My friend Mandi was right. Twenty nine is a very unglamorous year. It’s like, I’m in my twenties, but not really. I feel like I’m spending the last year of my twenties sitting around waiting to turn thirty. And when I turn thirty, I’ll have it all figured out, won’t I?
Say someone tells you that they work as a waitress. If they were twenty something, then you’d kinda think, “okay then, a waitress. That’s not a bad job to have while you’re deciding what career path to take”. But say they told you that they work as a waitress, and they were in their thirties. You would assume that was the career path they’d chosen. You would perhaps assume that they worked as a waitress to supplement their husband’s income. Maybe they have a couple of kids – they’re in their thirties, after all – and working as a waitress fits in perfectly because she can look after the kids during the day, and he can look after them at night while she goes to work. If she had no children, then you’d think, “a waitress? She wanted to be a waitress? Fair enough then… maybe she’s a great people person”. I dunno. Nothing against waitresses, mind you. I suppose it seems a bit like one of those jobs that people do while they’re looking for something else. Like working in the accounts department, perhaps.
At the moment, I feel like there is nobody else my age. Everyone seems to be either younger or older. A few years ago, I could have blended in reasonably well with the university aged people, without being automatically bundled in with the mature-aged-put-your-bloody-hand-down-in-lectures group. These days, there is no way I’d fit in with the scruffy bemulleted lot coming currently departing the waning college system. For one thing, I don’t even own an Ipod, let alone feel the need to get the ear buds surgically implanted. For another, I don’t see the need to remove every vowel from every word I write, be it in email or text. I really don’t think it saves any time, and I think it shows a laziness bordering on ignorance.
Of course, there are people my own age around, but they’ve either got ‘real jobs’ or have started a family. So I guess I consider them ‘older’, even though they’re not, simply because I can’t really relate to them. I feel like my friends are getting younger and younger, as I subconsciously connect with people with similar interests and lifestyles, and those in their early to mid twenties haven’t started to think about careers or families too much yet. This is fine at the moment – as a twenty nine year old, I’m still technically in my twenties. But once I hit my thirties, well, it strikes me as kind of creepy.
Like that guy at the night club, trying to crack on to all the girls who look young enough to be his daughter. There's one in every crowd.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
Rhema
Warning: very long blog ahead. You might want to go and get a coffee, then make yourself comfortable. If you’re just popping in because you have a couple of minutes to spare, you might want to come back later. Or not. It’s totally up to you. I don’t mind either way. I probably wouldn’t want to read my crap either.
My friend Nick has a blog that I read fairly regularly. The topics he chooses to write about are interesting and varied, and sometimes he poses questions to his readers and asks for comments. Here is a question that he asked recently:
“I am very keen to hear what you think about God's voice. Have you ever had an experience of God speaking personally to you? How does He do it? What did He say? Have you ever heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God? What did they say and what did it make you think?”
Yes, I have had an experience of God speaking personally to me. A few, actually. I value those experiences a lot, and I hope I never forget a single one. Nick’s question is a good opportunity for me to reflect on some of those experiences, so I thought I may as well jot a few of them down while I was at it. Here they are, as best as I can remember, in rough chronological order.
I was seventeen years old, living in a total dive in Aileen Crescent, Burnie. Anyone who knows Burnie at all will know the flats I’m talking about – on the corner of Mount Street and Aileen Crescent – not the ones that have been painted white, but the ones with the vacant block of land in front of it. It looks like a block of apartments, and perhaps it is now, but when I lived there back in 1996 it was a bunch of smelly one-room bedsits with shared toilets, showers and laundry facilities, inhabited mainly by middle-aged alcoholic men. And me. I was the only girl. I’d recently dropped out of college so that I could work at McDonalds full time. I couldn’t survive on Austudy, and I was too young to have a license, so I couldn’t get to college anyway. Even when I turned 17, I didn’t have a car or anyone to teach me to drive. Working full time at McDonalds paid $160 a week. My bedsit cost $55 per week to rent.
The guy in the room next to mine was nice enough during the day when I passed him in the hallway, but of a night he would usually get drunk and watch western movies. I know this because the wall that my bed was against was the same wall that his TV was against on the other side. He would watch these movies until at least midnight. I’d be trying to sleep, and all I could hear was “POW-POW! Gallop-gallop-gallop-gallop… POW! POW-POW-POW!” Sometimes, if it was really loud, I’d knock on the wall. To begin with, he’d turn it down a bit. But after a while, he must’ve been tired of me ruining his fun, because he stopped caring. He wouldn’t turn it down. Instead, he’d yell “FUCK YOU!” back through the wall at me.
One night, it was pretty bad. I had to start work at 5:30 the next morning for an open shift. This meant getting up at around 4:30, because I had to factor in the half an hour that it took to walk to work. The guy’s TV was turned up louder than ever, and I’d already knocked and pleaded through the wall at him, to no avail. I had been a Christian for only a few weeks. I remember crying, and praying with all my heart that the guy would turn off his TV so that I could get some sleep. Suddenly, God spoke back to me. Audibly. I heard a loud voice speaking urgently in my ear – “GO!”
Confused, I replied, “What?” The voice spoke again, with even more urgency. “GO!!”
I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but obediently I got out of bed and went to my door. At exactly the same time, the guy in the next room got up and went to his door too. We met in the hallway. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but all sorts of words tearfully poured out as I explained to him that I had to work in a few hours, and I was sorry to ruin his fun, and I knew we all had to live in close proximity, but could he please turn his TV down so that I could get some sleep. He looked at me, stunned. “I am so sorry,” he replied, looking ashamed, “I had no idea. I’ll turn it down straight away. I’m really sorry”. He walked back into his room, and turned it down so low I couldn’t even hear it. For the remainder of my time there, I never had to ask him to turn it down again.
I had never heard God’s voice audibly before that night, and I don’t recall hearing that clearly since.
“He’s a Pharisee”
I was attending a church in Burnie, and I’d just become (rather forcibly) involved in the music team. I was at a practice one night, and I was watching the worship leader sing. Something about him rang alarm bells. He just didn’t seem genuine. At all. I really felt that the guy was hiding something, that he wasn’t being totally honest. I remember trying to shake the feeling, thinking “what would I know? I’m only a new Christian, and this guy is an elder in the church!” I told God I was sorry for thinking things like that about such an upstanding member of his kingdom.
“Why on earth would I be thinking things like that about this guy, God?” I asked.
“He’s a Pharisee!” he replied.
I was stunned! This wasn’t an audible voice like before, but rather a strong, resounding thought in my head. I knew it was God for two reasons. Firstly, it definitely wasn’t a thought I would have had myself. Secondly, it would not go away. It rang around and around in my mind, like the reverberation of a gong. I couldn’t make sense of the information. A Pharisee? What did he mean? Why would he have told me that? I didn’t know. But I knew it was true. The guy was a Pharisee. He was putting on an outward appearance to hide something. The inside of his heart did not match his actions.
About a week later, the guy in question got up in front of the congregation and admitted that he’d been having a six-month long affair with the wife of a friend of his, who also attended the church. He stepped down from eldership, and no longer sang on the music team. His marriage was eventually repaired, but the marriage of the other couple was completely ruined.
I’m still not sure why God felt the need to tell me that about him, but I think it was to help me to learn to trust my instincts, no matter how unlikely they might seem. It was definitely a skill that I’d need for the future.
“YES!”
Since leaving home in 1995, I hadn’t had much success with accommodation. I lived with a friend for six months, until she asked me to leave because she felt I was invading her space. Then I lived with my grandparents, but for various reasons that hadn’t worked out either. Then I lived in the bedsit on Aileen Crescent until I moved into a slightly nicer place with my cousin. My brand new shiny ‘full-on-for-the-Lord’ lifestyle (which I cringe about now, thanks for asking) was in constant conflict with her new-found lesbianism. To top it all off, my pregnant 15 year old sister was sleeping on a camp mattress in my bedroom, for lack of anywhere else to live. I guess it was a recipe for disaster, but whatever the reason, my sister got up in the middle of the night to empty her pregnant bladder, and came face to face with my cousin, standing at my bedroom door with a knife, trying to gather up the courage to come in and stab me with it. So I figured it was time to move out of there, even though I knew in my heart I should stay put. I was offered temporary board with a lady I worked with. I moved in, but it soon became obvious that her and her husband were used to their own space, and tension started to build there too.
I was a bit of a broken mess by this time, without a skerrick of self confidence or trust left in me. It was then that I met a couple at the church I went to. They seemed lovely. They not only offered me a place to stay, but they professed to genuinely love and care for me “as a daughter”. I drank it in. Nobody had ever said that sort of stuff to me before. I desperately wanted it to be true, even though all sorts of alarm bells were going off inside me. I moved in, went back to college to finish year 11 and 12, and tried to feel happy and secure.
It gradually became evident that the couple I was living with could be fairly manipulative and controlling. They would have ‘talks’ to me about "my behaviour" whenever I showed any sort of emotion other than forced happiness. They drew up a list of chores around the house to "keep it fair" – my workload didn’t seem entirely fair to me, but I did it all, for fear of the consequences. They generally treated me like I was a lot younger than I actually was – they even insisted on hiring a babysitter to look after me when they went away for a couple of weeks. By this stage I was nineteen, and I had lived out of home long enough to look after myself, thanks very much, but they paid no heed to my protests. Both of them were constantly unwell, and their health seemed to rule everything they did. None of my friends liked visiting, because the atmosphere in the house was so strange.
Then things just got weird. The guy started spending a lot of time chatting to me, even massaging me, and it was getting a bit too close for comfort. Then the woman stopped talking to me. She wouldn’t tell me why, only that “I should know”. Of course, looking back, as an older and wiser version of me, I’m guessing that the two were connected, but at the time I was completely oblivious. One day they went out to the paddock next door (where I couldn’t hear them) and had a screaming argument. After that, the guy wouldn’t talk to me either, sticking with the “you should know” explanation whenever I asked what I had done wrong. I was completely confused, and totally miserable. There was more tension in the household than in any other I had experienced. I’d walk into a room, and she would walk straight out of it, slamming the door behind her. She stopped cooking meals for me. I wrote her a letter, imploring her to tell me what I’d done wrong, and I found it balled up in her room when I went in there to vacuum. I felt like I was going insane. I really did. I felt like I was missing something completely obvious. But even in the middle of it all, I was still terrified at the thought of losing this new ‘family’, the only ones who I thought had ever really cared about me. Even though in my mind I knew it was ridiculous, the things they said and did made me feel like I could never survive on my own again. They had this crazy hold over me.
In the middle of all this confusion, I went into my room one day and prayed. It had been quite a while since I’d allowed myself to talk to God with a totally open heart and mind, because I was terrified that he would tell me I should move on. But I knew I had to hear the truth.
“God, please tell me what I should do. Should I move out?” I asked, screwing my eyes up in anticipation of what he might say.
“YES!” came the resounding reply.
I opened my eyes. All of a sudden, I felt at peace. For the first time in months, I felt like me again. I knew he was right. I had to leave this insane environment. I knew I was strong enough. I’d done it before, and I could do it again.
I went and told the couple that I was moving out. They were ecstatic. A week before, this would have devastated me. Now, I didn’t care. Predictably, they insisted on orchestrating the whole thing, finding me a flat, helping move my furniture, etc. I agreed, more to keep the peace than anything. They were going away for a couple of weeks, and they decided that when they returned, we would all go looking at flats together.
While they were on holiday, I decided that I was perfectly capable of going to look at places myself, so off I went. The very first flat I looked at was perfect. I signed the lease the next day, and got some friends together to help me move all my stuff. I thought the couple would be proud of me for organising things without the need for their help. I was wrong. They weren’t happy at all. It was like if they couldn’t do it their way, then they wanted no part of it. Fortunately, I no longer cared what they thought. I was free!
A couple of weeks after I moved out, I was handed a letter at church by a small child, from the couple. They wouldn’t even give it to me in person. I read the letter, and nearly fell apart again. It accused me of purposely introducing a virus to their computer while they’d been away, short changing them for board, and for not paying them back some money they’d lent me about six months earlier. All up, including repairs to their computer, they calculated that I owed them around five hundred dollars. The letter stated that they knew full well how much I earned, and they wouldn’t be taking repayment in measly instalments, thank you. They figured I could afford ten repayments of $50 per fortnight until this debt was repaid in full.
I was floored. I showed the letter to a friend, who happened to be an elder in the church. He took the letter away from me and said that he’d deal with it. I later found out that there was quite a file of these sorts of letters from this couple to various people, and that they’d been spoken to before about the same sort of thing. My elder friend told me that this couple were very money focused, and that they wouldn’t let the issue rest until they’d been repaid, even though I knew full well I didn’t owe them anything. The elder and the pastor ended up paying the couple the five hundred dollars out of their own money, just to shut them up.
I still can’t believe it came to that. I wish I still had a copy of the letter, just to remind myself how bloody ridiculous it was. I have barely spoken to them since, which suits me just fine. I can’t believed how sucked in I was, and I’m very grateful to God for getting me the hell out of there.
“K”
It was 1999. I was halfway through Year 12. I was lying in bed one night, thinking about where I’d been, and where I was going. I felt like I had come a long way from the empty shell I was a few years earlier. I was still a bit of an emotional cripple, but for the first time in my life, I felt that I could perhaps give something of myself to someone else. Perhaps I could actually have a functional relationship. It was a novel concept, maybe even absurd. Nevertheless, those were my thoughts that night.
“God, I think I want to get married. Who should I marry?” I asked, a bit tongue-in-cheek.
“K” came the unmistakeable voice, echoing over and over again in my mind.
“WHAT!?” I mentally screeched back at him, “you’ve got to be JOKING! You are joking, right? K is the LAST guy on EARTH I would want to marry! Please tell me you’re joking. Please don’t make me marry K. PLEASE!”
Silence.
Man. I was freaked out. K was this annoying desperado who had been chasing me for a couple of years. I had never been interested in him in that way. Besides, he was at bible college in Adelaide, supposedly having the time of his life. It seemed unlikely that he’d move back to Tasmania. Even if he did, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to marry him. I convinced myself that I’d heard incorrectly. It can’t have been God. He wouldn’t want me to marry someone I didn’t love. There is no way it was him. It couldn’t have been. I pushed down my nagging doubts, and stuck to my ‘I must have misheard’ theory.
Well, to cut a long story short, K came to stay about six months later during his Christmas break. He was a different guy. Completely different. Confident, sure of himself, funny, caring. He didn’t seem to mind what I thought of him, he was just happy being him. I liked that. We hung out together every day. He asked me to marry him when we were at the beach one day, just after Christmas. I freaked out, and told him to ask me in a couple of years, because I wasn’t ready. But then I remembered what God had said to me a few months earlier. It all started to make sense. I realised I didn’t want to lose K from my life. I had no idea whether or not I loved him, but I knew that marrying him was the right thing to do. So I said yes.
I wouldn’t recommend our courtship methods to everyone, but it worked for us. Marrying him was the best thing I ever did. He’s exactly the sort of person I want to share my life with, and I love him with all my heart.
The Odometer Vision
I’d been involved in the aforementioned church for a number of years, and some of the stuff that went on there was starting to take its toll. K and I had been running the youth group for nearly five years, and we were burned out. As a solution, the leadership of the church appointed someone else, and told us we were no longer required. We were very hurt. All we’d wanted was a break of a few weeks, and perhaps some frigging support – not too much to ask, surely? Apparently it was. I turned up at a youth leadership meeting, and was made to feel like a leper. I walked out, and cried the whole way home.
Around the same time, the music team that had been so desperate to have me as a fresh-faced 17 year old told me that they no longer felt I was suitable for the role. According to the elder in charge of music, I had “issues”. I needed to resolve these “issues” before I would be welcome to sing in church again. I asked what the “issues” were, and he was unable to come up with a concrete answer. It was the vibe, really. Just… you know… the vibe. Apparently, I wasn’t worshipping properly. Other singers shut their eyes and raised their hands, and I didn’t do that. Why not? What was wrong with me? I told him it felt fake, like I was putting on a show. He shook his head despairingly.
“Well then Rebecca, why do you come to church?” he asked.
“To see people. To hang out with other Christians. Not necessarily to sing, or talk to God. I can do that anywhere,” I replied.
“Well you see, that’s the very reason why you can’t be on the music team any more!” he earnestly explained, telling me that he put the church before everything, even before his family. Oh. My. Goodness. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the slightest bit biblical. But what the fuck would I know? He was the elder, not me. From then on, I was relegated to overhead projectionist.
Turning up for my shift on projection one Sunday morning, I was feeling pretty low. I was sick to death of the whole thing. I’d seen so much behind-the-scenes bullshit that I was pretty much convinced that the church as I knew it had the totally wrong end of the stick. Surely this wasn’t what God was like? I’d heard he was accepting, not judgmental. Was I supposed to pretend I was in some sort of perfect place while I got my shit together? Here was me thinking that I’d be accepted, warts and all, wherever I happened to be in life. Silly me. For the first time since I’d become a Christian, I started to entertain the idea that I might not actually be in the wrong for once. That it might be them, not me. The very notion shocked me, but didn’t seem at all implausible. In fact, it made perfect sense.
So, I asked God what he thought. During one of the scheduled-yet-spontaneous patches of waffling on where the projector was not required, I shut my eyes and asked him, “What am I DOING here? Is this all just a pile of crap? Where are you in all of this?”
A vision popped up behind my closed eyelids. It was a car odometer. I watched with interest as the numbers on the odometer clicked over rapidly, getting to a few hundred, then it would reset itself to zero. This happened over and over. The numbers never reached more than a couple of thousand before the reset button would be pushed and the odometer would read zero again.
“What does this mean?” I asked him, slightly amused.
“Every time you come back to this place,” he replied, “I have to reset your odometer to zero.”
I opened my eyes. I knew I had to leave that church. And not go back.
So I did. And I’ve never regretted it. I discarded everything I’d been taught there, figuring that if it was true, then it would show itself to be true without it being drummed repeatedly into my psyche. I’ve learned more about God, more about myself, more about people, and more about life in general than I ever did while I was doing the ‘normal’ Christian church thing. I still find it amusing that God would tell someone to leave a church in order to have a better relationship with him. But I’m very glad he did.
“It’s just a job”
This one still hurts a lot, so I’ll be brief. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before anyway. In 2007, I had a very stressful job that I loved and stupidly gave my whole self to. The company went under, and I asked God where my future lay with them – should I go, or should I stay?
“It’s just a job. Remember that.” he said.
So I went into work, repeating his words over and over in an attempt to detach myself from caring so much. The next day I got fired.
I know I should listen to what he said, but I just can’t seem to stop it hurting. He was right. It was just a job. I’ll just keep telling myself that, and maybe one day it won’t hurt any more.
“You have let yourself go”
This was in around August last year. I was lying in bed one night, and I asked him to tell me something I needed to hear.
“You have let yourself go” came his familiar voice, resonating in my mind.
Immediately, I began to wholeheartedly agree with him – he is God after all, and he’s been right all those other times. But then I realised I had no idea what he actually meant by that. Was he referring to my blubbery physique? To my gradually developing indifference to pretty much everything? I have thought about this comment often since then, but I still have no idea. Of course, I probed him for more information, but nothing. Nada. Ideas and suggestions are most welcome.
“Which way is home?”
After an unrelated rant to him one night late last year (again, while lying in bed), my mind was swiftly transported to a place on the Bass Highway just outside of Elizabeth Town, kind of near the big apple orchard. I somehow knew that this was the halfway point between Burnie and Launceston. It was so random, and it had nothing to do with whatever I was whingeing to him about at the time. So I asked him, “What am I doing here?”
He replied with a question of his own. “Which way is home?”
I was stumped. I looked towards Burnie, and then towards Launceston. Which way was home? Suddenly it was obvious how much I had been holding on to my ‘old’ life on the coast. I had not fully moved on. I realised I had to commit to one or the other. I said to him, “This better not be some not-so-subtle way of saying I should move back to Burnie, because that is NOT something I want to do”. I sensed that it wasn’t. Just that I had to decide to fully move on.
So I did. Driving back to Launnie after the Burnie carols, for the first time I felt like I was driving home. I knew I’d have to give up my involvement in things like the carols, because it was holding on to that old life, and I wouldn’t be able to completely move on while I was doing that. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them. As it turns out, I didn’t have to. I was sent a ‘thank you’ card from the organiser, informing me in a very chummy ‘no hard feelings’ kind of way that the carols was changing, and that they would be “giving me a rest this year”. Haha. I guess if I wasn’t going to do it, then someone else would do it for me. You’d think I’d have learned to listen by now, eh.
Now that I look back over it, there’s a bit of a pattern in all of that. More often than not, he seems to speak to me during times of change in my life. I’m not sure whether to be pleased, or scared about what he’ll say next.
Getting back to Nick’s original question, of course I have heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God. Many, many times. It’s the main reason why I’m where I’m at as far as church goes. I reckon there’ll be a lot of people with a shitload of explaining to do when the time comes. No doubt I’ll be one of them.
There’s not much I can do about that now, though. All I can do is to continue to try and be genuine in all I say and do.
My friend Nick has a blog that I read fairly regularly. The topics he chooses to write about are interesting and varied, and sometimes he poses questions to his readers and asks for comments. Here is a question that he asked recently:
“I am very keen to hear what you think about God's voice. Have you ever had an experience of God speaking personally to you? How does He do it? What did He say? Have you ever heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God? What did they say and what did it make you think?”
Yes, I have had an experience of God speaking personally to me. A few, actually. I value those experiences a lot, and I hope I never forget a single one. Nick’s question is a good opportunity for me to reflect on some of those experiences, so I thought I may as well jot a few of them down while I was at it. Here they are, as best as I can remember, in rough chronological order.
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“GO!”I was seventeen years old, living in a total dive in Aileen Crescent, Burnie. Anyone who knows Burnie at all will know the flats I’m talking about – on the corner of Mount Street and Aileen Crescent – not the ones that have been painted white, but the ones with the vacant block of land in front of it. It looks like a block of apartments, and perhaps it is now, but when I lived there back in 1996 it was a bunch of smelly one-room bedsits with shared toilets, showers and laundry facilities, inhabited mainly by middle-aged alcoholic men. And me. I was the only girl. I’d recently dropped out of college so that I could work at McDonalds full time. I couldn’t survive on Austudy, and I was too young to have a license, so I couldn’t get to college anyway. Even when I turned 17, I didn’t have a car or anyone to teach me to drive. Working full time at McDonalds paid $160 a week. My bedsit cost $55 per week to rent.
The guy in the room next to mine was nice enough during the day when I passed him in the hallway, but of a night he would usually get drunk and watch western movies. I know this because the wall that my bed was against was the same wall that his TV was against on the other side. He would watch these movies until at least midnight. I’d be trying to sleep, and all I could hear was “POW-POW! Gallop-gallop-gallop-gallop… POW! POW-POW-POW!” Sometimes, if it was really loud, I’d knock on the wall. To begin with, he’d turn it down a bit. But after a while, he must’ve been tired of me ruining his fun, because he stopped caring. He wouldn’t turn it down. Instead, he’d yell “FUCK YOU!” back through the wall at me.
One night, it was pretty bad. I had to start work at 5:30 the next morning for an open shift. This meant getting up at around 4:30, because I had to factor in the half an hour that it took to walk to work. The guy’s TV was turned up louder than ever, and I’d already knocked and pleaded through the wall at him, to no avail. I had been a Christian for only a few weeks. I remember crying, and praying with all my heart that the guy would turn off his TV so that I could get some sleep. Suddenly, God spoke back to me. Audibly. I heard a loud voice speaking urgently in my ear – “GO!”
Confused, I replied, “What?” The voice spoke again, with even more urgency. “GO!!”
I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but obediently I got out of bed and went to my door. At exactly the same time, the guy in the next room got up and went to his door too. We met in the hallway. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but all sorts of words tearfully poured out as I explained to him that I had to work in a few hours, and I was sorry to ruin his fun, and I knew we all had to live in close proximity, but could he please turn his TV down so that I could get some sleep. He looked at me, stunned. “I am so sorry,” he replied, looking ashamed, “I had no idea. I’ll turn it down straight away. I’m really sorry”. He walked back into his room, and turned it down so low I couldn’t even hear it. For the remainder of my time there, I never had to ask him to turn it down again.
I had never heard God’s voice audibly before that night, and I don’t recall hearing that clearly since.
“He’s a Pharisee”
I was attending a church in Burnie, and I’d just become (rather forcibly) involved in the music team. I was at a practice one night, and I was watching the worship leader sing. Something about him rang alarm bells. He just didn’t seem genuine. At all. I really felt that the guy was hiding something, that he wasn’t being totally honest. I remember trying to shake the feeling, thinking “what would I know? I’m only a new Christian, and this guy is an elder in the church!” I told God I was sorry for thinking things like that about such an upstanding member of his kingdom.
“Why on earth would I be thinking things like that about this guy, God?” I asked.
“He’s a Pharisee!” he replied.
I was stunned! This wasn’t an audible voice like before, but rather a strong, resounding thought in my head. I knew it was God for two reasons. Firstly, it definitely wasn’t a thought I would have had myself. Secondly, it would not go away. It rang around and around in my mind, like the reverberation of a gong. I couldn’t make sense of the information. A Pharisee? What did he mean? Why would he have told me that? I didn’t know. But I knew it was true. The guy was a Pharisee. He was putting on an outward appearance to hide something. The inside of his heart did not match his actions.
About a week later, the guy in question got up in front of the congregation and admitted that he’d been having a six-month long affair with the wife of a friend of his, who also attended the church. He stepped down from eldership, and no longer sang on the music team. His marriage was eventually repaired, but the marriage of the other couple was completely ruined.
I’m still not sure why God felt the need to tell me that about him, but I think it was to help me to learn to trust my instincts, no matter how unlikely they might seem. It was definitely a skill that I’d need for the future.
“YES!”
Since leaving home in 1995, I hadn’t had much success with accommodation. I lived with a friend for six months, until she asked me to leave because she felt I was invading her space. Then I lived with my grandparents, but for various reasons that hadn’t worked out either. Then I lived in the bedsit on Aileen Crescent until I moved into a slightly nicer place with my cousin. My brand new shiny ‘full-on-for-the-Lord’ lifestyle (which I cringe about now, thanks for asking) was in constant conflict with her new-found lesbianism. To top it all off, my pregnant 15 year old sister was sleeping on a camp mattress in my bedroom, for lack of anywhere else to live. I guess it was a recipe for disaster, but whatever the reason, my sister got up in the middle of the night to empty her pregnant bladder, and came face to face with my cousin, standing at my bedroom door with a knife, trying to gather up the courage to come in and stab me with it. So I figured it was time to move out of there, even though I knew in my heart I should stay put. I was offered temporary board with a lady I worked with. I moved in, but it soon became obvious that her and her husband were used to their own space, and tension started to build there too.
I was a bit of a broken mess by this time, without a skerrick of self confidence or trust left in me. It was then that I met a couple at the church I went to. They seemed lovely. They not only offered me a place to stay, but they professed to genuinely love and care for me “as a daughter”. I drank it in. Nobody had ever said that sort of stuff to me before. I desperately wanted it to be true, even though all sorts of alarm bells were going off inside me. I moved in, went back to college to finish year 11 and 12, and tried to feel happy and secure.
It gradually became evident that the couple I was living with could be fairly manipulative and controlling. They would have ‘talks’ to me about "my behaviour" whenever I showed any sort of emotion other than forced happiness. They drew up a list of chores around the house to "keep it fair" – my workload didn’t seem entirely fair to me, but I did it all, for fear of the consequences. They generally treated me like I was a lot younger than I actually was – they even insisted on hiring a babysitter to look after me when they went away for a couple of weeks. By this stage I was nineteen, and I had lived out of home long enough to look after myself, thanks very much, but they paid no heed to my protests. Both of them were constantly unwell, and their health seemed to rule everything they did. None of my friends liked visiting, because the atmosphere in the house was so strange.
Then things just got weird. The guy started spending a lot of time chatting to me, even massaging me, and it was getting a bit too close for comfort. Then the woman stopped talking to me. She wouldn’t tell me why, only that “I should know”. Of course, looking back, as an older and wiser version of me, I’m guessing that the two were connected, but at the time I was completely oblivious. One day they went out to the paddock next door (where I couldn’t hear them) and had a screaming argument. After that, the guy wouldn’t talk to me either, sticking with the “you should know” explanation whenever I asked what I had done wrong. I was completely confused, and totally miserable. There was more tension in the household than in any other I had experienced. I’d walk into a room, and she would walk straight out of it, slamming the door behind her. She stopped cooking meals for me. I wrote her a letter, imploring her to tell me what I’d done wrong, and I found it balled up in her room when I went in there to vacuum. I felt like I was going insane. I really did. I felt like I was missing something completely obvious. But even in the middle of it all, I was still terrified at the thought of losing this new ‘family’, the only ones who I thought had ever really cared about me. Even though in my mind I knew it was ridiculous, the things they said and did made me feel like I could never survive on my own again. They had this crazy hold over me.
In the middle of all this confusion, I went into my room one day and prayed. It had been quite a while since I’d allowed myself to talk to God with a totally open heart and mind, because I was terrified that he would tell me I should move on. But I knew I had to hear the truth.
“God, please tell me what I should do. Should I move out?” I asked, screwing my eyes up in anticipation of what he might say.
“YES!” came the resounding reply.
I opened my eyes. All of a sudden, I felt at peace. For the first time in months, I felt like me again. I knew he was right. I had to leave this insane environment. I knew I was strong enough. I’d done it before, and I could do it again.
I went and told the couple that I was moving out. They were ecstatic. A week before, this would have devastated me. Now, I didn’t care. Predictably, they insisted on orchestrating the whole thing, finding me a flat, helping move my furniture, etc. I agreed, more to keep the peace than anything. They were going away for a couple of weeks, and they decided that when they returned, we would all go looking at flats together.
While they were on holiday, I decided that I was perfectly capable of going to look at places myself, so off I went. The very first flat I looked at was perfect. I signed the lease the next day, and got some friends together to help me move all my stuff. I thought the couple would be proud of me for organising things without the need for their help. I was wrong. They weren’t happy at all. It was like if they couldn’t do it their way, then they wanted no part of it. Fortunately, I no longer cared what they thought. I was free!
A couple of weeks after I moved out, I was handed a letter at church by a small child, from the couple. They wouldn’t even give it to me in person. I read the letter, and nearly fell apart again. It accused me of purposely introducing a virus to their computer while they’d been away, short changing them for board, and for not paying them back some money they’d lent me about six months earlier. All up, including repairs to their computer, they calculated that I owed them around five hundred dollars. The letter stated that they knew full well how much I earned, and they wouldn’t be taking repayment in measly instalments, thank you. They figured I could afford ten repayments of $50 per fortnight until this debt was repaid in full.
I was floored. I showed the letter to a friend, who happened to be an elder in the church. He took the letter away from me and said that he’d deal with it. I later found out that there was quite a file of these sorts of letters from this couple to various people, and that they’d been spoken to before about the same sort of thing. My elder friend told me that this couple were very money focused, and that they wouldn’t let the issue rest until they’d been repaid, even though I knew full well I didn’t owe them anything. The elder and the pastor ended up paying the couple the five hundred dollars out of their own money, just to shut them up.
I still can’t believe it came to that. I wish I still had a copy of the letter, just to remind myself how bloody ridiculous it was. I have barely spoken to them since, which suits me just fine. I can’t believed how sucked in I was, and I’m very grateful to God for getting me the hell out of there.
“K”
It was 1999. I was halfway through Year 12. I was lying in bed one night, thinking about where I’d been, and where I was going. I felt like I had come a long way from the empty shell I was a few years earlier. I was still a bit of an emotional cripple, but for the first time in my life, I felt that I could perhaps give something of myself to someone else. Perhaps I could actually have a functional relationship. It was a novel concept, maybe even absurd. Nevertheless, those were my thoughts that night.
“God, I think I want to get married. Who should I marry?” I asked, a bit tongue-in-cheek.
“K” came the unmistakeable voice, echoing over and over again in my mind.
“WHAT!?” I mentally screeched back at him, “you’ve got to be JOKING! You are joking, right? K is the LAST guy on EARTH I would want to marry! Please tell me you’re joking. Please don’t make me marry K. PLEASE!”
Silence.
Man. I was freaked out. K was this annoying desperado who had been chasing me for a couple of years. I had never been interested in him in that way. Besides, he was at bible college in Adelaide, supposedly having the time of his life. It seemed unlikely that he’d move back to Tasmania. Even if he did, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to marry him. I convinced myself that I’d heard incorrectly. It can’t have been God. He wouldn’t want me to marry someone I didn’t love. There is no way it was him. It couldn’t have been. I pushed down my nagging doubts, and stuck to my ‘I must have misheard’ theory.
Well, to cut a long story short, K came to stay about six months later during his Christmas break. He was a different guy. Completely different. Confident, sure of himself, funny, caring. He didn’t seem to mind what I thought of him, he was just happy being him. I liked that. We hung out together every day. He asked me to marry him when we were at the beach one day, just after Christmas. I freaked out, and told him to ask me in a couple of years, because I wasn’t ready. But then I remembered what God had said to me a few months earlier. It all started to make sense. I realised I didn’t want to lose K from my life. I had no idea whether or not I loved him, but I knew that marrying him was the right thing to do. So I said yes.
I wouldn’t recommend our courtship methods to everyone, but it worked for us. Marrying him was the best thing I ever did. He’s exactly the sort of person I want to share my life with, and I love him with all my heart.
The Odometer Vision
I’d been involved in the aforementioned church for a number of years, and some of the stuff that went on there was starting to take its toll. K and I had been running the youth group for nearly five years, and we were burned out. As a solution, the leadership of the church appointed someone else, and told us we were no longer required. We were very hurt. All we’d wanted was a break of a few weeks, and perhaps some frigging support – not too much to ask, surely? Apparently it was. I turned up at a youth leadership meeting, and was made to feel like a leper. I walked out, and cried the whole way home.
Around the same time, the music team that had been so desperate to have me as a fresh-faced 17 year old told me that they no longer felt I was suitable for the role. According to the elder in charge of music, I had “issues”. I needed to resolve these “issues” before I would be welcome to sing in church again. I asked what the “issues” were, and he was unable to come up with a concrete answer. It was the vibe, really. Just… you know… the vibe. Apparently, I wasn’t worshipping properly. Other singers shut their eyes and raised their hands, and I didn’t do that. Why not? What was wrong with me? I told him it felt fake, like I was putting on a show. He shook his head despairingly.
“Well then Rebecca, why do you come to church?” he asked.
“To see people. To hang out with other Christians. Not necessarily to sing, or talk to God. I can do that anywhere,” I replied.
“Well you see, that’s the very reason why you can’t be on the music team any more!” he earnestly explained, telling me that he put the church before everything, even before his family. Oh. My. Goodness. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the slightest bit biblical. But what the fuck would I know? He was the elder, not me. From then on, I was relegated to overhead projectionist.
Turning up for my shift on projection one Sunday morning, I was feeling pretty low. I was sick to death of the whole thing. I’d seen so much behind-the-scenes bullshit that I was pretty much convinced that the church as I knew it had the totally wrong end of the stick. Surely this wasn’t what God was like? I’d heard he was accepting, not judgmental. Was I supposed to pretend I was in some sort of perfect place while I got my shit together? Here was me thinking that I’d be accepted, warts and all, wherever I happened to be in life. Silly me. For the first time since I’d become a Christian, I started to entertain the idea that I might not actually be in the wrong for once. That it might be them, not me. The very notion shocked me, but didn’t seem at all implausible. In fact, it made perfect sense.
So, I asked God what he thought. During one of the scheduled-yet-spontaneous patches of waffling on where the projector was not required, I shut my eyes and asked him, “What am I DOING here? Is this all just a pile of crap? Where are you in all of this?”
A vision popped up behind my closed eyelids. It was a car odometer. I watched with interest as the numbers on the odometer clicked over rapidly, getting to a few hundred, then it would reset itself to zero. This happened over and over. The numbers never reached more than a couple of thousand before the reset button would be pushed and the odometer would read zero again.
“What does this mean?” I asked him, slightly amused.
“Every time you come back to this place,” he replied, “I have to reset your odometer to zero.”
I opened my eyes. I knew I had to leave that church. And not go back.
So I did. And I’ve never regretted it. I discarded everything I’d been taught there, figuring that if it was true, then it would show itself to be true without it being drummed repeatedly into my psyche. I’ve learned more about God, more about myself, more about people, and more about life in general than I ever did while I was doing the ‘normal’ Christian church thing. I still find it amusing that God would tell someone to leave a church in order to have a better relationship with him. But I’m very glad he did.
“It’s just a job”
This one still hurts a lot, so I’ll be brief. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before anyway. In 2007, I had a very stressful job that I loved and stupidly gave my whole self to. The company went under, and I asked God where my future lay with them – should I go, or should I stay?
“It’s just a job. Remember that.” he said.
So I went into work, repeating his words over and over in an attempt to detach myself from caring so much. The next day I got fired.
I know I should listen to what he said, but I just can’t seem to stop it hurting. He was right. It was just a job. I’ll just keep telling myself that, and maybe one day it won’t hurt any more.
“You have let yourself go”
This was in around August last year. I was lying in bed one night, and I asked him to tell me something I needed to hear.
“You have let yourself go” came his familiar voice, resonating in my mind.
Immediately, I began to wholeheartedly agree with him – he is God after all, and he’s been right all those other times. But then I realised I had no idea what he actually meant by that. Was he referring to my blubbery physique? To my gradually developing indifference to pretty much everything? I have thought about this comment often since then, but I still have no idea. Of course, I probed him for more information, but nothing. Nada. Ideas and suggestions are most welcome.
“Which way is home?”
After an unrelated rant to him one night late last year (again, while lying in bed), my mind was swiftly transported to a place on the Bass Highway just outside of Elizabeth Town, kind of near the big apple orchard. I somehow knew that this was the halfway point between Burnie and Launceston. It was so random, and it had nothing to do with whatever I was whingeing to him about at the time. So I asked him, “What am I doing here?”
He replied with a question of his own. “Which way is home?”
I was stumped. I looked towards Burnie, and then towards Launceston. Which way was home? Suddenly it was obvious how much I had been holding on to my ‘old’ life on the coast. I had not fully moved on. I realised I had to commit to one or the other. I said to him, “This better not be some not-so-subtle way of saying I should move back to Burnie, because that is NOT something I want to do”. I sensed that it wasn’t. Just that I had to decide to fully move on.
So I did. Driving back to Launnie after the Burnie carols, for the first time I felt like I was driving home. I knew I’d have to give up my involvement in things like the carols, because it was holding on to that old life, and I wouldn’t be able to completely move on while I was doing that. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them. As it turns out, I didn’t have to. I was sent a ‘thank you’ card from the organiser, informing me in a very chummy ‘no hard feelings’ kind of way that the carols was changing, and that they would be “giving me a rest this year”. Haha. I guess if I wasn’t going to do it, then someone else would do it for me. You’d think I’d have learned to listen by now, eh.
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Now that I look back over it, there’s a bit of a pattern in all of that. More often than not, he seems to speak to me during times of change in my life. I’m not sure whether to be pleased, or scared about what he’ll say next.
Getting back to Nick’s original question, of course I have heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God. Many, many times. It’s the main reason why I’m where I’m at as far as church goes. I reckon there’ll be a lot of people with a shitload of explaining to do when the time comes. No doubt I’ll be one of them.
There’s not much I can do about that now, though. All I can do is to continue to try and be genuine in all I say and do.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Real Fans
Today’s church was randomly selected because it was the only one in the paper that started at 10:30 that wasn’t named “St Someone-or-other”. I’d had a fairly late night the night before, and wasn’t in the mood to be liturged at. Now that I mention it, the paper is getting a bit thin on choice. Only nine denominations advertised this week. Looks like I might actually have to put in a bit more effort after I’ve exhausted these options. Sux to be me.
The name of the church I’d selected was a bit odd. I mentioned to K where I was going, and he said it sounded like one of those cults where the one sixty-something year old man fathers all the children. Instantly remembered that guy who was on 60 Minutes around 1989, with a face only a mother could love, who looked like he’d eaten all the children rather than fathered them. Whatever happened to that guy? Anyway, I was determined to go today with all the glass-half-fullness I could muster. Of course, it would be a bit too much to expect for the glass to be completely full. Aim low folks, and you won’t be disappointed.
How long can this sort of thing go on? What has the church become?
I’m not sure I can take much more.
The name of the church I’d selected was a bit odd. I mentioned to K where I was going, and he said it sounded like one of those cults where the one sixty-something year old man fathers all the children. Instantly remembered that guy who was on 60 Minutes around 1989, with a face only a mother could love, who looked like he’d eaten all the children rather than fathered them. Whatever happened to that guy? Anyway, I was determined to go today with all the glass-half-fullness I could muster. Of course, it would be a bit too much to expect for the glass to be completely full. Aim low folks, and you won’t be disappointed.
- Turned up in time to see two fluoro orange vested guys with ‘SECURITY’ menacingly printed on the back, herding the last car of about six into the car park. They seemed to take this task very seriously. Didn’t want to complicate things for them, as it seemed the car park could only take six cars, so I parked on the street.
- Sat in my usual spot nearest the exit. In case of a fire, of course. I’m very safety conscious, you know.
- The one-man-Casio-keyboard-band made me smile, for his sheer enthusiasm if nothing else. The kids (who made up roughly 60% of the small congregation) were up the front having a great time dancing along without a care in the world. Someone (presumably these same kids) had decorated the church by fastening tinsel to the walls with large strips of masking tape, and nobody had bothered to take it down yet. Very festive in a slapdash kind of way.
- Inevitably, the dreaded words were uttered: “Go up to someone you haven’t spoken to yet this morning, and tell them, ‘I love you because Jesus lives in me!’” At first, the handful of adults there stuck to who they knew, clapping their mates on the shoulder and robotically repeating the instructed greeting. Then an old lady snuck up on me from behind. “I love you because Jesus lives in me!” she exclaimed, giving my right breast a reassuring squeeze, then ambling off in search of further prey. In her defence, it does tend to reside right next to my arm, which I’m pretty sure is where she was actually aiming for. Felt rather violated nonetheless.
- No sooner had I collected myself again, I was lobbed on by Elderly Man and Linen Leisure Suit Lady. Seems they both decided in the same split second that I looked like I needed some lovin’. Almost breaking into a run, they came at me with arms outstretched from opposite directions – there was no place to run. “I love you because Jesus lives in me!” they both hollered in unison, mussing up my hair and groping me from every available angle. “Err… fabulous” was my incredulous reply, albeit muffled by one of their armpits. Felt highly amused yet incredibly traumatised all at once. Smelled like an op shop for quite some time after that.
- The sermon. Boy, where do I start? We were informed right from the get-go by the sermon giver that he would be drawing a parallel between sports and Jesus, and that the sermon was entitled, “Are you a real fan of Jesus?” Then, he proceeded to shout belittling accusations at everyone for the next half an hour. It seems to be the trend these days to have a number of titled ‘points’ in your sermon, and this one was no different. Great – a guilt trip with structure. Real fans get there early. Real fans don’t care what time they get home. They’ll turn up even in a blizzard, they sit right up the front, and they never miss a game, no matter what. Real fans memorise statistics (bible verses), they pay the cost no matter how high, and they are always vocal. I cannot begin to describe how utterly disgusted I was by all of this. Not so much by the content itself (even though it had no biblical basis whatsoever), but by the accusing manner in which it was delivered. He seemed to be doing his level best to make every single person in the congregation feel like the worst Christian in the world. His strategy in achieving this was fairly simple - 1. State point: "Real fans pay the price". 2. Use his own shiny, spotless life as an example: "My wife and I give hundreds, nay, thousands, to all sorts of charities. We gave X to this person, Y to this person, Z to such and such. And that was only last week! Aren't we wonderful?" 3. Point out that everyone else sitting there was falling way short of his example: "How much did YOU give last week? Bet it wasn't half as much as that!" It really was a total and utter pile of crap. By the time he had reached his final point (“if you’re one of those quiet types that doesn’t call out during sermons, then you’re not a true fan of Jesus”), I walked out. Literally shaking with anger, and absolutely appalled.
How long can this sort of thing go on? What has the church become?
I’m not sure I can take much more.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Groundhog Day
Here we go again. Didn’t I just write a recap of 2007 like a week ago? What the hell happened? And what have I done? Another year over? A new one just begun? Imagine there’s no heaven? It’s easy if you try? Just excuse me while I start my own one-man John Lennon tribute band.
2008 wasn’t a bad year. It wasn’t a good year. It was just a year. I was mainly happy, albeit a bit bored and restless. Some stuff happened. Here is some stuff that happened:
Ask if I could do some work experience in a different department at work
I made this resolution on New Year’s Eve. I knew once I’d made the resolution, I’d have to act on it immediately otherwise I’d chicken out. So I rang the boss straight away. She said that would be fine, and that I could start whenever I liked! I’d fulfilled my resolution, and it wasn’t even 2009 yet. So I thought I’d better make another one:
Lose five kilograms
Yes, I know. Lose weight. Very original of me. Even though I knew that the swim-ring I’d been cultivating over the last few years was happy fat, it was fat nonetheless. I figured it would be easier to lose a few kilos than to buy a new wardrobe. So I joined a website called Calorie King. It’s totally fabulous, and it’s working already.
New Years Eve itself was spent on our deck with beer and friends. M brought along some small squares of lead, telling us that a German friend of hers told her of a tradition where you heat up a bit of lead until it melts, then throw it into cold water, and the shape it forms is supposed to predict the year that lies ahead. This is the shape I got:
I think it’s a dragon. This year I’m going to fly the sky at night, setting people and property alight with my fiery breath, before taking refuge in my treasure-filled lair.
Then some annoying prat called Beowulf is gonna come and stick a sword through my heart.
Beats a quiet night in, I suppose.
2008 wasn’t a bad year. It wasn’t a good year. It was just a year. I was mainly happy, albeit a bit bored and restless. Some stuff happened. Here is some stuff that happened:
- Started a new job in January. Liked it. Got used to it. Became indifferent to it.
- Half committed to a church. Started playing piano. Stopped playing piano. Fully uncommitted to it.
- Formed an a cappella group. Got some gigs. Did some busking. Got thoroughly out-busked by a giant brass band about ten metres away. Realised how intrinsically stingy the people of Launceston are.
- Went back to uni. Gave English a try. Hated it. Changed back to history. Loved it.
- Upgraded our car to a Subaru Outback. Felt like a yuppie.
- Went to Sydney to visit a friend. Had a miniature personality crisis. Felt small. Got a tattoo. Felt tough. Went to Hillsong. Felt amused.
- Had relatives visit. Went quietly insane after the 30th cup of tea and 43rd conversation about Tasmanian weather.
- Planted a veggie garden. Felt like Peter Cundall when some stuff actually grew.
- Participated in the wedding of a good friend as her matron of honour. Loved it. Felt old.
- Sang in Carols by Candlelight. Wore a shiny silver top that I will never, ever wear again.
Ask if I could do some work experience in a different department at work
I made this resolution on New Year’s Eve. I knew once I’d made the resolution, I’d have to act on it immediately otherwise I’d chicken out. So I rang the boss straight away. She said that would be fine, and that I could start whenever I liked! I’d fulfilled my resolution, and it wasn’t even 2009 yet. So I thought I’d better make another one:
Lose five kilograms
Yes, I know. Lose weight. Very original of me. Even though I knew that the swim-ring I’d been cultivating over the last few years was happy fat, it was fat nonetheless. I figured it would be easier to lose a few kilos than to buy a new wardrobe. So I joined a website called Calorie King. It’s totally fabulous, and it’s working already.
New Years Eve itself was spent on our deck with beer and friends. M brought along some small squares of lead, telling us that a German friend of hers told her of a tradition where you heat up a bit of lead until it melts, then throw it into cold water, and the shape it forms is supposed to predict the year that lies ahead. This is the shape I got:
I think it’s a dragon. This year I’m going to fly the sky at night, setting people and property alight with my fiery breath, before taking refuge in my treasure-filled lair.Then some annoying prat called Beowulf is gonna come and stick a sword through my heart.
Beats a quiet night in, I suppose.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Superchurch Dot Org
My 100 churches experiment hasn’t really gotten underway yet, due to my aforementioned obligatory piano playing. However, I’ve managed to tick another church off my list, without even having to get off my vast acreage and go anywhere. “How could this be possible?” I hear you gasp in awe. Quite simple, really. I remembered another one I’ve already attended. Superchurch Dot Org.
I went there with a friend a few weeks ago, but not for the first time. After the last time, I didn’t think I’d be going again. I kind of likened it to one of those Chickenfeed Christmas crackers you get. They look pretty spiffy, all wrapped up in pretty paper with gold dangly bits on them. But then you pull on them, and they don’t go “bang”. So you have to get the strip of “bang” paper out, and practically burn your fingers off trying to get it to go. Then you look inside and realise there’s no toy. Or if there is a toy, it’s one of those little hoppy frogs, or a keyring token, or something just as gay. You put the hat on (if there is a hat), and it falls down around your neck. And the jokes (if there are any jokes) are the lamest dad-jokes you’ve ever heard. But that’s all Christmas crackers, really. Where the hell was I going with this analogy? Oh yeah. It had all the appearances of something really great, but when it came down to it, there wasn’t really much substance. Unfortunately, this time was no different.
Actually, come to think of it, I quite like the hoppy frogs in Christmas crackers. They’re kind of cool in an unpredictable sort of way. If I can land a hoppy frog into the drink of an annoying relative next Christmas, it’ll make the whole damn thing worthwhile.
I went there with a friend a few weeks ago, but not for the first time. After the last time, I didn’t think I’d be going again. I kind of likened it to one of those Chickenfeed Christmas crackers you get. They look pretty spiffy, all wrapped up in pretty paper with gold dangly bits on them. But then you pull on them, and they don’t go “bang”. So you have to get the strip of “bang” paper out, and practically burn your fingers off trying to get it to go. Then you look inside and realise there’s no toy. Or if there is a toy, it’s one of those little hoppy frogs, or a keyring token, or something just as gay. You put the hat on (if there is a hat), and it falls down around your neck. And the jokes (if there are any jokes) are the lamest dad-jokes you’ve ever heard. But that’s all Christmas crackers, really. Where the hell was I going with this analogy? Oh yeah. It had all the appearances of something really great, but when it came down to it, there wasn’t really much substance. Unfortunately, this time was no different.
- The service reminded me of television. Before you had time to get bored with one thing, something else was dancing in front of you, commanding your attention. First, there’s an upbeat song to get us all in the mood. Next, a multimedia presentation. Then another song. Then the announcements. Then a drama. Then another song. All in quick succession. I mean, we’d hate for people to actually have five seconds worth of headspace to themselves to contemplate any of the things they’re seeing or hearing. Perhaps they’re catering for the growing population of people who’ve “got that ADHD”. Who knows. What I ‘got out of it’ (it’s about getting, after all) were two distinct impressions: this church values excellence, and they value prosperity. Everything that was done was done to a very professional standard, with little expense spared.
- Of course there was the ubiquitous ‘connection time’ – five painful minutes of either awkward shuffling and forced small talk, or sitting and watching members of the various cliques eagerly catching up with each other. If you were new, you could draw further attention to yourself and wave your arms around to get a voucher for a free coffee at the café after the service. Up until this point, I had ignorantly held the misconception that all coffee was free at church. Boy, was I stupid.
- The sermon was given by a slightly panic-stricken church leader, and the gist of it was something like, “Don’t leave! We’re losing numbers! It’s God’s will for you to keep coming here! Please don’t go!” Of course, those actual words weren’t uttered, but they may as well have been. The guy brought out three chairs – one office chair, one dining room chair, and one that was a smaller version of the ones the audience… err… sorry, congregation were sitting on. The office chair was to represent work, the dining chair home, and the church chair, well, church. A parallel was then drawn between the amount of time the average Christian spent sitting on each chair. Cue forty five minute guilt trip. For fuxake, you think I want to spend the majority of my waking hours at work? Besides being annoyed about that, it was strongly insinuated that the only one of these chairs that would enable you to be with God was the church chair. That really pissed me off, because that’s pretty much the opposite of how I’ve found it to be. Then he said that even being five or ten minutes late for church would make God angry. Damn. I’m totally screwed.
- I was ever so slightly cheered by the announcement that we’d be hearing not one, but three testimonies tonight. I love testimonies. Most likely it’s due to my secret voyeuristic tendencies, but I like to think it’s because they’re real. A well articulated, honest testimony is worth a thousand sermons. So I listened to the testimonies, and they were pretty real at first. But they all ended as soon as the conversion experience was described. “I had this shit life, and all this stuff happened [insert watered-down version of stuff]. Then I came to know God, and I lived happily ever after”. So… that’s it? That’s the sum total of life? And you’re happy with that? What are you going to do with yourself now that your life has reached its zenith at the ripe old age of thirty two? Sit around and wait to be taken up to glory? Meh. I guess I’m the only one who still has shit stuff happen, who still gets depressed, who still wonders what the point of it all is.
Actually, come to think of it, I quite like the hoppy frogs in Christmas crackers. They’re kind of cool in an unpredictable sort of way. If I can land a hoppy frog into the drink of an annoying relative next Christmas, it’ll make the whole damn thing worthwhile.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas Day
Venue 1
Me: Hi Dad
Dad: Hello! Good to see you. Would you like a drink? What do you fancy? Gee, your hair looks nice that colour. And I like your shirt. What have you guys been up to this morning? Have a seat! Lunch won’t be far away.
Venue 2
Me: Hi Mum
Mum: Hello! Mwah! I came to the carols the other night. I heard that little glitch in your voice during your solo… hahaha! You must have been SO embarrassed! I certainly would have been, if it had happened to me. But you kept going, even under the circumstances. Oh how horrible! I’ve got the whole thing recorded on my mobile phone! Hahahaha! (walks off laughing.)
Me: Hi Dad
Dad: Hello! Good to see you. Would you like a drink? What do you fancy? Gee, your hair looks nice that colour. And I like your shirt. What have you guys been up to this morning? Have a seat! Lunch won’t be far away.
Venue 2
Me: Hi Mum
Mum: Hello! Mwah! I came to the carols the other night. I heard that little glitch in your voice during your solo… hahaha! You must have been SO embarrassed! I certainly would have been, if it had happened to me. But you kept going, even under the circumstances. Oh how horrible! I’ve got the whole thing recorded on my mobile phone! Hahahaha! (walks off laughing.)
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Heed His Call
Here is something I read in a newsletter at church recently that made me chuckle to myself:
“It is the intention of [this church] to make an advance group booking for next year’s Hillsong Conference. Please pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives, and that He may call upon you to attend the conference in 2009, and that you will heed His call and make this important commitment to the Lord.”
Now, it’s not the conference itself that I’m laughing at – I’m sure they’re just swell. It’s the fact that there’s obviously no doubt in the author’s mind that it is indeed God’s will for, well, pretty much everyone to go to the next conference. It’s just a matter of whether you are in communion with Him enough to recognise this. It’s like one of those questionnaires that asks a yes/no question, then assumes that you’ve answered a particular way by the way it asks the next question:
Q1. Do you like turnips? Yes/No
Q2. Why don’t you like turnips?
I mean, why pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives about the conference when the very next prayer is going to be to ask him that he may call upon you to attend it? And to cap it all off, then you’re going to pray that you will ‘heed his call’? Why not just ‘heed his call’ to begin with, and save the effort of praying about it, if you’re so sure that’s what he’d want? Fer cryin out loud!
Hehe. “Heed His call”. I mean, who talks like that any more? Hehehe.
“It is the intention of [this church] to make an advance group booking for next year’s Hillsong Conference. Please pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives, and that He may call upon you to attend the conference in 2009, and that you will heed His call and make this important commitment to the Lord.”
Now, it’s not the conference itself that I’m laughing at – I’m sure they’re just swell. It’s the fact that there’s obviously no doubt in the author’s mind that it is indeed God’s will for, well, pretty much everyone to go to the next conference. It’s just a matter of whether you are in communion with Him enough to recognise this. It’s like one of those questionnaires that asks a yes/no question, then assumes that you’ve answered a particular way by the way it asks the next question:
Q1. Do you like turnips? Yes/No
Q2. Why don’t you like turnips?
I mean, why pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives about the conference when the very next prayer is going to be to ask him that he may call upon you to attend it? And to cap it all off, then you’re going to pray that you will ‘heed his call’? Why not just ‘heed his call’ to begin with, and save the effort of praying about it, if you’re so sure that’s what he’d want? Fer cryin out loud!
Hehe. “Heed His call”. I mean, who talks like that any more? Hehehe.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Firefox Rox
For some reason, up until yesterday, this blog was only working in Firefox. No doubt it was because of my inferior HTML skills, but I preferred to think that it was because Internet Explorer is shit. That was my reason and I was sticking to it. Besides having a blog that only worked in Firefox was like writing it in invisible ink. Only cool people who used the same browser as me would be able to read it. It was like so Famous Five.
Anyway, it started to irritate me that I couldn’t fix whatever the problem was, and I threw a mini tantrum and cried to K, and he spent hours looking at my el-crappo code, and he found the problem and fixed it!
That’s why I love him. Not just because he fixed it, but because he fixed it even though I sooked about it. What a guy.
Anyway, it started to irritate me that I couldn’t fix whatever the problem was, and I threw a mini tantrum and cried to K, and he spent hours looking at my el-crappo code, and he found the problem and fixed it!
That’s why I love him. Not just because he fixed it, but because he fixed it even though I sooked about it. What a guy.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Gardening
Since uni has finished for the year, I’ve been spending quite a bit of my spare time gardening. I’ve finally gotten around to planting a veggie garden. I’m so proud of myself. The only spot that seemed suitable was right next to the house in the backyard. It looked like it had been used as a veggie plot before, because when we moved in it was just a patch of dirt that had been enclosed with rocks. Then some weeds grew. Then they grew even bigger. So when I finally got around to doing something about it, it took ages. Plus, there were all these rocks and half bricks and busted bottles etc in the dirt. It was like landfill. Then I had to possum-proof it. That took ages too, but planting the garden would have been pointless otherwise. I hate possums, and they’re everywhere around here. I planted snow peas, tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, capsicums, spinach, lettuces and parsley. Oh, and I put some mushroom compost in crates.
That was a couple of weeks ago now, and I just went up to have a look at how things were going. Much to my surprise, my plants are growing! They aren’t dead! I really think I was expecting them to be, which disturbs me a bit. But they aren’t! I tried something, and it worked! I’m glad it worked, because if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered trying again.
If I were reading this on someone else’s blog, I would have stopped reading by now. I’d have scanned through the entry, thought, “bah! Gardening! Booo-riiing!” and clicked the next link by now. But I don’t care. Gardening is boring, and reading about someone else gardening – even more so. But when I think of anything else that people my age do, I realise that I’m not interested in any of it. I don’t have an all-consuming career. I don’t want kids. I don’t go out partying. But I don’t have any other pursuit that defines me either – I know what I don’t like, but I’m not really sure what I do.
But I do like gardening. Gardening is normal.
I like something that is normal. A part of me is normal. I am normal.
That was a couple of weeks ago now, and I just went up to have a look at how things were going. Much to my surprise, my plants are growing! They aren’t dead! I really think I was expecting them to be, which disturbs me a bit. But they aren’t! I tried something, and it worked! I’m glad it worked, because if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered trying again.
If I were reading this on someone else’s blog, I would have stopped reading by now. I’d have scanned through the entry, thought, “bah! Gardening! Booo-riiing!” and clicked the next link by now. But I don’t care. Gardening is boring, and reading about someone else gardening – even more so. But when I think of anything else that people my age do, I realise that I’m not interested in any of it. I don’t have an all-consuming career. I don’t want kids. I don’t go out partying. But I don’t have any other pursuit that defines me either – I know what I don’t like, but I’m not really sure what I do.But I do like gardening. Gardening is normal.
I like something that is normal. A part of me is normal. I am normal.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Worker
I consider myself a somewhat creative person. Probably not as creative as some might think I am, seeing as I rarely have ideas of my own. Most of the artistic stuff I’ve done over the years has been a copy of something I’ve already seen or heard someone else do. But I guess I do have some level of artistic ability, as the ‘copies’ I have attempted have ranged from “not bad” to “pretty darned accurate”. I remember when I was growing up hardly a day would pass when I wasn’t making some crafty thing, drawing a picture, designing, building, envisioning. I’d wake up on a weekend with an idea burning inside that I would just have to try out.
Occasionally I still get split second glimpses of that creative desire. But only glimpses. Enough to remember what it used to be like. And I know why it’s gone. I’m a worker now.
Working (almost) full time requires a great percentage of my waking hours, a lot of my attention, thoughts and energy. Monday and Tuesday I work. Usually Wednesdays are reserved for studying. Thursday and Friday I work. Weekends are for winding down, or housework, or social occasions, or obligatory activities. Then the cycle starts all over again.
At first, when one of those split second glimpses of creativity would flash into my mind, I would do my utmost to grab a hold of it. I’d summon up any leftover dregs of energy and force myself to focus on one of the many activities I used to love – playing music, drawing, writing, sewing, etc. But as the glimpse faded, so did my motivation. I’d end up hating the project I’d begun, struggling through to the end. Or worse, not finishing it at all.
I’ve come to realise that in order for the creativity of yesteryear to dwell in me again, I need time. I need more than a day, or two days rest from work. By the end of the two weeks of holidays that I had recently, I was motivated. Raring to go. Lots of projects were flying through my mind. Where to start? Nowhere, that’s where. It was time to go back to work. Batteries recharged, I had to spend my renewed energy, concentration and motivation on my job. Going back to work, where bit by bit the life gets sapped out of me again, while I look forward to my next lot of holidays to recover from it.
Is it worth it? I have a lovely place to live, nice possessions, and we never go without. I am sacrificing my time and energy, and that small creative part of me along with it, for financial comfort. For possessions that I never have the time to enjoy. Our house is lovely and sunny, but I’m never home during the day to enjoy it. We have a deck, a hammock and outdoor areas, but lack the leisure time that the enjoyment of these things requires. When I do have a Wednesday off, or a weekend, I spend it staring vacantly into space, zombified by work, trying to get work out of my head so that I can concentrate on something worthwhile. I can’t decide what to focus my precious spare time on. I wander here and there, not really satisfactorily finishing any one thing. All I can think about is how little time I have before I have to go back to work. I no longer have the mental clarity I used to. My mind is a fog. I forget things. I have no concentration span. I don’t care about anything.
I know, boo hoo. Everyone else has the same dilemma. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with my job. I get paid a pretty reasonable wage for doing things that require not much effort on my part. The work isn’t hard. It isn’t strenuous, and it’s not really boring. It’s just constant. It’s like a dripping tap. One drip isn’t really a lot of water, but if you put a bucket under it, then by the end of the day that bucket would hold more than you realise. That’s what it feels like to me – I look at that bucket of water and think, “did all that come out of me? I didn’t realise I had that much water to give. Imagine all the other things I could have used that for”. Instead, I used it explaining people’s accounts to them, and taking their credit card numbers.
I don’t think I can take much more before I completely lose the person I am. But I’m trapped. I can quit work and have nowhere to live and no means to be creative even if I wanted to be. Or I can keep working for another twenty years until the mortgage is paid off, by which time I’ll be fifty and my young adulthood will be behind me.
Some fucking choice.
Occasionally I still get split second glimpses of that creative desire. But only glimpses. Enough to remember what it used to be like. And I know why it’s gone. I’m a worker now.
Working (almost) full time requires a great percentage of my waking hours, a lot of my attention, thoughts and energy. Monday and Tuesday I work. Usually Wednesdays are reserved for studying. Thursday and Friday I work. Weekends are for winding down, or housework, or social occasions, or obligatory activities. Then the cycle starts all over again.
At first, when one of those split second glimpses of creativity would flash into my mind, I would do my utmost to grab a hold of it. I’d summon up any leftover dregs of energy and force myself to focus on one of the many activities I used to love – playing music, drawing, writing, sewing, etc. But as the glimpse faded, so did my motivation. I’d end up hating the project I’d begun, struggling through to the end. Or worse, not finishing it at all.
I’ve come to realise that in order for the creativity of yesteryear to dwell in me again, I need time. I need more than a day, or two days rest from work. By the end of the two weeks of holidays that I had recently, I was motivated. Raring to go. Lots of projects were flying through my mind. Where to start? Nowhere, that’s where. It was time to go back to work. Batteries recharged, I had to spend my renewed energy, concentration and motivation on my job. Going back to work, where bit by bit the life gets sapped out of me again, while I look forward to my next lot of holidays to recover from it.
Is it worth it? I have a lovely place to live, nice possessions, and we never go without. I am sacrificing my time and energy, and that small creative part of me along with it, for financial comfort. For possessions that I never have the time to enjoy. Our house is lovely and sunny, but I’m never home during the day to enjoy it. We have a deck, a hammock and outdoor areas, but lack the leisure time that the enjoyment of these things requires. When I do have a Wednesday off, or a weekend, I spend it staring vacantly into space, zombified by work, trying to get work out of my head so that I can concentrate on something worthwhile. I can’t decide what to focus my precious spare time on. I wander here and there, not really satisfactorily finishing any one thing. All I can think about is how little time I have before I have to go back to work. I no longer have the mental clarity I used to. My mind is a fog. I forget things. I have no concentration span. I don’t care about anything.
I know, boo hoo. Everyone else has the same dilemma. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with my job. I get paid a pretty reasonable wage for doing things that require not much effort on my part. The work isn’t hard. It isn’t strenuous, and it’s not really boring. It’s just constant. It’s like a dripping tap. One drip isn’t really a lot of water, but if you put a bucket under it, then by the end of the day that bucket would hold more than you realise. That’s what it feels like to me – I look at that bucket of water and think, “did all that come out of me? I didn’t realise I had that much water to give. Imagine all the other things I could have used that for”. Instead, I used it explaining people’s accounts to them, and taking their credit card numbers.
I don’t think I can take much more before I completely lose the person I am. But I’m trapped. I can quit work and have nowhere to live and no means to be creative even if I wanted to be. Or I can keep working for another twenty years until the mortgage is paid off, by which time I’ll be fifty and my young adulthood will be behind me.
Some fucking choice.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Dear Blog
Dear Blog
I just wanted to drop you a line, seeing as it's been a while. I'm really sorry that we haven't been keeping in touch much lately. It's not you, it's me. I still love you. I've just had so much on lately, and I know that' s no excuse, but I keep thinking I'll find the time and then it never happens. I'm sorry. I promise - once I've finished uni for the year, been a bridesmaid, scaled the mountain of paperwork, had the in-laws over to visit from SA, and played piano in church for two hundred consecutive weeks, I am so like totally gonna hang out with you.
Yours at the end of October,
Rebecca
I just wanted to drop you a line, seeing as it's been a while. I'm really sorry that we haven't been keeping in touch much lately. It's not you, it's me. I still love you. I've just had so much on lately, and I know that' s no excuse, but I keep thinking I'll find the time and then it never happens. I'm sorry. I promise - once I've finished uni for the year, been a bridesmaid, scaled the mountain of paperwork, had the in-laws over to visit from SA, and played piano in church for two hundred consecutive weeks, I am so like totally gonna hang out with you.
Yours at the end of October,
Rebecca
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Famous
Gus and I are famous!
I searched for my address on Google Maps, clicked on 'street view', and there I was, riding down my driveway:
What are the odds...
I searched for my address on Google Maps, clicked on 'street view', and there I was, riding down my driveway:
What are the odds...
Monday, August 04, 2008
Holidays
I’m on two weeks holiday, starting today! YAAAY! I feel so… temporarily free. I’ve been engaging in all manner of uncharacteristic behaviour, like laughing spontaneously, smiling for no reason… just feeling happy in general really. I hardly recognise myself. K keeps looking at me with a quizzical expression, as though my personality is splitting right in front of his eyes. Never fear – I’ve got no doubt that my soul will be back to its regular shrivelled-prune state in a fortnight’s time.
Not that work has been that bad lately. We have a new staff member in the complaints… err… I mean accounts department. She’s not exactly Speedy Gonzales yet, but any work she does get done is work I don’t have to do myself. So I’ve been spending the last week at work doing those not-that-important-so-it’s-gonna-have-to-wait jobs. Like deleting old accounts. I printed out a giant list of businesses that have a thirty day account but haven’t used it for three years or more, and sat there methodically exterminating them, blasting their outdated zeroes and ones into oblivion. Bam! Pow! Like Space Invaders. But the Amstrad version, where you have to wait half an hour for the tape to load. Freakin archaic accounting system.
I could see why a lot of the businesses whose accounts I was disposing of probably didn’t last very long. Not that I know much about running a business, but even a dumbass like myself could tell that their scope was way too narrow. Of course the Cake Decorators Guild of Cressy was sent to the collection agency. I mean, geez. Were they really expecting to do well? Become a franchise, perhaps? Go global? Morons. So, to make the afternoon a little less mind numbing, I started my own Businesses Doomed for Failure list in my head. Like the Mobile Chihuahua Tail Clipping Service. Or the East Launceston Electric Toothbrush Repair Centre. Or the Over 70s Beach Volleyball Club of Liaweenie. Or the Penultimate Tuesday Morning Of The Month Walkie Talkie Association for Men Aged Between Forty Six and Forty Eight Who Also Happen To Really Like Crumpets And Have Problems Expressing Their Feelings And Who Always Wanted A Pet Labrador But Their Wife Wouldn’t Let Them And Their Wife Is Fat And Smells Bad.
I mean, you just never know.
Damn, I'm glad I'm on holidays.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Cold Shoulders
There are many things that I don’t, and will probably never, understand about the “yoof of today”. Most things I don’t really care to know. For instance, the specific yet rather oblique criteria one must meet to be considered ‘emo’. Or why great teenage oafs are riding around on those little clown bikes lately. What’s with that? Don’t they realise they look ridiculous? Anyway, one thing that I have wondered about in my vast amounts of spare time, is why my idea of being sufficiently clothed seems to differ so greatly from the idea of most young girls, particularly when going out for a night on the town.
I was driving through town on my way to pick up K from work the other night. It was bloody cold. The heater in the car was cranked, I had my puffy snowman jacket on, and my teeth were still chattering. So imagine my horror when I turned my head and saw a gaggle of girls on their way to Sporty’s, or Lonnie’s, or Gropey’s, or whatever meat-headed oonce-fest they were heading to, wearing nothing but a few strategically placed hankies. Seriously. One girl was wearing a see-through strapless dress, barely covering her boobs, and finishing up just under her butt cheeks. Another had on what I will tentatively term a ‘mini skirt’ (I’ve seen belts that are wider), a crop top and stilettos. All the girls had more skin showing than was covered. All the girls were shivering. All were struggling to walk in shoes that resembled Paddle Pop sticks with toothpicks glued on for heels.
I mean, I’ve never pretended to be a girly-girl. I’ve never really fit in with groups like that. But most groups that I don’t fit into, I can at least understand somewhat, if not appreciate. I don’t understand what they are hoping to achieve by dressing like that. No doubt they’re trying to attract attention from the opposite sex. But surely it’s possible to look nice and keep warm? And apart from being cold, they weren’t exactly leaving much to the imagination. I mean, I’m not a guy, so I don’t think like one, but surely part of the fun is wondering what someone is like underneath their clothes, rather than have all those interesting bits on display for the world to ogle (or wince) at. Do guys really like girls who dress like that? Are they rewarded for their discomfort? I guess they must be, otherwise they wouldn’t bother. Someone, please enlighten me.
Fuxake. IT'S WINTER, PEOPLE!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Church-A-Palooza
Hmmm. My relationship with church (the institution) has always been one of those love-hate things. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I don’t love it or hate it. I nothing it. Before we moved to Launceston, I hadn’t been to church for ages, maybe a year or two. And that was damn fine with me. No early Sunday mornings, no wasting a quarter of my precious weekend sitting through services that would inevitably bore me to death, no pressure to join the music team, the prayer team, the morning tea roster, the cleaning roster, the missionary prayer group, the community care constituent, the finance committee, the Croquet for Jesus Club, the Ladies Coathanger-Knitting Guild, to lead the youth group (just because I seem to fit that ‘youth leader age group’, or image, or was seen in the hallway talking to a ‘yoof’, or was overheard accidentally saying the words “awesome” or “generation”), or anything else that’s gonna drain me of any life or energy or passion or personality I may have had when I first arrived. But then, we moved to Launceston, and out of nowhere this strange, almost foreign desire came over me – the desire to start attending somewhere again. I know – annoying – but I went with it anyway. I sussed out a few places, before settling on one in particular. Let’s call it, say, “Thump Plate”.
Originally, I went along to Thump Plate because my (then) boss invited me to. Then, I met some really cool people, and through those people became involved in the Group of Indeterminable Cause. It was those people who kept me going along to church. Then, a bunch of people at Thump Plate had a hissy fit about the pastor there – they wanted “good solid Bible teaching”, and he wanted them to get off their spiritually obese arses and actually do something constructive with their faith (I know – the nerve!) In the end, they ‘ran him out of town’ in the form of a pastoral feedback survey. So nearly all of the people that I’d become friends with there stopped attending. The only reason I’m still going at all is because in the midst of all this, I was coerced to play piano for the service occasionally. I enjoy playing piano, so I agreed – on the proviso that I wouldn’t be playing very often, and that there wouldn’t be too many rehearsals taking up my spare time. So now, a few months later, I find myself one of only two piano players in the whole church, rostered on to play at least every second Sunday, and spending most Saturday afternoons rehearsing. Fuxake. The only reason I’m still going to Thump Plate is because I enjoy playing piano. But I don’t have to be a prophet to see that it won’t be long before I’ll be tired of playing so often.
So for a while there, much to my disgust, I thought I was starting to turn from my church-whore ways, and settle into a long term monogamous relationship. But not for much longer, I fear. Now don’t get me wrong – when I started out on the seemingly futile venture of finding a church where I felt like I fit in, I was never searching for a place that offered interesting church services. I would have been foolish to set my standards that high. Interesting church services are on par with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, unicorns, and church luncheons without egg sandwiches. Pure myth. Every service I’ve ever attended at any church has culminated in some form of church-coma – the only variation has been the depth. I’ve all but given up hope of ever reconciling the relationship I have with God to the outward appearance of religion that constitutes church as I’ve known it. (I’m totally willing to be proven wrong here. Please… someone? Anyone? I see that hand! Oh, you were just stretching? Okay…sorry). I guess ultimately what I’m searching for, in order of likelihood, is firstly to be able to connect with people, and secondly to be able to connect with God. Both of those things I find much easier to do outside of the church environment. So why go at all? I don’t know. Something just keeps drawing me. Boredom? Martyrdom? Dehydration? One of those giant hooks you get people off stage with? I’m not really sure.
Then, I had an idea. Pastor Beard, the ex-pastor, mentioned one day that there are over one hundred registered churches in Launceston. ONE HUNDRED. That’s a lot. Why would a population of 80,000, with an estimated percentage of church-going Christians of 9%, need ONE HUNDRED churches?! That’s one hundred buildings that are owned, mortgaged or rented. One hundred pastor’s wages. One hundred electricity bills. One hundred photocopiers that are on their last legs. What a waste of money. Surely there’s a better way? I suppose there probably is. But rather than ponder the answer to that, I got to wondering; is there a soul alive who has ever been to all of these churches? I doubt it. I am assuming that all but a handful are of the Christian persuasion, and probably most are of Protestant descent rather than Catholic, which means that the majority of the churches would be pretty similar. How different could they possibly be from each other? How could one small city need so many separate gatherings of believers?
So, I have set myself a challenge. I am going to try and attend one hundred churches in Launceston. No, really – I am. It will take years. But I will run the race. I will not rest until it is done. And I’m really really going to try not to be an utter shit about it. I don’t want to attend them all so that I can bag the crap out of them. I’m genuinely interested in why so damn many are necessary. (Disclaimer: I may at times lapse in this new-found earnestness – I’m not a freaking miracle-worker after all).
To make my goal seem slightly more achievable, here are some I prepared earlier:
- Thump Plate Christian Centre
- The Church Near Our House (aka “Elderly Men Have Wandering Hands”)
- The Church That Starts With Z (aka “Banner Betty and the Hearing Loss Posse meets Mr Shouty”)
- City Life Christian Community Life Family Life Church
- The Church Formerly Known As “Joey Jo Jo Shabadoo's church”
- Nude Erections (does that one count? I only went for five minutes… Please don’t make me go back… curls up in foetal position)
Monday, March 17, 2008
Nanny
At the risk of ruining my carefully cultivated reputation of being a cynical shit who exudes about as much warmth as a brick in a freezer, I love my Nanny. She’s the matriarchal glue that holds the funny looking bits of our family together in all its dysfunctional glory. Without her, I doubt the rest of us would have much to do with each other. At any rate, we’d almost certainly have to give up our lifelong passive smoking habit. Anyway, Nanny’s great. Here are some reasons why:
- Upon taking me in as a wayward 16 year old, the price was set for my lodgement at $30 per week. Apart from the fact that that amount wouldn’t even begin to cover my hot water consumption alone (and I’m proud to say my habit for unbelievably lengthy showers is still alive and well, hallelujah), she would then give three dollars back to me every day for my school lunch. Any effort to deny this generosity was met with her adamant refusal. "What about the lunches? I always cut the lunches."
- Rules of lodgement: "I’ll do your washin’, and you can do the ironin’. I’ve always done the washin’. Matter of fact, I’ve always done everyone’s washin’." Of course, she then proceeds to do the washin’ and the ironin’, much to my chagrin as a 16 year old try-hard grunge wannabe who certainly did NOT want her oversized clothes ironed. Washing them was dorky enough.
- When I think of Nanny, I picture her kicking back in her recliner, engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke, in her favourite fuchsia leisure suit with matching fuchsia lipstick, with the fire going in the middle of summer, ranting about the Government, or dole bludgers, or what the Government aren’t doing about dole bludgers, or the price of any of the following: food, petrol, electricity, telephone, rates, water, registration, cat food, cigarettes, Austar, and… well… pretty much everything, really.
- She constantly has "one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana skin" – a precarious position indeed, but one she has claimed to be in for as long as I can remember
- I can hear her now, lamenting the demise of Wheel of Fortune, especially in its glory days. Apparently, Baby John Burgess was irreplaceable. (Personally, I’ve never seen anyone with quite the same inability to separate his head movements from the rest of his body. He reminds me of a paper puppet glued to a Paddle Pop stick). But never fear – whenever she pines for Wheel of Fortune, she can simply whip out one of the many episodes she still has on tape. I doubt that the solutions to the puzzles are all that surprising to her by now, but it’s the memories, gosh darn it.
- If she ever tires of the Wheel of Fortune tapes, there’s always the Deal or No Deal tapes to fall back on
- If you ask her how she is, you’d better make a cup of tea and have a seat – you’re in for a forty five minute health report, complete with gory details about seeping sores and runny eyes. And she’s always got "that damned cough again". It’s the dairy, you know. Nothing to do with the aforementioned cloud of cigarette smoke. No – it’s definitely the dairy. Come to think of it, the wad of butter that tends to accompany pretty much all five food groups would probably affect anyone’s health.
- The runny eye issue eventually led to an appointment at the hospital to have a cataract removed. After a hearty lunch, she turned up at the hospital, only to be told that she wasn’t supposed to have eaten anything. "No", argued Nanny, "They crossed that bit out in the letter – see, look!" She pulled the letter out from her bag. Upon closer inspection, someone pointed out that the part of the letter she was referring to was actually highlighted. Well! Nanny had never heard of a highlighter, had she! Evidently, if it’s not a pencil (for crosswords) or a bingo marker, it doesn’t rate a mention.
- Only Nanny could get lost in Westbury. With Daph and Elaine on the way back from the casino. I mean, Westbury…
- My brother suggested she program Consumer Affairs into the speed dial on her phone, rather than wearing out those particular numbers from repeated use.
- When asked if there are any plans for the next Christmas together, she always cheerfully replies, "Oh, I’ll be dead by then!"
- She refuses to get a CD player. She doesn’t need "one of those new fangled things"
- Anything that takes more than a passing thought is too much effort. She just "can’t be bothered". Yet she’ll be out of the recliner like a rocket if someone’s outside the house doing a U-turn in the cul-de-sac. Old people are so nosy.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
New Year's Resolution Haiku
Perhaps at age twelve
Hitchhiker's Guide's a good read
Twenty eight's too old.
Hitchhiker's Guide's a good read
Twenty eight's too old.
Phone
My mobile phone died the other day. My trusty old black-and-white-screened monophonic-ring-toned bare-bones Nokia 1100. That phone was like a phone to me. I'm going to miss it and all its wonderful features, like… um… its ability to make and receive phone calls. Actually, come to think of it, I will miss the built in torch. And my Ernie and Bert phone cover. And Snake II.
So, seeing as I'm such a social butterfly, I needed a new phone quickly. I went to get one in my lunch hour, but ended up getting stuck in line waiting for lunch first, then I ran into someone I knew and yapped to them for a while (social butterfly, remember), so by the time I got into Wills and stood around waiting for a sales assistant to rouse from their slumber and come and serve me, I had precisely ten minutes before I had to be back at work. Luckily, I knew what I wanted and how much I wanted to pay. I wanted: a phone. Just a phone. I didn't want something that would make me a coffee in the morning or keep me constantly entertained. Just a phone. And I wanted one for under a hundred bucks.
Well, you sure do get more bang for your buck these days! (wtf does that mean, anyway?) You can't even GET 'just a phone' any more. My el-crappo Nokia 1100 cost me $89 three years ago. Pfft. PFFT, I say. The phone I hurriedly chose was $99 – one of those Nokia flip phones. It has a colour screen, plays MP3s and videos, has a camera and video function, surfs the internet, has bluetooth, a calendar, a stopwatch, a radio, a sound recorder, a converter, a memory card, a world clock, and Sudoku! SUDOKU! My life is complete. Sayonara, Snake II. You've been superseded.
So now that I've got a phone with a camera in it, I can take photos wherever I go (yes... it is I, Captain Obvious). So here's something I saw in a shop the other day that amused me:
Oh yeah, I bet you just can't shut her up. Life of the party, she is.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Aged Rage
My new job seems to be working out okay so far. Not that working in accounts is my dream career or anything, but it seems like a pretty cruisey place to work. Apart from the fact that it was like entering some sort of technology time warp. I mean, don't get me wrong – the good old days of CRT monitors, Office 97, dot matrix printers and DOS-based command prompt software were damn fine days indeed, but in this day and age I must admit I've gotten used to the finer things in life, like, oh I dunno, being able to email someone an invoice instead of faxing it. But the atmosphere there is a pretty good one, and that's the main thing. It seems like everyone who works there has been there for about twenty years, which is a good sign I guess. Either that or the place is like the employment equivalent of the Hotel California. Apparently on your 25th anniversary, employees are presented with a silver tray. On your 30th anniversary, you get a matching decanter. When I asked what you were supposed to do with the tray for five years while you waited for the decanter, they just laughed. Whether they were laughing at me, with me or near me, I'm still not sure.
This week, all the subscriber invoices went out with an error on them. Instead of the due amount being in the 'current – please pay in 30 days' box, the amount owing was printed in the 'overdue – please pay immediately' area. So all week I've been answering the phone to every damn Betty Jones in Launceston, demanding to know why their invoice says they are overdue when they know full well they aren't. Sigh. Needless to say, it's been a long week – one endless conversation with an irate elderly person. Elderly people aren't the only ones who subscribe, of course, but they certainly seem to be the only ones who complain. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd just tell me the problem, listen to my explanation and heartfelt apology, accept it, and hang up. But nooooo… First, they have to announce their age, the aeons they've been subscribing for, and make sure you're very clear on the fact that they have always paid on time. Then they have to tell you the whole long-winded story of how they came to discover the error on their invoice:
"Well! I woke up this morning, and after my cup of tea, I heard the mailman. And I thought to myself, 'There's the mailman. I might go and check the mail'. So, I went and checked the mail. I walked back inside with my letters, and I sat down to look at them, and I noticed there was a bill from you! So I opened it, and I had a look. And well! Imagine my shock when I saw that the bill said I was overdue! I have always paid on time, you know. I've never been overdue, and I've been subscribing for fifty years. I'm eighty six years old, you know!"
"Yes, I know Mrs Jones, I'm really very sorry. Our accounts were printed with an error on them. The amount that you owe is not overdue, it's in the wrong section. It should be in the 'current' section. You have until the end of the month to pay. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. Please accept our apologies."
"Well! Yes! Because I'm not overdue, you know. I knew that was a mistake as soon as I saw it. I couldn't believe it! I mean, after I woke up and had my cup of tea, and heard the mailman, and went to the mail box, and came back inside, and opened the mail, and saw the bill from you, I was most unhappy! I've never been overdue. I have always paid on time, and I've been a subscriber for fifty years. I'm eighty six!"
"I'm really sorry, Mrs Jones. Hopefully the problem will be fixed by next month, so it shouldn't happen again."
"Well, I certainly hope not! I'm eighty six years old, you know! I've been subscribing for fifty years, and I've never been overdue!"
And so on. I finally get Betty off the phone, breathing a sigh of relief as I hang up the receiver. The phone rings again. This time, it's Wilfred Smith. He's ninety three years old. His mailman came before he'd had his morning cup of tea. He's got a good mind to cancel his subscription. He doesn't need this stress. He's ninety three years old. Next time I ring up to complain somewhere, I'm going to announce my age a few hundred thousand times and see if it makes a difference. Unfortunately, "I'm twenty eight! Give me a discount!" doesn't really have the same ring to it.
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