We had our usual weekend except we did a whole bunch of stuff on Saturday so on Sunday we were relatively relaxed and chilled out.

Saturday, we took the wagon for a regular service and we wanted to look at several properties in the area, so we zipped around in the little MX5 to do that. I enjoyed it heaps but I think Tress would have preferred to traverse the eastern suburbs in something a little bigger. That was all in the morning and when we picked up the wagon around noon, we headed back, then to lunch and in the arvo, I did the cooking for the week – something I usually do on Sundays.

I guess on a weekend like that when no external causes impeded our personal plans, we felt freer. While the freedom allowed us to indulge in our personal causes and agenda, the greater benefit was it freed up my mind to think about where we are and where we are – I am – heading. United came back from 2-0 down to beat City and postpone the latter’s celebration of winning the league while Hawthorn ran out of time to claw back the 4-5 goal deficit and lose out to the reigning premiers. We did a bit of shopping and looked forward to our short trip back to Klang. These personal indulgences didn’t settle me enough to stop me thinking about where I am and where I’m heading.

Tanya C was one of those who made our initial visit to St Alf’s a whole lot friendlier. She’s a friendly and outgoing person and she had the lectern last Sunday for the prayers. It was a bit of a rambling range of issues, but I guess that sort of prayers sort of reflects the state of Australian – it cannot be just a Melbourne thing – society. The press and social media appear to have lost a grasp of why public figures – sports persons and politicians chiefly – appear to be behaving badly and listlessly, such that often ordinary citizens would probably just throw their arms up in the air in exasperation and check out from public discourse altogether. It is so hard to have a clearly thought out line of narrative and all that desultory cloud only grinds in all the more, the sort of hopelessness it can engender.

I feel very disengaged now. I feel as though I have given up hoping the world would turn to the good and right, that fewer things would be so undefined or its rightness or wrongness spelt out.

I’d often thing I’d need to simply and wholly turn to the word of God to regain the compass one needs to navigate through life. That I’d start to go beyond just reading it every day, and be bold enough to live by it, totally. I saw over the weekend – it could be a twit from someone like John Dickson or a Facebook posting of Tim Keller – that to believe in God is not quite the same thing as to trust in God. I read his word everyday because I believe in God. I’m not sure I can step out to trust in God as much as I read his word. Maybe that would help me better engage with this world and not be frustrated and disillusioned by the apparent pointlessness of how it is playing out. Maybe having a lamp and light wouldn’t mean anything unless my feet needs to find its next step on a path.