I haven’t read a lot this holiday. I re-read Cloudstreet yet again after watching the DVD series and thoroughly enjoyed seeing new angles I had previously missed. I finished ‘Falling Upwards’ by Rohr – another excellent book (see previous post) and today on the drive into Broome I finished Gilead – yes – Danelle was driving 🙂

It was the very first book I purchased when I got the kindle back in December, but I could never seem to get into it. I’d start it then lose interest, restart it and then give it up again… It is slow to ignite. But I decided to press on with it this holiday and see if it had more to offer.

It did.

But it is a book you need to stay with for at least the first half to appreciate the second. If you can get thru a fairly slow start then the rest of the book is engaging and compelling and beautiful both in its story and language.

Gilead is the name of a town in Iowa – a small town – insignificant even and that is part of the appeal of the story. It is story apart people who don’t ‘change the world’, but who live faithful and good lives, who raise their families, do their jobs and go the distance.

The narrative is essentially the writings of an elderly minister close to death recording his thoughts for his young son so he can know him after his impending death. The minister is in his 70s with a bad heart condition while his son is 7, the result of a second marriage to a much younger woman late in life. (His first wife and child died in childbirth.)

Much of the story revolves around the relationship between John Ames (the minister) and his elderly friend Boughton – also a minister and also near to death. These two have been lifelong friends in this one small town and their friendship is one that has stood the test of time. That relational dynamic alone is worth the price of the book.

The story gains steam when Boughton’s ‘prodigal son’ comes back to town. As a kid he was more than a larrikin – he was mean – and seemed to enjoy upsetting Ames. And now the old minister is convinced he has returned to town just in time to see him die and sweep his grieving widow off her feet.

The second half of the story revolves around the relationship between Ames and Jack, the attempts by both to make connection albeit for different reasons and the conclusion is both surprising and powerful.

I won’t tell more of the story as this is where it gets interesting

But it’s a great story for men especially. It tells of healthy long term male friendship, of a father’s depth of love for a son, of redemption in curious places and of finding peace in the final stages of life.

It is a reminder that your life doesn’t have to be ‘big and noticed’ for it to be significant.

I have started reading it again as I already realise there is much that I missed first time round. So if you pick it up I’m sure you will enjoy it if you give it the time to catch fire.

One day all will be restored and made new…

The sick will be well, the blind will see and old enemies will be friends…

A day is coming, maybe even sooner than we know when we will see God’s dreams for this world realised. It is more beautiful and spectacular than I can contemplate here. Its that vision that still gets me out of bed in the morning and that fuels my hope. That one day we will ‘gather by the river’…

Until then we soldier on. We keep going and we live with our brokenness and darkness. We find hope and goodness and light but we know all is not as it should be… as it could be.

‘People aren’t born broken.’

So goes the description of Dolly Pickles, wife of the larrikin, gambler Sam and the town drunk. Dolly is one of the less likable characters in Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, and she stays that way until we get to hear of her upbringing and the lack of love that formed her. When you hear Dolly’s story you begin to understand and even feel for her. She got dealt a very bad hand…

I’ve just finished watching the DVD series of Cloudstreet, possibly my favourite ever novel and I found it a beautiful story yet again. It’s a tale of family and of love and of pain and of stickability, but especially of our brokenness and the longing for healing.

Each of the characters are flawed in different ways. What’s odd is that you like them anyway – because you get to hear why they are living the way they are. They aren’t just jerks. They are people who are struggling with life – battling to overcome their failures, and the difficulties. They are doing it tough.

Oriel Lamb is a classic. A woman wounded by grief on all fronts, who watched her family die in a bushfire, then ‘lost’ her son in a near drowning. (“Fish came back – but not all of Fish came back…”) But she is determined to keep going no matter what. We hear Oriel say:

‘Strong people endure because that’s all life leaves you – that and being right.’ So she does – she endures all the pain life can throw at her and despite it making her terse and abrasive she doesn’t quit. In fact she chooses to wage war on badness in every form and she crusades against the evils that come near her world. I think it was CS Lewis who would have described her as ‘good in the worst sense of the word’. Hardly life in its fullness but it’s all she knows how to do. ..

As I reflected on the story it was the resilience of all the main characters that actually saw them find hope in the end – that and the ability to forgive. And I reckon there’s a pearl there. There were plenty of times the families ‘should’ have been torn apart and had the story been set in 21st century australia perhaps they would have gone their separate ways, because its more permissible.

But in a world where divorce was really not an option they hung in and worked it out. They even found healing for one another as they stuck it out. Their lives are at times tragic – but probably not more so than our own. That’s where Winton is so clever. He tells the story of ‘other’ screwed up people but you can’t help but read yourself in the story. Ha… you find yoursel choking back a tear not just because you feel for the characters but because you see your own murky life reflected in their pain.

The spirituality throughout the series is fuzzy and eclectic, but the final scene is a beautiful one. I forget how the novel ends but the DVD concludes with the two families – the Lambs and Pickles – enjoying a picnic at the river. Sam’s hand has healed… Everyone is enjoying being together. Two young aboriginal girls who had suicided in the house play in the river alongside the white kids, Ted (who also died) is resurrected there with his wife and kids and all is well. All is good and what you imagine it would be like in the kingdom come.

Fish takes off for a swim – the swim he has been longing for – and it is good… even though he ‘dies’. He has been waiting so long for this…

Subtly but clearly we hear the narrator tell us of ‘ the river – the beautiful the beautiful the river’ and you can’t help but see beautiful hope as the ‘saints’ gather by the river.

And some don’t seem so saintly and some really don’t deserve to enjoy the river, but then maybe that’s just how it is… Winton grew up in my own flavour of conservative evangelicalism so he knows what he’s writing even if many won’t pick it.

Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river; gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God.

And one day we will…

One day…

I am reading fewer and fewer blogs these days, but one that I keep coming back to is that of film maker and media consultant Phil Cooke. I like Phil’s feisty approach and willingness to ask hard questions.

So recently I have been reading ‘Jolt’, essentially a how to book on changing your life. I haven’t been particularly looking for a book on personal change, but I found this one valuable. Once I got past the rear cover endorsement by Joel Osteen I began to enjoy some of Phil’s insights.

The book is an easy read with plenty of stories and practical examples, but it does offer some very useful and sane insights into how a person can change a humdrum life into a meaningful one. I found his chapter on priorities helpful as I reckon we all need to know our not negotiables if we are to live a life that is true to ourselves.

I wouldn’t describe the book as a life changer as much of what Phil says is John Maxwell (or similar) repackaged. But occasionally its good to read a book like this just to provoke reflection and assessment. I don’t think there will be any massive jolts coming out of it, but I think I can say it was a decent and easy read.

Since I’ve known Mark Sayers I have been inspired and challenged by his incisive ability to analyse culture, and point to the achillees heel of the church – and more particularly my own foibles.

His first book ‘The Trouble with Paris’ did this in a broad sweeping way and his more recent book ‘The Vertical Self’ picks up from there and asks how do we live lives that actually reflect the priorities of Jesus rather than simply blending in with 21st C materialism and adding a little of Jesus on Sundays.

The basic premise of the book is that we have two potential ‘selves’, the horizontal – defined by culture, media and the forces around us calling us to conform to whatever is current and the vertical – shaped by our relationship with God and our understanding of how he sees us.

Where Mark really hits the money is that he ‘calls us out’ on our apparent belief in God and yet our actual practice of honouring our culture’s values more highly, as evidenced by our actions. He shows the incongruities of Christians who follow Jesus selectively – as long as it doesn’t impact on my actual life and looks at some of the implications of this for discipleship and our life as the church.

Its a simple and easy read, yet the content is challenging and confronting – if we choose to let it confront. Its impossible for it not to be when you live in a media saturated, self focused world. Mark presents some images of the kingdom and what that means for how we live now and he offers some practical suggestions for combating the allure of popular culture.

While Mark writes primarily for a younger generation what he says is of direct relevance to any of us immersed in western culture and trying to locate our identity in Christ.

If I had a critique it would be simply that as one who has heard Mark speak on many occasions I would say he is more a compelling communicator in person than in writing. But that is often the case. My tip – if you enjoyed the book then make sure you get to hear Mark in person. He is an unassuming, and gracious man with a great sense of humour, who will sneak under your radar every time and hit you in the guts with a big lump of 4 x2 and leave you glad that it happened.

This book has been around for a long time now, but I never bothered to read it. I did pick up the gist from friends – an amazing story of one man’s suffering and dedication to the gospel.

This week while at Janene’s I picked it up and gave it a whirl. My book selection lately has been very average and I was ready to move on from my last read ‘A Fraction of the Whole’, an Aussie book that seems to lack any real coherence and subtance and onto something a little more enjoyable.

In many ways THM was exactly what I expected. A story of a man with extreme dedication to faith and Jesus in a place where many others would simply give up. For those unfamiliar with the story, the book chronicles the life of ‘Brother Yun’ a Chinese Christian as he lived during a time of great oppression in his country. This bloke spends more time in jail and cops more beatings than you would think it is humanly possible to handle. And that is pretty much the point. The story is about suffering for the gospel as well as how God provides for us in those dark times.

It was inspiring to read of the miracles that God did in his life and yet I shared his wife’s frustration (she gets to write her reflections too) at the way he seemed to enjoy placing himself in harms way in Jesus’ name. Our own western ‘sufferings’ for the gospel simply look sick and lame alongside this man’s life and there are times when I wonder whether to be thankful for the ease of my life or to wish for a life that would call greater faith out of me.

Its a sad thing that Christianity is so much less potent in a comfortable world and so much more alive in a place of suffering.

I’m still reflecting on what I need to glean from the book. While some of it was definitely challenging there were also times I wondered if Yun had some sort of pathology that saw him constantly placing himself in these places. The flip side is that perhaps he sees the world in a whole different way to me and if I had lived in his context then maybe I’d understand.

This is a challenging book to read, but a little difficult for us to relate to as Westerners. I have been wondering why it has been so popular over here and my guess is that we all long for a more gutsy faith – at least something more than we currently experience – but I doubt any of us would really want to pay the price Yun has…

The first 3 books I have read while on holidays have been Dead Man Running, No Angel and The Barbarian Way. The first two are stories relating to Outlaw Motor Cycle Gangs (OMCGs) while the last was a call to a wild and untamed life of faith. There has been some interesting and unexpected overlap between the two types of books. More about that later…

Dead Man Running is the story of an Aussie Bandido who eventually got to a place where he couldn’t tolerate the violence and thuggery of the OMCGs and who chose to become a police informant in exchange for a new identity in the US. It’s a chilling tale about the inner workings of the gangs and the brutal manner in which people get treated, especially those who ever choose to leave.

It was given to me by my friend ‘D’ who has recently came to faith and left his own OMCG after 23 years of involvement. While he has chosen to follow Jesus he is genuinely worried for his life and for the possible repercussions from his decision.

What was equally disturbing was the incompetence of the ACC who threw him in the deep end and then gave him hopeless support, as well as the completely lame beauracratic systems that prevented any actual convictions from his work. ‘Steven Utah’ was no model citizen, but the story was as much a tale of police blundering (and corruption) as bikie thuggery.

The other book I am halfway thru is No Angel, about an undercover cop in the US who took on the job of infiltrating the Hells Angels. He is a hard nosed bloke who lives on adrenalin – why else would you do it?! What is interesting in this book is how many cops are working undercover as bikers. It seems they have ‘chapters’ everywhere and their job is simply to gather evidence that will ultimately convict these guys of the criminal activity they are involved in.

I really enjoyed the OMCG books and the insights they gave into a slice of life that isn’t normally seen by ordinary garden variety folks. An interesting reflection from both books is that many ‘outlaws’ have started as ‘outcasts’. Those who were rejected by society – for whatever reason – have subsequently chosen to live outside of society and not play by its rules. More than that they have chosen to live in revolt against the values and mores of conventional life.

The most hard core of these are known as the ‘one percenters’. If the stories I just read have validity then these are people you don’t want to mess with or get on the wrong side of.

When I get a chance to blog again I’ll offer some thoughts on Erwin McManus brilliant book ‘The Barbarian Way’ and the places of overlap between OMCGs and disciples of Jesus… No really…

To be continued… buy diovan

Yesterday we drove back from an enjoyable week down in Busselton.

Its the 3rd time we have done the January Busso trip with our friends from here in Brighton and this year we finished up with 10 different families dotted around the SU campsite.

We began these camps a few years back with one simple specific purpose – that of helping foster a greater sense of community amongst those who live in this local area. When we go at Easter we do some more ‘Jesus focused’ stuff, but January has simply been a shared holiday.

This time round we had 4 families from here in Writtle St as well as others from around the suburb. It was great to get away with our neighbours and give them a chance to see some of West Oz – as most of them are from overseas or east. I think they had a blast.

However the increased numbers did mean that some smaller groups formed and people generally hung around only those they were familiar with – a bit of a shame in the overall scheme of things and perhaps a learning that if you want to help foster interaction then fewer people is better than more.

As well as 3 great surfs at Indijup Carpark – one of my favourite breaks – I managed to get thru nearly 4 books.

The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll is a Miles Franklin award winner and is a beautifully written story of life in the suburbs. Carroll really makes the ordinary every day life sparkle and his writing is superb. Top notch and well worth buying!

Then I moved onto The Children, another Aussie novel by Charlotte Wood. This story follows the interactions in a dysfunctional family when the dad falls off a ladder and enters a comma. It is valuable for the way the roving journalist sister who seems to love spending time in Iraq and other war torn countries is forced to interact with her siblings who don’t see the world thru her eyes. All in all a decent read but lacking a bit of biff.

I am almost finished Richard Flanagan’s Unknown Terrorist – a book dedicated to David Hicks – that looks at how a person can unknowingly be implicated in a terror plan and how the media can sabotage any chance of their redemption. The Hicks dedication at the start gave the game away and for Flanagan – whose Sound of One Hand Clapping is brilliant – I thought this one to be a tad disappointing.

On a different tack I have also been reading Brian McClarens latest Finding Our Way Again and for the most part finding it really valuable. It looks at the value we can find in a variety of Christian traditions and explores how we can ‘find our way’ by including these in our lives. Its one of the most enjoyable McClaren reads for me, but I find his attempts at inclusivism a bit off-putting and unnecessary.

Any with book reviews over here are some ‘highlights’ from the 8 or 9 days we were there…

Sam loves to dance and at the annual street festival he got out there to try and win a digital camera… He might not win but he makes us laugh.

Indijup carpark is one of the best right handers in WA and at 3-4 ft its just a nice manageable size on the mal. I paddled out on the first day and my leg rope snapped after 5 mins so it meant the rest of the time was spent trying very hard not to wipeout or get caught inside. There was one stuff up that resulted in a swim but it was a very nice few days there.

The SU campsite we stay at backs onto this beach and its beautiful. Our friends from overseas are always amazed that such beautiful beaches are so common here in Oz.

We are also getting prepared for our trip around Oz and this was another good workout for the Jayco. One of the things we love about it is that the beds are very comfortable and each morning we were battling to get out of bed before 8.30am – a rarity for me these days! I guess camping is always about compromise and this seems to be the best compromise between tents and caravans.

While we were away we had Australia Day and with a pretty patriotic crew it was well and truly celebrated. Lunch was a bacon egg and sausage fry up and the rest of the day was spent on the water swimming and skiing.

One of the beauties of being a bloke is that the world is your toilet – however as we discovered – if you wee too much and too often close to your camper then the smell is not pleasant… Won’t be doing that again!

The view from the camper window gives you an idea of how close we were to the beach – 50 metres or so. A great picture to wake up to!

free librarian quest for the spear the movie download download blood crime divx

And I slot this one in for the colour of the water. Tell me that isn’t as nice as you have seen anywhere!

So… we’re back and into it…

Work started at 7 am this morning which was a bit hard to take, but we are now in countdown mode with only 11 weeks to go until April 20th which is when we drop everything and take off.

Looking forward to it!

I finished the ‘Art of the Engine Driver

divx life before her eyes the free s ance

• download runaway train free

‘ yesterday and found it a brilliant read, but not in the way you might normally expect. It was a slow moving, almost meandering type of book, but it drew you into the lives of the characters in a powerful yet deceptive way.

The story is set in one of Melbourne’s frontier suburbs in the 1950’s and explores the lives of the folks who live in that street. It is unapologetically ‘ordinary’ in its content matter yet it is superb in its writing and in the way it delves into the issues that confront suburban people at the outer edge of the city. As you read you cannot help but feel drawn into their lives and from there to reflect on your own experience of suburban life.

Here’s the publisher blurb:

The Art of the Engine Driver is the story of one evening in the lives of the residents of a new outer Melbourne suburb. As a mighty steam train leaves Spencer Street Station on its haul to Sydney‚ a family of three ? Vic‚ Rita and their son Michael are walking down their street to an engagement party. George Bedser‚ a shipbuilder from Liverpool‚ is celebrating the engagement of his daughter‚ Patsy. He has no family here and has invited the whole street to the party. Vic is an engine driver‚ looking to be like his hero Paddy Ryan and become the master of the smooth ride. As the neighbours walk to the party using a mixture of description and internal monologue ? we hear their stories and are drawn into the lives of a bully‚ a drunk‚ a restless young girl and a happy family man. On this hot summer?s night the old and the new‚ diesel and steam‚ town and country all collide and nobody is left unaffected. This is a distinctly Australian novel in the spirit of Tim Winton and Robert Drewe‚ a luminous and evocative tale of ordinary suburban lives with an extraordinary power and depth.

I really enjoyed being part of the pathos that is so often assumed to be ‘normal’ life. From the confused girl to the worka/alcoholic husband and the resigned wife. These are all people I know and somehow that makes it that much more incisive.

I have just started his latest book, The Time We Have Taken – which is the third in the trilogy (I couldn’t find the second!) and is a Miles Franklyn winner.

Its great to have discovered another Aussie author who genuinely makes me want to keep reading!