Always Be Wary Of Starting Conversations Between Drummers And Theology Students

my dear friend bruce and i haven’t managed to be face to face in a while now. so we are trading stories and ideas via email until we can sit down and natter it all out. just so we’re clear… he’s the drummer, and i’m the theology student. about 40 years and some between us… not that you would know it. so here is how this works… i write and then he reponds, normally line by line.. then i respond to his responses. follow (the white rabbit) and see if anything is useful…needless to say, whilst bruce and i share much we do not hold the same spiritual beliefs.

Conversation Part One

Bruce:hey babe, thanks for replying, your sympathy overwhelms me hehe..

Tash: well that’s never been the basis of this relationship… compassion?

Bruce: oops, sorry, lost my mind there for a moment…musta been the school bands

Tash: aren’t we more about a meeting of the minds, development of philosophy, creative understanding?

Bruce(response): whatever you say, he said meekly heh heh

Tash: there is no room for sympathy in the world of an artist… simply a burgeoning pressure to use your pain to create, interpret and illustrate some redeemptive feature of humanity.

Bruce(response):holy art school, Batgirl, this is deeply philosophical ! and correct ! yo studies are paying off, I expect a book from you any day now…

Conversation Part Two

Bruce: now, let’s see, where was I…? ah yes…

Tash(response): i haven’t figured out where you are yet…. and it’s been a few years now… still. it’s all about the journey.

Bruce: holy art school, Batgirl, this is deeply philosophical ! and correct ! yo studies are paying off, I expect a book from you any day now

Tash(response): mmm but would you read it if you suspected that by reading it you may have to irrevocably change your point of view? if for example… i wrote a postmodernist telling of the Gospel… would you read it? these are interesting questions. and should i, as a Christian, write the Gospel story or simply live it, … a modern translation of psalm 61.8…

‘and i’ll be the poet that sings of your glory, and i’ll live what i sing every day.’

mm… there is a challenge in that. what good is an artist’s song, or painting if it doesn’t work, or hold relevance to ‘real life’? what’s the purpose to all my learning if i don’t change what i live…

This Is How You Remind Me

of a conversation in theology a couple of weeks ago… pulling apart the joan osbourne song… what if God was one of us… there is a line that states.. “and would you want to see if seeing meant that you would have to believe?”. an interesting proposition really.

Tranzsend… he tangata, he tangata, he tangata…

those maori words mean… it is people, it is people, it is people… i see also that steve is also talking about he tangata in response to the foreshore and seabed issue. worth a look to see what he has to say about it all. anyway…. tonight i was blessed to sit and eat with, share with some of the tranzsend staff that i will be sharing workspace and mindspace with. it is encouraging to know that at the heart of where we begin to work and the end result of our work.. it is people, it is people, it is people. i am feeling encouraged.

Head Space…. So You May Want To Know What I Have Been Thinking..

from an email to a dear friend….

“i guess for the past month or so i’ve been in a place where i jsut wasn’t going anywhere in my personal relationship with God. you’ve maybe picked that up.. anyway… lots of external, no internal. i felt like i was behind a door and crying out to God, but God wasn’t getting inside the door. so i went and saw sue my mentor on friday afternoon… and she was able to pull some stuff apart and all of a sudden it was really clear that there was this barrier between me and God and i was the only one who could move it. … it was a little thing as far as i was concerned.. not really a sin issue, just an attitude one. there were some things about myself that i was rejecting because i didn’t believe that they were worthy or right or as they should be… but in rejecting them, i was actually rejecting God’s creation.. and although he may want to change me and those aspects of who i am, he loves me and has created me this way for a purpose. it may seem simple to you, but i guess for me it was this huge deal… God desperately wanted to come closer to me, but couldn’t until i stopped rejecting those things.. because in rejecting what the Creator has made, i was partly rejecting him.

so i had a cool weekend. i was housesitting .. wicked. anyway… on saturday i drove to hamilton with jo norrie. crazy. we went to the iguana for lunch and then we drove down to finlay park… yay for eastercamp. went out onto the point and jsut enjoyed being there. stopped at the dam and took a couple of cool photos. took some cool photos all day actually. anyway.. came home and chilled out with ian and adrian… meanwhile the whole time my brain was slowly processing the stuff that sue and i talked about… so sunday morning… cos it’s easy, easy like sunday morning…

i woke up and spent pretty much the whole day in prayer, reading and writing in my journal, processing what God was saying and what i needed to do and say and release and all that jazz. it was a really good day. frances and i hooked up and went down to milford beach and i told her about what God had been doing or revealing to me, and then we prayed for him to speak more and give guidance for the way ahead.

he gave this weird as picture in my head of God opening a gate, with sheer force… and i knew that it was in scripture somewhere… and he pointed me exactly to it, ‘his banner over me is love’… check it out!! God gave me a word from song of solomon. hahaha. gotta love that. the most intimate book of the bible….anyway..it was ‘my lover has thrust his hand through the latch opening’.. and then he spoke to me through a whole bunch of things in that book. the very things about myself i wasn’t able to accept.

it’s all a journey, but it’s wicked to know that God’s shown me what the problem is, and he’s being faithful to help me heal and move on. ”