Missing my real weekends
It should have felt like another tiring weekend. It didn’t feel that way. It was probably because we have become used to this cycle.
Last Thursday, my boss had her car in the workshop for some work done on it after an accident earlier in the week. Being the kind soul that she is, she asked me to use her car park while her car sits in the workshop. I had a seminar on Thursday so I did not make use of the facility until Friday. It was great on Friday because I left early and actually got home by 6.30! It took me all of 25 minutes to get home so we could get some dinner and be in church in time for kiddo’s youth program. She had to be in church by 7.55pm and we just about made it. We usually trot in just before 8.30, much to kiddo’s chagrin.
It was freezing cold again on Friday night. I was again very tired so though we were in church early, I couldn’t get very much out of the session. When we got home just before 11pm, I was so tired I gave it just about enough time for the electric blanket to warm the bed before I crashed out.
We had to be up early on Saturday morning. Theresa and I, that is. We had decided to sell our house and it was going to be an open inspection day later in the afternoon. Though our house is generally no where near slum level we still had to make sure we spruced it up the best we could, for an occasion like this. So in went the bicarbonate soda before vacuuming, and extra cleanser squirted into the sinks and toilet bowls. Everything was arranged to add what little aesthetic sense we could, including turning on a mini water feature. As a final touch, I took out my three favourite CDs for a hopefully classy touch to the whole set up. It was a choice among Stacy Kent, Benny Carter and Glen Miller. I went for Stacy and left Benny for the next day (Sunday). Theresa replaced the floor mats and put plush new towels on the racks and I made sure nice bottles of red went on the other remaining rack in the kitchen.
In the midst of the vacuuming and scrubbing, Theresa took time out to send kiddo to Borders at Chadstone to pick up JK Rowling’s final rendition – The Deadly Hallows. By the time they came back the house was ready and we went out to lunch at Proud Peacock, a Vietnamese place in Glen Waverley we haven’t been to for some time. Kiddo started devouring the book. Well, as much as she could in the tiny restaurant. After lunch she had to go for her math class so Harry had to wait for another hour or so. When she finally found time to get stuck into it was almost 3pm. We were doing our grocery shopping so she found herself a little table in a café, we bought her a cup of coffee and off she went into Hogwarts et al.
By the time we got home it was almost 4pm. We found a soiled floor mat, traces of dirt on the carpet in the hallway, and a note saying the open inspection was a “success”. A total of 19 groups walked through our home within the 30 minute period. Stacy sang right through and the agent thought that was pretty good. I cleaned up the little mess, and got ready to cook dinner as Kiddo tore through the pages. By the time we finished dinner and I was prepping for the “Shawshank Redemption” which was screening on channel 9, she had finished the book. That was it – all 7 in the series finished. No, the boy protagonist did not die, I was told. It wasn’t a dark finish after all or some misguided Sunday school principal would have another string added to his bow and rile against it again.
Shockingly, I slept towards the end of Tim Robbins’ escape but woke up in time for Morgan Freeman to join him in Mexico to finish off that superb story. Theresa had dozed off as well so we all ended another Saturday feeling tired.
After church on Sunday, we went home to again add some touches to the home for a repeat of the previous day’s open inspection. I put Stacy away however and had Benny Carter on. It turned out that it provided the near perfect ambience. The agent called me on the phone earlier today and said with the sunny afternoon and crisp cold air, Benny’s band played a perfect backdrop to create another frenzy of interest in the house among the 18 groups of people who made their way through the house. While this group deposited yet more dirt on my mat and hallway, we were in a church friend’s house, soiling theirs along with almost the whole church. B & T and their baby S had just moved into their new home not far from ours, 2-3 months ago and finally organised a house warming do. We got home close to 6pm, I did some vacuuming, ironing and had to prepare lunch. We didn’t need dinner so at least there weren’t any major messing around in the kitchen before we settled down to catch some shut eye. As I finally climb into bed, I felt like it was yet another weekend in which I didn’t feel like I had my needed rest.
Malaysian connection
Yet another old Malaysian friend is visiting Melbourne so I caught up with him for lunch today. An ex-colleague, he recently retired as a chief money man in a banking group and is now here to spend time with his family. I asked him what he thought of Malaysia, as we sat there in the Belgian Beer Café in the very elegant Ormond House next to my office building. He gave me that very same bleak outlook, just like many before him. In the past 6 months or so, I have met here in Melbourne, with a number of Malaysians who are senior executives in leading corporations in Malaysia. Not a single one of them expressed an outlook bright enough to want to have their children work and establish their lives there. Everyone one of them thought the future of their children is outside of Malaysia. The political bankruptcy, the social disintegration and the growing conviction that unless something drastic takes place it is going to be a financial basket case, are features no longer in dispute by all honest Malaysians.
I was once accused of being overly negative about Malaysia. This was 2-3 years ago. Now some of my then accusers have themselves become negative. I am sure there are some, maybe many who remain positive. I am not sure though if their optimism extends to their children as well, i.e. given a chance, they would like their children to grow up and build their lives in Malaysia. I recently shared with some people, my long held view that Malaysia is past the stage where incremental change is still possible. You can only play racial politics which include religious bigotry and bullying, for that long before you realised you have played with flint and fuel once too often. Yet is this is what it takes to change Malaysia for the better, then it wont be a bad thing. The problem of course, is that this could all have been avoided had the leaders been less greedy, more responsible and more God-fearing. As it is, I hope I am wrong but I believe it is now too late. Any change for the better can now come only at a costly price. A few months ago, a church member who used to work for an oil exploration division of a Malaysian government foundation, said Malaysia has been living a fairy tale which would soon be ending. I thought then that it was amusing that an Australian of Austrian descent should provide such a caustic but insightful opinion about Malaysia to a Malaysian Chinese. It would have been truly amusing had he been only joking.
House blessing
Like I said previously, yesterday we attended a house warming party at B & T’s new home. As is the practice of Christian gatherings of this nature, the party was preceded by a few persons praying. Just before the prayers were said, a leader went around prepping everyone, saying there would be a house blessing session with some prayers. One of the leaders then prayed for the blood of Jesus to cleanse the house. A few weeks before, J & J had moved into their new home with their 2 kids and a few days before they moved in, the leaders were also asked to go and bless the house.
I know I am probably treading on thin ice here but I cannot understand this practice. I must confess this practice sounds like a Hindu asking his priest to bless his house or a Buddhist asking a monk to do the same. The Hindus even do it for their cars. What does this mean for a Christian?
Where do we draw the line, if the rationale is that we want God to bless where we dwell? Many spend hours in their cars every day, so why not have a car blessing every time someone purchases a new car? I know one of our church members (and consequently the leaders!) would be terribly busy then as he changes cars every few months! We also spend hours at work every day. Do we have office blessings? Some are on the road all the time, staying in hotels frequently. Do we have hotel blessings? What about school blessings? Our kids are there for the most part of every week day. Maybe when someone purchases a business, there should be a shop blessing then. We are going to look like animists before too long, if we continue with this. It would be too similar to priests or monks chanting in some Chinese restaurants to “bless” the business there. There is something I cannot put my finger on but this practice bugs me.
We are the temple of God, according to the apostle Paul. That means God dwells in us. That has to be the overriding and therefore guiding principle for the above, or is there more to it? If God dwells in us, wherever we are, there God is. Does God dwell in our house separately from dwelling in us? Is there a sense in which God dwells in us but not in our house? Admittedly there is room for the idea (or fact) that there are dwellings in which for some reason spirits linger on. It is however, only a tiny room as such dwellings are few in number. It would be extremely rare, I believe. In addition, God is all-present. He is everywhere. If there is a haunted house therefore, one where poltergeists dwell, it may be because some one has conjured up something which specifically allows these spirits to roam free and do their thing. This has to be the exception except in those places where the practice of devil worshipping is wide spread. It then becomes a situation where God is not present, which is against the norm. God is everywhere unless He is specifically not wanted. Otherwise, He is God and Lord, and He is sovereign. He rules ad Lord God and reigns, but not against human free will. I sincerely believe that. For that reason, we don’t have to ask for God’s blessings and dwelling to be in each place we go to. We ask for special “prayer covering” only when we are headed to some oppressed places, where spiritual oppression – ie where God’s presence is oppressed – is rife. Well, that is my belief. Do I bring this up with the leaders? I already feel like an oddball in our church anyway, asking questions where they are not usually asked and raising stuff which Theresa thinks I shouldn’t raise. She thinks I shouldn’t be so “questioning” all the time. I don’t want to cause any problems. That was why I “resigned” from home group leadership about 6 months ago. It is easier to “live” with these issues – ie not bring them up – if I am not in a “wider leadership” role. As a leader in any capacity, I would be more compelled to raise issues concerning practices of the church. Is this a cop out? I hate to cause issues. That’s all.
Ante 