Monthly Archives: April 2006

The Pig of Steel

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I dropped the Landy in today for a service. The old girl is up to 380 000km from her birthday in 1981 and needing a bit of loving care.

For a mere $135.00 she is running nicely now, but not without her problems. The mechanic who worked on her suggested all I needed was 4 litres of petrol – to set fire to her…

Steady Eddie…

Ok… So she is full of rust, the shockies are shot, the front tyres need replacing, the rear axel seals are gone, it leaks everything it is possible to leak, the handbrake doesn’t work… and there are over 20 other items needing attention… BUT the fact is she still goes!

So I’m tossing up – sell her for $2K and buy another $8K beast, or run her into the ground. The problem is I’m not sure how far she has to go.

I reckon I might be able to get another year out of her. Then again she could cark it tomorrow.

My policy has always been to buy older cheaper cars and take a gamble on the maintenance costs. For the most part it has paid off with few really big bills hitting us over the years. I reckon this baby could roll along nicely for another 12 months if I spent $500.00, but then that’s about 1/4 of her total value…

Occasionally I dream of owning a car that was made in the same decade we are living in a dream that is currently well beyond us. Right now we have a 1989 Telstar that has been a great car and the 1981 Landy. I reckon the total value of our cars (and boat )would be less than $10K !

The great thing about the Landy is that when I am dropping the boat into the water I don’t worry about how deep we go. When smashing around the bush I don’t worry about the scratches – I’m told they will polish out but I am unlikely to ever make that discovery. I washed it once, but haven’t made a second attempt – couldn’t see the point.

If you want to buy a great old piece of Australian history then drop me a line and you can come and have a look. We can give her hiding up along the dunes and you can see what a great 4wD the old Landy is. And the best part is she’s on LPG so its actually cheaper to run than the Telstar. She’s done a heap of south west trips and been no drama (except for the time the harmonic balancer fell off in Mandurah…)

Come on… you know you want to…

I don’t want to go to heaven!!!

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Today Danelle has gone out for the day and I have Sam at home with me while I do some work.

I stopped for a bit, to wrestle with him and have some fun. I was throwing him around on the bed and generally doing blokey things when we stopped to chat.

I asked him if he knew ‘what happened on Friday’

‘God died?’

‘Close mate – Jesus actually – but God’s good. ‘

‘Do you know how he died?’

‘On da cross?’

‘Yep.’

‘And Sunday? What happened then?’

‘Don’t know…’

‘He came alive again.’

‘Oh.’ (not all that impressed)

We began discussing how Jesus died on the cross and why he died as best a 3 year old can understand. I let him know that because Jesus came back to life we would come back to life too when we die (when we are very old I added) and that he would go to heaven.

We talked some more, he told me he didn’t want to go to heaven and then he started bawling.

I know it was something to do with talking about death, but nothing stops Sam once he is howling so I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. He was on a roll. Only mention of pancakes for lunch could pull the situation back from the brink of disaster.

As he was sitting there at the bench watching me make pancakes he said ‘I don’t like to die on a cross dad…’

Aha…

‘Well if you’re a good boy then that won’t be a problem.’

Ok – I’m kidding. But hopefully he knows now that we don’t die on crosses any more.species the awakening divx movie online

Hows your church going?

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Don’t you love this question?…

I mean how do you answer that?!…

You could go for the generic ‘Um… Good’…

Or

These days I have taken to this as my answer because I am sure it is true for probably every church in the world if they are honest. I draw an imaginary normal curve in the air and say.

“Well… Some stuff is sensational! It just couldn’t be better and we are glad to be part of it. Then again some stuff is terrible! I want to pull up stumps and go sell real estate. But truth is that most stuff just hangs somewhere in between – not greatly inspiring – not horribly depressing. It seems most of life is lived in this zone.”

How my church is going depends on where my focus is on the day you ask me.

I write this because I get sick of hearing people who only focus on the stuff that is exciting and amazing and equally I get tired of listening to people only focus on the struggles.

Personally I am an optimist and tend to see the good before the bad, but in the times I have found myself frustrated it has been because I have wanted to live in a place where everything is wonderful and there is no bad.

The longer I do this stuff the more I am aware that a normal curve is a pretty good picture of life in mission. Sometimes it might get a little skewed up and some times a little skewed down, but never is all good or all bad.

So there you go. Now you know what to expect if you ask me!

The Kite Runner

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Atonement stories are always interesting and often heart rending. Last Christmas Danelle gave me a novel for a gift, but holidays ended and I never got round to reading it. On Saturday I started reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and found it absolutely brilliant.

Its not often I find myself unable to put a book down, but this one kept me reading until I finished it on the flight home yesterday. It wasn’t because it was riveting in a ‘mystery/thriller’ kind of way, but more because it captured the terrible pathos of broken humanity seeking redemption in such an incredibly ‘inhuman’ world.

Rather than me try and write my summary – here’s something I pinched from another review website:

In The Kite Runner, Amir and Hassan grow up together in Afghanistan like brothers, although they couldn’t be more different. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, a Sunni Muslim, a Pashtun, and he’s educated and reads voraciously. Hassan’s father is a servant to Amir’s father, and Hassan is a Sh’ia Muslim, a Hazara, he’s illiterate, and he has a harelip. But neither boy has a mother and they spend their boyhoods roaming the streets of Kabul together. Amir, though, continually uses his superior position to taunt or abuse Hassan, and one day hides in fear as Hassan is beaten mercilessly by bullies. The Soviet invasion of Aghanistan sends Amir’s family to the United States, but he returns there as an adult during the Taliban rule to atone for his sins to Hassan. Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan émigré living in San Francisco and his debut novel has received mostly good reviews. The Denver Post says The Kite Runner “ranks among the best-written and provocative stories of the year so far.”

If you enjoy a confronting novel that deals in ‘real life’ for a different part of the world then this one is great.

In reading novels like this it always causes that question to bubble to the surface for me again: why has my life been so privileged while others seem to draw the short straw and get born in places like Afghanistan in wartime?

I was going to ask ‘why was I born in a safe place’, but given that my home base is Belfast that doesn’t really apply. I have experienced some degree of war and religious persecution, but nothing of the order that seems to take place in middle eastern countries.

Taking my own advice

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I find myself telling people more and more people that if you’re sick then have a day off and get better rather than cruising around at half steam for 2 weeks and whining about it.

Well today I am sick. Not ludicrously, vomitously ill, but just clogged in the head and feeling ‘blech’. So I have cancelled appointments and will be spending today at home.

I had promised Ellie that I would go to school with her for a few hours this morning and she doesn’t get my reasoning so I will do that and then come home and veg.

Anyway – might have more to say when I am vegging!

Argh…

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I haven’t had a cold, flu or any kind of sickness for nearly two years. I was starting to feel like superman!

Sadly that changed over this weekend. On the way home from Kim’s place last night I started to feel my head clog and my throat itch. Then last night I spent half the night awake as my nose dripped into my throat. Today its just a stupid head cold that makes me want to laze around and sleep (partly cause I didn’t do that last night!)

So today has been very slow.

We went to the markets – a fairly ordinary experience – came home and slept. Tonight its a DVD and a snooze. That’s the beauty of holidays – nowhere to be and nothing you have to do.

We’re home tomorrow afternoon and then Monday AM I am spending the morning in Ellie’s class. We’ll see…

In Melbourne

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We’re enjoying relaxing here in Melbourne.

We went to the Forge Postcards evening on Wednesday with Neil Cole & some of our mates from Forge over here. It was top stuff – some great insights into Paul the missionary!

Yesterday after doing my own session we spent the afternoon vegging and went to see Inside Man in the evening – a pretty good action flick, but it won’t win any awards. We surfaced at about 9.30 this morning and had brekky at ‘Fabric’ cafe in Southbank – fantastic coffee and great ‘eggs benedict’.

Today we are off exploring, before heading out to Kim Hammond’s for dinner along with Al & Deb Hirsch. Its nice to have so much space in the day and (as much as we love them) no kids around.

If it wasn’t so freezing cold it’d be perfect!

15 Years…

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Ok…

We are off to Melbourne tomorrow until Sunday. It is our 15th wedding anniversary on Thursday and we thought a great celebration would be in order.

So the ‘outlaws’ have the kids and we have two tickets to chilly Melbourne.

We will be catching the 5.50am plane – which means leaving home at 4.00 (so I will miss TSK’s party!) We are having dinner with Neil Cole and the Forge Vic team tomorrow night and then going to the Postcards event. On Thursday morning I will be taking a session at the conference, sharing what we have learnt since moving to Brighton.

Apart from that it’ll be wine, woman and partying!

If you’re wondering why I am speaking at a conference while on holidays its because I will enjoy it. I no longer subscribe to the view that you can’t do anything ‘ministry related’ while on holidays – or hang out with ‘ministry people’. If that’ s what you want to do (and need to do) then do it. But as my own life has become more seamless, I have become increasingly comfortable with mixing stuff up as I want to. I think the key is that for me, I will enjoy it. It will be fun!

And yes Danelle is fine with it. She probably won’t wake until I get home!

Sometimes you need to feel it…

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Last night we met for our Upstream Community Meeting and it was my turn to lead again.

We are currently working our way thru Luke and I had chapter 22. What a chapter!

The more I read it over the week the less I wanted to ‘study’ it and the more I wanted to help people get immersed in it and feel it. This is one powerful story with so much to learn.

So here’s what we did (Again, this is for those who wonder – ‘what do you do when you get together?’)

When Darkness Reigns

1. I read the chapter with a few embellishments and additions trying to help people feel what it was like to be there. (If I had time i would have paraphrased the whole chapter and written it as I imagine it to have been.)

Settle people

Everyone else to listen and feel it. Imagine being there and allow yourself to engage with the action.

Read slowly with eyes closed.

As I read it I want you to see what scene captures your imagination and mentally bookmark it to come back to. We’re going to use our imagination to tune into the story, to explore it, to learn and listen to God.

2. Reflecting on the story

Track back to the scene that captured your attention and sit with it imagining what is happening there, how the people in that scene are feeling – the atmosphere – the tension in the air – the anxiety – whatever it is that fits with the scene.

Allow yourself to be a bystander – an onlooker – close enough to know exactly what is happening – yet discreet enough not to get entangled.

Guide: As I sit here I see” I feel”I wonder”

Sit with it for 15 mins

3. Sharing stories.

Tell your story…

As I sit here I see” I feel”I wonder”

We can all add on as we see our story fits.

4. Reflecting

What did we learn as we did that?

This is a pretty simple exercise, but for those able to use their imaginations it is powerful.