I did forget to mention that I’d be away for the weekend up in Sydney at Geoff’s cousin’s wedding. Anyhoo. I am back after a lovely time away, doing everything from walking Manly in a stunning 28 degrees, Tepenyaki (Japanese where they throw food at you) and having a cocktail in an Ice bar. Today I have spent 10 hours in the car only to watch the Rugby League Grand Final at the end of it – unlike last time, which nearly ended in disaster, I actually enjoyed myself.

Life

Amy Tan is an absolute genius.

I’m currently reading the Opposite of Fate which is somewhat a memoir, somewhat a collection of writings. I would have read maybe two or three of her other books, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife and one other. This the best -if I can impose my opinion- because of its honesty and candidacy.

I think of writing, she is my inspiration, and would be of fiction should I ever write anything anywhere else. I find it hard to write fiction, I can write from life – somewhat shabbily at times – but it is writing. Life is kind of the point though, Tan takes her observation and experience and winds it into something softly grander. I hope to do the same in my own way, although I doubt that I’ll ever sell books off it.

Blogging Words

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I’m easy to pick. This was my family’s blue truck (twin-cab) in the Solomons you don’t wear seat belts for the most part, you also don’t ever go that fast due to excessively pot-holed roads. We spent many car trips like this in the back, or standing up and yes, my little sister Hannah could only have been no more than five.

Laura (in front of me) and our friend Claire (back left) spent a good few hours one day sitting on blowup mats, bouncing around, getting quite sore and cloud gazing on a trip back from Claire’s village. .

This was good truck -it carried everything from: dirt, little arikwuo’s (white people) to a funeral party inclusive of body. It was full of rust then and full of memories now. I honestly think that is the most exciting vehicle my family has ever owned, we progressed naturally from there to your typical boring four child vehicle – the Tarago.

Life

glasses.jpgI like sermons. I like them better than the singing part of church for the most part. My mind likes to work and I tend to wind up discovering or even just seeing a bit more of God through exploring ideas.

This week Kevin kicked off his second sermon on prayer. I missed the first one… I could go and listen to it here, but that would require some more time.

He took us through the Lords Prayer. Now I’ve heard this done before, but for the sake of letting it stick (and I do appreciate repetition occasionally) here it is in outline form with some of my scrawlings.

Praying the Lords Prayer

Our Father in Heaven (where and who) – A prayer of focus and relationship

Hallowed (ascribe worth to/holy) be Your name – A prayer of worship

Your Kingdom come – A prayer of purpose

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven – A prayer of surrender

Give us today our daily bread – a prayer of request (dependence)

Forgive us our sins (us/me collective?) – a prayer of confession

As we also forgive anyone who sins against us – a prayer of reconciliation

And lead us not into temptation – a prayer of protection

But deliver us from the evil one – a prayer of deliverance

For yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory – a prayer of confidence

The last bit stuck out to me the most. The reminder that God is God is an interesting thing in prayer – most of the time I think prayer is fantastic and I really like it, however there are also times where its like you are sitting there talking to yourself or your conscience and wondering if your just praying out of this intrinsic unexplainable desire/need to, and that’s sort of it. I know not the ins and hows of God’s prayer listening/answering system but it’s a curious thing that points strongly towards humanity and our utter inability to do anything that we can’t. Beyond the obvious trust element: faith/belief, this confidence thing is a direct correlation with our dependence – which could be why lots of people don’t recognise God. If God is so insanely good, it clearly points to us being far less. We’d all like to be top dog in some form or other however much we deny our pride.

This to me feels relatively simplistic in theory and yet I don’t think we go about living very well.

The other night I watched Blood Diamond, it’s fairly full on. As with movies such as Hotel Rwanda you come away with this monster of a hole inside because you cannot do much, if anything at all about situations like those shown. It hit me strongly.

And we (collective) have the western gall to go about being frustrated at something as minor as it raining on our washing.

We really do miss the bigger picture sometimes.

In our confidence, let us pray our confession, in our confession let us recognise our dependence, in this reconciliation and surrender, protection for His and our joint purpose that stems from worship and relationship with the one who has got this kingdom thing sorted through his goodness and wisdom.

We need some perspective.

apologies I cannot remember the image source

Christianity Movies

Today marks the submission of the al-la crappiest assignment ever.

To be fair, my concepts were good but I did not leave enough room for application. My city poster was decidedly unfinished and I am relatively disgusted with myself because I HATE handing in anything half baked. Oh I tried, believe me, but the whole thing wasn’t working and I went about trying to fix it this morning. Bad move.

Will I pass it? I think I might, simply because a good percentage of the class hadn’t recognised that it was due today, but as my tutor informed me (and really, she is really nice and I like her and she’s great because she challenges us), “It’s not really ‘A’ material.” I did have a dream the other night about her telling me off for how disorganised I am, but that’s not to hold against her at all. This one is all my fault.

Time to employ some more time in the uni arena.

Uni