Month: August 2010
City to Surf audio posts here tomorrow
After walking and jogging a couple of hundred kilometres in the past few months, Jeremy and I are ready for the City to Surf tomorrow.
We’ll hop on the 440 bus just before 8am in time to join our exclusive back of the pack starting group in the city. Due to the large crowds expected to watch our special orange group, we won’t get away from the start line until about 9am.
But our times will be carefully synchronised thanks to the start of the art shoe lace chips we’ll be wearing so our spectacular times will not be interfered with.
For you, the listening public, we will phone in breaking news blog audio posts direct from the race. So watch this space tomorrow morning (not during church though…) for a starting summary, a mid-race review, and a eulogy at the end. Did I say eulogy? I meant wrap-up.
If you are watching on television (and checking out this blog at the same time of course) you will probably spot us, notable for our orange bibs, my Jesus Saves goalkeeping t-shirt (thanks Bek) and Jeremy’s huge stature. If you see an ambulance, that also may have something to do with us…
I know various other people completing the event and have decided to let them all beat me in the spirit of self-sacrifice. On the day, the City to Surf will be the winner…
My secret preparation tip was a carbohydrate-laden Pad See Ew, purchased on the way home from the Swans v Hawks game, from official City to Surf Thai restaurant, Thai La Long. (I just made up the official bit.)
My other secret weapon was to work night shift last night and have just three hours sleep this morning as I plan to sleep through the last half of the race tomorrow so as not to notice the pain in my curly toe.
I know you don’t believe me about the curly toe but it’s the stuff of legend in my family and I have learned from my mother that she gets it too and so did my grandmother. We come from a line of curly toed people…
I have just realised my sleep deprivation may be becoming obvious in this posting so will say farewell and go upstairs to see if I can make out what Jo is singing in the shower. PH
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Christians get moving on election action
We’ve passed the half-way mark of the election campaign and the temperature could be rising just a little.
Waking a bit groggily this morning, the result of working split night shifts so that my already insomniac tendencies are exacerbated, I heard a promo for ABC Radio’s AM in which a determined-sounding woman was telling the reporter she wouldn’t be voting for Julia Gillard because she’s an atheist and she knew ‘hundreds of people’ who had the same view.
You can check out this story at Australian Christian Voter.
As if to keep the ball rolling, the Australian Christian Lobby launched its Australia Votes website today and once again you can get a good rundown at ACV.
Finally, candidate electorate forums are up and running, check out a list of the ACL ones organised so far.
Or perhaps you would prefer the Make Poverty History/Micah Challenge variety. Learn about them here.
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Relentless, restless reading confessions
People with blogs often tell other people, with or without blogs, about what they are reading. This may be to come across as a clever, readerish type or out of a genuine attempt to stimulate reading and discussion.
In my case I’m going to tell you what I’ve been reading because the litter of books next to my bed could be ignored no longer. I suddenly noticed it one day and thought, mmmm.
Anyway, here’s what I’m reading and feel free to use the comment facility with this post to inflict on me what you are reading. No, seriously, I’m generally interested! By the way, this reading does not include the portions of novels I am required to read for the publishing and editing courses I am doing which so far has included Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, James Bradley’s The Resurrectionist and Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park (and that’s just the first week…). And then there is the constant noting of books other people are recommending in my lectures so that I now have a list of about 37 books that simply must be read…
But back to the leaf-litter around my bed:
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To be beheaded, and satisfied…
Back in the early 1990s when I started out in pastoral ministry and church leadership there was a popular teaching used to inspire Christians to greater heights of service and vision.
‘There came a man sent by God, and his name was John’ reads John 1:6, speaking of John the Baptist.
We were asked to replace the name ‘John’ with our own to encourage us to believe we too had been called by God to do great things. Just as John the Baptist strode out into the Jordan and Judea in response to the call of God, so to we would make our mark on the world.
Of course there is a fine line between an ultruistic desire to change the world and egotistical need for recognition and I’m not entirely sure which was more developed by this reference.
That is not to say that God does not call people and that we should not have an unaffected, humble and life-changing sense of the purpose of God in our lives. Each one of us is significant beyond our comprehension, in terms of our seen and unseen influence on others but mostly because we matter to God.
But I don’t recall us, as we discussed this verse, following on from this starting point with John the Baptist through to the outcome of his call. John lived in the desert, wore animal skins, ate locusts, languished in prison, watched his finest disciples leave to follow another and was beheaded.
While Jesus called him greater than any Old Testament prophet, his entire ministry was designed to make way for another. One of John’s best known statements was that Jesus should become more, and himself less.
Serving God is ever the selfless act and if we substitute our own ambition for his glory we cross over into something different.
None of us carry off selflessness to perfection – even John the Baptist acknowledged a gradual retreat of his own name and a rising up of Christ’s. And many of us forget selflessness altogether and pursue ministry for selfish gain, cloaked in a spiritual mantle.
The telling will be in our ability to lay it down and celebrate its picking up by another. To be beheaded and satisfied that we have done well is the mark of Christian greatness. Now there’s a line we don’t see too often in leadership classes… PH
PS There might be something in this post for Kevin Rudd??!!
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Possum’s magical parade across Parramatta Rd
While driving to work at about 11.45pm yesterday, the normally frantic Parramatta Rd heading into the city was refreshingly quiet.
Which was just as well with a dignified, if slightly wobbly, possum deciding to cross the road in Camperdown.
Setting off from near Bridge St School, the possum crossed the first three lanes with one or two hesitant moments before hopping on to the median strip like some street-savvy Sydney-sider. Having slowed down to watch this part of the journey, I stopped completely as the possum continued a metre or two in front of my car.
Having seen the creature safely across I moved on, wishing I’d got my phone out to video the unusual city sight.
My last glimpse of the possum was of it sitting patiently in front of the glass sliding doors of AGL. Maybe it had a gas bill to pay…
utterance 