I have been lamenting the state of the church a fair bit lately. Depite only being with us for a few weeks, our current locum has made some big changes, all of which I am struggling with but I feel like I have been silenced. I won’t go into details but I feel like I am now attending a very exclusive church that has no relevance to the local community at all and is not calling us to anything beyond our own personal eternal life after death. It is also boring, predictable and comfortable. All things that I am fairly sure the early church wasn’t and I am definitely sure Jesus wasn’t although the experience does make me wonder if I have it all wrong and if there is a place for me within the church. This hurts because as much as I struggle with the church I also really want to be a part of it. I love Jesus, I want to follow him and be close to him and eat at his table. I want to hear people speak about him and be challenged. I want to read the Bible and pray and be community with others who also want to this.

In more positive news we have made a nomination. I think I am allowed to say that. Our bishop announced it in church last week when he was speaking so I figure I am allowed to as long as I don’t use names. I am excited about the nomination. Being a nominator is really hard work and I have found it fairly confronting for all the above reasons so I am excited it is nearly over. But also I really like this guy. I am holding out hope for a different kind of leadership from the one we have right now and the one I have seen so often around the place.

I am currently living in Hornsby again with Jane, John and Hannah. They are very kindly offering me hospitality in between moving out of Glebe and before I go to Alice Springs. It is lovely to be here, I love how bushy it is here especially after so long in the inner city. And I am mostly ignoring the boxes in the corner that make me feel like I am in the middle of a move. Thankfully we do not have much stuff at all.

The move last weekend went pretty well. It was moving and moving is stressful but I mostly held it together and it was certainly a much less traumatic move than when we left Enmore and moved to Glebe. I guess our limited possessions helped that. It was a bit sad though. We spent the last night there on Saturday. The only thing left was our bed which we were giving to someone from GAPP. Anyway we went to church and by the time I came back after interviewing a minister the guy had come and got the bed and the people moving in after us were already there with all their stuff. I walked in yelling out “hello” and all of a sudden realised “oh my gosh this isn’t my home anymore”. Thankfully I knew the people moving in but it was still embarrassing and so abrupt. As I took off in the car to go to Hornsby I felt very sad that Glebe would no longer be home. But not too sad. Again not as sad as when I left Enmore. I think leaving Enmore was terrible as the thing I had loved most, living with Jem, Ryan, Jo, Tom, Jon and Matt in community would no longer be. Whereas the thing that I have loved most about living in Glebe was making a home with Martin and we will be able to do that in Alice as well.

Martin is not here at the moment though. He left on Wednesday morning. I miss him already. I really do.

In the bathrooms at a central station. Two women doing their hair chatting. One an older women, perhaps in late sixties brushing back her neat grey hair. The other a young punk with dreadlocks, fishnets and long boots (different colours). The younger woman asks if she looks okay, the older one says yes.

On Saturday night Martin and I went to see Baghdad Wedding. Matt’s room mate who works for Belvoir got us free tickets and we loved it. Martin very nearly didn’t come, he told me he didn’t like plays, but when we were speaking to his mum she asked what we were doing for Valentine’s Day (that hadn’t registered at that point). I told her that her son was refusing to come to a play with him so she had words with him on my behalf. I don’t know what she said but it worked.

He was glad he came in the end. The play was good. It looked at the war in Iraq and Islam in a way I hadn’t seen before and it challnged some of my ideas. It didn’t buy into any of the usual cliches and wasn’t black and white. It was also funny and sad and well written and acted and the music was good.

The experience was made even richer for us as we had, had the pleasure of sharing a meal before hand with an elderly Jewish couple. We had arrived early so bought dinner and then sat down with this couple as there were no other seats. We got to chatting with them and they shared a bit of their story. He was a Polish Holocaust survivor, she was Australian. It was a play about a wedding so they told us about Jewish weddings. They had been married for 35 years and loved the theatre. It was a rare moment. We a young Christian couple of Australian and Peruvian descent chatting with an elderly Jewish couple of Australian and Polish descent before a play about Muslim Iraqi’s. I felt strongly that I, that the world needs more interactions such as these. I felt that God, the God of these three religions was there.

Martin bought me the Juno soundtrack which I love. i dedicate the first song to him:

“If I was a flower growing wild and free
All I’d want is you to be my sweet honey bee.
And if I was a tree growing tall and green
All I’d want is you to shade me and be my leaves

All I want is you, will you be my bride
Take me by the hand and stand by my side
All I want is you, will you stay with me?
Hold me in your arms and sway me like the sea”

*replace the word bride for husband

Who remembers the game Mastermind? Not me until a couple of days again when I began packing up and came across it. Martin and I decided to have a round and now three days we have played a lot of Mastermind. We’re having such a good time. I started off much better but now Martin is kicking my butt. I think it is time for a come back.

I want to keep a record on my blog this year of all the books that I read. I often start off with desores such as these and don’t follow through but here is hoping.

My first book was Atonement. Keith lent it to me on the holiday of fun. I was needing a well written novel but not one that took me on too much of an emotional rollercoaster. It fit the bill really but I didn’t love it. Too much seemed a bit far fetched and very unclear endings don’t really do it for me. It was better than the movie though which I rented the other night. Even though I find Keira incredibly annoying I was curious to see what they had done with it. Not much is all I can say.

On Tuesday I went and saw Slumdog Millionaire with John. David, Tom, Martin, John and I had dinner at our place and then we were all going to see a film together. Martin piked and as usual we wanted to see different things. Two fillms “The Wrestler” and “Slumdog Millionaire” were on at the same time so Tom and David went to the Wrestler and we went to Slumdog. I think I might try and do that more often. Too often I see films I don’t want to for the sake of togetherness and you hardly talk anyway.

I loved Slumdog Millionaire. They managed to show much of the tragedy of living in a slum in India without totally destroying me. I was able to cry and laugh and I loved the characters, the story and the shots of India.

However my experience of it was slightly tarnished yeasterday when I read in the SMH that the children in the film, who come from the slums themselves were not paid a sufficient salary. Rubina Ali the little girl was paid $1060 and Azharuddin Ismail, the boy was paid $3600. The director claims there is also a trust fund but the parents don’t know anything about and they are still living in the slums. I am conscious that these things are complicated and that there are consequences of young children going from extreme poverty to wealth in a day however, depite that I think it is wrong to take advantage of them and patronising to not pay what one would pay someone who had not come from the slums. It is wrong that while the film and thus its British director and his team make millions while these children live in the tragic conditions that film was exposing. They were particuarly exposing people who find children on the streets and teach them to be beggars and then make themselves rich on the money the children earn. As far as I am concerned what the directors of this film are doing is nearly as bad.

Yesterday I attended Yabun 2009. Yabun is held on Australia Day, or what most people there were calling Survival Day, to celebrate Indigenous cultures. I think the name Survival Day is a great name and it was a wonderful, wonderful day. After spending the previous evening reading some disgustingly racist comments by people on Facebook it was probably the only way I would have been able to get into Australia Day at all. And it all came as a complete suprise to me. I love days that you are not expecting much of but turn out to be great. Only problem is that you don’t think to tell anyone else about it.

Back to Yabun, it was held at Victoria Park, just down the road from us. It opened up with some traditional dancing and smoking and of course a recognition of the Gadigal people on whose land we were gathered. Then Martin and I went off to hear a panel discuss indigenous singing/songwriting. This panel included none other than Kev Carmody. It was very interesting and there were only about 30 people there so intimate too. What I mainly got out of it was how most of them just wanted to be recognised as artists in their genre ie conutry or acoustic or rap rather than as indigenous. Many of them wanted to write about political issues and thought that important but they also wanted to be able to write about love or nature without feeling like it was unnecessary.

After that we sat on the grass and listened to some different artists play and had some lunch. I ate Turkish food to celebrate Australia’s multiculturalism (and because I really like it). We listened to some people reflect on the apology and where to from here and then more music, Kev included.

After the festival we went to the Frenchs to celebrate Jo’s birthday and farewell her. That was a bit sad for me, very sad actually but it was a great to spend the night with her and some other lovelies. We had a BBQ which I suppose was fitting.

So yay for Survival Day.

It seems awhile ago now but I have been wanting to write a list of the people who stayed with us over the Christmas and New Year period as there was lots and I would like to remember. It was very exhausting but lots and lots of fun too and all the people who stayed are pretty wonderful. Anyway here is the list:

23 Dec – Leila
24 Dec – Leila, Gem, Mum, Drew
25 Dec – Leila, Gem
26 Dec – Leila, Gem
27 Dec – Leila, Gem Jo, Victor
28 Dec – Leila, Mum, Keith
29 Dec – Leila
30 Dec – Leila, Gem, Dean
31 Dec – Leila, Gem, Dean, Daniel
01 Jan – Leila, Gem, Dean, Daniel
02 Jan – I stayed in the Blue Mountains.
03 Jan – Leila, Gem, Dean
04 Jan – Leila, Gem, Dean
05 Jan – Leila, Gem, Jem
06 Jan – Leila, Gem, Dad
07 Jan – Gem, Dad
08 Jan – Gem, Dad, Dave
09 Jan – Gem, Dave, Jess
10 Jan – Gem, Dave, Naomi, Karen
11 Jan – Gem, Dave, Naomi, Karen