does everyone have an inner nerd?

the way to a man’s heart …

2011-09-07T20:18:00.000+10:00

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach then surely it follows that the way to a man’s inner-nerd heart is through a huge meatcake in the shape of pacman chomping on a tasty dot?

Bliss.

2011-09-04T07:45:00.001+10:00

Our Daddy is pretty fab

2011-09-03T16:23:00.000+10:00

Jonny took the kids out for the day.

Jon is our resident artisan baker, marmalade my personal poison and tea, surely it goes without saying, is much better when poured from a vessel both short and stout.

An opportunity to show off my new vintage dress! Though it probably won't see the light of day til things are much less chilly. And yes, it would seem that my children like to stroke their own reflections with grimy fingers. I wasn't actually trying to disguise my identity.

And my t-shirt is finished! My first ever sewing project that I can wear the result of, though whether or not I will remains to be seen. It is massively over-sized and baggy and I feel like one of those awesome people on patternreview.com who talk about their genius alterations coz I ran a little piece of elastic through the bottom hem and now it looks much better, but still not awesome. At least I have some very fun turquoise shoes and a turquoise cardi to wear it with in case I do end up going in that direction. But WHATEVER! It's FINISHED and I MADE IT!

Now to make some din-dins for the fabulous people who are coming to eat with us this evening. Hope you've all got some goodies ready for the dads and granddads out there!

2011-08-31T14:55:00.008+10:00

Raw Materials

So who would have thought that Jon’s much-scoffed-at pre-compost practice of burying vegetable scraps in the backyard would have paid off so brilliantly! Gilbert can’t help himself, he’s back there every five minutes scrubbing about for more of these things that the rest of us seem so excited about. Bless him. He’s all enthusiasm. And it was a TWO EGG day! Our aged chooks are having some kind of revival.

Combined with the world’s most mammoth clove of organic garlic (note peg for scale), some olive oil, flour and natural yoghurt, these little back-yard ‘taters will make a truly magnificent accompaniment to the boneless leg of lamb, slathered in seeded mustard, that’s gradually melting in my slow cooker.

Sylvie lovingly scrubbed and wiped the garden off our potatoes and we thinly sliced and baked them only to eat more than a third before the dough was even ready – apparently, we all lack patience, not just the toddlers in our midst.

The one minor tradgedy of the day has been the total lack of fresh rosemary – we went to two separate grocers with no luck but came home with a bag of my unlikely favourite, Brussels sprouts (to cook like this), and a bag of the cheapest bananas I’ve seen in ages. Actually, most of them got eaten at the park…

And what Wednesday would be complete without a little bit of post-park painting mayhem?

Dinner turned out great!

And as for the 2011 Year of Craft, look at the treasures I uncovered at my new favourite place:

Here’s what I’m hoping to finish off tonight:

We'll see how we go...

2011-08-30T19:26:00.002+10:00

Bestest Books Ever

Last Updated: Tuesday 30th August, 2011

Not all the novels I’ve ever read, just all the novels I’ve ever loved (and can remember...)

Erin, this is for you.

Author	Title
Adams, Douglas	1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe 3. Life, the Universe and Everything 4. So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish 5. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency 6. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
Adiga, Aravind	7. The White Tiger
Alcott, Louisa May	8. Little Women 9. Good Wives 10. Little Men
Atwood, Margaret	11. Alias Grace 12. The Handmaid’s Tale 13. The Robber Bride 14. The Blind Assassin
Austen, Jane	15. Pride and Prejudice 16. Northanger Abbey 17. Emma 18. Mansfield Park
Barry, Sebastian	19. The Secret Scripture
Bronte, Charlotte	20. Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily	21. Wuthering Heights
Burnett, Frances Hodgson	22. The Secret Garden
Byatt, A.S.	23. Possession 24. Angels and Insects
Calvino, Italo	25. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Camus, Albert	26. The Outsider
Capote, Truman	27. Breakfast at Tiffany's
Card, Orson Scott	28. Ender’s Game
Carey, Peter	29. True History of the Kelly Gang 30. My Life as a Fake 31. The Fat Man In History
Carroll, Lewis	32. Alice In Wonderland
Chopin, Kate	33. The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph	34. Heart of Darkness 35. Victory
De Botton, Alain	36. Status Anxiety 37. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Dessaix, Robert	38. Night Letters
Dickens, Charles	39. Great Expectations 40. A Christmas Carol 41. Little Dorrit
Dostoevsky, Fyodor	42. Crime and Punishment
DuMaurier, Daphne	43. Rebecca
Eugenides, Jeffery	44. The Virgin Suicides 45. Middlesex
Faulkner, William	46. As I Lay Dying
Ferris, Joshua	47. The Unnamed
Fitzgerald, F. Scott	48. Tender is the Night 49. The Great Gatsby
Forster, E.M.	50. A Room With A View
Franzen, Joshua	51. Freedom
Gaarder, Jostein	52. Sophie’s World
Golding, William	53. Lord of the Flies
Haddon, Mark	54. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hamilton, Clive	55. Affluenza
Hardy, Thomas	56. Tess of the D’Urbervilles 57. The Mayor of Casterbridge
Heller, Joseph	58. Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest	59. The Old Man and The Sea
Hong Kingston, Maxine	60. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Hornby, Nick	61. About A Boy 62. High Fidelity
Ishiguro, Kazuo	63. An Artist of the Floating World 64. Never Let Me Go
James, Henry	65. A Portrait of A Lady
James, P.D.	66. Death In Holy Orders (that’s the favourite out of too many others)
Lawrence, D.H.	67. St Mawr 68. Lady Chatterley’s Lover 69. Aaron’s Rod
LeCarre, John	70. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Lee, Harper	71. To Kill A Mockingbird
Lewis, C.S.	72. Until We Have Faces 73. The Great Divorce 74. The Weight of Glory 75. The Four Loves 76. Mere Christianity 77. The Narnia Series
Malouf, David	78. The Great World 79. An Imaginary Life 80. Remembering Babylon 81. Johnno 82. Fly Away Peter 83. Harland's Half-Acre 84. Ransom
Martel, Yann	85. The Life of Pi
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia	86. One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nabokov, Vladimir	87. Lolita
Niffenegger, Audrey	88. The Time Traveller’s Wife
Ondaatje, Michael	89. In The Skin of a Lion 90. Anil’s Ghost 91. The English Patient 92. Running in the Family 93. Divisadero
Orczy, Baroness E.	94. The Scarlet Pimpernel
Orwell, George	95. Animal Farm 96. Nineteen Eighty-Four
Phillips, Caryl	97. Cambridge
Plath, Sylvia	98. The Bell Jar
Rhys, Jean	99. Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne	100. Gilead
Rowling, J.K.	101. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 102. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 103. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban 104. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 105. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 106. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 107. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Salinger, J.D.	108. Franny and Zooey
Smith, Zadie	109. White Teeth: A Novel
Steinbeck, John	110. Of Mice and Men
Süskind, Patrick	111. Perfume
Tolkien, J.R.R.	112. The Fellowship of the Ring 113. The Two Towers 114. The Return of the King 115. The Hobbit
Tolstoy, Leo	116. Anna Karenina
Twain, Mark	117. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
White, Patrick	118. The Tree of Man 119. Riders in the Chariot
Wilde, Oscar	120. The Picture of Dorian Gray
Winton, Tim	121. Dirt Music 122. Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia	123. The Waves 124. A Room of One’s Own
Zusak, Marcus	125. The Book Thief

2011-08-30T19:08:00.001+10:00

and one more time. humble apologies!

2011-08-30T19:04:00.000+10:00

And just checking... Sorry for being really annoying!

2011-08-30T18:55:00.001+10:00

http://www.diigo.com/list/fiveforsilver

It's all about connectivity, right? Well, let's see how many things I can get speaking to each other!

2011-01-26T13:55:00.004+11:00

Me? Not Crafty? Baaaaa!

So, our new little book is actually proving to be quite inspiring on the craft front as well as being a great way for us to read the bible together as a family over the morning's Vegemite on toast.

Here's the book*:

Here's today's devotion:

Here's the serendipitous sticker activity we just happened to have on hand**:

And here's what it all inspired (as well as quite a bit of crawling around on the floor with white knitted blankets on our backs):

"The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need." Psalm 23:1 NLT

* Bowman, Crystal. "The one year book of devotions for preschoolers" illustrated by Elena Kucharik. Tyndale House Publishers 2004.

** David, Juliet. "Candle Bible For Toddlers: Stories Jesus Told Sticker Activity Book" illustrated by Helen Prole. Lion Hudson plc 2008.

2011-01-22T21:31:00.006+11:00

Well, hello!

2011 is the year of craft and so I return to this blog to inform anyone who might be interested in my progress.

My friends on facebook got a bit of a giggle when I shared this photo of my early attempts at knitting:

No, despite appearances, I am not knitting a vase.

Allow me to share a few other bits and crafty pieces from these early days of 2011. Most of these craft projects are intended to aid me in applying the ole "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" adage to my existence. I am also attempting to be a bit more careful with money.

Hence, instead of purchasing several very beautiful diaries from several very beautiful shops and magazines that were offering them, I chose to spend $2.75 on a fixer-upper!

Unfortunately, I never took a before photo but you can imagine one of those VERY dull slimline black diaries. So, I took a bit of recycled Clarice Bean wrapping paper, the plastic cut out of one of those clear bags with poppers that things like baby shoes come in and some red thread out of a huge bag of cotton and braces elastic I still have left-over from some high school or maybe beach mission hair-wrapping venture and ta-da! I'm quite proud of it.

Another bit of fixing with craft nearly led me down a pretty old school path as my friend Mike pointed out to me:

Thankfully, I think I stopped just in time.

I did a sewing course on Wednesday which, unfortunately, turned out to be a bit more like whatever the sewing equivalent of a Tupperware party might have been except that I paid $65 for the privilege and didn't feel particularly inspired to pay another $43 for the bits and bobs that they were demonstrating. Even more unfortunately, I signed up for two courses at once so I'm back for part two in early March. I'm hoping that it will somehow be miraculously great and not at all like Part 1.

Anyway, I've got a few sewing projects in the pipeline so hopefully it won't be a whole year and a bit before I share my progress here. Right, must knit a few rows before bed. I obviously need to practise!

2009-10-26T15:25:00.004+11:00

Wow, it's been a long time! But thanks to the fabulous professional development program at my work, here I am posting again and this counts as work!

Hmm, let me think about what's been happening... I'm pretty sure that it's been about a year since I've last been here!

So I now have a beautiful 13-month-old daughter who is an absolute delight! I spend two days a week working back at my old job but instead of teaching English, I'm now in the Christian Ministry department teaching Christian Development (which is effectively Scripture) and I love it! The other three week days I spend with my lovely little girl - reading her stories, playing with her toys with her and chasing her around our back garden as she chases our six chickens! Oh, and of course changing nappies, feeding her and trying to get her to sleep.

Just in the last few months I've managed to find enough headspace to start reading again and, in terms of fiction, I've thoroughly enjoyed Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero, David Malouf's Ransom, something else which I've totally forgotten and Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated. The non-fictions have all been christian books and a little bit topical but I can't remember any authors: A Mother's Heart, Girls, Five Love Languages of Children, oh, and, Deep Justice For A Broken World, which I've found really confronting, challenging and hopefully it'll turn out to be life-changing.

In other news, I'm actually expecting my second baby in early February next year (though I am seriously beginning to look as though this baby is due any minute!) and we are very excited to be becoming a family of four! They'll be nearly seventeen months apart, which is bound to be character building...

One interesting thing about this little unborn one is that it's going to be born with a bi-lateral cleft lip. That bit of news has led to quite a journey for us as we've had to endure quite a few tests to determine whether or not this cleft was a sign of something much more significant and terrible. As it turns out, we have no indication of anything significant or terrible but we have learnt that we have a funny little genetic mutation in the family! I won't go into the details but it may just be that on top of its cleft lip, our little one may also have some webbing between its fingers and toes and will very likely have some little bumps on the inside of its lower lip. It'll have to have some surgery, possibly as early as six weeks of age. Poor little chap/ette! (We've chosen not to find out whether it's a boy or a girl. We didn't know last time so it doesn't feel right to find out this time!) Anyway, we're so delighted that we've been blessed with not just one fabulous little person but two and all of these things are completely fixable, so praise God!

Aaanyway, I think I've exhausted my blogging potential for today but who knows, maybe this pd session has opened the floodgates for more blogging in the near future?? We'll see!

2009-03-07T21:55:00.002+11:00

At least Chaucer’s mother believed he was beautiful …

… although even she had to admit he was a tad ill-proportioned.

2008-11-06T14:13:00.001+11:00

Have reduced blogging to an occasional 140 characters over at http://twitter.com/fiveforsilver

2008-09-28T12:12:00.002+10:00

Made Me Glad

There's more to say, but this encapsulates it for now and was the song of my head and heart all throughout her birth:

I will bless the Lord forever,
I will trust Him at all times.
He has delivered me from all fear,
He has set my feet upon a rock.

I will not be moved,
And I'll say of the Lord:
You are my shield, my strength,
My portion, deliverer,
My shelter, strong tower,
My very present help in time of need.

Whom have I in heaven but You?
There's none I desire beside You.

You have made me glad,
And I'll say of the Lord:
You are my shield, my strength,
My portion, deliverer,
My shelter, strong tower,
My very present help in time of need.

Miriam Webster

2008-09-14T14:22:00.003+10:00

Trying not to get too cranky…

Baby was initially due on the 4th, technically due on the 8th, possibly due on the 12th. It is the 14th - still no baby. If you're my facebook friend, I'm looking for guesses on the gender and date/arrival time of the baby - come and play!

Between us we have spilt five large drinks rather impressively all over various areas of the house. I've hit the carpet (twice) and the microwave. Jon hit the kitchen bench, with Berocca no less, and then knocked my enormous glass of water over the printer and a few power boards. It has been an eventful morning yet we've all escaped electrocution.

The baby is jiggling around pretty constantly. I think when it's older it will stand to attention when it hears the theme tune of The West Wing. It's heard it plenty of times by now.

Nothing more to report.

2008-09-13T14:34:00.004+10:00

The grace, favour and faithfulness of God, the love and commitment of prayerful friends and the wonder and mystery of acupuncture!

I know I didn’t post yesterday and some of you probably thought I’d gone into labour. Well, no. I realise that Jon’s post this morning would have done nothing to alleviate anyone’s curiosity but apparently that is a picture of a real KGB shoe-phone so I hope that you’re not complaining!

Thursday night was interesting – about 12 hours of contractions that ended up sputtering to a halt in the morning on Friday. Then I went to see the world’s best acupuncturist, Emma. I love this girl and have been seeing her since way back in January when I was so laid-low with what is laughably termed “morning sickness” that she said I looked like I had food poisoning. Anyway, on Friday morning she stuck me full of needles, as she is want to do. I’d seen her on Monday morning, but that was before I found out that the baby was posterior. I’d seen her on Wednesday when she started the attempt to turn the child around (yep, I’ve had a bit of Gloria Estefan stuck in my head this week, now you can experience the same joy) which mainly seems to focus on the corner of the little toe-nail – she’d even given me some little acupressure sticky things to keep on my little toes to try and bring the turn about! Yet it wasn’t until Friday, when I was sitting backwards on a chair, leaning forward over a pillow on the bed/table/thing with little needles in my neck, back and all over my shins and ankles, and of course, the little toes that I felt the most amazing thing.

Just before she’d started the treatment, I’d got her to feel my stomach and we’d both laughed about how we could feel this little baby’s legs all folded up at the top of my (wide-load) abdomen. Ten minutes into the treatment, while I was just in the little room by myself and Emma was seeing another patient, I felt the baby’s head spin. I didn’t make a song and dance about it at the time, I actually just thought that I must have imagined it and put it out of my mind, but when I walked out of the treatment room and into her little office, I felt my belly and instead of the folded up little legs, what could I feel instead? A bony little spine running dead centre down the middle of my belly! I got her to feel it too and we were both so excited – the baby had turned within the hour I’d spent in her clinic! I called Jon straight away and he ever so wisely advised me to go for a bit of a walk before I got in the car to see if I could help the baby’s head to engage while it was in a good spot.

Later that afternoon I had a bit of a minor panic. I’ve been so used to feeling and seeing these grandiose can-can style kicks out the front of my stomach that suddenly I had no sense of whether or not the baby was moving at all. I called my fabulous midwife and she told me to come in so she could check me out. When I got there she confirmed that yes, the baby had turned and we heard its little heart beating – all is well! I’m a bit better now at knowing what to look for with the baby’s movements and though they’re different to what they were, they’re still pretty unmistakable – poor little bugger has run almost completely out of room and the area towards my back obviously isn’t quite as flexible or stretchy as the area towards my front (thank goodness!)

Anyway, I know that so many friends were praying for us, in Sydney and in so many other parts of the world and we are so grateful. But please don’t stop praying! The baby may have turned but it still has to be born and that will be a bit of a bigger deal I imagine! We have some fairly good indications that labour will hopefully be starting soon but I won’t go into details – and who knows, it still could be another week!

For those of you who were wondering, my fake designer bag does look incredibly fake, but I’d never heard of the designer before, so I’m not fazed, I'd probably struggle to pick a real one, and it is totally awesome. No doubt you’ll see me sporting it around the place sometime soon and you can admire the six regular compartments and clever umbrella/drink bottle compartment.

And now for something completely different…

Toby: Of course I wrote a concession. You want to tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing?
Sam: No
Toby: Then go outside, turn around three times, and spit. What the hell is the matter with you?
Sam: It's like 25 degrees outside. . . . (Josh enters.) Toby wrote a concession speech.
Josh: Of course, he wrote a concession speech. Why wouldn't he? What possible reason would he have for not writing a concession speech?
Sam: The wrath from high atop the thing.
Toby: He up and said we were gonna...
Josh: No! You gotta go outside, turn around three times and curse!
Toby: Spit.
Josh: Spit and curse.
Toby: Do everything. Go.

2008-09-13T09:00:00.002+10:00

It has come to my attention that a lot of people post a lot of personal information on the internet.
Do you folks not realise that RUSSIANS are online too?

(made in Russia)

2008-09-11T11:22:00.003+10:00

The hilarity of the “due date”

Hi peeps, still here! Am yet to disassemble, Voltron-like, into more than one part… It’s God, rather than Keith and The Voltron Force, who initially says something like:

Keith: Position Keys! Launch Lions! Ready to form Voltron! Activate Interlock! Dynatherms Connected! Infracells Up! Megathrusters are GO!
The Voltron Force: All form Voltron!
Keith: Form Feet And Legs! Form Arms And Body! And I'll Form The HEAD!
The Voltron Force: Let's go, Voltron Force!

…but I think it’s the baby (and God, obviously) who ultimately calls the shots on when it’s time for us to become two separate lions.

However, human input has had the baby due on a few different dates – all September – so far they all seem to be right on that count at least. My GP had the baby being born on the 4th (nope!) and the midwives had it coming on the 8th (uh uh!). I realised this morning that I have one due date left! The 12th! And that’s tomorrow, so who knows what might happen… maybe the little person will turn out to be incredibly punctual after all!? No, seriously, I pretty much assumed that the one day the baby wouldn't be born on was its actual due date. And unless it does get born tomorrow, I'll be right to have been so cynical!

I’m trying to work out whether it is still posterior or not and I have no idea. This little one is not much of a morning person. I get the odd languorous kick now and again until about 3pm when it really gets going for the day. I guess I won’t be able to tell much until then. That said, there’s movement at the station right now! Perhaps it’s the fact that Justin Timberlake is on the stereo – that always gets me moving… It’s possible that what I’m feeling is a little spine but I’m not a medical expert (WW anyone?) so I don’t feel qualified to assume too much. Either way, all will be well. I’m still feeling pretty brave and determined. Long may it last, coz if the 12th of September does end up getting counted as a real due date, and the midwives let me go 18 days over, as I’ve heard that they’ve done with other late babies in the birth centre, this baby may not be born until the 30th of September! By that point I will be well and truly be out of my tree…

2008-09-10T16:50:00.002+10:00

Hello 40-weeks-and-two-days-belly!

Today I had acupuncture to try and turn the posterior child and still have two little acupunctury doozits sticking into my little toes for home use. Then I went swimming - an hour of breaststroke and general belly-downness to see if that would help. Since then I have spent about three hours on all fours and yet it seems that I'm still getting lots of kicks where I'm not meant to be getting any. Oh well, if it's not going to turn, I guess that it just isn't going to turn and that's ok! I'm still feeling brave and determined and ready for whatever this baby and body of mine are going to throw at me - I just want it all to start!!!

Oh, and I found a cool site with a stupid name - www.oztion.com.au - and I bought a fake designer bag! Fun!

So yeah, as of 4:58pm Wednesday 10th of September, I have nothing new to report... (except that I'm now onto Disc One, Series Four of The West Wing)

2008-09-09T09:30:00.003+10:00

Looking down the barrel of a posterior labour...

WARNING: I’M POSSIBLE OVER-SHARING HERE. IF YOU’RE NOT INTO BIRTH, PERHAPS SKIP THIS POST!

So I think that I’ve said that I’m keen, in fact, feeling quite determined to do my best to have a drug-free, intervention-free labour. I am having my baby in a hospital, but in a midwife-run birth centre within a hospital so technically (in the loosest of ways) I’m going to be giving birth in a non-medical setting. Yesterday, when I had my appointment with my midwife, it was discovered that what I had suspected a month or so ago, though untrue at the time, was actually now the case: this baby is in a posterior position. This means that it’s still the right way up – head down in my pelvis – but that its spine is against my spine and its feet are against my stomach. This explains the flurry of activity that I’ve been experiencing recently, suddenly the baby has way more ability to get my attention than it did when it was kicking off to my right side.

A posterior position is definitely not the worst position that a baby can get itself into, it’s not like the baby is transverse (lying horizontally across my stomach) or breech (feet-first) and that is fantastic because in both of those scenarios it is pretty much caesarean birth only in Australian hospitals (Note that I’m calling it a caesarean birth – it’s still a birth, even if it is under less ideal circumstances). What it does mean is that the weight of the baby is more concentrated in the mother’s back and that it isn’t applying the best amount of pressure to the cervix so the first stage of labour can take a really long time while you wait for the cervix to dilate. This means that the labour is prolonged, it can often be a fair bit harder than a more normal presentation and the mother is more likely to get worn out and want medical intervention. In almost every case, the baby is not actually delivered posterior, it almost always turns, but frankly, there’s not necessarily all that much joy in it turning ten minutes before it is born if you’ve just been in labour with it against your back for twenty-four, or thirty-six, or heck… many more possible hours. Preferably, you want that baby turned before labour begins.

I’m hoping, and am actually fairly confident that this baby will turn before I go into labour. Not because I had any particular success turning it last night even after being on all-fours for approximately five hours (it’s kicking me enthusiastically just under the ribs right now to prove that), nor because I’m going to be having more acupuncture tomorrow to try to turn it, nor because I intend to spend the entirety of today concentrating on turning it. The reason I feel fairly convinced that it will turn before or very early in labour is because of all of the wonderful people who have committed to pray for me and pray that the baby will turn. Was reading a bit of good-ole-Spurgeon this morning and this is what I read:

Prevailing prayer is victorious over the God of mercy, “As a man he struggled with God. He struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favour. He found him at Bethel and talked with him there.” Prevailing prayer takes the Christian to Carmel, and enables him to cover heaven with clouds of blessing, and earth with floods of mercy. Prevailing prayer bears the Christian aloft to Pigsah, and shows him the inheritance reserved; it elevates us to Tabor and transfigures us, until in the likeness of our Lord, as He is, so are we also in this world. If you would reach to something higher than ordinary groveling experience, look to the Rock that is higher than you, and gaze with the eye of faith through the window of burning prayer. When you open the window on your side, it will not be bolted on the other. (Mornings and Evenings – Morning September 9th)

Yet, all that doesn’t mean that God may not have a reason for answering these prayers with a “No”. And if that is the case, that just means that giving birth may be a bit more character building for me than it has been for some others! After doing a bit more reading since yesterday, here are the reasons that I hope will stay with me and convince me to avoid the temptation of having an epidural:
• In a posterior labour, mobility is really important, by moving around you encourage dialation of the cervix and you allow yourself to move into positions that ease the pain you might otherwise be experiencing. It is especially important to be able to lean forward and use pelvic-rocking. An epidural puts a stop to mobility because it numbs your legs and hooks you up to all kinds of restrictive machines.
• I need my pelvic floor muscles working for me, not having a holiday. If I cut them out of the equation, I’m more likely to need a forceps delivery or vacuum extraction.
• Then there’s all of the other reasons to avoid epidurals…
I’ll be proud of myself if I get through a text-book birth without medical assistance, so how much more proud of myself will I be if I get through a posterior labour without medical assistance!?

And anyway, the thing that I am most convicted of, and I think I’ve said this before, is that it isn’t only this little person inside me who has been fearfully and wonderfully made. My body has also been made by the same wonderful, powerful, sovereign and omniscient creator – it isn’t a dud. This body has been intricately designed to achieve incredible things and I’m not going to go into the most full-on physical thing I’ll ever do expecting my body to be dodgy. Rather, I’m going to go into this most full-on physical thing I’ll ever do praising God for his magnificent creation and trusting in Him to watch over and direct my labour and the birth of this little person.

Now I just need it all to start!

2008-09-08T08:55:00.003+10:00

Still antenatal, feeling very pro-natal, hoping to soon be post-natal!

Hi all, how are things? Apparently due dates don’t mean that much, unless you’re a little chap by the name of Jeremiah, who made a very punctual arrival about ten weeks ago. His parents are very punctual people whereas we are not, so perhaps this’ll learn us for all the times that we’ve held people up…

Usually I like it when people are late. I love it that we can usually trust our homegroup to interpret the 7pm starting time for something much closer to 7:30. I usually love it when people turn up half an hour late for dinner at our place – traditionally I need every second that I can get because I haven’t started thinking about getting the food ready until the absolute last minute! (Apologies to our most recent dinner guests who we ended up ordering pizza for…) But right now, I would be absolutely stoked if this little person would initiate the arrival process because I know my homegroup, and I rarely have total strangers around to dinner, but I have never met this little person and 40 weeks of suspense is quite a lot of suspense!!!

It was only 24 weeks ago that I stopped vomiting at least four times a day and things have been much happier since then. At that point, I have to admit I felt quite ambivalent about this little passenger of mine but God has abundantly answered all of my prayers and not only prepared me to tolerate this little person but given me a pretty fierce love for it even while I don’t know if it is a boy or a girl! Just as I needed the whole ten months of engagement to get my head fully around the fact that I was actually getting married, it seems that the nine months of pregnancy are just about perfect for getting your head around the fact that you’re going to have a baby – not that anything can properly prepare you for that, I guess.

Time for today’s The West Wing interlude: Anyone remember the episode “Gone Quiet” which starts with C.J. listening to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”? That is an unusually chipper episode – everyone is really cheeky and most of the dialogue is light-hearted rather than just witty. It felt a bit odd to me, especially from Leo given what he’d been told about his war-days in the previous episode. That said, it’s a fun episode. Lots of good lines. Not that I can remember any… but having previously asserted that there isn’t much singing and dancing in The West Wing I should clarify (there's a better word but I can't remember it!) by saying that even though C.J. isn’t exactly the star of HSM, she is single-handedly upping the anti!

Well, off to acupuncture for me, and then for my weekly check-up with the midwives and then, who knows!? It'd be nice and convenient to go into labour when you were already on the hospital premises!

Oh, silly me. I was looking for a picture of Right Said Fred but I ended up with Drop Dead Fred instead. Ah well, at least he has clothes on! And who doesn't love Rick Mayall in that movie? or in anything?

2008-09-07T17:54:00.002+10:00

So far Jon does not seem likely to become a father on Fathers’ Day.

But seeing as the baby isn’t even technically due until tomorrow we should probably all give it a bit of a break and stop hassling it – and now I need to apply that wisdom to myself. I’ve been feeling tight as a drum and completely exhausted all the time this week so I think it is about time that this baby moved into some slightly larger accommodation i.e. somewhere not inside me.

Today I exercised great discipline in the face of a very tempting ebay auction even with my parents offering the next $2 that I’d need to increase my bid. Jon will be very pleased with me when he hears about my self-control!

I am wagging church and I think I might go to bed. I’ll watch a few West Wings first though. Rennie is my new friend even though it is disgusting and tastes like spearmint-flavoured chalk. Sistas who have been here before me might be able to sympathise with me in my plight...

Sorry to all of you who are looking for news and are in suspense. It has to be born sometime before the end of September if that helps!? And if you think you’re in suspense, trust me, it’s not a patch on how I’m feeling! I have to give birth before you get to find out what I’ve had!!!

Ok, I think that’s enough for now but before I go, let me recall for you the delightful memory of Jemaine and Bret’s first interpretation of what it means to “flip the bird” at someone – bless!

2008-09-03T14:31:00.002+10:00

Yesterday I learnt a few things:

1. Just because everyone tells you that your baby is going to be born “any minute now” doesn’t mean that it actually will. It seems that I have at least a week to go. And my baby is a “fake artist” for deceiving us all!

2. You should not muck around with bidding on e-bay. I learnt some valuable lessons about that $20.50 later!

3. E-cards are pretty fun to play with and they’re better for the environment (except when you take into account all of the power that people are using to muck around on the internet, but in my defence, they were doing that anyway which is how they knew they had an e-card to look at!)

4. I have a great memory for television series, by which I mean I have absolutely no ability to recall details of episodes. This is awesome because I can still be shocked, amused, in suspense etc even if I’ve seen it all before. In case you’re wondering what I’m specifically referring to, yesterday I watched the episode of The West Wing entitled “Two Cathedrals.” Remember that one? Yeah, well, when Charlie was just staring at the phone receiver in his hand, I had no idea what was coming next. I love my brain sometimes – I’m always so easily entertained! (That’s kind of like a goldfish, isn’t it? That’s a bit of a disturbing comparison…)

5. Thanks to Bec, I learned the term “WAHM”. There are hundreds of forums and websites and all kind of things dedicated to those amongst us who are WAHMs and I am about to become one. The fact that I spent all day yesterday on e-bay, that I’m currently reading a book called “How to buy and sell on e-bay”, that I quite enjoy on-line shopping and that I communicated with a number of friends via e-card last night suggests that I am well on the way to becoming one of them, and it seems that you’re only really one of them if you keep up a high level of dedication to your internet time. As Julian keeps saying “it’s just that the internet brings all of the crackpots together.”

Today I might do some more reading. I’m reading cool books that I’m really enjoying but they’re all about babies and being a parent so you might not be interested in the titles. I’d like to read a novel. I’ve only read a few novels this year compared to my normal reading habits. I’ve read a gazillion non-fiction books though, but all about the aforementioned topic, no diversity of material really. Perhaps I should try and get back into some fiction. If I have another week I should probably try to take advantage of it. There might not be another novel reading opportunity for a long time after this week! I’ll let you know how I go with that one. It’s already 2:27pm and I haven’t picked up any novels yet…

I’ve been playing around with hilarious baby names such as Lucy’s suggested Coriander or Semibreve, and the names I heard on Baby Mama, Banjo and Wingspan. Ben suggested Cambridge Bookmark Apocalypse for a boy or a girl which is nice (noice, different, unusual). Jon and I toyed with Phichelle and Nichelle, Ikea and Babar amongst others. Any of you guys got any great suggestions? Or heard of any shockers? We have actually got names and they’re nothing like this list but they’re fun to play around with.

Let me leave you with this fact – Jermaine Jackson had a son in 2000 and named him Jermajesty. His other kids, by three different women and one adopted, are called Jermaine Jr., Autumn, Jaimy, Jeremy, Jourdynn, Donte and Jaffar. But man, I just love Jermajesty…

2008-09-02T22:12:00.001+10:00

Health: 97%

2008-09-01T07:55:00.006+10:00

Oh my, it's September! We're having a September baby!

Just so that you're all aware, that last post was Jon, not me. Hope you enjoyed it. I think it is the fruit of a mind deranged by HSC Music administration and marking. No, what am I saying? That's just Jon!

Since my last post I have slept quite a bit, eaten quite a bit, rediscovered a love for instant decaf (I know, I know, what's the point? But Anthea is my instant decaf friend still -aren't you Anth? Found a good brand in Wales yet?), watched High School Musical 1 and 2, watched a few too many episodes of The West Wing, had lunch with my friend Jeremy, hung out with my lovely parents and 100-year-old Grandma, re-read all my birth books and generally pottered about. Oh, and had about a gazillion contractions of all different shapes and sizes but none that seem to suggest that this baby is going to be born particularly imminently. Braxton Hicks seems to be here to stay!

The visit to the parents was delightful in many ways, but I know that many of you will appreciate this particular delight that was unearthed from the bowels of the house (amongst many others - our kid is going to be the coolest kid out!):

Obviously not a newborn outfit but how cool is that!? How many of you could find photos of yourself dressed almost identically? Ah, I love it! And to think that I've given Mum and Dad a hard time for hoarding everything that they've ever owned. Shame on me - my descendants and I will now reap the rewards! (Sorry Mum and Dad! Thanks for the cool clothes!)

So, I'm sure that you're all dying to hear what I thought of the phenomenon that is High School Musical.

1. Zac Effron looks just like a Year 10 kid at my school. I found that very difficult to get past.
2. Good ole Disney know how to make a "Family Friendly" movie don't they!? No revealing clothing, no dodgy jokes, no disrespect of parents, or of anyone for that matter! Even the stereotypical gay kid is somehow not really a gay kid, or at least no attention is drawn to his actual sexuality (apart from all of the pink and all of the hats)...
3. I approve of all things karaoke so the premise worked for me, as did the fact that if I really get addicted to these films, I can switch on the karaoke function and sing along to all the songs! I hope that won't happen to me, but I won't be surprised if it does.
4. I thought it would make a cool story to say that I went into labour while watching High School Musical. I may have to watch them both again just to give myself another shot at that one.
5. Ok, here's where it gets really specific. You know that scene in HSM 2 when Troy and Gabriella are having a picnic on the golf course and Gabriella is wearing that peach strapless dress? I have that dress in navy!!! I wore it to the Hoy-burgs wedding! I think that I will use that to cash into some minor level of celebrity. And should I ever fit into that dress again, you can all make appropriately impressed comments when you see me. It is some label but I can't remember which and I bought it dramatically reduced from its original price. Now that I realise its true value I should try to sell it for a fortune on e-bay... How many suckers are there out in the world?
6. Too many hats.
7. Those Troy/Gabriella duets all sound a bit alike. And are a bit too catchy.
8. Multiple jocks and nerds going out. Hilaire. It's just like Grease 2! (Except really not...)
9. One too many sport-themed song/dance numbers. I counted a basketball one, a baseball one and it seemed that even a golf one loomed on the horizon for a moment there but it was just a little Michael Jackson/Justin Timberlake style flourish with a nine-iron.
10. I'm struggling for a tenth observation but ten has a nice kind of symmetry. Ummm... Oh yeah, there were a few of those awkward "white boy street slang" moments that I found reminiscent of oh-my-goodness-I-cannot-for-the-life-of-me-remember-the-name-of-that-Whoopi-Goldberg-nun-movie-Part-Two! Aha! Sister Act 2! That film was redeemed by the fact that it launched our favourite Lauryn Hill but oh my, the dialogue was tragic. And HSM had a few moments of similar tragedy.

Ok, I feel like I've got all that off my chest now.

Today I shall go to my magnificent acupuncture friend, I shall start my bloody marking, I shall cook some more meals to freeze, I shall do some washing and if I get all that done, I shall attempt to go into labour while watching HSM! And then I can buy these for the poor child...

2008-08-30T17:28:00.002+10:00

Cool coincidence: I just grabbed a dictionary and it opened to exactly the right page (#705).

If you’re interested*, here’s some more data on the situation:

1236 pages in the book.

I actually had 2 words to look up - one on page 701 and one on page 705.

The dictionary was bought in February 1993.

To my memory, I have not looked up either of these two words before.

I have looked up many words in this dictionary over the last 15½ years (estimated usage: 60 words/year).

To my memory, this is the first time I have found a word on the first go with this dictionary.

Vaguely connected — I am currently wearing a jacket which I have owned since November 1993. It fits great.

*Actually, it’s incredibly unlikely that any of you were interested. Back to work/rest/play, all of us!

2008-08-29T08:35:00.003+10:00

Thursday came and Thursday went...

I begin to realise that this may go on for quite some time. Anyway, Friday Morning Group this morning and then a weekend of rest and relaxation ahead (apart from a trip to ikea in the morning) so things could certainly be worse.

I have some edifying DVDs to watch (the aforementioned Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and now High School Musical 1 and 2 which I have never seen and which I think Jon borrowed from a Year 10 student for me). Of course there's always the remaining five and a half series of The West Wing should all the singing and dancing get too much. You could never accuse The West Wing of having too much singing and dancing!

Oh, and there's that marking should I get really desperate...

Pick the scene anyone?? I love C.J.

2008-08-28T08:18:00.005+10:00

The requested baby-room photos...

Here you go, Rach! (and anyone else who is interested?) They're not great photos, but they're not too bad. As you can see we've painted the walls green ("pea case") and yellow ("lemon delicious") which we think is fun and we're slowly getting all sorted for the imminent (I hope!) arrival of the little person.

The cute little black and green prints on the bookshelf are from Jane, I think she made them herself, clever clogs... The pram and bassinet are courtesy of the very generous Sarah, Jonathan and Finn, the bouncer thing is from the lovely Matt, Natalie and girls and you can see my bag all packed in the middle of the room there!

The big 25-square shelf thing is not the one from our lounge room, we returned to ikea and Jon managed to find a display one for $120 cheaper. He was delighted and I tried not to cringe too much while everyone else stood at the ikea counter with their neatly packed flat boxes and Jon cheerfully wheeled the fully-assembled flipping enormous book case across the store and then had to dismantle it just next to the registers so that we could get it into the car to take home! It was the happiest I've ever seen him after a shopping trip so I was pleased that I didn't insist on us paying full price for a properly packaged new one. We're going to get 25 little drawers to fit in each of the squares so it will look heaps better when we've finished with it. As you can see, it currently houses the old drawers from the desk we've chucked out coz we haven't had a chance to actually sort through them yet. Jon is also using it as his clothes storage space because we had to move his amps into the built-in wardrobe.

I've been up since 5am again and I think I'll go back to bed for a bit now. The lovely Stef is coming over to hang out for a bit this afternoon and I would really like to get that bloody marking out of the way before she gets here!!! Surely today is the day!?

Oh, and as yet, Kaye's prophesy shows no signs of coming true, but it's only 9:13am!

2008-08-27T14:49:00.006+10:00

If you ever see our child wearing matching socks...

Be appropriately amazed. And congratulate us with a coffee or something.

Check out Kaye's amazing cupcakes! She predicts that the baby will be born tomorrow and that it will be a girl. If her prophesies are anything like her cupcakes you can expect the news of the birth of our daughter really soon!

100-year-old Grandma strikes again! Is this not a beautiful blanket? Twas a lovely Saturday, and the efforts of Jo, Nik and my mum were greatly appreciated - as twas the presence and presents of so many of my lovely friends!

As for updates, the baby feels like it is performing rather grandiose somersaults in a pretty confined space, but I'm hoping that it is actually staying right where it is because the midwives have declared it to be beautifully engaged, in a great position, chin tilted down and not-too-small, not-too-big. All of that strikes me as good news! Now I am just dying to find out who it is!!! Jon had another "it's a boy" dream last night. I am just convicted of the absolute reality that it is no more likely to be a boy than a girl, or a girl than a boy! I know that sounds like the world's most bleedingly obvious statement but you kind of go through phases of thinking one thing and then another and right now I'm thinking that I can't possible think in any way until I actually see this little person!

Anyway, this morning I woke at about 3am, tossed and turned til 5am, got up, ate toast and strawberry jam, had a hot shower, made myself a hot chocolate, watched an episode of The West Wing (remember the one where they think they're going to have to fire the Surgeon General for her comments on the addictive properties of pot?) and then went back to bed at about 7am and slept til 10:30. Is God training me to sleep at times that are other than night? I think it's a good idea on the whole but it wasn't much fun between 3 and 5...

Rach has requested some photos of the baby room - I'll take some now and post them up tomorrow. We're still waiting on one particular item to arrive at ikea and then we'll be totally set. Oh, and then we'll be wanting the actual baby to justify all of this mucking about!

In non-baby related news, I bought the DVD of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun the other day in Broadway for $8. Haven't watched it in at least ten years, possibly even fifteen. I'll let you know if it matches up to my very, very fond memories. Nik, if you're reading, you should come over and watch it with me. And then just so that we can have the real Year 3 experience, we could also get out Nadia and Electric Dreams and then play "Rockstar" until we remember that you have to do so much maths and give it up for the YTT Game.

And one more thing. Lots of people are going to see Mark Driscoll tonight. I know very little about him except for the fact that people talk about him as if they've converted to following him as the messiah. I think that Mark Driscoll is a topic about which I am going to remain as ignorant as I can for as long as I can. Let me know if this is anything like the folly of not reading the Harry Potter books just because everyone else is. If you can convince me of that (and I might take some convincing), I'll repent in sackcloth and ashes and jump on the bandwagon with all of you other rabid evangelicals!

2008-08-25T21:12:00.002+10:00

Still here! Baby still on the inside!

Hi there. Modem thing behaved strangely for a few days so I didn't even touch the computer for a bit, hence the absence.
Am now at 38 weeks! Where did those (nearly) nine months go???
Have had it predicted that this baby will be born on Thursday this week. That will be interesting and if it happens, I'll be consulting this prophet again in the future!
I am feeling well, great even! Just a bit tired. We're as ready as we'll ever be!
Saw "Baby Mama" today with the delightful Nic for her birthday. Was funny seeing such a film in such a state. It's a funny film anyway...
Just then I accidentally deleted all of my blog subscriptions from google reader which is REALLY annoying! I blame Craig for changing to wordpress. It was adding his blog that seemed to cause me to lose all of the others. Ah well... That may mean that any comments I might have made on any of your blogs this week have been postponed until I can remember all of your urls again!
The room that we're getting together for the baby has become my favourite room (out of our total of five rooms). It is brightly coloured, getting more organised every day and is full of beautiful things that have been given to us by people who love us - nice!
Aaaaanyway, I'm going to go to bed.
Hope you're all well!

2008-08-19T17:05:00.003+10:00

A Tuesday Update...

This is me at "exactly" 37 weeks (my countdown ticks over on Tuesdays), just so you know that I'm still sitting on the couch, pyjama-clad, belly fully present, and labour seems, once again, far off... Perhaps it's time to return to the 32-frozen-meals cooking challenge.

In other news, as I type, Jon is exchanging the cot mattress which we discovered (but not too late) was too big for the cot, I'm washing my newly arrived collection of the world's cutest modern cloth nappies and I have thoroughly enjoyed the *mumbled number* episodes of The West Wing that I have watched today. Still feeling pretty exhausted from the events of the last 24 hours and so still have not started my marking. Am thinking of paying Jane to do it. Janey, if you're reading, will you accept about three bucks a script?

Alright, that's enough mucking around for one afternoon!

2008-08-19T07:09:00.003+10:00

The arrival of a new friend and the return of an old nemesis…

Let it be noted that it is 6:11am as I type and I have been awake since 3:30am. Last night at pretty much exactly 6pm I was hard at work at the 32-frozen-meals challenge (having only started it about half an hour beforehand) and Jon was just arriving home from work. Almost immediately I started complaining that the baby was doing crazy somersaults or something and making me feel pretty weird.

Within not very long I realised that I had to apologise to the baby, it wasn’t her/him at all – it was my first non-exercise induced experience of contractions. And it lasted for two hours straight! I have to admit, I did have a moment of “Crikey! This might be the real thing!”. We finally finished packing the bags and Jon even put up the cot! But then, at almost exactly 8pm (I know these times coz I was keeping an eye on something I had cooking on the stove) it all stopped and I felt totally back to normal. But for two hours, it was pretty full-on. And pretty exciting! Welcome Braxton Hicks!

But then this morning, I woke up with a horribly familiar sensation. One that had been with me for the whole entire first sixteen weeks of this pregnancy – vomitousness. What does this mean, oh wise women who have been pregnant before me? Does vomiting and two hours of full-on contractions mean that labour is on its way?

Anyway, I’m going to stay at home, watch The West Wing, maybe put a bit more effort into the 32-frozen-meals challenge and see what happens…

(I know I've started two sentences with "But". I feel ok about that.)

2008-08-18T12:37:00.003+10:00

Monday, Monday... OR How I killed the washing machine... OR The 32 frozen meals cooking challenge...

Hi there, welcome back to the inanities of my life on maternity leave.
Yes, today is Monday. Yes, I am afeared that I might have killed the washing machine today. Yes, today I intend to cook and freeze approximately 32 meals. Well, that's more or less it, actually. Lucky I elaborated...

You would not believe how much our house is taking shape. It is very much all thanks to Jon the handyman who has been assembling furniture and moving things about and tidying and all kinds of other manly feats. Impressive!

Anyway, last night we sang one of those new versions of an old hymn in church. Allow me to sound like a nanna for a minute while I say that this kind of a venture does not always breed success. In fact, let me sound even more like a nanna and say sometimes a good hymn should just be left alone. Unfortunately, the new product, while having a very singable tune with some nice guitar pedal work, has two very stupid lines in it. This is because the chap responsible seems to have failed to respect the notion of context. Take some lines out of context and you find yourself jolted out of the experience of singing praises to God and instead thinking "what the heck are these lines supposed to mean?". Aaaanyway, while I am willing to forgive this very famous chap for being a bit of a himbo in this particular work, I'm going to type up the original for you because it is a very cool poem expressing God's presence and glory and provision in his creation.

O worship the King all glorious above,
O gratefully sing His power and His love,
Our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendour, and girded with praise.

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunder-clouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.

The earth with its store of wonders untold,
Almighty, Thy power hath founded of old.
Hath stablished it fast by a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast, like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air; it shines in the light:
It streams from the hills; it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust, as feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer and Friend!

O measureless might! Ineffable love!
While angels delight to hymn Thee above,
The humbler creation, though feeble their lays,
With true adoration shall lisp to Thy praise.

Robert Grant, 1779-1838

I love this hymn because it describes creation not only in its role of revealing its Creator but also of bringing praise to its Creator. Yet another great reason for us to value, teach and encourage the careful and thoughtful stewardship of this earth.

"The seas have lifted up, Lord,
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves." Psalm 93:3

"Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation rejoice before the Lord..." Psalm 96:12-13

"His lightning lights up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim His righteousness,
and all peoples see His glory." Psalm 97:4-6

"Let the sea resound and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the mountains sing together for joy;
let them sing before the Lord..." Psalm 98:7-9

and then there's Psalm 104, which you just have to read for yourself.

Anyway, hope that you're having a good Monday, like the happy parts of The Mamas and the Papas "Monday, Monday" rather than the other parts. And let's hope that no one's having a Bangles "Manic Monday"... Though probably everyone is... :(

2008-08-14T13:41:00.003+10:00

Spurious methods of gender determination.

In recent weeks I have had it declared with certainty that this baby is a boy by most people, but a few have declared it with equal certainty to be a girl. My midwife doesn’t look at whether “it’s all out the front” (which apparently suggests a boy) nor is she interested in whether “it’s all around” (suggesting a girl), instead, she listens to the speed of its little heartbeat. This seems slightly more scientific to me, but, as she readily admits, it’s still an imperfect process. Anyway, judging by this slightly-more-scientific-but-still-imperfect-method, my little passenger seems to be a female. And frankly, I’m excited! That said, I’ll be equally excited if it is a little boy because then I can stop guarding this jolly name and stop worrying that some celebrity is going to pinch it and render it unusable. It seems likely at this point that if we have a little girl, she will have a name, so that’s nice. It was looking quite a lot like we might have ended up with an Anonymity Argall for a while there, and as pretty a name as that is…

Anyway, I haven’t got my new copy of “The Guardian” yet so I’ll let myself post up a few more cute pics from yesterday’s wash for you to admire.

Aren't the little bonds "jeans" incredible? Bless their cotton socks, those nice people at bonds. If it weren't for their trakkies and singlets, I'd be getting out a lot more in my pyjamas...

2008-08-13T11:30:00.003+10:00

Wednesday (not the gal from the Addam’s Family, though it is the 13th, which called her involuntarily to mind when I wrote the date this morning…)

Having an odd but good morning! While waiting for washing loads to finish I’m reading a magazine that feels like it’s written in my voice! Won’t tell you which one coz you’ll think I’m up myself but I’m finding the whole experience quite bizarre, like I’ve been plagiarised on a massive scale… Except I would never come up with so many nifty things to buy! And this is why I avoid magazines – Aarrg! Covetousness!!!

It was originally my intention, as I may have pretentiously declared to some of you, to read The Guardian Weekly from cover to cover every week of my maternity leave as one last (or perhaps first!?) hurrah as an educated, informed, thinking, intelligent human being who is more concerned with the state of the world than the cuteness of the baby clothes she has amassed. But I left it too late this week, missed it at the newsagency, bought this fun but disquieting magazine instead and check out the cuteness of this morning’s load of washing!

awww...

bless!

*descends into unintelligible gurgling*

oh well! no more washing for me this morning!

some of yesterday's exemplary bread pudding instead. (photo of second breakfast inspired by Emily but not nearly as carefully composed or nicely taken as hers)

And now I shall move onto the next thing on my list of errands:

Hope you're having a spiffy Wednesday!

2008-08-09T16:07:00.002+10:00

Ever been to a one hundredth birthday party?

This is me getting some of the decorations finished on the morning of. Some of you might not have seen me looking super pregnant! I'm 35 weeks in this photo.

Mum, me and my mum's cousin from England working out places and setting the table. That's my uncle vacuuming in the background!

The birthday girl in the centre holding court with two of her delightful party guests and me on the left admiring Grandma's birthday message from the queen with one of her 92-year-old friends. The opening of the queen's message was so clearly the highlight of the day for my Grandma, awww...

Dad about to reveal the contents of his briefcase - lots of old photos of Grandma from when she was fifteen right through to when she turned ninety, ten years ago. You can also get a bit of an idea of the day - 30 guests, mostly over sixty, crammed into Mum and Dad's lounge room for a sit-down lunch. No mean feat!

2008-07-24T19:05:00.003+10:00

Acquiring your dream home.

What are the characteristics of your dream home? Mine used to involve a spa bath made up of clear glass walls filled with water and home to schools of tropical fish. (Having since cleaned a fish tank or two I have changed my mind about that one.) I used to envy people who owned those enormous fridges that had a tap on the front for chilled water, but even better, a crushed ice dispenser! That to me was the ultimate in luxury during high school. Regularly, with a few friends, we dream of the possibility of sustainable communal living, buying a property together or a number of smaller properties in close proximity to one another, gardening for our food permaculture style, raising our kids together and making it possible to live well and live generously even in the face of whatever it is that is going to happen in the world in the next little while. For the time being though, we’re sticking with our cozy little granny flat in Punchbowl and just sprucing it up a bit with the paint colours I’ve described in previous posts. (Incidentally, the room of requirement is finished! I think it looks awesome. You may not agree but I don’t give a fig!) I also have a little tenant at the moment, who seems quite at home in her/his watery bubble. Not sure if her/his current living arrangements constitute her/his dream home. Probably s/he doesn’t have much of a concept of interior or exterior decoration or space arrangement for now but from my perspective, judging by the much stronger sensations of internal movement I’m experiencing, s/he needs to upscale fairly soon and come and join her/his parents in the cozy little granny flat of the outside world. I’m evicting him/her. Consider this your 7-9 weeks notice, Squiggly Wiggly! (By the way, this week I think it’s a girl.)

However, today I was really struck by God’s idea of His dream home!

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” Revelation 21:3

It seems that the culmination of all of God’s plans for the earth is to ensure that he can once more live in close proximity to his people! I knew that, of course, but somehow it only just really hit me while I was reading through the “Jerusalem” psalms (46, 47, 48) at the bidding of my magnificent Scripture Union notes. And it’s funny because think of the songs we sing in church that come from these psalms, they’re some of my favourites:

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise,
the city of our God, the Holy place,
the joy of the whole earth.
Great is the Lord in whom we have the victory,
He aids us against the enemy,
We bow down on our knees.”

“God is our strength and refuge,
our present help in trouble,
and we therefore will not fear,
though the earth should change.
Though mountains shake and tremble,
though swirling waters are raging,
God the Lord of Hosts is with us evermore.”

“Our God is our King, our refuge and strength,
the earth is his own,
Though waters roar and mountains quake,
He is with us, he will not fail.
How awesome is the Lord Most High, (funny little fanfare)
God has ascended amid shouts of joy.
Sing praises to him!”

Unfortunately, right this second I’m composing this post in Word coz our little internet machine with all its wonderful flashing lights seems to be a bit kaput and is not paying attention to me no matter how many times I press its little button. That means that I can’t go online and throw “dwell” into biblegateway.com or anything cool and impressive like that. I can’t even get to my musty old “manual” concordance coz it’s behind a wall of about fifteen archive boxes on their way out to the shed. I’m just stuck with my own shonky memory and a bible. But from what I can remember, here are some other cool verses that operate along the same lines:

John 14:1-3 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. My Father’s house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

John 14:23 “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Ephesians 2:19-22 “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow-citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

Ok, that’ll do for now… but that little phrase “at home with the Lord” is going to really stick with me, I think.

So what are you up to today? I’m embracing my morning off, walking up to the shops to get ingredients for celery soup for homegroup tonight (sounds bad but is actually really good, I promise), perhaps buying some lollies for a sustenance jar for a friend who needs sustenance this term and returning my first two dvds from the glorious quickflix.com.au (you MUST investigate this – I think it is possibly the most awesome system ever invented). Then I’ve got to get to school by 1:15 to watch an hour of “The Return of the King” with my Year 8s, then I have to psych myself up for Year 9 parent teacher interviews. Given that I only have seven days left of teaching their sons, I figure I can get away with being friendly and vague. That’s about all I’m up for anyway!

Should our internet machine ever return to its former glory, you’ll know about it because you’ll be reading this. (It did, obviously... I'm posting this at 7:07pm on Thursday night but I wrote it around 9am Wednesday morning, just in case you're interested!)

2008-07-19T15:17:00.002+10:00

Conundrums

Feel free to post answers to any of these questions if you feel you can enlighten me.

Why do I always think I need to buy more stationery when stationery may actually make up the bulk of my possessions?

Why have we been set on a boy’s name for the last few months and yet have absolutely no progress on deciding a girl’s name? Or even narrowing it down? How do people ever name girls???

Should I watch a DVD or do my marking?

Why does painting the house take so long?

What is it about hot chocolate that makes everything alright?

How come our internet connection is speedy one minute and non-existent the next?

What does a text-book extrovert do when she finishes work in preparation to be at home full-time for at least six months with a non-conversationalist?

When will Sting come to Sydney on tour again?

Why hasn’t someone invented a thing that will hold my heat-pack precisely on top of the wayward muscle?

What does it say about me if I am 29 years old and still can’t watch movies that are rated MA?

How come some of my friends can hold so much nerdy information in their heads and my head seems fairly frequently to empty itself of anything but the absolute necessities?

Why is James McEvoy lauded for his roles in Atonement, The Last King of Scotland and Becoming Jane, but not his role as Mr Tumnus?

Will I live to regret yesterday’s decision to chuck all of my uni notes and readers in the recycling?

Isn’t it funny how friendships are kind of like the stock market? Sometimes you make big investments for very small returns, sometimes the smallest investment is met with great rewards…

What songs would you add to a playlist you were preparing to play while in labour?

Why is getting stuff in the post so much fun?

Does anyone, other than myself and a few other frequenters of Punchbowl IGA, appreciate that Black and Gold Tropical Muesli is the greatest breakfast cereal ever made?

Why are all the Indigo Girls songs by Emily almost always great and all the songs by Amy almost always unlistenable?

2008-07-18T12:40:00.003+10:00

Coolness

2008-07-17T13:26:00.003+10:00

Painting Painting Painting...

Next time you come to our house you might find that the bathroom is coloured "Superstar", the kitchen "Eye of Newt", the lounge room "Pea Case" and "Hog Bristle" and the Room of Requirement "Pea Case" and "Lemon Delicious". Not all of those colour names give much away, do they? What colour do you suspect "Superstar" to be? And how about "Eye of Newt"? Ever seen a newt's eye? What colour is it in real life?

For now we're at that stage where we've moved every item from one room into another. We are yet to see a lick of paint on the actual wall, but surely that bit can't be far away now...

I am discovering the challenge of squeezing my enormous belly between filing cabinets and prams and bookshelves and tables - no mean feat! But right now I am heading to Glebe to visit the lovely Bec, the beautiful Jeremiah and catch up with the magnificent Stef and perhaps even the paternal Andrew.

If any paint goes on the wall in my absence, so much the better, but if it doesn't, I'm sure there'll be a good reason. The fabulous Carey, who appears to be a house-painting expert, will be around tomorrow to help, to eat Jasmin's and to watch Alfio's international debut in the stations of the cross thingo on TV. All excitement!

As for me, in the last few days I have replaced my broken sunnies with my favourite style of old, learnt that Miranda is right next to Sylvania, done a yoga class, gone swimming in near-tropical temperatures, had acupuncture, been to the dentist, posted all of the parcels that have been building up for the last few weeks, been fed and entertained by the truly delightful Malcolm and Tamara, had some super bizarre dreams and eaten Jon's speciality fig cake with heart-attack inducing toffee sauce and ice cream for lunch...

Apparently, this is a newt. There is no colour here that remotely resembles the colour that we are soon to paint our kitchen. Perhaps Dulux were going with the rather more dramatic and bloody Macbeth version of "Eye of Newt" rather than the Google Images version. I feel quite certain that I'd make a similar discovery if I did a Google Images search for "Superstar"...

If any painting does actually take place any time soon, you'll be the first to know...

2008-07-13T23:34:00.009+10:00

A call into the yawning chasm

That title makes this post sound like it's going to be interesting, hey? Well, sorry to disappoint but it's just going to be more of the same... I’m just conscious of my non-audience!!!

A reflection from tonight's sermon:

Good ole I. Powell preached a great sermon on Romans 9 tonight - no mean feat! Jon and I were approximately 45 minutes late to the service but we made it just in time for the prayer before he launched into the bulk of the sermon. Apparently we missed a cool introduction with some great quotes but there has to be some punishment for a 45 minute late arrival doesn't there! Maybe I'll download the sermon from the website and have another go. AAAAAnyway, the little bit that I wanted to reflect on was this cool moment at the end, where after he'd been through the whole clay/potter thing and talked about how our God is "frighteningly free and frighteningly sovereign", he talked about the fact that our God is a God who calls with creation power. He mentioned Jesus calling people back to life from death and having the ability to call absolutely anyone in absolutely any situation no matter how unlikely it seemed that God might show them mercy or that they might choose Him. Nice!

A reflection from the Sunday Telegraph:

After church Jon and I wandered down King St to the fabulous Burgerlicious where we have been known to lurk on occasion, sampling their high-quality fare. While we waited for our order, I read about David Duchovny but Jon read the Pope's message printed in its entirety on pages 4 and 5. We both felt that we could say a hearty amen to everything that the Pope said - Nice! Of course I have my reservations about the whole thing, and I don't know what God thinks about all of the differences between protestants and catholics... Being of a protestant persuasion I guess there are some catholic things that I feel might be a bit weird and unbiblical, but that's not to say that we don't have lots of those things too... AAAAAnyway, my conclusion about the whole thing has been just to pray that God might bring glory to Himself during this whole WYD extravaganza and judging by the Pope's comments that we read today, that is far from impossible. Also, Alfio Stuto Jr, the chap playing Jesus in the stations of the cross passion play thing, is our friend and a very cool and very faithful guy with a lovely, lovely wife and a great ability to imitate John Travolta's dance moves from Saturday Night Fever. We know that for him this will be to the glory and honour of God and so we pray that God will take pleasure in the praise and worship of the WYD pilgrims and that many might be saved through what they see and hear.

Some good movies:

This week we’ve watched Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Years, and we say a hearty “Hooray!” for Cate Blanchett – what a champ! Quite liked both films, funny to watch Joseph Fiennes as Robert Dudley having just watched him as William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love and then funny that shortly after watching the two “Elizabeth”s we watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and saw good ole Geoffrey Rush in quite a different role! Both very pretty films with some interesting, and potentially topical topics, though nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition these days… We also watched the first twenty minutes of Across The Universe but struggled to cope with the quasi-musical feel, the badly oversung Beatles covers, the unconvincing lip-synching and the general lack of plot. I hope one day to be in a more tolerant mood, to give it another go and to love it, but this week was sadly not the week. Perhaps it was because I’ve had the real Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album playing on high-rotation in the car for the last few days that made it impossible for me to accept the crappy covers, who knows? 27 Dresses wasn’t as bad as it could have been, apart from five minutes about fifteen minutes from the end, which were roughly as bad as they possibly could have gotten. Shame. The highlight of our viewing would have to be the VERY awesome Dave Chappelle’s Block Party which simply could not have done anything but rock given the performances by favourite hip-hop megastars of ours like Eryka Badu, Lauryn Hill with the Fugees, Mos Def and John Legend. We totally loved the Ohio characters and if you get this movie out you have to watch the special features – bless! To keep us on the couch for the next little while we have The Namesake, based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel and Thankyou For Smoking, a film that I have heard discussed in more than thirty-five separate Module C speaking tasks (HSC Advanced English – Representation and Text – Telling The Truth – some of you out there would feel my pain…) but have never actually seen. I know the whole plot and all of the ways that the film relates to all of the points in the rubric, but I hope to be able to actually just enjoy the jolly thing. If not, I can always turn to my most glorious purchase of the week, a $7.99 copy of Grease 2. (Hope that goes some way towards explaining the images!) Can you watch the Cool Rider scene too many times? I think not. Oh, Maxwell Caulfield… it’s all down hill from here – Rex Manning indeed…

Some gazing at my navel…

It is quite large already with a minimum (by the grace of God) of five weeks and a maximum (by the grace of God) of ten weeks to go. Just, how big am I going to get!? Pregnancy comes with some unpleasant ailments and indignities. I won’t go into detail, but trust me, it does… Now it kind of pulses and seethes as if the little passenger is working on an escape hatch to let it out just below my bust. I’m not sure how best to communicate that this is not how things are done.

2008-07-09T18:52:00.003+10:00

General survey of the last two weeks...

Films viewed:

Much Ado About Nothing – a bodacious Keanu Reeves (think Point Break or TMNT) and a jive-talking Denzel Washington (“Relaaax! I woo in thy name!”) Love it. Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson must have spoken in Shakespearean dialogue for the whole extent of their marriage. Guess that kind of thing isn’t ultimately sustainable. Though Jon did exclaim “Dead for a ducat!” after killing a spider last night…

The Phantom of the Opera – the only film in this list that I watched for the first time! Thanks to the magnificent Martin for the recommendation. I am ambivalent about musicals – numbers like Masquerade and that one where the two new theatre owners are singing about how well things are going really leave me cold. I think it is my deep aversion to Gilbert and Sullivan that makes me wary of all such scenes. That said, it’s not a bad little film! Good chandelier special effects!

Blades of Glory – oh hilaire. How can you not love Jon Heder? And Will Ferrell isn’t always my cup of tea but I find him genuinely entertaining in this. And a long time love of ice-skating movies fostered by my best and oldest friend’s obsession with all things ice-skating causes me to just delight in the subject matter. A funny, funny movie.

Shakespeare In Love – let me just get this off my chest first – compared to Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow has one enormous noggin. That somewhat detracted from my enjoyment of their constant snogging… Ok, but otherwise, I remain convinced that Tom Stoppard is a genius. I love the whole concept. Viola, Twelfth Night, Thomas Kent (controversial “did Shakespeare love a boy?” questions) – it all works for me!

The Motorcycle Diaries – oh, how I love this film. The pre-myth, pre-“Che”, 23-year-old Ernesto Guevera on a road-trip around South America with his beloved friend, Alberto Grenado, who was on-set for most of the filming process. I find the asthma scenes greatly disturbing but everything else about this film is delightful. The special features raised some questions for me about the term “humanist”. I’ll have to have a chat with Byron to sort that one out…

Stranger Than Fiction – another absolute beauty! Back to Will Ferrell who isn’t always my cup of tea. I think he is MAGNIFICENT in this film!!! I love the whole concept of this movie – I love Emma Thompson as the embittered writer’s-block suffering author trying to work out how best to kill her protagonist, I love Maggie Gyllenhaal as the unconventional baker, I love Dustin Hoffman as the professor of literary theory and I LOVE Will Ferrell as Harold Crick! What an awesome film… hilarious, poignant, clever. Yeah, I guess you could say I recommend this one.

Books read:
(but after all that film annotation, I can’t be bothered to comment on these.)

Juju Sundin’s Birth Skills with Sarah Murdoch: Proven pain-management techniques for your labour and birth by Juju Sundin
Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin
The Breastfeeding Book: Everything you need to know about nursing your child from birth through weaning by William and Martha Sears

Things done:

Visited a cute new baby and his exhausted parents in hospital
Saw some delightful family members from Melbourne
Met with three lovely girls from my prayer group over vegetarian lasagne and chocolate cake
Finished birth classes
Visited an old friend in hospital after nasty operation
Went on a four-day holiday in the Hunter Valley to celebrate our 6-year wedding anniversary
Engaged in mass consumption of iron-rich foods and iron supplements to hold off mild anemia
At alternate moments, engaged in mass consumption of ice cream… oops…
Found self to be even less maneuverable than I was the week before.
Momentarily and misguidedly thought that the gifted child was beginning to recognise and react to specific words. Doesn’t bode well for the future!!!

2008-06-30T19:59:00.003+10:00

“Lord, give us grace that we, like them the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee.”

Don’t know about you, but I have always been dreadful at getting into a habit of reading my bible and praying. Thank God, therefore, for those magnificent chaps and chapettes over at Scripture Union who assemble the excellent “Encounter With God” notes and thanks for the lovely Guy who gives them to me for free at work! They work for me because they are dated and that clearly taps into some small measure of the obsessive compulsive within me. I can catch up on up to four missed days in a train trip, but if any more than five days go past, I’m pretty much stuffed.

Anyway, today was one of those catch-up-on-three-days-of-devotions days and rarely have I been more grateful for my own neglect of my personal spiritual growth because if I read all of these devotions three days apart, I might never have made the connection that God has prompted me to make this morning.

Firstly, with the fabulous guidance of Rikk Watts, I read what I was meant to read on Saturday, which was Mark 4:35-41 – the story of Jesus calming the sea. Rikk makes the observation that this display of enormous divine power is not for everyone. It isn’t for those who are skeptical about Jesus, it isn’t to precede the arrival of the glorious king. Rather, as Rikk puts it, “this momentary lifting of the veil of Jesus’ humanity is only for those who have already come to trust him on other grounds.” Rikk makes the point that our human reality is shaped by “power and compulsion” leaving “little room for trust and relationship.”
Jesus does not choose to come storming into our world in this first instance demonstrating his cosmic power, rather he comes into the lives of individuals, offering love and earning trust. These disciples don’t learn to relate to him out of fear, rather they come to know him as a friend and then are given a glimpse into the enormity of who he is – the God who can command the sea – “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” It is a totally different kind of power with which Jesus wins the hearts of his followers. Few of us have become Christians as the result of impressive displays of God’s outrageous power – most have become Christians in unimpressive, and even mundane seeming ways. But our hearts have been won by the one who values love and trust and relationship far above power and might and glory.

THEN, I move on to what I was meant to read yesterday, Psalm 108. But it is prefaced by Alastair Campbell with this challenge: “Examine yourself before reading today. As you think about the challenges facing the church today, are you encouraged or despondent? Bring your feelings to God.” Now I have been at an Anglican church for the last seventeen years and I’m not really sure what’s happening in this denomination in the world right now but I gather that it isn’t really a great place for the Anglican communion to be in. However, after reading about the calming of the storm and reflecting on what it reveals about Jesus, I suddenly found myself reflecting with a great sense of perspective.

Schism has been a reality in the church pretty much since the word go. And as much as schism is a bad thing, I have always concluded that it comes out of a conviction on either side of the fence that the truth can only be protected if the split is made. Now I’m a fairly inexpert commentator on these things, but generally speaking, isn’t God still definitely present and active in both the Eastern and Western branches of the church? Isn’t God present and active in orthodoxy, Protestantism, Catholicism, evangelicalism, the Charismatic movement and the emerging or alternative church? (I realise that lots of those terms cross over in lots of places – which convinces me all the more! I also realise that I’ve probably left lots out but it’s the first day of school holidays and it’s relatively early in the morning.) Ultimately, isn’t it not really such a bad thing that the “power base” of the church begins to crumble a bit? Sure, maybe each church will begin to look even more different to its neighbor church than it does now. But in many ways, aren’t schisms a funny way for God to work out his grace in the world? In His provision, there are a great variety of churches all over the world where individuals can find a spiritual home and encounter Christ. Maybe their bible knowledge doesn’t end up being as awesome, maybe they have some funny ideas about baptism, maybe they’re not very energetic about evangelism, maybe they like to sing, maybe they don’t etc etc. But by God’s grace he saves people from all kinds of situations and provides Christian family and food. So do we really have to worry about it? Perhaps what it leads to is what we see in Jesus calming the storm. Those great and powerful and cosmic acts are really for the benefit of those of us who have come into relationship with him through relatively meek and unimpressive processes. Jesus doesn’t seek to impress the world with the church, though it would be nice if we even actually thought of ourselves as a “we”. Seeing as we don’t, all we can do is make the smaller communities of which we are a part, welcoming, non-judgmental, loving places, characterised by the reality that we are all sinners saved from ourselves and from the fate that we deserve. I guess there is more to church politics than that but I clearly don’t get it…

In all that I don’t mean to say that I have any particularly well-formed opinion of this whole GAFCON thing nor do I really claim to have much of an idea of what the issues really are and what the outcome might be. I don’t know whether the issues at hand warrant a split in the Anglican communion or not, but I’m just saying, if they do, or even if they don’t, surely the church will be, and always has been, in the hands of God Himself.

Anyway, I felt inspired to sing a bit of a hymn after all of this and so I scrolled through my collection of worship songs and discovered that they’re mostly pretty much about me and my personal relationship with God – good for lots of occasions, but I felt like singing about the church. Anyway, I dug out my good ole Presbyterian “The Psalms and Church Hymnary”, which is pretty old, and looked up “The Church: The Communion of Saints” in the index. First hymn I found? The one I most want to sing:

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord:
She is His new creation
By water and the word;
From heaven he came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.

Elect from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation
One Lord, one faith, one birth:
One holy name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
The cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

‘Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forever more,
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won.
O happy ones and holy!
Lord give us grace that we,
Like them the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee.

Samuel John Stone
1839-1900

Interested in the inflatable church??

2008-06-22T13:03:00.001+10:00

Challenging words from Jesus via Keith Green

“Lord, there must be some mistake. When Lord? I mean, when were You hungry, Lord, and we didn't give You something to eat? And Lord, when were You thirsty, and we didn't give You drink? I mean, that's not fair, well, would You like something now? Would one of the Angels like to go out and get the Lord a hamburger and a coke? Oh, You're not hungry? Yeah, I lost my appetite too.
Uh, Lord? Uh, Lord, when were You naked? I mean Lord, that's not fair either, Lord. We didn't know what size You wear.
Oh Lord, when were You a stranger, Lord? You weren't one of those creepy people who used to come to the door, were you? Oh Lord, that wasn't our ministry Lord. We just didn't feel led, you know?
Lord, when were You sick? What did You have, anyway? Well, at least it wasn't fatal… Oh, it was? I'm sorry Lord, I would have sent You a card.
Lord, just one last thing we want to know. When were You in prison Lord? What were You in for anyway? I had a friend in Levenworth…”

“ENOUGH! In as much as you've not done it unto the least of My brethren, You've not done it unto Me.
In as much as you've not done it unto the least of My brethren, You've not done it unto Me. Depart from Me.”

And these shall go away into everlasting fire but the righteous into eternal life!

And my friends, the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to this scripture, is what they did and didn't do!!

Yikes... Sometimes I think I'm way more like a goat than a sheep...

2008-06-21T10:28:00.005+10:00

Just finished Ollander Elevandorby Elevātor Crumb·stein (see photo) …
quite an interesting read.

Click here to read my review,
or try this link if the one above doesn’t work.

2008-06-21T10:01:00.006+10:00

As crafty as a house brick and about as inclined to iron.

So I’ve hit a snag in that book I was reading, Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson. The last couple of chapters, while containing some sound advice on keeping clothes purchasing to a minimum etc etc have also started trying to convince me that I should take up sewing or craft of some kind (“…it is important to make things too – things to wear and things to use, things to keep and things to give, things that can remind us of our own essential physicality and of our links to past and future generations”) and that I should value doing the laundry (“Laundry may no longer be as physically demanding a task as it was in past ages, but it is still time-consuming and needs to be deliberately woven into the structures of our days and weeks. Establishing a regular pattern for the wash can help us experience this work, not as “time-consuming” so much as “clean clothes-producing” and thus a task whose rewards are proportionate to the effort we put into it.”). It’s not that she’s not making some good points, I’m sure that she is – but, in the vernacular of the mid-to-late-nineties adolescent: Care factor? Zero.

This book was written in 2007 and this woman has the audacity to tell me that things look nicer when they’ve been ironed. I got my iron out once this year and discovered that it has a kind of white flowering mould spouting out of one of the holes. My genuine attempts to iron something black, which I’ve possibly since thrown out or given away, were rewarded with white powdery stuff everywhere. Hence, the iron was re-relegated to the darkest corner of that cupboard that holds all the randoms and I doubt if I’ll see it again for a while. Introduce me to the person who is offended by wrinkled clothing and I’ll tell them to get a life. I’m sure that whole encounter will go really well.

As one of my (many) wise sisters-in-law once said “I don’t make anything that I can’t eat.” But then last time I saw her she was showing me some craft book and telling me about her sewing projects. In fact, this very afternoon I was meant to be having my own first sewing lesson since about 1991. As much as it would have been nice to spend time with the lovely friend who so generously offered to teach me to use the sewing machine I am machine-sitting while its owner is in East Timor (hi Rach!), I am not devastated by her having to cancel this afternoon. Perhaps I am just not cut from the same cloth (oh the hilarity) clearly I am no dyed-in-the-wool craft enthusiast, and now that I’m hanging by a thread, I’d better stop.

Let me share with you my top two craft projects from the last twelve months:

Clearly mass-machinery just doesn’t sew on buttons the way it used to.

Need a new zip-up pocket in your bag? (Who doesn’t?) Cut the back out of an old dress and stitch it in! Hey presto! (Note the addition of yet another trusty safety pin...)

Oh, but I have made some good jewellery.

And I make even better food.
Ok, this doesn't look as great as it could. It's the left-over poached pears from last night's dinner with friends. They might be more impressive if a) I could be bothered to find the camera rather than just trying to angle my mac-book to get them in b) I had taken them out of the plastic container c) you could make photos in blog posts scratch-and-sniff...

If I were to write a book on keeping house I think I’d include the following key tips:
* If your bathroom needs a clean and friends are coming over for dinner, light just enough candles so they can avoid tripping and falling into the bath when they’re on their way to the sink, but not enough that they can see anything else.
* Under the bed, under the couch, behind the bookcase and any spare rooms become “Room of Requirement” for things you don’t have space for.
* Furniture found on the side of the road will not lead to a broken heart if something that stains is spilt.
* If in doubt, take friends out!

In other news, Mrs Booker and the Tea Ladies will soon meet to discuss Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume. I really liked it! I never saw the film, I think that helped. I just couldn't really see how the film could convey the elements that made the novel so fresh and interesting. Also, I assume it would have to be fairly gruesome and my imagination is usually good enough at conjuring that sort of stuff for me...

There are so many different reactions to this novel - do you have one?

2008-06-18T14:23:00.002+10:00

I blame Justin

Towards Kings Cross is some weirdo's fan fiction that goes on forever...

2008-06-18T09:18:00.003+10:00

Even better than the real thing? Well... No.

This "yoghourt" (which seems a bit like spelling Belinda "Biilynda") is not like a cafe latte. Nor is it a promising alternative to my Bulla Creamy Classics Iced Coffee Ice Cream. After Mum saw me on the weekend for the first time in a few weeks and said "Oh my! You're enormous! Are you sure there's only one in there!?" I thought maybe I should attempt a less fattening dessert option. However, a visit to my fabulous midwife yesterday assured me that I'm exactly the amount of enormous she would expect and that it is the baby that is growing (appropriately) and me only incidentally.

A gifted child!

In other news from the midwife, our baby is head-down, bum up, legs to the left - which explains the "scuffling" I've been describing to people - "as if the baby is trying to tunnel its way out" - that's just its head and hands moving about as it performs a rather athletic and complicated handstand. It also explains the Jurassic Park like foundation-moving activity that takes place just under my left rib - hello dancing feet! I'm going to just organise an artist's impression...

See? This baby knows all about being born. It must be absorbing all of that good birth literature that I'm reading and getting itself prepared. Granted, next week all kinds of scary medical adjectives like "breech", "transverse" (which I momentarily confused with "trapeze" the other week) or "posterior" may apply, but today I declare the inhabitant of my womb a gifted child!

In literary news...

I am reading a book recommended to me by the fabulous Nic, who in my almost-year of absence from the world of blogging, seems to have given it up entirely - good for her, I say!
Anyway, this book is rather hokily titled Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson but I thought I should read it because I am not particularly domestically inclined and am about to spend six-ish months as a full-time-carer engaged in domestic duties. I wonder how P.C. you could get with that? Domestic Engineer? Manager of Domicile Enterprises? Nurture Giver? aaanyway... I thought I'd better get myself a bit inspired - and I am inspired! This is a pretty good book! I'm only half-way through (having started reading at about 5:30am until Jon left for work at 7:30ish) but I have already been challenged to see the way that providing shelter, food, clothing, comfort and beauty for people are very much activities in keeping with the activities of God! I had never really thought about that before. Let me just heave my way out of my chair and I'll fetch the book to provide you with some quotes:

"...Jesus has very strong things to say at various points in the Gospels about the Christian duty to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the homeless. He even goes so far, in his parable of the Last Judgement, as to paint this as the criterion by which the sheep are separated from the goats: Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me... Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. (Matthew 25:34-40)
There is a tendency, I think, on the part of those of us who are well fed, clothed and housed to imagine that the needy people to whom Jesus refers in Matthew 25 are people we don't know - the sort of people who are served at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, at which we ought therefore to volunteer at least occasionally. But housework is all about feeding and clothing and sheltering people who, in the absence of that daily work, would otherwise be hungry and ill-clad and ill-housed."

and I liked this quote too:

"...God does not appear to think as lowly of housework and housekeepers as members of our culture are apt to. On the contrary, scripture abounds with images of God himself as homemaker and housedweller, as one who clothes and is clothed, who feeds people and animals and the earth itself and receives gifts of food and drink in return.
Consider Psalm 104:
Thou... coverest thyself with light as with a garment, who hast stretched out the heavens like a tent, who hast laid the beams of thy chambers on the waters... Thou didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken. Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment... Thou makest springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, they give drink to every beast of the field... [All creatures] look to thee, to give them their food in due season. When thou givest to them, they gather it up; when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things. (vv. 1-2, 5-6, 10-11, 27-28)

Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far but will let you know if it all comes crashing down... I am very blessed in that my magnificent husband does all of our washing (not even sure I would know how to operate the washing machine - though I'm confident I could figure it out) and always stacks (and very often unstacks) the dishwasher and does all the vacuuming along with cooking the more-than-occasional meal. Our household duties have been divided in such a way that I have never had to contemplate any of them as being technically my jobs, as I know a lot of women still do. But I hope that when the time comes that I have a break from my full-time paid employment, I'll pick up some of Jon's domestic duties? Or will my new domestic duties, like the one that really I'm the only one equipped to do - feeding a newborn baby - take up all of the newly released time and energy? Well, we'll just have to work that one out as it happens.

You may be interested to know that Jon is in the process of sorting out his paid employment so that next year he can be at home with our baby two days a week and work the other three days. As a consequence, I will hopefully be back at work for the two days that he's at home and together we'll be earning one salary, rather than one of us always being at work and away from our baby and the other one always being at home and away from the world of paid-work, and more specifically, the teaching that we both love. It is an exciting thing to embark on this adventure of family in such a mutual way! I'll let you know how it pans out...

But now I must get to work. I may not have physically transported myself in to work today (hence the early morning mid-week blogging) but that's ok because I physically transported all of the work I need to do home (apart from my Year 8 class, who are in good hands and who I frankly wouldn't want here at home with me, delightful as they are) and am about to start marking and report writing like a mad thing. A mad thing in pyjamas.

2008-06-16T21:44:00.002+10:00

Happiness...

The best ice cream in the world - and I know I'm making a big claim here - is Bulla Creamy Classics Iced Coffee. It costs about four bucks for two litres from Roselands Coles and I may not be a connoisseur but isn't it better to be easily pleased?

2008-06-15T20:23:00.005+10:00

Courage and determination… and curiosity and consumerism…

It has been nearly 28 weeks since this seed of a baby was planted and so that means that any time from 9 weeks from now (and hopefully not earlier though that’s possible too) I will go into labour. You may think I’m crazy but I am feeling pretty good about birth. I guess having not been through it yet, it’s fine for me to think that, but I’m hoping to still think it even after giving birth.

Perhaps I am stupid and naïve, but I am really beginning to think that if I believe I can do this, and that God has designed me in such a way that I can do this, then I can. Some of the really helpful books that I’ve read have been Janet Balaskas’ New Active Birth: A concise guide to natural childbirth, Sheila Kitzinger’s Rediscovering Birth and Lakshmi Bertram’s Choosing Waterbirth: Reclaiming the Sacred Power of Birth. All of these authors have really encouraged me by clearly stating their belief, that they support with significant research and personal experience, that the female body is perfectly designed to give birth and that it is entirely possible, and even beneficial, to give birth without any medical intervention at all.

So I’ve chosen to have my baby with the midwives in the Birth Centre at St George Public Hospital and elected not to have a private obstetrician. The birth centre at St George is right next to the labour ward which I find to be helpful – should I require more complex medical assistance, it will all be right there for me. I’m aware that a number of women have complications in their birth experiences, but after having read these books, and completed one of my birth courses, I really believe that it is only the minority of women who actually have complicated births that require medical assistance and that many of these complications are caused or increased by medical interventions that are chosen by the pregnant woman to aid her in pain relief. If I choose not to have “minor” pain relief (and that’s very much the path that I’ve set myself on with the decisions that I’ve made so far) such as gas or pethadine, then I am less likely to need to graduate to something like an epidural, and if I don’t have an epidural, then it will be less likely that I will need a vacuum or forceps delivery, less likely that I will tear or need an episiotomy and less likely that I will need a caesarean section. I don’t want to think about giving birth to my baby as “day surgery” and I was particularly disturbed by the phrase my friend chose to use the other day when she announced that a friend of hers had had her baby “surgically removed” that morning. But that’s kind of the dichotomy, isn’t it? I can give birth to my baby, or I can engage a doctor to deliver my baby on my behalf. In the first instance, I am the active participant but in the other, I am merely the passive recipient of expensive, and quite major, medical intervention. (See, Janet Balaskas? I’m a convert!) It's also thanks to the encouragement of friends, both those who've given birth, and those who are yet to - Thanks Bill, Rach, Sarah, Bec, Jessica, Natalie, Rhonda and Emma for making me think I can do this! Oh, and Jon - you won't get to give birth ever but I'm confident that you'll be a great cheerleader for me while I do!

I guess the question is, can I handle the pain? Well, I’m not exactly a tough girl. I have always, prior to pregnancy, appreciated the availability of Panadine for headaches and the like, but that said, giving birth is not like a headache. You cure the pain of giving birth by getting the baby out! It will be interesting, anyway. I hope that in three or so months time once I’ve had the baby, if I have any time or inclination to post to this blog, I’ll be telling you about how wonderful my birth experience was. We’ll see, eh?

A related thought that is often on my mind is this: what on earth is it that is moving around just under my skin? Jon assures me that it is an Anglo and there’s very little arguing with that. We didn’t find out if it is a boy or a girl, and while I’m really happy that I don’t know, I am REALLY curious. I’m not very good with surprises. If Jon knew what gender the baby was, I’d be hassling him every second of the day until he told me. He’s learnt from his mistakes. He can never come home in the days/weeks before my birthday and say “I bought your birthday present today” without being prepared to hand it over within a few minutes. In the same way I can’t buy him a gift before the occasion and then wait for the actual occasion to present it. I get too excited and I want to see what he thinks straight away! So it was a moment of uncharacteristic self-control that allowed me to refuse the ultrasound operator’s offer to know what the sex was – and now it leads to a possible three whole months, maybe more, of complete suspense. It’s kind of fun suspense though. And I’m glad I don’t know. No disrespect to the finder-outerers – I was very nearly one of you – but I think you’re kind of weird. And I guess that you’re stuck with lots of pink or blue stuff. Our baby will look very cool – so far everything is red or green or coffee-coloured or white. Though I guess unless it looks very obviously masculine or feminine, no one will be able to tell whether it’s a boy or a girl – just like now!!!

Here’s another question – in a world where people seem to be showering baby gifts on me, am I still allowed to buy things for the baby myself? Or is that stupid? I have so far concluded that buying things myself is stupid… We’ll see how long my self-control lasts – there are many, many CUTE but also RIDICULOUSLY over-priced baby things out there. My beautiful work colleagues showered me with totally awesome gifts on the weekend and I feel very spoilt as a consequence (hope you like the photos - this is just a small sample from the top of the pile - thanks Sarah and Jessica, thanks Sandra, thanks Naomi, thanks Mum!). This baby is going to look very awesome. Or at least its clothes will look awesome. How awesome it will actually look will be determined by the genetic milkshake that is in the process of solidifying itself in my womb. Curiouser and curiouser…

Oh, and Taylor Mali is one of my favourite poets. The baby either loves him or hates him. Or is completely indifferent to him but jigged about in there the whole time I was listening to him on youtube today. Though I guess the baby is jigging about now to the sound of James Taylor and me typing. Perhaps s/he is just easily entertained. Like its mother…

2008-06-12T20:55:00.003+10:00

In the Belly of the Whale: Pregnancy and Identity at the Dawn of the Third Millennium

This is a depressing little insight into my life on Sunday 2nd March this year when I must have sat down and written this. I am delighted to announce that at sixteen weeks my "morning" sickness (what a cruel joke that is!) came to an end, so even though I didn't know it at this point, I was only about three weeks away from life returning to normal. I am now at twenty-seven weeks and have been MUCH happier for the last eleven or so. Still a bit sick sometimes but nothing like I was. But all praise be to God because he has expanded my heart so much to make room for this funny little creature that keeps punching me from the inside.

Anyway, I think this is an interesting insight into the mind of a very sick pregnant woman:

Who are you?

Can I answer that in past tense, please?

If you must…

I was a fun wife. I laughed and joked a lot with my husband, I had energy for him, affection for him and I was playful. I was probably never amazing at helping out with housework, but I definitely cooked fairly often and would very occasionally have a rare bought of cleanliness. We would put on music and dance around the house, we would go for walks or go out together, we would sing karaoke together and play games and chat.

I was a high-school English teacher, I was full of energy, I was passionate and enthusiastic. I loved the teenagers that I taught and I was patient with them and kind to them. I was committed to the task of educating the students entrusted into my care, I used to prepare for hours, I’d lie awake at night and dream up new ideas for the classroom. I was good with technology in my school, I used to train my fellow teachers and I always found time to help them out. I used to mark students’ work late into the night and then wake up early to meet up with students for coffee before school. I loved the colleagues that I worked with. I had all the time in the world for them and I used to see lots of them outside of work hours.

I used to go out all the time. I rarely had quiet weekends. I liked to try and pack as many friends into each weekend as I could. My husband and I loved to have friends round for dinner. Sometimes we’d have one lot of guests for lunch and another lot for dinner that same evening. We were good at entertaining. Other times, we’d see films or go out for dinner. I’d go shopping with girlfriends for hours, covering miles of territory. I’d catch up with three different friends for coffee in one afternoon after going to my book club that morning.

I used to read books. I used to read all the time. I could concentrate on a book for hours on end, often finishing a whole novel in a day and sometimes picking up a second one before I went to bed. I used to write for fun. I wrote pages and pages and entertained my friends with my silly ideas. I used to write on the train and at any time that I could find a moment of quiet.

I was involved at my church. I used to be on the roster almost every week, sometimes I’d usher, read the bible reading and do supper all in one night. Occasionally I’d lead services, which took me a fair bit of preparation. My husband and I used to lead a bible study group. I used to cook dinner for about fifteen people every Wednesday night after work and it never used to phase me. I’d often lead studies, and sometimes they’d be good, sometimes even profound.

I used to love food. My bookshelves are full of recipe books that haven’t been opened for ages. I used to pour over my new books and the magazines that I subscribed to and I used to actually try new recipes really often. I used to really enjoy cooking, whether it was just for my husband and myself or for a massive crowd. I was just getting into baking, it was new territory for me but I had found some fantastic cake and biscuit recipes and I was getting better.

So, who are you now?

Now I am three months pregnant.

For the last fifty days I have vomited at least once every day but more often I have vomited around four times a day.

I have no energy, no memory, no brainpower, no patience.

I cannot leave the house after five o’clock at night, as that is when the vomiting sets in. I haven’t attended church or bible study in weeks. I haven’t seen anyone socially for a long time.

I go to bed between seven o’clock and eight-thirty every night.

I live on Lebanese bread, two-minute noodles and ginger beer and have for weeks and weeks.

Who do you want to be?

That is not an easy question to answer.

On one hand, I want to go back to being who I was.

On the other hand, I’m praying that God will change my heart and make me want to be a mother.

This is not my belly - but how amazing is that picture?!
And how amazing is God, who hears all of our prayers. Now I regularly catch myself telling whatever creature lurks under my skin that I love it - so God is good...

2007-08-18T20:34:00.000+10:00

So, it's been a while. I so wasn't going to post here ever again. Somehow the world of blogs must know that I'm procrastinating. Like a siren it calls hauntingly to me and I am powerless against it. Or whatever...

Allow me to call just a short list of things out into the wilderness that is cyberspace:

Hope you're all well, I haven't been but am on the improve I think. Like Coleridge's wedding guest I return to this blog "a sadder and a wiser [wo]man"...

I hate marking, though there's not all that much new there...

I love Harry Potter and kind of like the idea of maybe posting about that whole thing at some point when I don't have a pile of work the size of my house...

I will not join FaceBook. I got on there accidentally for a few days last term and it made me so annoyed that I logged right off again. Having a job and not being a student kind of naturally selects people out of your life. FaceBook intends to facilitate bringing them all back in. I'm only interested in face-to-face or perhaps talk-on-the-phone relationships. That's all I have time for. If you want to talk to me, call me, or text me even... I don't need electronic friends. But you can comment here if you like!? Oh, the irony...

I feel it's safe to assume that no one will read this so a cheery "hello" to myself and a resounding "get back to work"...

It's Saturday night, Prince would say "I guess that makes it alright" but he was up to different stuff. Stuff that most of you wouldn't approve of...

Seemed to have developed a dangerous addiction to the ellipse... Better eat some dinner, it's flipping ten to flipping nine at night!!!

But first, I'll have to put a fun picture at the top of this post if I can remember how. Logging on here for the first time in how ever many months and seeing that photo of Ron and Harry made me happy. Now I have to find a photo of something else that makes me happy. Maybe I'll stick to the HP theme.

For some amusement, have a look at The Harry Ginny Network and underneath "Contributions" click on "Manipulations" There are people out there in the world with photoshop and TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS! Heads too big for bodies? Bah! No one will even notice! I would have posted one but they are too much... How did I come across them you might ask? Well, that's a sad story for another time. (Sad as in pathetic, not sad as in tragic.) Need a time sucker? Unafraid of bad prose and disturbing mental images? Check out phoenixsong.net All these confessions! Lucky I'm the only one who'll read this!!! Phew!

2006-12-22T10:51:00.000+11:00

This morning I read an article about what JK Rowling is going to name the last book in the series at ABC News Online

How reliable is this source? It isn't verified at jkrowling.com so far as I know. The only google result that verifies it is this which makes me think that ABC has it right - and why would the ABC deceive me? (is it just me or is that question strangely reminiscent of Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God?)

But what a weird title! Perhaps it's an anagram??

aha! verified again - an update 59 minutes ago on Bloomberg

Clearly I'm not website pop-up savvy enough because despite my assertion that it wasn't verified on jkrowling.com here's a quote from the Bloomberg article:
The title of the seventh book in the series was revealed through a puzzle on the British writer's Web site, where visitors have to click on items to reveal a chamber and then guess the name of the book from the clues given.

And apparently Jon's dad just heard it on the radio... Well, I am clearly not the next Huffington Post am I...

But what do you think of the title for Book 7 "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"?

p.s. I'm on holidays in case you didn't pick that up...
p.p.s the word count of my own novel has not altered since my last post but I have watched thirteen episodes of The West Wing which I am finding enjoyable but not without a distinct and unmistakable essence of cheese... It's the stirring music that keeps playing to make sure that you realise that a scene is poignant... it is beginning to get on my nerves just a little... If only, if only they hadn't cancelled Firefly

2006-12-03T22:57:00.000+11:00

I know, I know, it's been aaaaaaages since I last posted BUT in late breaking news, on Friday I started writing a novel! I was inspired by all of those English teachers at the English Teacher's Association conference (which I attended both on the Friday AND on the Saturday - I am SO professionally developed!) who are full time teachers and yet manage to write novels. The most inspiring of these was Maria Boyd, author of Will which I now must find and read...

Anyway, I shall now carry on with my non-cyber life until the holidays begin, at which point anything could happen!

2006-11-05T20:33:00.000+11:00

Hey people from church!
If you want to read the full text of the article on the back of the newsletter this weekend, click here...

2006-10-27T09:41:00.000+10:00

Remembering, Mourning and Moving Forward

A defining process as you become an adult is that of thinking through the legacy of your parents and childhood. This is especially important if you find yourself about to get married. You have to ask the question "how has the person I am now been shaped by the influence of my childhood, either positively or negatively?" For me (and I hope this is also true for most people, though I know for a fact that it isn't) reflecting on my childhood leads me to such thankfulness. In so many ways I have been deeply blessed by the love, guidance and provision of my parents. There are certainly some funny things too, no parents are perfect, and as Jon and I have learnt how to relate to one another over the last four and a bit years there have been patterns of relating I learnt from my family that I've realised I need to change. That process involved recognising the fault, working out where I learnt it and how deeply it was entrenched but also taking responsibility for the reality that I am the one perpetuating the problem and deciding that I will change. I couldn't have got away with saying defiantly "Well, this is who I am! Take it or leave it!" That would leave the responsibility for most marital disharmony (which almost ended up being an amusing typo - "martial" - that certainly suggests disharmony eh!?) we would experience firmly on my shoulders!

Another legacy of my childhood that my parents didn't have as much to do with, was my experience of growing up in church. (A previous post that discussed a different element of this is here ) Again, when I ask myself how my church youth experience has shaped me, I can be overwhelmingly positive. I was surrounded by loving, older Christian role-models, I really engaged with God's word and learnt a lot about how to read the bible and teach it to others, I had a fantastic six years with an amazing group of Christian friends and I had millions of opportunities to try all kinds of ministry and service. Overwhelmingly it was an amazing time of learning and growth.

That said, over the past ten years since I left Year 12, I've been hurtling towards this state of spiritual epiphany where I seem to find myself now. It's been a slow process but I really understand it as God opening up my eyes to see a bigger picture of who he is. No disrespect to Sydney evangelicals at all but growing up in the youth group of a Sydney evangelical church seemed to mean that much of an exploration of the role of the Holy Spirit was pretty off limits. I think that mainly, at the time that I seemed to have learnt some of my most enduring, and most unhelpful things about the Holy Spirit, our youth group was reacting against a similar sized youth group at a different church where apparently kids were being led astray by too much of a focus on "experiencing" God (i think the emphasis there is on experience rather than on God). The sad consequence of this, even though it may not have been what was overtly taught to me, I learnt a deeply-held suspicion of anyone that talked about experiencing God in ways that were different to my experiences - of anyone that raised their hands while singing in church, of anyone who spoke in tongues, of anyone who spoke about God giving them peace about a decision, or anyone who suggested that God had led them to act in a particular way...

In the same way that recognising malformed elements of our adult selves leads us to mourn the problems that we've created or contributed to, recognising this deficiency in my spiritual understanding, and its ongoing repercussions in my life, has really caused me to experience a great period of mourning. I wept for the years of my Christian walk that have gone by where I have expected less of God than he is willing to give to me. I wept because I had not learnt to relate to God in the intimacy that I now know is possible. I wept over the many years in which I dealt with a "business-like" part of God and the bad habits I had learned in my youth of how to relate to God and weak expectations of how God would relate to me. Thankfully though, Jon was on hand for God to use and speak through to me. He pointed out to me that my sadness was manifesting itself as blame-casting and bitterness and helped me to realise that perhaps there were more elements of myself in this mix than I was willing to acknowledge.

Maturity for anyone means acknowledging what has happened in their past but also being able to move forward taking responsibility for themselves in the current moment and recognising that they don't have to let their past dominate their future. For me, that means recognising the part I have played, and continue to play, in holding myself back. The irony of all this is that when I get over my blame casting I am able to acknowledge the fact that the strongest legacy of my youth was a real encouragement to enter into great habits of daily bible reading and prayer. And here is where I need to confess to my brothers and sisters the reality that this is where I have been deficient.

In home group this week we were looking at Luke 11:1-13 and I was really struck by Jesus' assumption in verse 13 that we would be most persistent in praying for the Father in heaven to give us the Holy Spirit. And so this is the way that I hope to move forward, which isn't to say that over the last ten years the Holy Spirit hasn't moved me a long way forward anyway, in spite of myself, as tends to be His way! Here is another nice post (from the previously referenced author, not God, the one before that) that I read this morning, which really helped to acknowledge this reality that I do know, am still learning to know and look forward to fully knowing without second guessing.

p.s. The photo is from here Did anyone else see that beautiful doco on the Grafton Jacaranda Festival on SBS last night? I cried... not all that unusual actually...

2006-10-26T18:46:00.000+10:00

¿Truth or Fiction? or ¡Gimme some o'that nerd stuff!

A lovely friend of ours forwarded on a petition email to me today which I thought may have been one of those many pranques d'internet (such as the fake French term I just made up). A few websites such as TruthOrFiction confirmed my suspicions (although you may wonder what makes a person trust these websites over the original email).

ANYWAY … at the end of this email I was asked to put my name at the bottom of the list of names and was told that if I were the 2000th person, I should forward it to George W.. If I didn't send the email on, all the "signatures" would be lost, yada yada.

I did a quick bit of math(s) and realised that if for every time that email was sent, only 2 people did as instructed, the "poor" "old" Whitehouse would still be hit with 2^1999 emails (that's 2 to the power of 1999), resulting in 2^2000-1 "signatures". Do you really need more signatures that there are people on the planet to get something done around here? Please write your name at the bottom of this and forward it to everyone in your address book if you think that this is beyond ridiculous.

Hoax email writers, listen up: you only need to ask for 20 names in a million-name-petition, 33 names will exceed the world's population … I worked it out using the above piece of paper and Microsoft Excel.

2006-10-23T16:46:00.000+10:00

It’s Time To Vote For Awesome People On Triple J Unearthed!

The cool thing about the Unearthed website is that you can listen to songs by the bands and see if you like them! Then, if you log in, you can give them a rating out of five stars. I looked up two bands that I know are very fabulous. One is a Christian band by the name of Revive who you might want to rate highly coz it might be cool to get all that air play for them.

Another FANTASTIC band is Melbourne group De Jah Groove We saw them play last time they were up in Sydney and could not stop dancing! I also had a bit of a scoot around and found some other people that you might like, one of these is Grassroots Street Orchestra and another is hip hop group ILLZILLA Log on and have a listen to some songs!

2006-10-17T20:19:00.000+10:00

Come back, Bobby! As our friend Mike said, democracy is baffling...

2006-10-09T17:53:00.000+10:00

Prayer and Our Enormous God

Over at blueearth-brownsky Rach has posted on prayer. I started writing a comment but it ended being too long even for a post. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to post it though! So perhaps read what she wrote first for a bit of context…

I remember once being in a seminar on prayer with Di at AnCon, must have been nine years ago, and she talked about the promises that Jesus had made regarding prayer. She said that we can’t go about limiting the promises of Jesus into qualified statements that look more like our disappointed experience or fit more with our lowered expectations. She said that we just have to trust Jesus and believe in these words of his that tell us that we will be given whatever we ask for in prayer! And a cool and helpful thing that she said was that even if many prayers seem to be answered with a no, it doesn't change the fact that Jesus has made this promise and is powerful to keep it.

During the upper room discourse, Jesus tells his disciples in no uncertain terms (three times across three chapters!) that we can ask him for anything in his name and he will do it.

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. John 14:13-14

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. John 15:16

Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. John 16:22-24

He even enacts this truth (as recorded in Matthew and Mark) for his disciples in the strangest (though most symbolic) of ways:

Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.
When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" they asked.
Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." Matthew 21:18-22

In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"
"Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:20-24

Nothing is mentioned about motivations or requirements by Jesus in the gospels. These things come up in James and 1 John:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble." James 4:1-6

This doesn’t seem to be any barrier to praying with confidence the kind of prayers that you are suggesting though, Rach! In fact, if anything, the kind of things that you are suggesting we need to pray more specifically and earnestly for are totally in keeping with God opposing the proud but giving grace to the humble.

And then this as a requirement:

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 1 John 3:21-23

And then there’s the bit that Ian preached on in his sermon last night:

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. James 5:13-18

To pray in faith!

And there's always that suggestion lingering in the OT that God acts through our prayers in such a way that we almost really need to pray if something is going to happen - I'm thinking Abraham and Lot in S&G, the example of Elijah and the rain as mentioned in James and this funny bit from Ezekiel 22:30

I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD.

We seem to be being called to take all opportunities to pray and to think of it as a serious responsibility, when you put all of this stuff together. We can pray that God will save that person that seems to be as far from God as they can possibly be. We can pray that God will stay the hand of the doctor performing an abortion. We can pray that God will frustrate the plots of paedophiles so that no more children will be harmed. We can pray for all kinds of specific and all kinds of huge needs and we can trust that God will do with our prayers what He will do.

I once read a funny old book called This Present Darkness by Frank E. Perretti which potentially takes all of this stuff too far but it certainly makes a powerful statement about our need to pray. Read it seasoned with several generous pinches of salt…

Also, right now I’m reading the new Philip Yancey book Prayer: Does it make any difference? So far (I haven’t got very far) he’s said this which I find really helpful:

“Prayer helps correct myopia, calling to mind a perspective I daily forget. I keep reversing roles, thinking of ways in which God should serve me, rather than vice versa. As God fiercely reminded Job, the Lord of the universe has many things to manage, and in the midst of my self-pity I would do well to contemplate for a moment God’s own point of view.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Prayer raises my sight beyond the petty – or, as in Job’s case, dire – circumstances of daily life to afford a glimpse of that lofty perspective. I realise my tininess and God’s vastness, and the true relation of the two. In God’s presence I feel small because I am small.” p14

Thanks for reminding us of this stuff, Rach. We do need to hear it! We need to have our sights lifted to take in the massive power of God to save, to heal, to restore, to conquer, to prevent and to protect.

2006-10-02T00:04:00.000+10:00

Homage To The Dance Movie So I have to admit that I'm a total sucker for dance movies. Think Footloose, Flashdance, Dirty Dancing, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Save The Last Dance (which I've seen but have absolutely NO memory of), Centre Stage and more recently Take The Lead and Step Up. They have intricate plots - rich girl who dances beautifully (perhaps she's a ballet dancer) meets boy-from-wrong-side-of-tracks who has a funky aggressive style (or perhaps he's a ballet dancer) and there's often another boy, or perhaps another girl who gets in the way, either they're very rich, or very arrogant, or the obstacle might be the girl's really strict father (perhaps a minister or an officer in the air force) but somehow there's a spontaneous routine danced with almost all the cast involved and the boy and girl get together and launch a career in dance together (or separately...) Of course each one is vastly different from the rest!

Well, while Baby and Johnny have some pretty cool scenes (think of them learning "the lift" in the river) and Ariel has plenty of spunk, I don't think I can go past Janey and Jeff from Girls Just Wanna Have Fun as my favourite dance movie couple. Janey is the new kid in school who has moved around a lot with her airforce dad. She introduces herself to her new class at her conservative catholic girls high school with the phrase "I love to dance" and meets Lynn played by a young Helen Hunt who has awesome hair and some awesome lines (like "Velcro, next to the Walkman and Tab, it's the greatest invention of the twentieth century" amongst others) and becomes her comrade in crime. Jeff, funnily enough, is a boy from the wrong side of the tracks... Aaaanyway, you can probably predict where it all ends up but along the way there is a fantastic dance competition (which is how Jeff and Janey meet), some unauthorised photocopying and delivering of invitations to the rich evil obstacle girl's "sweet sixteenth" at her dad's country club which gets trashed by a Billy Idol look-a-like and a parallel scene to Dirty Dancing's learning-the-lift scene where they jump around amidst autumn leaves because where Johnny's trying to lift Baby, Jeff is trying to catch Janey - see what I meant about vastly different!? The happy ending sees Jeff and Janey successfully perform the lift/catch/running-jump thing and become the new regular couple on Dance TV - think Young Talent Time meets Video Hits. It is a truly glorious 80's movie moment!

However, even though I remain loyal to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun as the ultimate dance movie, Step Up, which I saw last night was pretty fab and of course completely different. Sure the girl is from a rich background, sure the boy is from the wrong side of the tracks but while Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is, as it's title suggests, fun, Step Up has some badly cast poignance. I won't give anything away, you have to go and see it. Of course we have the obligatory routine where suddenly everyone knows the steps, and it was kind of cool, though not enough to top the dance class in Centre Stage. Oh, but one thing I will give away is that the funny looking Mario, who is an awesome singer and awesome dancer, is in a singing/dancing movie and neither sings nor dances... strange...

Anyway, it's late and time for bed and having just watched Love Actually on the telly, I'd be willing to insert Hugh Grant's little routine to Jump (a song originally released on the soundtrack to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun) into the list of great moments in the dance movie genre.

What about you? What's your favourite moment from a dance movie and why?

2006-09-27T08:25:00.000+10:00

OH PLEASE, someone tell me that these last three days of school will go quickly...
this term just HAS to be over soon...

On a completely unrelated point, there is a man outside my window (presumably hired by the international ladies of mystery ) in a fluorescent yellow shirt with one of those machines that blows leaves from one place to another. It achieves so little and yet it makes so much noise.
Man, if ever there were an activity that would bring on existential angst it would have to be this. It's reminiscent of poor ole Sisyphus, doomed by Zeus to a crappy punishment in Tartarus. Poor chap had to eternally push an enormous boulder uphill, only for the jolly rock to roll back down when he got near the top. He’d then have to start all over again, pushing it back up the hill…

Oh the wonders (and the absurdity) of modern technology...

So, I'm putting together a list of ten books my excellent Year 12s should read in the year after they finish school. I guess I'm thinking of it as part of their ongoing moral, spiritual, intellectual, existential and emotional education. Here's what I have, please feel free to cast your minds back to those good ole days and make suggestions for changes:

1. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
2. Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky
3. A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson
4. The Great World by David Malouf
5. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
6. The Outsider by Albert Camus
7. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
8. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
9. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
10. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I look forward to your thoughts!

2006-09-21T22:55:00.000+10:00

Ok, first you have to read this article by NT Wright.

Then you have to tell me what you think!

2006-09-20T09:16:00.000+10:00

This year, it's all about this guy... 191010 BOBBY

2006-09-18T18:40:00.000+10:00

Rachel’s Mini MEme

It's been a while since I've posted, it took a tag from Rach to get me back online! I got tagged, click here to see Rach’s answers to the (self-devised?) meme where it all began…

I suspect that Rach may be a bit more cultured than I, but we’ll give it a go…

A Piece of Art that you Love

I love Renoir’s “Bather With Long Hair” and “Nude Amid Landscape”. I remember being totally mesmerized by them when they were at the art gallery in Sydney a few years ago. I have little post cards of them but they are just nowhere near as good as the real thing – those paintings are so beautiful!

I also love Amedeo Modigliani’s “Gypsy Woman with Child” (above), I love all of his angular faces and this one is quite poignant.

A Line in a Song or Line of Poetry that Reaches Your Core

“Reaches my core” is something I’m not really up to on a Monday afternoon in Week 9 but I guess I have found myself identifying with nine lines about Eliot’s good ole Prufrock in recent months with my whole “I’m not the super hero I thought I was” epiphany!

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

An Experience in Nature that was Really Special and/or Spiritual

12 years old, a caravan park next to the beach in Bateau Bay, riding my bike with my best friend, Nikki, while on a family holiday over the Easter long weekend. The sight of the beach (or at least I think it was the sight of the beach, this was fifteen years ago now!) prompted our first conversation about our faith and what we were reading in the bible. I remember that one of us, can’t remember which now, had been reading Revelation 21 and 22 and we were pretty excited. I think we may have even prayed together, the first time we’d done that without someone else prompting us to, though I may have embellished that part. Nik occasionally reads my blog so she might be able to comment and verify…

The Movie that Changed the Way you saw the World

It wasn’t a movie, it was two novels, though both of them have had movies made of them and I haven’t seen either of them! They were Charlotte Bronte’s "Jane Eyre" and Margaret Atwood’s "The Handmaid’s Tale" and they helped me to understand what it meant to be a woman who experienced the benefits of the suffragette and feminist movements.

A Piece of Music That Makes You Cry

Ready for something truly tragic? Destiny’s Child’s “Stand Up For Love”. One of my Year 12 students who knows everything (no sarcasm intended) described it like this:
“Suspended fourths resolving to a protracted perfect cadence with vocal lines bridging the harmonic gap is a manipulative musical tool. Almost every national anthem/ patriotic song contains this device. (The Star Spangled Banner contains FOUR of them!) It's just a shameless way of tugging the heart- strings with permutations of sound waves. Talk about corny! You can practically make a country go to war with a minimum of eighteen notes. How convenient.”

ok, that's the end of the Mini MEme, thanks Rach!

In Idol news - Bobby is amazing, yes??

2006-09-03T22:58:00.000+10:00

So today Mrs Booker gathered her Tea Ladies around to discuss Alain de Botton’s “Status Anxiety” over some good afternoon food. As someone who struggles to read non-fiction I was pleasantly surprised by its readability – nice spacious layout, some helpful diagrams and lots of pictures! (yeah, after that you have a right to be questioning my ability to review books…)

Here are two bits that I really liked in case you don’t have time to read it:
“This successful industry of England, with its plethoric wealth… which of us has it enriched? … We have sumptuous garnitures for our life, but have forgotten to live in the middle of them. Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, but in the heart of them, what increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, beautifuller, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call “happier”? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in this God’s Earth; do more things and human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so… We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings.” Thomas Carlyle Midas 1843.

“Whereas a city’s other buildings serviced earthly needs – housing and feeding the body, allowing it to rest, contributing machines and implements to assist it – the unique function of cathedrals was to empty the mind of egoistic projects and lead it towards God and his love. City dwellers engaged in worldly tasks could, during the course of a day, on seeing the outline of these giant structures, remind themselves of a vision of life which challenged the authority of ordinary ambitions. A cathedral like that of Chartres, whose spires soar 105 metres into the sky, the height of a thirty-four-floor skyscraper, was understood to be the home of the dispossessed, a symbol of the wonders they would enjoy in the next life. However ramshackle their physical dwellings might be, the cathedral was where they belonged at heart. Its beauties reflected their inner worth; its stained-glass windows and ceilings made vivid the glory of Jesus’ message to them.”

It’s an interesting book because of the five causes of and five solutions for status anxiety that de Botton suggests. He regards lovelessness, snobbery, expectation, meritocracy and dependence as the five main causes and he suggests that solutions can be found in philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and bohemia. Despite the fact that he’s a secular author so far as I can tell, his book contains a powerful recommendation of Christianity as a world view and way of life.

One of the things that we discussed this afternoon was the reality that, as Christians, we’re aware of other ways to find confirmation of our worth than through the purchase of houses, the amassing of wealth or the gaining of promotion after promotion etc. What we wondered, though, was whether the voices that support part-time work, that tell people that working from home is good, that suggest that children are more than obstacles to career development etc are loud enough for the people who really need to hear them. We suspected that the answer would probably be no. Perhaps then, as de Botton seems to have noticed, the church is a powerful counter cultural agent and Christians have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to live our lives in full view of those around us in a way that challenges society and affirms all the things that society denies us – time to think, time for family, time for friends, time to build community, caring for those in need, developing our social consciences, regarding our money as God’s rather than our own and spending it accordingly. Yikes! That’s quite an opportunity/responsibility…

Funny that I’m currently watching Intolerable Cruelty…

Anyway, to switch topics completely, I feel betrayed by Dwight Yorke…

and I want Chris G and Ricky to get through the wild card stage!

2006-08-23T00:30:00.000+10:00

At church we’ve been hearing sermons on the Spirit that have actually been the kind of sermons I’ve always wanted to hear on the Spirit but never have. The Sunday before last's sermon (yeah, so I'm a little bit behind...) even started with a great quote from Spurgeon – “I see no reason why we should not have a greater Pentecost than Peter saw” – which makes a lot of sense to me. At one point though, Ian said something that totally resonated with my experience. He said that he had always been taught that the Spirit sees his role as bringing glory to the Father and the Son, not to bring attention to himself. He pointed us to Acts 10:20 where the Spirit sent three men to Peter and told him “Do not hesitate to go with them for I have sent them,” and Acts 13:2 where the Spirit says “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” These words of the Spirit don’t seem to be entirely in keeping with a strictly behind-the-scenes part of the Godhead. I think I agree with him…I think there’s been a bit of “grieving the Holy Spirit” or “putting out the Spirit’s fire” in my experience both in my own life and, dare I say it, the wider Sydney Evangelical… what do you call a group of churches? A flock? A herd? The cheech? Yeah, I’m going with the Sydney Evangelical Cheech…

Also, Mattos G (word up!) gave me some advice about seeking times of refreshing from the Spirit a few weeks ago and I can certainly say that his advice was helpful and that God has been good in answering my prayers!

I think Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 may sometimes be relevant to bloggers… “Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven… And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.” I don’t want my blog to go this way, so I’m asking you, my readership of a valued and exclusive three to five people, please keep me accountable if you see any of this happening…

I didn't draw the picture, nor, funnily enough, did I make the stained glass window. I have google images search to thank for both but naughtily did not copy the urls and even more naughtily now can't be bothered... but at least I've told you that they're not mine!

And now for something completely different! I'm quite enjoying this book (which I am reading as part of my involvement in the world's best book club - Mrs Booker and the Tea Ladies) so I thought I'd incorporate a little quote that I liked and that made sense to me:
Alain de Botton says this about western society:
"A sharp decline in actual deprivation may - paradoxically - have been accompanied by a continuing and even increased sense of deprivation and a fear of it. Populations blessed with riches and possibilities far outstripping those imaginable by their ancestors tilling the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe have shown a remarkable capacity to feel that both who they are and what they have are not enough."

hmmm... interesting...

Apparently I will find his conclusions unsatisfying, I'll let you know...

BUT as the Stage Six English Syllabus tells us,
"the journey is more important than the destination..."

(and all the English teachers cried out "How long, O Lord?")

2006-08-21T22:59:00.000+10:00

What the heck is with stigmata?? Bizarro world!!

Did anyone watch Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope just then with Mike Willisee? It was really interesting and not a little bit odd. Admittedly, I was trying to work out how to go shopping online and playing spider solitaire (spider solitaire rocks!) at the same time so I didn't give the show my full and undivided attention but I'm pretty good at multi-tasking and I had the mental space to go "what the ?" I’m not saying I think it is impossible, I’m just saying “yikes” and I'm also saying “I don’t understand”.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says this about it and Wikipedia says this and I continue to say “yikes” and “I don’t understand”…

2006-08-18T08:38:00.000+10:00

super hero or not...

yesterday, I preached in here!

2006-08-06T20:47:00.000+10:00

I am not the super-hero I thought I was…

Jesus says “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” [Matt 11:28-30] but it seems to be pretty easy to think only in terms of his words in Luke 12:48b “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

The legacy of my hectic adolescence and university years, in which too many of my fingers (and perhaps even some of my toes) were stuck to varying depths into far too many pies, seems to be an inability to regard what I am now doing as a worker as enough despite the fact that most of the time I am clearly not even up to the demands of the job that I have. It is hard in this world, when there are so many things that God calls His people to do, to not feel a need to try to undertake the tasks that He has called others to do, as well as the things He has called me to do.

Perhaps when God calls us to a task, He fills us with such a strong sense of the necessity of that task that we speak to others as if it is almost the only legitimate thing to do. Consequently, an impressionable person who listens to all of these other people may find themselves feeling that there is a whole host of missions which God has called them to, or perhaps would have called them to had He gotten around to it, which they are to attend to on top of their own God-given responsibilities. I realise that I need to repeatedly hear Paul’s words to those funny old Corinthians – I may be an elbow, and if I am an elbow then that is what I need to put my energy into being, rather than worrying about trying to be a foot or an ear or an eye or a hand or all of those other bits that I’m clearly not all at once. Rather, I need to let Colossians 3:17 be my pilot: “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

I suspect that a large part of my problem is attempting to do things in my own strength rather than in the strength that God gives me to enable me to carry on being the very best elbow I can be. Charles Spurgeon (1834-92) in his Morning and Evening devotion on 2 Corinthians 12:9 says this:

"For my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

A primary qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly, is a sense of our own weakness. When God’s warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, “I know that I shall conquer, my own right arm and my conquering sword shall get me the victory,” defeat is not far away. God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own strength. He who counts on victory in this manner has reckoned wrongly, for “it is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” Those who go forth to fight, boasting of their prowess, shall return with their brightly-coloured banners trailing in the dust, and their armour stained with disgrace. Those who serve God must serve Him in His own way, and in His strength, or He will never accept their service. That which man does, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere fruits of the earth He casts away; He will only reap that corn, the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love. God will empty out all that you have before He will put His own into you; He will first clean out your granaries before He will fill them with the finest of the wheat. The river of God is full of water; but not one drop of it flows from earthly springs. God will have no strength used in His battles but the strength which He Himself imparts. Are you mourning over your own weakness? Take courage, for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give you victory. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.
“When I am weak then am I strong
Grace is my shield and Christ my song.”

Actually, tonight at church, God really spoke powerfully to me through Malcolm’s sermon as he preached on Romans 8, praying that God wouldn’t allow him in his weakness and “chemo tummy” to hinder the preaching of God’s word to the congregation. Malcolm pointed out that the problem in Paul’s description of the struggle with sin in Romans 7 seems to be the obvious self-focus depicted by the constant repetition of the personal pronoun “I”:
“…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing…” [Romans 7:18b-19]
This description of our desperate situation under the sinful nature concludes with a cry in verse 24 – “What a wretched man am I! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

In contrast, Romans 8 shifts the focus away from the self and transfers it to the Holy Spirit: “…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” [Romans 8:1-2] Paul goes on to tell us in verse 6 that “the mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” Truthfully, peace is one thing that I feel like I’m really lacking so I know that some real handing over needs to take place. To that end, I have always been astounded by David in Psalm 3, even when I was as young as twelve years old:

What is David’s predicament? Yikes!

O Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.” [v1-2]

What does he do? He reminds himself of God’s faithfulness and prays:

But you are a shield around me, O Lord;
You bestow glory on me and lift up my head.
To the Lord I cry aloud,
He answers me from his holy hill. [v3-4]

And what is the result of his prayer? He lies down and sleeps!

I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.
I will not fear the tens of thousands
Drawn up against me on every side. [v5-6]

This is what it looks like to place one’s faith in God alone. If I believe that “God will have no strength used in His battles but the strength which He Himself imparts”[Spurgeon, above] then I must, like David, bring everything to God and then leave it with him, not carry it home again to fret over some more.

I love this image that Peter uses after healing the crippled beggar on Solomon’s Colonnade in Acts 3:19 – “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord…” How good do those times of refreshing sound? I think I am mightily in need of some of that…

2006-08-03T22:44:00.000+10:00

And now, a most wonderful video ...

Thanks to Craig for finding this for us!
Unbelievable, no?

2006-08-01T22:25:00.000+10:00

Sydney! Sydney! Sydney! Get Excited! 28 days til A-League kicks off!

2006-07-31T09:03:00.000+10:00

Common Sundays... Out on the Common...

Not bad for not a Friday eh? Ok, next week I'll be a little bit more creative like Rach and Andrew... If you're wondering what the heck this is all about, check out Rach's challenge at blueearth-brownsky

And, until next time, no bible, no kiss, eh Andrew?

2006-07-30T12:47:00.000+10:00

How many chickens? Bookbookbookbookbookbookbook Emma fully participated and then pestered Jon while he was trying to do something else... Oh, should explain, Andrew from peripatetically tagged us with this one book survey thing...

1. One book that changed your life:
E: The Great World, David Malouf. I went and apologised to my parents…
J: The Bible

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
E: Possession, A.S. Byatt
J: The Book of Luke

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
E: Bush Tucker Man, what’s that guy’s real name? Read it with a Year 7 History class for their assignment on Aboriginals during the time of the fatally silly Burke and Wills.
J: The Bible (jon's getting irritated now...)

4. One book that made you laugh:
E: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
J: Harry Potter (E: any particular one? J: each one had funny things in it)

5. One book that made you cry:
E: The Time-Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
J: The Bible (he's walked off)

6. One book that you wish had been written:
E: How To Become as Awesome As Me, Joss Whedon
J: How Blogging Could Ruin Your Life by somebody people would listen to

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
E: The Alchemist, Paul Cohelo - literally chucked it across the room.
J: Blogging for Dummies

8. One book you’re currently reading:
E: Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (meant to have finished it by Book Club at 7:45 on Tuesday morning – chances are getting thinner by the minute, and this didn’t help!)
J: The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancy

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
E: Running In The Family, Michael Ondaatje
J: Compulsory Chemical Safety Training

10. Now tag five people:
I’m tagging Rach (who has already accepted an invitation to this particular party) and the Shadrachs… (I wonder if people will be more cooperative at from the fiery furnace??? Maybe, but not till they return from their holiday...)

2006-07-25T08:11:00.000+10:00

I'm going to write an essay on sustainability. As I mentioned in a comment on Byron's blog, I've already written my plan (like a good high school English teacher) but this is how it's going to begin (and perhaps also how it will end...) because I think it encapsulates the whole problem - the problem in the past, the problem in the present and the problem that we need to confront for the future...

Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
that can hold no water.
Jeremiah 2:12-13

2006-07-23T12:38:00.000+10:00

What is it like to be a high school English teacher? Well, I love it, it is undoubtedly my dream job. BUT today I have no less than 53 essays to mark that I have collected in the last three days of school and I think I would find more than that if I were to check the electronic drop-boxes on my class websites...

Is this kind of thing sustainable? Jon thinks no - hence the accountancy thoughts... I am already on an 80% load and yet this is my life. In every case I grin and bear it but things fall by the wayside when the pressure is on - spending time with Jon, reading my bible and praying, feeding myself well, exercising, caring for my friends... I know that I am a victim of early on-set workaholism and I know that I have to try to fight against that. Yet I also know that my workplace is not the only workplace that is like this.

John Howard talks about these "aspirational workers" who will be willing to lose certain working conditions that unions have fought for in order to win the privilege of a massive crushing mortgage and a heart attack by the age of 45. What about those of us who know that life isn't all about possessions? How do we fight against a working world that will see our children grow up as veritable orphans, our money poured into landscape gardening that we will never see in daylight and our community dwindle ever thinner.

Those of us who call ourselves members of the church have to do something about this! We need to be counter cultural and show our society than we can live and not die - both in the sense that we don't have to let our jobs kill us and that Jesus can lead us into his eternal rest.

Unfortunately for me, cutting back on my workload means not caring for the students who have been entrusted into my care, not only by my employer, but also by God. I think the answer is that I had better stop complaining here and get on with it, eh?

Anyone else got any answers to my dilemma?

2006-07-13T16:53:00.000+10:00

hEY ... whoa ... here I am ... feels weird the first time.

Well here I am on this blog with my lovely wife Emma; today I'm gonna punch my inner-nerd and make my first post quick ... 2 things:
-the other day I wondered what it would be like to be an accountant.
-apparently I am not the only top-selling hip-hop artist on blogger! Aww, c'mon href!

Praise God!
From Jon

2006-07-10T21:41:00.000+10:00

The character and faithfulness of God
Here's a little section of a talk I gave at church a couple of weeks ago, I thought some of you might like it? Hey, I'm learning about this blog thing, does it matter if there's no coherent flow of logic??

Late last year the church that my dad attends, the church that I was effectively born into, held the 25th anniversary of its time in its church building. My husband and I went to the celebration, a service in the church followed by a lunch in the church hall.
My main experiences of being at this church was of old people. Presbyterians of my dad’s generation and older seem to regard their faith as a much more personal thing than perhaps we do here and now, but that didn’t stop this church from having a beautiful Sunday school full of amazing men and women who were devoted to seeing the children in the church grow up to be Christians. And I was able to share at the lunch will all of these old, old faces that I remembered from when I was really little, people who had smiled benignly on me when I was a bit of a brat at church, that it was in their Sunday school under the current session clerk who is now well into his 80s and his late wife’s teaching, that I had first learnt what it meant to invite Jesus into my heart, and that it was in the little hall off the room in which we were eating lunch that I had first done that when I was only just old enough to comprehend what I was doing.
That moment is probably one of my earliest memories. And I was able to share it with that church and encourage them, that 25 years later, one of the children that they’d lovingly taught, still held fast to the faith that they had first shared with me. Effectively I met Jesus through them and through their witness and I learnt what it was to live the Christian life through their service and witness to me. It was a pretty emotional day for me, because just as much as I saw all of these lovely old people who I’d known all my life, I also saw the character and faithfulness of God in their ongoing love of Jesus and their ongoing determination to be his people and to continue meeting together, provoking one another to love and good deeds all the more as they see the Day of the Lord approaching.

2006-07-10T21:33:00.000+10:00

What kind of blogger am I going to be? I’ve only just realised the extent of the world today as I followed a link to Byron’s blog then after encountering one, finally looked up Jess and Andrew’s blog, then Bec and Oak’s blog, then followed some links and found Justin’s blog and Lachlan’s and Jumbo’s and Craig’s and Scott’s and Jodi’s and Em’s and Nick’s and Luke’s and on and on it went!

And because I’m apparently more susceptible to peer-pressure than I’d like to think, now you might be looking at my blog! How did this happen!? It was only two days ago that my husband said, “give it time and you’ll be blogging it with the best of them” and I scoffed!

Well, perhaps I will wildly enthuse, perhaps I will seek to impart wisdom, perhaps I will just rant but either way… here I am in this world of online journaling and not hating it…

And you can never go wrong with some C.S. Lewis if you want to be impressive in your first post eh?

"It is written that we shall "stand before" Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God... to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness... to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son - it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is."
C.S Lewis The Weight of Glory