Currentlies

The days towards the back end of this week have been dark and dreary -- but lovely all the same. So, in celebration of the indoors, I present to you a list currentlies...

currently tinkering with Tumblr. It looks like a simple and cheerful little blogging platform, handy for sharing links, quotes, and short posts without fuss or bother -- or the necessity of moderating and interacting through comments. I love blog comment features (interaction is the best!) but I know a lot of folks don't. Perhaps Tumblr is worth a try.

currently listening to David Crowder*Band's Remedy. I was already a fan of Mr. Crowder and Associates, so I was predisposed to like this album. However, I like it even more than I expected! It's so full of joy and celebration of who God is -- with lots of bouncy music and some quirky elements, too. After all, it is David Crowder we're talking about here. Consider these lyrics:

Here we are / Here we are / The broken and used / Mistreated, abused / Here we are.
Here You are / Here You are / The beautiful one / Who came like a Son / Here You are.
So we lift up our voices / We open our hands / To cling to the love / That we can't comprehend.
Oh, lift up your voices / And lift up your heads / To sing of the love / That had freed us from sin.
Beautiful. Oh, and I found out something Very Good yesterday. David Crowder has a blog!

currently anticipating the complete creation of the new Boundless magazine. I talk about and refer back to Boundless a lot because I really respect a lot of the material coming from that place of web and faith goodness. I think a magazine coming from such an amalgamation of minds and hearts can only be great. I hope it happens soon -- and that we can somehow obtain this publication in Australia!


currently admiring these very adorable fabric-covered hair clips from Sportsgirl. Ninety-five cents, friends. For just ninety-five cents (I believe their sales are on at the moment), you too can keep your hair in place and feel girly and old-fashioned at the same time!

currently streaming RhemaFM straight from my web browser. I grow increasingly impatient with stations that offer a mix of Christian music and secular. There are enough secular stations to listen to if that's what people are after. Plus, the radio can provide a fantastic preview of Christian artists I might not be game enough to spend thirty dollars on straight up without knowing what their music is like. So I appreciate this station for its "100% Christian mix".

currently capturing pictures of light in unusual places. I guess it's a combination of the grey and the shortening autumn days (only two evenings left before winter!), but there seems to be sparks of glowing colour everywhere! I am enjoying capturing them when I can (and when my sister's camera is within easy reach, since my own has departed this earth).

What are your currentlies?

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conversations:

Staish -- genius? You're just saying that because you loooove me. I love you, too.

Bethany -- thank you for reminding me of that book! Scribbling in the Sand is on my list of started-to-read-but-stopped-for-reasons-that-are-unknown-to-me but it sounds like the perfect book to pull out again. I loved what I have read of it, and it provoked lots of good thought. There aren't a lot of books out there that discuss creativity from a Christian perspective.

The grey sometimes turns my mind to fuzz

It is a day of winter-come-early, cold and grey and damp and necessitating the bogan wearing of a blue checked flanno shirt over more normal clothes. My work keeps me at the computer but, unfortunately, being surrounded by grey and staring at a glowing screen for hours on end results in drowsiness.

In between work, when my mind needs a change of pace (not of the variety offered to me by a small brother wanting to attack me with a blue sticky hand), I've been visiting the archives of various blogs. And once again, I'm struck by how natural some writer's voices are, even those who possibly wouldn't call themselves writers. I'm not sure what it is, but I admire greatly those people who can write about the humdrum happenings of day-to-day life and make it all interesting. It must be a gift, this ability to write about the everyday in a way that makes the reader care.

I wonder also if it's an inherent sense of openness that makes some people's words so interesting?

I think a lot about openness vs. restraint in the world of public writing. Actually, perhaps openness and restraint shouldn't be considered as opposites, but more as complimentary values to be worked together into the life of the Christian writer. More and more lately, I am beginning to think that we who are following this Jewish carpenter need to be open about what we are learning, what He is showing us, and what He is challenging us, too.

But the openness must be tempered with restraint -- not just in the world of writing but in any of the arts. So many artists seem swallowed up in the confusion and despair of an artistic life pursued without restraint -- "art for art's sake" and all that associated humanism. The pursuit of something for itself alone will never bring lasting satisfaction. For Christians, as artists, there must be more. There must be restraint, and there must be delicacy. We do not pursue our art simply for itself; there is a greater purpose. And the purpose is not just to veil the Gospel in some creative form (to try only to do this seems to end only in cliches), but to live the Gospel in our work, by offering it all back to the One who created us to create.

Thoughts?

Weekend II

We had a very super weekend here. Friday involved a bunch of girlfriends, a dinner of Asian-inspired finger food (think satay chicken skewers and spring rolls), and a marathon viewing of the BBC mini-series North and South. It's always a delight to share something so great with those who are strangers to it, so my sister and I loved watching our friends' responses as they watched it. In between each episode, we got caught up talking about etiquette and the constraints of the class system and the inevitable longing for the return of chivalry.

Saturday did not contain a hoped-for sleep-in. We were all up early and Monique-the-cool's scooter would not start so Lauren ran her into work before coming back to join the rest of us for a hot-cooked brekky out on the balcony. Responsibility and a grave sense of study urgency drove Jocelyn home soon after but Lauren II (not 'my' Lauren) stayed on and we had a wonderful morning chatting about life and God and families.

The afternoon and Monique's return from work rolled round remarkably quickly so we spontaneously made a little trek out to the Point and ate fish and chips while eavesdropping on strangers' conversations and watching the tide come in and cover the sandbar. An awesome way to spend an autumn afternoon.

Sunday involved the long-awaited sleep-in (I calculated I'd slept four and a half hours of the past forty) and then a very late breakfast, followed by an afternoon of pottering around, washing, and ironing. We had a late lunch/dinner of fresh salad, beef and bean tacos out on the balcony at 4.30 while the strains of David Crowder and friends filled the air, then we headed into night church for the second sermon in The Grace Effect series. Grace is something I need so much to learn about, and I'm finding the sermon series to be incredibly valuable.

I'll leave you with one snippet that stood out to me in particular: Salvation by works is a form of rebellion against the gospel of the cross of Christ. Wow. I guess I had always looked at the reliance on works as a confusion with the gospel rather than a rebellion against it. But to try and work our way into fellowship with God is essentially saying His saving gospel is not enough. Yikes.

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conversations:

Lizzie B -- well, we will take whatever we can get of your sharing, even if you do feel like the sixteen-year-old girl blabbing about her nonexistent trip to the mall.

Caitlin -- I'm so glad the poem was a blessing; may it encourage you often! And ::hugs:: back!

ASourceofJoy -- I'm childishly excited that we're reading Rose From Brier at the same time. Yay!

Staish -- The artwork in Frankie just makes me want to do collages all night long.

Season of suffering

As always when I read Elisabeth Elliot, I find myself revisiting Amy Carmichael's beautiful works. I think it was in one of Mrs. Elliot's books that my appetite for Amy Carmichael's beautiful poetry and vivid prose was first whetted, and I have been in love ever since. This past week, I dug out Rose From Brier, a find from a pre-loved book fair, and began to read.

In the introduction I was arrested by a poem, first written for those who are sick but applicable to anyone who is suffering in any way. We want Him to take away the painful "winds that blow", but most of all, we want to be found to honour Him before their withering heat disappears. The victory is not in the end of the trial, but the beautiful surrender while the fire rages at its hottest. And even then we are thrown upon His mercy -- the victory comes only in Him. May you be encouraged.

Before the winds that blow do cease,

Teach me to dwell within Thy calm:

Before the pain has passed in peace,

Give me, my God, to sing a psalm.

Let me not lose the chance to prove

The fulness of enabling love.

O Love of God, do this for me:

Maintain a constant victory.

Before I leave the desert land

For meadows of immortal flowers,

Lead me where streams at Thy command

Flow by the borders of the hours,

That when the thirsty come, I may

Show them the fountains in the way.

O Love of God, do this for me:

Maintain a constant victory.

P.S. The beautiful stitchwork in the picture came in this morning's mail -- thank you, Caitlin! A special hug for you today, and some mail is on its way back to you!

Dear blog:

Justin Heazlewood waxes sarcastic in the latest issue of Frankie* magazine:

Dear Blog, Today I did this and said that and made this private joke and generally my grammar was terrible and I got myself into a situation with no dramatic tension or character arcs and I guess you had to be there. *SUBMIT*
Sound familiar? Yes, tickle me Qwertyuiop: it's blog-o'clock! Enter the literary dark ages as a million-volume omnibus of misspelled first drafts and textual healing is spammed out of Generation-Why? keyboards quicker than you can Yahoo! 'line breaks please!'. Hey, don't get me wrong, this influx in self-narration can only be good for the online diary industry -- it's just the readers' unions I feel sorry for.

So is it evidence of some severe fetish for self-punishment or simply a nod to irony that I should actually publish such a scathing rebuttal of blogs on, of all things, my own blog? No, it's simply that I believe he has a point. A hilarious** point. Dare I say it? An LOL point, even. His conclusion says it best:

How will historians look back on this e-era? A liberating lattice of language and interconnectivity or a billion gigs of ego gunk? Academics keep saying how isolated and disconnected we're all feeling, despite the communication age explosion. Perhaps if we all took a big, virtual *breath* and deeply pondered what we really want to say to the world, and to each other, artistic discipline could win over from, "This morning my friend said something hilarious but I can't remember."

Well said, Mr. Heazlewood. Let us redeem blogging from the muddy pool of "a billion gigs of ego junk".

notes:
*Not a magazine I'd universally recommend, but I happen to have a copy of this month's issue.
**We have dispensed with the "an" in front on silent H's, have we not? Justin Heazlewood is making me nervous.

Weekend

Market day, and sun and air blown clear
with autumn
Better not forget
your cardigan.

And men in ponchos hemmed in braid and fringe
of red and white which strangely match
the music haunting wild and free and joy
from native pipes

It somehow mingles with the scent
and rightly so
heady sweet and full of spice
of hot chai held in little paper cups.

“This music makes me crazy,”
he complains to her,
they pass me and I laugh.
It makes me happy.

Happy like the colours
in the crocheted rugs
tumbled red and blue and gold
and orange like your grandma knits.

“How much?”
Ten dollars each. Well you can have
Two for fifteen.
He smiles, two for twelve.
Too small for my bed, I shrug
and smile.

He smiles as we go.
His voice follows:
“You are both gorgeous.”

Self-aware we dig
through mounds of loveless clothes
and handle ancient things
like playing cards and purses
and awkward brown jugs that are kind of
warm

Because these things you can’t help
but hold.

And happy with the things we have bought
with our eyes
and the little glass rings of red and blue
--fifty cents for a tiny thing
--encircles your finger and
makes you
feel like a princess of Persia.

Fifty cents is not too much to pay
for that.

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conversations:

Claire -- Yes!! In the days when you could actually get something with a five dollar voucher :).

Caitlin -- It's terribly embarrassing; I agree! Twenty years back is far enough to go without the experience being too painful, but reading anything within the last ten or particularly five or so years makes me cringe. I rarely re-read my journals for that reason.

Kristy -- Hooray for being 1980 children. Long live puffy stickers!

Lizzie Balans -- I would love to know your deeply-provoked thinkings! Do share more!

The Friday Archives: my first journal

On Anzac Day, clever craft blogger Loobylu launched a new concept: The Friday Archives. The idea is to share some creative work of one's own from the past. I'm beginning today with the second entry from my very first journal, which I received on my eighth birthday. I won't share the first entry; it's altogether too egotistical and positively shameful. But here is the second, in all its glorious, eight-year-old's-messy-handwriting-goodness:

In case you can't read my scrawl (and it's very likely you can't), I'll transcribe, awkward punctuation and all:

Friday 26 [of August, I'm guessing] 1988

I went in a poster comp. I won first prize in the infants section. I got a $5 voucher to buy from the book fair. I chose a Drawing Book and The Frog Prince. The Frog Prince is an excellent book that shows you the true fact's that if you make your promise you must keep it. The Drawing Book is a book w[h]ich shows you how to draw hard things simply.

The entries seem very childish, looking back on them, but I think this little journal is likely where my love of writing really took off.

Remember Puffy Stickers? Weren't they the best?