It never rains...wait, yes it does.

Anyone for a game of volleyball? It rained for the past forty-eight hours solid here and it finally stopped this morning. It's the most rain Australia has had for five years and it's already the biggest June rainfall for thirty years. This is a good thing. You're probably aware that Australia has been suffering from a severe drought for years so everyone seems to be really happy at the moment. This is nice, because in the UK two full days of constant rain would push most of us off the edge into a psychotic episode.


After my wife's efforts I thought that I should have a go at riding the bike. You can see from this photo that I soon took to the machine like Paris Hilton to jail. That's me burning around the paddock without a helmet on. Aren't I cool. I have to say that learning to ride a bike has given me more respect for my motorcycling friends. It's more complicated than I make it look and it's very easy to get confused. I, for example, managed to put on too many revs and took the clutch off too quickly. As a result I shot forward like Reid catching the scent of cheese and ended up in a crumpled heap at the end of the paddock, my leg trapped under the bike and my pride severely damaged. You can see from the photo to the right the life-threatening injury that I sustained in this near-death experience. I'm also very happy to say that Ruth caught this incident on video. You'll be reassured to know that the sound of my horrified screams are drowned out by my wife's cackling laughter. Apart from this, my first lesson was a resounding success and I can now see the appeal of zooming along like a demented badger with nothing except your own skill protecting you from the taste of concrete death.

My conscience compels me to add that the photos of the redback and the sunset in my last post came from the camera of Jane, one of our neighbours. I had intended to credit her in the last post but forgot and am correcting that now to prevent you from making the mistaken assumption that I had suddenly got good at taking photos. In the same manner there are a couple of photos from this post that were taken during a camping trip a couple of months ago by Jane's sister, Lucy. Bonza!


The photo of me didn't seem to appear in either The Daily Liberal or even Dubbo Photo News. How is this possible? Why is it that Dubbo Photo News can spare the space to include photos of Sheila's twenty-first birthday party but not of living legend James 'Mat Fu' Webb? Where's the justice in that? It's not a total waste though as there is often some quite interesting stuff in the DPN, apart from the TV listings. For example, there's a section every week where they ask a small Dubbo child some random questions and record their answers as spoken. So for example in this week's paper Tayla is asked, amongst others, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" ('He can't do that because my mum has to hold his hand'), "What does the Prime Minister do?" ('He's a boy and he shops') and "What's the best thing about your dad?" ('He grows up when he was a little baby'). Calvin was asked the same questions and gave the respective answers 'He crossed the road to lay an egg', 'Licks his hands' and 'He's old'. Thanks son.


"This week I have been mostly thinking about COMMUNITY.". I've been asked to talk a little bit about it to the Dubbo teams next week, which I thought was strange seeing as I'm a newbie and don't really know what I'm doing. I really appreciate that Cornerstone is a genuine effort to do community properly - and this means not getting to pick and choose the face that you let other people see. If you live with someone for long enough it becomes very hard to keep up the pretence, and you can't avoid having to be real with other people. Furthermore, in Cornerstone there is ample opportunity for 'enforced genuine-ness' (TM) - meetings where we are encouraged to share about our lives beyond the surface. It's intense and hard work but there's something powerful about it and it just reinforces my conviction that God created us to move and breathe and have our being (and do mission) in community. After all, when God wants something done He tends to establish a community to do it. Maybe I'll share some more about this once I've had a chance to think about what I'm going to say. Have a good week.