Wise Words From Work

I'm a slow learner...especially about myself.

But I'm learning. Today a colleague repeated back to me office gossip - questioning my professional capacity because I wasn't "in the industry". It stung. In some ways it's true and it's been a source of ongoing tension at TAFE recently.

But driving home the second part of his comment sunk in - he reported that his way of dealing with the same charges is "i think do I respect this person's opinion? do i need to take seriously what they say?" Now many people have made similar comments to me on this sort of theme - over years - but somehow today it clicked. Do i let one person's opinion drag my thinking about myself down....coudl it be that the other's are right - stuff about encouraging inspiring teacher (yeah yeah i say brushing it off). And then because instead of just mouthing those words I let myself think them came the insight - it's one opinion not the final word. And I also justified it but that's being not nice.

So how come at least at the start I'm so willing to believe the one over the many? But at least I've caught it and recognised it.

Now I'm going to relax with a nice glass of wine.

take me out and shoot me

if ever i get to the stage where all that matters is the number of women at ladies fellowship take me out and shoot me.

i've been at a meeting where all that could be reported on was the numbers of women (very small) at the monthly fellowship. no sense of direction, no mention of others in the church. i really don't know how to change this...how did it get like this, how is that understanding of God been so distorted, what does leadership look like in this context. i sat there wanting to scream and just wanting to say if you want to know what I really think - I think we should stop all this right now and appoint a chaplian and stop calling it church...which leads us back to the missional question of what is church

and we're trapped in a situation that says the "congregation" is the final arbitor but making such incredible assumptions about the state of said congregation - and what recourse do we have when it really isn't a congregation any more....actually that'd be interesting - could we apply the same tests to these congregations to continue as we apply to those seeking to become congregations??

aghh just a rant really - just as well i've got marking to keep me insane

the downside of teaching

we're at the end of semester here at the moment. for teachers it's a marking frenzy and for students it's the make and break time

this is where the downside of teaching comes in. no matter how warm and fluffy i seem, at the end of term i am still the person marking the assessments. those who just don't turn up or don't hand stuff in allow us to fail them easily and mostly impersonally. i tap their results into the records system casually

but then there's the others. those who have worked really hard but who can't do it. this year in particular my colleagues and i have struggled with students whose first language isn't english. refugees many of them, eager to learn, struggling to keep up with the verbal style of our teaching and the classroom banter, and at assessment time - the assurances that all is unstood are stripped bare to show huge gaps in the understanding of even the requirements (before i even start on the content issues). i had to tell a student today that he would not be able to pass my subject and that as its all written communication that i felt that before he continued at tafe he needed to find someone to do some intensive work on his english with him. it was hard.

dave's said it often - we don't know and will never know the half of what they've gone through to get here - we realise that some don't have any written skills in their primary language as war in cebtral africa meant life has been a succession of refuge camps and snippets of education from different systems.

and here we do provide some language education but for many (as it would be for me hopeless at languages as i am) it is too big a class and not enough time. and then they must leave intensive english and take on further study for which they don't have the skill - or find work where their language skills aren't such a problem and condemn themselves to dead end jobs. it's so frustrating and even wirting this doesn't help assauge the guilt i feel at being judge or the frustration with the system that puts us all here.

aghhh

back to the marking...

impression as ministry

a wonderful risotto dinner and even better news

sometimes leaving an impression and not a whole meglithic structure is also ok

i have been drilled in modernist ministry which says that i should have spent time building up the chosen leaders and not been up the front. i felt i had been well loved but that overall the ministry would be judged (by those who really knew) a failure.

but over dinner i discover the dream suggested in the original interview is germinating and to be released into being in july - worship teams are forming to take the family service forward. multiple teams comprising the best of the diversity and giftedness

wow

and maybe i had to go for it to happen. my gift was to make the impression not to create the excavation

a sacramental rabbit hole

i fear i may fallen down a rabbit hole this morning and certainly not the matrix allusion to it involving the red pill

which is a worry because i don't really get what that means for now or next

how could this have snuck up on me - thank goodnes for the more alert around me who came along to be there - who provided shoes and bore faithful witness - again

i have long clung to my anglican training of the sacraments from the catechism - the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace - i think i'm reporting that the catholics are right about there being more than two

and the sacrament was started by the self appointed head toucher and completed by the washing in tears of a retiring puppeteer

and for once i was an unexpecting bystander kneeling not directing - receiving not bestowing

this whole thing may just be alright

daring to despair out loud

Yes, yes the three of you who read this - i haven't posted for a long time.

part of me doesn't want to post now either but I've been inspired by Mark Pierson's honesty and vulnerability so here goes

starting a new place is hard. very hard. all you have is a list of names and a list of tasks. no connection. lots of spaces in my head to fall down

the biggest space is the tendancy to despair - where is God in this mess....and today i have been wrestling with how to love people and remembering that Blacktown was like that at the start too and that loving people and not despairing is choice.

i somehow need to find a way of seeing and being that enables me to channel the source of love and hope until it wears off on me.

which leads me to the second thought exercising my spirit at the moment. I am profoundly bad at staying with process, at the not knowing the outcome. ironic when really that is what faith is all about - feeling around in the greyness of the journey. in a noisy inner world there is endless playing out of options and scenarios - practising for the real world at its best, creating the reality at its worst. i can't see how this can come out. and i'm really scared

i want to believe that it's who you are and that will be ok and mroe than that that by doing the walking i am also in the process of becoming so that the 'i' who gets to next year is not quite the same as the 'i' who writes this now. but the ever stalking voices of "not good enough" and "if people really knew" are attempting to entwine themselves in my path and what if these vines are stronger forces for the shaping?