Music

I don't own a lot of music and I'm okay with that. I wasn't last year - I was all bitter and twisted back then, but, thank God, I've come a long way. The music I own is more often than not, pretty daggy and I'm okay with that too. I did have in mind to flesh out my collection - get a selection of classic albums from the various (rock, pop and alternative) genres. But I rarely listen to the more eclectic stuff I do own and I don't pretend to be some sort of musicophile. But I was having a listen to a few albums on itunes the other day and now I want to buy:

• Extinction Level Event by Busta Rhymes [hip-hop]. I already own The Big Bang, which, were it not for some pornographic lyrics, I would absolutely love. I love Busta's meaty sound and thumping beats. And I love the melodic, pop-influenced sound on these two albums. If anyone knows of any other, more melodic hip-hop stuff that still keeps the rapping tight and punchy (so not Kayne or any of the RnB/hip-hop crew) I'd be very keen to hear about it.
• All three of Carlos Vives' albums [salsa]. I totally love everything Carlos does. His melodies are so infectious and happy. It's the best salsa dancing music.
• Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens [indie]. I don't often listen to quiet music, or if I do, I'll just listen to classical music on the radio. So this one's for the Christian lyrics. I would like to own some Christian music, but I've just never liked any that's been branded as such. Finding this is thanks to Pryderi.
• One of Gnarls Barkley's albums [?]. I don't love all his songs, but I've just gotta have a bit of Gnarls Barkley in my life. I mean, I'm a dancer for Pete's sake.
• Blackout by Britney Spears [pop]. I like the more pumping, electronic sound of this album, and I don't think there's any soppy slow songs ;-).

Other than these I'm totally pumped for whatever album JT and Orishas put out next. And for Eminem if he ever stops being violent. And I'd love to bulk out my salsa collection.

Cuteness

My (poor little) year ones had to do an 'exam' yesterday. One of them was asking me, well, not so much how to do something, but what the answer was. So I said that I was afraid I couldn't tell him. He looked at me with some concern and said "Why afraid?". So I explained the non-literal meaning of the phrase.


Good thing I don't have kids or you would be inundated with 'cute' stories ;-)

Small kindnesses

Today all the SMBC students gave back. I did the world's most thorough weeding job out in the blazing sun. While I was working away, Christie told me about a new church that doorknocked their local area to introduce themselves. But that's not all they did - they also offered to do any odd-jobs or gardening. I think this is such a lovely idea.

Master of Divinity! project take two

I've changed my topic. When I wrote about this before, I said that God had made me a dancer and a thinker but that "I'm not satisfied to just let myself be, but am always wondering about how these things should play out". Thinking about it a bit more, I've realised this just isn't true. It used to be true, but, praise God!, I'm now pretty comfortable with myself. So the thing that puzzles and amazes me is rather that God made this world physical in the first place - and, even more so, that heaven will be a physical place full of physical people. I want to grasp God's plan for creation a little better. So my new topic's more along the lines of:

The physicality of the new heavens and earth.

It's not creation per se that I'm interested in, but peoples' life in the new heavens and earth. Some particularly relevant passages are Isaiah 65, 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21-22.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions about how to narrow it down.

Holidays

I love holidays. The underlying tenor of relief has lasted six days now - and I didn't even think it was that difficult a year. I have worked really hard though and each year brings various challenges. Bible College World is a funny place to be, but tremendously useful and I thank God for his grace and faithfulness in it all.

Here's some of my more interesting holiday plans (I also have to do things like get a new driver's licence and - erm - do my tax):

• Buy another shrub for the front garden so no-one can tell when the grass is long.
• Actually write poems so I can tell people what it is I write.
• Learn Spanish. Find out what happens with Maria and the extraño.
• Read about the Trinity, liberalism and women pastors.
• Write a Bible college newsletter in a fresh new genre.
• Get into the habit of reading a bit of the Bible in Hebrew or Greek.
• Read a friend's book and play.
• Cook an extravagent meal for Bible study.
• Read a friend's hip-hop blog.
• Listen to albums on itunes and dream about which ones to buy.
• Listen to sermons on work.
• Buy some beautiful shiny cooking bowls from the cooking wholesaler in Surrey Hills.
• Take photos around Sydney.
• Go to the park on the other side of the harbour from Pier One/Two/Three.
• Do harbour walks.
• Go op-shopping.
• Swim at Sydney's beaches.

Oh, and blog more regularly.

We'll see.

Australian Idol

I love Australian Idol. It's always a pleasure to watch talented artists, and I enjoy the whole mentoring process - the judges are always making astute, creatively informed comments. This year I'm also loving seeing the characters of a couple of contestants. One of them (Stan Walker) is definitely a Christian. I'm not so sure about the other one (Toby Moulton), because there's a gag order on religious talk.

These men have the judges commenting on their character almost as often as their singing. The thing that stands out most to me is their humility. Even though they can't say much, they are a brilliant witness. I think more Christians should go on reality shows (unless of course the show's premise is spiteful or crass). Our culture might not care about metanarratives, but we care a lot about individual's stories and how a person's beliefs play out in their life.


- apologies for all the equi-length sentences. It's a bit jolting to read. I wouldn't get a good mark for "Sentence Variation" if I was one of my students.

Underwater

The way they teach us Ancient Greek and Hebrew at SMBC is grammar in the first year and Bible translation in subsequent years. This is well and good. In fact it has many pluses. But it's not language by immersion is it - or at least not in the first year. And I think I learn languages best by immersion. So, I haven't been doing particularly well, and I've been worried that all this pain will be for nothing and I'll never look at another word of Hebrew or Greek once I'm done here.

But I have a cunning plan. I've bought a New Testament with Greek on one page and an English translation on the facing page, and I've done the same for the Old Testament in Hebrew*. I like these far better than interlinears that give the English translation of each word under the word. I don't want to learn to give a literal translation of these languages - I want to learn to translate the actual meaning of sentences. So it's this that I want to expose myself to, again and again. My plan is to read as little as a sentence, or as much as a paragraph each day, first in the Hebrew/Greek and then in the English. I want to get into the habit of this now, so I've got more chance of keeping it up later. I'm not planning to employ amazing powers of observation or anything while I read, and certainly not to work out the grammatical status of individual words. I don't even care if I only understand one word in a sentence. I just want to be immersed.


*These were actually quite hard to track down, certainly on the net. I ended up finding them at the Bible Society bookshop. There seems to only be one option for each language. For Greek, it's the Nestle-Aland Greek-English New Testament, with the Novum Testamentum Graece for the Greek and the RSV for the English. For Hebrew, it's the Hebrew-English Bible published by the Bible Society in Israel, with the Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia for Greek and the NKJV for English.

Master of Divinity! project

I am two thirds of my way to becoming a superhero. In second semester next year we get to chose whether we do a project/thesis or two regular subjects. I've been hanging to do the project since I began my studies, and I think I've finally worked out some sort of a topic . . .

I want to look at what the Bible says about the importance and effect of physical closeness on relationships. I don't particularly have romantic relationships in mind, but of course it will play into that. The sort of situations I'm thinking of are those of friends (or missionaries) who are living in distant places, friendships between people on the net who have never met in person, and the relationship between Christians today and the Father, Son and Spirit who we can neither see nor touch.

I'm interested in this stuff largely because of me! I'm as much a dancer and aesthete as I am a writer and thinker, and, for some reason, (because I'm a thinker no doubt) I'm not satisfied to just let myself be, but am always wondering about how these things should play out. I'm also interested because I observe physical absence having curious effects in the situations described, but can't quite put my finger on the effects or say if they're good, bad or merely neutral.

I can think of all sorts of biblical passages and angles to take on this subject - the goodness of physical creation, the indwelling of the Spirit in us, Jesus' incarnation, why Jesus went to people to heal them when he could've done so at a distance, what 1 John 4:20 means etc etc. I'm going to try and work it out in January. But please do let me know if you have any suggestions :-).

amalgamate verb, -mat.ed. -mat.ing.

My Sydney church, Central Sydney Presbyterian, is joining up with another church, Abbotsford Presbyterian. We're doing it because the school hall we currently meet in is being extended, thanks to the government's stimulus money. A couple of Sundays ago both congregations voted for us to start meeting together, with a view to formally amalgamate halfway through next year. In many different ways, God's hand looks to be in the whole process, which is a great comfort and joy for us near-sighted people. It's going to be a really interesting time.

I don't know how other people in Central Sydney would characterise the church, but to me, it's a church of people who have integrity and desire to grow. People try to be honest about who they are and where they're at, and they really want to become more like Jesus. This means that we're pretty caring and concerned for each other. It also means we're pretty straight-up and blunt and we don't care about the niceties. We're a relaxed, casual bunch.

The church we're going to is a small, lively church full of elderly people. It's currently much more formal in style and more old-fashioned in aesthetic than Central Sydney. Thank God we don't have to somehow try to achieve unity and harmony - that's already been won in Christ. But we do have to live in accordance with this profound reality. It's going to be a good test I reckon and a rare opportunity to show the difference that the gospel can make in the lives of people. Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it goes.

The living's easy

Sometimes I'm good with people, but sometimes I get shy and find it hard to talk to them . . . and sometimes I talk, but keep myself back out of distrust. Still other times I'm trying hard to impress and not really being myself.

So I've prayed that I will share myself with people, and put them first. I like it when God answers this prayer because then I'm a little more like Jesus, the relationships are a little more like they will be in heaven and I'm more myself than at any other time. Too much time spent worrying over your image or fears turns you into a caricature of your true self. If, by God's grace, you can forget these things, then the living's easy - you have only to be the woman or man God made you to be.

We like some metanarratives

In this quote, Clark succinctly exposes some contemporary flawed thinking. He does back up his first point with some earlier argument, but I can only quote so much. It's a good book.

If authority is necessary to community and if it can function properly in community, then contra the postmodern critique, metanarratives are not essentially evil. Further, while postmodernism embraces local narratives as the antidote to oppression by metanarratives, it overlooks the oppressive potential of minority stories. The tribal conflicts in central Africa, Northern Ireland, and southern Europe indicate that minority voices can equally lead to violence. Postmodernism is also simplistic in failing to see its own interpretation of the world (that all metanarratives are evil tools of oppression that must be ddeconstructed) as an alternative metanarrative. Metanarratives are necessary and not necessarily evil; local narratives are hlepful but not necessarily good. . . . It is precisely the proper exercise of duly consituted authority, constrained by truth and love, not the rebellious rejection of all authority whatever, that safeguards against abusive authoritarianism.


- DK Clark, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology (Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003) 78-79.

A vision for life

A rockin' post over on the eighteen-heads-are-better-than-one MTS Tasmania blog.


Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I'm uncertain whether it's because I've been busy with college, or because I haven't had anything worth saying . . .