered for a long time - years, in fact - because every spring, its buds didn't come, and every summer, there were no white flowers on its branches, and every autumn noone came to pick apples from it. Still, every year, the tree wondered, "Perhaps, this year ...", but every year it was disappointed. The tree tried to be cheerful, but underneath it stayed very sad.
One day late in September, a boy and his mother were walking in the shade beneath the trees. This was a particularly sad time for the tree, as the other trees were covered in apples, but it had already begun to lose its leaves. The sad tree overheard their conversation as they picked rosy apples off the other trees. "This is my favourite place, you know," said the boy.
(The tree could understand that - the fame of the sweet apples had spread far and wide.)
"But it's not just because of the apples," he continued, "The apples are nice - sweet, juicy and crunchy - but my favourite part is watching the maples turn. Every single year, they have fantastic colours - the glorious reds, the fabulous yellows and the extravagant oranges - it fills me with such joy to see them. They are so beautiful; they make me so happy." The tree looked at its leaves - those familiar, fingered leaves - stretched its branches a little higher, and smiled. Be who you are - because there's nothing and no-one quite like you. Enjoy who you are - because you may be certain that other people do (even if they're not good at telling you) :-) Just a thought, K.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 14/07/2006.
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Courage
A long time ago I remember riding to church in Howick, and just as I was getting to the bottom of the last hill (and there are quite a few on the way!) I had a thought. If, as some old proverb tells us, forewarned is forearmed, then prophecy must be the weapon given, and needs to be handled with the same care and skill as any other weapon. The value of foretelling and the care required in its application is perhaps obvious, and so the simile with a sharp weapon is fitting. But last week I read a comment which said that the role of the prophet was as much to forth-tell as to fore-tell. The latter we know; and though I failed to find the former in a dictionary, the explanation given was one that I believe fits. To forth-tell is to speak into being - to bring forth, to cause to be born, to give rise to, to provide that which was lacking in order that what has been fore-told may occur.
If a thing has two parts necessary for its operation, one cannot be more important than the other, because the lack of either will cause failure. Take, for an example, air and fuel in your car. The car will not run without fuel, the fuel will not burn without air, so if anything happens to either supply, the quick jaunt down to the shops does not happen. Both of them, equally, are important. Now, as a second example, consider a warrior who is skilled in handling his weapon, coached and fit and ready. If, in the confrontation where he is needed, he lacks the courage to fight, his cause is as easily defeated as if he had neither skill nor sword. Remember the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz?
So, finally I come around to the title of this little idea. Prophecy has two parts - the inspiration of fore-telling to open the door, and the strengthening of forth-telling to enable us to pass through it. Encouragement is a soft word that covers a truly vital action: supplying courage to another. Courage is a tough, strong concept, but somehow encouragement has become something undervalued and weak. Prophecy is there for our equipping and strengthening, and as well as for our encouragement; what good is strength without courage? So as a salute to those out there who know how to impart courage to others; thankyou for what you do. So too, a plea to all the rest to see encouragement for what it is - the giving of something strong and valuable and vital - and to encourage you to see where you might perhaps encourage someone else. It's amazing the difference a breath of air makes to a fuel ignited; it's amazing how easy it is to give, and how priceless to receive. How satisfying to see the cowardly lion cowardly no more. Go on, give it a go. Find something to say that will build someone up, then stand back and hear them roar. Just a thought, K.
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 09/07/2006.
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