We live in ‘boomtown’ Perth where, because of the resource boom, people are wealthier than they have ever been… apparently. The average income of a West Oz bloke is $1350.00 a week.
But there are plenty for whom the ‘boom’ has only meant a further tightening of the belt.
Grendel shares a bread run with others of us around the local area and his insights here echo my own experience of the last few times.
The poor are still with us.
I reckon all of us have this ideal life that we hope to live. Its the life we believe would make us truly happy and free. The only problem is that it doesn’t exist – except in our imaginations.
When I sold my boat last week I was admitting that my ideal world didn’t exist. The world where I went fishing, surfing or diving once or twice a week simply didn’t exist. The real world did – the world where the boat sat there and took up space – and cost me money the less I used it.
My neighbours bought a boat recently – a much nicer one than I had. They also bought a family set of ski gear and a heap of dive gear. They told me they would be getting out every weekend and using it because that was what they imagined… Is it a surprise that the boat hasn’t moved for 4 weeks?
We were supposed to be going to Busso this weekend, but the weather conspired against us… So the boat will sit there a bit longer.
Yesterday two monster caravans turned up in our street. We had seen one before, but the other was new. Turns out it is very new and belongs to another of our neighbours. He told me today they will be getting away every fortnight in it. Call me a cynic, but I think they really just bought a spare room… I think they’d like to travel and they hope to travel and they will dream about it, but actually making it happen is just a bit harder than that.
I guess we all have a mental picture of the life we think we want to live but reality is that life simply doesn’t exist and even if it did we’d get bored with it.
In year12 I had to memorise some Shakespeare for my English Lit exam. One quote that sticks with me is from Henry 1st Part IV
“If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come”
How true.
If all the year were a holiday then we simply wouldn’t know the difference between fun and work.
I’m much like my friends with the caravan and the boat in that I regularly feel like there are things in this life that would make me truly happy. However a little reflection seems to easily undo the myth.
In fact to spend a lot of money on toys that rarely get used only adds to the anxiety. Now there is a loan to repay on an item we rarely use. I’m not happy. This is not my ideal life…pandora and the flying dutchman free download
Mark Sayers is back in blogdom and throwing out some juicy thoughts on gospel and culture over here.
Mark is one of those blokes I never tire listening to so if you have an interest in 21st C western culture and how we engage in it as missionaries this blog is essential reading – especially for Aussies.
And while we’re on Mark his first book is now out and there is an official booklaunch in Melbourne to celebrate it.
‘The Trouble With Paris’ Book Launch
Sunday June 15th 3:30pm – 4:30pm
@ the Red East Space: Level 1, 878 Whitehorse Rd, Box Hill
Cost $0
You can buy the book at the launch for $15.00 or you can head over to Amazon and get it there
The book gets an eclectic range of endorsements:
“These are great tools for everyone trying to find the Way, the Truth, and the Life in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death. Amid the noise and seductions of our culture, may Mark’s work help us to be both relevant and peculiar to this chaotic world. May we raise up a generation of radical nonconformists with everything that is wrong in the world, a generation that turns the world upside down so that it aligns with the Kingdom of God.”
Shane Claiborne, Author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Mark has something fresh to say about what can kill your soul and who can salvage it.
John Ortberg, Pastor and Author, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church
Mark Sayers is something of a spiritual genius who is able to both name and diagnose the angst of an entire generation caught up in the web of consumerism and hyperreality. This book is laced with the kind of wise and prophetic insights that take the reader to the heart of some of the most important issues of our age. Nothing less than a clue to the spiritual healing of a generation lies hidden in the pages of this book.
Alan Hirsch Author of The Forgotten Ways and author (with Michael Frost) of The Shaping of Things To Come. Alan is founding director of Forge Mission Training Network
Mark Sayers’ new book The Trouble with Paris is outstanding. Well informed, insightful, articulate, and down to earth are just a few thoughts that come to mind when describing this tour de force. Sayers has a unique ability to put his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture and Christianity, and he proves to be a capable guide through the thickets of that which is counterfeit and fake. Today we’re submersed in the media driven and publicity shaped hollow promises of hyperreality, which are driving us to embrace the unreal and consequently an impoverished spirituality. Reading this powerful book will help us get back to the real and lead us to a rediscovery of our spiritual bearings for the present and the future.
In working with Swiss L’Abri for over twenty years now, my take on this book
is that it’s exactly what we need to get our priorities aligned with living in God’s reality, instead of trying and failing to make it up as we go along. Hyperreality is deceptively addictive, and if we are to touch a generation of people for the sake of Christ, it is books like Sayers’ The Trouble with Paris that will help pave the way. Highly recommended.
Dr. Gregory J. Laughery, Author of Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path and teacher with L’Abri Fellowship, Switzerland
Its great to see Mark’s brilliance recognised and now in print. If you haven’t come across him before then I’d encourage you to check out both blog and book!
Danelle bought me this novel for my birthday and I finished it last night.
As anyone who has read this blog for a while would know, I am a Winton fan – possibly even an addict – and love virtually everything he has written. So when I heard this book was coming out I was frothing at the mouth with anticipation. I often feel like Winton writes what I would have written if i were a genuinely good writer. he says things like I wish I could. I feel in tune with his writing and the whole energy of his books.
However right off the bat there were a few things about Breath that knocked me a little. The first was the size of the book. At 213 pages it is hardly an epic and I knew I’d probably feel ripped off by the end. I would have just become engaged with the characters and the whole thing would end. And knowing Danelle paid $42.00 for it I was determined to get every penny worth out of it.
The second was that it was actually about surfing. This might surprise those who know my love of the surf, but what I have loved about Winton is the way the ocean and the West Ozzie landscape has formed the backdrop to his stories and in many ways has framed his writing. To move it to centre stage left me a little anxious. I guess I was wondering if the focus on surfing itself might actually be too obvious. People have often comnpared full scale surf movies to pornos – a dog-lame storyline hung around some exciting visuals. Now Winton is way too good for this, and his descriptions of surfing were as beautiful as any I have read, but I was still concerned.
Sadly it only took two evenings of slow deliberate reading to reach the final chapter. Now we have to wait another 4 years for his next novel.
Perhaps it was a self fulfilling prophecy, but my anxiety about surfing as the centrepiece had some merit. As much as the descriptions of Pikelet and Loonie’s first ventures out into the surf brought back wonderful memories, I just didn’t find the whole surf scene as potent as much of his other writing.
The guts of the story is about two young blokes who love surfing, and who find a ‘mentor’ in Sando who takes them out to surf humungous waves and stretches them to the limit. It traces the relationship between the boys the man and his wife and the twists and turns life takes in it all.
While the story itself revolves around surfing and the associated relationships and adventure, (kind of like a quality version of ‘Surfs Up’), the deeper theme of the book is powerful and worth a bit more reflection.
In essence it revolves around the desire for a life that is extraordinary in the middle of the mundaneness and blandness that forms most of our experience. The novel starts with Pikelet in his 40’s and now a paramedic attending a teenage death. While considered by some to be a suicide (hanging), Pikelet knows that it was actually accidental death by asphyxiation in search of a sexual rush. he knows because he has been there before…
Enter the idea of ‘breath’.
Much of life really is as mundane and ordinary as breathing in and out, which propels us to seek out climactic experiences – ways of encountering something more – or as Winto puts it “rebelling against the monotony of drawing breath’ . In many ways this is what the boys do as they surf bigger and bigger waves and as they seek new experiences, hyperventilating their way to longer and longer times under the ocean’s surface. Without wanting to spoil it, the story explores this theme of what ‘extraordinary’ looks like in a world where most of us need to live in the ‘ordinary’.
Loonie keeps chasing the extraordinary while Pikelet lives with his ongoing frustration with his own ordinariness. Somehow in the midst of the tumult that is Piklet’s life he learns to live with his own ‘insignificance’ while Loonie dies as a crazy feral always on the run and never content. Its probably no surprise that Pikelet finds some joy in this life as a paramedic where peak adrenalin experiences may remind him of his days in the ocean.
The metaphor of breath as that which gives life, is played out in the extremes of the sexual asphyxiation scenes and the mega hold downs in surfing and these are contrasted with the rhythmic, predictable, everydayness of simple inhaling and exhaling.
The messiness of life is contrasted with the sheer beauty of surfing. As Winton writes: “‘how strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, though nobody saw or cared.”
I think Winton actually commends the more ‘ordinary’ Pikelet who gets left behind by Sando and Loonie in their mutual pursuit of bigger adrenalin rushes. Pikelet lives where most of us live. He refuses to surf the terrifying ‘Nautilus’ with Loonie and Sando and is considered something of a coward, by them and himself. He struggles with his failure and his own demons of insecurity. he isn’t the ‘hellman’ he wishes he were.
Welcome to the world… But the fact that does he struggle is possibly his redeeming feature. He is honest and real, fragile and broken.
Loonie and Sando appear as superheros but in reality their adventures only serve to mask their own brokenness and struggle.
If anything the book is a testimony to the importance of being content with living an ordinary life. At least an honest divx sidewalks of new york ordinary life.
Maybe not my favourite Winton, but still a very good read, if you’re not easily disturbed.
This little clip is from the promo website and is very good, if only for its depictions of the south west Oz coastline.
Tim Winton reads from ‘Breath’ from Virginia on Vimeo.
Congratulations to Kaye Goldsworthy, Australia’s first female Anglican Bishop, consecrated today.
I tell you its the thin end of the wedge though. Before you know it women will be allowed to vote and who knows where it could lead…
Some believe the next step will be gay priests, but personally I am finding it hard to make the connection.
You can read more here.
Reggie McNeal reflects on the amazing growth of the church in other parts of the world and then asks – do we really omen the divx want to see God’s kingdom come in the western world. Its a good question.
He says if we do then “we need to shift from looking at the kingdom thru church lens to looking at the church thru kingdom lens.”
That strikes me as a huge key. As he goes on to say ‘this changes everything!’
This is a great video and well worth a look. He reminds us that our strategic planning and clever ideas are not as important as we sometimes like to think.
A few quotes:
“Is God most at home in the church?”
“Does God look at church stats to see how things are going? Does God really count how many showed up on Sunday?”
“God takes attendance by who’s missing.”
“A churchcentric view of the world sees ‘church’ as the destination. If we think the church is the destination then we don’t get it.”
“Why do we spend so much money on ourselves?”
“What’s the point of the people of God, if we are not the point?”
“Don’t have an evangelism strategy. Give up on that! It feels like a drive by shooting anyway. Instead have a ‘blessing’ strategy”
“Bless 3 people this week and make sure one of them doesn’t deserve it”
I thought the previous post
by this title may have drawn a little more engagement as it quite is a radical position to hold – that ‘we’ is more important than ‘me’.
That as a Christ follower I cannot with integrity, exist independent of committed Christian community. More than that however, within that community there is a healthy practice of mutual submission to one another as we seek to follow Jesus. Translation = I am willing to let others have real input into shaping my life and future and sometimes I will submit to their opinions over and above my own.
Its a dangerous place to be isn’t it?
If we genuinely allow communities like these to develop then we are really seeking a different way to live. We are consciously allowing community to be prioritised over individuality. I think I probably fear the danger of abusive community more than the danger of stupid individuality. But I still think this is the direction the gospel calls us in.
There simply is no future in a faith that tries to exist outside of committed Christian community. By that I mean more than catching up with friends for dinner. That is simply what it says – catching up with friends – and its good – but its not enough. Community needs to be much more diverse than that. Surely it will include people I don’t like and who don’t like me. Surely it will involve ongoing commitment to each other when we would rather not be involved.
I think there is both beauty and danger in the Pete Ward’s “Liquid Church’ concept. The beauty is that church is defined much less rigidly – as a verb rather than a noun even – as the gathering of believers in any form. But the problem is that it panders to the consumer in us (something Ward doesn’t see as an issue) and means that we can do church at our leisure, or with only the people we like.
In the newer expressions of church this idea is the one that concerns me the most – that we can do away with a regular ongoing commitment to one another and replace it with a convenient engagement with those we get on with at a time and frequency that works for us.
For those who tell me they are between churches or just haven’t found somewhere to suit them – I do understand – really – because there are plenty of sick churches out there – but at the same time I find myself saying ‘Oh well – looks like you’ll need to be part of a community that doesn’t suit you.’
And the individualist in us says ‘I don’t think so…’
I have occasionally pondered what I would do if Upstream folded and we were left on our own here. I imagine it would be a case of simply heading down to one of the local churches and joining them in some way. It would not likely be my first preference, but the other choice would be ‘waiting until something developed that suited me’. I would rather throw my lot in with a group of people and find a way to work together, than go it alone and wait until something more to my ‘liking’ emerged.
Fernando has some good reflections on the same topic over here entitled “is it possible to be a post-congregational baptist?” where he struggles with his own journey at the moment.
Last year when I wasn’t blogging publicly I kept my thoughts and reflections in a private blog.
I was flicking thru it tonight and came across some reflections I made after watching a doco on salmon swimming upstream. I guess you can draw your own conclusions…
Some thoughts in no particular order:
* There is a life cycle that starts with salmon swimming downstream (past other mature salmon coming up) and out into the ocean.
* The salmon have an inbuilt sense of where to head and are able to find the smallest river all the way from the ocean.
* Upon return from the ocean, in the river mouth some of the salmon get eaten by sharks because the tide is out and they can’t get past
* When they are actually able to navigate the shallow waters of the river, the bears await and many get picked off there.
* The journey upstream is an immensely difficult one with the salmon sometimes just swimming to stay still
* It is a journey that takes everything they have got in terms of energy and life
* Their intention at the end of this is to reproduce
* The bears at the waterfall are also able to pick off the salmon as they lurch themselves upwards and try to keep going
* The salmon change colour when they get past the falls and approach the mating time
* As they mate and lay their eggs they must surrender their own lives.
* They must die to themselves if new life is to occur.
Reckon there are some great lessons in that?
I sold my boat today…
A bloody big decision I can tell you, but one that had been festering for quite a while.
One of the things about boats is – if you don’t use them often enough they stuff up – so that when you do use them they cost you big $$$ to fix each time you go out.
Now this wasn’t an issue for me as a regular boatie, but in the last year my usage has dropped and my interest level has also waned. I still love the ocean, but have little desire to launch a boat. I have been hanging onto it because my friends keep urging me not to sell it – they enjoy going on it. But they don’t pay the bills…
I was recovering from the $500.00 service bill at the start of the year when the steering went (again). I had this fixed last year, but infrequent usage meant it had stiffened up. I bought a helm to replace the old unit and pulled it all apart but it wasn’t quite the right fit. I messed around, but in the end decided to give it to the local boat mechanic.
I guessed it would cost $80.00 or so given that I had done all the dismantling.
However it turned out he needed to order a different helm – an extra $220.00 and then it took him two hours rather than one… So the bill was $450.00 and I was not happy. I don’t think I was ripped off – it just ended up costing more than I expected, so after a long conversation with mechanic I walked out of the boat shop and straight away advertised it on ebay.
I actually have no drama paying for maintenance and repairs on items I use regularly, but this baby was sitting in the front yard getting used once a month and costing big $$ for the privilege. Without sounding holier than thou I was quite motivated by my beliefs on how money should be used. It just seemed all wrong to shell out money in an ongoing way for something I didn’t use – in case one day I might want to use it…
So… today was the sea test…
Given the recent spate of breakdowns I wasn’t at all convinced we would get thru unscathed, but the old beast performed admirably and the new owner was very much impressed.
I’m a crappy salesman – I tell people everything – even the stuff they wouldn’t ‘discover till later’, but we haggled a little over price and I finished up walking away pretty happy.
After 5 years of boating and $5000.00 of capital invested I walked away with $5500.00.
But let’s not talk about those maintenance expenses 🙂
As I said to Danelle, now we don’t have a boat… until I buy another one…free silent hill
