On a mission

Last week I went on college mission. Before I say anything of substance, can I just point out how horrific it is that this verb gets used as a noun. Or perhaps that's not the thing that troubles me - perhaps it's that the noun doesn't receive an article. Why do we say "I went on mission" when it should be "I went on a/the mission"?? This is the same sort of ugliness as when people ask "Where do you church?". Ew.

Anyway 'mission' was awesome. My group went to St Peters Anglican, just south of Newtown. I was hoping to learn how an inner city church can connect with the mass of disenchanted people, and to acquire the courage and skills to talk to scary homeless people. Here's some of the things I learned:

• It's tough. People are disinterested or hostile and they don't respond well to mass evangelism/marketing. But they do value relationships, and if over time you can win peoples' trust, well, then you've won their trust and they will listen charitably to your invitations to church or whatever. In each person's life there are plenty of opportunities to engage with the people around - your friends, the parents of your kids' friends, your hairdresser etc. You just have to be a friendly person who takes an interest in these people, and commit to getting to know them, little by little. It's that simple and that tough.
• I'm interested in people. Well I already knew that, but it was good for me to realise that, as long as I set out with the right attitude, I do have the courage to talk to homeless people.
• It's okay to be introverted and to get overwhelmed and drained by interacting with lots of people. It doesn't mean that I should give up on connecting with people - just that I should limit it to, y'know, one local supermarket owner, cafe, hairdresser, pharmacy, neighbour. And if I need time to myself, well then I can shop elsewhere and not interact.

Art

Creative expression is very often subtle and nuanced. It speaks to our emotions, subconscience and aesthetic sensibility. Its meaning may be deliberately or unavoidably ambiguous or hidden. Because it comes to us in this complex form, we can each respond to different elements. So, for example, I listen to music for melody and emotion. I like music with passion and music that makes me want to dance. Even though I love words, when I listen to music I don't care too much what they say. I don't even really mind if they're offensive. But other people listen to music differently and, for them, the lyrics will be the number one thing. In all things, Christians have to be careful not to judge one another, but, because it is so easy to make false assumptions about each others' experience of art, I think that this is even more important here.

Sober excitement

My dear friend Mikey has an awesome blog. Phewph, been meaning to plug it for a long time.

There's an embarrassment of great material I could link to, but I thought a couple of recent-ish posts were particularly timely. I see a lot of interest these days in creation and wisdom and God-as-Creator, in addition to what is regarded as a previously narrow emphasis on justification and salvation and God-as-Savior. I'm very much a part of this, but I worry that no-one is keeping an eye on the pendulum's swing. Until these posts.

Cultural assumptions

Some missos from Malawi discussed subtle cultural bloopers at college the other day. They observed that:

• Westerners need to think afresh about servant leadership in cultures where respect for leaders is shown precisely by them not doing mundane tasks.
• Western teachers and leaders see their number one task as getting the message across, but other cultures value relationships more highly. This disconnect may mean that it can actually be a blessing to speak the language badly, as it forces you to focus on relationships.
• When you try to communicate something cross-culturally almost every word you use can conjure up different things.

The world is mad

* a rant *

Does anyone else get really irritated when the speed camera people tell the public where the speed cameras are!?!!!!! Isn't the whole point for people to not know where a camera might be, and so to keep to the speed limit wherever they are!!

Book club

I've started attending a book club with my friend Emma. It's made up of her workmates and their friends - fiesty, intelligent, well-read women. Last month we read The Catcher in the Rye. We talked about things we would never otherwise mention - moral codes, hypocrisy, failure, cynicism, hidden motivations, disability and its treatment, the impact of grief and molestation. The experience was something like Hamlet's play within a play - it was safe to present our personal opinions and beliefs because we did so under the guise of talking about the book. I don't mean that what we said was ingenuine - just that there was more going on than discussion of the book alone.

Everyone should join a book club!

Unless you don't like books. That would be silly.

Up close and personal

I'm not sure how sustainable this line of arguing is, but it occured to me that if you worship a god who isn't real, then that god will necessarily be understood as distant from you. Perhaps one of the marks of the reality of the God that Christians worship is that we attest to a personal and intimate relationship with him.