Because I like to know when I'm famous, I found one guy who linked to my blog who said: "One guy has a poofter-ish looking photo and finds it uncomfortable watching topless women dance (bit like me, really) but it turns out that he's just religious. Oh well. It's a fine line, sometimes!"

I know people don't really like the photos of me on my blog, they say they're a bit scary. But I can't see the homosexualness in them. Not that there would be any real problem if they did look gay. Who cares if I look a little camp? Not I.

Anyway, I read a bit of the guy's blog, it was interesting. I think he's a dancer. Maybe Helen has run into him at dancer dance things. They could become friends.

The whole upstairs of my house smells. I think we may have some hidden dog wee somewhere.

My Weekend (evolving into a rant about church unity)

I've sat here for a while composing the first few words of this post. The options I have floated to myself have been:

"I don't..."

"Do Do Do Do..."

"I wanna be Kate!"

But none of them seemed right.

A lot has happened lately. I was on a leader's weekend away this weekend. It was good to hang out with the youth leaders for this year, they're good fun.

I also went to the opening service for College (the old one). It was a good chance to get a bit of closure and see some of my old friends. In the service I had to pray up the front. It was a little worrying because I was praying in front of a few Sydney Anglican big wigs. Like the Bishop. I spent most of the service trying to compose the prayer so would have the theology right. Then I realised that it is silly composing your prayers too much because you aren't praying to Sydney Anglicans you're praying to God. And so I just prayed. Once I finished though, I started analysing the prayer again.

I said at the end something like "And I pray that God continues to use this College to show the world his gospel and his glory." And I had visions of people coming up to me later and saying "Tell me, what is the difference between God's glory and his gospel? Wouldn't you say that the gospel is God's glory?"

And then I would disintegrate under the stares of the some of the world's most influential conservative, Evangelical theologians.

Ok, so I might be talking them up a bit (Uncle Pete wasn't even there), but it does sound good. I have never been quizzed on my theology by a Bishop, College Dean (except for tuitional purposes) or anyone else before for that matter. Except perhaps that kid in Canberra who asked me what the one thing that made Christianity different from every other religion was. I quite like Sydney Anglicans. I am one. And while I acknowledge that we Sydney Anglicans have been known to be a bit arrogant, too conservative for our own good, or just a little forgetful of some important bits in the Bible, there is a great heart for the gospel in us. And I don't think it's all as bad as everyone makes out, we just have failings like the rest of the Christian world.

We discussed church unity in staff meeting last Monday, and I’d been thinking about it a bit lately. I’m a little sick of all the church bashing that goes on amongst Christians. We seem to ignore how important unity is, how much Jesus values it. It was the last thing he prayed for before he got arrested, but we don’t seem to remember that, we just rip into each other in the name of the right way of doing Christianity.

It’s just silly. It seems to me that we Christians spend so much time trying to get the speck out of each other’s eyes, that we don’t notice that we’re bashing Jesus around the head with the planks in our own eyes. Everyone has something to accuse someone else of. The Evangelicals accuse the Pentecostals of putting too much emphasis on their feelings and experiences, the Pentecostals say that the Evangelicals worship the Bible. The Liberal Theology people accuse the Conservatives of being bigots, the Conservatives accuse the Liberals of being soft. The Social Justice people accuse the Conservative Evangelicals of forgetting the poor, the Conservative Evangelicals accuse the Social Justice people of forgetting the gospel. The Anglicans accuse the Hillsong people of teaching prosperity doctrine, and I don’t know what the Hillsong people say about the Anglicans, I haven’t asked them.

I’m just sick of it all.

Sure there are problems. We all have problems. But why do we have to expend so much energy tearing each other down. We all love Jesus, we’re all doing our best. While I’m a Sydney Anglican I’ll do my best to keep urging us to be good teachers of the gospel, lovers of the poor and marginalised, and followers of Jesus (with all that that entails). When I join Hillsong, I’ll do the same, when I join the Uniting Church, I’ll do the same. But until then I want to do my best to encourage my brothers and sisters from other churches.

I haven’t quite figured out where we have a responsibility to encourage each other to a biblical faith. After all, we are not really defined by our denomination, but by our faith in Christ. So in some ways I do have an obligation when I see my brother or sister, of any church, doing something which I think is not in keeping with the Bible to encourage them adjust their behaviour. I do believe that we should all keep each other accountable.

I think perhaps the key is in who you talk to about problems. I shouldn’t spend my time telling all my other Anglican friends how much I don’t like the Baptists (actually I quite like the Baptists). Sometimes I should keep my mouth shut, or if I really have a problem, I should go talk to the Baptists about it. It’s hard to do that, it’s so easy to engage in the verbal bashing of other Christian groups. There’s no risk when you’re amongst friends and it makes you feel righteous. I’ve done it way too often.

If we really are to have unity, I think we need to get better on this one. I can’t think of an easy way to fix the problem, so I’ll just keep plugging away and asking others Christians to join me in doing the same.

Love Wisdom

"I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she's yours. If you spew and she bolts, then it was never meant to be." - Wanye Campbell, Wayne's World

I watched the Tennis tonight. I've never really watched the Tennis before but the Australian Open has got me. I've become a fan I think. I was so tense watching Fedora and Safin. Too tense. It should have finished so much earlier, and I had to stand in my living room (I was too nervous to sit) and make funny noises ("yiiaayaah") I'm just like my dad. I wanted Safin to win though. I think because he wasn't meant to. Good stuff.

I’m not fully in the mood to be blogging but I do want to get rid of my photo off Blogfeed. I’m not particularly attractive in that photo.

Yesterday was a fun day.

I awoke early (8am) because Jo was having her birthday celebrations here. It promised to be the annual filling of my house with all the many people that my sister loves. Sometimes she decides to hold this event in the morning. In the days preceding this morning I am often struck by this horrible fear that people will arrive early and decide to hold the party in my bedroom. I know it’s an irrational fear, but on any day I don’t like meeting people in the morning before my shower, so it makes sense that I would be worried that Jo might decide to hold the party in my room so I wake up surrounded by pancake eating strangers.

Anyway, that whole paragraph is really just to establish why I got up so early. As it happened I got up early enough to avoid the hordes of early morning revellers seeing me in pre-shower “bler”.

At around nine people started arriving and they hung around till about one, eating yoghurt, croissants, muesli, and fruit salad. They talked and laughed and generally enjoyed each other’s company.

Once they’d all dispersed Howie and I headed off to the food court for a well earned meal of dodgy food.

After an afternoon nap, it was time for Third Day.

Chris, Howie and I journeyed out to Castle Hill to see Third Day play their music.

Upon arrival at Hillsong, we decided to have a competition to see how many people were there that we knew. (I think I won by the end of the night with 16) The line to get in was massive, but happily upon arrival I got a message from Erin who was let us join her closer to the door.

We got inside in good time and managed to find ourselves sitting with a bunch of people we knew. It was happy camaraderie.

Rookie (one of the support bands) were very fun. They made us laugh, worked the crowd. Musically they were a little too Pop/Punk (I think that’s what we call “Ponk”) for my tastes. But they were good performers.

Third Day were good. They played like seasoned performers. They worked hard to make the show about Jesus, not about them. They were fun. It wasn’t an awe inspiring show, and it was turned up too loud to be a good corporate worship session. Their music was solid, although they didn’t deviate much from what you hear on the albums. I knew most of the songs they played, which may say something about the popularity of their latest album (which I don’t own). But Third Day was good, I’d be quite happy to go see them again. They kept saying “Aussie”. Things like “Come on and sing it Aussie”. No-worries, they are American, we’ll forgive them. We’ll forgive Americans lots of things.

Hair

The first thing I did this morning after I got up, the very first thing, was take a photo of myself so I could preserve my hairy state.




Today I got a hair cut. I hate hair cuts. This afternoon I was sitting in the living room and Howie woke up and came out of his room. We looked at each other, I laughed and he said something like “Bastard”. We had both gotten hair cuts on the same day. It’s annoying when this happens, we look too similar and people laugh at us. Oh well.

Marriage

I decided tonight that if I would be so excited if I married me because I've got a really good cd collection. I like almost every cd in it.

I just talked to the Dean of my college and told him that I wouldn't be continuing with them this year. I didn't like doing that, I felt like I was breaking up. He said he understood and he thought I was making the right choice if I'm going to get to work on my degree. But it is very sad.

So may I say publicly that Youthworks College is fantastic. They teach good Bible, they give you good foundations for a life in ministry, they love their students and they love God. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Youthworks, not just because they made such as huge impact on my knowledge of the Bible, and how to teach it, but because it is a place that genuinely cares and wants the best for you. Go them!

I just shaved of my month old beard. I have now learnt that it takes a long time to kill a beard when all you have is a disposable razor. I went through one and a half of them. Now I look 16.

Happy Birthday to Jo my fabulous sister!

Hey Now, Hey Now, Don't Dream it's Over

My holidays are almost over. Tomorrow it's back to work.

The sad bit is that I don't get to sleep in anymore, I don't get to do whatever I want with my days and I don't get to go traveling all over the nation.

The happy bit is that I really like my work and I'm looking forward to this year and doing ministry, hanging out with people and being silly in the office. I'm am looking forward to going back. If only I could work and be on holidays at the same time.

Today was a quiet day. I woke up late than had a really late breakfast with Jo.

Tonight I went to church with Chris. It was a good experience. I like visiting other churches. They were a friendly bunch and the pastor seemed like a good guy. It seemed a little like Hillsong Lite. It was a like a big penty church without the bigness. I had fun.

I went home with Chris and Chris (the housemate) and hung at their house. It was good to see Chris. He's a good chap.

And that's all I have to say.

Inspiring Church Sign Quote of the Week

"Today is the tomorrow you looked forward to yesterday."
Found outside a Church in Katoomba

What can I say?...

Freedom

I just read Bush's inaugural speech.

It was a very good speech. He has good writers. It sounded like a sermon. There were lots of biblical illusions in there. I would have enjoyed giving that speech.

I found it hard to read though and not feel a sense of irony in what he was saying.

“We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”

I wonder how those in Guantanamo Bay feel about their chains. I wonder how many Iraqis still feel that they are living at the mercy of a bully.

“Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling.”

Again Iraq seems to mock this statement as she continues in violence, and so many oppose (both violently and peaceful) its upcoming elections. Perhaps they want the right to vote, but do they want it now, and at this price?

I found the speech worrying because it seems to be proclaiming America’s God-given right to impose freedom on the rest of the world. How can you enforce freedom anyway? Isn’t that oxymoronic? I know Bush said people must chose it, but do they chose freedom before or after America invades their country?

Perhaps freedom, at least political freedom, shouldn’t be the primary goal of every society anyway. Perhaps a quality of life, and a higher standard of living should be first on the agenda. Perhaps education, clean water, the irradication of preventable deseases should be America’s highest aim in its foreign policy. Perhaps many of the people in the world would give up their rights to vote in a second if it meant they could keep their children alive and free from a life of fear.

Perhaps America could achieve more for freedom, true freedom, by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless and healing the sick, than by enforcing democracy through guns and bombs. When they do that, how much more leverage will they have to free the oppressed?

John Stott once wrote (while discussing nuclear war, although I think it is still relevant in this context): “In the end, then, we have to decide which blessing we value the more: social freedom, though at the cost of losing our moral integrity…or moral integrity as a nation, though at the cost of losing our social freedom…If this might one day be the option before us, I hope we should know which to choose. It would be better to suffer physical defeat than moral defeat; better to loose freedom of speech, of assembly, even of religion, than freedom of concience before God. For in his sight integrity is even yet more valuable than liberty.” (New Issues Facing Christians Today, 1999)

I think that America, and we her allies, no longer have the moral victory, we lost it long ago, and continue to loose it. It seems we are erroding our integrity daily.

Don’t hear me saying that I don’t value democracy. I do, and always will. I love the freedom I have in this country, I love that I can stand up for what I believe in. I love that I can vote for which ever person I want to. But I think that democracy is not the starting point of freedom, but an end point. And, as Stott said, ultimate freedom will never be found in a society, but in our hearts, before God.

I love catching express trains at night. I love being in a brightly lit carriage, as it races through stations. I love the way the lights flash past, and you see glimpses of suburbs, and then you're in the dark again. I like the way you can rush through so many people's lives, the places of their realities, and no body knows that you were there, just a loud noise, some rushing lights and you're gone again.

I spent most of the day on my own today.

I went to the city to wander around. There was nothing on at the right time at the cinemas so I meandered slowly towards the Botanical Gardens. I thought it might be nice to sit in the shade and read, it was such a stunning day.

I got distracted by the State Library. I’ve never properly explored the State Library. Or in fact figured out how it works, but it looks fun. I decided today wasn’t the day to try and understand it, to make sense of its marble floors and intimidating bookshelves, so I looked at the photographic exhibition upstairs. That was very interesting.

By the time I made it to the Botanical Gardens the sun had disappeared never to return. While I had planned to read my book, I found that I also learnt about why there are no roses in the Rose Garden and which are the best grasses for playing fields and to survive drought. If you want to keep Buffalo Grass healthy you must keep it at least 50mm in length.

I finally found a bench and read for an hour or so.

When the sky started to look threateningly grey and turgid, I decided to head for home. I caught a train from Town Hall back to Hornsby. In Hornsby I ate some dinner and read my book in the Library.

I only left to break my day of solitary hermitness to watch Alexander with David. Boring. Not David, the film. It was three hours of Colin Farrell staring longingly into the eyes of every waxed legged soldier in his army. Anthony Hopkin’s character just droned on and on and on. Even the fighting was dull. I didn’t care about any of the characters, just how much colder it was getting outside for my walk home with every extra, excruciating, minute of the film.

Now, thankfully, I am home, and I no longer have to watch Colin Farrell stare at anyone, or hear Anthony extol the greatness of Alexander’s golden, deity inherited locks or whatever it is he was nattering about.

Tomorrow I head for the hills, I’m going to Katoomba.

These days when I pray I usually start by saying one of two things. Either "Thank you God that you are good" or "Here I am Lord, I don't understand". I guess that's because those are two constants I can rely on.

These days have been pretty quiet.

Yesterday I decided to try and get my life in order and figure out what I will do with all the time that I’m not working this year. I rung a Bible college, looked up jobs and researched volunteer positions. I then went to the Library and read the paper.

I bumped into Jem after the Library and hung out with her for a bit. At night I went to Commy Dinner. A nice day, nothing spectacular, but very pleasant.

Today I went to visit the Bible College to talk to people and see if I can start my Bachelor or Theology this year. I figured that could fill in the idle hours. The problem is that if I do that I’ll probably have to leave my current college. That would be sad because I love my college, nice people, good teaching, friendly staff. Oh well, I guess I’ll have that figured out by the end of the week.

Tonight we had our first pub of 2005. Quiet, but a nice little bit of sitting around.

I should go to bed soon, but I’m not sure I want to. I wish there was something on TV. Foxtel costs too much. It just seems to be a black box that sits on top of my TV to give me the option to give away hours of my life watching noisy, colourful nothing. Then I just feel depressed when I turn it off.

DVDs are good though.

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 the other night. It was interesting but not all that good. Michael Moore’s biased reporting made me switch off and not listen to any of what he was saying. I came out thinking no less of George W than I did before.

And all the George W shots that were taken out of context reminded me that, whatever I think of George’s policy, I think he’s a funny guy. Not someone to laugh at, but he can actually make a joke, and joke about himself. If nothing else, I admire that about him.

I watched The Village the night after. That was good. I heard that was a comment on America following September 11. If that is true, it was much better at making me think than Fahrenheit 9/11 was. It was interesting to consider a society that used fear as a legitimate tool to maintain its good ideals. I wish I got to listen to the directors commentary on that one.

I also watched the second series of The Office. That was as brilliant and dreadful as the first series. It really is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time, and it is probably the most painful show I have watched. The people are just so pathetic. And when you watch them and see your own foibles in there, it’s even worse. I don’t think there will be a third series but I wish there was, they really are top quality television.

The Office is on Foxtel I think, I’ll give Foxtel that.

I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow…

I spent almost all day on my couch, sleeping, reading, praying, watching and eating. It was marvelous.

Well I’m home now. I’ve come a long way baby. 4,826kms in the van to be precise. Today we drove about 400kms.

I’m not sure what to say. I wouldn’t mind going to bed at some stage, reading my book, perhaps watching a DVD. Who knows?

I could write about the past few days, I may write about the past few days. We’ll see how this post pans out.

I had a great time on our road trip. The Great Lower Quarter of Australia Road Trip was a stunning success. Being back in Sydney is a little strange, I’m not sure I want to be here. I don’t want to have to deal with Sydney life, I want to be away when all I have to worry about is what to do that day, or how far to the next driver change over and petrol refill. In Sydney I have to sort things out, sort my life out, organise my year, become a better person, on the road I can just stare out the window.

Melbourne was tops. I didn’t really do much. After breakfast in the City (and a dodgy night in the F1), I caught a tram to the city and sat by the Yarra reading. I am reading The Purpose Driven Life. I never really planned to read it, but it was on the shelf and I wanted some structure to my God contemplation. It’s not bad. I’m a few days behind. I wasn’t very good at having quiet times on this trip. It’s hard to find time alone when you’re always travelling with 6 or 7 other people. Oh well I’ll catch up. I’m only three days behind.

At night we went to Soul Survivor for the night. It was good. Hugh Evans spoke and spoke well. He was honest and passionate. It was good to see how much he loves God, and how much he is intent on searching God out.

It was fun to catch up with the church crew. They’re a lovely bunch. I went to say “Good bye” to a bunch of them and told them to drive home safely because if they died driving home I wasn’t going to their funeral because I’m on holidays. It was a joke but it sounded pretty dodgy. I meant nothing of the sort and drove home kicking myself, because it wasn’t a funny joke and just sounded, um, bad, Scrooge-ish?. Oh well. We all say stupid things some times. My stupid mouth…

Over the past two days we drove home from Melbourne. It was a much quieter journey, there were only 7 of us (Jo left us in Melbourne) and Liz was sick. I think we were tired too. Last night in Genoa (just near the Victoria/NSW border) we realised both cars were almost out of petrol. Genoa had nothing open that would give us anything resembling petrol, and we didn’t have enough to make it to Eden the next town up. We had sudden terrifying thoughts of getting stuck alone in our cars in the wilderness having to have Breakfast Club-type conversations where we all shared our deepest secrets while we waited for the NRMA. So, fuelled by our fear of intimacy, we headed off down some mostly ignored road hoping to make it to a remote costal town that we found hiding on the map in the hope of finding petrol. We arrived in this town and found had a surprisingly large amount of people in it. I wondered where they all came from, and if they ever left. It felt a little like we were explorers like Captain Cook in dire need of water and had discovered an island somewhere in the vast, empty ocean with a colony of natives no-one had ever heard of before, who were most probably cannibals.

As we drove into town it felt as if everyone was staring at us. We drove past a long abandoned petrol pump on the way in, and hoped that wasn’t the only one. There was an Ampol, but that was all locked up for the night. In fact every petrol station was closed.

We were saved from a night spent in our petrol free cars warding off the hungry locals, by the owner of the Shell, who was cutting lettuce in his yard adjoining the station. He kindly opened his pumps again so we could fill our cars up. He said he didn’t ever do this but he did it for us because we’re tourists. He told us to be quick otherwise the locals might notice and then they’d want a piece of the action. At the time I thought he was talking about after-hours petrol but on reflection it was more likely he was protecting us from their appetites.

We spent last night in Bega. The people who live there are very friendly. I’d recommend the Pizza shop on the main street to anyone. Mainly because they have the friendliest pizza shop owner I have ever met.

Today we drove and thought of Sydney. It really is a lovely place this. The whole trip was pretty un-eventful (although I did pick up my first ever hitch hiker, a lovely Czech girl called Mishalandavlvofvaoiviavfkvkvich). We ate lunch in Ulladulla, perhaps not the classiest little seaside town in Australia, but certainly not lacking any tacky charm. It had what we needed (a parking spot, toilet and food), except for my friend James who has gone AWOL. Shame. I’m sure he’ll turn up. At least, I’m sure he’ll turn on his mobile again.

We drove into Sydney at around 3:30pm, with a cheer and a smile. I started to feel like I was back home as I drove to the city at the speed limit and everyone else was driving faster than me. In the rest of Australia I’m a bit of a hoon. I’ve noticed that in most of the places we’ve been people stay about 10kms under the speed limit, in Sydney everyone stays about 10 over. I guess we all balance each other out.

So now I’ve seen more of Australia. I like this country, and I like these people, even the cannibals and the people from Dandenong. I think next time I’d like to drive to Perth. I wonder if the van would cope.