So, I have spent the morning trying to work and realizing, hey, wait a second, I am not actually getting anything done towards this exegesis paper that is going to be due in two more days. Now there is only a half hour before we are going to leave for another one of our lovely excursions, so I figured I might as well give in and at least attempt to catch up my blog again. This past weekend was our wondrous trip to Tasmania. I was somewhat surprised by the amazing natural beauty of this little island, it is like a cross between Western NY, only with higher hills and mountains, and the Caribbean with wide, shallow bays fully of crystal clear turquoise water. So, in answer to my assigned journal questiony thing, I think that Tasmania has much more natural beauty than the mainland, or, as they like to refer to it, the North Island. We spent our first afternoon there in Freycinet National Park, hiking around and visiting Wineglass Bay, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I have not seen enough of the places on this planet to be able to make an accurate evaluation as far as that is concerned, but I was not disappointed. There was a long, white beach with the funniest sand you have ever seen, almost like tiny pebbles, but hardly small enough even to be called grains of sand, and they squeaked when you walked on them. The beach was all in a long arc, backed by a steep dune all covered with green vegetation. On each side of the beach were big tall mountains, so tall that you could see little wispy puffs of cloud drifting by far below the peak. They were covered with deep green trees all laid our like a carpet around their flanks. Out towards the ocean, the bay narrowed so that only a little neck of water could get through, which is probably where it got its name. It was a long, steep hike down to the beach, but I think it was definitely worth it to be able to walk on that beautiful sand, look at the shells, and laugh at Matt as he tried to swim in the icy water, fresh off the Antarctic icebergs, which is the next closest land mass off the shores of Tassie. So that was a really fun day, in spite of the fact that we had to wake up at 5 in the morning in order to catch our plane.
Oh! That was the other funny thing. We all had to wake up ultra-early that day in order to be on time for our plane, and then as we all stumbled out of the house in our groggy, half-conscious state, we realized that only one of the taxis we ordered had come. So we all stood around in the parking lot, watching the sun come up and the sky redden, much like Dr. King’s face as he grew more and more perturbed at this unprofessional behavior from the taxi company. Then, we all breathed a sigh of relief as we at last saw the second taxi speeding down towards Kingsley, only to turn that sigh into a gasp of disbelief as the driver sped right past the college, missing us entirely. We waited some more while the one driver we did have radioed the tardy driver, I imagine with a message something along the lines of, “Hey moron, you missed your stop!” and we waited a few more minutes as he came speeding back, then waited a bit longer as he overshot the entrance to the parking lot just enough to need to back up in the middle of the street before he finally pulled in and we all rolled out. It all turned out fine, we still got to our plane on time anyway, but gosh it was awfully funny in the delirium that I was in at the time. Anywho.
The second day in Tassie was fun too. We stayed in Hobart and that morning just happened to be the one when they had their Christmas Parade! It was so much fun, I haven’t seen a parade in forever and I enjoy them so much. They had a bunch of different floats trying to show the multi-cultural nature of Tassie and so there was great Japanese drummers and Greek music and a whole float full of Africans (though I must say, that was definitely more Africans than I’ve seen in the rest of my time in Australia put together) and like three different troops of bagpipers. The weirdest things were the float carrying the giant gold statue of Buddha, sitting in his locust flower and shaded by a big umbrella, and also to see Santa Claus come rolling by in his sleigh and reindeer over a snow covered roof, all things which they definitely do not have in Australia, especially at Christmas time. Also in Hobart they have this big market that you can go to that has the coolest stuff which is where I spent the afternoon. I had been saving up my food money for the last few weeks and so I got to do a good bit of actual shopping that morning, rather than just browsing longingly. The other thing about Tassie is that the whole place has much more of a small town feel, so I found the people to be really exceptionally friendly there, even more so than most other Australians. A story to illustrate…
I had shopped all morning and it was getting to be like 2:00 and I still hadn’t eaten the peanut butter and nutella sandwich that I had brought for my lunch, so I picked the courtyard of a quiet café that was just closing and sat down. The only other people who were still there were these three older guys who, I noted from their conversation were all in a band together and had just finished playing the coffeehouse. So, as I sat there quietly eating my sandwich, one of them came over to say hi and we got to talking and he was asking me (my accent giving me away as an obvious American) why I was over here and what kind of studying I was doing and he stops suddenly and says, “How old are you?” and I think for a second before remembering, “20.” He starts digging in his pocket and pulls out this antique coin and gives it to me and says, “Here, I like the way you talk to me, you’re not afraid. You look me straight in the eye” and we continue talking. It was a crazy coincidence that the other guy in the band’s family all lives in Houston too, and not just in the same city, but like the office where his brother works is like two blocks away from my house. He is an ex-pat American who’s lived in Australia for the last few years. He really seemed like he just couldn’t stand living in America any more, the noise and the pollution and the traffic and the consumeristic way of life all just finally drove him out. I can identify with that to some degree, but I also feel like it’s better to stay with a place and work to make changes than just give up on it. But anyway it was a really cool conversation.
The next day in Tassie was quite silly, we staying in Hobart, but it was Sunday and basically everything was closed down. So basically Thryn and I read all day, which was fairly productive, but not much fun. Then that night we went to a service at this church that Thryn found. It was pretty strange, fairly small (actually really small, maybe only like 40 people) but still trying to follow this mega-church Hillsong kind of model. And rather charismatic, but not so much on the scriptural foundation. But hey, at least we can still all get together and having exciting and emotionally charged experiences of God. The end was also rather interesting, people getting slain in the Spirit all over the place, they were dropping like flies! I don’t know, I’m not really in town long enough to have an impact on any of this negative or potentially negative stuff, I thought about talking to somebody after the service but I was too upset to be able to articulate myself well. So I just ended up leaving. Bleh.
Our last day there started off with a tour of the Cadbury Factory…yum. Just like visiting Willy Wonka, only more purple. It was really funny because we had this tour guide with this razor sharp wit and she kept the tour pretty interesting and fun and also managed to make fun of Ben King without getting in trouble for it. The tour itself was also pretty cool, but I mean c’mon, it’s chocolate, what’s not to get excited about???
The rest of the day we spent touring around Port Arthur, which was kind of dismal. It is a sobering thing to be in a place of so much heartache, a place where so much pain was endured and so many lives were played out in listless despair. I went into the old penitentiary building and looked out the windows, trying to imagine what it would do to me to have to spend years looking at the world from behind bars. I don’t think I even came close to the sentiment, but the place made my stomach turn. Speaking of which, it’s supposed to be majorly haunted, especially the old parsonage. Our tour guide spoke about that place with so much conviction and as much matter of fact common sense as if she was simply warning us about loose floorboards. Don’t go in by yourself, she said, and she especially warned us girls not to go in, even together. Send a guy in first, she told us. I don’t know what exactly to think about such things, but I have heard enough stories to heed such advice when it is given. Although interestingly we had just been up to said parsonage before the tour, and not knowing anything about it, we experienced nothing out of the ordinary. But, regardless of any ghosts stories, I think it really does something to the feel of a place when so many people live such unhappy lives there. I was not sorry to leave Port Arthur behind. It has a pretty and historic veneer, like many other old sites, but there is something rotten at the core, methinks.
So, that was our trip to Tasmania. Sorry this was such a long post, but it was a four day trip. Fairly succinct for me, actually.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Friday, November 25, 2005
"Your mom goes to Hanging Rock!"
Wow, finally getting back to blogging for a bit. Sorry that I’ve been so remiss, but as I’ve said before, I’ve been busting my butt working on the world’s most involved paper, so I haven’t really had time to post. The paper, btw, is done, more or less, at last; it’s on theology of the body, but if you’d like to look at it you’ll have to e-mail me and ask for it, because it’s 24 pages of text, much too long to post. Anyway, the topic for tonight’s post is our little visit to Hanging Rock, a post which is overdue by about two weeks, and is a very important topic, since it has proved to be surprisingly pivotal to my Australian experience.
Well, to begin this delightful excursion we all got together to watch the film, Picnic at Hanging Rock in preparation for our own picnic we were planning to embark on the next day. And friends, I kid you not, it was probably the strangest film I have ever seen. It was actually in my opinion, pretty poorly written, the plot just kind of wandered all over the place without ever having a really clear direction, and the film seemed to always be trying to drop these little “clues” which never really fit together and introducing all kinds of obscure characters and dialog that didn’t really do anything to further the story. Cinematographically, it was also pretty…uh, I don’t even know what to call it. There was just a lot of stuff done to make it seem really hypey, like when the girls were walking up towards the mountain and there was all this intense, LOTR style music, and all they were doing was hiking up a rock. And then when they got up near the top, they all just kind of spontaneously laid down on the rock. Why? We may never know. Most strikingly was the part where the three girls were walking up into the clefts of one of the rocks, led by the flighty and ethereal Miranda, prone to mid-stream dancing, the main character I guess (“She looks like a Botticelli angel!”). Then the fourth girl was calling after them and all of a sudden she starts screaming her head off and her running is in super-slow motion and the sky turns pink and then the scene just ends. What was that about? Again, I couldn’t say. Oh, I probably should have mentioned that the story behind this strange film is of 3 students and a teacher from an all girls school in about the 1910’s who go out for a picnic at the rock along with the rest of their class and never come back. They are never found and nobody knows what happened to them. Now, the movie is based off of a novel and although there are some who think that there could be some kind of factual basis for the novel, but there were never even any news stories run about the event. The question that we are supposed to address in our journals for this week is whether any Australians think its true. The ones that I’ve talked to seem to be quite aware of the fact that the story is fictional, and yet there is a great awareness about the story. I don’t know, it seems to me like people know the story is not true and yet they still believe in it to a degree, maybe even only subconsciously, but there is always this niggling little doubt of, well, it could be true.
Hanging Rock really is a place that captures the imagination; it is just so strange and unreal. All the rocks are like these incredibly enormous boulders scattered around, some worn incredibly smooth by the trodding of many feet and some that were as jagged as hardened lava. You could see all kind of faces and forms in the weird shapes of the boulders, which didn’t help the place to feel any cannier. The way that the rocks were tumbled about around the top of this giant formation made this complex web of little passages, impossibly steep little valley, turns and crevices. I could easily believe that someone could be lost in there and never be found again. It was a totally awesome place for exploring though, a fact which I was quite determined to take full advantage of, which led to the first exciting occurrence of the day. I was poking around the rocks when all of a sudden I went around this corner and there was this book just sitting on the rock. I left it alone for a few minutes to see if someone would come and grab it, but then curiosity got the better of me and I went over to check it out. There was a sticker on the front that said, “Take me home!” which confused me until I picked the book up and opened the cover. On the front was a panel explaining that this was a book crossing book, which is basically a program sponsored by a website where people can take their books and leave them out in public places for other people to find, read, and then leave out in a different place. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and it was certainly one that tickled me, so the book is definitely coming back with me to America. Most exciting of all, it’s a book of Flannery O’Conner short stories, so I feel pretty sure that it will be something that I enjoy.
Secondly, well, I was having so much fun climbing around on the rocks, climbing in and out, up and then back down, and well, I have no sense of time and I don’t wear a watch…the short form of the story is that I was a bit late getting back down the rocks to our picnic. And when I say a bit late, I mean like, a big bit. The two-hour-long sized bit. Oops. So I finally got back down and they all saw me coming and started clapping for me and I took a bow. I finally got back down to where the tables were set up and people were joking with me, asking, “Hey Shannon, where’ve you been, we thought you’d disappeared too!” And I put my hand dramatically to my forehead and rolled my eyes back and said, “I’ve was possessed by the spirit of Miranda!” which would probably be a lot more funny to you if you had seen the movie. But the point of all of this is that the people there thought it was quite funny, and I have been known as Miranda, especially to my housemates, ever since. This is an important fact because Miranda is not just a name, especially now that the idea of it has developed over time. It is a persona that I discovered I fit quite well, because as I have realized, the idea of it was built around me, like hey, this spirit of Miranda thing is how people here see me. And that’s kind of a cool thing. I like my new nickname. I like being Miranda. Now I suppose the only questions are whether this person really is me, or is just a part of me, or whether it is only a disguise and whether that part will remain when I return to life at home or life in Houghton. These are the kinds of things you have to think about when you are a freaking over-analytical nutbag like me.
Goodnight everyone.
Best regards,
Miranda
Well, to begin this delightful excursion we all got together to watch the film, Picnic at Hanging Rock in preparation for our own picnic we were planning to embark on the next day. And friends, I kid you not, it was probably the strangest film I have ever seen. It was actually in my opinion, pretty poorly written, the plot just kind of wandered all over the place without ever having a really clear direction, and the film seemed to always be trying to drop these little “clues” which never really fit together and introducing all kinds of obscure characters and dialog that didn’t really do anything to further the story. Cinematographically, it was also pretty…uh, I don’t even know what to call it. There was just a lot of stuff done to make it seem really hypey, like when the girls were walking up towards the mountain and there was all this intense, LOTR style music, and all they were doing was hiking up a rock. And then when they got up near the top, they all just kind of spontaneously laid down on the rock. Why? We may never know. Most strikingly was the part where the three girls were walking up into the clefts of one of the rocks, led by the flighty and ethereal Miranda, prone to mid-stream dancing, the main character I guess (“She looks like a Botticelli angel!”). Then the fourth girl was calling after them and all of a sudden she starts screaming her head off and her running is in super-slow motion and the sky turns pink and then the scene just ends. What was that about? Again, I couldn’t say. Oh, I probably should have mentioned that the story behind this strange film is of 3 students and a teacher from an all girls school in about the 1910’s who go out for a picnic at the rock along with the rest of their class and never come back. They are never found and nobody knows what happened to them. Now, the movie is based off of a novel and although there are some who think that there could be some kind of factual basis for the novel, but there were never even any news stories run about the event. The question that we are supposed to address in our journals for this week is whether any Australians think its true. The ones that I’ve talked to seem to be quite aware of the fact that the story is fictional, and yet there is a great awareness about the story. I don’t know, it seems to me like people know the story is not true and yet they still believe in it to a degree, maybe even only subconsciously, but there is always this niggling little doubt of, well, it could be true.
Hanging Rock really is a place that captures the imagination; it is just so strange and unreal. All the rocks are like these incredibly enormous boulders scattered around, some worn incredibly smooth by the trodding of many feet and some that were as jagged as hardened lava. You could see all kind of faces and forms in the weird shapes of the boulders, which didn’t help the place to feel any cannier. The way that the rocks were tumbled about around the top of this giant formation made this complex web of little passages, impossibly steep little valley, turns and crevices. I could easily believe that someone could be lost in there and never be found again. It was a totally awesome place for exploring though, a fact which I was quite determined to take full advantage of, which led to the first exciting occurrence of the day. I was poking around the rocks when all of a sudden I went around this corner and there was this book just sitting on the rock. I left it alone for a few minutes to see if someone would come and grab it, but then curiosity got the better of me and I went over to check it out. There was a sticker on the front that said, “Take me home!” which confused me until I picked the book up and opened the cover. On the front was a panel explaining that this was a book crossing book, which is basically a program sponsored by a website where people can take their books and leave them out in public places for other people to find, read, and then leave out in a different place. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and it was certainly one that tickled me, so the book is definitely coming back with me to America. Most exciting of all, it’s a book of Flannery O’Conner short stories, so I feel pretty sure that it will be something that I enjoy.
Secondly, well, I was having so much fun climbing around on the rocks, climbing in and out, up and then back down, and well, I have no sense of time and I don’t wear a watch…the short form of the story is that I was a bit late getting back down the rocks to our picnic. And when I say a bit late, I mean like, a big bit. The two-hour-long sized bit. Oops. So I finally got back down and they all saw me coming and started clapping for me and I took a bow. I finally got back down to where the tables were set up and people were joking with me, asking, “Hey Shannon, where’ve you been, we thought you’d disappeared too!” And I put my hand dramatically to my forehead and rolled my eyes back and said, “I’ve was possessed by the spirit of Miranda!” which would probably be a lot more funny to you if you had seen the movie. But the point of all of this is that the people there thought it was quite funny, and I have been known as Miranda, especially to my housemates, ever since. This is an important fact because Miranda is not just a name, especially now that the idea of it has developed over time. It is a persona that I discovered I fit quite well, because as I have realized, the idea of it was built around me, like hey, this spirit of Miranda thing is how people here see me. And that’s kind of a cool thing. I like my new nickname. I like being Miranda. Now I suppose the only questions are whether this person really is me, or is just a part of me, or whether it is only a disguise and whether that part will remain when I return to life at home or life in Houghton. These are the kinds of things you have to think about when you are a freaking over-analytical nutbag like me.
Goodnight everyone.
Best regards,
Miranda
Monday, November 14, 2005
Probably the most boring post you will ever read...
Seriously, I'm trying to warn you guys away from this one. We just had to write about our recent trip to the bustling metropolis of Geelong for our Engaging Australian culture class. I had to say something, but you do not have to read it...although, if any of you are suffering from end of the semester stress and insomnia, this could be your cure. Oh, the fascinations of the Ford factory and wool...
I think in all fairness it must be said that the Geelong excursion was the most dreaded of all the excursions we have done this semester. I think considering the fearful expectations we had, well, it could have been a lot worse. The first part of the trip was our tour of the Ford factory, which I have to say was my least favorite part of the trip. I don’t really know anything about cars, so I couldn’t understand anything of what were seeing and how all those metal bits they were showing us could be made into a functional machine. I also feel like we didn’t really get to see how anything was done, we just kind of watched from a distance but we couldn’t see, for example, how they used the die-molds to form pieces of the cars. The explanations that our guide was giving weren’t very illuminating either. The thing that I did find really interesting was considering the impact of robotics on the industry. It is interesting to think of the extent to which robots could replace human workers. They do the job better, more quickly, and you don’t have to pay them a salary or workman’s comp. because they never get hurt on the job. All of these factors make them very attractive to employers, but maybe not so good for the overall economy. Workers lose jobs when their work can be performed better by a machine, or they can be replaced by just one worker who is more highly trained. Some argue that this actually creates jobs by putting people into the technology industry to make and program the robots, but I find it hard to believe that this would work out like that in actual fact. It would eliminate a lot of jobs for unskilled laborers, at any rate, even if it did provide more work for those in the technology industry.
The second part, the Wool Museum, did provide an interesting contrast to the Ford factory as well as some parallels. For one thing, the aversion to technological advances was definitely a parallel. A lot of times when an invention would come along with the capacity to make work easier on the shearers, they would totally reject it because they thought that if work was easier, they would get paid less. So they would have riots and burn the shearing sheds of the squatters who introduced the new technologies. Actually, the whole shed burning thing was like the theme of the wool museum. If something happened that you didn’t like, just go find a shed to burn down. Yep…I can identify. This whole wool thing was pretty serious business. There was actually almost a small scale war over shearers rights when the squatters all got together to decide to unanimously lower the price they would pay for the work. It was a big conflict, and in some ways it continues to this day. I am glad that we got the chance to go to the wool museum because I feel like the whole wool thing is so much a part of the Australian consciousness. It is all over the literature in things like Henry Lawson’s stories and the work ballads, and even the modern travel narratives that I’ve been reading usually mention something about sheep. I think historically, if there had been no sheep, there would not have been an Australia because they could not have had that first sustainable export to stabilize the colony. From what I’ve been reading though, it’s currently a very rough market and a lot of station owners are constantly in danger of going bankrupt. There’s a lot about the whole economic situation that I don’t really understand, but apparently even with the help of unionizing and cooperatives, it is hard to make ends meet. It is no longer needed for sustaining the economy all by itself, but I think something integral to the Australian consciousness would be lost if the wool industry died out. Something of those outback ideals and the strange and sublime scenes that Lawson paints in his stories would be gone, leaving behind a hole that would be very hard to fill indeed.
I think in all fairness it must be said that the Geelong excursion was the most dreaded of all the excursions we have done this semester. I think considering the fearful expectations we had, well, it could have been a lot worse. The first part of the trip was our tour of the Ford factory, which I have to say was my least favorite part of the trip. I don’t really know anything about cars, so I couldn’t understand anything of what were seeing and how all those metal bits they were showing us could be made into a functional machine. I also feel like we didn’t really get to see how anything was done, we just kind of watched from a distance but we couldn’t see, for example, how they used the die-molds to form pieces of the cars. The explanations that our guide was giving weren’t very illuminating either. The thing that I did find really interesting was considering the impact of robotics on the industry. It is interesting to think of the extent to which robots could replace human workers. They do the job better, more quickly, and you don’t have to pay them a salary or workman’s comp. because they never get hurt on the job. All of these factors make them very attractive to employers, but maybe not so good for the overall economy. Workers lose jobs when their work can be performed better by a machine, or they can be replaced by just one worker who is more highly trained. Some argue that this actually creates jobs by putting people into the technology industry to make and program the robots, but I find it hard to believe that this would work out like that in actual fact. It would eliminate a lot of jobs for unskilled laborers, at any rate, even if it did provide more work for those in the technology industry.
The second part, the Wool Museum, did provide an interesting contrast to the Ford factory as well as some parallels. For one thing, the aversion to technological advances was definitely a parallel. A lot of times when an invention would come along with the capacity to make work easier on the shearers, they would totally reject it because they thought that if work was easier, they would get paid less. So they would have riots and burn the shearing sheds of the squatters who introduced the new technologies. Actually, the whole shed burning thing was like the theme of the wool museum. If something happened that you didn’t like, just go find a shed to burn down. Yep…I can identify. This whole wool thing was pretty serious business. There was actually almost a small scale war over shearers rights when the squatters all got together to decide to unanimously lower the price they would pay for the work. It was a big conflict, and in some ways it continues to this day. I am glad that we got the chance to go to the wool museum because I feel like the whole wool thing is so much a part of the Australian consciousness. It is all over the literature in things like Henry Lawson’s stories and the work ballads, and even the modern travel narratives that I’ve been reading usually mention something about sheep. I think historically, if there had been no sheep, there would not have been an Australia because they could not have had that first sustainable export to stabilize the colony. From what I’ve been reading though, it’s currently a very rough market and a lot of station owners are constantly in danger of going bankrupt. There’s a lot about the whole economic situation that I don’t really understand, but apparently even with the help of unionizing and cooperatives, it is hard to make ends meet. It is no longer needed for sustaining the economy all by itself, but I think something integral to the Australian consciousness would be lost if the wool industry died out. Something of those outback ideals and the strange and sublime scenes that Lawson paints in his stories would be gone, leaving behind a hole that would be very hard to fill indeed.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Office Space
Sorry friends, I know it's been a while since my last post, maybe even long enough for you to notice the lack. I have been consumed lately with a big paper for my Christianity and Postmodernism class. I want so badly for it to turn out well, not for the sake of the grade, but because the problem that I'm working through is something I honestly want to figure out and revise. It's due on Thanksgiving Day (here, not there) so the clock is ticking down. I needed a break tonight though. I've been reading Dunn all day and my head is so full of Paul...sarx, pneuma, soma...and I don't even know Greek! But, an update is long overdue, so here goes...
It's been about a week ago now since I found myself walking towards the security desk of the Telstra Building, looking around anxiously. A few minutes of indecision before I found the folks I was supposed to meet, and we all headed up to the 24th floor. It was then that I found myself in a conference room way, way up in one of the tallest skyscrapers of the Central Business District, Melbourne, sitting down with Telstra execs, a postal worker, a drummer, and a city councilman, trying not to look as out of place and silly as I felt. What were we all doing there? Having church, of course.
David Wilson, who teaches one of my Kingsley classes on Wednesdays, also runs a number of cell churches throughout the week, including one that meets on Friday's at lunchtime for business people. I told him I was interested in going to one of his house churches and this was the one he directed me to. It was altogether an interesting experience. First of all, as a kind of side note, everyone except me and one other person was male. That may not sound like a big deal, but I have been going to Houghton for 2 years now, so it's pretty safe to say that I've gotten used to a different ratio. Secondly, I was the only American. That was interesting just in terms of what they had to explain to me. Like one of the things that was referenced in discussion was a big court case that's going on in Indonesia where an Australian woman got busted for bringing in some kind of drugs, which she claimed were put in there after the suitcase was out of her hands. That's commonplace enough, except in the country she was bringing them into, they deal out the death penalty for a crime like that, so its gotten a lot of media coverage. This is a specifically Australian concern b/c a lot of people travel into that area for either business or just on holiday, and so suddenly every tourist or business person has to wise up to the fact that they could easily find themselves in the same situation. All of this had to be explained to me, as an outsider. Just an observation on the whole "in-group, out-group" thing.
Anyway, they were talking about the book of Ecclesiastes because, as David explained to me, it's a book of wisdom which they find to be applicable to their place in the business world. It's highly informal, and nobody is exactly an expert biblical scholar, but they did come up with some surprising insights and ways of looking at things. At one point, they were talking about a verse that is about obedience to the king and how there's a time to just shut up and take orders. They were applying that to a corporate setting, to team projects they had been on where someone can start out with good insights, but when they start constantly shooting down everybody's suggestions, they probably should just shut up for a while and learn to just take orders. Or how when you're trying to make a suggestion to your boss, you can only push things so far before you need to just lay low and let him make his own mistakes. Mmmmm...contextualized scripture, it does a body good.
The interesting thing was though, that because the nature of the group was so specific that because I was not in the know, not just about Australian things, but about corporate things, I didn't feel like there was anything that I could have added to the discussion b/c it wouldn't have the same immediacy of application. Although you could argue that it was my fault for allowing myself to be intimidated, you could also say that it was the nature of the group itself. I do feel like it is a valid risk when forming "special interest" churches, outsiders will probably not feel as welcome or even necessarily be able to function. For example, my mom has functioned in a corporate setting all my life, so I have picked up a lot of the lingo and ins and outs of things just from listening to her talk about what's going on at work. What if I had had no knowledge of that whatsoever? I think one of the things that's pretty hot in postmodernity is forming these kinds of cell churches that really fit the needs of one or the other marginalized groups. I'm kind of reading a book on that right now, and I've got a lot more thoughts on house churches and the book specifically, but really can't write them out tonight. Someday, maybe.
It was an undeniably uncomfortable experience, but I'm glad I did it, if for no other reason than to add another dimension of experience to some of my other cell church experiences that I've had in the past. So many thoughts, so little time before the movie starts and I get counted absent...
It's been about a week ago now since I found myself walking towards the security desk of the Telstra Building, looking around anxiously. A few minutes of indecision before I found the folks I was supposed to meet, and we all headed up to the 24th floor. It was then that I found myself in a conference room way, way up in one of the tallest skyscrapers of the Central Business District, Melbourne, sitting down with Telstra execs, a postal worker, a drummer, and a city councilman, trying not to look as out of place and silly as I felt. What were we all doing there? Having church, of course.
David Wilson, who teaches one of my Kingsley classes on Wednesdays, also runs a number of cell churches throughout the week, including one that meets on Friday's at lunchtime for business people. I told him I was interested in going to one of his house churches and this was the one he directed me to. It was altogether an interesting experience. First of all, as a kind of side note, everyone except me and one other person was male. That may not sound like a big deal, but I have been going to Houghton for 2 years now, so it's pretty safe to say that I've gotten used to a different ratio. Secondly, I was the only American. That was interesting just in terms of what they had to explain to me. Like one of the things that was referenced in discussion was a big court case that's going on in Indonesia where an Australian woman got busted for bringing in some kind of drugs, which she claimed were put in there after the suitcase was out of her hands. That's commonplace enough, except in the country she was bringing them into, they deal out the death penalty for a crime like that, so its gotten a lot of media coverage. This is a specifically Australian concern b/c a lot of people travel into that area for either business or just on holiday, and so suddenly every tourist or business person has to wise up to the fact that they could easily find themselves in the same situation. All of this had to be explained to me, as an outsider. Just an observation on the whole "in-group, out-group" thing.
Anyway, they were talking about the book of Ecclesiastes because, as David explained to me, it's a book of wisdom which they find to be applicable to their place in the business world. It's highly informal, and nobody is exactly an expert biblical scholar, but they did come up with some surprising insights and ways of looking at things. At one point, they were talking about a verse that is about obedience to the king and how there's a time to just shut up and take orders. They were applying that to a corporate setting, to team projects they had been on where someone can start out with good insights, but when they start constantly shooting down everybody's suggestions, they probably should just shut up for a while and learn to just take orders. Or how when you're trying to make a suggestion to your boss, you can only push things so far before you need to just lay low and let him make his own mistakes. Mmmmm...contextualized scripture, it does a body good.
The interesting thing was though, that because the nature of the group was so specific that because I was not in the know, not just about Australian things, but about corporate things, I didn't feel like there was anything that I could have added to the discussion b/c it wouldn't have the same immediacy of application. Although you could argue that it was my fault for allowing myself to be intimidated, you could also say that it was the nature of the group itself. I do feel like it is a valid risk when forming "special interest" churches, outsiders will probably not feel as welcome or even necessarily be able to function. For example, my mom has functioned in a corporate setting all my life, so I have picked up a lot of the lingo and ins and outs of things just from listening to her talk about what's going on at work. What if I had had no knowledge of that whatsoever? I think one of the things that's pretty hot in postmodernity is forming these kinds of cell churches that really fit the needs of one or the other marginalized groups. I'm kind of reading a book on that right now, and I've got a lot more thoughts on house churches and the book specifically, but really can't write them out tonight. Someday, maybe.
It was an undeniably uncomfortable experience, but I'm glad I did it, if for no other reason than to add another dimension of experience to some of my other cell church experiences that I've had in the past. So many thoughts, so little time before the movie starts and I get counted absent...
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Not about Halloween
So yes, the Great Ocean Road. This should be an interesting post b/c it is already 1:00 in the A.M. but I am already falling behind my posting in terms of what is going on here and events are starting to pass by more quickly than I can record them. So, this may not make sense, but at least it will be here. So, as I began, the Great Ocean Road...you'll be pleased to know that all of the landmarks are the same, the rock formations and the water, the waves and sand and bright air and big sky...the kind of endless water that entices you to dream of foreign destinations and adventures as big as the blue on blue horizon. But the one element that was decidedly different on this trip (besides not changing al fresco) was the social element. This time, instead of being with Thryn and a whole bunch of strangers, I was with a whole bunch of people that I knew, or rather, a whole van full of the more familiar brand of stranger. I felt though, that this trip was very good for us as a group. We lead such separate lives here, off in our own dwellings with hardly any contact besides tea breaks, growth groups and these excursions. I feel like in some ways some of the walls were broken down on this trip, perhaps for the first time in our semester I felt like we were a group, and not a conglomeration of completely separate cliques. And then, there was that day at the Gibson steps...
It all started well enough. The Gibson steps are famous, and so we, being good little American tourists, stopped to walk down them. The waves were large and enticing, and though we were warned straightaway that the undertow was fierce, wading ensued. Many lamented the lack of swimsuits (bathers, for you Aussies) and so some (the indomitable Katie O. and Thryn) just decided to go in w/ their clothes on. Well, then other people w/ clothes on were dragged or pushed into the water or splashed until it was just no more use trying to stay dry. I was one of the fortunates who got dragged into the water, fully clothed. It was so much fun though, we splashed around in the water and chased each other and tried to knock each other down and tried to get other people wet who remained dry and ran all around dancing like lunatics and got sand EVERYWHERE and just generally enjoyed life and our temporary liberation from the classroom. We were liberated in a lot of ways that weekend...
Pause for reflection: It is atypical of me to get soaking wet with all my clothes on, and I only find this to be more true the older I get. I think of the consequences, I plan ahead, I go through different scenarios in my head ("Well, I didn't bring a towel, what if I'm too cold when I get out? Will we be going back to our cabin immediately after this? Do I have anything with me that could be damaged by the water?" and etc.). Katie O. put it to me so well this weekend, "Shannon," she said, "you've just gotta stop thinking so much." And so for one afternoon I did, I was in the in-group, the wet crowd, the people who were having fun, the people I would have envied if I had stayed dry on the shore. And the thing of the thing is, that's who I wish I was more often. A little less rational, a little more fun, more carefree, more willing to take chances if that's what's called for in order to really experience life. So here's the question that I've been mulling over ever since. Who am I really? Am I the person that I tend to act like most of the time, reserved, thoughtful, and above all, deliberate? Or am I the person that I act out when I am trying my hardest to be the person that I really want to be, the person that I am working towards inasmuch as I feel myself capable of change? I still don't know...
Anyway, my other favorite part of this second trip was a part that we actually hadn't seen before, a rainforest walk in a place called Melba's Gully. I think I am finally coming to discover that I am, solidly and undeniably, a tree hugging, forest-sprite wannabe nature nut. There is something about being in such a place that energizes me, calms me down and quiets me, no matter what craziness I was mucking about with before. I love to take photos in the rainforest because of the interactions with light and water that take place there. A fern frond backlit by the sun, a tender shoot growing in a rotting log, the slow and breathtaking unfurling of a fern finger. It's like everywhere I look some little nuance of creation is screaming for my attention: "Hello! Can't you see I'm a miracle, right here in front of you?" There is so much variation that takes place even in a short walk through, the changes from full sunlight to murky shadow to dappled path, a wide open clearing with enormous trees framing the distant sky, to a roof of those ferns, lovingly enfolding and shielding, brushing my head as I walk underneath. There is so much life there, even the dead things are already being used to support new life. And of course, a plant can't just be a plant all alone. You can have a tree growing with moss on one side of the trunk, some other kind of prickly foliage on the other and yet another plant growing in the forks of the branches. There was even a sense of new discovery that was pervasive, like maybe I wasn't the first person to walk through here, but it may be that I'm the first to notice how the light hits that little cataract of water or how feathery this one clump of moss looks. This all sounds a bit hippie-esque, but I hardly care. I'm just trying to reflect the experience accurately.
Well, after we got back from our trip it was time for the Halloween party. I was going to say something about that as well, but I feel that it is not quite worthy of keeping me up all the way until 2 in the am, and this post is already quite long enough. But I would like to say, for your sake Katie, that in the decorating I did make a rather spectacular arrangement of post-verdant greenery. That is the most noteworthy thing you can choke out of me tonight.
Aeh-I must go to bed. I have consecrated tomorrow as a day in which work much take place all day long, and I will be subjected to the most fearful sort of ire and rage (my own) if I sleep in tomorrow...goodnight.
It all started well enough. The Gibson steps are famous, and so we, being good little American tourists, stopped to walk down them. The waves were large and enticing, and though we were warned straightaway that the undertow was fierce, wading ensued. Many lamented the lack of swimsuits (bathers, for you Aussies) and so some (the indomitable Katie O. and Thryn) just decided to go in w/ their clothes on. Well, then other people w/ clothes on were dragged or pushed into the water or splashed until it was just no more use trying to stay dry. I was one of the fortunates who got dragged into the water, fully clothed. It was so much fun though, we splashed around in the water and chased each other and tried to knock each other down and tried to get other people wet who remained dry and ran all around dancing like lunatics and got sand EVERYWHERE and just generally enjoyed life and our temporary liberation from the classroom. We were liberated in a lot of ways that weekend...
Pause for reflection: It is atypical of me to get soaking wet with all my clothes on, and I only find this to be more true the older I get. I think of the consequences, I plan ahead, I go through different scenarios in my head ("Well, I didn't bring a towel, what if I'm too cold when I get out? Will we be going back to our cabin immediately after this? Do I have anything with me that could be damaged by the water?" and etc.). Katie O. put it to me so well this weekend, "Shannon," she said, "you've just gotta stop thinking so much." And so for one afternoon I did, I was in the in-group, the wet crowd, the people who were having fun, the people I would have envied if I had stayed dry on the shore. And the thing of the thing is, that's who I wish I was more often. A little less rational, a little more fun, more carefree, more willing to take chances if that's what's called for in order to really experience life. So here's the question that I've been mulling over ever since. Who am I really? Am I the person that I tend to act like most of the time, reserved, thoughtful, and above all, deliberate? Or am I the person that I act out when I am trying my hardest to be the person that I really want to be, the person that I am working towards inasmuch as I feel myself capable of change? I still don't know...
Anyway, my other favorite part of this second trip was a part that we actually hadn't seen before, a rainforest walk in a place called Melba's Gully. I think I am finally coming to discover that I am, solidly and undeniably, a tree hugging, forest-sprite wannabe nature nut. There is something about being in such a place that energizes me, calms me down and quiets me, no matter what craziness I was mucking about with before. I love to take photos in the rainforest because of the interactions with light and water that take place there. A fern frond backlit by the sun, a tender shoot growing in a rotting log, the slow and breathtaking unfurling of a fern finger. It's like everywhere I look some little nuance of creation is screaming for my attention: "Hello! Can't you see I'm a miracle, right here in front of you?" There is so much variation that takes place even in a short walk through, the changes from full sunlight to murky shadow to dappled path, a wide open clearing with enormous trees framing the distant sky, to a roof of those ferns, lovingly enfolding and shielding, brushing my head as I walk underneath. There is so much life there, even the dead things are already being used to support new life. And of course, a plant can't just be a plant all alone. You can have a tree growing with moss on one side of the trunk, some other kind of prickly foliage on the other and yet another plant growing in the forks of the branches. There was even a sense of new discovery that was pervasive, like maybe I wasn't the first person to walk through here, but it may be that I'm the first to notice how the light hits that little cataract of water or how feathery this one clump of moss looks. This all sounds a bit hippie-esque, but I hardly care. I'm just trying to reflect the experience accurately.
Well, after we got back from our trip it was time for the Halloween party. I was going to say something about that as well, but I feel that it is not quite worthy of keeping me up all the way until 2 in the am, and this post is already quite long enough. But I would like to say, for your sake Katie, that in the decorating I did make a rather spectacular arrangement of post-verdant greenery. That is the most noteworthy thing you can choke out of me tonight.
Aeh-I must go to bed. I have consecrated tomorrow as a day in which work much take place all day long, and I will be subjected to the most fearful sort of ire and rage (my own) if I sleep in tomorrow...goodnight.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Take the floor
You know, it's kind of denigrating, especially for a future writer (ha!) to read other people blogs who have 46 or 37 comments on each entry and then come home sweet home to my own little blog and stare down the barrel of straight zero's since I don't know when. Just a thought...
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