Category: Walking With God

The Pastor Your Pastor Shouldnt Be


Sorry for alluding to the really funny Old Spice ad again, but it was just really very funny and good.

The Pastor I refer to is of course, Pastor Danny Nalliah. He is the pastor your pastor shouldnt be.

After succeeding in getting his “prophecy” spectacularly wrong in 2007, he is understandably more cautious this time around. He is however, still trying to use his position to bully the church into voting conservatively.

To him and his troops, anyone voting to the left of politics is somehow being unfaithful and disobeying God. What a clown.

If he and his troops are so confident the Coalition is the answer to Australia’s social problems, why is it that John Howard and Peter Costello – the annointed ones of Danny Nalliah – presided over a tragic descent of Australian public mores? The Australia I came to in 2004 saw the peak of Howard/Costello powers. It also saw the height of Australian consumerisms, escalating drug and alcohol problems, deteriorating family values and glorification of self over community.

If Conservative policies are so Christian, why was it that the Howard and Costello years saw escalating crimes and breakdown of traditional values?

Rise up indeed Australia – stop being blinded by the likes of Danny Nalliah who has proven himself to be a false prophet. Look instead at the simple facts of what is on offer. That alone is enough in my mind, to come to the same conclusion, but without dragging the church through the quagmire of “word” and “visions and dreams” and “revelations” that for the most part is laughable if not also revolting.

If you local pastor takes up the cudgel ask him or her to pipe down and be a true pastor, not a false prophet.

Dear Danny Nalliah


To: Danny Nalliah

I really must say many share my views that you are a false prophet as proven in 2007. No “prophesy” depends on man’s action to be fulfilled.

If we as a church want to look at aspects of a leader’s life such as a de facto relationship, then let us all examine our own lives too. It would be hypocritical for us to demand a leader of a certain standard when we ourselves don’t (at least try to) live up to that standard.

Why is a de facto relationship a greater sin than other sins? What about sins of theft, coveting, idol worship and the like? How many of us freely download movies and music from the internet, thus stealing from rightful copyright owners? How many of us work endlessly to covet material things? How many of us idolise things, people and possessions to the exclusion of God and His children? How many of us get drunk habitually? Eat too much habitually? Being lazy and not working when we should? Why aren’t these sins given any attention so that collectively the body of Christ may submit and obey?

A pastor’s calling is to guide the flock to be more submissive and obedient to God so that we may be holy just as He is holy, not seek to influence the congregation to vote any which way as long as it is to the right conservative politics. Why is it all Christians who vote anywhere to the left of politics are viewed negatively, as though they are not being faithful to God and His calling? Why is a vote for labor necessarily a vote against the Judeo-Christian legacy? You are either trying to hijack the church to boost your own political views or you have serious misunderstanding.

You have proven yourself to be a false prophet. Don’t also make you out to be a false pastor.

Acceptance = Understanding?


If there is a theologian or enlightened one among you out there, please show me where I have misunderstood or failed to understand this.
I have, in the past 2-3 years, come across various speakers (read: preachers and pastors) whose messages I have struggled to make sense. Some of these involve “prophecies” and I have made an entry on this before, in particular in relation to Nalliah and his misguided “prophecies” about the recent Australian federal elections. Others involve healing and “giftings” which frankly, sound just like some medicine sellers to me.
My problem is this. Whenever I tell someone about my difficulties with understanding (let alone accepting) these teachings, one of the responses I get is “don’t worry, I used to be like that too”. Is time the impediment to a clear understanding? Does understanding come with the passage of time alone? Are those who do not agree with such teachings “behind the 8th ball” somewhat?
Ok – maybe it’s pride but that’s not the point. The point is to provide an explanation, not a sagely and condescending “you will understand in time” response. If one truly understands, surely one can explain? I think the next time I get this response I will hold this person down and insist on an explanation and suggest that no matter how much time passes, he/she doesn’t understand either. That person has merely stopped questioning and accepted everything. That is not understanding. That is quitting. That person has simply thrown up his or her hands and say I give up, I’ll just accept anything. Is this understanding?
 

Nalliah No Prophet


Kevin Rudd is in, John Howard AND Peter Costello are both out (Costello has declined to lead the Liberals). I guess Pastor Danny Nalliah will now say the Body of Christ did not unite in prayer and action? Or simply that God did not reveal what he said God did –
it was more Danny’s personal desire?

Danny Nalliah has confirmed for me that many of these so called modern
“prophecy ministry” is a gross misleading of God’s people. Nalliah, like many of these “prophets”, are no prophets. I think it is best they tell their flocks of that very obvious fact.

Involvment at the Political Fringe


J is a leader of the church we have been attending for the past 3 years, here in Melbourne. He is one of the 6 but I think he’s a de facto chairman of the board sort of a person. We haven’t had a pastor since April of last year so sometimes in a teasing mode, we call him Pastor J as well. He’s a good sport so it’s all taken in a light hearted manner. Yesterday, he made a raft of announcements, which is unusual. He tended to be short on administrative details at time, probably because he has so much to do. He holds down a full time job, has 2 teenage kids and his wife works full time as well. So he has as much time as the rest of us yet there he is, virtually “pastoring” a church as well. So while he tends to be short on details, we understand. I have in recent past, urged him to consider hiring a part time administrator, so address this. So I wonder if last Sunday’s pile of announcements was a response to my urging and possible of others who felt the same way.One of the things he announced was the church’s respond to recent announcements by the Brumby Government of Victoria, to decriminalise abortion. I’ve written a draft letter for the church to send to the relevant ministers as well as the local member for Glen Waverley, one Maxine Morand whose office is on Montclair Avenue – she is the neighbour of that law office I used to work in. The relevant ministers are I suppose, the Attorney General (Rob Hulls) and the minister for children and women’s affair, who as it turns out, is also Ms Morand the local member for Glen and Mount Waverley. The content of that letter is then repeated and sent by individual church members to their individual members of parliament. There was a member who has been actively involved in politics, often attending conservative organised prayer functions as well as public rallies. When it was first announced that I was preparing a draft letter, this member approached me and provided me with some material and references. It was obvious the political leaning was conservative so I felt duty bound to inform J. I kept a deliberate neutral tone in the letter, choosing only to appeal to God’s standards as a basis. That letter has now been distributed and I wonder if Australian politicians would take kindly to an act like this…

Submitting to Authority?


The recent independent day celebrations in Malaysia have, as one may expect, stirred a number of publications into putting out pieces on challenges facing Malaysia today. I sent one of these (from The Economist) to a number of people and it generated a little heat. That has lead to the creation of a new blog for certain family members to further talk about this and other issues. It also lead to the discussion of that age-old issue of what do we do with a government we don’t agree with?

 

This latter issue was raised in conjunction with obedience to Romans 13. That chapter started with a call to submit to the authority of the existing government. Of course, in a modern democracy, you fight like crazy to have your preferred candidate making the laws and no matter what the outcome of your fight, you have to remain law abiding citizens. That is an obvious starting point. Our natural instinct tells us however, that it is a relative and malleable principle. It doesn’t take much to respond, at the very next breath, with a yes-but. The holocaust jumps out in a flash in a topic like this. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, modern Serbia, Rwanda and most recently, Zimbabwe are regimes which scream out against an unqualified plain reading of Roman 13.

 

The problem with qualifying any part of the scriptures is it invites analyses and second guessing, based on our values which are subjective by definition. When that happens it becomes a free for all and you might as well throw away the bible. On the other hand, you have references such as Acts 5:29 in which Peter clearly qualifies Romans 13. Is that the answer then? I guess it must be. You can and must only submit to the authority of a government which has not clearly violated God’s standards. Peter himself has echoed Paul’s advice – see 1 Peter 2:17. Yet Peter in Acts 5:29 clearly said obedience to God must take precedence.

 

I have made numerous entries on my feelings on the deeds (or more accurately, misdeeds) of the rulers of Malaysia. I don’t know they are clear violations against God’s laws – I suspect so but have not clearly pinned it down. I have not openly rebelled against any particular law of Malaysia. I have merely spoken up against many of its policies and practices. I guess instead of staying and chancing deterioration and prospects of actually violating Romans 13, I opted instead to avoid the issue. I simply thought it wasn’t worth it. Maybe it isn’t the issue of not being law abiding citizens so much as an issue of opting out of an unsatisfactory regime

Weekends, and House Blessings


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.

Can we both be right?


I was just chatting with someone earlier today and the issue of religious dogmas surfaced again. A few days ago a couple of high profile terrorist attacks took place in Britain, in London and Glasgow, Following the Glasgow one (a couple of twenty-something medical doctors loaded up an SUV with petrol and crashed into the Glasgow airport), a couple of medical doctors from the middle east were detained in Brisbane. Both were working as doctors in a Gold Coast hospital, both are Muslims with one of them having Palestinian parents and was himself born in Jordan. He may have been an Indian. Anyway, we were talking about this piece of news and someone remarked why so much violence emanates from religions. Someone else retorted that was because religions create bigotry, especially religions which insist they are right and everyone else is wrong. Exclusivity is always a bad idea for societies trying to find ways to live together more harmoniously.

That is a problem isn’t it – the world insisting no one should be dogmatic and claim exclusive ownership over truth. Religions, in my mind, are necessarily dogmatic. Why set down principles of relating to God and the consequential rules for this and the after life, if you don’t believe them to be true? In fact you shouldn’t just believe them to be true you have to believe they are the only ones which are true. If you don’t, if others are also true, why start something new? Why not just use the other, pre-existing one? After all, one isn’t talking about building a better model of say, a car or a computer or a phone, because newer or better models of those tools make those tools even more effective. Essentially a car is to get you from point A to point B and you make a newer model only because it brings you from point A to point B either faster, or in more comfort or safer or using less fuel. You don’t make a new car for any other reason, do you? Or maybe you do but surely that is just consumerism gone mad (as in having fifty varieties of margarine on the supermarket shelves) and has nothing to do with making sure you get from point A to point B, because the old beat-up whatever does exactly that already.

My point is, when one starts a new religion, surely the motivation must be the idea that all the other religions don’t bring you to God, that some aspects of their teachings are not quite right with the result that you may not reach God? Man seeking God isn’t exactly like finding different ways to eat chocolates and that discovering another way is always a plus. If religion A already lets you find God, you don’t start religion B unless A didn’t actually let you find God. If merely parts of A were problematic but you still got to God anyway, wouldn’t religion B then be false if it didn’t contain those bits of A which did get you to God? And if A did get you to God, shouldn’t those problematic bits be fixed but didn’t matter anyway because you still got to God via A? Why start B? I’d be pretty disappointed with a God who doesn’t have a set of standards, for whom anything goes. If God wants us to come to Him, He’d set down a way and that’d be it. I guess I’m trying to say truth in religion is necessarily exclusive. If A is true then everything else must be false. If there’s something else which is true, then A must have been false. I’ve heard this described as an “either or” principle, as opposed to a “both and” principle. I think my point is especially focused if you agree that often, A and B actually say very different things. So, they cant be both right and they cant both get you to God. I guess you can call me an “either or” person and if that makes me a religiously dogmatic exclusionist bigot, well…that’s not so nice but I guess I’m in that sense, one.

One Down, Bring on the other Two!


One down, two to go. Winter, that is. June has somehow just whizzed by amazingly quickly. Perhaps it was the busyness at work in particular. It was maybe also the other events – kiddo’s entrance exams for Mac Robertson High, our 15th anniversary. Whatever the cause(s), the feeling has been that I have had very little time to just take things in. I feel like I have been rushed and swept by the tides around me. While I much prefer this to sitting around waiting for things to happen, it also feels like I am not charting my own direction. I guess I’m experiencing the perennial challenge to find meaning in the midst of the hustle and bustle of activities which constitute living. In as much as I have enjoyed the activities of the past 3 months or so, they have affected the life I live in ways which I don’t necessarily like.

For example, I have had to spend a lot of time dealing with trains and trams. I spend a great deal of the start of each morning working towards getting on that 6:48, 6:59 or 7:11 at the Mount Waverley station, or 3 minutes earlier at Syndal, where the gym is. This morning for example, I had to cut my run down to just 30 minutes and rushed through my showers with the sole aim of getting on that 6:56 at Syndal. I missed it so caught the 7:08 which meant I didn’t catch 7:10 or 7:16 tram at Glen Iris, no matter how fast I huffed and puffed my way up the 200m stretch to the tram stop, which meant I got in close to 30 minutes later than I would have liked. My mornings are ruled by this insane preoccupation with catching that train or that tram. All that, because of the other insane race against time – that of getting my work done.

Maybe that’s it – the endless chasing and meeting of deadlines means you lose sight of what is important to you and where you want to go, especially if these deadlines are not your own. Meeting such deadlines is a cold achievement devoid of any real thrill of making a difference, or should it? I know, I know – work ethics demand we do the work to the best of our ability without any regard for personal agenda. I’m not saying I don’t get any satisfaction from doing my job. I’m just saying the rush, the zipping by of the hours and days this process involve, robs me of a sense of “that’s what I want”. At the end of it all, it’s cold and means little.

Yet, I plough on and when my eyes and mind tire late in the day and I long to go home, another round of rushing kicks in. This time it’s the reversed trend of catching the right tram so that I don’t miss the 7:25 train at Glen Iris to go back to either Mount Waverley or Syndal. If I do, the always erratic 7:40 would see me arriving home after 8, which is always a bummer. Yarra Tram has a tram tracker hotline which you can call to find out what time a tram is arriving and if I hurry, I can just about hang up the phone, undock my notebook, pack up and make a quick dash for a tram which is due to arrive in 3 minutes. However, if the boss is still in, it’s good form to just nick in and say good bye for the day. If this was the case, it has to be the next tram, whenever that is. At times, I have had to sprint from my cubicle to the lift, get down to the lobby, sprint across the hall to the glass door (which seem to know my rush and so open at a glacial pace) and do an Asafa Powell to the tram stop. I would then spend the next 5 minutes catching my breath and hoping my heart holds out, and also hoping Theresa wouldn’t pick that moment to telephone, lest the heavy breathing suggests it wasn’t my workload in the office requiring her to keep my dinner in the oven.

Assuming I manage to get on the tram on time, arrival at Glen Iris some 20 minutes later signals another assault on the cardio respiratory system. Often, the tram stops, the passengers get off and the shuffles last only about 2 seconds before they turn into trots across the road. If the rail crossing bells start to signal, the trots escalate into an almighty stampede. This time, the distance is more than double that between my glacial glass door and the tram stop. The route also involves a 30m ramp going up, towards the station platform so while I still often manage catch the 7:25, the recovery can take the whole of the 12 minutes from Glen Iris to Mount Waverley. God forbid that Theresa should call then. I’m certain I looked absolutely pale on those occasions as I sit panting and rubbing my chest. Like Detective Murtaugh liked to say, I’m getting too old for this (expletive deleted).

On arrival home, it’s another round of rushed activities. I’d put my gym clothes in a bucket to soak away the 12-hour old perspiration, get out of my coat, jacket and shirt, pack my clothes for the next day, and go downstairs for dinner. It’d be way past 8 by then. After all the washing up, and if I pack lunch for the next day, it’d be close to 9pm. We start thinking about bed around 9.30pm. So you see there is precious little time to talk or just think about the day. This goes on for a whole week and come weekend, the cycle of house cleaning, shopping, cooking, ferrying kiddo to her activities and church on Sunday, would leave us so little time. The rush goes on. The cycles are endless. Yet this mouse prefers spinning away, chasing endlessly, on that little treadmill in the little cage, more than having no wheel to climb onto at all. It may be tiring and challenging and raises all sorts of questions but it also makes for a full life. Now for the remaining 2 months…

Living


I woke up a full 25 minutes later than I intended this morning, so I missed the gym. I had felt I needed to, to get the week kick-started. It was such a long week last week and I was so bushed that on Friday night, the last thing I wanted to do was to be in church for a long night of movie and fraternizing. Oh I know I shouldn’t use that word but on that night I really felt that way. Any form of socializing, unless it is with a very small group over a warm meal and a few bottles of very good red, was to be avoided. Anyway there I was, in the church hall on a cold and tired Friday night, watching this movie called One Night with the King. It was on the story of Esther of the Old Testament. The sound was a bad, as obviously it felt like one of those cheap movie sessions Malaysian schools used to organize – the hall wasn’t meant to the a theater and it showed. We ploughed through the 120 odd minutes of celluloid, after which we worked our way through cakes and other delights totally unsuited for such a late hour. Despite all that, it felt good to be in the company of church friends so as tired as I was it was not a totally bad way to end the week.

Saturday was therefore the start of my recuperation from the week, including the events of the previous night. I was particularly looking forward to it as we were supposed to look at a couple of houses which we had seen on the internet. As it turned out, one was a dud and the other has been sold, but that was only one part of a damp squib of a weekend. After the usual house cleaning, we dropped kiddo off at her morning class (final one, with at least a few months’ break). After replenishing my wine stock, we went off all the way to Wantirna South, for the first inspection. The internet copy writer was extremely skillful, for what was a small unit stuck behind another one occupied by very messy owner/occupier was given a description like it was a Taj Mahal perched on the Cote d’Azur going for a song. We left the house, dropped off the dry cleaning, picked up some bread and went to pick kiddo. After lunch with her, we went to do the weekly shopping, after which we headed home. I fixed up the wiring for the home phone (a new set with an answering machine, which Theresa picked up from the recent Myer stock-take sale). The made-in-China electrical extension cord was a challenge and by the time I was done it was time to go look for the second house, which turned out to have been sold the previous day already. I was peeved at the agent for making us go to the property, when she knew it has been sold. If it was to lure us to see other property it failed, because I don’t think I would want to deal with her again. That property was so close to kiddo’s present school so we were really keen on it but then again I know God has His ways of dealing with us.

We went home and it was nearly 5pm but we weren’t hungry so we watched a DVD – Stranger Than Fiction starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson. Dustin Hoffman played a role as well, in what was a very novel plot. Will Ferrell played an IRS agent, Harold Crick who lived a regimented life. His life was actually written as a fiction by Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Their paths somehow crossed when Crick started hearing Eiffel’s narratives of his life. He thought he was going cuckoo, saw a shrink, who referred him to a Professor Jules Hilbert (Hoffman) who worked with Crick to unravel what was going on. It turned out Eiffel was writing a tragedy and she usually kills of her dramatis personae. Crick was waiting to be killed of but fortunately for him Eiffel had a writer’s block when it came to the ending. She struggled as Crick’s life took a turn for the better. One of his assignments took him to an Anna something (Mary Gyllenghall) and they hit it off after a rocky start. Eiffel finally had her writer’s block cleared up and found a way to kill her guy. By then Crick had figured out it was Eiffel who was writing his life and managed to contact her. He got her outline of a script, gave it to Hilbert, who thought it was a poetic and most beautiful ending so Crick should opt to go this way, rather than a mundane death albeit much later. He thought the book (titled Death and Taxes) could end no other way. The brave Crick went ahead and lived the final moments of his life exactly how Eiffel wanted. Except of course, Eiffel had struggled with the idea that her character was real and she was killing a real person so unbeknownst to Crick, changed the ending which saved Crick. Hilbert of course thought the ending spoiled it, thought the book would have been much better had Crick died as per the original version. It was a strange movie, but enjoyable.

We finished the movie just before 7, I cooked some vermicelli for dinner, after which we did something we hadn’t done for a long time. We caved in to kiddo’s pestering and played monopoly. She won, we lost, she was happy and we went to bed. Yesterday afternoon after church kiddo had lunch with the youth group followed by a jam session so Theresa and I went for lunch on our own. We went to Shangrila Inn at Brentford square – she for her char koay teow and I had my laksa. We went window shopping at Forest Hill after that before we went home and I did some ironing and cooked some more, for this week’s dinners. I also boiled some red beans for supper. SBS had a EPL classic match on where United thrashed the tractor boys 9-0 with Andy Cole scoring 5. It was great to see Giggsy turning the Ipswich defense upside down for half if not all of the goals. I wondered again if United would be better next season than they were. With Hargreaves, and the two latin dancers they should but one never knows. Maybe Anfield would be more threatening this time around. Apparently they are close to signing Spain’s Torres for over 26 million GBP…

And so it was a very uneventful weekend, but great because it had loads of family time. It was also great because yesterday morning, I found myself really getting stuck into acknowledging God and worshiping him. That echoed again this morning just by listening to some songs on an SD card which I thought had gone walkabout. I found it again yesterday and the songs on it (Amy Grant mainly) were inspiring stuff. It drained the battery on the phone but just listening to music about worship for a change (instead of reading) was great. Mundane stuff huh? Living, I guess.