Leeches, hills and hard beds

Today I was speaking to a certain anonymous someone. I'll only tell you that their first name was David and their last name rhymed with book. Anyway this mystery person was claiming that there's no point to beautiful scenary unless you can get there in a car. As someone who used to do a lot of pretty serious bushwalking I had a few things to say . . .

1. Life is simple out there. Everything gets pared back, reduced to a purer form. Responsibilities and roles drop away and you simply exist.
   
2. The challenge is enjoyable. Having to be tough and savvy enough to achieve physical - and perhaps technical - feats is stimulating. There's an air of valour about the whole endeavour.
   
3. It's a world of technical knowledge and skill. Bushwalking and rockclimbing (etc) are not unlike an artisan craft. That world can be intoxicating once you've stepped in.
   

I might have spoken about how beautiful it is out there, but I guess my adversary acknowledged that. It is beautiful though. It's hard to convey to people who've only ever seen wilderness calenders. For seven years whenever I was visiting or living in Tassie I would routinely go bushwalking with my friends and see the most sweetly beautiful and staggeringly majestic sights. We'd wander through lush rainforest and make our camps by pretty mountain tarns or at the base of soaring cliffs, and think it unremarkable.

It's funny though . . . I've barely been bushwalking these last few years. Doing multiday walks takes a degree of mental toughness that I can't seem to muster any more - becoming a Christian has made me a little softer. And for a while there I was felt as though bushwalking was somehow incompatible with femininity or intellectualism. I'm over that now, yet I still don't find myself rushing out. It's partly because all my bushwalking friends have got little kids, but mainly because I find it near-impossible to do anything by half-measures. I can't quite see my way clear to going bushwalking from time-to-time. I know it's strange, but there it is. Ah, but I'll still defend it to the death.

The long view

I'm told that living in a culture not your own is stressful. I guess I'll find that out for myself soon enough. A missionary who spoke to us at college last week counsels new missionaries to perform at maybe 70% of what they're capable of. That way they'll be able to not only deal with the day-to-day stress of being in a new place, but they'll also have energy left to cope when something more major happens.


H/T Ros

Look again

A few posts ago I spoke about Noel Pearson's exposé of what is necessary for Aboriginal peoples' economic advancement. In an earlier article, he was eager to "make clear that my position has never been that the total expenditure on indigenous affairs is too large" [italics mine]. Indeed he argued that "It is patently obvious that during the past 222 years, the pendulum has never swung too far in favour of Aboriginal Australians in any political, social, economic or cultural sector of society."

Pearson's article was written in response to Tony Abbott's categorisation of 'welcome to country' as "genuflection to political correctness". Pearson argues that this sort of comment serves to foster the idea that Aboriginal people have too much of everything.

"It is wrong to start a debate in any indigenous policy area about whether Australia should move from a low level to an even lower level. Doing so contributes only to the perception that the low level is an excessive level and we need to cut down on these excesses because the pendulum has swung too far."

Noel Pearson, "It's Uplifting to Stand on Ceremony," The Weekend Australian, Focus section, March 20-21, page 12.

Community

Tim Chester came and spoke at college about The Crowded House, his church planting organisation. He was winsome and engaging and I loved most of what he had to say. But he pretty much said that it's impossible to have real community unless you are frequently meeting your brothers and sisters and sharing your everyday lives with each other. It is only within this intense expression of community that evangelism, discipleship, accountability and openness will properly occur, or perhaps even occur at all.

I like the motivation behind his model and I even like the model itself. But I'm not convinced that we all need to change our church structures. I feel like community is still valid even if it is less frequent/intense. I even think that there are peculiarly good things about doing it the traditional way. There's working within an imperfect structure and making it beautiful. And there's the joy of singing and talking with people you don't know so well, just because you are brothers and sisters in Christ.

I don't know if my reasons are clear. It was hard to pin them down. Please ask if they aren't - or argue with them if you disagree.

Foibles

For some reason - probably a strange one - I find watching both The Bill and Insiders very comforting. They're the visual equivalent of eating chocolate. No, that was probably going a little far.

The rage against God

Christopher Hitchens' brother Peter is a Christian and he has just published a book. I've flicked through the introduction and it's an exciting start. But after watching some YouTube videos I'm a little concerned that Peter's complicated relationship with his brother may result in a shortness of tone, or that he may so focus on the damage that atheism can do to a country that Christianity will end up sounding like nothing more than a vehicle for social good . . . but I'm sure these things won't evenuate and instead the book will bring honour to the good and living God.

A serious decision

In Anglo Australian culture the mark of a serious decision is when a person makes that decision for themself. Thus it is Christian parents' dearest hope that at some future time, each of their children will decide to follow Christ. But in other cultures the mark of a serious decision is when a community makes it together.

So when Western people head off to India to tell people about Jesus, they will typically invite the individuals listening to make a personal decision to give their life to Christ. Unfortunately the local people will infer from this that it is a minor decision, no more important than the decision to stop and have a cup of tea with a friend. Anything more serious than that - and nothing could be more serious than a decision about your eternal destiny - is always done in consultation with others.


H/T CB Samuel