AUDIO
 |
Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
|
I was walking though a city park on a mild, sunny Sunday afternoon.
To my surprise, in the middle of the widely paved pedestrian thoroughfare, a portable floating dance floor had been laid, music was blaring from a state-of-the-art sound system and the floor was filled with people of all ages, shapes and sizes.
They waltzed, they rocked, they bopped and they improvised. Nobody was worried about quality, nobody was dancing with a star and nobody had a wannabe celebrity judging their every step and swing. This was amateur hour. This was happy hour. These were simple people (I say that with complete benevolence), enjoying an innocent and ancient pastime that required negligible expense and minimal energy, soaking up a stupendous sunny Sunday afternoon.
The lyrics of that old sixties song by the Young Rascals immediately sprang to mind:
Groovin’ . . . on a Sunday afternoon.
Really, couldn’t get away too soon.
I can’t imagine anything that’s better . . .
We’ll keep on spending sunny days this way
We’re gonna talk and laugh our time away
It seemed so strangely out of place, and yet so profoundly in the very place it should be. The Broadwalk Ballroom read the sign above the tent shading the DJ and her range of musical equipment. As I awkwardly edged my way around this open-air dance floor I couldn’t help thinking of the pleasures of the gift of dancing. It’s hard to dance and be down in the dumps. It lifts the spirits, lightens the step and chases away the complexities of life, at least for a time.
I thought of the last time I had danced, and I couldn’t remember. It may have been a recent wedding but I wasn’t sure. I remembered the times Helen and I danced at home. Quietly, in the lounge room, to some soft, gentle music, cheek to cheek, long after the kids had gone to bed. We didn’t do it very often, certainly not often enough, and we haven’t done it for quite a while. Our kids have now long flown the nest, and busy putting their own kids to bed.
I remembered family socials in my church back in the eighties. We danced at those socials; mums and dads, singles and sole-parents, grandparents and kids.
What I remember most clearly about those old church socials, and, oh, what delight it gave me, was to see university professors and coal miners doing the chicken dance side by side. And single mums, yuppy doctors, struggling pensioners, stalwart patriarchs and ratty kids pouring drinks from the same no-name soft drink bottle and serving salads from the same plastic bowl, like they were cut, like coal, or like diamonds, from the same quarry – because we all knew that, in Christ, we were.
When was the day I forgot to dance? When did life get so serious, issues so urgent that I forgot to have that sort of fun? When was the last time I laughed so hard, it ached so much that I thought I was having a heart attack? Have I lost, have we lost, the art of enjoying the simple things of life? Have we forgotten these wonderful words:
Not to place our hope in wealth which is so uncertain but to put our hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment (1Timothy 6:17)
Have we forgotten the gracious provision of a sabbath, Sunday school picnics, and church socials. Of long, lazy Sunday afternoons, of inviting strangers in church back to lunch, after lunch walks to the park with sea-saws, swings and slippery-dips.
Maybe I’m just getting old and nostalgic. Perhaps in a generation’s time my kids will be ruing the day that we left Facebook and Xbox behind for some yet to be imagined form of entertainment and even more remote experiences of electronic relationships.
I know it’s not politically correct to drop this name on a Christian website, and I’ll probably cop a hiding for doing so, but the lyrics of another old song have sprung to mind. Cat Stevens in the opening song on his classic Tea For The Tillerman album asked,
I know we’ve come a long way,
We’re changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?
Did the Cat have any idea that the answer to his question might be found in darkened rooms hypnotised by silicon chips? Was Stevens, better known as Yusuf these days, being prophetic about the pervasive onslaught of pro-choice and euthanasia views when he asked,
Will you can tell us when to live,
Will you tell us when to die?
Have we forgotten to dance: in marriage, as families, communities, even as a nation, and perhaps as a church, and a diocese? Can we go back to that day? Can we learn to dance again?
Do we need to gamble our way into deeper debt, drink our way into number nights, eat our way into unhealthy obsessions and amuse our way into atrophied brains?
Can we enjoy God-given gifts of life again; without the need for ubiquitous technology, virtual friendships, degustation experiences, European engineered cars, exotic holidays, expensive toys and people playing God?
Can we enjoy together the simple pleasures of life as we rejoice together in the stupendous gospel of grace?
Can we learn how to dance again? Can we learn how to dance to the music of heaven?
I notice in Sydney that, in many parts, from a town planning perspective, there is not alot of public space set aside for parks and ovals for people to congregate and enjoy being people. Sure there are huge sections of land in different parts of Sydney set aside for this purpose, such as Centennial Park, but alot of smaller parks are better than fewer large ones. There are also many golf courses in Sydney which cover huge tracts of land but these are obviously not parks.
If you consider the concrete jungles of many cities in the USA, this scarcity of parkland is even more pronounced. So I fear that urban men and women have been herded away from the things that would enrich them and remind them of their creator God, such as flowers, butterflies, grass, trees and leaves on the ground, which are all beautiful.
Thankfully, many people are now wide awake to our dearth of 'space' in some parts of Sydney. With a dearth of 'space' comes a dearth of community because there is simply less space for community to happen. Some people are so awake that they have begun designing buildings to work in that better meet our needs as human beings for 'space' and community but this is only half the solution to the problem. The other half of the solution is providing actual
Continued...
Another option is community gardens (for growing food) which are becoming more popular.
Personally, I believe that an important reason why there is a dearth of 'space' is that town planners simply don't want us talking to each other. This is similar to a bunch of students sitting in a classroom at school, forbidden to talk to each other and individually receiving the indoctrinating message from the front. This is the same principle upon which television operates because people watching television together are generally entranced and generally don't talk to each other very much while watching television. The easiest way to control people is to keep them separated from each other.
The first Bible study I did revolved around a course on "encouragement" by Larry Crabb and I was like, "What the Dickens is this about?" I was eighteen years old and my mindset was to compete with people. At school, I spent most of the time outside lessons in musical activities rather than socialising, so I was very susceptible to becoming a stereotypical Type A personality, except that within six months of leaving school, I had no motivation to continue my efforts at 'success'. So, after an intense academic crisis in which I forgot about a major assignment at university, I ended up in church.
I didn't understand what that Larry Crabb course was all about because all of my self-worth was based on my achievements. And when I say "all" of it, I mean ALL of it. But I understand it better now and I appreciate your encouragement!
My fear is that it's our calendars and diaries where there is not enough green space which in turn may mean that it's in our minds and hearts where we have failed to do the green space thing.
What you have described, including your reference to "the green space thing", is precisely the problem. We have made green space incidental to our lives so that we have to go out of our way to find it, rather than a part of our lives. We will find that there is a greater level of spontaneous community if green spaces are established very close to existing high (pedestrian) traffic areas such as retail areas and business park areas.
For example, when I worked in Chatswood near the railway station, there were two green space areas which are worth comparing to each other. The first is an obscure and little-known park across the highway which was built in a dramatic manner down the steepish hill, complete with amazing, thick-trunked palm trees that showed the branches they have shed on their trunk. It was great but it was also little-known and seldom-used at that time in 2003.
The other green space in Chatswood at that time may no longer be there. It was in Victoria Avenue opposite the main entrance to Westfield shopping centre and in front of a council building - a concert hall I think which I think has since been demolished. This green space was utilised heavily and treated as a sanctuary (as open as it was) from the concrete jungle by all types of people, including office workers at lunchtime. It was a popular green space because it was part and parcel of this high (pedestrian) traffic area of Chatswood.
Continued...
The establishment of desirable green spaces in high (pedestrian) traffic areas requires forgoing investment in other uses of what is commercially valuable land in these high (pedestrian) traffic areas to set aside a place for the benefit of the local community to promote a social atmosphere and a ready sanctuary from the busy activity all around.
Actually, on second thought, I think that the relevance of your very last point outweighs the relevance of the points in my reply. As modern people, we are not very used to setting aside time to enjoy green space and when we do it is often under the constraint of immediate time pressure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQn_ARp-uTg