It doesn't make economic sense

I've been putting off writing here, because I had too many unformed ideas competing for air time. Plus, this week I've had meetings every day, a lot more than I usually do. I've also discovered over the years that meetings mess with my ability to process my thoughts into written words. In any case, I'm here now, and determined to get something coherent written before the end of Friday.

Last week I listened to an episode from my favourite podcast: Undeceptions. The topic was close to my heart: Dis/ability. There was lots to chew on, including different theological ideas about what heaven will be like, whether the disabilities that people experience here on earth will have any part of that or not.

One of my favourite earrings. It's
a shard of pottery, created by a
group called Nozomi Project who 
began after the giant triple
disaster in Japan in 2011. They
made jewellery out of broken
pottery, initially from what was
washed up on the shoreline after
the tsunami. Their tagline was
"Beauty in brokenness", a 
beautiful way to think about the
brokenness that disability brings to 
people's lives.

As one who has worked as an allied health worker, I was thinking about this topic from well before I encountered disability as a parent. As an Occupational Therapy student we were trained to think about people holistically, to consider their whole lives and probably more than most professions in the field, to think deeply on what someone could do as opposed to what they couldn't do.

And then we had kids and got neurodivergent diagnoses which gave us another perspective on this whole topic, especially as our kids moved into post-school years.

I'm not about to rehash what was covered in this hour-long podcast, but wanted mostly to mention something that particularly jumped out at me. The host, John Dickson, interviewed Kirk Patston, the Director of the Centre for Preaching and Pastoral Ministry and a lecturer in Old Testament and practical theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He's got lived experience as the parent of an adult son with a disability as well as professional experience as a former speech pathologist.

He and his wife were working in four churches when their son, Jerrah, was born. Kirk talked about the mentality of someone in Christian ministry where there is always a feeling that there's more you can do and a sense that you can always do better. This really resonates with me. It's a strange mix of our worth is based on how much we do, yet our faith is about God's grace, which has nothing at all to do with how much we do. They weren't getting much sleep because their son was having seizures and not sleeping and they both ended up having to "live off government payments and people's kindness for a year." It was very different to the church work they had been doing, and this of course meant they thought about who they were, what did God really want from them. See the full transcript at the end of this post.

Kirk said, "It doesn't make economic sense". Indeed, the whole field of disability can make you step back and think about human value. If our value is based only on economic output, then disability really challenges that. So does caregiving of little children and elderly people. (Cross-cultural mission also doesn't make economic sense, but I digress.) Kirk also said, though, that "that's not to say that the Lord's not in it, and that God might actually be doing something deep and important here."

I think this is an important point to think on: that even if it doesn't make sense from an efficiency point of view, it's not the only perspective. God has a different view on our lives and we need to trust him that he's got a purpose in the situations we find ourselves in, even if we don't understand it now.

A portion of the transcript of the podcast:

 John Dickson:

How has Jerrah, over the years, helped you think through, maybe not at the highest philosophical and theological level, just approach our topic that I wanna talk to you about of, of disability? Have you found that this experience, this lived experience has actually had a big influence, or did it just simply turn your mind to the topic, as it were?

Kirk Patston:

Oh, no. Big, a big influence. Kind of an undoing of me, really. Yeah. Um, I think I had a framework about Christianity, which I, I knew intellectually I was always had to work against, that, um, what God really wants from me is, you know, lots of service of other people, lots of activity.

A very kind of activist, uh, account of Christianity. So, my wife and I have… We’ve got theological training and have worked in church ministry, and you’re always feeling that there’s more I can do. There’s more people I could talk to about Jesus. There’s m- you know, there’s better pastoral care I could offer, more, you know, there’s how can we grow things?

So you’ve got that kind of story where you’re, you’re productivity based. Sure. Um, and, and but with paradoxically at the same time knowing that the Christian message is actually about God’s grace- Yeah … where, you know, we don’t earn and where we’re actually unable to- Mm-hmm … perform. So it’s, it’s sort of weird.

Like, there’s this clash in it, and oftentimes I would identify and know that clash. But then along comes Jarrah, and, um, he came along in a period in our life when Lisa and I had four churches to look after that were all struggling. Um, but one or two of them in particular were just sort of going through a time of change.

New people were coming. There was this sense of, aha, these churches that were dying are not going to die. God’s going to do something. And then along came Jarrah with these uncontrolled seizures, and, he didn’t sleep. He’d just sleep in 40-minute little snatches. So we just… Our life was so chaotic, we just got to the point we just had to walk away from our ministry roles.

We just lived off government payments and people’s kindness for a year. And, um, so then you think, oh, who am I? You know, who am I as a Christian? Mm. What does God want from me? And you begin to see the dignity of, and the, the wasteful dignity of I’m going to care for one little person with epilepsy, rather than four churches.

Yeah. Um, and it do- doesn’t make economic sense. It’s not efficient. Mm. But that’s not to say that the Lord’s not in it, and that God might be actually doing something deep and important here.

(This is a transcript with this note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. I've removed some small errors, but I haven't checked the audio before quoting it here.)

Lots to think about

Life has settled down again to a discernible rhythm. It's a bit of a relief, actually—I work better like this. I find it hard to concentrate and make decisions when my day-to-day routine is less stable and predictable. So when I do things like try to work and travel, even though most of my work is done remotely, it gets tricky and I don't do as good a job. But I also get bored if life is too same-same. So I'm glad for a job that always includes new challenges and has a fair amount of variety in it, even if, like last week, I sometimes get overwhelmed by it all.

Magazine matters

I'm glad that the Autumn issue of the magazine I manage has gone to the printer and we get to mail it out next week! I've been working fairly solidly on this since we got back to Tokyo in early August. 

I've been working on this magazine for around 15 years, and I can tell you that some "issues" are harder than others. There are all sorts of reasons for that. It can be team challenges, a difficult issue-theme, unexpected random obstacles, author difficulties, or at times when my own transitions or travel interfere with my ability to concentrate on the work needed. 

This issue was particularly difficult for some of these reasons, and has required "above and beyond" over the last few months. I hope that it was all worth it, and pray that God will take it and use it for his purposes.

This month is our magazine "annual meeting" month. Because our remote team works across several different time zones it's hard to hold meetings. I've never been a fan of meetings, they can easily be a waste of time! I'm in a position to have been able to shape my work in so many ways, both with the magazine and with the social media work, and I've tended towards setting up processes that mean we don't have to meet often, though I have been called out on that!

Our magazine team gets together once a year to talk about team and magazine stuff, to pray, to have fun, and to plan. In the last few years that has been achieved with four 1½ hr meetings. I really enjoy this team. We have fun when we get together, even online. They are passionate about the mission of this magazine and that makes them easy to lead. And the four shorter meetings are actually a lot easier to manage than a single one-day event, like we used to have. (I've written about this meeting/ these meetings before, here's one back in 2016 when it was an in-person meeting: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2016/08/energising-meeting.html)

What have I been thinking about recently?

Well, if you know me, you know that there's usually a lot going on in my brain! This week I've had time to listen to some podcasts and I've been trying to be disciplined about continuing to gradually (usually a short portion over coffee in the afternoon) work my way through non-fiction books that are on my to-read list.

I listened to John Dickson's Undeceptions (my usual go-to for lunchtime listening), an episode about the boy Jesus. It gave some interesting historical background to the life Jesus lived.

I came across an OMF US podcast interview with a new worker I met last week. She was effusive last week about the social media work I do and how that had been a pivotal part of her coming to Japan, so I was curious about her larger story (if you ever get into the position to ask, find out a missionary's "call story" they are usually fascinating and never the same as any other missionary's). The 45 minute interview was well done and I loved the bit where God led her to look at Instagram, just after she'd surrendered her desire to go to Japan...and she saw a post from OMF Japan!

I also listened to a podcast from Moore Bible College about Neurodiversity and the Christian Life (part 1 of 3). I wasn't so impressed with their format, it's a bit academic, although there were some redeeming interview clips. Yet it's a topic that is close to our hearts, so I'll go back later and hear what they have to say in the next two parts.

I've just finished one non-fiction book (after several months) and have started another. The first I've read before, and will probably read again. Gentle and Lowly is deep and full of many things that will take a lifetime for my heart to absorb. It's about the heart of Christ for us and what small amount I can grasp, even though I've been a Christian since I was a child, it still breathtaking.

The new book I've just picked up, Life interrupted, by Susan Chapman, an OMF colleague, starts out on a similar line: understanding that we are loved by God. It's something that is easy to say, but hard to live. I'm only just starting this short book, but am already challenged by what she says next: "we need to be totally content in being finite". She goes on to quote Ruth Hayley Barton who says:

Living graciously within the boundaries of our life as it has been entrusted to us gives our life substance. Oddly enough, something of the will of God is contained in the very limits that we often try to sidestep or ignore. Living within limits is not in any way an acquiescence that is despairing, passive or fatalistic. Rather it honours the deepest realities of the life God has given us. Life in this body at this age and stage. Life in my family at its age and stage. Life in this personality. Life with this community. Life in the midst of this calling. (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry), p12 in Life Interrupted. 

It's this that I need to continue to learn as I settle into this phase of my life. What does "life in this body at this stage and age, with the gifts and calling that God's given me?" look like. And how can I be content in that? I think it's something all of us probably need to think about at various ages and stages!