Tender

In our world the short, quick, easily consumed--tweet, text, soundbite, post, clip, pic--dominates our awareness. Designers of social media seem intent on capturing our attention as often as possible in the shortest time available. But what if we are deeper, more mysterious, less easily manipulated than Facebook and Twitter would like us to be? What if there is more to us than this reductive ever-present commodification of ourselves allows?

The beautiful stories that follow seem paradoxically to be perfectly tuned to our need for 'short'--most of them are only a page and a half--and yet have the effect of slowing us down, stretching out our inner space for pondering, for meeting the world around us. The word 'tender', the word 'kindness', the gentleness of the word 'lean', are not common in public discourse. These subversive stories show us, without saying so, how desperately we need them. But more than that. They offer us, in a series of brilliantly crafted vignettes, a way of grasping what these words can mean across an extraordinary range of common human situations.

Tender means to offer something, usually in the hope of making a positive difference. A builder tenders for the job of constructing a home. An artist tenders a painting for an exhibition. Julie Perrin tenders these stories, each arising from her own immediate experience. In the midst of the ordinary--a swim in the pool, a birthday party, waiting in a bank queue, joining the crowd at an AFLW game. In the presence of what is different, unusual, wounded or broken, we are invited to become 'at-tenders', those who deliberately lean into, that is become part of, what is disclosing itself in a situation. The ordinary is charged with potential radiance. 'Wherever you turn, the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see, ' says Marilynne Robinson in her novel Gilead (quoted p22). Reading this book is a masterclass in the cultivation of such 'willingness to see'.