The shape of Sunday worship

Our local church is a hexagonal shape with flat floor, carpet and chairs. It lends itself to all kinds of arrangement for different kinds of services.

With more or less movable furniture this imaginative building was designed to reflect a whole lot of different ways of being church. For instance, it could be a "people" kind of church where worshippers could see a little more than the backs of people's heads in front of them. Or perhaps a "participatory" kind of church where contributions could be made and seen and heard from some other place than up front, concert style. Or maybe a "gathered" church where the congregation could be seated around the (hexagonal!) communion table for the fellowship meal. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination.

And there's the problem.  In more than two decades of occasional visits and eighteen months of fairly regular attendance I have never seen it arranged in any other manner than what I would call "railway carriage" style. Rows and rows of chairs, all facing the same way towards a table that is always against the same wall.

Somewhere, sometime, a vision for this sanctuary was lost. And now, just to make absolutely sure of our fundamentalist understanding of worship and its setting, I have just found on the wall a diagram showing us exactly how the chairs should be rigidly laid out to marks in the carpet! I suppose some committee put a lot of work into this to save things being a little untidy on Sunday mornings.

I'd have preferred a bit more untidy and a lot less rigidity...

Failure in UNlearning

For years I have edited video in Pinnacle Studio, graduating to version 11+. That was fine until I changed my computer out of Windows XP. Studio would not run in Windows 7. So after a lot of thought I ordered up the latest version of Studio, v18. It looked like a big step up but it was much bigger than I anticipated. The entire interface had been changed. Everything was different. Nothing was where I expected to find it. I even didn't know what things to look for, never mind where to find them. Eventually I gave up the whole thing as a bad job.

It was not just a matter of learning a whole lot of new stuff; I had to UNlearn all the things I had been used to for years. It was the UNlearning that defeated me.

A lot of Christians are in the same position. Sometimes it is not so hard to learn new stuff about the faith as it is to give up what we thought was fine - half a century ago...

A Gospel Quadrilateral

I did the "Gospel" presentation (see Sept 14th) to the Methodist Supernumeraries this week under four headings:

• Pain - This is usually what we feel when something is wrong with us... And at our age, that's pretty common with people here in the Village. "How are you?" is not always just a formal greeting but an opportunity for real sharing about real issues. This can be linked to the feeling that we  sometimes have about Creation and what we are doing to the environment. There's an awareness of something not quite right, of failure, of dis-integration. 
• Balance - Yet it's a "Gospel" issue that we do not need to be totally dominated by pain. We can get over some of our dis-ease.  We do not have to become totally absorbed in it but can experience all aspects of living and dying in a balanced way. The natural environment, too, if left alone, seems to have the capacity to re-create itself. 
• Knowing - It's interesting that Jesus didn't gather "members". He gathered "disciples", learners, seekers after truth. Some people around me these days are highly motivated to consider living and dying in the context of truth rather than myth. They seem to experience as "good news" some of my beliefs that are at odds with traditional Christian doctrine. They are more responsive to a belief system which is consistent with what they have learned rather than one which demands that they set aside their beliefs for uncritical "faith".
• Growing - I have drawn to Chris Scott's interpretation of Matthew's Jesus, "Unless you become as little children"(See Sept 14).  Scott suggests that the significant quality of children is the capacity to UNlearn - thus all waterbirds are "ducks"  until the child UNlearns that certain "ducks" are actually swans. This ability to UNlearn seems to be what hinders people inside and outside the church. For growth toward the ultimate maturity - "self-actualisation", for instance - invites Unlearning. Unchurched people around me sometimes find that it is Good News to be able to discard some things they were once taught were ultimate truth.

Looking at my modest Gospel Quadrilateral" I find some parallels with John Wesley's summary of Methodist theology. 

• All people need to be saved - sin
• All people can be saved - salvation
• All people can know that they are saved - Christian assurance
• All people may be saved to the uttermost - Christian perfection

These days I wouldn't attempt to share my convictions around these terms as Wesley used them. But perhaps they have shaped my own theology of the Good News more than I thought! Maybe I still have some unlearning to do!

A Visit "Home" and the Gospel

We have just had another great weekend away, enjoying some remarkable back roads around mid-Northland and delighting in the community and congregation which has been so much a part of our lives in the last quarter-century. We visited 20 Tui Grove and shared the excited plans of the new owners who have great hopes for major development of the house and the lovely property. They have the same feel for the bush and the view that we had...

On Sunday morning the strengths of the small church were clearly evident in the way people cared for each other, noticed absences, gave hospitality to a couple of other visitors and shared together for a long time after the service. This particular congregation has always been open to new ideas and it was really stimulating to develop a somewhat provocative interpretation of Matthew 18:3. It received only the most enthusiastic reception, even from people I might have expected to be a little resistant to my views. I would hesitate to use that sermon if I were asked to take another service our local church here at Red Beach.

Next Thursday I am to talk for five minutes about "My Gospel". Three of us are going to do this in the context of a two-monthly gathering of retired Methodist Presbyters -- a daunting audience. And of course the idea of "my" Gospel is a bit uncomfortable. But I understand the group is simply wanting to know how I interpret the Good News of Jesus in today's context. That will be interesting. Maybe I will go back to Sunday's Mt 18 and "the child in the midst", so significantly interpreted by Chris Scott in his book "Goodbye to God - A Search for a Human Spirituality"...

But any inner stirring to find new ways of offering a theoretical Good News to people in today's world pales in comparison with the urgent human need that is surfacing so dramatically in the thousands of people on the march in Europe. And the anti-refugee, anti Muslim, anti-immigrant sentiment that is swilling around the sewers of social media in this country sickens the soul.

Maybe we retired clergy should take up an offering for refugee rehabilitation rather than just "discuss" the Good News on Thursday...

The Debate Must Go On

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Health has released the terms of reference for its hearing of the issues around End of Life Choice. Submissions close in February 2016.

On the one hand, that gives everyone plenty of time to prepare statements. On the other, it moves the whole process further away in a distant future.

Furthermore, no Government has to take notice of a Select Committee. The matter will be investigated and a report produced. And that could be where it all ends. Both of the major political parties are aware that at least 30% of the country's voters do not yet support changing the law. There is too much to lose for the politicians on both sides to be enthusiastic about a debate that comes down to an actual vote on whether or not Physician Assisted Death will become a reality.

An promising feature is that the terms of reference state the Committee is to "fully understand public attitudes". A significant shift in reported public attitudes could well be prompted by publicity attached to the Select Committee submissions process. So a vigorous debate needs to continue now. Supporters of End of Life Choice must not leave the debate to the Committee. And they need to enlighten this debate by personal experiences. Some of us who have terminal cancer have to allow our stories to become public property. 

Tomorrow, Bev and I sit down again with our Oncologist and discuss the option of a fairly new chemotherapy, Abiraterone, and its vague promise of an "average of 4.6 extra months" of life.

It doesn't sound like much of an option. But, perhaps, if I am currently good for two or three years and Abiraterone could push that out a further, say, six or seven months, I could even be in the Parliamentary public gallery when the law is changed.

Sooner or later, with or without my presence, it will be.

PAD and Progressive Christianity

At a birthday nibbles and drinks last night I got into conversation with yet another person nearer my age (we don't talk about "old people" around here!). She asked me, "How are you?" and, as usual, I answered.
Most people don't actually want to know. "Too much information," they say to themselves. But if you ask me that question I am likely to answer it. And last night we got quickly around to end of life and medical care issues. She is another advocate for what she calls "euthanasia". The topic is quite close to home around here. Yet you couldn't find a more active bunch of oldies doing stuff. A black and white formal dinner dance planned by the management for this Friday night has been cancelled for lack of registrations - but I hear that a bunch of us are organising an unofficial "bring a plate" BYO "knees-up" in the Village lounge instead and we'll probably enjoy it just as much as the official dine and dance. That's the spirit of our age...

Someone said we're living in "God's Waiting Room" around here. Well, that's not quite how I would put it but I know exactly that feeling. Nobody knows better than us that we do not know what the next day will bring. When you have a terminal illness you're so much more conscious of the impermance of life. But, heck, meanwhile there's a lot of living to be done. There's a sense of urgency about how you fit in all the things you'd like to do in a day. For the first time for years, I've been working on formatting no less than three books at once. I thought I'd given up publishing. I've got caught up in our Parish's review of its badly neglected giving programme and we're experiencing a very encouraging response that is pushing us to do even better things. And today some of us from the Village are squeezing in a trip to the movies half an hour away and then rushing back to Barbershop chorus practice just before dinner. Oh, it's all Go around here...

And at the end....  What I hope for is something like this definition of PAD that I received in an email today:

There is a type of Physician Assisted Death where, at the request of the patient, the physician prescribes the drug, and the patient takes it to end their life. This is often called ‘physician assisted suicide’.  This type of PAD is beneficial to the patient, prevents suffering, is a compassionate act from the doctor, can be regarded as an extension of treatment at End-of-Life, is respectful of the patient’s autonomy, and allows the relatives and friends to say goodbye before the ravages of disease and intense sedation make this impossible. It also allows some ceremony and spiritual and religious involvement.

Members of Parliament, hear me: 
I have terminal prostate cancer. I am likely to refuse further medication next Tuesday. I believe it is a human right for me choose to die a dignified, planned death when I feel the time is right. Make it legal!

Family Budgeting

With all the interesting things to do around here, the book on family budgeting is moving along only slowly.  But it is a moving experience to enter into the lives of those who half a century ago had a vision of a country in which fewer households would suffer because of their inability to manage the financial affairs.

I am writing today of a public servant who conspired to change the way his department worked to help people into getting their own homes. I have discovered that an imaginative and sweeping proposal to assist Maori people into a better quality of life was back-burnered by one Minister of the Crown because it might become an election issue. 

But, wait, there was a change of government. The new Minister not only put the report back on the heat but appointed the report chair as acting secretary of the department. And a key person in the same department caught the vision and travelled widely around the country promoting a system of voluntary family budgeting advisors that altered the household budgeting landscape.

My own involvement in the decade from 1978 gave me huge experience in the area. I knew of the two men who dreamed up a scheme that caught the imagination of the country. But I was never enlightened about those who spread this extraordinary voluntary movement throughout fifty centres in just three or fours years. It is a privilege to be trying to put together their story...

Flag it!

The Change the Flag debate is fascinating. With many others, I am outraged at the $27m budget for the cost of discussing the flag. The flag may well be outdated and inappropriate but I suspect the allocation of that kind of money - not to mention the manipulative structure of the process - is just part of a ploy to exhaust us all with the possibilities so that nothing is eventually changed.

And I am whimsically touched that a throw-away remark from the Leader of the Opposition that we might just as well replace the NZ national anthem has launched a public discussion that has no budget but is already consuming more oxygen than the official flag debate.

I am absolutely with those who say that the anthem reflects a Victorian understanding of God and nation. But I am appalled that those critics seem to assume that all of today's Christians still promote that kind of thinking. Several times in this blog I have advocated junking the ridiculous anachronisms around the daily prayer in Parliament, saying grace on public occasions, a lot of Anzac Day liturgy, and, yes, absolutely, the national anthem.

Besides these real issues of our understanding of ourselves, and our capacity to express that understanding in appropriate and creative rituals, the flag debate is a bit of a sideshow.

More ups and downs of PSA doubling times

Today's appointment at Medical Oncology, at my suggestion, has been postponed. There being - unprecedentedly! - no significant change in my PSA for the last month, there wouldn't have been much to talk about. Up or down, another month may give us a better picture.

But I appreciate that doubling in the last three months is still a pretty steep increase. Not as steep as the two months of June/July, but still steep. So I am probably just delaying the inevitable. The white-coated ones really would like me to accept the government's offer of their fancy new drug. All my friends say "Of course you should do it." Even my very sympathetic GP, when discussing the prospect of 4.6 extra months of life in exchange for lowered quality of life from the drugs, wondered out loud:  "Well, you never know; a cure might be found in that 4.6 months!".  Now that's clutching at straws....

Right now my quality of life is very good and I am reluctant to submit it to the massive list of possible side effects of a very heavy drug regime in the hope of squeezing out a few more months at the end.

Ups and Downs of PSADT

My PSA doubling time rocked up to two months for the last three monthly readings but, last Friday, it went down to zero for the month. Quarterly trends are no doubt more reliable than one- month checks. But this is a big downwards shift for which we are all pretty grateful around here.

And, while I'm on-line, the Vol Euthansia Society has just sent me this link to a marvellous parody of the Eminem and Rhianna number Love the Way you Lie by Zdoggmd. It's called Ain't the Way to Die, and - if you can just follow the words - picks up on so many of the issues around end of life choice. A wonderful piece of work from an inspired medical team.

Oh, heck, here are the words for you. But do go and see the clip!

Based on “Love The Way You Lie” by Eminem and Rihanna

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
End of life and all my wishes go unheard
They just prolong me and don’t ask why
It’s not right because this ain’t the way to die, ain’t the way to die
Patient:
I can’t tell you what I really want
You can only guess what it feels like
And right now it’s a steel knife in my windpipe
I can’t breathe but ya still fight ‘cause ya can fight
Long as the wrong’s done right—protocol’s tight
High off of drugs, try to sedate
I’m like a pincushion, I hate it, the more I suffer
I suffocate
And right before I’m about to die, you resuscitate me
You think you’ve saved me, and I hate it, wait…
Let me go, I’m leaving you—no I ain’t
Tube is out, you put it right back, here we go again
It’s so insane, ’cause though you think it’s good, I’m so in pain
I’m more machine than man now, I’m Anakin
But no advanced directive, I feel so ashamed
And, crap, who’s that nurse? I don’t even know her name
You lay hands on me, to prolong my life again
I guess you must think that this is livin’…
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
End of life and all my wishes go unheard
They just prolong me and don’t ask why
It’s my right to choose the way that I should die
Doctor:
You ever love somebody so much, you can barely see when you with ‘em
That they, lay sick and dying but you just don’t wanna let ‘em
Be at peace cause you miss ‘em already and they ain’t gone
Beep beep, the ventilator alarms
I swore I’d never harm ‘em, never do nothing to hurt ‘em
Hippocratic oath primum non nocere now I’m forced just to torture ‘em
They push full code, no one knows what his wishes were
His sister heard him say once, “I don’t wanna be a vegetable”
But no one agrees in the family, his caregiver Kate
Wants him comfort care but Aunt Claire lives so far away
That her guilt eats her like cancer
So she answers, “Wait! I think he’ll wake”
Maam, you ain’t even in the state!
Palliate, relieve pain, get him home, explain
Critical care? Just hypocritical when it’s so insane
But they insist I shock his heart again so I persist
Guess that’s why they say that love is pain.

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
End of life and all my wishes go unheard
They just prolong me and don’t ask why
It’s my right to choose the way that I should die
The way that I should die