Month: <span>April 2006</span>

It becomes very complicated when make a so called stand on one small thing only to find the implications of consistency are far larger than you thought.

This morning I refused the easter eggs that Mum had for me. I had told her only yesterday that I didn’t want any but obviously she didn’t believe me or felt bad about having some for the others. She thankfully understood when I did not take them. My younger sisters however started going on about hypocracy and asked what happens when it comes to Christmas and your Birthday?

If you’ve been reading for a while you might have noticed that certain aspects of consumerism really frustrate me. This has become only more clear while working in retail where I get Mums and Grandmas coming in, “This year we’ve chosen to celebrate Easter by buying books about bunnies and bilbies as they last longer than chocolate”.

It annoys me that people totally miss the point of Easter and treat it as another day of the year where they don’t have to work and have a ripper of excuse to spend up big on frivolitries – like chocolate. Shows how effective we are in getting the truth out there.

Why though, refuse eggs? I truly did not spend enough time thinking about it before I made the choice to ‘not buy into it’. I originally decided to ‘just not’ this year because of the commerical aspect in hope that my recognition of the stupidity and waste and non-symbol aspects of the egg would be in some way acted upon.

“Do you plan to continue this trend of anti-commercialism?”

That’s exactly what it is, commercialism. Yet the nature of the western world throws this commercialism back into our faces as it is replicated in everything, from our food to our clothes to our holidays and most clearly, our celebrations. It is very difficult to completely ignore it, to refuse it, to not go along with it, to defeat the wheat, go against the grain.

I was talking to a friend about this all, he said that, “What I think you’re really dealing with here is a value conflict with mainstream society.”

It calls into question the nature of taking a stand. Why bother?

“By recognising that it’s crap you’ve already won your battle.”
“And what are words without some action?
“But what’s the point of action if it achieves nothing further”
“What about demonstrating your words?”

Why should we bother to take a stand?
“To what extent do you participate in things that are fundamentally meaningless in order to reach people who mean something to God?”

“You don’t achieve anything by making a protest other than to alienate yourself from someone who clearly doesn’t know any better”
“Then why does anyone ever make a stand about anything?”
“You make a stand when it either compromises you… or can benefit someone else and by compromise I mean leading to sin.”

The question now is, in what way is refusing easter eggs, making any difference to anyone beyond supporting my own frustrations at a way the world works? Is it worth it? Will it change anything? Probably not.

Sorry in advance to do another, ‘what I did today’ thing.

Took off shopping with Mum, Han and Sam. Went to Ikea, it wasn’t very interesting this time. Their meatballs are superb though. I could eat bucketloads.

Went Bridge Road Shopping, which varies from reasonable to horrendously expensive. Bought some wintery things and finally found a coat/jacket which I’ve been after for ages. So it was a sucessful trip, but Sam was being a grump and a zombie (and knows it) so not quite as fun as it could’ve been. I really do shop with intent, if I don’t find what I am looking for, the whole day = flop and a waste of time. Alas I did spend more money then I intended.

To share and record a rather funny moment:

Sam ended up staying over. I’d had a shower while she took over my msn. I swapped places with her and she was stuffing around trying to find her missing underwear. So she and Laura are chatting and searching away, “I know I bought them!” and so on and so forth. Laura’s like, “You should borrow some of Becs” to which my response was, “No way, thats kind of disgusting.”. I’m sitting online and getting the dvd ready when I stand up. My PJ pants are halfway down my butt – which is fairly normal as I dont’ really bother tying them up very tight. Laura’s forever telling me to pull them up and she was about to do so again, when they both start laughing. It turns out that I grabbed hers (Sam’s) which were sitting on my bed. I have a pair almost exactly the same. I appoligised profusely after doing my own share of haha’s. The rest need not be told, but she’ll get them back someday. I promise Sam!

To relieve a boring yesterday afternoon, Sam and I decided to find somewhere open to go so that we had something to do – a difficult task on Good Friday but we hit an immediate winner when we (well, Sam) called Sky High and they were open. So up Mt Dandenong we went.

After a wander and some coffee and some photo taking (no not the one on the left) it started raining, we made the decision to continue our random jaunt, just because and picked the road up to Olinda. To our shock it was pretty much all open so we spent a good hour poking around in antique and touristy shops. We get back to the car and it is pouring, I turn the key, it is completely dead. I was extremely confident I hadn’t left any lights on and so am sitting there doing the bah-humbug thing when I remember that the car (dad’s) sometimes does this and you have hit the dashboard underneath. Immediate start. I congratulated myself and we got out of the not so nice parking spot sucessfully.

We detoured on the way home and drove into Silvan dam. It was too wet to get out and walk to the top of the wall, but we had a brief run outside in the rain, then sat in the car and took stupid photos (one of which you can see).

I invited Sam to stay over. Jess W gets onto us and asks us if we’d like to come to the Carefactor (Careforce) for their evening Good Friday service which, I quote, is, “somber” (ie: Jess’ way of saying it’s not as hypey as you normally think it is Bec). We had to see this rarity and wanted to catch a few of the yitsers, so Laura, Sam and I headed down at eight.

Nearly hit a pedestrian ladeda, it was dark, wet and the guy was in my blind spot when I was backing out of a parking place which at the last minute turned disabled (so I was being good and actually moving), Laura was having kittens. Inside, we spotted Darryn (YITS), found a seat eventually. Iain (YITS) came in with Jess.

I’m not sure exactly why I found the service so exceptional. I think I really needed something like it. It was quite beautifully God pieced (for me) a lot seemed to relate to some of what I was trying to explain yesterday.

Alan Meyer was preaching on Nicodemus and at one point refered to a bit of the old song, When I Survey the Wonderous Cross, which we did sing earlier. Shock horror, hymns at Careforce :P. Anyway so I first discover where that, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” thing comes from, as I’ve used it as an avatar before, which was satisfying.

I guess what I was getting at yesterday was gathered into, “How can one respond appropriately with only moderate degree of love.” – this in regards to what Jesus has done.

The everything, your all, you entireity is a big thing to give up and yes, I do think Jesus is the absolute most important but working out how to give that – life – up is sometimes difficult and I don’t want to do the half hearted thing. Sometimes perhaps if I can’t give it my best it offers less motivation to actually do so in the first place.

So it was interesting in that regard. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” – Jim Elliot

A story was read out about this woman who ended up with the name, Esther Easter. Inspiring story and if I could find you a copy, I would share it, but I haven’t had such luck yet.

For communion, they took small groups aside and someone prayed and we took it collectively. A really great way (and different from what they normally do there) to do communion. God and I had a bit of talk afterwards as it took a fair while, wrote something down of what I thought he was saying, encouraging stuff no sharing though 🙂 I was pushed to Isaiah where 43, and particularly 55 stood out.

We went and found Clacy (Michael) after church and got a massively cheerful welcome. There are certain YITS people I miss having around and was a little surprised to find that Clacy is one of them. Nothing like a bit of exhuberance.

A very good evening.

This afternoon I had some old photos out as I was scanning a ‘favourite’ and Hannah says to me, “You look more like you did back then, then you used to.” This I think, is a mighty fine compliment as I was a cute kid up until about 5, then something changed 😛 And no you do not get photos of the 7-13 or more ages, don’t even ask.