I can still feel my fingers
at the keys, 
tapping out eternal warnings
to fellow thirteen year old
pilgrims on the OG 
messenger platforms
brains early in development
didn’t stop my confident assertions

I came at matters of belief
like a child soldier
lobbing theological grenades
in the name of 
love?

Thankfully, 
the turnings 
and conversions
birthed from the faces and spaces
that flipped my assumptions 
and judgments 
came divinely appointed
again and
again and 
again

The ones
the world calls lesser
whom Jesus calls blessed

kept bringing me home to the news
that God 
never wanted appeasement
or child soldiers
or fear-based ultimatums

Just mercy,
and love,
and embrace

Though I
shudder at times
to think of my youthful arrogance

I know this current me-in-progress
fingers at the keys, 
tapping out reflections
will appear immature
in my rearview mirror
twenty years from now

And even as
I look now at my own
children in development
I never want them to feel
ashamed of the winding path
they must walk 

to come home to the news
that God 
only ever looks
like mercy,
and love,
and embrace.

It’s been raining for as long as this goldfish can remember
And the forecast shows no sign of change

And I am tempted to complain
about the moat forming around my castle,

But then,

I think of floodwaters
Rising to meet eaves
And the displaced ones
Scattered through churning streets

My mind
Jumps borders
Envisages explosions
Tries to reckon with invasion
The places where displacement
Is not by nature, but by design

The gridlocked chess match
Of expensive weaponry and fragile egos
History is a finger painting of innocent blood
On repeat

Much closer to home
I think of the friends who cannot sleep
Battling invisible mental beasts
They text me to pray for them

I pray Psalm 23 for us all,
For the whole flooded, bloody mess of it
Are there green pastures and quiet streams,
Amidst all the dark valleys and enemy tables?
Sometimes I lose sight of the shepherd

As it all swirls through my mind
To the sound of constant rain,
I am hyper aware of the shelter
I have from the storms
I am sheltered — physically and emotionally
And there is no entitlement in it
No deserving of it
The things I am most grateful for
Feel like subtle reminders of injustice

And I don’t know how to do anything else,
Except cry out for the shepherd:

Please,
Don’t hide now.

I am frequently paralysed by 
    the choices of the modern world:
    from how to spend $50 
    to how to spend my own life
    which streaming service to keep?
    which show to binge next?
    Leaves me flailing
    on my back,    
        like a slater

Perhaps this has always been a problem        
on some level,
    no doubt exacerbated,
    by optical fibre
    but, how do you choose what you do 
    with these ticking hours? 
Mary Oliver phrased it beautifully; 
    ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’
But sometimes I want to say back to Mary
    ‘What is it you plan to do with this one wild
    selection of Netflix originals?’

Of course, 
    Mary Oliver,
    Saint that she was,
    probably wouldn’t have made the first choice
    to even entertain the notion 
    of the Netflix scroll
She was just choosing which flower        
to write her next poem about
    and would probably
    gently encourage me 
    towards the hum out the window
    of life pulsing electric
    through stardust and soil

Ghost Mary reminds me
    the choice was never just
    whether to rewatch the Matrix trilogy
    or try something new
The choice was (and is)
    to show up and write
    some words on this page
    or to distract myself,
    from myself    
    catching up to 
    myself.

Of course you can watch movies 
    and show up 
    to your creative life
    (arguably, it’s essential)
    but I know when my own scales
    are tipped.

So Mary, 
    here I am
    beneath a thumping fan in the kitchen 
    writing.
    I want to write the poems,
    like you. 
​

It is happening just like they said it would:
    they are growing up fast

I used to hold him like a football
Yesterday he kicked one over the fence

He used to know no words
Yesterday he told me he could see 
‘The soft-feathered wings of the day’
    6 and he already spins better poetry than me

His brother,
    dresses up like a pirate
    like a paramedic
    like an astronaut

And I’m still wondering
    is he dressing up as a 4 year old?
    or has that much time actually passed
    since we first met? 

They are growing up fast

And you find yourself uttering that phrase
    even though you know how cliche it sounds

And I wonder, 
    if it is just an easy-to-reach-for substitute 
    for things that are more difficult to say

If you pause too long to ponder
    the volumes you’ve already forgotten
    the mispronounced words
    the day before walking
    the night after coming home
    it’s dizzying to think about
    the rollercoaster tracks in the rearview

And when I say 
    they’re growing up fast
I think what I really want to say
    is that I’m horrified by how casually
    I am passing through this gift shop

And I know,
    it’s easy to be sentimental
    when the household is asleep
    and you are writing poems in the quiet hour

And I don’t want to romanticise
    the slog of it
    the shit of it
    the thousand little deaths of it

There are honestly days when I fantasise about
    going back to before
    back to morning sex
    and midday movies
    and deciding to go to the beach
    and then just going, straight away

And, maybe
    this is what horrifies me
    more than my kids growing up

It’s the curse of casually spending every season of your life
    wanting to space-jump
    backwards or forwards
    when the miracle, in all its bloody wonder
    is always and only ever happening
    where you are now. 

And you casually let it play 
    like background music. 

You are skim reading the body of your life
You are swallowing without chewing your life
You are driving on auto-pilot through the rich landscapes 
    of your one life, 

Sometimes I feel
    like every poem I write is the same
    I only really talk about
    trying to be present 
    trying to see the wonder
    trying to live and give
    from a deep well of gratitude

I write about it so often
    because it is 
    as important
    as it is difficult

And the best things are often so
    like raising these kids
    who are growing up
    at the pace of growing up

And maybe all you can show them
    is that none of it is casual
    none of it is granted    
    none of it is cheap

Every time oxygen fills those God-given tanks
Every beat that is thumped from that drum in your chest
    every blink, 
    every tear,
    every word, 
    every touch 

It is all more dazzlingly wondrous 
    than any Sci-Fi reality anyone’s ever dreamed of
    
It is nothing to be casual about.

This everyday miracle.

These are my sons, Noah and Leo.

They both have a penis.

And they both have adorable long hair.

Noah’s favourite shirt has a pink glittery flamingo on the front. Leo collects shiny things like a magpie in his bed.

They are both rough and gentle and kind and fierce and infuriating and fantastic. They are all kinds of wonderful and wild.

This morning the three of us were sitting in one of our favourite local cafes having a babycino date. Sunshine out the window, double-shot flat white in my hand and the glorious site of chocolate mono-brows emerging as my kids made contact with the rim of their cups after every sip.

Another family came in and sat behind us. I could hear the parents talking to one of their children about the exposed air conditioning system and what those large silver tubes snaking all over the roof were there for. I smiled; we had just had this conversation.

When I got up to leave, the mother looked at me with kind, parental solidarity and asked, “How old are your girls?”

My boys are five and three, I thought.

“…Five and three” I said, opting to avoid any awkward vibes.

“We have two the same age. Except they’re boys. So they’re very busy!”

I smiled and walked out, leaving behind the familiar gift of assumptions with a side of stereotypes.

Before I continue, I want to say, this family seemed lovely. There was genuine warmth in the interaction, and I have no doubt these are good parents who love their busy boys well. There was nothing malicious in this interaction.

But isn’t it amazing how quickly our minds make links? My sons have long hair, so the snap judgment is that they are girls. And if they are girls, they must be less ‘busy’ than boys.

I have interactions like this every week. I don’t have time to write a blog post about it every time (that’s what this poem is for).

But this morning I was still stewing over an interaction from the night before.

I was sitting round a table playing board games at a mate’s place. (Gender stereotype much? Sidenote: it doesn’t help that basically every board game ever only refers to players as ‘he’ in the instructions. Seriously. Go read instructions for any strategy game. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it).

Anyway, it turns out one guy’s wife is pregnant. Congratulations are exchanged. Then someone asks, “Are you going to tell everyone what the gender is?”

“Yeah, I think we will”.

“Good choice. You don’t want to end up with a whole bunch of yellow and grey clothes.”

True. You definitely don’t want that. What could be worse?

I gently offer an alternative perspective, “You could just let your child wear whatever clothes they want?”

It was a genuine suggestion, but grey-hater builds on what he perceives to be a joke about how PC the world is becoming, and chuckles: “Yeah. You need to wait until the child decides if they are a boy or a girl first!”

He then tells a story about how his son always plays with trucks and cars as vehicles, but everytime he has seen girls play with trucks and cars they become characters talking to each other. His son never does this. His trucks and cars never have a conversation. He finishes the story by making the point that in the case of his son “it’s not a social construct”, just an observation about how his boy is wired. Read between the lines: he’s following those good old fashioned rules about what a boy is supposed to be like. Phew.

Once again, I am sure this guy is well intentioned and that he and his wife love their little person who has the good sense to play with trucks like they are trucks, rather than characters having an emotional ‘girly talk.’

And I know, in the grand scheme of things both of these interactions may seem small and trivial.

But that is kind of the point.

It’s why I often don’t know how to respond when people project their assumptions on to my kids. It feels like I would be the one making a ‘big deal’ about gender and hair length. Meanwhile, pouring kids back into the moulds they supposedly came from is so socially acceptable you seem like a revolutionary for suggesting yellow and grey aren’t the only colours up for grabs if you don’t yet know whether it’s a penis or a vagina?

This large, invisible framework of gender roles/stereotypes/expectations is actually made from mountains of ordinary, everyday, seemingly harmless moments like these.

That’s the whole point.

If you think your kid is free of any social construct, but the first question you ask someone when they are expecting is whether they are going to announce the gender….then sorry, I’ve got news: you’re handing your kid a pretty clear script for how they are supposed to perform in this world.

And from little things, big things grow.

Could there possibly be any connection between these busy little boys whose trucks don’t talk and these risk taking teenagers who don’t  articulate their feelings and these grown up men who are angry and violent and isolated? It doesn’t happen in a single moment, but a lifetime of messaging about what the world does and doesn’t expect from you….might just produce exactly the kind of results we see on the other end?

If you’re not allowed to wear certain colours when you’re an infant how many other options are already being taken away from you? How many unnecessary walls have been built for you to climb, before you have even learned to crawl?

I’m not under any illusion that my house is some kind of magical neutral zone free of social constructs. Our kids are going to have plenty they need to unlearn. But I hope that every time we become aware of an invisible rule, we talk about it. We put a spotlight on it. We ask questions about it. We decide whether or not it is life-giving.

And when the rules are questioned, some of them get ditched.

I live with these wonderful little people who see themselves as poets and artists and inventors and scientists. They paint their nails and love dinosaurs and build towers and collect flowers and kick balls and ride bikes and cry and laugh and scream and give me high fives and kisses on the lips. All of these things are true. Shocking, I know.

And I am sure it is confusing when we leaves our house where we’ve tried to dismantle these rules, and they walk through a world where some people call them she and some people call them he, and then people treat them differently based on which one of these they see. It can feel like it’s a lose-lose. We either start playing by the ‘rules’. Or we prepare for the ongoing bafflement and confusion and social awkwardness.

But at the end of the day, I don’t think is my choice to make. If my kids want to rock long hair and pink flamingo shirts, I’m not going to stand in their way.

Instead, I will try my best to create conversations about why this might confuse some people. I will share about the old stories, the invisible rules that have existed for a long time. I will also emphasise that they aren’t written in stone and they don’t deserve the weight they are given. We will talk about how I am a man and Mama is a woman, and that does mean something, but it has nothing to do with colours or hair or emotions or skill sets. We will ask together, what do these words mean, ‘man’ and ‘woman’? What could they mean? And what are the deeper words we would use to describe who we are?

Maybe sometimes there’s no better word for who you are than your very own name.

If you’ve read this far, could I ask you to consider a simple suggestion? A concrete action that we could all easily take?

It’s one small brick in a big wall, but if we all took down one brick a day, that would make a profound difference (and maybe we could do away with some wrecking balls in the process).

Ready for it?

When you are interacting with a parent and/or their child for the first time, ask an open question without gender assumptions, like this:

"How old is this little person?"
"What is this little person’s name?"

90% of the time the answer will be something like.

 “She is two years old.”
 “His name is Rupert Made-up-child the Third!”

If they say a name but not a gender, then just use their name in your follow up questions:

“What does Rupert like to do?

This might not seem like a big deal. It’s not going to eliminate all our ingrained stereotyping and assumptions and invisible rules.

But I guarantee you, if you train yourself to ask a question like this first — that little shift in awareness will ripple out in all kinds of beautiful and helpful ways.

After all, from little things big things grow.

Before I was born
my mother and father
moved from respective country towns
became same city bound
and together found 
the quiet, Australian, Christian values
they were raised with
became the awakened zeal
of passionate university evangelists

My Dad, always wanted to be a pastor,
he is an architect,
but I realise now he has always been a pastor to me.
There were four kids before I came on the scene
six by the time the family was complete

And so
I, number five
was born breathing Bible stories into lungs
immersed in words faithfully sung
seeing Old Testament violence filtered
through animated vegetables using clever puns
I was suspicious of Santa from an early age
I was singin' baa baa doo baa baa to Colin Buchanan tapes

At five years old
in the kitchen with my mother,
I asked Jesus to enter my heart.
Nothing deeply profound
and yet, as simple and beautiful as it still sounds.

Years later I would question the validity of my five year old faith
but now I think a five year old’s faith carries no hate
a five year old’s faith knows no shame
a five year old’s faith can be pretty great.

Fast forward
to when I am
fourteen years old
I think life is swell
I am on MSN messenger warning my friends about hell
I hate Muslims, atheists, gay people as well
I am very confident I know how everything works
I love Jesus, but my faith is full of darkness unsearched
assumptions unquestioned,
questions forbidden
collections of unwritten biases
I was unconsciously given

At Seventeen years old
I am leading classroom debates about the age of the earth
I am turning the public schoolyard into a church
I am passionate, naive and clumsy at best
I avoid alcohol, swear words, gay people and sex.
In the eyes of some I am a success;
in the eyes of others, I am a threat

Nineteen years old
I wade through Philosophy tutorials and set texts
I add to my self-righteousness undergraduate pretentiousness.
My mind is engaging more deeply,
but my answers are still pre-determined
God is still a middle-class, capitalist white boy like me
and I still know how everything works

Twenty years old
I spit raps in juvenile justice facilities
I begin to see aspects of faith a little differently
I begin to wonder if these kids would be welcomed at services on Sundays
I begin to confront aspects of myself that seem a little ugly
I begin to wonder if I have misunderstood how some things work.
The seeds of new questions are planted in the soil of my soul

Twenty-five years old
I become a father
two months later I become a pastor
both of these roles bring questions harder
than any I had grappled with prior
chinks to the armour
having casual existential crises between Sunday sermons
trying to exercise leadership that looks more like service
I’m hyper conscious that I’m in a position of power and authority
trying to follow a rabbi whose life was marked by sacrifice and poverty.
My heart has felt the insane expansion of parental responsibility
My past now looks like a bread crumb trail of judgmental hypocrisy
I no longer know how everything works
But I am still convinced that Jesus is the hope of the cosmos,
the neighbourhood
and me

Thirty years old and here’s where I’m at:
My faith is a vibrant patchwork with some open gaps
I’m no longer desperate to hide every hole
I have lost the illusion that God is mine to control
I believe my body is not just a container for a heaven-bound soul
but instead part of a cosmic broken temple being made whole
I'm ashamed thinking of people my faith was wielded like a knife at
particularly the ones who weren’t present to fight back
all the people I had ridiculed before meeting round tables
ideas formed without relationship, based purely on fables
I grieve often for all my friends who have faced
a choice between a faith community or an honest faith
that should never have been a choice in the first place.
If nothing else, shouldn’t church at least be safe?

These snapshots of my evolving faith
are pictures of broken humanity sprinkled with grace.
There are past versions of me I struggle to like
I hope the future versions of me look more like Christ

Sometimes it feels like everything I believe has changed
except one thing,
one name,
at the centre remains.
These days,
I know how very little works
but now I think maybe that’s ok.
I still believe Jesus loves me
like when I was five years old.

I process life as a human on planet earth through poetry. Love, loss, wonder, wounds, parenthood and more recently pandemics. Here are 9 poems I wrote during March and April, as we grappled with the biggest global disruption in living memory. You can also hear me read some of these poems on the Poetic Beings podcast.

#1
18/3/19

After bushfires, a global virus
I look into my lions' irises
my children - making their earliest memories
within a globe that rocks unsteadily
gig economy, cancelled concerts
anxious crowds, hidden monsters
and sometimes I wonder how to teach them
God is love, the ground beneath them
sometimes I wonder how to teach me
God is love, the ground beneath me

#2
21/3/20

The sun shines brightly here
while the world is humbled
systems crumble
we lose the control we never had
like the ferris wheel stops spinning
the car tyre is flat
the light globe blows

but the sun shines brightly here
the breeze still blows
the birds still sing
and the pen still writes
when some things are taken,
other things are left
and maybe nothing's ever birthed
without some kind of death

#3
22/3/20

There are new griefs here
more subtle than the classic losses
we have tasted in the past

The wave of fave local cafes
ending their operation
knowing you can't sit at that table
drink that coffee
made by that barista, anymore.

Then there are the places trying to stay open
you think about how difficult this must be
your shoulders sag a little for their burden

You just had a stack of new books arrive
you will not be able to launch in person
and you wonder,
who wants to buy poetry books right now?

And you enter the tangled mental knots
of plans interrupted
rhythms shattered
likely losses passing before your eyes
holiday cancelled
business plans scrapped

And there are beautiful innovations
seeds of new creativity
little sprouts of hope
like 'going to church' this morning
on couch with sons snuggled close
And there will be new life
there will be wondrous, unexpected beauty

but don't miss the grief
it deserves to be felt
don't live out of the despair
or anxiety
but don't miss the grief
it deserves to be felt.

#4
24/3/20

The centipedes don't know

Life continues normally for them
and the billions of other life forms on earth
that don't go to the cinema
or the pub or the library

It says something about us
that these places feel like
part of who we are
limbs we only notice when they're lost

These are the places we swap stories
watch them on screens
borrow them printed and bound
part of who we are
is in the telling
and the showing
and the sharing

And we will do this
in our homes
and on our phones
if our meeting places close

But maybe it's a good reminder
that what makes a human creature
is a little more than hunt and gather
a little more than food and shelter
a little more than 'the essentials'
And the more is in connection
so we must not lose connection.

#5
30/3/20

The parks are closed
the swings hang still
dust gathers on the window sills
of restaurants with doors now shut
Centrelink brims with the latest cuts

And I lay in bed to pen this poem
safe and fed, here at home
and I don't know what words to write
one minute, everything feels alright
but sometimes a breath is all it takes
to feel the fear, to sense the weight
guilt that we don't suffer more
terror that we might suffer more

And being human is a fragile thing
and we rest our trust on paper wings
but they're razor thin
and maybe life on a knife edge is always life
and privilege is just another word for blind

#6
5/4/20

I've been
going to bed earlier
spending less money
sitting on the deck
outside when it's sunny
writing more poems
calling more friends
thinking more about
who I'll be when this ends

I've been
reading more headlines
feeling more anxious
craving more wine
acting impulsive and restless
I get stuck in my mind
when there's nowhere to run
and I wonder
where I will be when it's done
​
In some ways I feel better,
in other ways worse
and maybe the mix
of the two just affirms
I'm still broken and beautiful
like I was before
I'm still held by grace
no less and no more

#7 
12/4/20 (Easter Sunday)

Death and resurrection;
the way.

In the time of crucifixion or coronavirus
this hasn’t changed
every ending, a rebirth
waiting to be reframed
check your tombs for rolled stones
and messiahs playing gardener
like when it all began

If the story teaches anything
maybe it’s that Christ often resides
in ordinary places unrecognised
and seeing requires more than just eyes

So check your tombs
and don’t be surprised
if new life walks out
of the burial sites

#8
18/4/20

Exercise has returned to nature

We used to sleep in our homes
but did we live in them, like now?
we used to drive on our streets
but now we walk them, rediscover them
I have never seen so many people
walking their local pavement

It helps that these last few days
have been the glory of autumn
warm sunlight after cool mornings

I wonder about winter
maybe it is time to learn to hibernate?
If we could sleep 6 months
and wake on the other side, would we?

Is there enough life here
to be here,
today?

But that is always the question
in our privilege or our poverty
we gaze towards unrealised horizons
replay waves of yesterday's waters

Here is so often the most difficult place to be.
​
But here is where we are,
walking our streets
drenched in Autumn light
as ordinary and extraordinary
as ever.

#9
19/4/20

When my grandkids ask me
about living through the coronavirus
I hope I can tell them
I trod gently on sacred ground
and didn’t squander all my thoughts on the survival of my comfort

The preservation of privilege
turns our gaze from the sacred amongst the suffering
Christ, the ground of being
is always positioned with the suffering

That is why sacred ground abounds
the woman whose home reeks
with bulldog masculinity
the bruised child facing bullies
haunting homes and not just schoolyards
the elderly who miss the glint in grandkids eyes
(not captured on screens)
single ones whose skin will
only know its own touch for months
not to mention the frontline workers
or the very ones who suffer the virus

I have been known to trample
over sacred ground
in my anxious rush to feed my ego
but I hope that when my grandkids
ask me about the days the world changed
I will be able to say
I changed with it
I trod more gently
I loved tenderly and fiercely
among all the sacred in midst the suffering

Lately I’ve been splashing around in the waters of contemplative prayer. Like a kid. I’m no expert. I don’t understand how it all works, but I’ve found some water I want to jump around in. Ironically, it’s the kind of water that makes me want to stop jumping around. To sit, to be still, to feel every sensation, the cool liquid my toes can drink from, the sun settling softly on my tightly wound mind.

The last few mornings I’ve started each day with centering prayer. I sit in my armchair in my office, focus on my breath and use the word ‘spirit’ as a focusing point. Breathe it in, breathe it out. There is spirit here. Magic here. Wonder here. Christ here. The sitting perfectly still part feels kind of like planking. Or holding some other kind of stretch. Like when you can feel the muscle stretching, straining in physical exercise. I can feel my mind stretching, straining. Wanting to snap back to familiar fidgeting, distractedness, permanent state of rush. But instead I choose to sit through the stretch and let it grow me.

For each of the last few nights I have closed my day with the Examen prayer. I sit straight against the back of the bed (if I lay down, I’ll be asleep in seconds), and I run through my day in mind. I see myself: so rushed, so distracted, so anxious. I see brief moments where I was present. Kind. Available to my children, my wife, myself. I see the seemingly wasted moments and the deeply wonderous ones. And as I hover over my day in my memory, I speak to God. How could I have done this differently? Where were you breaking through amidst the ordinary? It feels like I am sifting through my inner world. It feels like a muddy bundle of sticks and leaves and treasure that I am holding in my hands. Some of it is very ugly. Some of it is very beautiful. God promises me, we are sifting through it together. This bundle of muddy nature that I am; we are making something out of it.

I feel like I have been fascinated with the contemplative for a long time. At least at a theoretical, cerebral level. I like the idea of it. But right now it feels like I am beginning a practice. Like a child learning to ride a bike. It is a fumbling and beautiful and clumsy thing. But I can feel the brief moments of what it could be like, to ride this bike down a glorious hill, to feel the wind, the spirit, hammering me with glee. So I will keep splashing in these waters. I will keep trying to ride this bike. I will keep sifting through this muddy mess with God.