to treat all group members as individuals

I was walking at our wetlands, when I saw this magpie. He was digging around in the grass but I kept a wary eye on him because it's spring time and a few days earlier, I'd been savagely swooped by one of his kind. It had happened along another walking trail, beneath a line of gum trees which must have had nests in them. The magpie meant business. He zoomed straight for my head five or six times, and I felt the wind from his wings. Knowing that some of my friends had been pecked until they bled, I went running and waving my arms around my head, but could see him following from rooftop to rooftop with his beady eyes fixed on me, waiting for his next move. I reached my car safely, but around this time last year, my daughter and her best friend were so freaked out by another swooping magpie that they fell face down on the cement, afraid to move. Then, when they had dared to make a run for it, Emma lost her purse, which I'm glad somebody honest found.

Anyway, I walked past this fellow and said, 'Are you a bit of a stinker? I don't think I like your kind, especially this time of year.'  But he was cool with me being there.

It occurred to me that's exactly how any form of discrimination begins. I used to think it was crazy to base our expectations of a group of people on the behaviour of couple of individuals. I would have liked to think I was above doing that, but one innocent magpie showed me that I'm not.  

I read recently, in a passage by Thomas Merton, how absolutely convinced Adolf Hitler used to be that sin was unforgivable. You might say, 'I can't figure that one out. If that was his attitude, why did he commit so much evil?' The scary thing is, Hitler didn't think he was evil at all. He believed he was a zealous Christian who was eradicating the group of people he considered, 'Christ killers.' That is why sending thousands of Jews to concentration camps and gas chambers; mothers, fathers, children, professionals alike, didn't smite his conscience one bit. It's sickening to reflect upon.

Automatic discrimination even occurs in the Bible, from 'good guys.' I'm thinking of the time when Philip went off to tell Nathanael, 'We've found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about... and he comes from Nazareth.'

Do you remember Nathanael's response? He said, 'Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?' It would seem Nathanael's knee-jerk reaction probably had something to do with prejudice he'd developed, having met some people from the backwater province of Nazareth in his past, who he didn't think highly of. But I find it encouraging that Jesus didn't rebuke Nathanael for the way his mind worked. Just before their first introduction, he even said, 'Here comes an honest man. A true son of Israel.' Jesus knew that Nathanael was sound at heart, but simply prone to that quirk of human nature in which we jump to conclusions, basing every member of a group on the behaviour of a couple.

I think the biggest challenge is not to wallow in guilt when our minds automatically do this, but to get into the habit of reminding ourselves that we need to step back and consider everybody as individuals. It also helps to pause sometimes, and think about the sort of impression we might be giving others about groups we identify with.

Just today, I was reading some Amazon reviews of a book I was considering buying, by a well known Christian author. Among them was a One Star review by somebody who had issues with the Christian content. They had written that it would have been nice to have been warned from the blurb, because if they'd known, they might have steered clear of it. At the bottom were several angry comments from Christians. Although these were worded differently, they basically said the same thing. 'Our hero is a Christian author, you idiot, so of course he's going to include Christian content! You know where you can take your one star!'

 I thought it a bit lame that the twentieth respondent would bother to add his vicious two cents worth, even though he could see that nineteen others had already soundly ticked off this reviewer. If they wanted him to remove his review, none of their reactive ranting worked anyway, as it was still up there, along with all their unfriendly feedback. Saddest of all is the reputation they may be giving all Christians, including those of us who wouldn't kick up such a fuss.  It makes me squirm to think that, based on something like this, somebody who is introduced to me may think, 'A Christian! Ha, I know what your type are like.'

I'm glad that simple little magpie reminded me to be careful before making judgments about other people, and also to think about the impression my behaviour might give others about many people apart from me. I even looked up the Australian magpie on wikipedia, and read that the male breeding magpies who become aggressive and attack those who approach their nests are actually a small minority. I've got to remember to warn my daughter, every time she shakes her fist at another magpie and says, 'I hate you.'

   

we are living in a labyrinth

My son, Blake, and I recently found a lovely surprise while we were out having a walk at the wetlands near our house. Somebody had celebrated the beginning of spring by creating this labyrinth out of sticks, twigs, rose petals and sprigs of lavender.

I know labyrinths have ancient origins, which piqued my curiosity. Some people say they have deep spiritual meaning, while others simply see a twisting path which ends in the middle. Looked at like that, it may be hard to see their significance. I remember being let loose in hedge mazes on holidays, but labyrinths don't even have dead ends to get lost in. I can imagine kids saying, 'What's the fun of them, then?' That's why I decided to look them up on Google.

I already knew that some Christians get a bit edgy about them because they are found in other spiritual traditions. It didn't take long to discover this is true. Some labyrinths are said to have been used as traps, with fierce, mythical creatures in the centre, a bit like an elaborate cage. Yet they've also been used as part of worship in the Christian tradition. They started appearing on church and cathedral walls and floors around 1000 AD. The Chartres Cathedral labyrinth in France is said to have the most famous design in labyrinth history. It would seem that devout pilgrims such as those Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about in Canterbury Tales might have used them as substitutes for actually visiting the Holy Lands. I can imagine these people crawling through the labyrinths on their hands and knees, wearing out the edges of their cowls as they scraped along the ground, and having their time of intense prayer in the centre, which represents the heart of God.

Some people regard the journey through a labyrinth as a three-staged trip. First comes the journey inward. Second, you get to spend time in the centre, regarding it as a nesting place where you're held in God's safe and loving embrace. Finally, there's the trip back out, to join the world again.

With all this in mind, I've returned to our wetlands labyrinth, sometimes with the kids and sometimes alone. We've fixed it up from time to time, when twigs have blown away in the wind. I've walked through, and although I haven't felt quite the same awe as the ancient pilgrims, I can see how people may say there are life analogies.

1) With all the twists and turns, it may look as if you've simply walked in circles, and returned back where you started from, but appearances may be deceptive. Although you're standing by the start, it will take only one more curve and you'll have arrived at the centre. In the same way, we've probably all had a whine, saying, 'After all my hard work, I'm right back to where I started,' without realising that we have actually have come a long way along the labyrinth that is our life.

2) Similarly, you may think you see the end in sight, because you're standing right beside the centre, and then another sudden sweep will take you right back to the outer limits of the labyrinth again. It's not going to be as quick and easy as you've hoped. We may think we've exhausted our knowledge about a particular topic, and then a curve in our path will reveal that we probably know only a fraction of all there is to know. We've been fooled by the labyrinth twists. It turns out we may be self-proclaimed 'experts' who are really further away from our destinations than we thought.

3) We may appear to be walking alongside other people, so close that we can reach out a hand to touch each other and speak. But we're actually at different stages in the labyrinth. Suddenly, one of us will be veering out to one of the outer paths again while the other is on his way around the last little curve to the centre. And the one who looks as if he's closest to the middle may, in reality, be further away. That's why we shouldn't judge each other for the way we react to the peripheral subjects of life. We're simply on different stages of the labyrinth.

4) When you're on the ground actually walking it, every step of the path may look pretty much the same as the rest, with the centre coming suddenly. It takes more of a birds-eye view to see the beautiful pattern we've been walking. The bigger the labyrinth, the more true this may be, and I can't think of a bigger one than life itself. Unlike a maze, there are no actual dead-ends for us to get lost in and have to turn back. There may seem to be dead-ends in life, but looking at them from a higher perspective, they turn out to be part of the labyrinth after all. We learn our lessons from the apparent false detours and kept moving toward the centre.

The famous labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral, France, which has been duplicated for other places.

5) We get an enforced chance to deliberately slow down to the speed at which life is meant to be lived. In these fast-paced 21st century times, we're encouraged to choose our goals and zoom after them, like an arrow whizzing straight to the target. Life is really designed more like a labyrinth, with twisting paths we all have to follow, and the walk is as important as the destination. My older son and daughter seem to be on a stage of life's labyrinth where they don't get this. If we ask them to come for an afternoon walk with us, they say, 'No, because you don't walk with a particular destination in mind. You just ramble around for the sake of it, and that's boring.' Our younger son still seems to understand the point of doing things which seem to have no point, but I think he's showing signs of catching up to the part of the path which they're on.

I can't help hoping our local labyrinth will last for a long time. No people or animals have walked past and messed it up yet, after several weeks, which I think is a nice surprise on its own. When I go to walk in the wetlands, I can often tell with a glance that it's still there, when I occasionally see people walking in weird circle shapes on the ground. I wonder if that's how we all look to the angels above.  

that we may be waiting for the wrong type of fame

  

I think it's easy to get the idea that fame and fortune is the ultimate measure of success. I've been writing novels for years, and the idea pops up all the time. If you're not getting accolades, and if your target audience don't recognise your name, some people suggest you're not doing the 'platform' thing properly.  The juicy carrot is always dangling a few inches beyond your reach. Yet you assume the goal of fame must be achievable, because you see others in your same field taking great, crunchy bites of their own magnificent carrots. Sometimes that encourages you to never give up, and other times, if you're honest, it makes you envious because their offerings seem to be no better (or maybe even worse) than yours.

Author Julia Cameron suggests that it feels a bit like waiting for rain in a drought. 'We keep squinting toward the horizon, jealous of our luckier neighbours and dissatisfied with our own condition,' she says. Her words gave me funny images of Elijah asking his servant, 'Can you see anything yet?'

After several fruitless looks, the young man replies, 'Yes, there are a couple of new reviews on Goodreads and a slight increase in your Amazon sales ranking.'

We know what happened in the Bible. Elijah and his servant rushed out in order to beat the soaking deluge they'd already predicted to King Ahab. In our analogy, we grasp these measly signs and push on, trying to prepare ourselves for the downpour of sales, ads, praise and money we hope will follow. But in our case, the small cloud just wafts away. 'Hey,' we complain. 'That's not what happened with Elijah!'

Julia Cameron goes on to muse that our culture has taught us to think of fame as a necessary by-product, but she suggests that it's full of empty calories with no nutritional value. We are taught by the media to keep seeking the amazing breakthrough, after which our lives will be abundantly blessed, but we only need to look at the sad revelations, not to mention several premature deaths, of many celebrities who seemed to have had it all to see that fame is not all it's cracked up to be.

'Not all artists will lead public lives,' she goes on to say. 'Many of us as talented as those who fame strikes may toil out our own days in relative anonymity.' And that's okay, because it may not even be healthy for us. I'm reminded of an article written by Ann Voskamp recently, in which she argued convincingly that the human soul isn't really even built for fame. I couldn't help but be convicted by her pointed question about which platform I'm trying to scramble up on anyway. The article is here.

A couple of days ago, I came across a touching article by Ann Swindell. I love how she found perspective about all this bothersome business from 'The Great Divorce' by C.S. Lewis. Basically, we may be surprised to find that while our desire to be recognised as offering some meaningful input is natural, fame in heaven is very different from fame on earth.  You can read it here.

And then this morning, as I was scrolling through my news feed on Face Book, I chanced upon a great article by Lisa Mikitarian, which gave me another clue that we may stress far, far, far too much over something which God doesn't necessarily think is that big a priority. Read it here.

If you haven't had enough yet, here's one more link to follow, by Yours Truly on this very blog. Even though I wrote it a few years ago, somehow, the worries about this stuff started creeping up on me again, as they tend to do if we don't keep our focus. It's here.

So with all this, I'm encouraged to make sure we're listening to our Creator and not our culture. I think, keeping in mind how easy it is to get the two mixed up at all times may be a key to help. I appreciate anything that may clear my mind in this confusing world where we're brought up not to be attention seekers as children, and then later, chastised for not seeking attention in the adult world of self-promotion.

That things are rarely as we expect

I recently read a memoir by Rebecca Mead, a lady who is just a little older than I am. She studied English at University in the mid 80s because she loved books, but quickly found that being a book lover didn't really have much to do with it, because the course was nothing like she expected.

'The mid eighties was the era of critical thinking,' she wrote. 'Scholars were encouraged to apply tools of psychoanalysis or feminism to reveal ways the author was blind to his or her own desire or prejudice. Books weren't supposed to be merely read, but interrogated as if they had committed some malfeasance.'

Yes! That brought back clear memories of my late teens. How I used to hate that! Mead might have been describing my experience in the late 1980s. There were no tertiary creative writing courses back then, so I chose English as my major, expecting to get guidance and valuable tips on how to write the novels I intended to write. Instead, it was just as Mead described. I often used to complain, 'Hey, I didn't sign up for this so that I can criticise Charles Dickens and the Brontes, and highlight their perceived failings and limitations. I like Dickens and the Brontes. They're better authors than I am. If I'd known it was going to be like this, I might have chosen something different.' But as it was, I went in like a lamb to the slaughter.

That became my standard complaint all through Uni. Straight out of High School, I'd chosen a list of subjects I thought would suit me to the ground. English, Pyschology, Anthropology and Philosophy. But instead of just looking at people's motivations and attitudes, Psychology was full of more Maths, Chemistry and detailed brain structure illustrations than I cared to dive into.  And rather than just studying different cultures, Anthropology delved into symbolism and all sorts of deep linguistic studies I hadn't expected. As for Philosophy, I thought it was off this planet! What I remember most is that all of the male staff seemed to wear long, bushy beards as apparent status symbols, and the female members had long, long hair to compensate.

My best memories of those Uni years was sitting in the basement of the Barr Smith library, tracking down and devouring ancient, out-of-print novels. They were totally unrelated to the course material I was studying, and I used to put off what I was really supposed to be doing for as long as possible.

I don't think this discovery that things are not what we expect was limited to the late 80s. This year, my older son started his degree at Adelaide Uni, (which makes me feel very proud but quite old.) I'm finding out that the place has changed a lot in several ways since I was there, but in other ways, it's much the same. Some courses still turn out to be nothing like what they sound like.

This semester, Logan has had to tackle a compulsory subject called, 'The Enquiring Mind.' On the surface, the name sounds quite alluring and intriguing, but some of his friends who had tackled it in first semester warned him that it was full of 'arty farty stuff' as they call it. Even the lecturers must have known that word of its true nature had spread. When Logan showed up in the crammed theatre, with students spilling out into the aisles, the lecturer introduced the topic by saying, 'I know many of you are here under sufferance, but I hope you'll overcome any prejudice you may have at the start and get something out of this course anyway.'

And has he? Well, after a couple of weeks I asked, 'What's it all about?'

'I still can't figure it out,' he said. 'Nobody can.'

I read the first few paragraphs of his introductory handout and knew what he meant. It seems to be one of the subjects which are designed just to be a pain in every way. For example, when Logan went to purchase the text book from the faculty office, he was told, 'No, we can't take your money. You have to buy it online and bring the receipt in to show us before we give you one.' And the shelves behind them were piled high with this text book which nobody really wants.

But when you think about it, this quality of not entirely living up to rosy expectations isn't limited to tertiary institutions alone. In fact, maybe it's a feature of life in general. When we decide to get married, we have wonderful images of a 'happily ever after' scenario without the 'barefoot and pregnant at the sink washing dishes' one which is almost as well known a catch-cry. When we decide to have babies, we daydream about their cute, sleeping faces without dwelling on the screaming, colicky fits and stinky nappies which are also part of the story. Maybe the study experiences which don't quite live up to expectations are just like almost everything else. When we dwell on the flip side, we realise there have been quite a lot of good aspects too. In fact, sometimes expectations are turned on their heads the other way, and we are pleasantly surprised by good things we hadn't expected.

This happened to me years ago when I was doing Year 12. I was told that my timetable was too heavy with humanities subjects and I had to drop one to replace with a Science subject. That made me grumble, but I picked Biology, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, easy to pass subjects that year. More so than Drama, which I'd expected to be my favourite subject but turned out to be a terrible drag. If asked, I could rattle off the titles of many novels I've started reading with low expectations and discovered they were brilliant. As for Logan's experience this year, he admitted that although 'The Enquiring Mind' is full of arty nonsense, it does have it's lighter moments, which turn out to be the fun his discussion table have with their jokes at the tutor's expense, while he thinks they're really getting right into it.

that we tend to edit our public persona

Authors don't tend to talk about all the rigorous editing that goes into each of our books. I'm always happy with the final product when editors and publishers agree, 'That's good enough.' I throw those ratty old dog-eared, scribbled over, crossed-out, commented on early drafts away. People aren't ever supposed to know about the paragraphs which got deleted because they are redundant, or the extra pages added to supply what the story was initially lacking. They don't realise that the first chapter may have been written later, and what I used to call the start is now found almost a quarter through Chapter Three. Nor do they know that a scene of dialogue has been so changed, that none of the characters say any of the things they originally said, yet it comes across more spontaneous and off-the-cuff than ever. I never mention all the Word documents I've deleted with names such as More track changes for Best Forgotten, Imogen's Chance fifth edit, or A Design of Gold final, final draft. I'm pleased to offer each novel to the public as if the polished version is what I came up with in the first place. It's a big illusion which I think crops up in most areas of life, time and again.

We've probably all been warned about the discouragement we may face when we believe the polished, picture-perfect lives our friends present on social media trump our own messy reality with its irritations and disappointments. But then we do the same impression management, knowing there are some things we would never share. (Well, sometimes people share theirs anyway, and then we cringe for them and maybe even pretend not to see those posts on our news feed.) But in general, we may try to edit our on-line persona as much as I edit my novels. Facebook  is probably a pretty apt name.

In general, we are brought up to believe that looking our best in front of other people is our social obligation. Sometimes people's masks are torn off, making us gasp at what was concealed. It turned out the young man who took the accountant's job at the Stirling Hospital after my husband quit spent his couple of years there embezzling money from the till, and almost got away with it. His story made it into the newspaper. And recently, Australian celebrity, Rolf Harris, had his title changed from 'children's entertainer' to 'paedophile.' Although most of us don't have such huge, devastating secrets, we'd probably all hate the prospect of having the content of our minds visible for others to see.

This all begs the question I come across from time to time. 'Who are you when nobody is looking?'

In his book, 'Soul Keeping', John Ortberg makes the point that many of us indulge in sneaky, dishonest behaviour when we believe we can get away with it. He cites a study which showed that a significant number of 'family deaths' tend to happen when students have major essays due. Requests for compassionate extensions tend to be made close to the deadlines, and often the deceased person turns out to be 'Grandma.' Ortberg gives senior readers the tongue-in-cheek warning that their longevity may not correlate with their cholesterol or fitness levels, but with whether or not they have grandchildren studying at University whose major assignments are due.

Do we really try to get away with shonky behaviour when we're sure we won't be found out? I'd just finished reading 'Soul Keeping' when my daughter mentioned something interesting. Emma works at the local fish and chip shop. She said that whenever she clears money from the automatic hot drink machine, she finds all sorts of foreign coins. It takes no great insight to figure out why customers decide to use these in the slot machines rather than paying over the counter with them. When I told Emma what I'd read, she said, 'It doesn't matter, because we keep the foreign coins in a little box for the staff to use when we want a hot drink.'

How about me personally? Well, something happened last week, which I'm tempted not to admit, but here goes. My youngest son and I were about to start a bushwalk, and I'd intended to park in a bus exchange car park, because it was right near the path we wanted to walk. We arrived to find one car park left, near a sign telling us, 'This car park is for travelers on public transport only.' All sorts of thoughts passed through my mind. Nobody else seemed to be there, wanting that park. It was already early afternoon, and most serious commuters probably used it in the morning. There were no other parks nearby and it wouldn't be convenient to have to add miles more onto the long walk we'd planned already. I knew we should have left, but I shrugged and joked to Blake, 'That covers us. We travel on public transport sometimes.' I know, I know, what a bad example for my young son.

So what do we take away from all this? I think it's always wise to remember that no matter how polished and good our friends and acquaintances may appear, not to automatically jump to the conclusion that this is their full story. It is their polished persona and they are not necessarily much different than we are. It may help to think, I've probably missed all the editing which has gone into this impression, but wow, they're doing it good. Yet at the same time, I took to heart John Ortberg's point that little dishonesties, indulged in over time, rub the shining edge off our souls and hurt ourselves. Fair enough. Just because we can get away with something without putting our public selves in a bad light, doesn't mean we should. No more using unentitled carparks for us.

That we are the essence of where we come from

I live in Australia, which as many know, tends to be an obscure country when it comes to the media. Lots of celebrities in the arts have moved overseas to try to 'make it' in places where they believe more is happening. When you look at Australia's situation at the bottom of the globe, it's easy to understand why this may be so. It takes a glance at the whole picture to show how far removed from the rest of the world we are. (Apart from our Oceanic neighbours, such as New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, who share our plight.) It's all very well to say we're surrounded by ocean on either side, but words alone don't paint an adequate picture of just how much Pacific Ocean there is to our east, and Indian Ocean to our west.

Okay, having established that, I remember an interesting message my pastor once gave, about how our position in the world is basically an arbitrary choice made by the world's map makers throughout history. Our planet is out in space, so it could have just as easily been flipped upside down in our Atlas, which would put Australia high in the north. It wasn't done that way though. We are far south in everyone's minds, which has connotations of being 'down there'. We have deserts, kangaroos and blokes slouching around in tank tops and thongs. That's us, in the world's eyes.

So having established that, my state, South Australia, is probably one of the most obscure states in an obscure country. This hit me hard once when I was part of a group of Aussie Christian authors who were talking live online to several American readers. We asked where they would like to go if they were able to visit Australia. The answers, although not surprising, were overwhelming.

'I'd like to see the beautiful eastern coast... Sydney and the Harbour Bridge... the Gold Coast with all the theme parks... it would have to be the Queensland tropics with the Great Barrier Reef... Ayers Rock. How beautiful... I've heard that Tasmania is lovely, with all its produce.' South Australia was mentioned just once, and that was by a lady who had relatives living in Adelaide, who had told her how beautiful it is.

Once I acknowledged that I'm living in the most overlooked state of the most overlooked country, other things began to slot into place. I remember asking my dad, 'Why didn't your father ever become more famous?' He had such a successful boxing career that he'd been asked to retire, to let younger men have a fair go. Yet if you search for my grandfather on the internet, hardly anything comes up. 'Why isn't Red Mitchell's name as widely recognised as Les Darcy's,' I asked.

I took Dad's answer on board without a thought at the time.

'He was only South Australian.' That said it all.

I finally got it when people started suggesting that I might want to change the settings in my books. 'They won't get anywhere if you keep using South Australia. You should make it Sydney. At least the rest of the world has heard of it.'

I don't know about that though. It might not be wise because I'm a South Aussie girl all through. The blood of several generations of others flows through my veins. Some were Germans who wanted to flee religious persecution in their own country, and others were Brits who wanted a brand new start away from the mid-nineteenth century poverty they'd struggled with. They all became South Australians. Although I'm not one of those people who couldn't possibly live anywhere else (such as Emily Bronte and her Yorkshire moors or Heidi with her Swiss Alps), I'm so familiar with my home that the South Aussie authenticity can't help slipping accidentally into my stories. It probably wouldn't work if I tried to adopt another setting.

I use words such as 'Fritz' and 'Fruchocs' assuming that everybody will know what I'm eating. I use long R sounds, pronouncing 'castle' as 'carsel' instead of 'cassel', and 'graph' as 'grarf' instead of 'graf.' I know all about Beehive Corner, the Silver Balls of the Rundle Mall, and the State Bank Christmas pageant without having to research these things. I've always thought of using my own environment for my novels as putting my stamping ground on people's radars. My South Aussie settings have been my trademark, not because I'm doggedly stubborn, but because I'm not sure I could easily change if I tried.

I'm not really sure I'd even want to sacrifice my setting, as it really is a beautiful corner of the world. South Australia has four very distinct seasons. If you were to see a photo of my Adelaide Hills, you'd be able to tell whether it was summer, winter, autumn or spring. When we speak about going to the beach, we're often talking about safe, warm gulf waters which have lost the Southern Ocean chill. It's been a pretty good home for me. At the moment, even though it is the most obscure place in the most obscure place, I tend to think I'll probably keep using it for the time being at least. I'll finish up with this photo, taken in Adelaide last week, of me with the statue of Catherine Helen Spence, a very illustrious South Australian lady who became an author, journalist, politician and well-known suffragist, all from the obscure spot of South Australia. She bloomed where she was planted, and so can we.

to cut ourselves far more slack

We all know this big man's lowest moment. It's recorded for us. Peter denied knowing Jesus or having anything to do with him, not once but three times. After being so certain in his own mind that he would never desert his master and best friend, it just happened impulsively as a self-protection instinct set in. It was never something Peter intended to do at all.

At least he went further than his fellow apostles, who didn't even join him around the fire at the high priest's court, but that was no comfort to Peter. He was a big, tough fisherman and his first accuser was a lowly servant girl, who merely said, 'This man was with him.' Two other people said the same thing, and each time Peter's knee-jerk reaction was the same. 'No, I wasn't. I've never seen him before. I don't know what you're talking about.'

It was straight after his third denial when the rooster crowed, just as Jesus said it would, and Jesus turned to look at Peter. The Bible often shows that things which may appear random and coincidental are, in fact, anticipated and woven into the fabric of a person's life. This was one of the most gut-wrenching moments for Peter, as he was brought, face-to-face with his own darker side, which he didn't even know existed. There was nothing he could do at that moment but hurry off, horrified and remorseful, to weep bitterly.

Later, we see the loving way in which the Resurrected Jesus addressed him on the beach. Jesus understands the true nature of a person's heart, and he gave Peter three chances to say, 'I love you, Lord,' to counterbalance those three, unfortunate, impulsive denials. You would think that might be it. Peter has learned his lesson. He becomes a head of the new church and is known by all as Peter the Rock, rather than Simon the Fisherman.

It isn't all. Years later, he's at the end of another rebuke, this time from the apostle Paul, who hadn't been around for near as long as Peter. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul explains that he opposed Peter to his face. It seems that Peter had been enjoying the company of several new Gentile believers, freely joining them to eat at the same table. When a delegation of Jewish believers was sent from James in Jerusalem, Peter withdrew from joining the Gentiles, evidently concerned about the impression he wanted to make on the Jews.

It would seem that Peter accepted this rebuke, although I'm sure he could tried justifying his actions by saying, 'It was just to begin with while I got them to understand,' or something like that. But this new knee-jerk reaction makes his real motivation evident again. It would seem that impression management and care about what people thought of him struck again. Although many of us would agree that we probably need to watch the basic weaknesses we're born with, it's astounding when you consider who this man was. Maybe I wouldn't have expected it from him, at this stage.

Peter was the guy who was always full of confidence. He had thousands of converts at his first sermon. He was rescued from prison by the spectacular arrival of an angel from heaven. He'd received some amazing revelations, including a radical one about acceptable food, which led him to understand God's true heart for the whole human race, including the Gentiles. He'd been God's instrument of several healing miracles, to the point that people put their ill friends in a position that Peter's shadow could touch them passing. No, I wouldn't have thought Peter would be the one to fall prone to such insecurity and shallow considerations any more. But we're told that he still did.

In the light of this, I'm wondering if we should cut ourselves, and our friends and relatives, far more slack than we do. We may be quick to say, 'How could my brother have done that same silly thing again?' or 'I thought I had more sense by now! I'm a moron.' But why should we expect more from ourselves than even Peter could deliver? Of course we're being made new every day, but it's a lifetime process and we are human. Instead of blaming ourselves when the same old thing crops up again, and taking it as proof that we were never any good to start with, it may be more helpful to remember that it also happened to somebody far more illustrious than us.

I'll aim to remember this in my parenting, my friendship, my writing, and also try to remember to extend the same grace to others.