Suffer the Little Children...

On Sunday I met an amazing woman who is a foster carer for Barnardos. She was running the creche at the local Baptist church we were visiting and, once the service had finished, I had a really great chat with her that left me with so many questions and mixed feelings, and overall confusion...

You see, she is foster mother to a set of twins (boy and girl) who are about 17 months old. When she first started looking after them, they were 9 months old and had been removed from their home due to the fact that they had been completely neglected. They had never been fed any solid food, and were unable to sit up or support themselves in any way, as they had spent their entire short little lives laying in their cot.

So this lady spent a great deal of time, effort, and massive amounts of love and affection, and managed to get these little ones to a point where they actually started interacting, and eating, and progressing as they are supposed to...
And then the courts decided they were to be returned to their parents.

So now she only has the twins on the weekends - and apparently they are getting increasingly clingy and difficult, as the only place they get any affection or attention is with this lady.

Oh my heart just breaks for them...

Now, I don't know the whole story here - I don't know who the parents are, what their problems are, what the whole convoluted scenario is... But for goodness sakes! It must be so difficult working in this area - having to make judgement calls such as this one, when one decision can affect the whole future of a child.

What constitutes 'neglect'?
When does 'neglect' become 'abuse'?
When does the right of a Child to be healthy and content outweigh the right of a parent, to well, parent?

It is so hard not to make snap judgements, about 'the system', the parents, the carers... What a mine-field. I can only pray for those involved to maintain strength and compassion and hope.

I remember going to the National Baptist Assembly when I was living in the UK. And while it was one of the most uplifting and empowering experiences of my religious life, the moment that remains with me, that still has the power to sting me to tears, was the story of the Baptist Missionary Society's trip to the North Korean orphanages. Picture after picture of dead-eyed children. Of rooms full of tiny cots, with babies swaddled, never to enjoy the comfort of cuddles in the middle of the night. Hundreds of deathly quiet infants, who learn so quickly that crying brings no comfort, and is therefore just not necessary.

I just wanted to fly over there, and bundle them all into my arms and run away with them.

I know that's not possible, but my heart - it still aches.

Fostering is something that MrB and I have seriously considered - although obviously it's not something we can do right now. When the girls are a little older, when MrB's not studying, then we'll do it. And that's not an excuse, just reality. When sometimes I have to stop and remind myself to hug my own children, to acknowledge the need to spend some time appreciating them, then I'm in no state to be presenting myself as an alternative parent to some other poor child. But it's something that's always there in the back of my mind. And if it's something that I'm meant to do, then it will happen. I have faith.

I may not be able to save an entire orphanage, but if I can one day help other children to understand that hearts can sing, and that families are love, then it'll be a start...

not so Good Friday

Look, I'm not going to muck about here, I'm feeling a decided lack of inspiration (and there have been no kind offers of memes either) - and it's not just the blogging, it's everything. I need these 4 days off, even if MrB has got to do an essay, which means I'm on child-minding (and child-keeping-quiet) duty.
I having one of those terribly female phases of dropping things and getting all shaky and bursting into tears for no apparent reason (and NO! I am NOT pregnant before you even think that) Last night I dropped a dish of roasting carrots and tomatoes, and got quite irrationally upset about it - MrB was trying to comfort me about the shattered baking dish, but that wasn't what was upsetting me - it was the loss of the carrots. I really really wanted roasted carrots and tomatoes with my roast beef and potato bake. Like really...

Maybe it's because it's Easter, and our family has the worst luck at Easter... So subconsciously I guess I'm strung rather tightly, just waiting for the axe to fall...

And it's Good Friday, and I haven't made it to church. Again. And my soul is aching... I'll make it on Sunday, even if it kills me. I'm not too sure why I've been letting 'life' interfere with the church-going, but I think it's probably something to do with the lack of my RevJen. Although I thought it would be liberating to just be a bum on a pew, I'm kinda reticent to go knowing that her warm (though harried) smile won't be welcoming me. Which is precisely why I need to go. Because church shouldn't be about the people sitting alongside me, it should be about Him. And everything else is just a pathetic excuse.

INC's post showed up in Bloglines this morning, and I can't add to it, other than to say - go, read - and I'll have the CD playing, along with the New Irish hymns, because Mohammad, mountain etc.

And now I'm going to spend the rest of this grey and rainy Friday baking Hot Cross Buns, and hope the warm and comforting spices bring home to my selfish heart the sacrifice of my Crucified Christ.

Love

Last night was RevJen's last day at our church. She was 'de-commissioned' - heh.
Church was a pretty amazing place to be last night, because as well as mourning the loss of our most amazing pastor, we were also mourning the loss of a parishioner who had died last week in quite tragic and shocking circumstances.

Jen preached on 1 John 7-21, focusing on v. 10

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The church was filled with a great sense of love - for God, for Jen, for Mark, and for each other... trying to care for one another in the confusion that we all feel at the moment. You see, Mark committed suicide, having battled mental illnesses for most of his life. He wasn't that old mad man shouting at the clouds, but a young-ish guy quoting great chunks of the bible, and blessing all and sundry. He could be as frustrating as hell, but we just kept trying to love him, and always welcomed him as a fellow worshipper on Sunday evenings.

Anyway, Jen quoted a poem from here. It is about an amazing minister in the UK, but I think it can be applied just as much to the amazing RevJen.

Rob's God
I want to follow Rob’s God;
God-the-goal of my soul’s education.
Rob’s God is approachable, articulate and artful,
A glowing God, of graceful inclination.
Rob’s God snowboards cloudscapes
And paints daisies on his toes,
While watching Chaplin re-runs
On his i-Pod.
He smiles at cats and children,
Jumps in puddles with his shoes on,
A ‘where’s-the-fun -in-fundamentalism?’ God.
Rob’s God doesn’t shoot
His own wounded,
Or blame the poor for failing
At prosperity.
He doesn’t beat the broken
With bruised reeds from their garden,
Or tell the sick that healing’s their
Responsibility.
Rob’s God is a poet,
Painting people as his poems;
A sculptor shaping symphonies from stone
A maker of mosaics
Curator of collages
Woven from the wounds and wonders
We have known
A furnace of forgiveness;
Rob’s God radiates reunion
Pouring oil on every fight
We’ve ever started
A living lover
Loving laughter
Lending light
To the helpless and the harmed and heavy-hearted
Other Gods may claim more crowded churches
Higher profiles
Better ratings
Fuller phone-ins
But in the contest for commitment
In the battle for belief
In the war to woo my worship;
Rob’s God wins
In the fight for my faith’s fervour:
In the struggle for my soul;
In the race for my respect
Rob’s God wins.
Absolutely.
Gerard Kelly May 11th 2006

That she quoted the poem, talking about her discomfort at the gratitude being showered upon her, when really last night should have been about mourning Mark, just further underscores what an amazingly gracious and humble servant of Christ she is.

I'm losing her sermons and her ministry, but not her friendship, which is the only way I held things together last night!

And I've been thinking that there's probably one very good thing that will come out of Jen going... I no longer have any links with the hierarchy of the church - I resigned from Parish Council about 6 months ago - so I go back to being a punter in the pews and not let anger and frustration at Church politics impede me from worshipping God. Because, as John continues...

20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Encounters of the Boomer kind

The other day I had the privilege of spending a few days with Actual Howard Voters™ (AHV). You know, they really are differently-programmed. Really truly. Things that I and MrB think are undeniable truisms to them are actually, well, debatable. And I'm not even talking contentious issues such as Hicks and Iraq, these are things that, as Christians, we should be agreeing on... yet don't.

The weird thing is:

MrB's parents are Christians, both from working-class backgrounds, but now both solidly middle-class. You don't get much more bourgeois than the Shire! They ran a Small Business, and have backgrounds in nursing and banking. Your average everyday BabyBoomer in fact.

My parents are not Christians, both from working-class backgrounds, but both now solidly middle-class. And yes, they also live in the Shire. They run a Small Business - also your average Baby Boomers.

And yet, politically, MrB and I have so much more in common with my parents, not his. Very weird.

They are so similar in many ways, and yet so vastly different in terms of their political views. My parents are avowedly left-wing on most social issues, proud of their trade union heritage, yet not so narrow-minded that they're not prepared to see positives in some more right-wing policies. They were always supporters of the GST for instance... MrB's parents?

Well.

Back to the AHV™s... we didn't even discuss Hicks, because there's seriously no point. But we did discuss Iraq - and it's the only thing that they disagree with Howard over. The only thing. And it's only because we haven't won yet.

We threw at them:

• WorkChoices - they say it's all good because employers are the salt of the earth and need a break because these rascally employees just rort the system.
• Detention Centres - (in particular the recent story about the Sri Lankans being sent directly back to Sri Lanka) - they say it's all good because there were thousands and thousands of 'asylum seekers' - hordes in fact - coming over in boats to rort our system... [My question - What would Jesus Do? He said to take in the strangers... His reply - Render unto Caesar. At this point I exploded (and I had been very very good and had bitten my tongue on so many occasions) Right. So using that logic Jesus would have done nothing about the Holocaust and the gas chambers, because y'know Hitler said it was OK????? And you really don't need to know what his reply was.]
• Notable Christians taking the Government to task over the serious slide in social welfare over the last 12 years - they say they're not really evangelicals so it doesn't matter what they say... and besides they're all out to rort the system.

My all-time fave quote of the weekend, from MrsB Sr, was: I don't think Howard's a Christian. But he does listen to his wife a lot, really respects her... and she's a lovely Christian lady. Fred Nile says so.

Hmmm. Quite so. [How precisely does one respond to that?]

But the biggest thing, the massivest conspiracy theory that I'm surprised I hadn't heard on the interwebs yet, but seems to be the only way these conservatives can actually cope with the web of lies we've been told over Iraq is this:

The reason we haven't found the WMDs is because they were smuggled out of the country into Iran or Syria (doesn't matter which) during the invasion. But they were definitely there, and they definitely very very nasty and scary otherwise there wouldn't have been such an unseemly rush to go to war. Because there's no way that Tony Blair would have supported the invasion without concrete evidence of Saddam's evilness. And he's Labor, so you know we (MrB & I) have to believe him...It's just unfortunate that the haven't found the damn tricksy things. But they were most certainly there. Because they'd never lie to us.

The nasty scary thing is: they believe it. Whole-heartedly.


Updated to hopefully make more sense. In brief: MrB & I are Bleeding Heart, Latte-sippers etc. The object of much derision and scorn by his parents. Who I really do love very much. As long as politics aren't discussed. Because then I struggle to be tactful. Which, as anyone who knows me IRL would know, is a struggle indeed.

Anglicaring

At church on Sunday, we had a rep from Anglicare's Wollongong Office come and do the spiel about why we should be supporting them. We often get guest preachers coming along - Bush Church Society, Bible Society, CMS, etc. I usually tune out - I started to this time as the lady was basically reading a 'prepared statement' rather than engaging with the congregation (and she had a really annoying Southern English accent - but that's beside the point) Zephaniah got really interesting, let me tell you. Anyway, I tuned back in, and was amazed to discover how much stuff Anglicare does - especially in the Wollongong region (which stretches from Campbelltown and the Southern Highlands all the way down to Ulladulla)
It's not just the Emergency Relief during natural disaster - such as bushfires and floods; it's not just the food hampers at Christmas - it's so much more.
Anglicare provides relief for people in many different situations - from the elderly infirm to the middle-class family in financial strife. They provide counselling services, adoption services (for disabled kids), prison visits, migrant support services, mental health support. They seek out the helpless, and help them! And it's run by an army of volunteers. Of course the Counsellors are all proper paid employees, but the majority of Anglicare workers are ordinary, everyday, churchgoing christians. And you never hear about them. They are out there running playgroups for single mums, for newly-arrived migrants; they're providing twice-weekly coffee mornings for the mentally-iffy in Wollongong; they're visiting the elderly; they're helping struggling families... In fact, they've effectively become the outsourced Welfare System. The government has abrogated their responsibilities towards the vulnerable in our communities, and left it to the Church.
Well, despite the unsparkliness of the prepared statement, the Anglicare Lady did her job well. Although I annually provide the components of a Christmas Hamper for a Medium to Large family (xmas pudding, xmas cake, tinned ham, tinned custard, tinned potatoes etc) I've decided I don't do enough. I don't have time to volunteer, but I CAN donate money. And that's what I'm going to do.

He is Risen!

This has been an interesting weekend.

Good Friday has got to be one of the more perfect days experienced for quite a while: Time spent with the kids, walking along the beach, playing with the babes... The weather was amazing, so clear, so still. I stood on Bulli Beach, and looking north I could see the coastline stretching to the Royal National Park. I felt calm, truly blessed.

Last night I went to church - the first time I've been in weeks. It's always easy to be too tired, too sick, too busy to get to church. I've been struggling with it for a couple of months now. I don't want to be around people, don't want to be accountable, don't want to be judged. I know I won't be - I know it's all in my head and that I am loved, not scorned - but still. Church is a difficult place to be when you're trying to hide from God! Anyway we all went to church - lots of hugs and kisses and concerned looks - "Christ is Risen" "He is Risen indeed!" Christians on Easter Sunday are the most joyous of people! Well we should be - our saviour lives! I didn't feel particularly joyous - and I shared something with a friend of mine (while hiding in the creche) - something which should have prompted care and understanding but instead brought forth a diatribe of pure and unadulterated dogma. Is it any wonder I'm feeling conflicted at the moment?

And in that frame of mind I read this article 'The Christian Paradox' by Bill McKibben. I had never come across his work before, but this article blew me away. The discomfort one can feel professing Christ in this world of Christian Right Neo-Cons is both validated and diminished. The Christ the Left blames for the woes of the world is not the Christ of the Bible: not the Risen Saviour. "Since the days of Constantine, emperors and rich men have sought to co-opt the teachings of Jesus. As in so many areas of our increasingly market-tested lives, the TV men, politicians and the Christian interest groups have found a way to make each of us complicit in that travesty, too... When (we) hunger for selfless love and are fed only love of self, they will remain hungry..." The central tenet of Christianity is Love: love of God and love of each other. I'm not going to get into an argument here about imaginary friends: I have my reasons for my faith, and as the daughter of scientists, you can believe that my reasons are pretty sound. I may share my testimony at some other point, but now all that is necessary is to understand the my faith is real and my Saviour lives. My struggle now is to try and apply His words to my life. Again. Because they've been sadly overlooked recently.