This week

God was very kind to us this week and - despite my anxieties! - we had a smooth transition back into school and preschool. We're thrilled with the teacher Jacob has been given and Rebecca is back with her teacher from last year (whom she loves). Elsie was delighted to have two days this week where she had me to herself for a fair proportion of the day - and I certainly enjoyed her company too.

Here's a photo taken on Rebecca's first day back at preschool. Don't they look like an old married couple? Very sweet.

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Ten years

It's our 1oth anniversary today. Here's photo of what we looked like back last century when we got married (haven't changed a bit have we?).

Roses should be chosen for smell
(for Dave, on our 10th wedding anniversary)

Roses should be chosen for smell:

not the sugar-pink smell of generic romance;

not the faint stale smell of petrol,
still lingering on the petals from the servo
where they were bought as an afterthought
on the way home;

not the whiff of guilt
seeping through their weak attempts
to propitiate...

No: roses should smell of
whispered conversations in the dark,
long after the lights have been turned out;

walks to and fro between home and the train station,
framing the day's labours;

newsprint and coffee on a Saturday morning;

a flickering screen
watched with knotted fingers,
waiting for a glimpse of a heartbeat;

summer nights spent
desperately passing a screaming newborn
back and forth, back and forth
in time with the tennis on the TV.

Roses should smell of a
first date
first kiss
first flat
first loss

and every second and third and fourth,
from then till now,
encoded in the scent of each petal.

(PS. Dave's flowers never smell of petrol or guilt!)

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Biblical theology, according to Rebecca

Here's a picture that Rebecca drew for my mum yesterday, giving her an overview of the Bible. As you can see, we have a little work to do on chronology, but I do like centrality of Jesus and 'good news' in her view of the Bible! It's touching how significant the story of Jairus' daughter is for a little girl.

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Book of the Week: 'My Place'

This week, inspired by an Australia day post on my dad's literacy blog, I dug out our copy of My Place, by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins. (Because it is a fairly lengthy picture book and Dave usually reads the older two 'chapter books' at night, it's been getting overlooked).

The book was written when I was a child (in 1988 - our Bicentennial year). It looks at the history of one piece of land (in the inner-city of Sydney), through the eyes of a different child in each generation. It starts in 1988, and concludes with a young Aboriginal girl called Barangaroo. Each child talks about the place where he or she lives as well as family, friends, and lifestyle. You get an insight into how the place changes over the generations in the way the story is told. On each page, a map (supposed to be drawn by the child) is drawn. Here's an example:

Rebecca and Jacob were enthralled. They pored over each of the pages with Dave, looking for details on the maps, working out the sequence of events and who was related to whom through the generations. We only got through the first half on Monday night, but Jacob was desperate to find out how it finished and continued to read it on his own in bed - running out to tell us exciting developments!

The story is very effective. It captures kids' imaginations and gives them a sense of how history unfolds and how different their life is from the lives of children who lived in past generations. It also educates them about the impact European presence has had on the land and on the Aboriginal people who inhabited it before us.

We've all become so interested in this book that Dave and I decided to try and work out exactly where in Sydney the book was set. Dave had a hunch it was St Peters, and when we followed it up we discovered that St Peters Church, Cooks River have a historical society that does free walking tours based on the book periodically. There aren't any scheduled this year yet, but I've contacted them, and they are prepared to do one if I can get a group of 10 together. So, if you are interested, just email me, and we can form a group. I think it would be really fun!!

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Back to School

For most school kids in NSW, today is the last day of their summer holidays.

As I've watched the 'return to school' date in my diary get closer, I've started to feel a little anxious again about school this year. I have no real earthly reason to worry. Jacob had a great year at school last year and Dave and I are very happy with the school, but it's all the 'unknown' factors about this year that have been troubling me.

Last week, I made a concerted effort to pray about this. I've asked specifically that he will get a teacher that understands him and that he'll have a friend in his class - the usual things that a mother wants for her child. But I've also asked God to do what is best for Jacob, knowing that might not be what I think is best. I've become more conscious as I've prayed that what is even more important than a happy year at school is that he will grow in godliness - which may even mean an unhappy year at school!

But as well as thinking about this, as I've been praying I've found that I've been reminded of how God is Sovereign in the details of our lives. I have no idea who Jacob's teacher will be this year - but God does. I don't know which kids will be in his class - but God does. And God's sovereignty over the details revolves around his plans at the centre, which are not about the smoothness of my life but the glory of his Son. At the end of the day, the comfort of God's sovereignty is not the promise that Jacob will get the best teacher, and all his friends in his class, and everything will work out the way I plan it. The comfort of God's sovereignty is that everything will work out the way God has planned it, and will be for the glory of the Lord Jesus.

Pic by Avalore on flickr.

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Australia Day post number 2

Last year I wrote a brief post about Paul Kelly's song "Sydney from a 727" in honour of Australia Day. This year, I thought I'd stay with Paul Kelly and this beautiful seven minute piece of musical jingoism. Here's hoping that "in the hour of greatest slaughter, the Great Avenger is being born"!

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Poetry Monday: Australia Day

It's Australia Day today, so in honour of the day I thought I'd post A.D. Hope's Australia for this week's Poetry Monday. A.D. Hope lets you know from the very first line that this is not going to be a flag-waving exercise. Still, in its own acerbic way, the poem does have a kind of patriotism to it - by the end, he makes you feel almost proud to be living and surviving here, in "the Arabian desert of the human mind"!

And you have to love the line about "second hand Europeans pullulating timidly on the edge of alien shores"!!

Australia

A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.

They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb is dry.

Without songs, architecture, history:
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands,
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,
The river of her immense stupidity

Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: "we live" but "we survive",
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.

And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,

Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.

{From A. D. Hope, COLLECTED POEMS 1930-1970, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1972}
Photo by waferkitty on flickr

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The year ahead

The summer holidays are winding up and I'm starting to think about the year ahead. I've been thinking about how my routine will work, both daily and weekly, and I've been thinking a bit about my blog. When I started my blog the aim was to think about how to glorify God in my everyday life. It's been a wonderful discipline for me - getting my thoughts at least half thought-out, enough to share them with others, and the encouragement/stimulus of the occasional comment or response. But like a few other blogging friends I've spoken to, I find that getting the right balance with blogging can be a challenge. I want to keep working out ways of blogging that mean that it doesn't take me away from my other responsibilities, or prevent me from doing other ministry inside and outside the home. Here's what I've come up with for this year:

* I'm going to keep doing Poetry Monday. I like the discipline of finding, reading and thinking about a new poem each week.

* I'm studying New Testament this semester at College (a first for me!), so you can probably expect some more posts about what I'm learning from the Bible. But I promise you that I won't just put up lecture notes! Instead I'll try and think about how it applies to me. Hopefully it will inject a bit more Bible (and a bit less hobby-horse!) into my blogging and a bit more thought about application into my studies.

* I'm going to introduce a new weekly series about kids' books. I figure that since I read to the kids every day this can motivate me to be a bit more deliberate about it, and it might even prompt a few more trips to the library this year. I'll focus on a children's book we've been reading together that week. It will generally be our favourite one of the week, but I may occasionally throw one in that we didn't like (and explain my reasons!).

* I'm hoping to read You Can Change, by Tim Chester this term and blog my way through it as I go.

* I'm going to keep trying to write a bit of poetry, if I feel inspired.

* And I'm going to keep writing posts about everyday life - both the shallow and newsy and the slightly more reflective or analytical ones.

I'm hoping the increase in regular weekly series will mean I do a bit less worrying about what to write day by day. If it's Monday, it's poetry; if it's Thursday, it's New Testament, and so on...

As always, looking forward to your comments in the year ahead!

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Seventies Jesus

We recently bought a piano. It was an unwanted piano that had been sitting in the corner of our church hall and had been forgotten. When it arrived at our place, we discovered (to our delight!) that the piano stool still contained a little time capsule of music spanning the last three or four decades - Dave calls it our little musical genizah! It seems that no one had thought to throw out anything since sometime in the 1970s, because one of the gems we found was a songbook from the 1975 Camp Retreat for the Baptist theological college Dave works for now.

As we looked through the book, we noticed that it wasn't just the typed multi-coloured pages that dated it securely in the mid-1970s - they just don't write songs like this anymore!!

I suspect there's a cautionary tale here about the perils of contextualisation...

The Man

1. There once was a man, a long time ago,
A standin' all alone against the status quo.
He worked with his hands, and grew tall and strong,
He worked with His mind a-sort-in' right from wrong.
He was sure of His mission and He spoke loud and clear,
He got ev'ry eye and He got ev'ry tear.

2. But some didn't like Him 'twas plain to see,
'Cause He put 'em down for their hypocrisy,
The Idea of lovin' was drastic and new
And buckin' the crowd was just too much to do.
Well things haven't changed from those days of old,
They still try to make Him fit into their mold.

3. There isn't a man or a woman too low
But what He would love 'em and help 'em to know
That if they would care to prove Him on out,
He'd slam down all their fear and all of their doubt.
It's not the easiest choice you can make,
It's playin' for keeps with a whole lot at stake!

4. Now you can't go a-pointin' at what others do.
'Cause it's a personal thing, strictly 'tween Him and you.
And if you're really wantin' to give life a pull,
Alive to your finger tips, brimmin' and full,
Then give Him a try, going out on a limb,
You'll never know life till you really know him.

He's Everything to Me songbook, no 32.

Pics from stockxchng.com and Green Lantern2008 on Flickr

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A visit to the Aquarium

We haven't done a lot in the way of outings this holidays - Dave's been back at work since 2 January, and the kids and I have filled up a lot of the days with swimming lessons. We have done a few things like fish and chips on the beach, and the kids have had a couple of sleepovers at my parents' house, but it's all been pretty low key. But today, since the holidays are almost over and because there is a dugong exhibition there at the moment, I decided to take them to the Sydney Aquarium (my mum came as well, which I was very grateful for). Unfortunately a lot of other people had the same idea, because it was PACKED! (I overheard one woman next to me say in desperation to her friend: "this is worse than when we saw the Mona Lisa!!".) The kids didn't seem to notice though, and had a great time.

The dugongs were a bit hit (although I'm not sure why Rebecca is looking at the ground in this photo below!)

Rebecca enjoying the touch pool, where she could touch shark eggs and starfish and coral

Watching the pool where the dugongs lived while we had morning tea

Having a rest

And this one is to prove that we did spend a fair bit of time actually looking at the fish!!

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Making disciples for missional church

I listened to Tim Chester's talks on making disciples for missional church a little while ago. He covers a lot of ground in them, and all of it was really helpful for me - and I'm not about to plant a church or anything! There are two talks your can download:

Making Disciples for Missional Church
Making Disciples in Missional Church (2)

There wasn't much in them about how to be 'missional' in the fashionable sense of the word, but there was some really great, solid stuff about being a church whose culture is shaped by Jesus and the pattern of the cross, rather than a self-focused, consumerist, me-centred package to keep us all comfortable and entertained. Lots of good encouragement too about being genuine and purposeful in everyday relationship with other Christians that we are in fellowship with.

I was particularly challenged by his thoughts on speaking the truth to each other in love - he made some excellent points about the way we tend to encourage sinful attitudes in each other, rather than help one another fight our sin. I was also helped by what he said about how we should think about our Christian brothers and sisters at church - that it is no accident who God brings together in a church as he puts the parts of the body together. Everyone in my church is there by God's design, as part of his good purposes. This was a very helpful thought for me to ponder!!


Pic from stockxchng.com

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A letter from Adoniram Judson

Reading this quote that Tim Challies posted yesterday inspired me. It was from a letter written by Adoniram Judson to Ann Hasseltine's father, in which he asked permission to marry his daughter:

. . . I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world? Whether you can consent to see her departure to a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life? Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death? Can you consent to all this, for the sake of perishing immortal souls; for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?

Her father consented to this unusual proposal and Ann married Adoniram two weeks before they embarked for India. A few changes in theological views on the trip over meant that they parted from their mission society and ended up in Burma where they served God together for 13 years, before she died at the age of 37. Once there, they worked hard and experienced many painful trials. For a start the work was slow - they didn't see a convert for the first 6 years of their time there. Then in 1826 Adoniram was imprisoned for 17 months and during this time Ann gave birth to a baby (who later died), carried on the mission work and lived in a shack outside the prison gates so she could care for him. Most prisoners died in this particular prison, and her husband owed his survival to her. Near the end of his time in prison, she contracted cerebral spinal meningitis, and while she recovered, it was probably this that contributed to her death in 1828.

I guess this all says that Adoniram wasn't kidding when he he wrote that letter to Ann's father. Marrying him would mean a life of hard work and suffering. But their ministry bore much fruit. At the end of Adoniram Judson's life, the whole Bible was translated into Burmese, a task that could not have happened without Ann's support. She translated Daniel and Jonah herself and enabled her husband's work (even to the point of keeping him alive so he could go on to finish the work after his release from prison). And by the time Adoniram died, there were 8000 believers in Burma.

Ann Judson, (and her father in allowing his daughter to marry Adoniram, knowing he would probably never see her again in this world), understood something I want to understand better.

The God who is our loving Father, and who desires our good, does not promise a life of earthly comfort and security, but the joy that comes with serving Jesus, even to the point of intense suffering, is worth far more than any earthly treasure.

The future hope of 'the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour' is not a quaint notion to be mockingly dismissed as 'pie in the sky when you die', but a powerful, driving motivation for faithful servants of Jesus, who know how to pour out their lives for his glory. (And the Judsons' story, along with countless Biblical examples along the lines of Hebrews 11:33-34, would suggest that people who know how to live like that make far more difference, and find far more joy, in this world, than people who want to cling onto earthly comfort and security and reputation.)

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Poetry Monday

It's summertime in Australia, and down here in summer we really need a poem to help us learn to love the fly - or at least respect him! Here's another Ted Hughes poem from this collection.




The Fly

The Fly
Is the Sanitary Inspector. He detects every speck
With his Geiger counter.
Detects it, then inspects it
Through his multiple spectacles. You see him everywhere
Bent over his microscope.

He costs nothing, needs no special attention,
Just gets on with the job, totting up the dirt.

All he needs is a lick of sugar
Maybe a dab of meat -
Which is fuel for his apparatus.
We never miss what he asks for. He can manage
With so little you can't even tell
Whether he's taken it.

In his black boiler suit, with his gas mask,
His oxygen pack,
His crampons,
He can get anywhere, explore any wreckage,
Find the lost -

Whatever dies - just leave it to him.
He'll move in
With his team of gentle undertakers,
In their pneumatic protective clothing, afraid of nothing,
Little white Michelin men,
They hoover up the rot, the stink, and the goo.

He'll leave you the bones and the feathers - souvenirs
Dry-clean as dead sticks in the summer dust.

Panicky people misunderstand him -
Blitz at him with nerve-gas puff-guns,
Blot him up with swatters.

He knows he gets filthy.
He knows his job is dangerous, wading in the drains
Under cows' tails, in pigs' eye-corners
And between the leaky broken toes
Of the farm buildings -
He too has to cope with the microbes.
He too wishes he had some other job.
But this is his duty
Just let him be. Let him rest on the wall there,
Scrubbing the back of his neck. This is his rest-minute.

Once he's clean, he's a gem.

A freshly barbered sultan, royally amoured
In dusky rainbow metals.

A knight on a dark horse.

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Goodbye Lou and Jon!!

My sister Louise and her family (husband Jon, and kids Samuel and Evelyne) will be moving from Sydney to Bathurst this weekend. Jon is leaving his job to teach Scripture to high school kids 3 days a week (he'll do casual teaching the other two days of the working week).

I am very sad they are moving as they will now be over 2 hours drive away. I know, it's hardly the other side of the world - but it feels far. At the same time I am excited about the opportunities for God to use them for his purposes in a town that is very special to our family.

Here is a poem I gave to my sister the other day at our family 'farewell':

Bathurst

My sister,
we were always
so different
from each other -
'Chalk and cheese'
mum would say.

But we share a childhood,
our shaping years,
spent side by side in the back seat,
on the first stages of the journey.

And now you're leaving.
God has flung you somewhere new.
Soon the last box will be sealed,
the truck doors will slam shut,
and you'll drive back
to where it all began -

Back to that cold, beautiful town,
where Autumn covers the parks
with a carpet of orange
and the taps freeze in winter;
back to where God first drew our family to him,
one by one,
slowly chipping away at mum,
melting dad's resistance in one morning.

And now you're driving back
with your own little family,
for God to use you,
in the chipping and melting work
that he has planned for many hearts.

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Inter-generational encouragement

I appreciated the responses to my question about fostering intergenerational relationships the other day. Anna raised a good question about how this type of encouragement happens in practice when you already attend a church with a good cross section of generations. I've been thinking about this question ever since (thanks Anna!), and thought I'd share a few half-formed ideas.

I don't want to idealise inter-generational church relationships (not all elderly people are saints, and not all inherited piety is Biblical piety...). But I do want to say that, for all the difficulties that come with inter-generational fellowship, there is something really healthy in the way it creates opportunities for one generation of God's people to pass on to the next the stories of God's mighty works and a lived example of how to walk in his ways. As I said in my post the other day, there were some older people in the churches I attended growing up who were godly Christians who encouraged me in my faith. I want to start imitating women like them, in the hope that one day I might be like them.

Relationships with older members of my church

It strikes me that there are two main things I can do to start working towards this. The first, is to be deliberate in my relationships with the oldest members of our church. I've always found that there is a temptation to gravitate towards people in the same 'stage of life' as us. Since being at Macquarie Baptist, where I've been blessed to be in a women's Bible study group that had a 50 year age range, I've been reminded that learning with and from older women can be a real blessing.

I've also been reminded that I don't show hospitality nearly enough to the older members of our church. This is something I want to change.

Other people's kids

The second thing is that I need to be deliberate in how I relate to the youngest members of our church - and not just my kids, other people's children as well. I think this means I need to:

Pay attention to other people's kids

So often in our churches these days, it seems that kids are shunted off to the side so we can get on with more 'meaningful' things. Creche and Sunday school rosters are often the hardest to fill, as most people would rather be in church or Bible study. And even when we are spending time 'with' kids, we can have the wrong focus. I've often struggled with the temptation to rationalise my lack of attention to the kids I am looking after in creche by telling myself that I need to have an 'edifying' conversation with one of the other mums. Edifying conversations are great (and don't we all need them!), but if the assumption is that the only kind of 'edification' that matters is cognitively advanced conversations with adults, then I think we've missed something about the body of Christ and what it means to build it up!

Take them seriously as eternal beings

The older women in my church growing up would not only talk to me, but they would also be interested in my spiritual life. The conversations were often turned back around to Jesus, and they would urge me to 'keep on loving him', 'keep telling my friends at school about him' etc. As I thought about this, I've realised that my conversation with younger kids in my church family are way too superficial. I think this happens a lot because many adults these days just don't take the idea of kids having a real and lasting faith in Jesus seriously. But as I reflected on this, I realised that I do take the faith of my own kids seriously, but I think I haven't fully thought through my role in other kids' lives (without usurping the primary responsibility of their own parents, of course).

But don't restrict your conversation to just "spiritual" things

The older women who encouraged me when I was growing up would take the time to talk to me and show an interest in my everyday life as well. They would ask me questions about my friends, school, what I liked doing, and listen to my answers. As I've been writing this post, a vivid memory came back to me of the wonderful advice an older woman gave me, when I was 10, and was fearful about starting at a new school the next day. And while it was good advice, I think the most interesting thing about the memory is that it was obviously so important to me that an older person had taken an interest in my feelings and fears.

The church is meant to be a human fellowship with family-shaped relationships, not some sort of super-spiritual religious conversation society. We're meant to care about what's going on in each other's lives (including the lives of kids).

Take kids ministry seriously

I already do teach preschool Sunday school because I am convinced of the value of teaching little ones the Bible. But I've been reminded this week as I've thought about this, that even though I love teaching Sunday school, I sometimes feel a little resentment that I don't get to sit in church and listen to the sermon week by week. If I do it cheerfully, I honour God and echo his attitude to children; if I do it resentfully, my Sunday school lessons are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (which is what the music often sounds like anyway!!!).

I could go on, but instead I'll point you to a sermon on 'Other People's Kids' that covers a lot of this ground really, really well. The talk was given by Tim Blencowe, who is starting as our new pastor at Macquarie Baptist Church this week (!!).

Pics from Petersham Baptist church website, and stockxchng.com

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Book meme answers

Here are the answers to the book meme from last week (if you don't know what I am talking about, you can read the original post for explanations!). Thanks to those who had a go at guessing which books the quotes came from!

1. "So how do we appropriate what we believe about God? The bottom line is that, with God's help, we must stop in the middle of our struggles and force our line of vision back on the eternal perspective". (Practical Theology for Women, by Wendy Alsup)

2. "The show that opened the evening was of work by Elizabeth Blackadder." (The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith)

3. "After three notes went unanswered, I made a personal visit to St James's Place, where I encountered the iron Miss Tilley, who said you were out of town." (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer)

4. "Let me take a few of the examples that you used to illustrate God as a risk-taker." (The Pleasures of God, by John Piper)

5. "Grace wins our hearts." (YOU can change, by Tim Chester)

6. "Our attitude shouldn't be that we "have" to do all these things for them, but that we "get" to." (Grace based parenting, by Tim Kimmel)

7. Their conversation continued in a desultory fashion for a further half-hour. (The World According to Bertie, by Alexander McCall Smith)

8. "It was swimming at the bottom, waiting". (The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini)

9. "Haze glanced out the window at the shapes black-spinning past him." (The Complete Stories, by Flannery O'Connor)

10. "If the venerable apostle had to learn to be content, I can expect no less." (Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye?, by Carolyn McCulley)

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Swimming lessons

Tomorrow the kids will have their last swimming lesson (they are doing the swimsafe program, which is a 2 week intensive course, run by NSW Sport and Recreation).

I must admit that was a bit apprehensive at first about spending so much of our precious holiday time doing swimming lessons. I feared that even if the lessons went well, that the novelty would quickly wear off - especially on the first cold day that we encountered!!

But I have been pleasantly surprised. I already knew that the program is good, I thought that having lessons on consecutive days would aid their learning and I expected that the teachers would be very competent - and I was right. But I have been surprised at how the kids have improved so dramatically over the last week and a half. It's amazing how much can be learned with a bit of intensive work!

What's more, we've all loved it. Elsie and I have had a fine time playing in the baby pool together. Jacob and Rebecca have enjoyed the feeling of accomplishing something. I've enjoyed the fact that I haven't had to plan things to do with the kids for the last two weeks. Plus, the ice blocks we've eaten as we sit together on the grass near the pool after the lesson have been pretty good too. I definitely think I'll try and do this again next year!

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Church family

I've been reminded of another reason that I love the inter-generational nature of our church family. Last week, after asking our permission, an elderly lady who is part of our church family wrote Jacob the most beautiful note, encouraging him about something she had observed him do at church on the previous Sunday. She also included a sheet of stickers for all 3 kids.

You can imagine how much it meant to him to get a letter of his own in the mail, with such words of encouragement! And it also meant a lot to Dave and me too, that someone took the time to take an interest in our boy, and encourage him in his walk with God. (I believe I may have cried - but then that is not so unusual!!)

And it reminded me of the many elderly men and women in the country Baptist churches I attended who encouraged me in my faith. Like this woman in our congregation, they took my spiritual welfare seriously, even when I was a young child.

Some would always talk to me after church, exhorting me to 'keep on loving Jesus' whatever happened. Some would send me letters, which came with a selection of Christian stickers, bookmarks, erasers etc that they picked up at the local Christian bookshop. (Yes, there is a way of using that stuff for good, not evil!) Some would teach me in Sunday school and CE. As I thought about them, I realised that there were so many of them who made a difference to me with their words and deeds!

I suspect that (because of the way we structure our churches and because we don't take children as seriously as we ought) we are losing some of these beautiful interactions between the eldest and youngest members of our church families. This is a great loss! Have you found any good examples of ways to arrest that trend?

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Poetry Monday

Last week I posted a poem from Ted Hughes' Collected Poems for Children. I found a review of the collection this week. It's a lovely book of poems.

Jacob found the copy sitting on my desk the same day and (after getting a bit confused about why it was on MY desk, since it clearly says it for kids), started reading them, and has been busily making up poems about strange creatures ever since. So I asked him which one I should use this week, and he suggested this one, because 'it is really funny'.

My Sister Jane

And I say nothing - no, not a word
About our Jane. Haven't you heard?
She's a bird, a bird, a bird, a bird.
Oh it never would do to let folks know
My sister's nothing but a great big crow.

Each day (we daren't send her to school)
She pulls on stockings of thick blue wool
To make her pin crow legs look right,
Then fits a wig of curls on tight,
And dark spectacles - a huge pair
To cover her very crowy stare.
Oh it never would do to let folks know
My sister's nothing but a great big crow.

When visitors come she sits upright
(With her wings and her tail tucked out of sight).
They think her queer but extremely polite.
Then when the visitors have gone
She whips out her wings and with her wig on
Whirls through the house at the height of your head -
Duck, duck, or she'll knock you dead.
Oh it never would do to let folks know
My sister's nothing but a great big crow.

At meals whatever she sees she'll stab it -
Because she's a crow and that's a crow habit.
My mother says 'Jane! Your manners! please!'
Then she'll sit quietly on the cheese,
Or play the piano nicely by dancing on the keys -
Oh it never would do to let folks know
My sister's nothing but a great big crow.

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Some more clues

Last Friday I posted a book meme, which asked for you to do some guesswork. So far, Megan and Rachael have got four of them right:

2. The show that opened the evening was of work by Elizabeth Blackadder. (Rachael correctly guessed The Sunday Philosophy club)

3. After three notes went unanswered, I made a personal visit to St James's Place, where I encountered the iron Miss Tilley, who said you were out of town. (Again, Rachael got this one - it was the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society)

7. Their conversation continued in a desultory fashion for a further half-hour. (Another Alexander McCall Smith one, The World According to Bertie, guessed by Megan)

10. If the venerable apostle had to learn to be content, I can expect no less. (Megan got this one right - it was EQUIP book club's book this month - Did I Miss Marriage Goodbye?)

But there are still six to go! I'll give you some more clues for the final six (you'll need to scroll down to the original post to see which quotes I am referring to):

- Number 1 is a book about theology.
- The quote from Number 5 removes a misconception you might have had from the title of the book.
- Number 4 is a book that is all about God.
- Number 6 IS a parenting book, as Megan suggested.
- Number 9 is not a novel, but it IS fiction.
- Number 8, on the other hand, IS a novel.

And, once again, the really big clue: all the books I've taken these quotes from are either from the EQUIP book club list, or my reading list!

Pic from stockxchng.com

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A book meme

Melanie has tagged me to do a book meme which is quite a fun one (and suits the summer holiday tone of this blog at the moment!). Here are the instructions:

- Take ten books, and transcribe the fifth sentence from page fifty six.
- Make sure that at least five books are fiction, provide five hints, and pass the meme on to six other bloggers.

The quotes:

1. So how do we appropriate what we believe about God? The bottom line is that, with God's help, we must stop in the middle of our struggles and force our line of vision back on the eternal perspective.

2. The show that opened the evening was of work by Elizabeth Blackadder.

3. After three notes went unanswered, I made a personal visit to St James's Place, where I encountered the iron Miss Tilley, who said you were out of town.

4. Let me take a few of the examples that you used to illustrate God as a risk-taker.

5. Grace wins our hearts.

6. Our attitude shouldn't be that we "have" to do all these things for them, but that we "get" to.

7. Their conversation continued in a desultory fashion for a further half-hour.

8. "It was swimming at the bottom, waiting".

9. Haze glanced out the window at the shapes black-spinning past him.

10. If the venerable apostle had to learn to be content, I can expect no less.

Hints:

I've made this REALLY easy for you and have taken all the books from either my reading list, or the EQUIP book club list for the first half of the year. So, I'm not going to give five hints to start with, I'll see if I need to follow up with some more as we go. I'll give you the answers next week. Have fun guessing!!

Now, I'm going to tag: Megan, Rachael, Cathy, Ali, Jean and Soph.

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The local pool

This week and next I'm taking the kids to swimming lessons each day at our local pool. I've found that it's brought back a lot of childhood memories, which, in turn, inspired this poem:

The local pool

The clonking turnstiles twist,
And we file through,
my sister, dad and me,
our rubber thongs* clapping
the grey concrete.

I smell the first hint of chlorine,
hear the shrieks of the kids
and my thongs clap
a little faster
as we dance our way
through an obstacle course
of towels and beach bags.

The water is teeming with kids
bobbing like bath toys
amongst the churning detritus
of dead grass and used band-aids.

We slip in between them,
and feel the relief
of coolness enveloping us
against the hot, hot day.

A short quarter-century later,
with kids of my own in hand,
the pool-smell brings it all back,
and the memories wash over me
in waves of chlorinated, cool nostalgia
as I clonk my way back through the turnstiles.

* For my American readers, I should clarify that 'thongs' in Australia are footwear, not underwear!

Pic of a typical local pool from here.

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Church family and guinea pig cages

As I've mentioned in a previous post, we've had some temporary visitors to our house over the last week or so. The other day, the time came for me to pluck up my courage and clean out the cage that the rabbit and guinea pigs inhabit. I had been dreading this task and my fears were realised. I made a bigger mess than the one I started with, panicked halfway through when the mess ended up all over me, almost lost all three animals in the confusion and provided quite a bit of entertainment for my three children! (Jacob, afterwards: "It was an adventure for me but it was a nightmare for you!")

The next morning, after church, I was sitting enjoying a cup of tea with a friend who has 2 adult daughters. We started talking about guinea pigs, and I told her about my cage cleaning shenanigans the day before. It turned out she'd already been there, done that, and she proceeded to tell me the method she had perfected through years of practice. It made so much sense!

I went home lamenting that if I had only done things that way, it would have been sooooo much less traumatic, and giving thanks for what a blessing church family is, with its intergenerational relationships and hand-me-down wisdom - even about things like guinea-pig cages!

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Dave and I went to the movies the other day and saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We both thought it was a great movie. The storyline is unusual: it is about a man named Benjamin Button who ages backwards. It sounds a little silly in a way, but the makers of the movie manage to build on that premise (taken from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald) and create a convincing character and a poignant, thought-provoking story.

I loved the way that the movie dealt with ideas relating to our mortality. By making Benjamin Button's life progress in the opposite direction from the life of the woman he loves, it made his mortality seem more shocking somehow - there is a mercy in the way our lives run as parallel (rather than as intersecting) lines.

I'll try not to ruin the movie for you by saying any more, but I do recommend it. And those of you (like me), who are prone to cry in movies, take the box of tissues!

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Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? at EQUIP book club

Ali Payne has started her series on Carolyn McCulley's book Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? at EQUIP book club. Her first post is worth a read, whether you are married or single.

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Poetry Monday

Since it's the school holidays, I thought it might be a good time to share some poetry for children. Last year I bought Dave a copy of Ted Hughes' Collected Poems for Children so I'm going to use a few of those this month. This particular version also has some lovely illustrations by Raymond Briggs (of When the Wind Blows and Fergus the Bogeyman fame.

The first one I've chosen has a summer holidays theme. Somehow it makes me feel thankful that we're not going away for holidays this summer!!

Work and Play

The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.
         But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust
         In shimmering exhaust
         Searching to slake
         Its fever in ocean
         Will play and be idle or else it will bust.

The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon,
She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples,
Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.
         But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach
         Disgorges its organs
         A scamper of colours
         Which roll like tomatoes
         Nude as tomatoes
         With sand in their creases
         To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech.

The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer,
She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it,
She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.
         But the holiday people
         Are laid out like wounded
         Flat as in ovens
         Roasting and basting
         With faces of torment as space burns them blue
         Their heads are transistors
         Their teeth grit on sand grains
         Their lost kids are squalling
         While man-eating flies
         Jab electric shock needles but what can they do?

They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces
         And start up the serpent
         And headache it homeward
         A car full of squabbles
         And sobbing and stickiness
         With sand in their crannies
         Inhaling petroleum
         That pours from the foxgloves
         While the evening swallow
The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson,
Touches the honey-slow river and turning
Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves -
A boomerang of rejoicing shadow. 

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Austen does facebook

For the time-challenged: Pride and Prejudice, rewritten as a facebook newsfeed.

HT: Megan.

Pic: Mr. Collins and Elizabeth, circa 1894, from Allposters.com.

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This is inspiring!

I think I just got a new New Year's Resolution.



You can read the details at The Piper's

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Guests

We have three new (temporary) members of our family.

Some friends of ours are away at beach mission over these first 2 weeks of January. We got the job of looking after their pets at our house - a rabbit, 2 guinea pigs and a budgie called Bubbles. They have been the source of much excitement in our house, and my stress levels are subsiding now we have worked out a way to secure the door of the rabbit hutch so 2 year olds (and one 2 year old in particular!) can't release the animals. We are eager to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself!!

Here are some pics of the kids enjoying them. And if you get a chance, please pray for all the beach missions happening up and down the coast at the moment!

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New Year's Resolutions 2009

About a year ago, I (somewhat tentatively!), made some new year's resolutions. It was the first time I had ever gone so far as to write them down, let alone share them on the world wide web! I wondered aloud if I would manage them, I even included question marks for some of them. Quietly, I wondered if I would regret having shared them so publicly. A year down the track, after having looked at them again, I would have to say that I'm glad I made them.

Some of them I have managed to keep (sort of), and I think setting a goal had a big part to do with it.

On the other hand, others I have dismally failed at! I didn't do as much hospitality as I would have liked, and we never did start that book club (hey Emma?!). But I think my total failures remind me that I am not perfect and that I depend on God and his grace. They also remind me that I can't plan everything.

So what are my resolutions for this year? Well, I think I'll try again with most of the ones I made last year, and pray that God helps me to do the things I failed to do in 2008. I'm also going to add another couple that will protect my health a bit more, because I did push it a little last year!

• Try to meet up with 1-2 women on a regular basis to read the Bible and pray.
• Do more hospitality. Plan a regular time in each week where Dave and I invite people into our home - and be open to more 'spontaneous' hospitality as well.
• Be intentional with my friendships with the mums from Jacob's school, and be more willing to proclaim the gospel.
  
• Continue with my daily Bible reading regime - and start being more deliberate in my praying.
• Create a 'reading list' for the year (and try to stick to it).
• Further to the above - read a bit more fiction this year.
• Keep planning my weeks and try to be deliberate in asking "What's one thing I can do to serve my husband/each child this week?".
• Go on more 'dates' with Dave, now Elsie is a little older.
• Go for at least three walks a week.
• Keep spending time in my front yard (more neighbourly than the back yard!).
• Get to bed earlier
• Have a blogging free day every week
• Keep writing poetry!

What about you? Have you made any resolutions this year?

Pic from stockxchng.com

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