Category: <span>Relationships</span>

Published January 2, 2009 by

Idealutions, resolutions or hopeings

It is entirely up to me to eventually work out which are feasible, but it is now 2009 and there are, however ridiculous: resolutions or I could term them idealutions, at least that way there is leeway in sidestepping the mark.

2009 came in moderation, not with a bang. There were no fireworks, but we had sparklers, music, champagne, a marquee and a few friends. I most enjoyed the early morning introduction to ’09. First up after a less than perfect sleep in a tent on less than flat ground, but there was an eggshell sky and sun, a silent field and moment of the same before it went to the crapper and the clouds and we got some rain.

The news continues to talk about 2008 as a non-highlight and begs hope out of the new year. I am inclined to disagree with the former statement however the word hope is a sweet one that should live on.

In a moment of introspection (aka. now) here are my highlights of the past and hopes for the present (with a few true aspirations and undoubtedly top shelf items that I won’t really reach, being short and all).

Highlights

  • January 5th I married my best friend. And consequently spent the rest of the year married to him (to be continued…). It’s been interesting and fun! Needless to say, I really love being married and I really love Geoff! It’s certainly been a wildly contrasting year in regard to all previous years.
  • Uni, second semester proved full of inspiring people especially in regards to tutors. I finally felt like I was pulling my weight effectively and got to try things like branding and animation. I have come to the realisation that I mightn’t fit the typical traditional stereotype of ‘graphic designer’ but can work from my interests and strengths and hopefully can levy more out of the web stuff and marry it with my ‘designish eye’.
  • Frustration. It seems a weird choice to include it here, but God has increased my frustration with how I live as a Christian and how church can/could operate. It hasn’t gotten too far but there is room for movement and there needs to be room for movement. Some of this is tied up with finishing up with leading youth and being dumped in the deepend of doing nothing.
  • And there are the miscellaneous things like: growing friendships with people like Beth and Bri, marvelous restaurants, some great movies  and books and some less than typical experiences – like seeing Wicked.

Un-Highlights

  • A bodgy start to the uni year with some super low motivation levels in regard to particular subjects.
  • Less investment in certain friendships and not because of want, but because I am a lazy and…
  • Feeling so busy and unorganised

Idealutions, resolutions and hopeings

  • A slower year, where priorities become priorities and the trivial things are thrown out with the bathwater
  • Invested time and head space to enjoy and get the most out of uni
  • To be more organised at home
  • Eat better, cook nicer food – to be bothered
  • Get more fit
  • To continue to investigate, read more about, and live out some of the results of the aforementioned frustration
  • More time for God…. listen more, write more
  • Be less critical of things like traditional church and learn to love what is good and do differently instead of simply getting annoyed.
  • Be a part of something that explores doing Church differently, try some things!
  • To freelance for a while and to do well at it in terms of being self-disciplined and gain useful experience
  • Put together a portfolio, get a design job
  • More head in the blog. More faithful writing, less crap. Perhaps make something more of it.
  • Release a WordPress Theme (and yes it is in production!)
  • Learn to use the Wacom properly and work on practicing drawing/illustration etc.
  • Learn more about Flash
  • Learn more about Illustrator
  • Learn some of the little extra things about webdesign and standards that I might otherwise ignore.
  • Get my head around Javascript/PHP etc..
  • Continue to work on building a really good marriage and be better at loving Geoff
  • Be better at maintaining and developing friendships
  • Invest in things like Soul Survivor etc.
  • Keep track of the money I spend
  • Spend less money
  • Own less, give more
  • Greater confidence and willingness to try things (especially re. design)
  • Days of doing different things, like taking my camera out somewhere foreign or less than usual
  • Finish uni, and do well in my final year
  • Righteousness and peace… Isaiah 32, Romans 14

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Published December 22, 2008 by

Market Culture

proteaThis evening I took a short road trip or rather a longish drive with some of my family to visit the twilight market at St Andrews – which is up toward Kangaroo Ground where I spent a good bit of my ‘in Australia’ childhood.

The market is very much along the hippie/sustainability lines and very communal. Food stalls, chai tents, fishermans pants, live music, drums etc.

I wandered around and came to the conclusion that many people must simply know each other through schools, perhaps the market (which is weekly but usually early Saturday morning), or just in living locally. Yet what was more interesting was that this ‘vibe’ (if I can call it that) itself induced community. A poor example was that I had a brief chat with a guy while waiting forever for food after he stood in so his daughter didn’t have to wait so long. But, so much chatting – and you could see that conversations were going further than the simple – hi, hello.

I’m interested now to passively investigate if community begets community. And if established community is plonked in a less formal setting (which is not really an idiosyncrasy in itself) if it evolves into something more… and if then, what does that mean for  the Kingdom of God or dare I say it, doing Church?

I bought some yellow proteas.

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Published November 27, 2008 by

This Christmas… Advent Conspiracy

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Published July 13, 2008 by

Mission is not for pansies

My fingers are not as fluent as they are with a pen as they are with a keyboard so here is my confession that my journal writing was not so up to scratch as I would have liked while being away. In a small way my brain stalled. I will share what I did wind up writing, but the perpetual blow by blow will present itself in the group journal – to which I contributed to on Day 11. Trivial information for you, but I do not have access to that particular entry until the rest of the crew return, so there will be an intentional gap alongside the many unintentional.

What I do want to recount tonight is not the blow by blow nor the vague emotion based recap of revisiting where I grew up but some thoughts on mission. Despite my desire for the experience of a short-term mission (after seeing so many of them trepass ‘my country’), I don’t really feel like I got one. We lugged a lot of boxes, waited around a whole deal, handed out flyers and generally seemed to do a whole heap of menial tasks – yes it was useful and intended and part of being on the trip…

Tonight I had a read of The Pink Elephant in the Missional Room and had to agree on the lack of courage displayed in the act of my generation sharing ‘their faith’. My biggest fear or hurdle or perhaps ‘bother’ was something I didn’t end up actually doing. As part of preparation for the trip we were asked to work out how we would share what God has done in our lives – in a way that was vaguely culturally appropriate, should we have to share it in the Solomons. And I got stuck in pinning it down. And this is a position that I’m not exactly comfortable in being in, because opportunities can launch themselves at you very unexpectedly. It personally disturbs me that I don’t really know how to talk specifically about God in my life.

While away, we had a ‘day off’ snorkeling down at an old haunt, Bonegi Beach. My sister Laura managed to get into a conversation with a western (aka. white) diver and they wound up having an indepth chat about Christianity and belief…

Although God can use our mouths and willingness when approached, I don’t think that we too often go searching for those conversations. I know I pretty much wait for them to drop into my lap, at most I might pray for an opportunity.

When it comes to ‘mission’ – and by that I mean, talking about Jesus, we are cowards.

bevkumasiThis is Beverly Kumasi. She doesn’t ask permission to be a Christian.

On the outside she looks like a fairly average Solomon Island, Malaitan woman. She has five kids. Her husband is a pastor. We used to play with their girls, Sherry and Queenie.

On the other hand Bev is an a-typical Solomons woman. She is outspoken, her wantoks (relatives) extend far beyond her blood. She is mother to many, pastors her own church, advocates for HIV education – telling UNICEF to take their condoms to hell* (HIV is a recent occurrence in the Solomons and will soon become a huge problem, there’s been a jump from 3-300 affected by AIDS in the past few years), and she somehow raises enough money a year to send one of her ‘street kids’ to Bible School, she wants to build a youth centre.

Bev tells this story of two local gangs based on islands in Lunga river, based just outside Honiara. Gangs like these formed after the ethnic conflict that began back in early 2000. She went down to this ostracised group of young men and asked to speak to them. The gang leader threatened to shoot her and she retorted with something like, “A man who shoots a woman is a woman forever”. He let her approach. She hugged him, accepted him and shared Jesus with him. Those same Lunga gangs no longer exist.

She is entirely legitimate. She talks about the Kingdom of God as if it runs through her blood. She seeks out people to love and to share Jesus with and her home. She expresses her frustration at churches who sit singing and never go and ‘do the work of the gospel’.

This is courage and makes the rest of us looks like pansies.

Mission is not for pansies. Yet sometimes that’s all we’ve got to work with – ourselves. Let us at least be willing.

*In relation to their request for her to distribute them to some of the young prositutes she helps rehabilitate.

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Published March 30, 2008 by

No rules

Writing a post now is some kind of evil-forced reflection on the past week.

I have been up at Soul Survivor for it’s entirety, bar the last afternoon/evening and one night session hiatus for a 21st. This is the third year in a row – I think. It could be the fourth. It’s always interesting seeing what goes on. God generally uses it as a grand old chance to mess wildly with my head. Last year’s highlight was found in leaving a ‘main session’ going off on a walk and having God speak pretty clearly to me after catching my attention with possibly the most mind blowing moon ever (the same one that frequents your night sky actually). Nothing so gobsmackingly obvious and beautiful naturalistically this year.

Here’s the bare honest truth. I love Soul Survivor for the chance to step out of my ‘daily patterns’, I love the people, I love watching my youth kids pray for eachother, rally around others (and they around them). I love watching people change and grow. But I pretty much spend the whole time, every time frustrated in trying to work out what the hell is going on. Not so much in a bad way – it’s hard to explain. I guess I have this enormous dissatisfaction at the moment with the type of stock standard basic life that I live and although I know, I know there is stuff I do that is good and hey stuff that even is a bit on about bringing about God’s kingdom – I struggle to see it. And even when I do, I don’t think that I’m quite on the right track.

My (kinda) friend Steve Said ran some seminars about the Kingdom of God and if you ever get the chance to hear him do. I’m sure he’d be happy to assist busting some misconceptions. I’ve heard him before, but I needed to hear it again. The VERY short version:

The kingdom of God and following Jesus is not about what you eat – it’s not about prescribed rules at all.

“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” – Romans 14:17

And before you approach that directly, go and blow the brains out of your standard understanding of righteousness, justice, peace and joy. Erm… take some time and learn Greek and have conversations with lots of wise people or shortcut by going and buying the recordings off the seminars.

Prescribed rules are easier but I don’t think they’re what I want.

(and that my friends is why I’m going to add this stupid little mid-post footnote – calling you my friends – and saying that I think you’re a tool if you think you can go to church on Sunday, lead a “moral” little life, don’t swear and think that you’re following Jesus. Harsh? Hey well I need to hear some of it too and I really wanted to use a different word than tool btw… but I figure I’d better keep this vaguely respectable.)

The other thing I was reminded about was the word Vocare (oh yes, remember that thing I started and pulled out of due to wedding insanity?)

Vocare (latin) basically is on about vocation – where your deepest passion meets a great need in the world. I’d really like to be living my vocation, vocare.

If someone could tell me what my deepest passion is, I’d be greatly obliged.

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