Month: <span>April 2006</span>

It is a little sad looking back on past years and a seeing a couple of ways in which this (and last) has differed. Something that I’ve really appreciated and have done probably about four times now in the past seven or so years is a Christian passover. I’m not going to use this space to explain what Passover is, if you are interested you know where to investigate and I’ll even help you out by pointing you in the direction of another blog’s explanation.
The photo on the left is of the sedar platter of the Passover we celebrated back in 2001 with the Mellows and the Carters. This one particularly stands out in my mind. You’ll notice (if I point it out) that the plate contains some creative versions of ‘what should be there’. It’s not the worlds easiest thing to locate appropriate items such as a lambs bone, as there aren’t really any sheep in the Solomons and imported foods are insanely expensive. We tend to do this ‘passover’ thing with family friends – it somehow ends up being always that way. The Mellows and the Carters are probably the haha most prominent families in this niche in the B’s lives. The 2001 time was a curious ‘last-time’ moment for me as we are now spread out away of where we grew up and where we ‘knew’ eachother.

Why mention Passover now? Well the 13th on the glorified Ferret callendar in the bathroom lists this as the when. Why are you celebrating it when it’s a Jewish ceremony and not a Christian one? I think it was originally introduced to us by Bob and Amy (the Carters), who’ve spent a goodly amount of time in the Middle East (before the Solomons). My mum has this book Celebrate the Feasts which explores the traditional Jewish celebrations in how we as Christians can incoporate them and use them to remember aspects of what Jesus has done and God’s involvement.

The parallels of the Passover meal to Jesus’s death, ressurection and the resultant redemption of humanity are striking.

It is Good Friday today. I confess I sometimes get confused about which day relates to which as the ‘good’ is initially vaguely misleading. I like that the ‘Good’ comes into the crucifixction which points directionally towards the amazing thing that Jesus has done rather than the somberity and brutality of the death. I like the fact that we (if we wear them or display them) use an empty cross.

I hate the comercialism of Easter and this has really only hit me this year. I dont’ want to see bunny ears or easter eggs or bilbies. I don’t want to know how much people spend on chocolate or books (surprisingly they do) or how much excitement goes into easter egg hunts simply because it’s ‘fun’. I do like how this very Jesus thing manages to stop the western world mostly in it’s tracks. An excuse for a holiday? But almost all the shops stay shut and clunk, the comercial world is frozen for a cool 24 hr block.

I don’t think I’m very good at ‘getting in the grain’ when it comes to comprehending what has been done for us. I was sitting in church this morning doing the ‘yeah’ thing, where I’m trying to grasp it a bit more but am finding it really difficult. I’d like to say I had this great revelation, but I didn’t. I know what Jesus has done and I wish that I could often feel more awed by it. I find it really hard to understand it in the ‘feeling’ means. I’m not saying I haven’t ever grabbed hold of it in that light before, I have, but not this time. Despite this, it was still a good time to remember what the crux (ooh theres a bit of irony) of it (life) is all about.

I was reading something in Matthew the other night when Jesus sends out the twelve (Matthew 10) and I came across this verse:

“A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.” (10:24-25)

I think we sit in our churches and our homes and ask and ask to know God and I know I ask how can I love God and get a bit stuck. Being a Christian has got a fair bit to do with being ‘Christ-like’. I don’t exactly know why I trip over this, but to read ‘it is enough’ to be like him was really helpful. Perfection is a strange issue. I think I wind my mind to the point of ‘how can we possibly love God’ beyond simply recognising him? Doing the love thing as a Christian seems all directed at others. Really hard to explain but perhaps it’s a throw back to how we have been programed to see love. Love is all about feeling. No love is not all about feeling and it’s a good thing it isn’t.

I don’t quite understand what love is but I can see how it’s shown and nothing speaks more powerfully than the one who is love achieving the ultimate act of it.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 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. This is my command: Love each other.” – John 15:9-17

And if you look back to that verse I mentioned previously, about servants and masters – how much more has God done in calling us friends! Although that does render what I mentioned before slightly less impacting. What a wide expanse of opportunity, how much more God has in store for us.

Unpredictable morning. I wake up and rouse Hannah too early for her liking. Discover my phone is missing and don’t think too much more of it/ I am pushing various individuals to hurry up so I wont be late for my 90% probable work shift then I get a phonecall. Someone named Eddie has found my phone and was decent enough to call me. It seems it fell out of my bag or something last night outside of church. He says he’s in the timber-yard (which is next door) and says come pick it up. So one minute later I’ve stolen Laura’s car. I rock up watching the time and wander hesitantly in, “Um, is there an Eddie here, he found my phone this morning?”

I get called, ‘love’ and get taken on a tour to go and find E who is way down the back. They were all rather nice, it was just a bit odd to be wandering around a strange place so early in the morning. Sure enough phone is now safe within my posession again. Bizarre that he found it, it would’ve been lying lost and lonely in the middle of a carpark.

I drive back home and try the speed limit just a little. I was ten minutes late to work – but I was working so it wasn’t a big waste of my time. Worked 8hrs. Had lunch with the little blister and bongos Dan (who works in the Pancake Parlour above Dymocks). Saw Adam Gaissl of all people. He’s been in QLD the past few years. I did my Multimedia Cert. with him (only other one from my school) so we got to know eachother a bit. That saying I’ve had no contact with him for at least 2.5years, quite strange. I also saw/met the mature age student in my photography tute. She was going through her cards when I was serving her, I spotted a student card, looked up and recognised her face and asked. How random.

My chin is bruised, my hip is bruised etc… Yeah like black bruise (or blue) not too big, but still visible if you look. How did you do that Bec, its a weird spot to have a bruise? My jaw is kind of sore too but thats beside the point. I can blame it all upon the game thing we somehow got coerced into last night at small group. Moving pathways, ie: everyone lies on stomach’s close together and person at the end (there was about 20 of us at least) rolls over along top of them all. Hilarious stuff. Bit painful with the heavy people and laughing really hard because it was all so stupid. I landed and thumped my chin on the floor – real smart. Hence why the jaw does not quite feel normal and other odd bruising. There was of course absolutely no point to the ‘activity’, I think Peter was reliving his youth group days through us (yes he did have a go). So I can now state I have had full bodily contact with almost everyone there- that sounds haha so wrong, I think that’s why its amusing to say.

My car is now roadworthy (which of the actual test, got done for free :P). It’s cost me about $180 all up to get it to that point, which is SO unbelieveably good. I shall be registering it next Friday and still have to mosey on down and get insurance from wherever I end up getting that from and probably take it to Henry to get it ‘tuned up’. Oh the lovelys, its’ worth about double what I paid for it! It wont be ready to take down to Torquay, but hey it’s getting there.

Had an extremely long chat to Jess D on the phone. It’s been ages since I’ve caught up with her, coordinating dates (particularly from my end) always proves to be difficult so there is now part of a weekend shoved in a couple weeks down the track. Hooray!

NB to self, to write more about the Holy Spirit stuff when I am less tired.

Oh and that’s just plain weird, either Matt you got the ‘theme’ from my blog (but I somehow doubt it) but why’d you go and blog on waiting and time and seizing the day? Let me know if it’s not okay to link to you. If you even read this. Reoccuring themes are great and frustrating at the same time. Now I just have to work out why exactly I keep getting this shoved in my face.

Whether you read Matty’s link or not, do yourself a favour go and read Ecclesiastes 3 and pray about it. Context please though. Context within the whole of the book and not just the surrounding passages.

To slightly prepare you for a disjointed blog here goes a brief outline (as I’m told all good lecturers should give) – however I’m not a a lecturer so it really serves little point. Which means I wont, and I have just sucessfully suceeded in turning you away wondering what the heck is Bec crapping on about this time? Or I have made you just a little curious. If you do not fit either of the above categories, that’s fine, I think you are just another normal person that occasionally reads this overly disjointed blog. A thanks here to my regular ‘readers’ it’s a bit strange to do so, but it does give me the motivation more to write however much I attempt to convince myself that I write for myself. So, disjointed post coming up. That’s about what you need to know before you decide that ‘oh no’ she’s going to get fixated upon one topic again and spend four fat posts on it to discover later that she’s already worked it out. Sometimes I enjoy the process more than I should. Whoop-de-do it’s truly fun to ramble.

Firstly, I have no idea whether I am working tomorrow or not which is really not smart of me (I forgot to call) as it means goodbye to any sleepin that has a vague chance of happening. I have to be at work by 8:45am, I cannot call beforehand because simply no one will be there. I am attempting to play off what has been so for the past few weeks. In which case my trip and abuse of beautiful sleep time shall not be in vain. If not, then I hope at least to make it a productive time by finding a jacket worthy of being mine this winter. Whatever the case, Mum’s on her way somewhere so I can be ‘dropped off’ which saves me dealing with my beloved Connex, Laura’s meticulous logging of km’s (if I use her car) and fighting the lightswitch in my brain which almost always wants off until at least about 11:00am.

I am not a morning person.

Uni was entirely bludgy today. For some reason my first tute was starting 15 minutes later than it should’ve which really isn’t a lot except when you factor in that there is always something that affects the starting time of that particular class anyway so you can easily add another 15 minutes, which, if my maths is correct wound ‘start time’ half an hour later. Why I said that, and you couldn’t have just worked it out I don’t quite know.

The fine precursor to this late tute was a decent wait with a decent coffee in the decent Corner Cafe after arriving at quite a decent time despite travelling by means not so decent. I confess I really don’t mind the train that much, besides I happened to run into Melissa and so got shown photos of her wedding dress had a brief catch up before I had to get off, whereby I fell over onto one of her uni friends and had to appoligise profusely while running out the door.

So the tute (yeah let me finally get to it) was on Video following the horrifically boring lecture yesterday which I did, I confess, walk out of. Had a very brief play with a camera and spent the rest of the time talking. Turns out Ben went to school with Dean Lusk and hence knows Mark (Luskie) a little. Small world. That class is full of erm, characters shall we say.

As Jeremy so eloquently put it, “It’s really not your day today.” I am sitting in my Comparitive Imaging tute watching assignments being presented (digital images) and I realise one of mine has a really scrappy background which I totally missed seeing after my tired block of time wasting yesterday afternoon. I duck out of class and spend an outrageous $2.50 on a blank CD. I come back fix up the background, which didn’t take much, and re-burn the CD. I forget to put my original image file on the disk, oops. So I contrive an explanation and decide to include both CDs. My turn to present. I put in the newly burnt expensive CD and it fails multiple times, the Computer chokes up and refuses all my pleas (by means of pounding the eject key – Macs). It finally relinquishes the stupid thing and I grab it as it spits it out, just before it swallows the glorifed cupholder very unnaturally again. Tutor says he’ll look at my work (or is it art?) afterwards as it was working three seconds ago on my computer.

That gets all sorted. I end up submitting the old cd (with the stuffed background) but make sure he has seen the good version. His suggestion to submit the old one, he makes a note of it. I am satisfied. It still means I wasted $2.50 but it does mean I don’t have to somehow make it in to the D before Friday.

This afternoon (hey maybe this is not such a disjointed blog afterall!) I made my way into Fitzroy to visit the Centre of Contempory Photography. A HUGE thanks here to Burkie for directions. It was easy btw. Funny place to have it though, sort of on a back, well side street. It was quite interesting. I quickly skipped to the exhibition I wanted to review (yeah it was a homework thing in place of my still images class). This particular one was called In Cold Light. I spent some time there taking it all in. Admiring some, truly not ‘getting’ the two dvd things – Why am I in interactive media?! Tell me now! And scrawling notes in the back of a notebook.

I had a brief look at the Thank You Friends gallery which was really not that good. Then came back to the start and had a look at White Collar Undone which I bypassed the first time. I was observing for a little while and then I got truly disturbed at the not so subtle message through the work. No I’m not explaining it! Go to Fitzroy! (For those who can’t, go to the website and work it out yourself). I am still going to review In Cold Light and I somehow missed seeing the Industry of Working which has me a tad disappointed, I don’t know how, it’s not really that big a place.

This evening (woah is this logical progression?!) was young adults thingo. We’ve been talking about the Holy Spirit. Peter spent this week going through the Biblical talk about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the ‘Holy Spirit came upon ___’. Some interesting discussion, it’s not the worlds easiest thing for us to grasp and I need to I think work through some of the stuff in my own time.

Some valid questions raised and some not so valid. Ie. mine. Actually it was valid but I was playing a bit of the devils advocate (are you allowed to do that in a church!) We had gotten onto the subject of tongues – inevitably. I asked and I loosely paraphrase, “You are talking about tongues (personal prayer life) as being edifying, if it isn’t intellectualising it too much, how does it edify? Particularly when you don’t really know what you are saying?” I admit that this perspective comes from my overly thought tuned brain and my incessant need to understand, and although I have worked through much of this before he said something interesting. I did sort of know the answer, but he used the word “control” in relation to thought. The word control always flicks on a few warning lights for me as it is an area I do battle with fairly regularly. Interesting.

I am truly grateful for what God has done in putting me at Vineyard (church). I was so entirely ready to quit and try elsewhere and I had several people encourage me to ‘hang on for a few more weeks’. It’s such a fantastic, unique group of people. It’s so amazingly good to be where there are likemindeds (if I can steal your phrase Paul). Church is pretty good as a whole, but it helps so much more to have that group travelling, or beginning to, alongside you. Quality rings loud. I am so glad I was convinced to give it a last shot. Thank you also here to those who prayed for ‘all that church crap’. I am still fairly cynical about many things at Church but that’s not going to change regardless of where I am and until I work through a bit more. It’s good to keep a healthy questioning mind even in the most comfortable of situations. Continued prayer for well, I guess not letting my mind so entirely bash everything up that I forget to take away from it would be good as it can be an issue.

Oh and this is where I briefly diverge from the doings of the day?

As a throwback to my blahhing on about praying for your future spouse, check this post out.

My that was fun writing all this. Lets do it again some time!

I think we all have our peculiarities. This is one of mine. Sabrina (the Harrison Ford one) is one of my absolute favourite chick flicks probably second only to such things as Little Women and Pride and Prejudice. I’m not sure exactly why, as I can’t/shouldn’t really relate too much to Sabrina, ha, half the Characters in this movie do not have their heads screwed on straight, half are frustrating and half are depressed because they cannot get or don’t know what they want. I like to think I’m at least a little more sensible.

It does use beautiful language, has a coy interuption of humor at the odd moment and plays with a couple of things close to me.

The movie, despite the reputation for chick-flicks being shallow entertainment, says a lot about loneliness, a lot about being stuck and a lot about which things are really important. Perhaps this is why it appeals?