Month: <span>April 2006</span>

What a fine day. After pleasantly beating my alarm up, I stuffed around until it was time to head off to Darryn’s 21st. That’s right, in the middle of the day. A stupendous idea, I intend to do the same, far nicer then an evening with loud music and dancing. Spit roast and other such nice food.

An exceptional afternoon – we (meaning I taxied Sam) were there 5hrs. About a third of the yiters showed up along with a few others I knew/know of. Jacqui – Alecia’s housemate who I’d met once and have no idea how she knows Darryn, Dan of the Berwick yits variety and um Geoff’s sister Anita- not that I’ve talked to her or have even met her but, small world.

Anyway I had excellent conversations with quite a few people. It was good to catch up with Nathan and Jessmyn and Dawn and all those. Can’t believe some of the distance those kids travelled! Dave showed his face later as well as Alecia. Everything was fine and dandy.

Darryn’s little brother is extremely cool. 4yr olds are lucky people, they can run around and go mad and do exactly as they please without anyone thinking they are fools.

Despite it being a family and friends event it wasn’t one of those stuffy, long winded speech type’s which was as it should be.

The sore throat I woke up with is now worse, that’ll teach me for yacking my face off.

After posting my ‘camp extravaganza’ I realised I’d missed something.

Sunday morning the guys and girls split up. We got inside and the couches. Roz and Evie lead the ‘stuff’. We started off talking about friendships and Roz read excerpts from a book called, “Big Girls Don’t Whine” which is one I’ve had half an eye on for some time. Now I have to (that’s compulsory) go and get myself a copy. Then we talked about mums and sisters – which was strange for both Laura and myself seeing as we are eachothers, and share one. I confess we ‘dragged’ happily along for far longer than the guys needed to and spent several hours going over all this stuff.

As someone pointed out, we never talk about mums/mothers. We mention fathers all the time but it seems mothers slip off the radar and are probably more of a reckoning force than most of us would like to admit. There was a huge benefit to having Laura there in that we worked out that we have some similar attitudes towards our mum. Closeness – as in the tight friendship thing is something that I don’t have any desire for with her, which as Sam said, is, “a bit sad” but that’s the way it is. And in seeing where she is with God (oh I know she does love God immensely) but she’s not that clear cut and so I haven’t the role model so to speak in that area. I can put myself and I need to put myself in a place where I am working on improving the relationship and see what happens, I guess as long as I am stepping in the right direction…

The topic of mentors has come up lately. Laura, oddly enough has our Grandma as her mentor. I haven’t really got anyone. I had Renee (sort of) for a little while, but it didn’t quite work as it should with distance as an issue. I genuinely want a mentor, I can see the huge value in it, but something in me still wonders how it would work. I honestly don’t know what I’d talk to ‘her’ about. My words have a far grander time of making it from my head to paper then they do from head to mouth. Apparently you can go and chat to Kathy (Pete’s wife) and she’ll find you someone – an older godly woman from the church asap. I need a bit more of a push and shove before I do this… how would it work with someone you don’t know? I’m tempted to talk to Evie about it, she’s what, 26 – still not sure though – might be better to just keep her as a friend.

I guess I shall have to continue and uh, maybe even start praying about it.

It’s curious (I do like that word) how God completes circles and brings you to a satisfying point of either completion or at least closure.

My entire last year had this massive background focus on ‘community’…

“My whole aim of last year’s YITS was to discover that community type thing again – fairly sure I’ve talked about that. Yet my biggest issue last year was in vulnerability, it’s bizarre, which reminds me, I never did share my ‘mid-year’ camp experience. Perhaps it was Gods roundabout way of letting me know there was more than being just a group of people that wind up together.”

I got a pretty good idea before camp (which is where I’ve been the past few days) that this was a little of what God was going to do.

“Maybe it’s that time where it’s all drawn together with a little closure for me, I’ve harked on about the issue for over a year now – longer. I hope that the up coming camp ends up being very ‘community’ orientated, in simply the way camps do. The closeness that comes on camps is desireable but I’d like it to be continued.”

Not so surprisingly much of this was on God’s agenda for me. Differently of course then I thought of how might play out.

I drove down to Torquay with Susannah in some very fine brown Melbourne sludge skies with roads to match. We get along rather well so it was not a chore in the slightest, a long way to drive but we were right. Had slight difficulty in finding the last turn off as erm, Susannah thought we’d gone too far when we actually hadn’t, but we still arrived well on time – there being no definite in the first place.

The place was little more than a glorified shed (but still really well set up) and was extremely drafty. Colder inside then out at some points. We had fires both places and wore about 8 layers of clothes a person, stomped round in ugg boots (which seems to be a commonality of both the girls and the guys) and squashed up on some ancient couches, chairs, the floor under sleeping bags.

Saturday morning turned out for me to be dealing with some of this ‘time/busy’ stuff and where God is on the priority list. Roz talked about the Kingdom of God and living life that way and sent us off to ‘think/talk’ to God about what might be hindering us. Time was the big fat obvious one for me. Others shared things from status to success to career. I came across Ezekiel 37:15-28 which is a totally obscure passage about a prophesy but God threw something infront of me that highlighted some relevance.

A fairly relaxed afternoon. After lunch most of us took off to the beach for a wander, kick of the footy. Susannah, Evie and I walked the length of the beach. S and I came with Tim (IT Tim) and Geoff and so stopped to get a huge ammount of sparklers and tape on the way back.

There were some issues with a gas leak and the place entirely running out, so having to go to the lady who run’s the place’s house to use their oven to cook the lasagne (dinner). This also meant no hot water. Showers were again offered by Linda (the lady who runs it) even though it meant trecking into her house to take advantage of it.

Peter D came up to do something for our evening time. We started talking more about the Holy Spirit but ended up talking about events>beliefs>behaviors and this is where I dealt with some of that ‘community’ stuff and left over junk that I hadn’t fully let go of around leaving the Solomons. I was a bit surprised to find I hadn’t totally dealt with it but God is gracious and seems to provide opportunities to bring to mind what we miss.

Evening that followed = Tim’s sparkler bomb that wasn’t quite as spectacular as it could’ve been, fireball soccer which fell apart after a fairly short while but was quite amusing all the same. I didn’t join in this one as I had one pair of shoes with me and didn’t exactly want to melt them. A game of spotlight out in the paddock. Don’t know how many cowpats we collectively lay on. A goodly ammount of talking and laughing.

Then the descision was made to play Canasta – which is a card game. I tracked down all who knew the rules: Geoff, Dan, Tim (IT), Laura (she came up late) and we pulled in Cameron as an extra. Everyone else went to bed bar Jess W and Susannah who stayed up to watch. So Laura taught Cameron, and Dan told us all about this ‘proper’ rule about wild cards and the first play. After three rounds, this rule had left Geoff and me (team game: Laura & Cam, Dan & Tim, Geoff & me) with -900 something points (that’s right, read NEGATIVE) so I pulled the rules out and made Dan read them – he couldn’t find it. We played until about 3am, which was around when I finally woke up. I decided the 7 or so hot drinks I’d had that day had finally kicked in. No joke – actually there were quite a few being made, I think I just warmed up to being myself around some of these relatively new people.

I love how God has turned all these changes into what it is now. I love this bunch of people immensely, they are all rather diverse but a quality group. It’s remarkable that when you go chasing something like community and you lament what you’ve lost that when you and others have been seeking God on it that he doesn’t just let things go and slide, yes I had to wait but I was given a transit community (YITS) and people there to push me along and now things are for the moment right. It is good.

A funny, slow, change process and a horribly long winded discovery of what community is and the expression of it in it’s many different forms. When it is truly community you know, you can see God at work and there is this banding together that is not entirely natural.

And so I remember those there:
Roz & Andy, Sarah & Chris, Geoff, Tom, Dan, Cam, Dave, Marty, Tim (IT), Tim, Evie, Laura, Jess H, Susannah, Jess W, Izzy, Jerome (for one afternoon), Me. and anyone else I’ve forgotten.

Three of us also got ‘floured’ – thanks very much to Dan and Cam ie: in my shoes and my ugg boots, I was by far the least worst hit and seemingly an after thought as my only ‘retribution means’ was some disliked card play. Jess copped a faceful by night due to the ‘ham slapping’ incident earlier in the day and Izzy got a handful during the day, due to her cooperation or simply because she got angry at them flouring Jess.

You’ll also see that the arrow pointing at Bec in the thoroughly lightened photo is where I had made it warm shortly before, I had not disappeared into the pile of sleeping bag on the couch or into the white light (of the projector we were using in place of the fluro), I was shockingly taking the photo (this being the 3am set up.)

I went to be last night with a headache bigger than a shiner. You’d expect sleep to cure things, but when I woke up after a none too pleasant and really strange dream around 3am, it was still there – worse than ever. Pathetic moanings don’t come too easily at that time as you are well and truly still in sleep mode but came they did in some form or other. I faced the light, got a drink, ran through all the options of opting out of work and prayed desperately that I wasn’t getting sick which would mean a miserable weekend. Woke up the second time appropriately to my alarm and it was gone.

Eight hours of work. Not too painful. Longish, however Thursdays are the standard: start work with Simone and Mel, Susan joins us around lunchtime and Mel disappears more out the back. Grace comes just as Simone and I are leaving. I spent too much on lunch today, but couldn’t face having fried something. I don’t know if cheap pasta is any better – and it only tastes good for the first few mouthfuls but sometimes its nice to have a bit of a change.

I dropped off at Croydon on the way home, the Camera House is open until 6pm on Thursdays (Got love that! For once something works to my advantage!). Picked up my photos, the majority of which are for my typology. It’s really for my comparitive imaging class (ie: digital) but scanned photos are quite acceptable in my opinion. I am pleased with the photos – some of which are now up on flickr. The two slide films that I put in wont be ready until next week some time.

We had people over for dinner, friends of Wendy’s and I think the parentals have met them once before. A missionary family heading back to Vanuatu sometime soon, two boys 9 and 7. Turns out they know the Batcocks – small world. They came to talk homeschooling with Mum, seeing as she happens to be something of wizard on it. This also means we got Chicken and Broccoli (casserole) for dinner which is one of my absoultest favouritest meals in the whole wide world and to top it off, chocolate pudding for desert. What a meal!

Scanned all my photos, which took an age but had to be done. Wow they do such a better job then Kmart. Who cares if it’s an extra dollar or two, it’s so worth it. Threw together my typology which means I can somewhat console myself with not a complete disattention to anything homework related.

See. I think it’s cool.

Tomorrow I pack, go register my car (maybe in the other order), then drive to Chirnside and pick up the lovely Susannah and then proceed down to Torquay – which means I shall not be online until probably Sunday night. I have yet to work out if I can make it to Tom’s 21st (sorry Tom for such late notice!) but if I do, that means backtracking by my ownsome to Geelong somewhere.

I am so ready for the break, I am so not going to think about all the assignments I’ve procrastinated on.

I am very drained, very tired and I have a headache that’s been plaguing me most of today.

Tonight, Peter was sick so didn’t show up to do anything w/ Young Adults so Isobelle opted for everyone chuck a question in that we wanted to discuss and we’d pull one or two out and see how it went. It worked extremely well. The first two questions interrellated and the others that followed all in some way drew back to them – excluding the few plain stupid ones.

Community, suprisingly enough. Maybe it’s that time where it’s all drawn together with a little closure for me, I’ve harked on about the issue for over a year now – longer. I hope that the up coming camp ends up being very ‘community’ orientated, in simply the way camps do. The closeness that comes on camps is desireable but I’d like it to be continued.

I discovered something curious tonight, in talking about vulnerability and community. My whole aim of last year’s YITS was to discover that community type thing again – fairly sure I’ve talked about that. Yet my biggest issue last year was in vulnerability, it’s bizarre, which reminds me, I never did share my ‘mid-year’ camp experience. Perhaps it was Gods roundabout way of letting me know there was more than being just a group of people that wind up together. We have to be willing to give a little in order for it work to it’s best and fullest.

Putting yourself on the line is no easy thing. Sometimes its as big an effort to speak up when you don’t know what will come out of your mouth is even very comprehensible or worthwhile as it is to spill on some major life predicament. Trust, trust, trust.

I could say if we managed to trust people we might have more faith in trusting God, but I’ve always found it far less of an issue in trusting God then people. It’s a funny thing though, because if we are trusting God – shouldn’t we then have no fear from putting ourselves out there? Ahh roundabouts for the mind aren’t the best thing at this time of night.

Regardless of all the nargon jargon, please could you pray that I have a really positive time away, I think it might just even mean slowing down and getting that break. I’m a bit on the upper end of burn-out with a few things, I have no motivation and have been feeling pretty drained. This Solomons stuff too, for the situation over there but also for those of us who have to sit at home and watch as something we really do have close ties to falls apart. I thought I could do the whole bystander thing, but it hits closer then that.