It's a sad week this week. Not only is it the last week of my sabbatical, but it's the end of 37 years of Neighbours. A soap that is almost as old as me, it's been part of my life since I was smaller and has been a key part of my routine in ministry (for someone who works better in the morning but is not a morning person, 1.45pm is a good time for lunch).
Neighbours has everything you need in a soap - lots of different types of people, humour and tragedy, characters who could be your neighbours or your friends, a slight surrealism that reminds you occasionally that it is not actually real life (Bouncer's Dream is as surreal as some of mine) and an intricate weaving of storylines that would make you, on one hand, wonder if you want to ever live on Ramsay Street but on the other hand, be drawn in and buy one of the houses now for sale.
The Neighbours theme music was one of the first things I remember enjoying playing on my recorder at school. It's simplicity lends itself to an infant playing a recorder, and you can't go that wrong. It tells a perfect and simple story of how if you can get the right group of neighbours together, the right blend of neighbours, the right blend of people in your community, then you might become friends. That theme tune has brought itself to life in the last few weeks as old cast members have returned and they have told their story of their best bits of Ramsay Street.
The stories are of laughter and joy, of the characters that they lived alongside, of those that they miss and of those with whom relationships have broken. They tell the stories of coming to a peaceful place even though they have gone through difficult times, and how Ramsay Street will always be their home, not because of the location, but because of the people who are there. Alongside this, life continues, and brokenness still happens, people still change, people still argue, and the painful past bites when memories arise. Their lives are intertwined, in their now stories, in their past stories and in stories of connections they didn't know they had. The one thing that keeps them together is their collective story, even though they may have only been part of that story for a short while, their story matters. The perfect blend in the theme song is not about it all being pretty, but about the people who make up the story, it's a blend being changed and renewed time and time again.
Neighbours tells the story of a community searching for and finding home. It's a story of how we need each other, that life cannot be lived in isolation, however much easier that might seem. Alone time is lovely, but we need togetherness to become fully alive.
I'm reading a book at the moment called Seven Sacred Spaces. The author, George Lings, identifies the elements of Christian communities, which, with the right blend enable 'a richer expression of discipleship, mission and community'. One of these spaces is 'Cloister' - basically the corridors and the spaces of the monastery where nothing specific is usually planned to happen, but community encounters naturally occur. It's in these places that a lot of the relationship building and conversation happens. These are the joining places - the bits where dots are joined together and we can begin to make sense of the world. Giving time to make sure that encounter can happen in the cloister - that the community can just hang out together is key to making the community healthy.
I think that's what makes Neighbours what it is - it's not a series of rushing from one thing to another with the camera swinging between organised events (although they happen and are important) - it's a story full of encounters in the cloister spaces - Harold's Cafe, The Waterhole, the archway outside of Karl and Susan's, the strange little room in Toadie's house, at doorways and on walkways, by the swimming pool..... Those moments are significant in making the theme tune's perfect blend. If you bump into someone and stop to talk, even if only for a few seconds, you remind them that they matter, that they belong, and that they are welcome here..... and when someone feels at home, they let their barriers down and begin to grow. In Neighbours maybe feeling at home happens quickly, not just because it's a fictional soap, but because the joining places are there, and in those joining places they learn to become the perfect blend.
If we put spaces in place for chance encounters and semi-planned bumping into one another, it helps us learn to be community better and more beautifully. Lings ends the chapter on Cloister with this:
"Cloister has a socially challenging function. I suggest it speeds up the formation of honest community. Love, humility, generosity of spirit, good listening and mutual learning, reconciliation across genuine differences - wow, that would be a church community I'd be privileged to join! Cloister puts right in your face the need to grow in all these virtues and to fight the particular temptations to grumbling, bad-mouthing, sheer hatred, judgementalism and pride that can occur when we are with others"
Ramsay Street is not the perfect place to be, and neither are the places, the churches, the worshipping communities, in which we find home and space to grow in Jesus.... but, life amongst others, searching for Christ's blend in amongst the challenges of interacting with other human beings - it's a better, more fulfilling and more fruitful place to be than trying to walk the journey alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment